Air raids on Solingen
The air raids on Solingen during the Second World War caused considerable damage in the Bergisch city of Solingen , the death toll fluctuates between 1,880 and 2,250. Between 1940 and 1945, the city's goal of 84 was air raids of the Allies . On November 4th and 5th, 1944, Solingen's old town was completely destroyed by a major attack . Further targets of the aerial warfare were, for example, the arms factory Rudolf Rautenbach am Mangenberg and, in two large-scale attacks, parts of the districts of Wald and Gräfrath .
initial situation
Solingen before the air war
The city of Solingen, which only became a major city on August 1, 1929 through the merger with Ohligs , Wald, Gräfrath and Höhscheid , had 140,453 inhabitants when the war broke out in 1939. In 1939 a total of 50,071 apartments were available to them in the city.
The city had grown considerably from the mid-1920s to the 1930s due to the construction of the large housing estates of the Solinger Spar- und Bauverein on Kannenhof , Weegerhof and Böckerhof in its outskirts. The old town of Solingen has been seen since the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Century subject to constant change, in which numerous half-timbered houses have already been put down in favor of new, modern residential and commercial buildings from the early days . Further demolitions in favor of wider roads and thus an improved transport infrastructure were planned.
Civil air defense
Preparations for a possible air war began on December 4, 1933 with the formation of a local branch in Solingen for the Reich Air Protection Association . Until 1936, air protection matters were subordinate to the Solingen building authority , before a separate city office for fire and air protection was established. It was located in the building of the Solingen fire brigade on Katternberger Straße. The construction of air raid shelters began in 1938 on Ohligser Wittenbergstrasse and in Solingen-Mitte on Florastrasse (1938/39). In January 1940, more bunkers were inaugurated on Hohen Gasse (today Max-Leven-Gasse) and Lüneschloßstraße. By the end of the war, 15 larger aboveground bunkers had been built in the city area.
An air raid school was established in Solingen on July 19, 1934. With the increasing number of enemy air raids, night watch was set up in public buildings on March 31, 1941.
Air defense
In 1937, as a department of the Rhineland regional group , the anti-aircraft weapon ring , which was also known as the anti-aircraft weapon ring , was established in Solingen . This instructed its members in questions of air defense. The instruction took place in the newly established flight physics laboratory of the Moeller-van-den-Bruck-Schule .
Due to its location on the edge of the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area, Solingen was extremely endangered by possible air attacks. A flak with 8.8 cm guns started work on the outskirts of the city . When the air war intensified in 1943, the 16- and 17-year-old high school students were deployed as air force helpers. The Solingen flak helpers belonged to the Flak Battalion 389. Until August 1944 they still did their duty mainly in Solingen, before they were relocated to the Ruhr area (e.g. to Oberhausen - Holten and Gladbeck ) and to Aachen . Towards the end of the war they even did their service in Hamburg . The anti-aircraft battery from Höhscheid was moved to Eversael near Rheinberg in 1943 , the Walder battery came to Lintorf . Due to the numerous withdrawals from the Solingen city area, there was a lack of suitable anti-aircraft protection during the major attacks in Solingen in November 1944.
Way to air war
The Second World War affected the local civilian population primarily through air raids by the Allies. Up until 1941, British air raids over German cities were rare; in the early days, the aim of the air war was still to destroy German infrastructure such as airports . The decision of the British Cabinet on February 14, 1942 to wear down the German population through area attacks ( moral bombing ) intensified the air war . What awaited Solingen could already be seen on 28/29. March 1942 during the attack on Lübeck . From January 1943, the British also received support from the US 8th Army bomber fleet.
Chronology of the air raids
Air raids from 1940 to October 1944
The first bombs fell on Solingen's urban area on June 5, 1940. On that day, stick bombs caused small fires on Walder Strasse, in Krausen , on Rolsberger Strasse, Krautstrasse and Wittkuller Strasse. One person was injured at the Rolsberg . According to reports by the Royal Air Force , according to which their plane also carried explosive bombs that day , the Solingen police files did not confirm. However, the police files were reconstructed from memory, since the police station on Felder Strasse was destroyed in the attack on November 5, 1944.
