Air raids on Chemnitz

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Memorial stone at Chemnitz main cemetery: 4,000 dead on March 5, 1945 (other source: 2,100)

The air raids on Chemnitz during the Second World War caused severe damage to the Saxon industrial city of Chemnitz . From February 6 to April 11, 1945 units of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) flew a total of ten air raids on the city on the northern edge of the Ore Mountains . This involved 2,880 heavy four-engine bombers , which dropped over 7,700 tons of explosives and incendiary devices. Of this, about 55% came from the Bomber Command of the British RAF and the Canadian RCAF , and 45% from the 8th Air Force . In the Chemnitz city area, 4,000 people were probably killed, 2,100 of them in the night of March 5 to 6, 1945 alone. 80% of the city center was destroyed. 27,000 apartments (a quarter of the total stock), 167 factories, 84 public buildings and numerous cultural buildings in the urban area were completely destroyed. Chemnitz was written off as "another dead city" by the Allies.

Attack planning

In the “Greater German Reich” of 1939, Chemnitz, with over 337,000 inhabitants , was ranked 20th on the list of the largest German cities , including Wroclaw , Königsberg and Vienna . The densely populated Chemnitz had an efficient mechanical engineering and vehicle industry. With the armament of the Wehrmacht in the 1930s, the plants of Auto Union ( DKW ), Presto , Reinecker , Wanderer and Wetzel-Union became armaments companies. The city had therefore been a strategic goal in the planning of the Royal Air Force since September 1941 under the code name "Blackfin" ("squid", zoologically correct but a tuna ). The deputy of Arthur Harris , Commander in Chief of the RAF Bomber Command, was Air Vice-Marshal Robert Saundby and, as an avid fisherman, gave all the German cities selected with a "Fish code". Chemnitz was intended for area attacks as part of the morale-bombing strategy to break the defensive morale of the civilian population, also as a target in the Central German "Small Ruhr Area", later to "disrupt German troop movements and refugee transports" and because it had "even larger undestroyed areas". Uwe Fiedler, the director of the Schlossbergmuseum Chemnitz, and best expert on the history of the city's aerial warfare, wrote in 2005: "The extensive destruction of the Chemnitz city center was not, as has long been assumed, merely an accompanying effect of attacks that primarily targeted the armaments industry , but a goal of British air war planning since 1942 ". Chemnitz was initially out of the range of British bombers. This changed only with the increased commissioning of heavy four-engine planes of the Stirling , Halifax and Lancaster types at the RAF. In mid-1943 the Combined Bomber Offensive began , the use of the US Air Force with its B-17 ("Flying Fortress") and B-24 ("Liberator") in the aerial warfare over Europe, which began in early 1944 with the use of long-range escort fighters came to its peak.

In spring 1945 Chemnitz no longer had anti-aircraft protection because the heavy batteries had been relocated to the central German fuel centers.

Early attacks

Chemnitz city center (airship photo 1910) before its destruction in 1945

17th August 1940

On the night of August 17, 1940, a single British aerial bomb fell in the city of Chemnitz.

May 12, 1944

After several years of silence, at midday on May 12, 1944, Rabenstein was attacked by eleven US type B-17 bombers with a bomb load of 26 tons. An infant was the first to die in Chemnitz.

June 29, 1944

On the flight back from attacking the BRABAG - Hydrierwerk Bohlen threw the early morning 15 B-17 USAAF on 29 July 1944 their remaining bombs on Chemnitz as a "target of opportunity" (target of opportunity) from, there were three deaths. Borna and Rabenstein were particularly affected.

September 11, 1944

On September 11, 1944 from 11.30 a.m. to 1.25 p.m., 74 B-17s, accompanied by 20  Mustang fighters, targeted the industrial facilities (tank production) and the residential area of Siegmar with 450 high-explosive bombs and many incendiary bombs (a total of 176 Tons of bombs). Large parts of the Wanderer factory were on fire. The Auto-Union plant had 85 deaths, including 41 foreign workers. 21 people died in the residential area of ​​Siegmar. Part of the bomb load had fallen into the open.

