Air raids on the Ruhr area
The air raids on the Ruhr area by the British Royal Air Force and the US Army Air Forces in the aerial warfare during World War II had the aim of using various bomber offensives with different strategies to produce and transport war-essential goods in and out of the Ruhr area , the "armory of the Reich" in the Nazi state to hinder. In addition, the attacks were directed against the morale of the civilian population in this metropolitan area .
Because of its central economic importance, the first plans for the aerial warfare in the Ruhr area were made at the end of the First World War . The Allied bombings were not limited to the Ruhr coal district settlement association , but encompassed the entire present-day Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region . The carpet bombing had its highlights in 1943 and 1944, for example, in the five months of the Battle of the Ruhr ( Battle of the Ruhr ) of the RAF Bomber Command . After the Ruhr basin and the capture of the Ruhr area by the US Army in April 1945, the air raids ended. Destruction and reconstruction had a variety of effects that are still noticeable today and in some cases intensely discussed. Contaminated land clearance and ordnance clearance are still busy with the consequences of the air strikes in the region.
First World War
Political situation
The First World War was fought in Europe , the Middle East , Africa and East Asia from 1914 to 1918 and claimed around 17 million lives. The war was initially fought between the Central Powers and the Entente . The power political contradictions of the great European powers erupted after an enormous armament . At the end of the war, 25 states and their colonies, in which a total of 1.35 billion people lived, about three quarters of the world's population at that time, were in a state of war. In the hungry winter of 1916/17, the food supply in the German Empire was catastrophic, which particularly affected the people in the metropolitan area of the Ruhr area.
Air raid plans in World War I
Even before the First World War, the Ruhr area was considered the armory of the German Empire . The Krupp family and the Krupp Group were synonyms for this .
The war plans of the Entente envisaged long-range attacks by the Royal Navy - naval aviators and the Royal Flying Corps on the German armaments industry in the Rhine-Ruhr area. The first bombs were dropped in Cologne in 1914 and in Essen in 1915 . In the autumn of 1916, approaches to a coordinated strategy against the German Reich arose , but initially the technical possibilities and organizational prerequisites for implementation were lacking. In April 1917, the Royal Air Force (RAF) was created as an independent armed force , not least in response to the momentous attacks by Gotha-G.IV - long-range bombers of the Imperial Air Force on London . The British War Cabinet passed a binding bomb attack strategy in July 1918, which included a high target priority for the Rhine-Ruhr area. It was hoped that this would also have an impact on the morale of the German civilian population.
The target plans for the Ruhr area included an airfield in Gelsenkirchen-Rotthausen , mechanical engineering companies in Duisburg and Rheinhausen , two large steelworks in Dortmund , and another one each in Oberhausen , Hagen and Mülheim . The accumulator factory (today VARTA ) in Hagen, the Essen works of Friedrich Krupp AG and the Hasper Hütte received a very high priority as suppliers for submarine construction.
In November 1918 it was decided to launch a comprehensive air offensive with heavy bombers, which in the first quarter of 1919 was to have Berlin as its target in addition to the Rhine-Ruhr area . The construction of a powerful air fleet was made difficult by the double-decker technology, which was still immature for long-haul flights . Discussions about the international law issues of the air war concepts, which provided for the dropping of bombs on densely populated cities, had a similar effect on the military implementation of the plans. The armistice on November 11, 1918 brought operations to a standstill. The Handley Page HP15 bomber, which was commissioned by the RAF in 1918 , was no longer used.
Air defense
The military leadership of the German Reich met in 1915 strengthened preparations against air attacks on the Rhine-Ruhr area. Starting in the summer of 1916, the population of the endangered cities was urged by the press and large posters to “ behave in accordance with air raid protection ”. In the spring of 1917 the first darkening measures were taken , compliance with which the airship LZ 93 of the Imperial Navy checked several times in May. In September 1917, the VII Army Corps in Münster ordered a general nightly darkening for the cities and industrial and transport facilities on the Rhine and in the western Ruhr area.
The deployment of air defense - units and fighter pilot - associations received high priority. In 1917 three groups of anti-aircraft guns were stationed in Essen, Dortmund and Düsseldorf and were connected to the most important industrial, transport and municipal companies in their regions by telephone fire control . A comprehensive system of alarm systems extended over the Ruhr area and the neighboring regions.
Interwar period
Political situation
The Weimar Republic emerged from the November Revolution at the end of the First World War . The occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 was the climax of a politico-military conflict between the German Reich and the Belgian-French occupation forces. In 1932 the global economic crisis reached its peak and the unemployment rate in the Ruhr area rose to 31.2 percent. Since the beginning of the crisis in 1929, the export-oriented production of iron, steel and coal in the coal and steel industry had collapsed by around 60 percent. With the seizure of power in 1933, government power in Germany was transferred to the National Socialists under Hitler's leadership. A transformation of democracy into dictatorship followed .
- See also
- Versailles Peace Treaty , 1919
- Socialization movement in the Ruhr area , 1919
- Ruhr uprising , 1920
- Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch , 1923
- Ruhreisenstreit , 1928
The Ruhr region
In general, the borders of the Ruhr area can be traced back to the settlement association Ruhrkohlengebiet , which was founded in 1920 and is now the Ruhr Regional Association . The regional economic structure of the Ruhr area is seen differently in the literature, so the exact boundaries depend on the interpretation. The Ruhr area is often defined there as the administrative district of Arnsberg and the administrative district of Düsseldorf (the “ desk of the Ruhr area ”), whereby the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area located in the administrative district of Münster is not taken into account, but regions with a completely different structure on the Lower Rhine and in Bergisches Land are included . The northern foothills of the Cologne Bay extend into the western Ruhr area, and although Cologne and Düsseldorf are not in the Ruhr area, they were part and target of the same regional allied air campaigns.
The Ruhr area played an important role in the economy in the National Socialist German Empire . The coal and steel network, the concentration of the coal and steel industry and raw material deposits, as well as the accompanying dense network of traffic routes on the Rhine and Ruhr and the exposed location of the metropolitan area within reach of the enemy bomber fleets were viewed critically by the German leadership with regard to military security. On November 23, 1939, Hitler emphasized to the commanders in chief in the run-up to the attack on France :
“Behind the army is the strongest arms industry in the world. [...] We have an Achilles heel ; the Ruhr region. The conduct of the war depends on the ownership of the Ruhr area. If England and France advance through Belgium and Holland into the Ruhr area, we are in great danger. That could lead to the waning of the German resistance. "
The Army Weapons Regiment had already determined in 1933 that the "63-division war army planned from December this year would not be viable without the Ruhr area". From 1934 onwards, with the reputation of a supplier of raw materials and semi-finished products in the course of the armament of the Wehrmacht and the German economy becoming detained, the focus of armaments acceleration was on the Ruhr . The four-year plan called for the German army to be operational and the German economy to be able to go to war in four years. As part of the self-sufficiency policy , the chemical industry in the Ruhr area experienced a high phase. Germany should be made independent with synthetic materials based on coal, especially in the areas of fuels and lubricants , textile fibers and rubber as well as substitutes for metal ( plastics ).
The iron and steel industry was able to more than triple its production by 1939 compared to the production low of the global economic crisis . Almost three quarters of the iron ore requirements of the steelworks on the Ruhr were covered by imports from Sweden, with a volume of 11 million tons in 1939. Fritz Thyssen noted in a confidential report to Hitler and Göring that the outcome of the war was from iron ore in northern Sweden be dependent. Between 1935 and 1938, pig iron production increased from 9.9 to 10.2 million tons, and crude steel production from 10.7 to 12.6 million tons. The armaments expenditures were increased substantially, and the number of arms factories in the Ruhr area rose strongly; Among other things, ammunition , aerial bombs , mines , infantry weapons of all kinds, equipment for soldiers, parts for shipbuilding, drop devices for the air force , semi-finished products and special steel for combat aircraft and tanks (without engines and gun devices ) were manufactured.
The arms dependency of the economy in the Ruhr area was 70 percent. With 20.2 percent, Berlin had the largest share of orders from the Wehrmacht , the Ruhr area accounted for 15.3 percent.
The idea of the Ruhr area as the central armory of the Third Reich, which was also widespread among the Allies, was based, among other things, on the successes of the Friedrich Krupp AG company in exporting arms and steel products since the middle of the 19th century. This term was coined further in 1937 during a state visit by the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini . On September 27, Hitler and his ally visited the Krupp works in Essen, where 70,000 people stood in line for the Führer and the Duce to visit the gun and tank production facilities. The Hotel Handelshof was adorned with a banner: "Welcome to the armory of the empire ".
Companies
- AFA, later VARTA AG - batteries for submarines, torpedoes, planes and missiles
- Bayer (rubber, oil and lubricants, gases) and Chemische Werke Hüls (Buna) are part of IG Farben
- Flick companies - steel, coal, armaments
- Gutehoffnungshütte - steel, bridge constructions, diesel engines for ships of the war and merchant navy
- Hoesch - steel and mining company
- Klöckner - tanks, trucks, tracked vehicles
- Mannesmann - ore and coal mines, steel production, mechanical engineering
- Rheinmetall (armored vehicles, artillery systems) was nationalized during the Second World War and integrated into the Reichswerke Hermann Göring .
- The United Steel Works was created in 1926 through the merger of the Thyssen Group (share 26 percent), the Phönix Group (share 26 percent), the Rheinische Stahlwerke (share 8.5 percent) and the companies belonging to the German Rhine-Elbe Union -Luxembourgische Bergwerks- und Hütten-AG , Bochumer Verein and Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (shares together 39.5 percent). In the 1930s, the company was one of the largest German corporations and was at times the largest steel group in Europe and the second largest steel group in the world. The group now employed over 250,000 people, produced around 40 percent of the steel produced in the German Reich and mined over 20 percent of German coal.
Many executive and supervisory boards were well connected in the National Socialist German Workers' Party , while others, some of Jewish descent, were critical of the National Socialists. The Ruhrlade often dominated the economic and political events of that time. 27 industrialists, including some from the Rhine and Ruhr region, came to a secret meeting in February 1933 with Adolf Hitler to finance the NSDAP's election campaign. The ideas of the industrialists on the Rhine and Ruhr were not based on an unlimited domestic upgrade, they were more interested in the release of the lucrative arms exports. Some of the industrialists profited from the aryanization promoted by the National Socialists .
Industrial
The Ruhr Plan 1937–1939
As early as 1935, the RAF Bomber Command was founded in Great Britain as an offensive air force in view of a feared military conflict with the German Reich. By the beginning of World War II in September 1939, a number of British bombing plans were drawn up, including the Ruhr Plan . This envisaged attacks on 19 power plants and 22 coking plants in the Rhine-Ruhr area, for example the Koepchenwerk pumped storage power plant on Hengsteysee near Hagen, the Gerstein plant on the Lippe near Werne and the Dortmund power plant of the Vereinigte Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen (VEW) . The Hamm train station , the marshalling yard in Schwerte , the Duisburg main station , the port of Duisburg , the port of Dortmund , and several steelworks on the Rhine and Ruhr rivers were potential targets for the RAF in 1937 and 1938. In the event of a military conflict with the German Reich, the armaments industry in the Rhine-Ruhr area should be switched off as quickly as possible by means of massive air strikes in order to weaken the German troops' power to attack France. However, the British target planners overestimated this concept because in the summer of 1939 there was still a lack of machines, personnel and suitable bombs to carry out the Western Air Plan .
Second World War
Political situation
After the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on September 3. That night, German air defense could not prevent 19 twin-engine Armstrong-Whitworth-Whitley bombers from dropping leaflets and conducting military reconnaissance . Millions of leaflets with the title Warning - Great Britain to the German people were dropped over the Rhineland and the Ruhr area . In advance, the Reich Minister of Aviation Hermann Göring had announced on August 9, 1939 in Essen that the Ruhr area would “not be delivered to a single bomb from enemy aircraft” and that he would personally take care of any additional anti-aircraft batteries that are used in the Ruhr area should.
The British air missions, including with Bristol-Blenheim and Vickers-Wellington bombers, were limited to reconnaissance flights and individual bomber missions on German naval targets until the winter of 1939/40. But they showed that the plans for air warfare had so far been inadequate. First major air raids by day, such as on December 18, 1939 against the naval base in Wilhelmshaven , resulted in heavy losses for the Bomber Command . Attacks at night offered better protection from the German anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft guns, but the darkening of the German Reich caused problems with navigation and orientation . This phase of the war was also known as the Phoney War or Sitzkrieg .
The German air raids on Wieluń , Frampol and Warsaw in Poland in 1939 are considered to be the first area bombings to be used as a means of warfare in World War II. The German Reich launched the bombing war on opposing cities in the west, among other things
- with the air raid on Rotterdam on May 14, 1940 (800 to 900 dead, 80,000 homeless; the Netherlands capitulated one day later),
- the air raids on Coventry on November 14, 1940 and April 8, 1941 (1,236 dead, 1,746 injured) and
- the lightning strike on London on September 7, 1940 and May 16, 1941 (a total of about 43,000 dead in German air raids on London, hundreds of thousands homeless).
The British defended themselves against the announced German invasion, the company Seelöwe . Thanks in part to their air superiority, they retained the upper hand in the Battle of Britain .
Acts of war
Beginning of the strategic bombing war
Winston Churchill formed an all party government on May 10, 1940 , including the Labor Party . In addition to the office of Prime Minister, he also took on that of Minister of War . British air warfare became much more offensive in the summer of 1940. After the surrender of France, Churchill saw the air raids as the only means Great Britain had to carry the war into German territory.
In 1940 and 1941 the British Air Ministry pursued the concept of attacks by individual aircraft and small groups of bombers. Immediately after the start of the German campaign in the west on May 10, 1940, the night air raids on the Rhine-Ruhr area began. When the first big blow against the Ruhr area on the night of May 15-16, 1940, the 99 British aircraft aimed primarily at the hydrogenation plants for coal liquefaction in Oberhausen, Castrop-Rauxel, Wanne-Eickel , Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen and Bottrop . From May to the winter of 1940/1941, the marshalling yards in Hamm , Soest , Schwerte, Osnabrück , Münster , Duisburg, Cologne and Düsseldorf along with hydrogenation plants, coking plants, aircraft plants and other operations in the arms industry, especially the Krupp plants in Essen, repeatedly targeted by British air strikes. The air raids against the German Reich and especially the Rhine-Ruhr area took place night after night until the winter of 1940/1941. The bombings actually led to severe property damage in industrial plants, which in 1940 and 1941 resulted in relatively low production losses.
In the winter of 1940/41 the previous tactic of sending individual aircraft and smaller units against individual targets was abandoned. Since January 1941, the Bomber Command proceeded in larger closed attack formations against individual targets, whereby a greater damage effect should be achieved; a tactic that the German Air Force used in its attacks on British cities. 135 British planes bombed the Scholven and Gelsenberg hydrogenation plants near Gelsenkirchen in the night from January 9th to 10th, 1941 . However, like the more than 30 previous attacks, this operation was only able to cause minor damage. However, there was another attack on Gelsenkirchen on 14/15. March 1941 as much more successful. After the Scholven hydrogenation plant was hit by numerous explosive devices and incendiary bombs, it was partially paralyzed for two weeks. This result was one of the exceptions for Bomber Command . At the end of 1940 a plan to shut down the German hydrogenation plants was worked out, but was shelved by 1944 in favor of the area bombing. Various factors came into play in moving away from industrial goals. In the Rhine-Ruhr region, a dense, cloud-like layer of industrial smog and ground fog often made targeted attacks from the air difficult, which were made even more difficult under night flight conditions. Until the introduction of radar and radio control procedures in 1942, this so-called invisibility cap over the Rhine-Ruhr area was a considerably greater obstacle for the British bombers than the massive defense by anti-aircraft batteries in this region.
Turning to area attacks
In the European theater of war resulted from the company Barbarossa , the German invasion of the Soviet Union a new political and strategic situation on 22 June 1941. Churchill wanted to demonstrate to the new Soviet ally credible successes in the previously unsuccessful British air warfare against Germany. The West German railway network was the target of the Transport Directive (German traffic directive ) of July 9, 1941, which should hinder the supply traffic between West Germany and the German Wehrmacht, which was then still successful in the eastern theater of war. Like the Atlantic Directive of March 1941, which also naval targets (German belonging to the Navy objectives ) inland as Hagen, Mannheim , Stuttgart were added and Cologne also lay Transport Directive states that the bombing, the morale of the population should be taken in cities. From June 1941 onwards, the Bomber Command increasingly attacked railway facilities in West Germany, with an operational focus on important railway centers such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Hamm, Soest, Osnabrück and Schwerte. The Bomber Command but had to be limited because of the time still inadequate electronic navigation and targeting methods, especially to attacks on cities in the Rhineland. In the summer and autumn of 1941, for example, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg were bombed several times. The city of Hamm, with its large marshalling yard, and the equally high-ranking railway facilities in Schwerte and Soest, however, were only rarely approached at this time.
The Bomber Command had assumed beginning of the war due to the lack of experience to be able to turn the Ruhr area with only 240 twin-engine heavy bombers, the entire German fuel supply and rail-based transport infrastructure. The attacks on industry and large cities in the Rhine-Ruhr area did not prove to be so successful. Until early 1942, the effects of the British air raids were disproportionate to the material costs and the loss of personnel. The Butt Report confirmed this view through detailed evaluations of attack and reconnaissance photos in August 1941. The bombs only hit their targets within a five-mile radius in a quarter of the nightly missions over Germany, and in the Ruhr area only a tenth. The report did not take into account those missions in which bombs could not be dropped due to equipment failure, enemy action, weather, or the pilots getting lost. Including this data, only 5 percent of the bombers hit their targets.