Until May 30, 1943, the damage caused by air raids in Solingen was minor. By 1942, three residents died as a result of air attacks and 27 were injured. The flak was also occasionally active. It shot down one enemy aircraft in 1941 and 1942, and in 1944 there were a total of six. On August 29, 1941, a Canadian aircraft was shot down by the flak near Glüder , the two pilots were captured and taken to Frankfurt am Main . Locals were also injured by the effects of flak, for example on the day of the air raid on Barmen on May 30, 1943, when there were injured and damaged buildings in the area around the Luther Church . On November 30, 1943, however, the flak succeeded in convincing a bomber squad of 80 American aircraft to turn around.
When the Allies carried out major attacks on the Solingen neighboring cities of Remscheid (July 31, 1943 and August 23, 1943) and Elberfeld (June 25, 1943), the outskirts of Solingen were also affected. On June 25, 1943, 21 people from Solingen died and 58 were injured as a result. In the attacks on Remscheid, a total of 40 people died in Solingen city area, 82 were injured. The building damage, however, was still limited until November 1, 1944, which was also due to the fact that much of the damage was immediately repaired by the residents and houses were almost immediately repaired. Otherwise, the housing shortage after the two major attacks on November 4 and 5, 1944 would have been even greater.
Air raid on November 4, 1944
At noon on November 4, 1944, a Saturday, the wireline radio reported an approaching bomber formation that was over the mouth of the Scheldt in Belgium . He turned north near Koblenz . At 1.55 p.m., the sirens in Solingen gave a full alarm. A little later the first bombs fell in the southern part of the city. A total of 170 British Lancaster bombers unloaded their bomb load within 18 minutes from Krahenhöhe via Schützenstrasse, Ufergarten to the main station . The affected area south of this line was in ruins, while the core of the old town was spared that day.
The attack triggered 100 large, 300 medium and 500 small fires, the water supply collapsed, which made the extinguishing work even more difficult. The fires only reached their greatest intensity in the late evening hours. Despite the adverse circumstances, the Solingen fire brigade managed to prevent the fires from converging and thus a wildfire . At least 500 people died in the air attack, and a particularly large number of dead were recovered at the main station.
Air raid on November 5, 1944
The air warning system had been largely destroyed by the attack the day before. Makeshift sirens on trucks were brought in; but these were nowhere near as powerful. So it happened that the alarm on November 5, 1944, which was triggered at 12.15 p.m., did not reach many people in the old town of Solingen and they were subsequently surprised by the attack, which lasted from 1 p.m. to 1:26 p.m. This time the British came with 165 bombers carrying 783 tons of high-explosive and 150 tons of incendiary bombs.
This time the target of the attack was the old town center with its winding streets and half-timbered houses around Hauptstraße, Graf-Wilhelm-Platz , Kölner Straße up to the turnpike . Due to the destruction of the previous day, the fires that had started could not be reached in many cases, and extinguishing water was hardly available. The fire brigades used did not manage to prevent a wildfire, which subsequently destroyed almost all the buildings that had survived the hail of bombs. A total of 1,700 people were killed in both attacks, as well as at least 150 prisoners of war, 20,000 people were made homeless and 16 percent of the buildings in Solingen were destroyed. The success of the two attacks was praised in the British press that same evening:
"Solingen, the heart of the German steel goods industry, is a destroyed, dead city"
The massive destruction of Solingen's old town resulted in an enormous heap of rubble, from which only a few remains of the wall protruded. Only at the triangle between Graf-Wilhelm-Platz, Neumarkt, Max-Leven-Gasse and Kölner Straße were some residential and commercial buildings from the Wilhelminian era, including, although badly damaged, the corner building Haus Tückmantel and the neighboring building Haus Quabeck.
