Air raids on Engelskirchen

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The destroyed town center of Engelskirchen

In several air raids on Engelskirchen in February and March 1945 , Allied warplanes destroyed most of Engelskirchen and parts of Loope . With attacks between February 2 and March 16, 1945, they interrupted rail traffic on the route that led from the Ruhr area via Engelskirchen to Cologne. The ammunition trains parked as a result in Engelskirchen train station exploded in a bombing on March 19, 1945. Two thirds of the more than 300 victims of all bombings died in this attack. With the damage to buildings and infrastructure, Engelskirchen was the most severely damaged place in the Rheinisch-Bergisch and Oberbergisch districts after the end of the Second World War .

initial situation

Until the beginning of 1945, Engelskirchen had not been a target of Allied air raids. The community of Engelskirchen had 5,760 inhabitants. Loope, like Engelskirchen part of the Rheinisch-Bergisch district at that time, had around a quarter of the approximately 6,000 inhabitants today. In Engelskirchen and the surrounding communities there were numerous war refugees who had reached the Oberbergisches Land from the west. The refugees were housed in emergency shelters and mass quarters. This included the Catholic and Protestant churches, two elementary schools and the local cinema. The Aggertalbahn running through Engelskirchen and the Leppetalbahn were used to transport ammunition produced in the area.

Allied troops approached the Rhineland and took the Ludendorff Bridge near Remagen on March 7, 1945 . In the course of Operation Clarion , air forces began destroying the German transport network at the end of February 1945. The II. And IX. Tactical Air Force. The main tasks of the IX. Luftflotte included the destruction of railway bridges and stations in the Ruhr area and its peripheral areas, the destruction of supply stores and means of transport east of the Rhine, and the immediate support of the army by attacking troop positions and supply columns.

Primary and secondary goals

The possible targets and motives for the attacks are only partially proven and remained unexplained for a long time. In his report, which appeared in the book Engelskirchen im Aggertal in 1951 , the eyewitness Edmund Schiefeling described the course of the attacks and assumed that they were arbitrary. Later research found that this information was largely incorrect. For example, there was a British order to attack, which pretended to destroy the rolling stock and interrupt traffic through the Engelskirchen marshalling yard for the attacks on March 19 and 28. In addition, the railway lines leading from the northeast to the Remagen bridgehead were to be destroyed. Engelskirchen was always highlighted on maps of the American military and marked as a worthwhile target. Josef Hesse was later of the opinion that the air reconnaissance of the British had seen Engelskirchen as an important traffic junction, as there was an intersection of Reichsstrasse 55 and Leppestrasse and the Aggertalbahn and Leppetalbahn ran here.

Other potential targets of attack were possibly a Gestapo image inspection station with several hundred employees or a Walter Model radio station in nearby Ründeroth . In addition, several high-ranking members of the NSDAP who had fled the Rhineland were staying in Engelskirchen. Assumptions that the attacks could be connected with the transport or the stationing of V1 and V2 missiles have not yet been finally clarified. Gebhard Aders later referred to this as “creating legends” and “pulled by the hair”. Like Hesse before, he saw the main reason for the bombing in the trains that were in the center of the village. In his opinion, the Allies had no knowledge of the Gestapo's stay in Engelskirchen. In addition, the bombing of individual quarters as part of the overall warfare was not of interest to them at that time.

Air strikes

Destroyed buildings along the Reckenstein driveway

The air raids on Loope and Engelskirchen occurred between February 2 and March 28, 1945. At the time of the air raids on Engelskirchen, there was a train with 50 wagons loaded with ammunition in the station there. The train could not continue its journey due to the track systems that had been destroyed in previous air raids in Loope, which led to Cologne.

Loop

The first attack on Ehreshoven on February 2, 1945 killed 17 or 22 people. In the attack, carried out with around ten aircraft in two waves of attack, the train station and bridges were slightly damaged and several residential buildings were destroyed. One of the targets of the bombers was a truck loaded with soldiers and civilians, which turned into the courtyard of Ehreshoven Castle, where there were other vehicles. Several vehicles caught fire as a result of the attack; Considerable damage was caused to the buildings of the station and castle. Most of the bombs fell on undeveloped areas. A German air defense did not take place.