Area attack strategy for the Ruhr area
In Great Britain, political bodies called for a change in the air war strategy because the targeted air strikes on individual transport and industrial facilities did not have the desired results. In the autumn of 1941, the Bomber Command developed plans for an area bombing aimed at all large cities and a large number of medium-sized towns in the German Reich. On February 14, 1942, the British Ministry of Aviation issued the Area Bombing Directive (German instruction for area bombing ). On February 22, 1942, Sir Arthur Harris , a proponent of area attack strategy, was appointed head of Bomber Command , in which he had held various leadership positions since the beginning of the war. In the course of the war, not only strategic targets such as the industrial plants were flown to, but the cities in their entire plant and organization were seen as targets in order to hit the war morale of the population and especially the industrial workers. The strategy was based on the Trenchard Doctrine , according to which bombing residential areas would weaken civilians' willingness to fight. According to Harris, the city center was actually the ultimate destination. After the war he confessed: “Apart from Essen, we have never chosen a special industrial plant as a destination. The destruction of industrial plants always appeared to us as a kind of special bonus. Our real goal was always the city center. "
The main targets of the area attacks that began in March 1942 included the industrial cities on the Rhine and Ruhr. Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg and especially Essen topped the list of priorities in 1942. Similar to the Germans during their area attacks on English cities in 1940/41, the British military and politicians involved in the planning promised extensive effects on all areas of public life. The British air offensive was directed against the civilian population and the infrastructure in the big cities as well as against the arms industry on the Rhine and Ruhr. The attacks on cities in the Rhineland, especially on Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg, led for the first time to severe destruction and loss of people at an unprecedented level. In contrast, the frequent aerial operations against Essen were mostly failures, as most of the machines used could not bomb the city or could not reach it. The British raids on Dortmund and Bochum in the spring of 1942 were equally unsuccessful. There was a lack of technical options for target location when it was cloudy and poor visibility, as well as adequate navigation methods.
In the spring of 1942 a technological change took place. The GEE navigation system enabled the aircraft's navigators to determine their position relatively precisely for the first time, which simplified the planning of flight routes and the localization of targets. In addition, the RAF began building a powerful fleet of four-engine aircraft of the types Avro Lancaster , Handley Page Halifax and Short Stirling . In July 1942, the twin-engine De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito came into service. But the range of aerial bombs was also expanded; In addition to explosive bombs of various calibres , heavy air mines as well as stick and liquid incendiary bombs were now part of the standard bomb load for area attacks on German cities. In the summer of 1942, new methods of marking targets were also developed, with specially trained crews flying ahead of the actual attack unit and marking the target with large-caliber, long-burning incendiary bombs, which were popularly known as Christmas trees . The dropping of leaflets was not dispensed with during area attacks: since 1942 the number of leaflets and leaflet newspapers regularly dropped over the German Reich has increased steadily.
At the beginning of 1943, the British Bomber Command was ready to carry out major attack projects. Modern radar and targeting systems, such as OBOE and the H2S panorama on-board radar (German Rotterdam device ), as well as the conversion to four-engine long-range bombers made it possible to start the air offensive against the Rhine-Ruhr area that has been planned for several months.
Air raids during the Battle of the Ruhr
The attack on Essen marked the beginning of a five-month British air offensive that lasted until mid-July 1943, known as the Battle of the Ruhr . Similar to the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in January 1943, this offensive was also a turning point in the war. Since March 5, 1943, such serious consequences after air raids were repeated not only in Essen. The population of the cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf on the Rhine had to endure numerous heavy bombings with great destruction and high human losses. While cities were like Aachen , Krefeld , Bielefeld , Münster, Mönchengladbach and Wuppertal from a British perspective on the Ruhr area (German Ruhrgebiet counted). With the exception of Hagen, the Bomber Command bombed all the major cities on the Rhine and Ruhr in the spring and summer of 1943. The months of May and June 1943 were the climax of the air offensive. The losses among the German population and the foreign forced laborers amounted to around 15,000 human lives. On June 11, 1943, the Bomber Command had 726 aircraft and crews; the last attack of this offensive on July 9th had only 623. For the first time in the German Reich, the Battle of the Ruhr led to lasting damage and production losses in the armaments industry.
The ejection sequence of ammunition during air raids was often through the Christmas trees led the target designators, soon followed by air mines, including so-called blockbusters (German apartment block buster ), the pressure waves covering roofs, blew away the window and could collapse firewalls. As a result, incendiary rods and phosphor bombs fell into the damaged houses, in which drafts caused the fire sources to grow into major fires. After that, explosive and fragmentation bombs, some with time fuses, were dropped. Water pipes were destroyed, roads made impassable and fire fighting teams switched off, so that the countless individual fires could unite to form firestorms , some of them unhindered . Gigantic columns of hot air formed over some of the city districts that were set on fire, producing hurricane-like storms and drawing in thousands of tons of oxygen. Many people, whether they hid in the basement or fled outdoors, died from heat stroke or overpressure, burns or carbon monoxide poisoning.
| date | Target of attack | attacker | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 5, 1943 | eat | RAF | In the late afternoon hours, over 442 aircraft took off from airfields in East and Central England. At around 9 p.m., a twin-engine mosquito with colored Christmas trees brought to the city of Essen by the OBOE targeting system marked the Krupp works and downtown Essen. Subsequently, around 360 bombers (Wellingtons, Halifaxes, Stirlings and Lancasters) dropped around 1,100 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs on the city area in three waves within one hour, of which the bombs of only 153 aircraft within a radius of three miles (5 km) went down the target point. At least 457 people were killed and over 3,000 buildings were completely destroyed, leaving tens of thousands homeless. The Krupp works suffered major damage for the first time. 14 British planes were lost in the attack. The balance of this first heavy British bombing raid on Essen can be compared with the consequences of the so-called Operation Millennium on Cologne on 30./31. May 1942 compare. Until March 5, 1943, the attack on Cologne was the climax of the British air warfare against the German Reich. |
| 9/10 March 1943 | Dysentery | RAF | 8 mosquitos over the Ruhr |
| 10/11 March 1943 | Essen and Mülheim an der Ruhr | RAF | 2 mosquitos |
| 12./13. March 1943 | eat | RAF | The RAF lost 23 planes |
| 26./27. March 1943 | Duisburg | RAF | A widespread air attack by a large number of RAF aircraft due to cloudiness and technical problems with the radio navigation system . |
| 29./30. March 1943 | Bochum | RAF | The RAF lost 8 percent of 149 Wellingtons and 8 OBOE Mosquitos. The attack was unsuccessful due to cloudiness and technical problems with the radio navigation system. |
| 3rd / 4th April 1943 | eat | RAF | Air raid with 348 bombers (225 Lancasters, 113 Halifaxes, 10 Mosquitos). Widespread damage in the city center and in the west of the city. 21 machines were lost. |
| 8/9 April 1943 | Duisburg | RAF | An attack by 392 RAF aircraft had little success. 19 planes were lost. |
| 9/10 April 1943 | Duisburg | RAF | Of 104 Lancasters and 5 Mosquitos, eight did not return after a widespread attack. |
| 26./27. April 1943 | Duisburg | RAF | Heavy air strike with 561 aircraft (215 Lancasters, 135 Wellingtons, 119 Halifaxes, 78 Stirlings, 14 Mosquitos). Due to incorrect target marking, the northeast of the city was bombed. The attack was rated as a partial failure. More than 300 buildings were destroyed. 17 machines were lost. |
| April 30 / May 1, 1943 | eat | RAF | Of 305 aircraft, 12 were lost. The Krupp works were also hit again. |
| 4th / 5th May 1943 | Dortmund | RAF | That night, the largest association to date attacked Dortmund with 596 four-engine machines, killing 690 people. |
| 13./14. May 1943 | Bochum | RAF | 5.4 percent of 442 RAF bombers were lost. The bombs missed many of their targets due to diversion target marking. Despite this, more than 360 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The town hall suffered severe damage. |
| May 17, 1943 | Möhnetalsperre and Edersee | RAF | On the night of May 17, 1943, a British special unit from No. 5 bomber group with 14 bombers as part of Operation Chastise (German punishment ) to destroy the dams of the Möhne dam and the Edersee with the help of roll bombs . More than 130 million tons of water poured out of the Möhne dam as a flash flood ( Möhne catastrophe ) and flooded the Ruhr valley between Neheim-Hüsten and Hagen. The tidal waves killed (depending on the source) between 1284 and 1900 people. The supply of hydroelectric power to the Ruhr area was only briefly interrupted. 40 percent of the attacking aircraft did not return. |
| 23/24 May 1943 | Dortmund | RAF | In the second heavy attack on Dortmund, 826 bombers dropped over 2000 tons of bombs in one night for the first time. The Hoesch Stahlwerke then stopped their production. The RAF lost 4.8 percent of the aircraft used. After the attacks on Dortmund, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The reports that come from Dortmund are quite terrifying. [...] We are in a helpless inferiority and have to accept the blows of the British and Americans with dogged anger. " |
| 25./26. May 1943 | Dusseldorf | RAF | 729 bombers were used in the air raid on Düsseldorf , with clouds and diversionary fire causing widespread bombing. The RAF lost 3.6 percent of its aircraft. |
| 27./28. May 1943 | eat | RAF | The RAF lost 4.4 percent of 518 aircraft. Widespread bombing caused damage to parts of Essen and ten surrounding cities. |
| 29./30. May 1943 | Wuppertal | RAF | During the air raid on Wuppertal - Barmen by 719 bombers, a firestorm of around 4.0 km² developed which largely destroyed the district . |
| 11./12. June 1943 | Dusseldorf | RAF | Air strike with 783 aircraft, 4.9 percent of which did not return. Some of the bombs missed their actual target by about 23 km due to incorrect OBOE target instructions. An area of 130 acres (~ 0.5 km²) was destroyed. |
| 12./13. June 1943 | Bochum | RAF | 503 RAF bombers caused serious damage in the center of Bochum. 4.8 percent of the planes did not return. |
| 14./15. June 1943 | Oberhausen | RAF | Of 197 Lancasters and additional OBOE mosquitos, 8.4 percent did not return. |
| 16./17. June 1943 | Cologne | RAF | The RAF lost 14 of 212 bombers. Clouds and faulty equipment resulted in widespread bombardment. |
| 17./18. June 1943 | Cologne and Ruhr | RAF | 3 mosquitos, no RAF losses. |
| 19./20. June 1943 | Cologne, Duisburg and Düsseldorf | RAF | 6 mosquitos, no RAF losses. |
| 21./22. June 1943 | Krefeld | RAF | During that moonlit night, 705 aircraft ignited a conflagration that raged out of control for several hours. The RAF lost 6.2 percent of its aircraft in this attack. |
| June 22, 1943 | Marl sleeve | USAAF | The 8th Air Force achieved its first major attack success in an attack on the chemical works in Hüls near Marl, which interrupted the production of synthetic rubber there for around four weeks and left over 180 fatalities among the workforce and in the surrounding housing estates. |
| 22./23. June 1943 | Mülheim an der Ruhr | RAF | 557 planes destroyed 64 percent of the city in cloudy conditions. |
| 24./25. June 1943 | Wuppertal | RAF | 630 aircraft destroyed the Elberfeld district to 94 percent. |
| 25./26. June 1943 | Gelsenkirchen | RAF | The attack by 473 bombers on the Nordstern refinery was classified as unsuccessful by the RAF due to cloud formation and technical unsuitability of five of the twelve mosquitos equipped with OBOE devices. |
| 28/29 June 1943 | Cologne | RAF | In the "Peter and Paul attack" called area bombing of Cologne with 540 (according to another source 608) aircraft, at least 4,377 people died. 4.1 percent (of 608) of RAF aircraft did not return. Only half of the radio navigation systems in the mosquitos worked. |
| 9.9 / 10. July 1943 | Gelsenkirchen | RAF | Unsuccessful attack by 418 bombers on Gelsenkirchen. Again failure of the radio navigation systems in five of the mosquitos, a sixth aimed at an area about 16 km north of the actual target. |
| 25./26. July 1943 | eat | RAF | 600 bombers dropped their bombs over Essen within half an hour. Goebbels recorded in his diary that production in the Krupp factory was stopped after this attack. |
| 30./31. July 1943 | Remscheid | RAF | In the last air strike of this campaign, 1,200 people died in the bombing of 273 RAF aircraft, of which 5.5 percent did not return. Destruction of the city center and severe damage in the outskirts were the result. |
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) day attacks
In the summer of 1942, the first units of the 8th Air Force arrived in Great Britain. The American concept had already been developed in the pre-war years and included daytime attacks on selected industrial and transport facilities. In the 1930s, four-engine long-range bombers had already been developed for this, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (German for the flying fortress ) and the Consolidated B-24 Liberator (German liberator ). The US Air Force had developed its own attack plans as early as 1940–1941, which provided precise daytime attacks, for example on industrial plants in Essen, Hagen, Gelsenkirchen and Bochum and on the marshalling yards in Hamm, Schwerte, Essen and Duisburg. But it was not until the spring / summer of 1943 that the 8th Air Force was ready to bomb targets in the German hinterland. The start of the 8th Air Force's air offensive was the attack on a German naval base in Wilhelmshaven on January 28, 1943.
As early as February 1943, the marshalling yard in Hamm was repeatedly on the attack orders for the bomber groups of the 8th Air Force, but the unfavorable flight weather conditions repeatedly led to the interruption of operations. On March 4, 1943, the time had come when an association of around 80 B-17s started with Hamm as their destination, but the mission over the North Sea and the Netherlands was canceled. However, 19 machines of the 91st Bombardment Group flew on to Hamm and bombed the station, causing great damage. More than 150 people died in Hamm in the first US air raid on a target deep in the German Reich. The 8th Air Force carried out repeated attacks on the hydrogenation works in Gelsenkirchen and various targets in the Rhineland and Westphalia up to the end of 1943.
Preparations for the Allied Invasion
Apart from the continuous air raids by smaller units of twin-engine mosquito high-speed bombers, the Ruhr area was spared from heavy area attacks in the late summer and autumn of 1943 and in the winter of 1943/44. However, the cities of Uerdingen were on 22./23. August, Bochum on 29./30. September and Hagen on 1./2. October 1943 the target of major bombings. The main focus of the attack activities of the British Bomber Command between November 1943 and March 1944 was on the Reich capital in the (air) battle for Berlin . From the summer of 1943 the 8th Air Force also intervened in the bombing war against the German Reich. The combined bomber offensive decided in January 1943 at the Casablanca Conference between Great Britain and the USA thus took on concrete forms.
American daytime attacks alternated in the spring of 1944 with British area attacks during the night. Several operations took place against marshalling yards in the Rhineland and Westphalia between March and May 1944. More than 600 aircraft of the 8th Air Force bombed the railroad facilities in Hamm on the evening of April 22, 1944. With the imminent Allied invasion of northern France on May 31, 1944, an aerial operation by the 8th Air Force was directed against the marshalling yards in Hamm, Schwerte, Soest and Osnabrück.
The British Bomber Command was from February 1944 under the command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and participated in the preparations for the invasion. In April and May 1944, Bomber Command undertook a series of heavy area attacks on West German cities, starting with an attack by 705 aircraft on Essen from March 26 to 27, 1944. Further area bombing of Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Duisburg followed at the end of May 1944.
Second air battle over the Ruhr
The British Air Chief Marshal Arthur W. Tedder , who had been General Dwight D. Eisenhower's deputy for Operation Overlord since January 1944 , emphatically demanded the bombing of marshalling yards on the Rhine and Ruhr and increased area attacks on industrial cities and the population of the Ruhr area.
From August 1944, the British Bomber Command also flew into the Reich territory with heavy long-range bombers during the day. The British machines alternated over West Germany with the 8th Air Force. In addition, attacks by the Allied tactical air forces with fighter bombers and twin-engined medium-range bombers took place. As a consequence of the failure of Operation Market Garden , the strategic air raids on targets in the German Reich were intensified from September 25, 1944.
| date | Target of attack | Bomb load in 1000 kg |
|---|---|---|
| 27th of March | eat | 2834 |
| April 22 | Hamm | 8,000 high explosive and 3,500 incendiary bombs; Load? |
| May 21 | Duisburg | 2000 |
| 31. May | Hamm | ? |
| October 6th | Dortmund | 1658 |
| 14./15. October | Duisburg | 9000 |
| October 22nd | eat | 4522 |
| October 24th | eat | 3719 |
| November 4th | Bochum | 2323 |
| November 6th | Gelsenkirchen | 3288 |
| November 9th | Wanne-Eickel | 1315 |
| November 12th | Dortmund | 1122 |
| 15th of November | Dortmund | 904 |
| November 19th | Wanne-Eickel | 1519 |
| November 29th | eat | 1147 |
| November 29th | Dortmund | 1618 |
| 2. December | Duisburg | 2270 |
| 13th December | eat | 2354 |
| December 17th | Duisburg | 1767 |
| total | 43,360 |
But the British area attacks also continued. In the evening hours of October 6, 1944, the heavy area attack by 498 planes on Dortmund claimed at least 1148 lives. It was at the beginning of a series of heavy air raids, a second Battle of the Ruhr , which hit all the major industrial cities in the Rhineland and Westphalia by the end of 1944.
On October 13, 1944, the Royal Air Force received instructions to conduct Operation Hurricane . The purpose of this operation was to demonstrate the air superiority and destructiveness of the Allied bomber forces against the German civilian population. The instruction contained the following passage:
“In order to demonstrate to the enemy in Germany generally the overwhelming superiority of the Allied Air Forces in this theater… the intention is to apply within the shortest practical period the maximum effort of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command and the 8th United States Bomber Command against objectives in the densely populated Ruhr. "
"In order to demonstrate to the enemy in Germany in general the overwhelming superiority of the Allied Air Forces in this theater of war ... it is intended that both the Royal Air Force Bomber Command and the 8th United States Bomber Command should make a maximum effort against targets in densely populated areas in the shortest possible time To undertake in the Ruhr area. "
This operation was one of the highlights of the second Battle of the Ruhr on October 14th and 15th, 1944 . Around 1,800 British aircraft bombed the traffic facilities and the urban area of Duisburg in the night of October 14th and in the morning of October 15th, 1944. Within a few hours, more than 9,000 tons of high-explosive bombs fell, with more than 2,500 fatalities and major property damage in the already badly battered city. On October 15, 1944, the dam of the Sorpe Dam in the Sauerland was the target of five-ton Tallboy bombs (German big guy ) dropped by a group of 18 Lancaster bombers. The great dam had already withstood a British air raid on May 16 and 17, 1943 and was not destroyed this time either. With two bomb attacks by 899 and 914 machines, the 8th Air Force flew to the traffic facilities in Cologne and caused severe destruction and high personal losses. Other targets of this operation were Düsseldorf, Braunschweig (cf. bombing raid on Braunschweig on October 15, 1944 ) and Hamburg .