The attacks in 1945

American Boeing B-17 ("Flying Fortress")
Handley Page Halifax of the RAF
British Avro Lancaster dropping a blockbuster and stick bombs

February 6, 1945

474 American bombers B-17 threw off 10:50 over 3,000 high-explosive bombs and 600 cluster bombs , a total of 1,132 tons of bombs over the city of Chemnitz from. The damage was considerable. The main target, the Chemnitz-Hilbersdorf train station , was not hit.

14./15. February 1945

Anglo-American "double punch". Chemnitz was first attacked on February 14 at lunchtime (11.45 a.m. - 1.55 p.m.) by the USAAF with 294 (306) B-17 bombers and 718 (747) tons of bombs, accompanied by a large number of P-51 fighters.

Two subsequent night attacks from 8.35 p.m. to 10.00 p.m. and from 11.55 p.m. to 1.20 a.m. were carried out by British and Canadian bomber crews who had flown the first attack on Dresden the day before . The inferno, including the firestorm , also planned for Chemnitz failed. Due to the weather, the city center was not hit but suburbs in the south of the city. Of 717 aircraft, 13 were lost. 789 tons of high explosive and 1320 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped. The Allied impact assessment reported: Chemnitz damaged, but not yet destroyed.

March 2, 1945

A major attack by the USAAF took place in the morning from 10 a.m. to 12.15 p.m. 255 B-17 bombers of the 1st Air Division dropped 594 tons of bombs. There was considerable damage in the city center. Among the many dead were also numerous children from a municipal children's home. Behind the Siegmar train station, heading towards the city, a fully occupied train with refugees from the east was hit: 75 dead, including 30 children, and 250 injured. Important industrial companies, according to Reinecker AG, were razed to the ground.

March 3, 1945

On that day, Chemnitz was attacked from 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. as a secondary target by 166 B-17s. The stated destination was the railway facilities, the Hilbersdorf marshalling yard was missed. 400 tons of bombs fell on the badly hit inner city. Both attacks combined (March 2nd and 3rd) killed 540 people, including 39 children.

5th / 6th March 1945

Anglo-American "Double Strike". In the morning , from 9.45 a.m. to 12.10 p.m., the USAAF flew its usual daytime attack with 233 B-17s, which dropped 563 tons of bombs, and long-range escort fighters. Again, the main target station Hilbersdorf was not hit, but much more damage was done in the city.

In the evening the sirens wailed from 8.30 p.m. The British RAF and the Canadian RCAF attacked, a first wave from 8:37 p.m. to 9:08 p.m. and the second from 10:30 p.m. to after midnight. The city was very well lit by "Christmas trees". 683 heavy four-engine Halifax and Lancaster bombers first dropped 413 mine bombs (around 800 tons), then 859 tons of incendiary bombs and finally 1,112 tons of high explosive bombs. 22 machines were lost. There were 2,105 dead in Chemnitz that night alone. The city was lit up in glowing red, "the firestorm was bad, but not like in Dresden". Two days later, not all fires were extinguished. Of 117,000 apartments, 42,000 were destroyed. 75% of the city area and 140 km of frontage buildings were "in ruins". The surviving population fled into the area. The Allied aerial reconnaissance registered Chemnitz as "another dead city".

April 11, 1945

The last bomb attack on Chemnitz took place at night by the RAF, with 20 aircraft and 16 tons of bombs. Among other things, the foundries of the Krautheim company in Borna were hit.

From April 13th the 4th US Armored Division occupied Siegmar and the western suburbs of Chemnitz. In accordance with its directive, it stayed there and only made intermittent forays into the city. The population suffered from low-level aircraft attacks and two-week artillery bombardment until the beginning of May, which again claimed numerous lives. The city asked in vain to be occupied by the Americans. According to Allied agreements, the Red Army became the occupying power on May 8, 1945. On 6./7. May the remnants of the Wehrmacht withdrew from Chemnitz.