Among the prominent buildings destroyed were the old church on Fronhof, the town hall, the police station on Felder Straße, the vehicle fleet of the municipal works on Florastraße, the tram hall, the main train station and St. Clemens Church . The municipal hospitals on Vogelsang also suffered severe damage, so that the majority of the victims of the air attack had to be taken to a hospital in Barmen . In addition, badly damaged, but still be reconstructed, the so-called was Goebelbau on Dick Bush, the official residence of the Lord Mayor, whose remains, however, in 1949 an administrative offense were canceled.
On the same day, four Allied soldiers in Canadian uniforms, who fell in an attack on November 2nd, were to be transferred to Düsseldorf for interrogation. The small guarded group of SA men , Wehrmacht soldiers and civilians was discovered in front of the Solingen town hall . The prisoners of war were shot out of the crowd, and all four prisoners died on the street. Other passers-by threw stones at the dying soldiers and stepped on their bodies. Two perpetrators were charged before a British military empire in 1947: SA leader Erich Wilinski was sentenced to death and soldier Hans Kühn was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Wilinski was later pardoned to 20 years in prison and, like Hans Kühn, released from the Werl war crimes prison in 1957 .
Further air raids until 1945
In the period up to the end of 1944, the Allies only flew individual attacks on Solingen. On New Year's Eve 1944, the first major attack on the forest and parts of Gräfrath began, which was continued on New Year's Day 1945. This time, 1,657 high-explosive bombs and 1,020 incendiary bombs were used. A loosened settlement area was affected, including in particular the Eschbachstrasse (today Bausmühlenstrasse), Ehrenstrasse, Nümmenerstrasse, Focherstrasse and the Frankenstrasse. In addition there was the Hindenburgplatz (today Walder Marktplatz), the Merscheider-, Dellerstraße and the local area Mühlenbusch . In addition, the Walder-, Sedan-, Korn-, Baverter-, Röntgenstraße, Sonnenschein , Haaner-, Göring- (today Friedrich-Ebert-), Rosenkamper-, Beethoven-, Luisen- and Wuppertalerstraße as well as the Kannenhof in Solingen. Despite the vast area, the damage to the building was relatively minor, the only serious damage being the damage to the gas containers and pipes. The personal injuries, however, were great, there were 117 dead and 128 injured. In addition, there was the fact that from December 1944 the clean-up work was made more difficult by constant Allied low-flying aircraft over Solingen and later made completely impossible.
The only air raid on Solingen that could have been justified by military considerations occurred on February 16, 1945 on Mangenberg . The aim of the Allies was the light metal foundry Rudolf Rautenbach, which produces for the aircraft industry . The force of the 310 tons of explosive bombs had an impact as far as Dammstraße. 105 people were killed and 62 injured in the attack. Many prisoners of war and foreign workers who were forcibly employed in the factories were among the victims.
Up until the final liberation of Solingen by American soldiers on April 17, 1945, 15 individual air raids occurred. The last of them had the returning German troops in their sights. Two more people died in one of the last attacks aimed at the Solingen Krahenhöhe.
consequences
Dead and injured
The number of dead and injured in the air raids on Solingen cannot be precisely estimated. This is mainly due to the fact that the city administration as well as the police administration and the American commission used different reference points for the census. Sometimes the prisoners of war and foreign workers in Solingen were included in the figures, and sometimes not. In December 1945, the mayor of Solingen, Josef Brisch, reported around 2,100 dead and 1,847 injured. After Brisch, others followed, some of which differed considerably in number from this one.
Overall, based on the figures given by various sources, the following benchmarks can be established: The number of dead fluctuates between 1,880 and 2,253, and that of wounded between 2,596 and 2,618. Between 1,604 and 2,077 Solingen dead and between 2,508 and 2,530 local residents were injured.