On the night of 23/24 and 25 October 1944, Essen was the target of around 1,800 British aircraft, with at least 1,163 people losing their lives. In the evening hours of November 4, 1944, Bochum was attacked, which was badly damaged by over 700 heavy bombers. In the cast steel factory Bochumer Verein as well as in other companies there was great destruction, with at least 994 people killed. Of the 23,000 houses in Bochum, only around 1,000 remained undamaged and 70,000 people became homeless. Further heavy air raids followed in December 1944 on Hagen, Soest, Siegen , Witten and Essen.
In the SHAEF directive for the Allied air forces of November 1, 1944, the railway facilities in the Rhine-Ruhr area were given the second priority, but at the same time this region was declared an important operational area. The transport plan , which came into force on November 7, 1944, ultimately made the railway facilities on the Rhine and Ruhr a priority target. At that time, high military and leading political circles in the Western Allies expected the collapse of the Nazi regime before the end of the year . The hopes for a quick collapse of the German Reich, however, turned out to be a mistake.
Combined day and night attacks
The 8th Air Force intensified its attacks on the Rhine-Ruhr area from September 1944, targeting the hydrogenation works in Gelsenkirchen, Bottrop and Oberhausen in October and November 1944. The Bomber Command took part in these bombings with heavy day and night attacks on the hydrogenation works on the Rhine and Ruhr. The continuation of the Oil Offensive, which the Allies only began in Central and Eastern Germany in May 1944 , now also affected the fuel supply for the Germans in the Rhine-Ruhr area.
In addition to aviation fuel, the hydrogenation works and coal chemical companies on the Rhine and Ruhr also supplied valuable lubricants, without which, for example, the use of the new Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter would not be possible. Many coking plants that were connected to hard coal mines and which, in addition to coke, also produced benzene , nitrogen , hydrocarbons and tar , were again the focus of the Allied target planning in autumn 1944. In the final months of 1944, the marshalling yard in Hamm was the target for US bomber groups on several occasions. Hamm and Gelsenkirchen were among the main targets for attacks by the 8th Air Force on the European theater of war, along with the Leuna works in Merseburg and the capital Berlin.
Much of the freight traffic from the Ruhr area and transport to the west was handled via the branched track network in Hamm, which is why the railway systems were on the British target lists as early as 1938. British planes attempted to hit the station for over 100 nights from May 1940 to August 1941. Hamm was also a high priority target for the 8th Air Force, but their attacks in early 1943 were unsuccessful for four days until Hamm train station was bombed for the first time on March 19, 1943. The damage caused by the frequent daytime attacks by the 8th Air Force could hardly be repaired by the repair teams in Hamm in 1944. On February 16, the 8th Air Force again bombed fuel plants and traffic facilities in the Ruhr area.
Closure of the Ruhr
The air offensive Interdiction of the Ruhr (German blockade of the Ruhr ) was decided by the Allied High Command on February 17 1945th This operation envisaged the systematic bombing and destruction of all railway facilities, industrial companies and cities on a line along several railway bridges from Bremen in the north and Neuwied in the southwest. The background to this program was the planned crossing of the Rhine by Allied ground forces . The ground offensives on the left bank of the Rhine and in the direction of Cologne came to an end at the beginning of March 1945, and so the way was clear for the conquest of the Ruhr area and the advance into the German hinterland. From the end of February 1945, the strategic bomber fleets began the air strikes of Operation Interdiction of the Ruhr .
The twin-engined medium-range bombers of the 9th Air Force and the British 2nd Tactical Air Force intervened increasingly in the war on the Rhine and Ruhr from the beginning of March 1945 and aimed at motor vehicle parks, railway and road bridges, barracks, airports, supply depots , troop stores and shunting yards. The targets of the attack were in small and medium-sized towns that had previously been spared from major bombings, for example in Wuppertal- Langerfeld , Schwelm , Iserlohn , Unna and Recklinghausen . The incessant attacks by fighter bombers on moving trains, railway and industrial facilities as well as on road traffic and people were a particular burden for the population.
The most important marshalling yards on the outskirts of the Ruhr area were destroyed by several heavy US air strikes during Operation Bugle . The start was a combined mission started on February 28, 1945 against the railway facilities in Hagen, Soest, Schwerte, Siegen, Arnsberg and Kassel . The low-level attacks by fighter-bombers of the tactical air fleets were also directed primarily against rail and road traffic in western Germany, which almost completely came to a standstill. In the night attack on Hagen on March 5, at least 400 people died in a bunker. The overcrowded bunker near the main train station was hit by several mine and high explosive bombs and penetrated. It was the most momentous bunkering accident during the entire course of the war. On March 11 and 12, 1945, two massive British attacks with over a thousand aircraft each on Essen (850 dead) and Dortmund (890 dead) were among the highlights of the air offensive. Two more nightly area attacks took place on 15./16. March 1945 on Hagen and on 18./19. March on Witten. In Arnsberg, Vlotho , Bielefeld and Altenbeken , British bombers destroyed or damaged the most important railway bridges on the main routes into the Ruhr area in special operations with superheavy tank explosive bombs (so-called earthquake bombs called Grand Slam and Tallboy ) by March 20.
The strategic air forces continued their bombing raids on the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area and the surrounding area without interruption until the end of March 1945. From March 10 to 20, 1945, a series of particularly heavy bombings and a subsequent four-day air offensive took place, with the cities of Essen, Dortmund, Hagen and Witten being completely destroyed by British area attacks. This was intended to prepare the Allied Rhine crossing in the Wesel and Rees area (see Operation Plunder ). Between March 23 and 28, 1945, the last major air raids were carried out by four- and twin-engined bomber groups, in whose hail of bombs numerous small and medium-sized towns located on the edge of the Ruhr area were lost. The historic old town of Paderborn was destroyed in the last British area attack on March 27, 1945.
A total of around 10,000 people died in the Rhine-Ruhr area during this period.
The Ruhr basin
The Ludendorff Bridge near Remagen was taken almost undamaged by the 1st US Army on March 7, 1945. The immediate crossing of the Rhine and the construction of a bridgehead at Remagen became an important starting point for further operations against the German hinterland, which also brought the conquest of the Ruhr area closer. On March 10, 1945, the German troops also cleared their last bridgehead on the left bank of the Rhine near Wesel. British, Canadian and US airborne and ground troops crossed the Rhine on a broad front in the Plunder and Varsity operations in the Wesel- Dinslaken area on March 23 and 24, 1945 . From the bridgehead near Remagen, the 9th US Army advanced from the south over the Siegerland and Sauerland towards the Ruhr area.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in Northwestern Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, approved plans on March 25, 1945, in which the Ruhr area should be enclosed in a pincer-like manner and the German units should be encircled . The aim was to avoid violent street fights in the ruins of the bombed-out cities and in the mountain ranges of the Sauerland as far as possible. When troops of the 1st and 9th US Army met on April 1, 1945 near Lippstadt, the Ruhrkessel ( Ruhr Pocket ) closed. The air operations of the Allies over the Ruhr area during this time were essentially limited to aerial reconnaissance and the dropping of leaflets.
Around 325,000 German soldiers, from regular units of Army Group B to units of the Volkssturm , as well as around 5 million civilians, prisoners of war and forced laborers were in a huge cauldron that was being pulled ever closer by the US troops. The supreme command had the Field Marshal Walter Model , who appeared as fanatical follower of National Socialism.
A US advance on April 14, 1945 split the Ruhr basin in two parts near Hagen . In contrast to the protracted and extremely bloody clashes in the battle in the Huertgen Forest , the Allied advance on the Rhine and Ruhr, contrary to the continued Nazi perseverance propaganda, only resulted in heavy fighting with German units in a limited area. The conquest of the Ruhr region was compared as a mere mopping up (German swab perceived) of the German defenders. On April 17th, the German defense collapsed in the eastern part of the Ruhr basin . Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers and members of the Volkssturm were taken prisoner of war. The western part of the boiler in the Düsseldorf area surrendered four days later. Some responsible German officers had already capitulated to the US troops on April 15, such as Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein in the Iserlohn- Menden area on April 15, 1945 . Field Marshal General Walter Model shot himself on April 21, 1945 in a forest near Duisburg, after he had refused every Allied surrender offer and appealed to the defensive will of his soldiers. Thousands of soldiers had died in final battles in the Rhineland and Ruhr areas since March 1945 .
In the area from which North Rhine-Westphalia later emerged, parallel worlds could be observed in the last weeks and months of the war. On March 7, 1945, the Thousand Year Reich was already five months past in Aachen when US troops conquered the center of Cologne and advanced to the Remagen Bridge. On the same day, the Dortmund Gestapo began mass executions of forced laborers. In Essen, National Socialist slogans were still posted on advertising pillars. During these weeks the population on the Rhine, Ruhr and Weser experienced the heaviest bomb attacks, while many liberated Polish slave laborers plundered farms in the American-occupied areas. In the Ruhr area, young people and old men were still being recruited for the Volkssturm during these days, while US soldiers were already distributing chewing gum, oranges and chocolate to amazed children in Neuss . In Lüdenscheid , runaway soldiers were hanged as deserters and displayed on the market square. There were uprooted people everywhere, often stranded at train stations in the hope of being transported to other regions, or looking for food and shelter. The people in the Ruhr area often had the feeling that they were constantly walking close to the abyss . They ran the risk of being executed by remaining Nazi organs if the white flag was hung up prematurely, or of being shot by the advancing allies if they gave up too late. Any step could be the wrong one in these last days, but it could also bring salvation.
Air defense
The approximately 3000 anti-aircraft guns stationed in the Ruhr area appeared to be the only effective air defense against the increasing British bombing attacks in the first two years of the war, with the 8.8 cm FlaK 18/36/37 forming the backbone of the air defense. The German flak was responsible for about a third of the total losses of allied bombers. Statistically, several thousand rounds of large-caliber ammunition were required for one launch. The German anti-aircraft guns consumed a total of 12 percent of the total production of ammunition.
German radio measurement stations were built in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, which made it possible to locate approaching bomber formations before they even reached Germany. The Kammhuber Line , a strategic facility for radar-based air defense based on the four-poster bed method , reached a length of 1,000 kilometers from northern to southern Europe when it was completed. The enemy aircraft could already be taken under flak fire over northern France. In the Ruhr Valley, an additional flak line was built between Hamm and Duisburg as part of the expansion of air defense zones. After the first major waves of attack, more and more anti-aircraft batteries and individual artillery were set up within the towns. Some of these were located within the residential areas in the middle of the street, right next to residential buildings and in parks. Low-flying aircraft often attacked recognized or suspected positions.
In 1940, for the first time, and more effectively from 1941, night hunting was an additional effective means of defense. The night fighters were mainly stationed in the Belgian-Dutch area. The German Air Force also deployed day-hunting units after the 8th Air Force increasingly intervened in the war from the summer of 1943. With the Wilde-Sau night hunting process , British bombers were supposed to be shot down by German day fighters directly over the attacked German cities at night . However, despite numerous successes, neither the hunting associations nor the flak units succeeded in preventing the Allied air raids or containing them to any significant extent.
Between 1941 and 1943, the effectiveness of the anti-aircraft defense increased through large anti-aircraft batteries , some of which were equipped with over 24 guns, through radar devices such as Freya and Würzburg-Riese , which could locate targets up to 70 km away, and up to 200 cm large flak headlights with carbon arc lamps , the light beam of which reached up to twelve kilometers depending on the weather. Large areas could be monitored with them. From 1943 onwards, the Allies used a large number of electronic measures to switch off German radar devices. Smaller bomber formations laid false courses with tinfoil strips , so-called Windows (German Düppel ), or scattered tons of chaff over the targets to deceive radar. Large and powerful jammers were also used, which were used in four-engine aircraft. To reduce this interference, various additional devices for friend-foe detection were installed in the radar devices.
With the introduction of compulsory military service in 1935, the ground-based air defense was expanded, resulting in numerous anti-aircraft regiments that were housed in the barracks of Bochum, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Iserlohn, Cologne and Wuppertal in the Rhine-Ruhr area . Several flak batteries were stationed in the vicinity of the Rhenish-Westphalian arms factories and transport facilities in 1938 during the Sudeten crisis . At the beginning of the war in September 1939, the flak units responsible for the Rhine-Ruhr area moved into their planned and partially already developed positions.
The anti-aircraft defense in this area was not given its structure until the end of the war until the spring of 1943. The 22nd Flak Division had its command post in Dortmund and was responsible for the eastern Ruhr area, the Münsterland , East Westphalia and South Westphalia . The 4th Flak Division , based in Wolfsburg between Duisburg and Mülheim an der Ruhr, was responsible for the western Ruhr area and the Lower Rhine, the 7th Flak Division in Cologne for the Rhineland and the area on the left bank of the Rhine, as well as for the Bergisches Land.
Within the flak divisions , so-called flak groups were formed in the flak regiments , which were responsible for a city area or a region. These were divided into flak departments , which were responsible for a protected object or a city district . An anti-aircraft group with several anti-aircraft sub-groups was responsible for the air defense of large cities such as Bochum, Essen, Duisburg, Cologne, Dortmund and Hagen. Flak headlight regiments were structured similarly. Mobile railway flak batteries operated within the anti-aircraft divisions and were stationed at prepared stops at train stations.
In autumn 1943 around 1,500 heavy and 1,500 light to medium anti-aircraft guns were stationed between the Rhine, Ruhr and Lippe. However, from March 1944 onwards, numerous anti-aircraft batteries were relocated from there to the eastern part of the German Reich to protect hydrogenation plants and operations in the air armaments industry in Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt , Thuringia and Upper Silesia . Although the anti-aircraft fortress presented by Adolf Hitler there also proved to be insufficient against the advancing Allies, the German anti-aircraft defense was nonetheless fatal for tens of thousands of Allied bomber crews.
Air raid
With the further development of aerial warfare technology after the First World War, the abundance of organizational measures for defensive air defense in the German Reich increased. The population recognized the great dangers that air strikes would bring in future wars.
Since the seizure of power, civil air defense has been under the authority of the Reich Aviation Commissioner . The Reich Air Protection Association , which was directly subordinate to the Aviation Ministry, was founded on April 29, 1933. In the same year, the works air defense organized the first major air defense exercises in the Ruhr area together with the city fire services. There was an extensive briefing of the public in “air protection behavior”. In the course of this, a public air defense exercise carried out as part of the Gelsenkirchen air show aroused very strong interest.
A special form of passive air defense was the construction of dummy installations . During the Second World War z. B. About a third of the 1.5 square kilometer built-up site of the Krupp cast steel factory, mainly facilities in the outer area, completely destroyed, another third partially. In order to avert and deceive Allied air raids, a mock-up of the cast steel factory was created on the Rottberg near Velbert from 1941 , the so-called Krupp night glow system . Initially, it attracted a few attacks, but lost its effectiveness from 1943 onwards as the aviators were better able to orient themselves, including the introduction of radar . During the first attack on the actual cast steel factory in March 1943, the Allies dropped 30,000 bombs, which also bombed surrounding housing estates and thus civilians.
Guidelines for the protection of the civilian population were drawn up with the assistance of the Air Protection Committee . Active LS helpers, LS control room, clean-up helpers, detoxification helpers, fire brigades, practical gas protection, technical emergency aid , etc. received special written instructions for emergencies. In 1935 the air protection obligation was introduced. In 1939 the Reichs Luftschutzbund had 13.5 million members.
The more and more violent area attacks that took place during the war caused enormous property damage and tens of thousands of homeless people who were bombed out , whereby the air protection measures ordered by Hitler in 1940, above all the failed " immediate Führer program " to build bomb-proof bunkers in 50 selected German cities, proved completely inadequate.
Many of these cities were located in the Ruhr area and could offer up to 24 percent of the local population in public air raid shelters and underground air raid tunnels . However, the so-called LS-Führer program was largely discontinued at the end of 1941, as the supply of raw materials and labor for military buildings such as the Atlantic Wall , the Führer headquarters and submarine bunkers were given priority over protective measures for the population. After the end of the Battle of the Ruhr , a planned further expansion of the air protection did not get beyond the first beginnings.
At the end of the war, the civil air defense associations disbanded.
Side effects
Psychological effects
- Bomber crews
Allied bomber crews had in a Tour of Duty (German service round ) to complete normally thirty missions that could last from six weeks to one year. Aviation personnel from Commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia were also trained under the Commonwealth Air Training Plan . These personnel were often used as bomber crews in the air raids on the Ruhr area. The average losses of the Bomber Command in air raids on the German Reich were 3 percent. In attacks on strongly defended targets such as the Ruhr area or Berlin in 1943 and early 1944, the loss rate was between 5 and 6 percent. The bomber crews were aware that with an assumed loss rate of 3 percent, the chance of survival after thirty missions was 40 percent, and with a loss rate of 5 percent it was 21.5 percent. This meant that bomber crews had the least chance of surviving in World War II. Many were also faced with moral justification for the necessity of their acts of war.