After the attacks on Chemnitz, the RAF missed a total of 31, the USAAF two heavy bombers

Fatalities

Memorial for Chemnitz bomb victims in the municipal cemetery

Around 4,000 people were killed in the air raids on Chemnitz (former city area), 2,105 of them on the night of May 5th / 6th. March 1945 The air war historian Olaf Groehler, however, gives 3,700 people killed for that night alone, and the memorial stone in the cemetery (see below) names 4,000 victims for March 5 alone: ​​event-related information. Wehrmacht losses are not included in these figures. Reliable information on missing and wounded people is difficult to find.

During the GDR era, a memorial stone with the following inscription was erected at the Chemnitz municipal cemetery (Karl-Marx-Stadt) : "To commemorate 4000 victims of Anglo-American bombing terror in Chemnitz on March 5, 1945. 1224 bomb victims found their final resting place here" . According to this, there were 4,000 deaths in this one day alone, with its consecutive day and night attacks by the Americans and the British. Behind the memorial stone are the mass graves under lawns.

On the other side of the burial ground there is a large memorial - also from the early GDR era - with a grieving woman (mother?) Holding a dead child in her arms. 675 children lost their lives in the bombing raids on Chemnitz. On the memorial there is also a poem by Louis Fürnberg : "The wounds that the terrible barbarian inflicted on humanity will close, and the early red will pour over the earth, shimmering - new territory under the plow ". The monument comes from the Chemnitz sculptor Hanns Diettrich . It was badly weathered in 1992 when it was restored by Frank Diettrich , the artist's son. On March 7, 2020, the monument was desecrated by a paint attack - as it was on the Chemnitz Peace Day 2014.

Comment by the Canadian Peter Hensel, who comes from Chemnitz, on the - today official - assumption of "only" 2,100 (civilian) deaths on May 5th / 6th. March 1945: "In view of the severity of the attacks, the huge number of heavy bombers, and the enormous amount of explosives and incendiary devices used, which were dropped during the night and during the day, it is almost unbelievable that only such a relatively small number of People has been killed. "

Material losses

The inner city was hit hardest, 80% of it was destroyed. In the entire urban area, eight square kilometers of built-up area were completely destroyed: 167 factories (but only 17 of the 50 with the highest attack priority), 84 public buildings (out of 400), 42,000 apartments (out of 117,000). The number of homeless was correspondingly high . The population of Chemnitz is said to have fallen from 334,000 before the war to 250,000 in spring 1945.

Work by the Chemnitz police to clear the destroyed city in 1945
Work by the Chemnitz police to clear the destroyed city in 1945

The main roads were cleared during the war, and by the end of 1945 33 kilometers of streets had been freed from rubble and valuable reconstruction material had been obtained. In Chemnitz, too, the rubble women excelled in removing the debris . A special memorial was set for them: a carillon in the old town hall tower, inaugurated in 2001, has six large protruding figures. One of them is a rubble woman (who doesn't look as miserable as the women in 1945).

Loss of and damage to cultural and public buildings

This section was written based on the standard work Fates of German Architectural Monuments in World War II , including the chapter Karl-Marx-Stadt. Formerly Chemnitz by Heinrich Magirius: "The bombing raids in February and March 1945, in particular the Anglo-American major attack on March 5, 1945, almost completely destroyed the inner city and the inner suburbs".