Building damage
The statistical data on the number of buildings destroyed are less fluctuating. The total is an estimated 14,260. The following list follows the information provided by Heinz Rosenthal , which is taken from the Rheinische Städtebuch.
| Building type | total destruction | severe damage | medium and light damage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential and commercial buildings | 1.961 | 1,209 | 9,255 |
| public buildings | 14th | 27 | 56 |
| Small industry commercial buildings | 375 | 186 | 765 |
| Large-scale industrial plants | 22nd | 31 | 118 |
| agricultural buildings | 26th | 49 | 171 |
| total | 2,398 | 1,502 | 10,365 |
reconstruction
A reconstruction of the Solingen city center in the same place was still a long time coming in the first years after the end of the war. The reason for this was a lethargy prevailing in large parts of the population and in politics in view of the extent of the destruction. Only the tram system was poorly restored, the rough reconstruction of the pre-war network had already been completed on December 16, 1946. In the meantime, there were plans to move the city center to Gönrath in politics . It was not until the summer of 1948, after extensive discussions, that the decision was made to rebuild the city center at its old location and based on the main features of the destroyed old town. A quick reconstruction was not in sight in 1948 either. Only in the first half of the 1950s did the city center take shape; by the end of 1953, for example, the old market was rebuilt. On December 6, 1963, the last vacant lot was closed with the construction of the Quelle mail order company on lower main street.
In view of rationing , allotments and the flourishing black market , interest in setting up a business center was initially low. Only the currency reform in 1948 and the economic upturn initiated the decisive turning point. In order not to have to wait for the inner city to be rebuilt so that they too could participate in the upswing, the local retailers asked the city of Solingen for a provisional solution. Without further ado, the city made a 14,000 square meter area on Mühlenplatz available for the establishment of the Mühlenhof business center for ten years. The Mühlenhof center in temporary barracks opened with 38 shops on August 17, 1949. It was extensively celebrated as Kö von Solingen in the local press .
For cultural life in the post-war period it was crucial that the town hall on the upper main street as well as the Walder Stadtsaal and the Ohligser festival hall survived the bombing raids unscathed. The city administration resumed its work in the undamaged town house on Potsdamer Strasse.
The badly destroyed St. Clemens Church on Mühlenplatz had lost its characteristic twin towers due to the bomb damage. With the participation of the architect Dominikus Böhm, the two towers were given concrete spiers in 1955, which stylistically contrasted sharply with the neo-Gothic body of the church. This contrast was softened again in 1963 by slight structural changes. The Protestant town church at Fronhof was rebuilt exactly ten years after its destruction on November 5, 1954 with the laying of the foundation stone. It was inaugurated on November 4, 1956.
Reconstruction also took place in the outer areas of the city that were hit by air strikes from the 1950s. For example, on the site of the destroyed Rautenbach am Mangenberg foundry, an Obi hardware store was built next to the Dönhoffstrasse industrial estate .
Web links
- The Nazi era and World War II in Solingen at zeitspurensuche.de , accessed on March 29, 2017
literature
- Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a city . From the middle of the 19th century to the end of World War II. 1975, Volume 3, Braun, Duisburg 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0 .
- Ralf Rogge, Armin Schulte, Kerstin Warncke: Solingen - Big City Years 1929–2004 . Wartberg Verlag 2004. ISBN 3-8313-1459-4
swell
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a city . From the middle of the 19th century to the end of World War II. 1975, Volume 3, Braun, Duisburg 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0 .
- ^ A b Marina Alice Mutz: Nazi era and World War II in Solingen. In: Time Track Search. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Ralf Rogge, Armin Schulte, Kerstin Warncke: Solingen - Big City Years 1929-2004 . Wartberg Verlag 2004. ISBN 3-8313-1459-4
- ↑ When the bombs fell on Solingen, Solinger Tageblatt of September 22, 2014
- ↑ Wolfgang Arzt: Commemoration of the Lynch murder of allied airmen in Solingen 75 years ago (2019-11-05). In: nrweltoffen-solingen.de. Retrieved November 1, 2019 .