A bomber crew consisted from 1942 typically consists of a pilot, a flight engineer, a bombardier, a navigator, two gunners and a radio operator. The members of a crew were highly dependent on one another and often formed teams with close ties. All members of a crew were almost indispensable for the success and survival of any mission. The air raids on the Ruhr area required the crews in the poorly heated aircraft under low air pressure conditions for around eight hours to be extremely careful in a confined space. In the middle of the flight was the goal of their mission, which was usually defended by strong flak fire and German fighters. In many of their diaries, the aerial combat over the bombed cities, which they experienced with increased awareness due to the fighting situation, was described as fascinating and terrifying at the same time. The risk of collisions with other aircraft in narrow flight formations, the occurrence of mechanical errors, the constant risk of not surviving the mission, as well as wounds or losses within the crew or the task force demanded the highest level of endurance and skill from the crews. Many crew members described themselves as physically and psychologically exhausted after the attacks.
The crews went through a cycle of tension before the missions, the exhausting intensity of their mission, followed by attempts to sleep, relax and recover, in order to then prepare for the next mission. The mood swings of many crews were intensified by participating in peaceful civil life or excessive, often spontaneous parties during the leave of absence between missions. Squadron Commanders often tolerated these conditions so that tension could be relieved and morale could be maintained. Many positions at air bases in the UK were held by women from the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). From 1943 up to 300 women were not uncommon on a base. Relationships of varying lengths and intimacy existed between them and the crews.
Despite increasing routine in the air raids on the Rhine-Ruhr region, it was the Allied bomber crews as a special target, comparable to the German capital Berlin, as Big B was called. The strong anti-aircraft defenses on the Rhine and Ruhr and the seemingly closed urban and industrial landscape exerted its own attraction on British and US bomber crews, which they were given by nicknames like Happy Valley (German happy or cheerful valley ) and Land of no Return ( German the country from which one does not return ) tried to express. Some crews gave their machines a connection to the Ruhr area. The first in Canada built and in the 405th Bomb Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force flying four-engined Avro Lancaster was named the "Ruhr Express" (German Eilbeförderung or courier to the Ruhr ). A Lancaster of the 550th Bomb Squadron was named Phantom of the Ruhr (German Phantom der Ruhr ). The Halifax bomber of the 158th Canadian Bomb Squadron was called The Ruhr Valley Express (German the Ruhr Valley Express ) and showed a railroad train loaded with bombs on the cockpit.
- Civilian population
The air raids on the Ruhr area, as well as on other parts of the German Empire, initially achieved the opposite of the intended effect. Instead of weakening morale, they strengthened the feeling of togetherness among the population. In the summer of 1943 the mood changed. The feeling of being powerless at the mercy of the air strikes was now combined with critical statements against the National Socialist institutions, but this did not result in the will to rebellion. Those who were bombed out were primarily concerned with their own existence, but not with overthrow.
The waiting for the alarm, the howling of the siren, the running into the shelters, the sounds of the falling bombs, the approaching impacts, fear and panic in the basement, the loss of the sense of time, the emotional rigidity and the state of intoxication after surviving the attack shaped often the lives of civilians. Despair, numbness and an overwhelming need for sleep determined the attitude of the bombed until the end of the war. The mood fluctuated between hopelessness and hopelessness and optimistic expectation. Psychiatric research studies of the effects of mass bombing confirm that this war technique has often produced severe and long-lasting trauma such as acute stress reaction and complex post-traumatic stress disorder .
The traumatization of the population is also present in the literature on the bombing war. The figures depicted are emotionless and dull, they can, strangely absent and almost removed from the events, only react instinctively and completely without the possibility of reflection on the events. For example, in Der Untergang , Hans Erich Nossack described how refugees from destroyed Hamburg, similar to the Ruhr area, how animals crouched together and wondered: “Why didn't they complain and cry? And why this indifference in tone [...] this dispassionate way of speaking? "The bomb victims experienced their condition as outside of time and history, because, as Wolfgang Borchert noted in The Kitchen Clock ," when the bomb goes down, the clocks stop. “They were prisoners of their trauma, which made itself felt again and again through thoughts and dreams and did not allow them to continue a really normal life. In almost all texts, the characters are therefore constantly in motion, but without actually arriving anywhere. For example, Dieter Forte described the survivors of the Düsseldorf air raids in his novel In Memory as "people who [...] sneaked through the hilly landscape of rubble, looked around half-starved in abandoned buildings, often no longer knew what they were looking for." The effects of the bomb trauma often determined the writing process itself in the rubble literature . Many of the texts not only represent literary works, but also approaches to self-therapy, whereby the authors tried to overcome their own traumatic experiences by translating the mostly visual and disordered impressions into language. How difficult this process turned out to be has not only been shown by psychiatric research, but the works themselves are also marked by it. Forte emphasized: "You have to find the language for it - and you have to wait for it all your life."
- children
The originally voluntary Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) was supposed to expand to the largest internal migration in history to date with an estimated 2 to 6 million children, adolescents and mothers with small children sent by the end of the war.
In July 1943, extensive evacuations of children from the air-endangered cities on the Rhine and Ruhr began. The so-called extended Kinderlandverschickung recorded all school-age children and adolescents who were sent with their school classes to regions in eastern and southern Germany that were considered safe at the time and as far as Hungary .
The KLV brought hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents out of the Ruhr area, which was hit by ever more frequent air alarms and ever more severe bombing attacks, and in the assigned, often rural reception areas, mostly saved them from major physical and psychological damage or even bomb death until the end of the war. However, many children suffered psychological damage in many cases through loveless acceptance into “foster families”, brutal treatment and neglect by teachers, as well as harassment by the camp leaders.
The KLV was an altogether unpopular measure, one spoke sarcastically in the population at the time also of the "voluntary forced deportation" or of the "kidnapping". It was not possible to evacuate all school children from the evacuated cities of the Ruhr area. In Bochum, for example, after the school evacuation in the summer of 1943, despite massive pressure from the authorities and regardless of the schools being closed, around 6,000 school children were kept at home by their parents until the end of the war.
From February 1943, regular air force soldiers in flak positions in the Ruhr area were replaced with middle school and high school students born in 1926–1927 in the role of air force helpers. In January / February 1944 the born 1928 followed, and in the summer of 1944 apprentices and vocational school students were also brought in .
The relatives born between 1927/28 and 1945/47, the so-called war children , spent their childhood and sometimes also their youth during the war and in the immediate post-war period . They were traumatized in various ways, for example through direct confrontation with the air raids and other war events. Hunger, cold, exhaustion, illness and death were among the painful experiences of these adolescents. Added to this was the constant readiness to flee and the experience of one's own defenselessness; not least in view of the helplessness of the parents, especially the mothers who are often solely responsible.
In the years after the war, these cohorts generally had to suffer serious structural and family dynamic upheavals. The war had left more than 1.7 million widows and almost 2.5 million half and full orphans in Germany, mostly due to the loss of fallen or missing fathers. Returning fathers were often physically and mentally impaired and behaved isolated and inaccessible. Mothers were also forced to notbehelfsökonomischen strategies, which include the prostitution , as well as entering into so-called marriages of convenience mattered. Despite the often unloved family relationships in the post-war period, the war children were not allowed to complain. “Be glad you survived” was a typical phrase of the time.
Adults and war children who had become parents themselves were often faced with questions about the war past from their own children, the war grandchildren, which the parents often perceived as accusations and which they felt lacked appropriate empathy. The intergenerational exchange of experiences was overshadowed by guilt and shame among those affected and thus suppressed. The behavior developed that we encounter to this day either as the pathological normality of silence or as a communicative trivialization and avoidance strategy.
The extreme stress and trauma that occurred in childhood and adolescence led to the fact that in the following period a not inconsiderable number of those affected developed anxiety disorders , post-traumatic stress disorders , depression, and identity and relationship disorders . Another part remained largely free of symptoms during the early and middle adulthood, but often suffers for it aged a trauma reactivation .
propaganda
Allied propaganda
The Allies reported in detail about the heavy air raids on the Rhine-Ruhr area in their leaflet newspaper, Nachrichten für die Troop , which was distributed daily across Germany . The German readers were told the Allied view of the devastating bombings and the absolute Allied air sovereignty over the Reich was signaled, with headlines such as:
- The Ruhr under new terror
- Food goes up in flames
- Bombs on Dortmund block the Ruhr
- Double strike against Hagen
- The Ruhr also becomes a death zone
- The Ruhr is on fire
German propaganda
The constant nocturnal air raids in the Rhine-Ruhr area associated with the air raids were not only aimed at weakening productivity , but also at the resistance of the industrial workers, and thus also at the war morale of the population. The nightly attacks and the frequent air raids led to sleep disorders in those affected and had a variety of psychological consequences.
In May and June 1940, the bombing raids often took place without a previous air raid alarm , whereupon the population discussed the failure of the air warning system. There were rumors in many places. In the summer of 1940, the security service of the Reichsführer SS in Dortmund registered the rumor about the impending use of poison gas , which quickly led to panic reactions in parts of the population.
In the situation reports of the security service, the reports from the Reich , in the spring and summer of 1943 there were repeated references to great unrest among the population of West Germany. The security service registered increasing nervousness since March 1943. For example, on March 11, 1943, it is said that the American daytime attack on Hamm on March 4, 1943 had considerably weakened confidence in the Abwehr. The population in West Germany had the oppressive feeling that the English and Americans were determined to eradicate one city after another.
Criticism of the National Socialist reporting on the Allied bombing attacks was increasingly voiced by the population . The one-sided press reported exclusively on the high casualties among children, women and the elderly as a result of the air raids, which were described as the murders of aerial gangsters ; the economic and industrial damage caused, for example, by the American daytime attack on Hamm on March 4, 1943 and the attack on the Möhne dam on 16/17 May 1943, but were either played down or not mentioned.
The sarcastic poem spread among the population:
“Dear Tommy, fly on, only the Ruhr workers live here.
Fly to Berlin, all of which have even cried. "
The Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , Joseph Goebbels, who was also chairman of the Interministerial Air War Damage Committee (ILA) founded in January 1943 , called for total war on February 18, 1943 in the Berlin Sports Palace with his Sports Palace speech . With an intensified propaganda offensive , he countered the moral effects of the bombings and visited the Rhineland and the city of Essen in April 1943. From the spring of 1943, the leadership of the German Reich relied, among other things, on intensified anti-Semitic propaganda aimed at trying to portray the Jews as the supposed backers of the Allied bombing war.
At the same time, the propaganda against the Allied bomber crews, especially against that of US bombers, increased. They were insulted as air pirates , murder gangs , gangsters and terror aviators. Air murders took place in almost all parts of the Reich, especially from the summer of 1943 ; in total there were between 225 and 350 such murders. The South Westphalian Gauleiter and Reich Defense Commissioner Albert Hoffmann issued an order on February 25, 1945 to approve lynching against Allied fighter-bomber pilots. Cases increased in the Ruhr area in October 1944.
In order to strengthen the will of the population and their belief in a final victory , Goebbels initiated an action in the spring of 1943 to spread rumors about the imminent use of new weapons . After a major event in Düsseldorf, Goebbels took part as a speaker at the memorial service for the victims of the air raid on Wuppertal-Barmen (May 29/30, 1943). The highlight of his trip was a major event in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle on the evening of the same day, where he promised retaliation for the bombing in front of an audience of around 20,000 .
This mood was joined by the unfavorable developments for Germany in the various theaters of war: first the defeat in Stalingrad in January 1943, then in May 1943 the surrender in the African campaign and finally the Allied landing in Sicily . The Germans could find out little about the "successes" in the submarine war that had previously been used for propaganda purposes - the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Karl Dönitz , broke off the " Battle of the Atlantic " in May 1943 after heavy losses. Allied leaflets spread the news of the failure of the German submarine war and the defeats in Africa and Italy across the entire German Empire.
Nevertheless, the “mood” in the German population was extremely changeable; many still trusted "their leader" Adolf Hitler. Party officials on the home front proclaimed final victory slogans and promises of retaliation.
The German "retaliatory attacks" propagated by the National Socialist leadership on English cities in the spring and summer of 1943 were, compared to the British bombings, small operations that led to property damage and locally high personal losses. Contrary to German propaganda, the extent of the destruction by the British Bomber Command in Germany was much higher in the same period. The ammunition dropped by the German Air Force over London throughout 1943 corresponded almost exactly to the weight of the bomb dropped on the night of 23/24. May 1943 was dropped by Bomber Command on Dortmund within a single hour . The promised retribution weapons such as the V1 and V2 were only used in June and autumn 1944.
Living room
With the increase in air strikes, the housing shortage worsened in the big cities. The government hoped that living space inhabited by the Jewish population, who had to vacate their apartments through deportation or consolidation in Jewish houses , would be “free” . The deportations of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in the east, which were forced in Westphalia in spring and summer 1942, provided only a fraction of the living space actually required. From autumn 1943, the German Housing Assistance Agency (DWH) was supposed to build simple temporary homes in the form of settlements.
Due to the severe effects of Allied air raids, which resulted in tens of thousands of homeless people being bombed out in a city within a few hours, the need for replacements for destroyed home furnishings, clothing and everyday goods rose sharply from 1942 onwards. The German authorities and the NSDAP, especially the NS-Volksfürsorge , were no longer able to adequately compensate for this need; between 1942 and 1944 they also distributed or sold the confiscated property of Jews. In the M-Aktion (furniture campaign) , numerous “bomb victims” in Westphalian cities were given confiscated Jewish property as a replacement for their destroyed household effects or were offered at low prices. These objects were brought to the places where they were needed (for example to Herne and Gelsenkirchen) by train or barge; the actual demand could only be met to a small extent.
economy
In order to relieve the military and political authorities, the National Socialist government often made use of state self-administration, with large entrepreneurs exercising sovereign rights and state tasks, and the self-governing bodies being tools for enforcing the state's will.
Regardless of the increasing number of air raids in the course of the war and the increasing demands of the state on large-scale industry and despite the relatively early signs of German defeat, the basis of trust and cooperation between the state and business management remained almost unscathed until the end of the war.
At the beginning of December 1944, Albert Vögler was appointed general representative for the Rhine-Ruhr area. As head of the so-called Ruhr staff , Vögler von Speer was commissioned to make all decisions in the field of armaments and war production on his behalf.
Albert Speer expressed himself on November 11, 1944 in his Ruhr memorandum to Hitler: "It is [...] self-evident that a failure of the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area is unsustainable for [...] the conduct of the war."
In a further memorandum to Hitler dated March 15, 1945, he forecast the collapse of the German economy within one to two months .
production
Armaments
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey ( inventory of strategic bombing ) from November 1944 dealt with the impact of the Anglo-American bombing of Germany. The bombing of steel production facilities reduced the output of various types of steel. Contrary to the expectations of both sides, the resulting bottleneck was of no significant strategic importance, just as the bombing of ball bearing manufacturers in Schweinfurt did not significantly reduce the production of moving equipment elsewhere. The main limitation of armored vehicles such as military aircraft was not in production, which increased significantly until 1944 despite the bombing, but in the scarcely available fuel. The production of ammunition and trucks had also fallen noticeably as a result of the bombings in 1944 and had come to a standstill in the case of submarines. The secondary effects on the economy of the Ruhr area became evident in the destruction of the infrastructure, failure of material deliveries and constant work interruptions. Not to be underestimated were the stresses and strains on the workforce, who were confronted with the adversities of the bombing not only at work, but also at home. In 1944, for example, absenteeism at the Ford works in Cologne was 25 percent.
- Production of armaments in Germany, 1941–1944
Guns
Infantry weapons
Armored car
ammunition
Fighter planes
coal
| time | 1000 kg / day |
|---|---|
| 1943 | 400,000 |
| February 1944 | 390,000 |
| February 1945 | 190,000 |
| Days of occupation | 11 |
| Mid-May 1945 | 7,000 |
| Late May 1945 | 20,000 |
| Mid-June 1945 | 40,000 |
The air raids paralyzed most of over 150 mines in the Ruhr area by 1945 , mainly through the destruction of the surface facilities and air raids . The production rate fell continuously after the peak in 1944; In September 1944, instead of the required 22,000 coal wagons, only 5000 rolled out of the Ruhr area every day. Funding came to a standstill on the day of the occupation.
Oil and fuel industry
Above all, the air strikes against the oil and fuel industry and the coal liquefaction plants in the Ruhr area, among others, were catastrophic for the German Reich. The German Reich covered most of the demand for liquid fuels by liquefying indigenous coal with the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and the Bergius-Pier process to synthetic gasoline . At the beginning of the war in 1939, the total annual capacity for synthetic fuel was 1,200,000 tons, and in 1943 it increased to the highest annual production of 5,528,000 tons, of which the facilities in the Rhine-Ruhr area produced almost a fifth. In addition to the German oil production of 800,000 tons (1942), only crude oil reserves in Ploieşti , Romania were conditionally, and after the Allied air raids on Ploieşti and the occupation of Romania by the Red Army from August 24, 1944 no longer available. Since May 1944, oil plants should also be built underground as part of the Geilenberg program . The implementation of all plans would have tied at least 200,000 workers over a year. This would have required more workers per month than in the entire oil industry of the USA for the targeted minimum quantity of almost 300,000 tons of fuel. With a monthly requirement of around 165,000 tons for aviation fuel alone, only 9,400 tons were produced in September 1944. The collapse of the fuel supply was also unstoppable through the increased use of forced labor and sub-concentration camps . In March 1945, the capacity of the hydrogenation works was only 3 percent of the 1943 peak.
| Location | Surname | Estimated production in 1000 kg / year |
|---|---|---|
| Scholven - Buer | Hydrogenation works Scholven , Hibernia AG | 350,000 |
| Gelsenkirchen | Gelsenkirchen-Petrol AG | 325,000 |
| Wesseling | Union Rheinische Braunkohlen fuel AG | 250,000 |
| Welheim | Ruhröl GmbH | 100,000 |
| Other production facilities in the German Empire | 3,250,000 | |
| Bergius Pier as a whole | 4,275,000 | |
| Total synthetic oil production | 5,528,000 |
| Location | Surname | Estimated production in 1000 kg / year |
|---|---|---|
| Rauxel | Klöckner-Wintershall AG | 200,000 |
| Moers-Meerbeck | Fuel works Rheinpreussen | 200,000 |
| Holten | Ruhrbenzin AG | 130,000 |
| Wanne-Eickel | Krupp fuel works | 130,000 |
| Dortmund | Hoesch-Petrol GmbH | 130,000 |
| Came | Chemical works, Essener Steinkohle AG | 50,000 |
| Other production facilities in the German Empire | 710,000 | |
| Fischer-Tropsch as a whole | 1,550,000 | |
| Total synthetic oil production | 5,528,000 |
steel
In 1939 German industry produced 23 million tons of steel, with the Ruhr area accounting for 69 percent. Mainly through expansion into Lorraine, Belgium and Luxembourg in 1940, an additional 17 million tons of steel production capacity was gained per year. However, the theoretical capacity of 40 million tons was never reached due to deficiencies caused by the occupation.