Destroyed (or badly damaged / burned out):

  • The Jakobikirche : on March 5th, including the neo-Gothic interior, it was almost completely burned out, the vaults and pillars in the nave collapsed in June 1945. Gradual reconstruction over decades until 2009.
City Church St. Jakobi before and after destruction in 1945 (model 2010)
  • The Jodokus Church in Glösa: destroyed by explosive bombs
  • The Pauli Church : burned out. Reconstruction was planned, the tower had already been reconstructed. Torn down in 1961 along with the partially renovated nave.
  • The Johann Nepomuk Church : destroyed, ruins removed
  • The Nikolaikirche : on 5./6. Badly damaged in March 1945, including the ruined tower demolished in 1948. A hotel complex at the site today.
  • The Lukaskirche : badly damaged, demolished
  • The Kreuzkirche : burned out, destroyed except for the surrounding walls. Rebuilt true to the original by 1954
  • The church of the St. Georg Hospital : destroyed, ruins removed
  • The old town hall : burned out on March 5, 1945. Reconstruction, completely new building. Due to its massive reinforced concrete construction, the New Town Hall survived the bombings largely unscathed.
  • The high tower next to the town hall: completely burned out, collapsed in 1946. Reconstruction. Did not get its historical form back until 1986 with an octagonal storey and a lantern.
  • The Red Tower : burned out in March 1945
  • The "Rathaus am Beckerplatz ": representative neo-renaissance building from 1891, destroyed and demolished.
  • The citizen school : burned out, worn out
  • The playhouse : burned out and torn down
  • The main post office : burned out and torn down
  • The municipal high school : burned out and torn down
  • The casino building (society house): burned out, demolished
  • The Central Theater : destroyed and demolished
  • The "Hotel Stadt Gotha": destroyed and torn down
  • Siegertsches Haus am Markt: 1735 -41, the last evidence of baroque bourgeois architecture. Destroyed in 1945, facade included in the new building completed in 1954
  • The Tietz department store burned out, only the extension building remained intact. Rebuilt with the old facade, reopened in 1963
  • The "Speersche Spinnmühle": burned out and worn away
  • The "Beckersche cotton spinning mill": valuable architectural and industrial monument in the forms of baroque and classicism, destroyed and ruined

The following were damaged :

  • The castle church suffered damage to the neo-Gothic spire, the roof and the north facade from artillery fire
  • The Christ Church in the Chemnitz-Reichenhain district was badly damaged
  • The Reichsbank : erected in 1885 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzi as a striking red brick building. Damaged in 1945, it was part of the cityscape until 1964. Then canceled (for central stop)
  • The Chemnitz Opera House : was badly damaged
  • Central station : on 5th / 6th March 1945 badly hit. Parts of the reception building burned out and numerous panes of the station hall were broken. The multi-aisle, 150 meter wide platform hall (1906–1910) spanned 14 platforms. The impressive glass and steel construction was demolished in 1972.

"The inventory of residential buildings in the city center was completely destroyed " (Magirius)

Characteristic examples:

  • Brüderstrasse 5, 7, 13
  • Loh-Strasse 8 u. a.
  • Holzmarkt 13/14
  • Kirchgäßchen 1
  • Innere Klosterstrasse 3, 5, 19 (Goldener Helm)
  • Market: numerous buildings, including the "Roman Emperor"
  • Neumarkt 8, 29
  • Roßmarkt 4, 5, 9/10 (Hermannsche houses, Schützenhof)

Contaminated sites

The Western Allies reckoned with about 10% duds in their bombing raids on Western and Central Europe during World War II. Correspondingly, such finds were made in Chemnitz for decades. On October 25, 2016, construction workers came across an American fragmentation bomb weighing 250 kg with an excavator on the Kaßberg , which, after 17,500 residents had been evacuated and large road closures, were defused on site for over 16 hours in the late evening.

Burial places

Victims of the air raids, including the artillery fire, were buried in almost all cemeteries in the Chemnitz districts. The following compilation is only part of the many burial sites.