Several buildings were destroyed in two further attacks on the town center on February 19 and March 1.

Engelskirchen - Overath railway line

Around noon on March 16, 1945, the 474th Fighter Group of the IX Tactical Air Command bombed the railway line between Engelskirchen and Overath. The aim of the group stationed at the Straßfeld airfield near Euskirchen was to interrupt rail traffic between Olpe and Cologne . Ten Douglas A-26s and nine Lockheed P-38s dropped 15 1,000-pound bombs on the route. Another bombardment followed in the afternoon by ten Republic P-47s and thirteen P-38s, which dropped 26 bombs. As a result of the attacks, the railway line between Overath and Engelskirchen was interrupted. A locomotive and 54 wagons were destroyed in the attack.

Engelskirchen

March 19, 1945
The destroyed train station
The destroyed Leppe bridge

The town center and the district of Blumenau were bombed during these attacks . British and American archives show that Allied headquarters had ordered a large-scale operation of its air forces for that day. In the process, traffic junctions in the rear of the German front were to be destroyed, including the train station and the forecourt in Engelskirchen. As a result of the railway line interrupted by the bombardment of March 16, ammunition trains with 50 wagons were parked here, the loads of which were to be reloaded into trucks. This was known to the British Air Force scouts. In the opinion of experts, the German military leadership had misjudged the strategic importance of Engelskirchen and hardly taken any protective measures.

The attacks by the bomber planes were carried out in two waves. On the morning of March 19, first fighter-bombers of the IX Tactical Air Command took off on reconnaissance flights. The pilots flew at low altitude in dispersed flocks and shot anything that moved. They bombed a Leppetalbahn train near Blumenau . They also dropped leaflets .

Medium bombers escorted by fighters took off for Engelskirchen in the late morning from airfields in Lorraine and northern France . The attack was carried out by the 410th Bomber Group and half of the 397th Bomber Group . The 410th bomber group included 34 Havoc A-20 bombers with a total of 204 500-pound bombs on board. They were accompanied by three B-26 Marauder machines , which were supposed to drop tinfoil strips during the flight in order to disrupt German flight reporting and radar equipment. The approach took place together with a bomber group, whose destination was Nassau . The approach route ran over the Hunsrück to the Rhine near Sankt Goar in the direction of Nastätten . At Naststätten, the unit was shot at by flak, damaging eight aircraft and wounding two crew members. Here the associations separated. The further approach towards Engelskirchen took place over the Lahn to Morsbach , where the associations turned and thus had the sun behind them on the following approach to Engelskirchen.

When attacking, an attack height of 12,000 feet (3,810 meters) should not be exceeded. This served to reduce the spread of the bomb carpets to less than 300 meters. The bombs fitted with percussion fuses should impact 50 feet (15 meters) apart. First, the 410th bomber group was to attack, half of the 397th bomber group 20 minutes later, after clouds of explosion and smoke had cleared. The association's final approach took place in two groups with a height graduation of around 1,000 meters. After flying over Bielstein , the leading aircraft went to an altitude of around 2,900 meters. At 12:04 p.m. the first aircraft had reached Engelskirchen with good visibility and began the bombardment. All the bombs dropped by the 410th Group hit the planned target area. This destroyed the station building, tracks, an ammunition train and residential buildings in the center of the village, and the flames of the explosions rose up to 1,200 feet (365 m). The Allied military described the hits as superior (= excellent), some also as excellent (= excellent). After each bombing, the pilots used serial cameras to analyze the bombing results after returning from the mission.

The 397th bomber group , arriving later, consisted of three jamming aircraft and 29 A-20 bombers with a total of 116 bombs weighing 1,000 pounds. During the approach, the formation near Hachenburg and Morsbach was shot at, which damaged two aircraft. A quarter of the bombs dropped over Engelskirchen hit the target area, the remaining bombs fell on a residential area 300 meters to the northeast and a forest area several hundred meters away to the southeast of the town. The reasons for the missed throws are not known. The planes returned to France, where they landed around 2 p.m.

The fires resulting from the bombing were extinguished by fire brigades from Lindlar , Overath , Ründeroth and the Leppetal; the deletion operations lasted for several days. The mass of the debris from the explosions that day was estimated at 25,000 m³.