Steel production on the Ruhr fell by 10 percent due to the air raids by the RAF in 1943 and could not fully recover by the end of the year. However, the frequent air alarms were more decisive than the damage to the systems. Hitler ordered not to contradict the production losses of 50 percent at the Ruhr reported by the New York Times , as he wanted to give this impression.
In the second half of 1944, the bomb load falling on Germany tripled from 150,700 tons (1943 total) to 481,400 tons. Together with higher accuracy, this resulted in a drop in steel production capacity on the Ruhr of 80 percent. The total steel production of the German Reich sank in 1944 from 5.57 million tons in July to 1 million tons in December, whereby 490,000 tons were based on territorial losses.
Although blast furnaces and rolling mills were also hit, the damage to the electricity, gas and water supplies as well as the interruption in communication and logistics had a greater impact on the decline in productivity. Despite the reduced production, which led to bottlenecks in the stainless steel sector in particular , this was less decisive for the outcome of the war than the oil or ammunition shortage. An inventory after the end of the war showed that some German industrial sectors had adequate to plentiful steel stocks.
transport
| date | Wagon loads / week |
|---|---|
| August 19, 1944 | 900,000 |
| October 29, 1944 | 700,000 |
| November 5, 1944 | 700 001 over 700,000 |
| December 23, 1944 | 550,000 |
| March 3, 1945 | 214,000 |
21–26 percent of all freight movements took place via rivers and canals , less than 3 percent went via roads , the rest was transported by the Reichsbahn . The sporadic air raids before September 1944 had little impact on the efficiency of the German transport systems. However, the Reichsbahn was not prepared for air strikes, so the subsequent heavy air strikes on marshalling yards, bridges, tracks and moving trains caused serious interruptions in the West German logistics sector . Of the 1,350 kilometers of railway lines in the Ruhr area, more than half were no longer passable at the end of the war, and around 500 iron bridges were destroyed.
The air strikes on the waterways sometimes had even more drastic effects. From September 23, 1944, the Dortmund-Ems and Mittelland canals could no longer be navigated, and connections to the coast and central Germany were interrupted. From October 14, 1944, all traffic, especially coal deliveries, was stopped on the Rhine to the south due to the destruction of a bridge near Cologne. The transport of coal made up about 40 percent of the total traffic. In September 1944 in Essen, the main hub for coal, only 12,000 wagons per day (W / T) were loaded for the requirements within the Ruhr area, compared with 21,400 W / T at the beginning of the year. In January 1945 shipments decreased to 9000 W / T and dropped to 700 W / T in March. The volume of traffic in the Ruhr area was reduced enormously as a result.
The bombing of the German railways and waterways was one of the decisive factors for the Allied ultimate success. They hindered production in the Ruhr area due to a lack of supplies and the delivery of the finished war equipment to the front, as well as the tactical mobility of the Wehrmacht. Many industries had their production peak in the late summer of 1944. However, from this point onwards, output fell only gradually until the end of November, but from the beginning of December there was a drastic fall in production.
Production relocations underground
The increasing bombing of the Allied air fleets led to considerable production losses in the armaments industry from the summer of 1943. In the autumn of 1943, the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition under Albert Speer planned the "bomb-proof" underground relocation of important arms production to underground rooms and bunkered structures. Caves, railway and road tunnels, quarries and hidden valleys were considered potential relocation sites. The establishment and expansion, as well as the subsequent start of production, were linked to the deployment of forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners, so around 100,000 prisoners in the Geilenberg program were under brutal conditions for clearing and construction work in fuel plants damaged by bombings and for relocation underground used by hydrogenation plants. The extensive construction work was under the supervision of the Todt Organization , which closely coordinated the work with the SS and Gestapo . Cover names were given to secret objects to cover the underground relocation structures .
Slave labor
In the late summer of 1944, the number of “ foreign workers ” deployed in the German Reich was around 7.1 million (around 5.3 million civilian forced laborers and 1.8 million prisoners of war), which corresponds to around a quarter of all workers in Germany. The Ruhr mining was one of the most important places of work for foreign civil workers and prisoners of war , of whom over 150,000 were deployed here in December 1943. At the height of this mission in the summer of 1944, around 430,000 civilian workers and prisoners of war were employed in the German mining industry, 120,000 of them in the Ruhr mining industry, mainly Soviet, but also Polish, Ukrainian, French prisoners of war, Eastern workers and Italian military internees as well as inmates of subcamps of regular concentration camps Die Eisen - and the armaments industry soon swallowed up the largest contingents.
Due to the lack of manpower and the high targets, forced laborers were considered a scarce resource despite their large number . In the Ruhr mining industry, for example, there was minimal medical care for forced laborers, mainly with measures to combat worm disease , typhus and to combat skin fungus . The factory air raid of Fried. Krupp Bergwerke AG in Essen issued air raid protection instructions for “foreign workers”, as well as for the accommodation of prisoners of war in the event of an air raid and the construction of cover trenches for Soviet prisoners of war. In spite of all official and mining company regulations on treatment, accommodation and psychological care of forced laborers, numerous serious abuses were repeatedly identified, including by commissions and board members in the Ruhr mining industry. When the intensity of the air raids increased in the course of 1943, the number of forced laborers who were no longer able to work for health reasons, who died in air raids or who fled in the air rose so much that the desired increase in coal production was put into question was asked. This was imperative to increase the production figures in the iron industry. For example, out of 2,619 Eastern workers received by the Krupp mine in August 1943, they managed to escape in 1979.
Dealing with the aftermath of the air raid assigned slave labor a key role. In the cities, they had to clear rubble, salvage bodies and, above all, defuse numerous bomb divers. Thousands of forced laborers were also among the fatalities in the air strikes, many of whom were left almost defenseless against the Allied bombs. Police presidents and mayors often denied them access to the air raid shelter . Exact numbers can no longer be determined, as examples should serve:
- Figures on the victims of the attack on the dams of the Möhne Dam in May 1943 vary between 1,284 and 1,900 people, more than half of whom were prisoners of war.
- About 200 Soviet prisoners of war were killed in a British night raid on Dortmund in May 1943.
- On May 31, 1944, a major attack on Hamm left around 200 dead, the majority of whom were forced laborers and prisoners of war.
- On September 11, 1944, at least 150 female concentration camp prisoners were killed in bomb attacks in the Gelsenberg camp for Jewish forced laborers from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp because they were not allowed to seek shelter, and more than a hundred were injured. There were no victims among the guards or the workforce of the attacked plant.
As the front drew closer, discipline in the camps sank and resistance increased. With the ongoing air strikes and the associated destruction, the social order disintegrated, and an underworld of criminals, deserters and escaped forced laborers developed in the destroyed cities, to which the Nazi authorities reacted with numerous end- stage crimes . In the course of the American occupation, the Ruhr area was at times anomalous with looting, assaults and rape by former slave laborers.
Infrastructure
Repair
The Reich leadership countered the extensive damage to property in the armaments industry by deploying the Todt Organization for the first time in the German Reich. In August 1943, the Ruhr Staff was set up, which was subordinate to the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Ammunition, Albert Speer. Over 5000 members of the OT were relocated from the Atlantic Wall in May 1943 for the reconstruction of the Ruhr area , and so the reconstruction of the Möhne dam was already completed on October 3, 1943. This OT Einsatzgruppe Rhein-Ruhr remained stationed in West Germany until the end of the war and, by March 1944, repaired most of the property damage that occurred in the industrial plants on the Rhine and Ruhr in the summer of 1943. This was helped by the fact that even in completely destroyed workshops, the machine equipment often only suffered minor damage. The intact machines could usually be put back into operation three or four weeks after the bombing and the removal of the rubble. However, plants such as boiler buildings, power plants, chemical plants or refineries were temporarily completely paralyzed when partial facilities were hit. The repair of factory buildings was only carried out where it was necessary for the production process. In this way, the appearance of serious damage and the cessation of work were preserved for observers from the air.
The Nero order
On March 19, 1945, Hitler ordered destructive measures in Reich territory with the Nero order , through which the scorched earth tactic was used on German territory. The Fuehrer's order read: “All military, traffic, communications, industrial and supply facilities as well as material assets within the Reich territory that the enemy can somehow use to continue his fight, immediately or in the foreseeable future, are to be destroyed. “The Allied military units advancing after the air raids were only supposed to find unusable infrastructure ; this should make their advance more difficult. There were many fanatics among the party and SS functionaries who vied for six weeks with the Allied air forces and artillery for the ultimate destruction of Germany. On March 30th and April 7th, 1945, parts of the destruction order were rewritten by Hitler and specified more precisely, primarily defining the scope of action of the responsible Reich Defense Commissioners and the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, when implementing the measures. This particularly affected industrial companies, supply and transport systems as well as bridge structures. The main reason for the 'weakening' of the decree was that it was now again assumed that it would be possible to repair it after it had been recovered from Allied hands.
Speer traveled several times to the Rhine and Ruhr region from September 1944 to the end of March 1945. He shared his impressions of the situation with Hitler and members of the Nazi leadership corps, the state administration and the economy in travel reports. In his memoirs , published in 1969 after his release from prison, Speer gave the impression that on the occasion of a meeting with the Rhineland-Westphalian Gauleiter in March 1945 near Hagen, he had obtained the immediate withdrawal of the planned evictions and the decision-making authority in the implementation of the destruction orders. Speer sought cooperation with industrialists and those in charge of the Ruhrlade , above all Walter Rohland and Albert Vögler, as well as the region's military commander, Field Marshal Walter Model. However, Model was unwilling to defy Nero's orders. The rapid advance of the Allied troops, the weakened combat strength and the lack of technical implementation capabilities of the German defenders in the midst of chaotic conditions meant that the combination of military obedience and the National Socialist will to destroy could not fully develop and the means of production in the Ruhr area were largely preserved.
Duds and contaminated sites
Of the 650,000 tons of drop ammunition dropped by British and American air fleets over what is now North Rhine-Westphalia during World War II, up to 30 percent remained in the ground as duds . A large number of duds can still be found in the ground in the primary target areas of Allied air strikes. In North Rhine-Westphalia almost 1,600 bombs were defused in 2007, plus 116,000 grenades, 86 mines and 1,800 hand grenades. For safety reasons, 928 ordnance could not be removed, but had to be blown up at the site. The headquarters of the ordnance clearance service in Hagen today has 300,000 historical photos of the RAF, which were taken by reconnaissance planes after bombings. Archival work and aerial photo analysis can be used to identify specific suspicious points of duds and war-related contaminated sites on industrial areas and building plots, detailed investigations are carried out with test drillings, magnetometer probes and ground penetrating radar . With age, the risk of defusing or destroying weapons increases. Despite all precautionary measures, 17 people were injured and buildings were damaged in the explosion of a dud in Hattingen in September 2008.
War-related contamination , chemical contamination and environmental damage were still partially determine decades later. The Environmental Agency of North Rhine-Westphalia provided a particularly for the period from early 1943 to June 1944 high , and from June 1944 to May 1945, a very high war-related pollution firmly in the Rhine-Ruhr area. In addition to bombs and anti-aircraft duds, this also includes shot down aircraft (the rate of allied aircraft being shot down was 10 percent in the early years of the war) with their fuel, lubricant and ammunition residues and possibly also chemical reaction products caused by fire. The attacks with a high proportion of incendiary bombs resulted in different direct and indirect harmful effects with longer aftereffects. Other damaging effects came about through preventive measures for passive air protection such as the fogging of war- essential facilities with high vulnerability and the discharge of explosive and / or highly flammable substances.
During the war, there was an increase in pollution-related accidents , operational disruptions and accidents with contaminating effects. The improper demolition of destroyed facilities and the disposal of contaminated rubble, rubble, incorrect batches and unusable product residues from tanks and pipelines contributed to the formation of contaminated sites. In the course of clearing-up work, the company's own residual material dumps and heaps on the company's premises as well as bomb craters, cooling tower cups, extinguishing water ponds, sludge pits and septic tanks and other hollow forms were filled. As a result, in the wake of the air war, qualitatively "new" contamination areas arose on the operating sites. Today's drilling in the area around the lake district in the north of Hagen shows enormous environmental damage from sewage sludge, animal carcasses, fuels and heavy metals after the bombing of the Möhne dam. At the height of the Battle of the Ruhr in the summer of 1943, this was no longer considered.
post war period
Political situation
At the end of the war, the Ruhr area was paralyzed. In the densely populated region, the bombing war, the artillery fire and the destructive measures of the Wehrmacht in the final phase had destroyed living space, industrial facilities, traffic routes, supply systems and power lines. The supply situation was extremely precarious, initially there was a lack of raw materials, energy, food and an efficient workforce. While a good 4.3 million people lived here before the war, it was just under two million at the end of the war. With the return of city dwellers, refugees and the release of prisoners of war, the housing and food situation worsened. American experts like John Kenneth Galbraith also saw positive aspects in the influx of refugees and in particular their excellent level of education. The currency depreciation increased, the black markets flourished. There were no longer any functioning capital markets, the construction industry could not yet function effectively, and a functioning market was still a long way off. The British administration as well as the German authorities acting on a provisional basis at local level were initially barely able to cope with the situation. In addition to resuming production, the workforce of the mining and steel companies had to do repairs and clean-up work on the superficial facilities destroyed by bombs or overloading.
On April 15, 1945 after the American conquest of the Ruhr area, trade unionists from Gladbeck, Bottrop, Recklinghausen and Marl gathered in Gelsenkirchen-Buer. The 120 delegates gathered founded a Free German Trade Union Confederation - Industry Group Mining , as the predecessor of the IG Bergbau und Energie, which was later organized in the DGB .
At the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals , Albert Speer, the chief plenipotentiary for labor deployment , Fritz Sauckel , Reichsbank president (until 1939), Hjalmar Schacht , Reichsbank president (from 1939 to 1945) Walther Funk , and the entrepreneur Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach held criminally responsible. In the twelve follow-up trials to the Nuremberg trials , 42 industrialists and bankers were charged as Nazi war criminals. The cases V: Flick Trial (April 18 to December 22, 1947), VI: IG Farben Trial (August 14, 1947– July 30, 1948) and X: Krupp Trial (December 8 , 1948) are relevant to the topic 1947–31 July 1948). In the western zones, denazification was essentially limited to a comprehensive political cleansing of personnel, in which the economic structure, in contrast to the Soviet zone, remained largely untouched.
In 1946 the Ruhr area became part of the newly founded state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Production resumed
The British did not expect a rapid recovery and restoration of industrial capacity. According to the Detmold Memorandum of the countries and provinces of the British Zone, written in November 1945, the production apparatus was "almost thrown back to the early days of industrialization". As recently as 1970, the widespread economic history of the Ruhr area said “The huts largely destroyed by air raids”. German and American experts, on the other hand, did not tend towards dramatization as early as the spring of 1945. The soldiers of the 9th US Army discovered in the Ruhr basin that all vital industrial plants were practically intact. Their estimates were that the industry was operating at just over 50 percent of its capacity and that it could increase to likely 85 or 90 percent in four to six weeks.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung has already reported four weeks after the German surrender, you'll be the total loss of industrial assets "must be estimated at a maximum of 40-50 per cent on average." Incidentally, the restoration of the industrial facilities should "not cause any great difficulties and should take relatively few months". In the official documentation of German war damage in 1962, which is based primarily on the work of the German Institute for Economic Research , it is pointed out that the fixed assets of West German industry in the phase of armament of the Wehrmacht by 26 percent since 1934 and in the first During the war years 1939–1943 it had grown by another 24 percent. Not until 1944 were via balance the losses have been higher than the investment . From then on, an average of 1 percent of assets was lost every month. Nevertheless, the capital stock at the end of the war was roughly at the same level as at the start of the war. The increase in capital stock that took place between 1936 and 1945 “despite the bombing war and neglected investments in the last years of the war” was put at around 20 percent. The individual sectors were affected to varying degrees by war damage; due to the intensive links between the coal and steel industry , the failure of individual key sectors paralyzed the entire economic cycle. However, in view of extremely low production figures, the German economy went into the post-war period with a remarkably large and modern capital stock.
In addition to the actual war damage, there were also consequences of the high production pressure in the era of armament and the war economy. According to estimates by the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the industrial production volume in large parts of the Ruhr area had only reached a third of the 1936 level at the end of 1946, with coal production at 46 percent and pig iron production at only 17 percent. The resumption of coal production had priority so that the population could be supplied with coal that is essential for survival in the coming winter. Since the colliery was naturally less destroyed, it was possible, for example, to start funding again on May 7, 1945 at the Consolidation colliery in Gelsenkirchen. Many private households obtained the most essential heating material via Kohlenklau , also known locally as Fringsen .
