Air raids on Gdansk

Gdansk (1945)

Air raids on Gdansk were the repeated air warfare operations of the Allies on the city of Gdansk during World War II. Due to the city's location, however, there were seldom any noteworthy attacks by the Western Allies, and the city suffered major damage in the spring of 1945 .

prehistory

→ Main articles : Free City of Danzig , attack on Poland  and battle for the Westerplatte

Located at the mouth of the Vistula in the eastern regions of the German Empire , British bombers initially could not reach Danzig during the aerial warfare . Around 220,000 people lived in Gdansk at that time, almost exclusively Germans. The Gdańsk shipyard and railway workshops and the main shipyard of the Schichau works were located in the city . There were also brick and cement works and port facilities that had to be operated by prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp . After 1939, units of the Navy , Wehrmacht and Air Force were stationed in Danzig. In addition, the city was the seat of the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia .

Air raid on July 11, 1942

The first air raid by the Royal Air Force took place on July 11, 1942. A total of 44 Avro Lancasters of the 5th Bomber Group were assigned to the city, of which only 15 reached their target. The destinations were presumably the shipyards, bridges, Gdansk Central Station and ships of the navy that were in the port of Gdansk at the time. Civil property was also destroyed; 90 people were killed. Two bombers were shot down by anti-aircraft guns .

Air raid on October 9, 1943

In early October 1943, the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces attacked the city with 378 aircraft. There was serious destruction in the city center; possibly Danzig was simply an alternative target of the US Air Force, which also tried to reach the Focke-Wulf plant in Königsdorf near Marienburg .

Air raids in the final stages of the war

In the spring of 1945, in the course of the Battle of East Pomerania, there were air raids by the air forces of the Soviet Union . On January 26, for example, there was an attack in which the Friedrich Wilhelm Schützenhaus was destroyed and other buildings were badly damaged. On March 9, 16 and 18, large fires were caused by attacks in the city center; the fire brigade was brought to cease operations. During the occupation of the city by the Red Army and the Polish Army , there were low-level aerial attacks on the city. After the final capture of Gdansk on March 30th, 90% of the old town and 60% of the buildings of the entire city were destroyed by air strikes and fighting on the ground. Architectural monuments such as the Green Gate , the Artus Court or the Crane Gate were destroyed or badly damaged.

See also

• List of Allied air raids on the German Reich (1939–1945)

literature

• Dieter Schenk : Danzig 1930–1945. The end of a free city . Ch.links, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86153-737-3 .
• The fire. Germany in the bombing war 1940–1945 . Propylaea , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-548-60432-3 .
• William K. von Uhlenhorst-Ziechmann: Westerplatte. 1939. A play in three acts. Exposition Press, New York NY 1955.

Web links

• Timeline on Gdansk Online
• The last days of the war in Gdańsk on the Liberation Route Europe website
• The destruction of unique cultural assets in World War II and their reconstruction in the Land of the Teutonic Order

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lexicon entry
2. ^ Danzig Latest News , July 13, 1942.
3. ↑ Unser Danzig , No. 11, 1958, p. 7.
4. ↑ Family Chronicle Klimek ( Memento of the original dated November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.