March 28, 1945
The town center, in the background the church of St. Peter and Paul

A second attack by the Second Tactical Air Force of the RAF followed on 28 March on the orders of Arthur Coningham . He gave his squadron commodore Lieutenant Colonel Barwall the order to attack at 10:08 p.m. on March 27. Elwood Richard Quesada , American commander of the IX Tactical Air Command and commander of the Remagen bridgehead, had previously asked for support with air strikes on the southern area of ​​the Ruhr basin. The attack took place after a preliminary assessment of the situation using aerial photographs. The targets of the attack should again be the train station in the center of the village, the end of the Leppetalbahn and the intersections of the roads leading to Overath and Lindlar .

Three squadrons of the 139th Squadron of the 2nd Group of the 2nd Tactical Air Fleet of the RAF were used in this attack. The pilots had attacked railway facilities in Olpe and Attendorn that morning and had returned from these attacks at 12:35 p.m. The 36 B-25 Mitchell bombers were accompanied by fighters. The take-off took place at 14:40 from the airfield in Brussels-Melsbroek . After the approach via Aachen , Siegburg and Drabenderhöhe , the aircraft coming from the east reached Engelskirchen between 15:57 and 16:20. The attack altitude was between 9,000 and 14,000 feet. The target of the attack was the lower village. It housed numerous people who had become homeless as a result of previous attacks. 240 bombs, each weighing 250 kg, were dropped over the village. The attack took place in a disorderly formation; Due to poor visibility, the attacking squadrons had to break up into small groups or fly to the target area individually. Numerous bombs missed the intended targets and detonated outside the built-up area. 25 apartments were destroyed; The church and primary school were badly damaged. Since the bombed local area was seamlessly connected to the areas hit on March 19, it can be assumed that the pilots had good quality aerial photographs.

All 36 machines in use returned to the departure airports. In the Siegburg area, four machines were hit by flak, killing two soldiers. Further flak fire took place during the approach in the area of ​​Drabenderhöhe.

consequences

Due to the bombing, Engelskirchen was the most heavily damaged place in the Rheinisch-Bergisch and Oberbergisch districts at the end of the Second World War . The journalist and publisher Edmund Schiefeling documented the destruction in 1945 with 60 photos.

Victim

Memorial at the Engelskirchen community cemetery

The number of people who died directly or as a result of the air raids is more than 300. The information on this varies depending on the source.

A large proportion of the deaths was due to the inadequately organized air raid warning service and the distant warning offices. They determined the approach route and the exact destination of the bombers too late and therefore did not alert the residents in time. Eyewitness Edmund Schiefeling suspected that an ambiguous siren signal might also have led to the death of many Engelskirchen residents. The sirens were aimed at Cologne and were only of limited reliability for Engelskirchen. Schiefeling wrote: “Before, a full alarm had been given, but now the sirens gave the all-clear ... So the people came out of the bunkers and the cellars. So they too got caught in the hail of bombs ... "

date District Fatalities
February 2nd Ehreshoven 17 or 22
19th of February Loop 3 or 7
19th March Blumenau 30th
19th March Town center 223
28th March Engelskirchen-West 25th

Another 22 people died from the injuries suffered at later times. Among the dead were seven prisoners of war from the Eibach prison camp as well as 14 Eastern workers and 46 evacuees from Cologne and Cologne-Wahn . The number of missing people, unidentified dead and unrecognizable corpses has not been precisely determined. A memorial for the dead was erected in the community cemetery. The attacks also killed numerous farm animals.

After the end of the war, more corpses and body parts were found during sewer and excavation work. The community had investigations carried out in the area of ​​the train station and the cinema to investigate possible rumors about other victims. The work dragged on until 1952. For a long time, up to 60 bodies were suspected here, seven charred people were found who could not be identified.