The extensive production restrictions and dismantling measures decided by the Allies in Potsdam on March 27, 1946 , were primarily intended to affect the coal and steel industry in the Ruhr area. Germany should be made impossible to ever wage a war of aggression again. France wanted to prevent the old rival from regaining its strength. To this end, the large corporations on the Ruhr should be broken up by unbundling and splitting them into smaller units. In contrast, the USA and Great Britain considered an economically strong Germany to be advantageous in the looming East-West conflict and decided in 1947 to double the agreed steel quota. The dismantling programs, which at first were not pursued consistently after the end of the war, gradually increased in 1948 and caused great unrest among the population of the Ruhr area, as people feared for their jobs. A large part of the dismantled facilities in the Ruhr area and the Soviet zone were brought to the Soviet Union. In fact, the extent of the dismantling did not have any far-reaching economic consequences. In addition, the necessary modernization of the Ruhr industry was driven forward under the supervision of the Allies, so that the iron and steel industry in the Ruhr already exceeded the entire French steel production at the turn of 1947/48.
Contemporary voices
"A very substantial part (... of the industrial facilities ...) can be put back into operation in a very short time."
advisor to the American delegation to the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission in Moscow,
after a trip through West Germany
"The coal mines in the Ruhr area are largely undamaged and, as far as the production facilities are concerned, could be brought back to almost full production in a few months."
"If you take the steel plants of the Ruhr as a whole, production could be increased to two-thirds or three-quarters of the level of the war years in four months, provided coal, labor and means of transport are available."
Chairman of the Board of Directors at Krupp
“The underground facilities were found to be intact, apart from the occasional flooding of deeper shafts, caused by the pump stoppage due to the interruption of the power supply. About 10 percent of the mines examined show serious war damage to their surface facilities. "
Engineer Section : Progress Report on German Coal Mine Operations, May 1945
"We live in times when in times of need the individual will also be allowed to take what he needs to maintain his life and health, if he cannot obtain it in any other way, through his work or by asking."
reconstruction
The extensive destruction in the most important cities in the Ruhr area led to plans for reconstruction as early as 1943. These measures were coordinated centrally by a task force for the reconstruction of bomb-destroyed cities under Albert Speer. The municipalities of Bochum, Münster, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Hamm and Dortmund, for example, were designated as "reconstruction cities in Westphalia" in the summer of 1944. Until March 1945, the building authorities in the municipalities worked on plans for reconstruction.
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At the end of June 1943 Goebbels noted in his diary a statement made by Hitler about the cities in the Ruhr area destroyed by air raids: “From a higher point of view, the fact that the cities themselves are being hit in their core is not that bad. The cities are not good pictures in the aesthetic sense. Most industrial cities are poorly laid out, musty and poorly built. The British air raids will give us space here. Otherwise, the new building plans designed for the Ruhr area would always have clashed with the existing conditions anyway. "
The balance after the end of the war showed that about 20 percent of all architectural monuments in West Germany had been destroyed by bombing and acts of war. Almost hard the loss outweighs the non-classified monuments historic buildings of the urban city centers that were often destroyed in the attacks. 90 percent of the inner cities (average in North Rhine-Westphalia ) were destroyed, around half of the housing stock was destroyed and many residents had left the big cities.
In Dortmund, according to contemporary reports, it was initially considered not to rebuild the city center. Places like Duisburg- Alsum were showered with rubble from other parts of the city that were destroyed by the war. On the outskirts of the towns and communities, large camps with so-called Nissen huts were initially built, where many people lived under catastrophic conditions. In 1949 there were still 32,000 miners living in such camps in the Ruhr area, in a room of 2 to in isolated cases of 40 or more people.
The plans for the reconstruction, which had already been drawn up during the war, contained, in addition to Nazi symbols, echoes of modernist architecture (green corridors, wide traffic routes, moderate high-rise development), for which arguments of air protection were used. Not infrequently, these plans were used by architects in the post-war period, omitting the Nazi set pieces, with reference to architectural modernism, while traditional historicist reconstruction plans were discredited with reference to corresponding tendencies in early National Socialism (see Paul Schultze-Naumburg ).
In view of the limited historical substance, especially in the Ruhr area due to the rapid growth in the 19th century, the historically grown parcel structure of the plots in the town and former village centers was further dissolved. A far-reaching historicizing reconstruction was also postponed with reference to a quick and cheap provision of living space for displaced persons and refugees.
A widely noticed exception in the area was the reconstruction (with the exception of the so-called drubbing ) of the Gothic facades in the city center of the Westphalian minster. The urban reconstruction was otherwise, with the exception of individual symbolic individual structures such as the Reinoldi Church in Dortmund, mostly not in keeping with the historical shape. An important exception was the monumental Old Synagogue in Essen , which was only built in 1911 , which was not demolished during the Nazi era due to its central position in the inner city area and also survived the bombing war halfway undamaged. At Saalbau Essen , the simple reconstruction of the 1950s has meanwhile been considerably expanded.
1948 until today
The Allies initially exercised strong control over western Germany and especially the Ruhr area. On December 28, 1948, the Ruhr Statute was passed, which placed the coal and steel industry in the Ruhr area under the supervision and market control of a joint authority. The German government was offered participation in the associated Ruhr authority, but the German population was initially opposed to this statute. The Adenauer government agreed to the Ruhr Statute after negotiating a dismantling stop in the Petersberg Agreement on November 24, 1949.
Aided by the currency reform of 1948 and the capital aid of the USA through the Marshall Plan signed in 1949, the economic miracle resulted in an impressive upswing in the young Federal Republic of Germany . The integration of the Federal Republic into the western alliance was also pushed ahead. From the Schuman Plan of the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman , the European Coal and Steel Community emerged in 1952 for the economic cooperation of Western Europe in the coal and steel union . It expanded the Ruhr Statute and was the nucleus of the European Union .
The growth of the coal and steel sector in the Ruhr area slowed in 1958 with the first major coal crisis , another coal crisis followed in 1965. The raw material processing industry came under enormous competitive pressure, since coal mining in particular became increasingly uneconomical. The steel crises in the late 1960s, late 1970s, early 1980s and 1990s had their origins in overproduction and international competition. Alternative industries developed comparatively late in the automotive and mechanical engineering sectors. Due to a lack of innovation and investment in production facilities, these first replacement industries are now also under pressure from more attractive locations around the world. These factors combined to form a process of economic deconstruction and restructuring, which half a century after the first coal crisis has not yet mastered the regional structural change. A major challenge in coping with structural change is the organization. On the vertical level there is no Ruhr area level and on the horizontal level many institutions work alongside one another rather than with one another. The efforts to merge the municipalities to form the Ruhrstadt were seen positively in surveys of the population in 2009 by 45 percent of those questioned.
Balance sheet
Victims of the bombing war
The Battle of the Ruhr was the first air offensive against an important industrial region in the German Empire, which had severe and, above all, lasting effects. Around 35,000 people were killed in air strikes by Allied bomber squadrons in the metropolises of the area, well over 50,000 in the surrounding areas of the Rhine-Ruhr region, including thousands of prisoners of war, foreign forced laborers and concentration camp inmates. Tens of thousands more were seriously injured . The British Bomber Command led around 5,000 crew members as MIA . Around 50,000 civilians died in the German air raids on Great Britain.
| city | region | dead | Air strikes | Air raids | ammunition | Effects | supporting documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bochum | RG | 4095 | 225 | 22,000 SB, 531,000 BB | The city was 38 percent destroyed. Other sources report 52 percent. | ||
| Bottrop | RG | 719 | 105 | 11,500 SB, 30,000 BB | 38 percent of the total stock was destroyed. | ||
| Castrop-Rauxel | RG | 398 | 11,415 SB, 500,000 BB | Heavy destruction. | |||
| Dortmund | RG | 6341 | 137 | 25,000 SB, 500,000 BB | 90 percent of 40,000 apartment buildings with 144,000 apartments destroyed. | ||
| Duisburg | RG | 5730 | 299 | from 1943 almost daily | 30,698 SB, 727,685 BB | 80 percent of residential buildings destroyed or badly damaged. | |
| eat | RG | 7500 | 272 | 32,511 SB, 1,401,957 BB, 4,648 mines | 51 percent of the total stock was destroyed, 10,000 buildings were completely destroyed, 50,000 houses were seriously to moderately damaged, only 6,300 were intact. | ||
| Gelsenkirchen | RG | 3092 | 184 | 2820 | 55.035 SB, 663.491 BB | 52 percent of the houses destroyed, 42 percent damaged, 6 percent continued to live in, 28 percent of the industrial plants destroyed. Almost complete destruction of the old town, Schalke, Bulmke and Hüllen districts; partial destruction of the districts of Bismarck, Heßler, Horst and Scholven. | |
| Gladbeck | RG | 872 | 109 | 10,606 SB, 25,281 BB | 45 percent of the total stock was destroyed. | ||
| Hagen | RG | > 2 200 | The inner city was largely destroyed. | ||||
| Herne | RG | 419 | 64 | 2698 SB, 4843 BB | The building fabric in Herne was largely spared. | ||
| Luenen | RG | 287 | > 50 | 1165 | 60 percent of the houses destroyed. | ||
| Mülheim an der Ruhr | RG | 1301 | 160 | 8870 SB, 290.481 BB | 29 percent of the total stock was destroyed, major destruction of building fabric worth preserving. | ||
| Oberhausen | RG | 2300 | 161 | 25.010 SB, 395.045 BB | 31 percent of the total stock was destroyed. | ||
| Recklinghausen | RG | 393 | 12,000 SB, 150,000 BB | Relatively little damage, the north quarter was reduced to rubble. | |||
| Wanne-Eickel | RG | 1074 | 92 | 3000 SB, 461,000 BB | Heavy destruction. | ||
| Wattenscheid | RG | 328 | 48 | 1241 SB, 85.440 BB | 45 percent of the apartments were damaged or destroyed. 100,000 m³ of rubble were created. | ||
| Witten | RG | 711 | 91 | 1977 SB, 103.845 BB | In November 1944 the city was almost completely destroyed. | ||
| Remscheid | BL | 1200 | 295 tons SB, 483 tons BB | 24 percent of the houses in Remscheid-Zentrum were completely destroyed, 20 percent severely and moderately severely, the rest slightly damaged. 51 percent of the total stock was destroyed. | |||
| Solingen | BL | > 5 000 | 20 percent of the total stock was destroyed, the city center completely wiped out | ||||
| Wuppertal | BL | 7000 | 7527 SB, 631,590 BB, 58,320 phosphor bombs, 357 mines, 100 grenades | 45 percent of the city destroyed, Barmen perished in a firestorm , Elberfeld largely destroyed, 200,000 homeless, another 100,000 continued to live in their destroyed apartments. | |||
| Dusseldorf | RL | 5858-6000 | 234 | > 93 percent (around 176,000) of the residential buildings were destroyed; of the 535,000 inhabitants in 1939, just under 250,000 are still in the city in 1945, around 10 million m³ of rubble. | |||
| Cologne | RL | 30,000 | 262 | Between May 1940 and March 1945 the people of Cologne spent around 2000 hours in a state of alarm with 1,122 air raids and 1,089 public air warnings. | 42,969 SB, 1,406,226 BB, 18,652 phosphor bombs, 1,239 mines | 90 percent of the city and 95% of the old town destroyed, the population sank from 800,000 to 40,000, it wasn't until 1959 that Cologne regained the pre-war population. The only military building that was damaged in Operation Millennium was an anti-aircraft gun post. | |
| Muenster | ML | > 1 600 | 102 | 1128 | 32,000 SB, 642,000 BB, 8100 phosphor bombs | > 60 percent total degree of destruction (> 90 percent of the old town),> 60 percent of the apartments unusable, 1050 of the 33,737 apartments remained undamaged. |
Remarks:
- ↑ RG = Ruhr area, BL = Bergisches Land, RL = Rhineland, ML = Münsterland
- ↑ SB = high explosive bomb, BB = incendiary bomb
Assessment of the air war after 1945
Political situation
The bombing war, both in the air raids on the Rhine-Ruhr area and in other theaters of war, increased to a new dimension in warfare during the Second World War. It not only affected soldiers at the front, but targeted the livelihoods of the civilian population belonging to it. The technical possibilities of aerial warfare, from area bombing to triggered firestorms, increased considerably during the war.
From the point of view of the Western Allies, air strikes with accompanying bombing were necessary and, for a long time, one of the few direct ways to bring the war to Germany and thus limit German expansion. The RAF air raids on Germany, including the Ruhr area, were intended to permanently ward off the danger of a German invasion of Great Britain .
The Allied air strikes wore down the German defense of the western "home front", for which the Reich had to keep considerable military and human resources ready, which in turn contributed to the weakening of the Wehrmacht on the eastern front.
The usefulness and ethical accountability of the Allied air war strategy have been controversial in Britain from its inception, but have rarely been publicly criticized since the Battle of Britain . After the German devastation in London and Coventry, the British population had a widespread desire to reward like with like. Few British personalities opposed the Allied air war strategy of area bombing at the time . The Anglican Bishop George Bell , who repeatedly took the view in the House of Lords from February 1943 onwards that the British bombing of cities broke international law , threatened the ethical foundations of Western civilization and destroyed the chances of future reconciliation with the Germans. In the House of Commons , two Labor MPs opposed the area bombing .
rating
The historical and international legal evaluation of the Allied air war strategy is still controversial today.
The considerable destruction and, in particular, the civilian deaths as a result of the Allied bombings are described and discussed as morally wrong and even war crimes . The British philosopher AC Grayling ruled out historical revisionist misuse of this assessment : "Even if the Allied bomber offensive should have been partially or completely morally reprehensible, this injustice does not even come close to the moral monstrosity of the Holocaust ."
The British historian Frederick Taylor emphasized that the Germans had opened the air war and led it ruthlessly, so that the British only had bombers as an offensive weapon at that time. He thus attributed a military rationality to the attacks, but did not rule out that they could also have been war crimes.
A consistent pursuit of the American strategy with precise attacks on targets of the armaments industry instead of the British bombing of predominantly civilian targets could possibly have brought about the end of the war earlier. This is countered by the fact that precise bombing was still more difficult at that time due to a lack of target radar technology and weather dependency. In 1943, it was precisely the poor hit rate for point targets that led to the intensification of area bombing. On the other hand, the RAF is said to have achieved more precise hits on the western front with new radar equipment, which would have decisively favored the advance of the Allied ground forces. At the beginning of 1945 the end of the war could already be foreseen and it was only a matter of time. The warfare of the Allies at this time was primarily aimed at the civilian population and was no longer decisive for the war. The intended breaking of the population's will to resist with the morale bombing (German: Bombardieren der Moral ) did not come to fruition. The German side was lacking in will, but in capacity in the face of increasing Allied air superiority.
Before the end of the war, Winston Churchill distanced himself from Arthur Harris, although he himself had made the decision to go ahead with area bombing . Unlike other leading military officials in Great Britain, Harris received no state honors after the war and was later raised to the nobility.
The legal question is sparked in particular by the different interpretation of Article 25 of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1907, signed by Great Britain and Germany , which states: "It is forbidden to attack or use any means to attack undefended cities, villages, dwellings or buildings to shoot. " the range of designed for the land war international law international law experts had advised 1922/23 and rules designed for the air war, but this design was not included in the law of war, so this carpet bombing not expressly prohibited.
It is doubted whether those responsible for the air war could have been prosecuted in 1945 because of the lack of a supranational legal authority at the time. According to the additional protocol to the Geneva Convention , which has also been ratified by Great Britain and Germany since 1977, area-wide city bombing is prohibited. However, this prohibition is not legally applicable retrospectively .
The publication of the book Der Brand by Jörg Friedrich in 2002 sparked an extensive debate in Germany. Among other things, the author was accused of not considering the Allied bombing raids in connection with the war started by Germany. In Friedrich's opinion, the bombing raids on German cities since 1944 at the latest had no military meaning. First and foremost, they followed an inhuman military doctrine . In the course of the debate, the literary scholar and writer Winfried Georg Sebald stated that post-war German literature had not dealt with the bombing war adequately, as it had been for a long time.
See also
literature
Non-fiction
In German language
- Ralf Blank : Battle of the Ruhr. The Ruhr area in the war year 1943 . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8375-0078-3 .
- Ralf Blank: Everyday life in the war and aerial warfare on the “home front” . In: Jörg Echternkamp (Hrsg.): The German Reich and the Second World War . tape 9 : The German War Society 1939 to 1945 Part 1: Politicization - Annihilation - Survival. . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-06236-6 , pp. 357–461 (on behalf of the Military History Research Office ).
- Ralf Blank, Gerhard E. Sollbach: The Revier in Sight: Bomb Warfare and “Home Front” in the Ruhr Area 1939–1945 . 1st edition. Bookmark Verlag Dierk Hobein, Hagen 2005, ISBN 3-930217-69-4 , p. 245 .
- Ralf Blank: Hagen in the Second World War. Bomb warfare, everyday war life and armaments in a Westphalian city . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8375-0009-7 , p. 550 .
- Horst Boog , Military History Research Office : The German Reich and the Second World War . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-421-05507-6 .
- Stephan Burgdorff: When fire fell from the sky. The bombing war in Germany, 2nd edition . DVA, 2003, ISBN 3-421-05755-9 .
- Jochen von Lang: War of the Bomber: Documentation of a German Catastrophe . Ullstein, 1986, ISBN 3-550-07681-9 .
- Willi Mues: The big boiler - a documentary about the end of the Second World War between Lippe and Ruhr / Sieg and Lenne . Self-published, Erwitte 1984, ISBN 3-9800968-0-7 .
- Rötger Neuhaus: Bomber over the Ruhr: From the diary of a flak helper . EHA-Verlag ;, Erwitte 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-014821-7 .
- Nina Grontzki, Gerd Niewerth, Rolf Potthoff (eds.): When the stones caught fire. The bombing war in the Ruhr area. Memories . Klartext, Essen 2003, ISBN 3-89861-208-2 .
- High Command of the Wehrmacht : Regulations for Air Defense Exercises (LS-Ü), Part 1: Installation and implementation of LS exercises . Berlin 1944, p. 20 .
