Air raid on Dachwig
The village Dachwig in the former district Weissensee suffered in the Second World War , on April 8, 1945 just two days before its occupation by American ground forces, a devastating air raid . Six Douglas A-26 fighter aircraft of the 9th Air Force attacked the site as a "target of opportunity" with a total of 7.7 tons of incendiary bombs (4,300 pieces). The machines belonged to an association of 152 twin-engine bombers, which were to attack the city of Sondershausen .
Dachwig
At the beginning of the 1940s, Dachwig was a large farming village (well over 1000 inhabitants). Until 1932 it belonged to the district of Erfurt , then to the district of Weißensee in the Prussian province of Saxony . It is located in the city triangle of Erfurt , Gotha , Bad Langensalza - north of the Fahner Höhe . A thoroughfare ran through the town from Erfurt to Bad Langensalza (today a bypass). Since 1897, Dachwig had a train station (today a stop) on the Erfurt – Bad Langensalza – Mühlhausen line . It had two brick factories, of which the Bögeholz brick factory was the largest in the town. At the end of the Second World War there were 40 handicrafts and businesses in Dachwig in addition to the farms. These included restaurants, an organ building, a dairy, blacksmiths, water mills and a teaching and research institute for fruit and vegetable cultivation (since 1943).
An aerial photo from 1938 from the village museum shows an attractive, closed village image with numerous four-sided courtyards.
As early as 1936, Dachwig had been divided into air raid shelter districts. Fire protection exercises took place especially from 1941 onwards, during which hundreds of women and girls were trained as air raiders. Many buildings had vaulted cellars, others were set up as air raid shelters .
Even if the able-bodied part of the male population was not in town during the Second World War, there was a considerable increase in the population. In May 1943 alone, 690 air war evacuated persons came to Dachwig, there were prisoners of war and plenty of “foreign workers” in the village, and towards the end of the war there were refugees from the eastern regions.
The attack
Before the air raid
The American troops had been advancing eastward in Thuringia since the beginning of April 1945. They occupied Gotha on April 4th and Bad Langensalza on April 6th. On April 8, they were not far west of Dachwig, which received shell fire that afternoon .
The bombers and their cargo
On April 8, 1945, 152 light twin-engined bombers of the 9th Air Force started in the late afternoon from their bases in northern France with an attack on the inner city of Sondershausen in northern Thuringia as a "primary target". One of the four bomber groups used was the 409th Bombardment Group, which was stationed in Laon . It consisted of 38 Douglas A-26 Invaders that were loaded with incendiary bombs . They were supposed to set the town of Sondershausen, which was partially destroyed by the other three bomber groups with high-explosive bombs , in a major fire. The attack on Sondershausen split up despite the lack of defense; Parts of the aircraft formations attacked Nordhausen and Sangerhausen as secondary targets . In addition to navigation difficulties, the clouds of smoke, smoke and dust over the actual destination increasingly contributed to this. Only 32 of the 38 invaders of the 409th Bombardment Group dropped their incendiary bombs over Sondershausen, while six planes instead headed for Dachwig as a target of opportunity . The attack on the village took place at 6:38 p.m. The six warplanes each carried six to seven containers, each containing 110 incendiary bombs weighing 1.8 kg, a total of 4,300 bombs, corresponding to 7.7 tons.
The damage in place
“The Second World War ended with an inferno for Dachwig,” says the village chronicle. 60 buildings were affected by the large number of incendiary bombs: 18 were completely lost, 24 were seriously and 18 were slightly damaged. These included seven workhouses, two community houses, the “Tanne” restaurant, the upper school and the barn of the four-sided courtyard of the farmer Alfred Schumann was hit and burned out completely. The large Bögeholz brickworks was destroyed (and not rebuilt), the Kolbe brickworks damaged (and repaired). The livestock losses were great: 5 horses, 3 bulls, 28 cows, 36 pigs, 97 sheep and 21 goats perished in their stables in the flames. The building damage and livestock losses occurred even though the population came out of the cellars immediately after the brief attack. "Incendiary sticks" were removed, fires put out and cattle driven outside. 54 families had become homeless. A woman and a child were burned to death. The losses would have been much higher if the cellar would have been relatively safe and when in front of the fire bombs and explosive bombs had been used, but these have been planned thrown off by the other machines in Sondershausen.
After the bombing
Intensive artillery fire began in the morning of April 10, and the villagers fled into the field. A woman was fatally hit by a grenade. At noon the Americans moved into the town; When the residents returned in the early afternoon, they found their surviving houses occupied by the soldiers. When they were able to move back in days, their homes were ransacked. American tanks and other military vehicles rolled through the town to the east, over Andisleben, day and night . A child was driven to death.
The village was rebuilt with great commitment from the inhabitants, under the deficit conditions of the Soviet Zone and GDR . Like all of Thuringia, the place was contractually handed over to the Red Army by the Americans at the beginning of July 1945 . The bricks for the reconstruction were supplied by the refurbished Kolbe brickworks, which was demolished in 1954 for "unknown reasons".
literature
- Thomas Blumenthal: Anatomy of an attack. The bombing of the city of Sondershausen on April 8, 1945 . Thesis. University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, Faculty of Political Science and Law. Munich 2002. The work is available in the Sondershausen City Library.
- Chronicle of a village. Dachwig. 860 - 2010 (1150 years). Edited by the municipality of Dachwig. Editor Klaus Ranglack, collective of authors. Bad Langensalza 2010.
- Diary of a citizen of Dachwig, April to July 1945. Dachwig village museum.