Damage

Makeshift bridge over destroyed train tracks

Large parts of Engelskirche were largely or partially destroyed. These included:

  • 94 residential and commercial buildings
  • approx. 731 residential units
  • the train station with signal box, tracks and rolling stock
  • the post office with telephone system
  • the Catholic parish church of St. Peter and Paul and the elementary school
  • 10 road and river bridges
  • several factories
  • approx. 50% of the sewage system and the water supply network
  • Building of the Ermen & Engels cotton mill

In addition, 52 apartments were badly damaged and almost all utilities destroyed. The districts of Miebach and Steeg were cut off from the center.

reconstruction

By December 1945, the slightly damaged apartments and two bridges over the Agger had been restored, and water and power lines had been repaired. Under the leadership of Heinrich Raskin , the community formed a building authority in the mayor's office and commissioned the “Oberberg construction company” with the organizational implementation of the construction projects and the monitoring of construction costs. Raskin presented his drafts at the municipal council meeting on May 9, 1946. The plans for the reconstruction of Engelskirchen were drawn up by Wilhelm Riphahn , who was a war refugee in Engelskirchen. His calculations envisaged the construction of 8,500 square meters of living space in the town center. Today's site is essentially based on these plans. In March 1947 an alignment plan was decided which provided for a section-by-section rebuilding of the town center. Until the currency reform in 1948 , only a few residential and commercial buildings could be built due to a lack of foreign currency and building materials. The community took over and supervised the procurement and use of the necessary financial resources and had several blocks of flats and streets for small settlers built.

Due to the lack of living space, Engelskirchen was classified as a “hot spot of housing needs” at the beginning of December 1948. By early 1949, another 1,500 refugees and displaced persons had moved into the community, which exacerbated the housing shortage. In 1949 there was a lack of permanent housing for around 2,000 people who had to live in emergency shelters.

A community of settlers emerged in Loope. A settlement was to be built based on a social housing model previously implemented by Nikolaus Ehlen in Velbert . The Engelskirchen official director Paul Lücke supported the project. After construction began on May 3, 1949, a settlement with 92 apartments for around 500 people was built. The first phase of construction was named "Theresienhof" in the autumn of 1949 after Lücke's daughter.

Until 1957, Engelskirchen only had a provisional station, which at times consisted of a makeshift building and parked freight cars.

Craters from the bombing can still be seen today, for example in the Forkscheid area behind Ehreshoven Castle. In November 1982 a dud was recovered in the center of Engelskirchen, and in August 2013 several shell casings were found during track construction work. Experts suspect other duds in the area.