- Kultur- und Stadthistorisches Museum Duisburg (Ed.): Bombs on Duisburg. The aerial warfare and the city 1940-1960 . Mercator-Verlag, Duisburg 2004, ISBN 3-87463-369-1 .
In English
- Alan W. Cooper: Air Battle of the Ruhr . Airlife, London 1992, ISBN 1-85310-201-6 .
- Arthur Harris : Bomber offensive . Greenhill Books, London 1998, ISBN 1-85367-314-5 (first edition: 1947).
- AC Grayling : Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan . Frank R. Walker Co. (Il), 2006, ISBN 0-8027-1471-4 .
- Alan J. Levine: The strategic bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport 1992, ISBN 0-275-94319-4 .
- Robin Neillands: The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany . The Overlook Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58567-457-5 .
- Henry Probert: Bomber Harris: His Life and Times . Greenhill, 2006, ISBN 1-85367-691-8 .
- Charles Kingsley Webster, Noble Frankland: The strategic air offensive against Germany: 1939-1945 . HM Stationery Off., 1961.
Fiction
In German language
- Heinrich Böll : The angel was silent . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-462-02214-8 .
- Dieter Forte : The boy with the bloody shoes . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-10-022115-X .
- Gert Ledig : retaliation . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-39741-9 .
In English
- Guy Gibson : Enemy coast ahead . M. Joseph, 1946.
- Don Charlwood : No Moon Tonight . Crecy Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-907579-97-3 .
Press
In German language
- Jochen Bölsche : This is what hell should look like . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 2003, p. 38 ( online ).
- Lars-Broder Keil: When Hitler was retaliated with Hitler - the bombing war . In: Die Welt , November 1, 2004
- Manfred Messerschmidt : Inferno and Liberation - Field Marshal General Model's last stand . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/2005
In English
- The Evening Independent, June 20, 1941 , British Bomb Ruhr and Invasion Ports While Russians Are Said Preparing for Battle
- St. Petersburg Times , May 25, 1943 , British Lose Huge Bomers in Dortmund Raid
- The Canberra Times , June 28, 1943 , No cessation of continuous blows on the Ruhr
- The Canberra Times, June 30, 1943 , Aircraft Workers praised
- St. Petersburg Times, July 1, 1943 , Krefeld, Bomber Objective, Tops Ruhr Threshold
- St. Petersburg Times, December 17, 1944 , The Course Of War
Video material
Reports
In German language
- Video documentation: Bombs on the Ruhr Area, The Allied Air Raids of 1943 , by Jochen von Lang and Peter Latzel, 2008
- Video documentation: The end of the war on the Rhine, Ruhr and Weser , in three parts, by Anne Roerkohl, Mathias Haentjes and Florian Opitz , 2005
- Video documentation: End of the war in the Ruhr area , by students of the Maria-Wächtler-Gymnasium , Essen, 2005 • (7:04 min)
- Contemporary educational film: Fire protection - correct behavior before and after an air raid • (4:00 min)
- German newsreel , selection of Krupp: Hitler visits the Krupp factories in 1940 • (0:29 min) - Hitler honors Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach, August 13, 1940 • (0:34 min)
In English
- Color film clips: RAF Lancaster bombing raid with radio traffic • (0:55 min) - Journey through the Ruhr area at the end of the war • (4:30 min)
-
Allied Newsreel , selection in chronological order:
- Gigantic 1,000 Bomber Raid, Cologne, June 1942 • (5:55 min)
- The Grand Slam Bomb, March 1945 • (2:12 min)
- Allies Crushing Air Power, 1945 • (4:35 min)
- The Trial of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach • (9:01 min)
Feature films
- May 1943 - The Destruction of the Dams (originally The Dam Busters ), Great Britain, 1954 • Excerpt , (10:27 min)
- Krupp - A German Family , Germany 2009
Web links
In German language
- Ralf Blank : Strategic aerial warfare against Germany 1914–1918 . (PDF; 39 kB) First World War.Clio-Online.de
- Ralf Blank: A big blow . Air raids in the First World War. one day , with video
- Ralf Blank: Battle of the Ruhr . Historisches-Centrum.de
- The Battle of the Ruhr, air raids on the Rhineland and the Ruhr area in spring and summer 1943 . Historicum.net
- 2wk-jeager.de Combat aircraft archive
In English
- Bomber Command . ( Memento of March 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Royal Air Force
- 8th US Air Force - Europe Chronicles
- Bombing the European Axis Powers (PDF) USAF - Air University
Remarks
- ↑ See the article seizure of power. In: Contemporary history dictionary of contemporary German . Edited by Georg Stötzel and Thorsten Eitz. Hildesheim 2002, p. 232 ff .; for a summary, see government transfer to the NSDAP at the Federal Agency for Civic Education .
- ↑ With Hitler's demand in his speech of September 14, 1935 in front of 54,000 HJ boys , that they should become “nimble as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel”, Krupp was mentioned again in Nazi propaganda. Cf. Max Domarus: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945 . Süddeutscher Verlag, 1965, p. v. 1, pt. 1 .
- ↑ Another remark by Göring from a radio speech of August 9, 1939 read, something like that: "If even one English bomber reaches the Ruhr, I will no longer be called Hermann Göring, but Hermann Meier", quoted in: Christian Zentner , Friedemann Needy: The Great Lexicon of the Third Reich . Südwest Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-517-00834-6 , pp. 379 (keyword: Meier).
- ↑ According to the views of Air Marshal Ludlow-Hewitt from 1938, it was possible to switch off the electricity supply to the Ruhr area within four nights with 1,500 deployments and 88 losses. It was assumed that a 500-pound bomb would be enough to destroy a 100m by 100m building. The air force command assumed four times the number of bombs to be able to destroy such a building. (cf. WA Jacobs, The British Strategic Air Offensive against Germany in World War II, in: R. Cargill Hall (Ed.), Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment, Washington, DC 1998, pp. 91–182, here: pp. 108.)
- ↑ “The trust of the entire population in the Führer was expressed in all of the discussions, with many comrades expressing gratitude that the Führer was 'the greatest gift for the German people'. Despite numerous voices of doubt after Stalingrad and many rumors, the general belief in the leader is unbroken among the broad mass of the population. In the cities hit by hostile terrorist attacks, too, this trust of the population was expressed again and again, albeit more cautiously, for example when it was said that 'we must not be angry if we celebrate this year's birthday despite all our love for the Führer [note .: April 28] cannot celebrate with the joy as usual. "
-
↑ Examples of satellite concentration camps in the Ruhr area:
- Bochum: Bochumer Verein, Eisen- und Hüttenwerke AG
- Dortmund: United Steel Works AG
- Essen: Friedrich Krupp AG
- Gelsenkirchen: Gelsenberg warehouse at the hydrogenation plant in Gelsenkirchen-Horst
- Lippstadt: Lippstädter Eisen und Metallwerke GmbH, Westfälische Metallindustrie AG
- Porta Westfalica: Hausberge radio tube factory
- Schwerte: Concentration Camp Schwerte
-
↑ In the post-war period, the foundation initiative of the German economy launched under the leadership of Krupp and Ruhrkohle AG admitted to being jointly responsible for the injustice committed. Thyssen-Krupp paid a total of 78 million euros after the merger of the two groups in 1999. As early as 1959, the Fried. Krupp made ten million marks available to the Jewish Claims Conference . Sources: exil-club.de ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2008 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. , sueddeutsche.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , ruhr-uni-bochum.de
- ↑ North Rhine-Westphalia received its legal basis with Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government of August 23, 1946 "Concerning the dissolution of the provinces of the former Land of Prussia in the British Zone and their re-establishment as independent states" . The new state of North Rhine-Westphalia was formed from the northern part of the Prussian Rhine Province and the Province of Westphalia . In 1947 the former state of Lippe had to give up its independence at the instigation of the British. After negotiations with the two neighboring states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia (both British administrative zones), his government decided to join North Rhine-Westphalia. On January 21, 1947, the association came into force through British Military Ordinance No. 77 and was to be confirmed by a referendum in Lippe within five years, but this was not done. On November 5, 1948, with the passing of the “Law on the Unification of the State of Lippe with North Rhine-Westphalia” by the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament, membership was also legally completed (see: North Rhine-Westphalia ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spencer Tucker: The Encyclopedia of World War I. A Political, Social and Military History . ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2005, ISBN 1-85109-420-2 , pp. 273 (English).
- ↑ Turnip winter . German Historical Museum ; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ A b c Ralf Blank : Attack plans in the First World War . Historisches-Centrum.de accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Ralf Blank : Strategic aerial warfare against Germany 1914-1918 . (PDF; 39 kB) First World War.Clio-Online.de
- ^ Toni Pierenkemper: Trade and Industry in the 19th and 20th Century . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1994, ISBN 3-486-55015-2 , p. 108 .
- ^ Klaus-Dietmar Henke : The American occupation of Germany . Oldenbourg R. Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-486-54141-2 , p. 437 .
- ↑ Michael Geyer: On the influence of the National Socialist armaments policy on the Ruhr area . Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter 45, 1981, p. 204 .
- ↑ Michael Geyer: On the influence of the National Socialist armaments policy on the Ruhr area . Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter 45, 1981, p. 223 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Michalka: German History 1939-1945 . Frankfurt a. M. 1999, p. 112 .
- ↑ Chemical industry as a network partner . ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Ruhrgebiet-Regionalkunde.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Joachim Schaier, Daniel Stemmrich, Rhineland Industrial Museum : heavy industry . Klartext, Frankfurt a. M. 1997, ISBN 3-7927-1651-8 , pp. 144 .
- ^ A b F. William Engdahl : Geopolitics - Geoeconomics, Halford MacKinder's Necessary War . Engdahl.Oilgeopolitics.net
- ↑ Michael Geyer: On the influence of the National Socialist armaments policy on the Ruhr area . In: Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter . No. 45 , 1981, pp. 261 .
- ↑ a b Michael Geyer: On the influence of the National Socialist armaments policy on the Ruhr area . Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter 45, 1981, p. 234 .
- ↑ Michael Geyer: On the influence of the National Socialist armaments policy on the Ruhr area . Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter 45, 1981, p. 258 .
- ^ Klaus Macharzina , Michael-Jörg Oesterle: Handbook of international management: Fundamentals - Instruments - Perspectives, 2nd edition . Gabler Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-409-22184-0 , p. 88 .
- ↑ NRW2000.de ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 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. September 27, 1937 - Hitler and Mussolini visit the “armory of the Reich” and the Krupp factory in Essen .
- ↑ Ralf Blank : Hagen in the Second World War, bombing war, everyday war life and armaments in a Westphalian city 1939–1945 . Weltbild.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Gerd Wysocki: Work for War: Mechanisms of Rule in the Armaments Industry of the “Third Reich”: Labor, social policy and state police repression at the Reichswerke “Hermann Göring” in the Salzgitter area, 1937/38 to 1945 . Steinweg-Verlag, 1992, ISBN 3-925151-51-6 , p. 28 f .
- ^ Gerhard Gebhardt: Ruhr mining, history, structure and interdependence of its societies and organizations . Glückauf, Essen 1957, OCLC 10649862 , p. 226 .
- ^ Gustav Luntowski: Hitler and the gentlemen on the Ruhr. Economic power and state power in the Third Reich . Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, ISBN 3-631-36825-9 , pp. 19-21 .
- ↑ Henry Ashby Turner : The Big Entrepreneurs and the Rise of Hitler . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1985, p. 393-396 .
- ↑ The rise and retreat of the coal and steel industry, world wars and the post-war period, armament. ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2016 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. Ruhrgebiet-Regionalkunde.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Daniela Kahn: The control of the economy through law in National Socialist Germany: the example of the Reichsgruppe Industrie . Vittorio Klostermann, 2006, ISBN 3-465-04012-0 , p. 431 .
- ↑ a b Ralf Blank : The Ruhr Plan 1937–1939 . Historisches-Centrum.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Timeline September 1939 to May 1940 . RAFbombercommand.com (English) accessed May 2009.
- ^ "Sitzkrieg" on the German-French border . German Historical Museum .
- ↑ Chronicle - Timeline 1940 . Historicum.net; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Michael Schmidt-Klingenberg: Hitler's bomb terror - We will erase them . In: Der Spiegel Special , 1/2003
- ↑ a b c d Ralf Blank : First bombs . Historisches-Centrum.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ A b Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes: Factor oil: the mineral oil industry in Germany 1859–1974 . CH Beck, 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , pp. 233 .
- ^ Klaus Autbert Maier: The operative war up to the air battle for England . Stuttgart 1979, p. 338 f .
- ^ Alan J. Levine: The strategic bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport 1992, ISBN 0-275-94319-4 , pp. 338 f . DM Butts, a member of the British War Cabinet, analyzed more than 600 reconnaissance photos that had been taken after the nightly bombing raids. The results of the Butt Report exceeded the expectations of the critics of the bomber offensive. The full report is printed at: Webster, Frankland: The Strategic Offensive against Germany . Volume 4, Appendix 13.
- ↑ Norman Long Mate: The Bombers: The RAF offensive against Germany from 1939 to 1945 . Hutchinson, 1983, ISBN 0-09-151580-7 , pp. 120-133 (English).
- ↑ a b c d awm.gov.au , Australian War Memorial, 2003 History Conference - Air War Europe, Hank Nelson: A different war - Australians in Bomber Command.
- ↑ a b Ralf Blank : Area attacks . Historisches-Centrum.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Charles Kingsley Webster, Noble Frankland: The strategic air offensive against Germany: 1939-1945 . HM Stationery Off., 1961, pp. 71-76 .
- ^ Werner Wolf: Air raids on German industry, 1942–1945 . Universitas, 1985, ISBN 3-8004-1062-1 , pp. 16 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Trees , Charles Whiting, Thomas Omansen: Three Years After Zero: History of the British Zone of Occupation 1945-1948 . Droste, 1979, p. 49 .
- ↑ Geographical Institute of the University of Cologne : Cologne geographical works, notes: No. 57–58 . Original from University of Michigan, digitized Oct. 7, 2008, 1993, p. 7 .
- ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims : Documents of German War Damage: Evacuated, War Damaged, Currency Damaged: The Historical and Legal Development . Germany (Federal Republic) 1949, p. 48 .
- ^ Battle of the Ruhr . Australian War Memorial ; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e f g Ralf Blank : The "Battle of the Ruhr", air raids on the Rhineland and the Ruhr area in the spring and summer of 1943 . Historicum.net
- ↑ a b Ralf Blank : The first Ruhr battle in 1943 . Historisches-Centrum.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Jochen Bölsche : This is what hell must look like . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 2003, p. 38 ( online ).
-
↑ a b c d e f Staff: Campaign Diary . In: Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary . UK Crown. Archived from the original on February 21, 2006. Retrieved on April 15, 2009.
1943: January ( memento of February 21, 2006 on the Internet Archive ), February ( memento of February 21, 2006 on the Internet Archive ), March ( memento of February 21, 2006 on the Internet Archive ), March ( memento of February 21, 2006 on the Internet Archive ) February 2006 in the Internet Archive ), April ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), May ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), June ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), July ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) - ^ Richard G. Davis: Bombing the European Axis Powers: A Historical Digest of the Combined Bomber Offensive, 1939-1945 . Air University Press, 2006, ISBN 1-58566-148-1 , pp. 109 ( AU.AF.mil [PDF]).
- ^ A b c d Staff: Campaign Diary April 1943 . In: Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary . UK Crown. Archived from the original on February 21, 2006. Retrieved April 15, 2009.
- ↑ Major attack on Bochum . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bochumer-Geschichte.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Möhne reservoir blown up . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bochumer-Geschichte.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ a b c Ralf Blank : The night of May 16-17, 1943 - Chastisement operation . The destruction of the Möhne dam. LWL.org, Westphalian History; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Staff: Campaign Diary May 1943 . In: Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary . UK Crown. Archived from the original on April 9, 2013. Retrieved April 15, 2009.
- ↑ Rolf-Dieter Müller , Florian Huber, Johannes Eglau: The bomb war 1939-1945 . Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-86153-317-0 , p. 160 .
-
↑ 8th Air Force 1943 Chronicles . Archived from the original on September 12, 2007. Retrieved April 14, 2009.
1943: March , April , May , June , July - ↑ a b RAF.MOD.uk ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), RAF History - Bomber Command 60th Anniversary - No. 8 (Pathfinder Force) Group , English; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Home.Wtal.de/heinemann , Remscheid ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ a b c Historisches-Centrum.de , Ralf Blank : Happy Valley ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ a b c d Ralf Blank : End of war phase . Historisches-Centrum.de; accessed in 2009.
- ^ Staff: Campaign Diary . In: Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary . UK Crown. Archived from the original on February 21, 2006. Retrieved on April 27, 2009. 1944: March ( memento of February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), April ( memento of February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), May ( memento of February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), May ( memento of February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) February 2006 in the Internet Archive ), June ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), July ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), August ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), September ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) October ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), November ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), December ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ 8th Air Force 1944 Chronicles . Archived from the original on May 30, 2009. Retrieved on April 27, 2009. 1944: March , April , May , June , July ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2008 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. August ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2007 in the web archive archive.today ) 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. , September , October , November , December
- ^ Hanno Ballhausen, Friedemann needy: Chronicle of the Second World War . Wissenmedia Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-577-14367-3 , pp. 440 .
- ^ Eckart Grote: The Target Brunswick 1943–1945. Air raid target Braunschweig - documents of destruction . Braunschweig 1994, p. 119 .
- ^ RAF war diary ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ RAF.MOD.uk ( Memento of 21 February 2006 at the Internet Archive ), RAF Campaign Diary October 1944 English; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ 70,000 homeless people in Bochum's center . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bochumer-Geschichte.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e Bombing War - Chronicle 1945 . Historicum.net; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ A b Historisches-Centrum.de , Ralf Blank : Ruhr closure program ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ 8th Air Force Chronicles, April 1945 . Retrieved June 26, 2009.