  • Chemnitz municipal central cemetery . Most of the bomb victims of all Chemnitz cemeteries are buried here; five grave fields (6/12, 22, 51, 58, 61) were created for them. The largest is a mass grave, in which 1224 bomb victims found their final resting place under a lawn with a memorial: this is what it says on an explanatory memorial stone.
  • Chemnitz-Adelsberg : in front of a high cross there is an inscription "IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE AIR ATTACKS ON ADELSBERG IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR" and the name plaques of the 53 (of them 15 children) buried here from February 14, 1945 and from February 2 to 5 March 1945. Not far from there are three individual graves with "unknown civilians from the USSR" (probably also bomb victims).
  • Chemnitz-Glösa-Draisdorf : 116 war dead lie in the Glösa cemetery, including 69 bomb victims. 13 Russian prisoners of war who were killed in air raids were buried in the grave of foreigners.
  • Chemnitz-Hilbersdorf : 63 people are buried in the grave field of the Trinitatis cemetery for bomb victims, most of them on May 5th / 6th. March 1945 and April 18, 1945 died.
  • Chemnitz-Rabenstein
  • Chemnitz-Reichenbrand : on the war cemetery for victims in the 1st and 2nd World War there is a wide lawn, on it a small plaque with the inscription: "To commemorate the bomb victims of Reichenbrand and Siegmar in September 1944 and March 1945". A memorial project lists around 125 names of those buried there, 40 of them children
  • Chemnitz-Reichenhain : in the cemetery of the Christ Church there is a memorial stone from 1965 "for the 26 Reichenhain children and adults who perished in February and March 1945".
  • Chemnitz-Rottluff : in the small village cemetery Rottluff on Rottluffer Straße there is a grave complex for bomb victims from 5th / 6th March 1945
  • Chemnitz-Schönau : Bomb victims from February 14, 1945 are buried in the Schönau cemetery
  • Chemnitz-Siegmar
  • Chemnitz-Sonnenberg

  • Five graves with bomb victims in Chemnitz cemetery

  • Memorial for the Chemnitz bomb victims

  • Monument desecrated on March 7, 2020

  • Detail of the monument

  • Leveled mass graves with bomb victims in cemetery

  • Memorial stone for 4,000 bomb victims next to the mass grave

  • Bomb victims on February 14, 1945 at Schönau cemetery

  • Individual grave bomb victims from June 1944

Monuments in the city

  • Rubble woman from glockenspiel in the old town hall tower

  • Relic human : with this designation there is a large steel sculpture, which is supposed to represent a falling person, in the courtyard of the square of the Commerzbank on Hartmannstrasse. It was created by Michael Morgner in 1998 . "Impotent fear of the bombs and the cry of despair symbolize the tragedy of the destruction of Chemnitz on March 5, 1945"

GDR view of the air raids

To the end of the war was followed by 45 years SBZ and GDR , so the former classification of the air raids of interest: "As part of the spring (1945) directed against the Saxon cities and industrial centers terrorism large-scale attacks of American and British bombers residential areas were partly Chemnitz industrial plants badly destroyed on March 5, 1945 ".

Desecration of monuments

The memorial in memory of the Chemnitz bomb victims in the municipal cemetery was desecrated on March 7, 2020 , two days after they were honored on the 75th anniversary of the heaviest bombing on Chemnitz (March 5, 1945), by applying left-wing extremist slogans in red

literature

  • Uwe Fiedler (Director of the Schlossberg Museum): Bombs on Chemnitz - the city reflected in aerial photos of the Western Allies . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen, Chemnitz 2005. ISBN 3-910186-51-3
  • Uwe Fiedler: Chemnitz. A lost cityscape . Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 1994. ISBN 3-86134-175-1
  • Uwe Fiedler: Chemnitz. A lost cityscape . Volume 2. Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2004. ISBN 3-8313-1423-3
  • Uwe Fiedler and Stefan Thiele: Chemnitz 1945. The cityscape before and after destruction . Photographs by Helmut Brückner. Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt 2020. ISBN 978-3-96303-119-9
  • Roger A. Freeman: Mighty Eighth War Diary . JANE's. London, New York, Sydney 1981. ISBN 0 7106 00 38 0
  • Olaf Groehler : bombing war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 .
  • Heinrich Magirius : Karl-Marx-Stadt. Former Chemnitz . In: Götz Eckardt (Ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War . Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1978. Vol. 2
  • Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt: The Bomber Command War Diaries. An Operational Reference Book 1939-1945 . Midland, 2011. 4th edition. ISBN 978-1-85780-335-8
  • Gert Richter : Chemnitz memories 1945. A documentation in words and pictures about the destruction of Chemnitz in the Second World War . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen Chemnitz GmbH, 1st edition, Chemnitz 1995 (Contains lists of the people who were killed in the five air raids in February and March 1945). ISBN 3-910186-17-3
  • Gert Richter : Chemnitz memories 1945. A documentation in words and pictures about the destruction of Chemnitz in the Second World War . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen Chemnitz GmbH, 2nd edition, Chemnitz 2001. ISBN 3-910186-173