literature

  • Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985.
  • Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag , Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 208-218 .
  • Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: The time of the Second World War. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 332-337 .
  • Engelskirchen community (ed.): The Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005.
  • Werner Pütz: 60 years later. War and National Socialism in the Bergisches Land. Contemporary witnesses remember. Pp. 27-39. Bücken & Sulzer Verlag Overath 2005. ISBN 3-936405-25-5 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 70.
  2. ^ Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: The time of the Second World War. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 332 .
  3. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 149.
  4. ^ Community Engelskirchen (ed.): Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 13 .
  5. ^ Gebhard Aders : The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 210-211 .
  6. ^ Community Engelskirchen (ed.): Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 31 .
  7. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 151.
  8. ↑ Annelies Giebler: A village sank into ruins. Kölner Stadtanzeiger from March 19, 1975.
  9. ↑ a b Many bombings were aimed at V-weapons. Rundschau Online from January 29, 2005. Retrieved November 17, 2014.
  10. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 209-210 .
  11. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 217 .
  12. ↑ documents are listed in the Follow called
  13. ↑ Engelskirchen 60 years ago. Ed .: Community of Engelskirchen, p. 15.
  14. ^ Community Engelskirchen (ed.): Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 15 .
  15. ^ Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: The time of the Second World War. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 332-335 .
  16. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 211-212 .
  17. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 212 .
  18. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 213 .
  19. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 213-215 .
  20. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 215 .
  21. ^ Edmund Schiefeling: Engelskirchen since 1945. In: Peter Opladen and Edmund Schiefeling: Engelskirchen im Aggertal. Engelskirchen 1951, with the assistance of Josef Külheim. P. 173.
  22. ^ Community Engelskirchen (ed.): Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 28 .
  23. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, pp. 151-152.
  24. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 216 .
  25. ^ Edmund Schiefeling: Engelskirchen since 1945. In: Peter Opladen and Edmund Schiefeling: Engelskirchen im Aggertal. Engelskirchen 1951, with the assistance of Josef Külheim, p. 176.
  26. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, pp. 152-153.
  27. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, pp. 150-153.
  28. ^ Gebhard Aders: The air raids on Engelskirchen 1945 . Headquarters, radio station, Gestapo? Decades after the end of the war the background clarified. The air raids on Engelskirchen on March 19 and 28, 1945. In: Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in Bergisch Gladbach (Hrsg.): Rheinisch-Bergischer Calendar 1993 . 1st edition. No. 63 . Heider-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, ISBN 3-87314-272-4 , p. 216-217 .
  29. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 156.
  30. ^ Arndt Gaudich: Engels churches in ruins. Photo exhibition commemorates the bombing raids in March 1945. In: Oberbergischer Anzeiger from April 20, 2015 (online)
  31. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, pp. 153, 156.
  32. ↑ The Inferno. Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids on March 19 and 28, 1945. Published by the community of Engelskirchen 2005, Schiefeling-Verlag, p. 17.
  33. ↑ a b c d e f g Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 156.
  34. ^ Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: The time of the Second World War. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 333 .
  35. ^ Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: The time of the Second World War. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 334 .
  36. ^ Community Engelskirchen (ed.): Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 36 .
  37. ^ Josef Hesse: Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 . Ed .: Community of Engelskirchen. Schiefeling Verlag, Engelskirchen 2005, p. 35 .
  38. ↑ Regarding the housing units: Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 165.
  39. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 161.
  40. ^ Wilhelm Riphahn: The new townscape. In: Engelskirchen must rise again! The new townscape - plans and preparatory work. Edmund Schiefeling publisher (ed.), Engelskirchen 1946
  41. ↑ see also: Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 165.
  42. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, pp. 162-163.
  43. ^ Chronicle of the community Engelskirchen, community archive
  44. ↑ Klaus Becker, Benedikt Lücke, Stefan Paul: The emergence of the small settlement Loope: social housing of the post-war period . History of helping. In: Bergischer Geschichtsverein, Rhein-Berg department (Hrsg.): Series of publications by the Bergisches Geschichtsverein, Rhein-Berg department . 1st edition. tape 23 . Bergisch Gladbach 2000, ISBN 3-932326-23-7 , p. 24-26 .
  45. ↑ Klaus Becker, Benedikt Lücke, Stefan Paul: The emergence of the small settlement Loope: social housing of the post-war period . History of helping. In: Bergischer Geschichtsverein, Rhein-Berg department (Hrsg.): Series of publications by the Bergisches Geschichtsverein, Rhein-Berg department . 1st edition. tape 23 . Bergisch Gladbach 2000, ISBN 3-932326-23-7 , p. 27 and 54 .
  46. ↑ see also: Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: A new settlement on the sunny side of Loope. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 338-341 .
  47. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 182.
  48. ^ Karl-Heinz Lüdenbach: The time of the Second World War. In: Heinrich Lüdenbach: Loope . A home book. Ed .: Citizens and Beautification Association Loope e. V. Joh. Heider Verlag GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-87314-473-6 , p. 333 .
  49. ^ Josef Hesse: Engelskirchen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Engelskirchen 1985, p. 153.
  50. ↑ Grenade shells found - railway line around Engelskirchen closed. Rundschau online from August 22, 2013. Accessed November 26, 2014.
  51. ^ Duds from the world wars also in Oberberg. Oberberg-Aktuell from January 15, 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2014.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lüdenbach gives the number of dead in a detailed description in the running text, Hesse only lists it in tabular form. Like Hesse, Aders mentions 223 civilians plus an undisclosed number of soldiers and foreign workers not entered in the registry office. He gives the total number of people killed as 287.
  2. ↑ in Das Inferno - Engelskirchen 60 years ago after the air raids of March 19 and 28, 1945 Hesse gives different figures on page 35, but does not evaluate the information mentioned. There he states, citing eyewitness reports, as destroyed:
    • 113 residential buildings with 326 residential units
    • 43 commercial establishments
    • 34 business premises
    • 3 industrial companies
    • 7 public buildings, including the train station, post office, cinema and the fire brigade's tool shed
    • 5 railway bridges and 8 road bridges
    In addition, 14 damaged residential buildings with 35 residential units.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 14, 2018 .