Web links

Commons : Air raids on Chemnitz  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c March 5, 1945 - Bombing of downtown Chemnitz. AG Chemnitzer Peace Day , 2005, accessed on March 9, 2020 (memory of the bombing).
  2. ^ Olaf Groehler: Bomb war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , p. 449
  3. ^ Heinrich Magirius: Karl-Marx-Stadt. Formerly Chemnitz . In: Götz Eckardt (Ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War . Volume 2 districts of Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Erfurt, Gera, Suhl. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1978, DNB 790059118 pp. 452-460
  4. ↑ Fish code names , (British original, PDF; 292 kB), German translation (PDF; 214 kB), on: bunkermuseum.de ( Bunkermuseum Emden ), accessed on October 2, 2017
  5. ^ Olaf Groehler: Bomb war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , pp. 22, 35, 62, 179, 332, 383, 385, 389
  6. ^ Uwe Fiedler: Bombs on Chemnitz . 2005. p. 21
  7. ^ Olaf Groehler: Bomb war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , p. 227
  8. ^ A b c Karlheinz Reimann: How Chemnitz fell to rubble and ashes in the hail of bombs in 1945. In: Chemnitzer-Geschichten.de. January 2018, accessed March 9, 2020 . First edition 2007, first update 2013.
  9. ↑ a b c Olaf Groehler: Bomb warfare against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , p. 423
  10. ^ A b Olaf Groehler: Bomb war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , p. 422
  11. ↑ Bombs on the Sonnenberg. AG Sonnenberg in the Chemnitzer Geschichtsverein, accessed on March 9, 2020 . Complete article in Jürgen Eichhorn (ed.): The sun gave the name - old and new from the Sonnenberg: Contributions to the history of a Chemnitz district (=  messages from the Chemnitz history association . Special 2007). Chemnitz History Society, Chemnitz 2007, ISBN 978-3-936241-10-5 .
  12. ^ Uwe Fiedler: Bombs on Chemnitz . 2005. p. 17
  13. ^ Uwe Fiedler: Bombs on Chemnitz . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen GmbH, Chemnitz 2005. pp. 19, 21
  14. ^ [1] Uwe Fiedler at the conference "The end of the war in Saxony. Military violence - expulsion - new beginning". Chemnitz University of Technology, July 10, 2015
  15. ^ Peter Hensel in "The Mystery of Frankenbergs Canadian Airman". Toronto 2005
  16. ^ Olaf Groehler: Bomb war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , p. 447
  17. ↑ Ticker: The big sigh of relief - aviator bomb defused on the Kaßberg! In: Free Press . October 25, 2016, accessed March 9, 2020 .
  18. ^ Burial place of the bomb victims in Adelsberg
  19. ↑ Reichenbrand war cemetery
  20. ^ Uwe Fiedler: Bombs on Chemnitz . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen, Chemnitz 2005. Pages 2 and 3
  21. ↑ Historical Guide: Districts Leipzig, Karl-Marx-Stadt . Urania-Verlag Leipzig, Jena, Berlin. Leipzig 1981. p. 202
  22. ^ Memorial desecrated for victims of the bomb attacks in Chemnitz. In: MDR Saxony . March 7, 2020, accessed March 9, 2020 .