- ↑ a b Torsten Fischer: End of the war on the Rhine, Ruhr and Weser. Book accompanying the WDR documentation . Ed .: Westdeutscher Rundfunk . Wartberg-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-8313-1410-1 .
- ^ Historisches-Centrum.de , Ralf Blank : Ruhrkessel ; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ JM Spaight: Bombing vindicated . Robert Maclehose & Co. Ltd., The University Press, Glasgow 1944, p. 79 .
- ↑ German Flak 1930 to 1945 - Heavy Flak . ww2technik.de; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Ernst Willi Hansen, Karl-Volker Neugebauer , Michael Busch, Military History Research Office : Basic course in German military history . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007, p. 406 .
- ↑ Bochumer-Bunker.de , active air protection ; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Luftarchiv.de , air defense of night hunting ; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e Historisches-Centrum.de , Ralf Blank : With cannons against bombers ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ a b The bombing war in Mülheim an der Ruhr . Muelheim-Ruhr.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ a b Bunker-Dortmund.de , Studienkreis Bochumer Bunker e. V., Fachgruppe Dortmund, overview: Air protection - history of air protection ; accessed in June 2009.
- ^ Horst Boog: The conduct of the air war in the Second World War: an international comparison: proceedings of the International Conference of Historians in Freiburg im Breisgau, Federal Republic of Germany, from August 29th, to September 2nd, 1988 . Berg, Original from the University of Michigan 1992, ISBN 0-85496-697-8 , pp. 287 .
- ↑ Almut Hielscher: Life in ruins - we have nothing more . Spiegel Online , April 1, 2003; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Canadian War Museum , The Royal Canadian Air Force 1939–1945
- ↑ Wolfram Wette : The Little Man's War: A Military Story From Below . In: Peter John Dines, Peter Knoch (Ed.): Experiences in the bomber war . Piper, 1992, ISBN 3-492-11420-2 , pp. 213-229 .
- ↑ a b Volker Ullrich : The end of the world cannot be worse . In: Die Zeit , No. 49/2002.
- ↑ dradio.de ( Memento of the original from March 14, 2008 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. , Deutschlandradio Kultur, Monika Köpcke: The bombing war in Germany ; accessed in June 2009.
- ^ Olaf Groehler: Bomb war against Germany . Akademie-Verlag, original from University of Michigan 1990, ISBN 3-05-000612-9 , pp. 297 .
- ↑ Daya J. Somasundaram: Post-traumatic Responses to Aerial Bombing . Social Science & Medicine 42, 1996, pp. 1465-1471 .
- ^ A b Susanne Vees-Gulani: Bomb warfare and literature . Historicum.net; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Hans Erich Nossack : The downfall . With an epilogue by Siegfried Lenz . 2nd Edition. tape 523 . Library Suhrkamp (license from Krüger-Verlag, Hamburg), Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-01523-0 , p. 28 (first edition: 1948).
- ↑ Wolfgang Borchert : The kitchen clock, outside the door . Hamburg 1997, p. 104 (first edition: 1956).
- ↑ Dieter Forte : In memory . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-022114-1 , p. 198 .
- ↑ Dieter Forte : People become herd animals . In: Der Spiegel . No. 14 , 1999, p. 220 ( online ).
- ↑ The big farewell - the extended Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) . ( Memento from May 26, 2009 on the Internet Archive ) Historicum.net; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Gerhard E. Sollbach: Escape from bombs: Kinderlandverschickung from the eastern Ruhr area in World War II . Bookmark, University of Michigan 2002, ISBN 3-930217-65-1 , pp. 98 ff .
- ↑ a b c d Ralf Blank : Reactions . Historisches-Centrum.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ K.-P. Kolbatz: Repressed suffering among war children . Poolalarm.de; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Barbara Stambolis: Sons and Fathers - dealing with the experiences of loss in children of the Second World War . ( Memento of the original from September 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 196 kB) 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. Ruendal.de; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Research Group Weltkrieg2Kindheiten (w2k) ( Memento of 3 March 2009 at the Internet Archive ); accessed in June 2019.
- ↑ WLB-stuttgart.de ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2011 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. , Württembergische Landesbibliothek : Collection of leaflet propaganda in World War II ; accessed in June 2009.
- ^ Heinz Boberach: Reports from the Reich . The secret situation reports of the security service of the SS 1938–1945 . tape 13 . Pawlak, 1989, ISBN 3-88199-158-1 , pp. 4927 (17 volumes).
- ^ Heinz Boberach: Reports from the Reich . The secret situation reports of the security service of the SS 1938–1945 . tape 13 . Pawlak, 1989, ISBN 3-88199-158-1 , pp. 5217 (17 volumes).
- ↑ Zukunft-bendet-Erinnerung.de ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Total War - Joseph Goebbels' speech in the Berlin Sports Palace on February 18, 1943; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Barbara Grimm: Lynch murders of Allied airmen in World War II . In: Armin Nolzen , Dietmar Süss, Malte Thießen (eds.): Germany in the air war. History and memory . Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-58084-1 , p. 71–84 (According to this, 225 cases are documented. Including the number of unreported cases, serious estimates assume around 350 cases.).
- ^ Heinz Boberach: Reports from the Reich . The secret situation reports of the security service of the SS 1938–1945 . tape 13 . Pawlak, 1989, pp. 5157 (17 volumes).
- ↑ Ulf Balke: The air war in Europe. The operational missions of Kampfgeschwader 2 in World War II . Pawlak, Koblenz 1989, ISBN 3-7637-5882-8 .
- ↑ a b "Home Front" Westphalia - between the bombing war and the "final battle" , compensation for damages from Jewish property . Westphalian history, LWL.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Arno Buschmann: National Socialist Weltanschauung and Legislation: Documentation of a Development . Springer Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-211-83407-9 , pp. 524 .
- ^ Wacław Długoborski : Second World War and Social Change: Axis Powers and Occupied Countries . von Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35705-2 , p. 98 ff .
- ↑ a b c Sensitive breast (see cover picture) . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1966, pp. 44 ( online ).
- ↑ Klaus Hildebrand : The Third Reich . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-486-49096-6 , p. 117 .
- ↑ United States Strategic Bombing Surveys . (PDF) Air University Press, Reprint from 1987 (English), accessed March 2014.
- ↑ Chuck Anesi: United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (European War) . Anesi.com, 1997, accessed April 2009.
- ^ William O'Neil: History, Reports, Data . ( Memento of February 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) USSBS.com, 2006 (English). Retrieved April 2009.
- ↑ Richard Overy : The Roots of Victory . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-499-61314-X , p. 168-174 .
- ^ Klaus-Dietmar Henke : The American occupation of Germany . Oldenbourg R. Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-486-54141-2 , p. 444 .
- ↑ 40 percent was burned in the pits or distributed among the miners; most of the excess coal was used for transportation and other military needs, leaving very little coal and briquettes for distribution to civilians.
- ^ List of mines in the Ruhr area . ( Memento from February 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Der-Foerderturm.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ USAAF.net ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2011 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. , The Attack on Oil , English; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ Markus Schmitzberger: Austrian fuel and lubricating oil industry in World War II . ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 2.4 MB) 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. Althofen.at
- ^ A b c d Henry Ludmer: Oil in Germany . ( Memento of September 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 355 kB) In: The Ohio Journal of Science , v47 n6, November 1947, pp. 259–263, University of Toledo, Ohio (English), accessed April 2009.
- ^ Marin Sorin: The Social Consequences of the 1944 Anglo-American Bombing of Ploieşti: A Grassroots Perspective . (PDF; 2.3 MB) Central European University , Budapest, 2008, p. 104 (English).
- ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes: Factor oil: the mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974 . CH Beck, 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , pp. 239 .
- ↑ Holger Menne, Michael Farrenkopf (arr.): Forced labor in the Ruhr mining industry during the Second World War . ( Memento from June 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 463 kB) Special inventory of the sources in North Rhine-Westphalian archives, p. 20; Retrieved April 27, 2011.
- ^ Marlies Mrotzek: The concentration camp subcamp of Gelsenberg-Petrol AG . Germinal, 2002, ISBN 3-88663-527-9 .
- ^ A b Adolf Galland : The First and the Last: The Rise and Fall of the German Fighter Forces, 1938-1945 . Ballantine Books, New York 1968, ISBN 3-88663-527-9 , pp. 210, 224 and 239 .
- ^ Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Population and Economy 1872–1972 . Kohlhammer, Germany (Federal Republic) 1972, p. 181 .
- ↑ Anesi.com , United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Steel , English; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ a b Anesi.com , United States Strategic Bombing Survey: The Attack on the Railways and Waterways , English; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ No further statistics are available beyond this date.
- ^ Bahn Extra - Railway in the Ruhr area . Verwüster Verlag + Buchhandel, Graz April 2005.
- ^ FR-online.de }, Frankfurter Rundschau : 60 years after the end of the war ; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ 7Grad.org , U- Verlagerung Eisenkies - Project "Schwalbe 1" ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Eforum-Zeitgeschichte.at , workshop on the history of the concentration camps ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Historisches-Centrum.de ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2007 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. , Ralf Blank : Underground arms relocations ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Enkreis.de (PDF; 195 kB), Documentation Forced Labor , p. 12.
- ↑ Ruhr-Uni-Bochum.de , Dr. Josef Koenig: Press Office of the Ruhr University Bochum , 2001; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Holger Menne / Michael Farrenkopf (edit.), Forced Labor in the Ruhr Mining During the Second World War ( Memento from June 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) - Special inventory of the sources in North Rhine-Westphalian archives, p. 15 (last viewed on April 27, 2011 ) (PDF; 463 kB)
- ↑ Lernzeit.de, 2006 , Knowledge in the WDR: End of the war on the Rhine, Ruhr and Weser ; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ Jan Erik Schulte: Concentration camps in the Rhineland and Westphalia 1933–1945: central control and regional initiative . Verlag Ferd. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71743-X , p. XXIX in introduction .
- ↑ Hans Erler: Remembering and Understanding . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37361-0 , pp. 275 .
- ↑ Holger Menne / Michael Farrenkopf (edit.), Forced labor in the Ruhr mining industry during the Second World War ( Memento from June 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) - special inventory of the sources in North Rhine-Westphalian archives, p. 85 (last viewed on June 29, 2019 ) (PDF; 463 kB)
- ↑ Klaus Tenfelde , Hans-Christoph Seidel, Jens Adamski: Forced labor in the mine: the work in the coal mining of the German Empire and the occupied territories in the First and Second World War . tape 2 : documents . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-389-5 , p. 291, 297 ( DeutschesFachbuch.de - document directory with brief registers available at). DeutschesFachbuch.de ( Memento of the original dated November 2, 2012 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.
- ^ Lothar Gall : Krupp in the 20th century. The history of the company from the First World War to the establishment of the foundation . Self-published, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-88680-742-8 , p. 417 ff .
- ↑ a b LWL.org , Westphalian history: "Home Front" Westphalia - between bomb warfare and "final battle" ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Hamm.de ( Memento of 21 June 2009 at the Internet Archive ), local history: World War II ; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ Ulrich Herbert : Foreign workers. Politics and practice of the 'deployment of foreigners' in the war economy of the Third Reich . Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8012-5028-8 , pp. 389 ff., 424 .
- ↑ Elisabeth Tillmann: On the "Imperial Mission" to Dortmund. The Fate of French Forced Laborers in the Loh Camp 1943–1945 . Katholisches Bildungswerk der Dortmunder Dekanate, Dortmund 1995, ISBN 3-931183-00-9 , p. 148 ff .
- ↑ Forced Labor in Essen ( Memento of December 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 867 kB), Forced Labor in Essen ; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ GermanHistoryDocs.ghi-dc.org (PDF; 99 kB), Helmuth James Graf von Moltke : Report to Hans Wilbrandt and Alexander Rustow on the conditions in Germany and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. July 9, 1943, air raids on Germany .
- ^ International Military Court of Nuremberg : The Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals from November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946: Documents and other evidence. Nuremberg, 1949, Volume 17: German edition, Raeder-8 to Streicher-21 . Delphin Verlag, Munich 1989, p. 431 .
- ↑ Sebastian Haffner , Adolf Hitler: Notes on Hitler, 2nd Edition . Book guild Gutenberg, 1981, ISBN 3-88621-011-1 , p. 279 .
- ^ Ralf Blank : March 19, 1945 - The Nero command . LWL.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ A b Albert Speer : Memories . Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-548-36732-1 .
- ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek, Ralf Blank : End of the war in 1945: crimes, catastrophes, liberations from a national and international perspective . Wallstein Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89244-793-4 , p. 105 ff .
- ^ Rüdiger Hagenbucher: Difficult search for bombs . DerWesten.de, April 14, 2009; accessed on July 13, 2015.
- ↑ The bomb seekers . WDR.de, February 15, 2008; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Aircraft bombs The risk of detonations is growing , 2 . focus.de, September 18, 2012.
- ↑ Suspected duds: The bomb only consisted of an intact detonator . Ruhrnachrichten.de, February 9, 2009; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ 17 injured in a dud explosion . Tagesspiegel.de, September 19, 2008; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Dud explodes . WDR.de, September 19, 2008; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Landesumweltamt Nordrhein-Westfalen ( Memento of the original dated January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 812 kB), materials for the remediation of contaminated sites, etc. on soil protection, Volume 18: War-related proportions of contamination on suspected old sites ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Planet-Schule.de , The Ruhr area in the course of time - planningless urban development, wars and destruction ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ John Kenneth Galbraith : The arrogance of the satiated: Strategies for overcoming global mass poverty, 2nd edition (original title: In The Nature of Mass Poverty) . Scherz, Bern, Munich 1980. In 1980 John Kenneth Galbraith expanded his experience in the US Strategic Bombing Command, as in the immediate post-war period in Germany, into recommendations on development policy and poverty reduction in developing countries such as India.
- ↑ Wolfgang Krüger: Denazified! On the practice of political cleansing in North Rhine-Westphalia . Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 1982, ISBN 3-87294-200-X , p. 14th ff .
- ↑ Juris.de , Ordinance No. 46 - Dissolution of the provinces of the former Land of Prussia in the British Zone and their new formation as independent countries; accessed in June 2009.
- ^ Demonstration against the dismantling in Germany (June 7, 1949) , after the Second World War the workers of the Ruhr area demonstrated against the dismantling of their factories by the Allied occupation forces.
- ^ Wolfgang Benz : From occupation to the Federal Republic. Stages in the founding of a state 1946–1949 . Frankfurt 1989, ISBN 3-596-24311-4 , pp. 80 ff .
- ↑ Route-Industriekultur.de , From the ping to industrial culture : History of the Ruhr area, The new beginning after 1945 II ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ a b Trip through Western Germany, report from Moses Abramowitz to Isidor Lubin from May 14, 1945 NA, RG 165, CAD 014, Germany, (7-10-42), sec. 13 (English).
- ↑ Burke Knapp's commentary on Moses Abramowitz's report May 23, 1945 NA, RG 84, Poland 728/4, English.
- ↑ Progress Report on German Coal Mine Operations , report to the Chief Engineer, NA, RG 332, English.
- ↑ Detlef Wienecke-Janz, Johannes Ebert, Ute Becker: The Chronicle - History of the 20th Century to Today . Chronik Verlag, published by Wissenmedia Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-577-14641-9 , p. 333 .
- ^ "Home Front" Westphalia - between the bombing war and the "final battle" , plans for reconstruction . Westphalian history :; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Heinrich Schwendemann : The consequences of destruction - bombs for construction . Spiegel Online , April 1, 2003; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Demolition and new construction - the reconstruction of the cities . WDR.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ dortmund.cityin.de , historical information from Dortmund , accessed on 18 January 2012 found.
- ↑ Alsum in the north of Duisburg has not existed for a long time . Alsum.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ What is happening in the Ruhr? In: Frankfurter Hefte ; Magazine for culture and politics . Neue Verlags-Gesellschaft der Frankfurter Hefte, 1949, p. 50 .
- ↑ Stadtbild-Deutschland.de , war destruction and post-war urban development ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Consequences of the war . ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. Ruhrgebiet-Regionalkunde.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Wiwiki.Wi-Inf.Uni-Essen.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , History of the Ruhr Area - New Beginning after 1945 ; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ Klaus-Dietmar Henke : The American occupation of Germany . Oldenbourg R. Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-486-54141-2 , p. 442 ff .
- ↑ The rise and retreat of the coal and steel industry . ( Memento of the original from February 10, 2009 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. Ruhrgebiet-Regionalkunde.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Markus Lüske: Causes, process and perspectives of structural change in old industrialized areas: The example of the Ruhr area . ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 161 kB) 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. accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ GFD-Berlin.de ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 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. , Society for German Research e. V., Conference Report: Current Structural Change Processes in the Ruhr Area , 2004; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Carsten Lippe: “Ruhrstadt” does not meet with much approval . DerWesten, February 22, 2009; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Number of war and Nazi victims can no longer be determined . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bochumer-Geschichte.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ 1939–1945 air raids . German Historical Museum ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Bochumer-Geschichte.de ( side not available , searching web archives ) information: The link is automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , List of bomb victims in the Ruhr area ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Nina Grontzki, Gerd Niewerth, Gudrun Norbisrath, Rolf Potthoff: Firestorm and Hungerwinter: Contemporary witnesses remember war and reconstruction. Volume 54 of We in North Rhine-Westphalia. Klartext, 2007. ISBN 3-89861-923-0 , p. 314.
- ↑ a b c d e f The destruction of the Second World War in the Rhineland . Regional Association of Rhineland; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Ralf Blank: The city of Dortmund in the bombing war . In: Gerhard E. Sollbach (Ed.): Bomb warfare and everyday life after the war 1939–1948 . Hagen 1996, p. 15-55 .
- ↑ Memories in the air raid shelter . ( Memento from June 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Kriegsende.ARD.de; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Gelsenkirchen . ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Herbert-Basteck.com; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ City of Gladbeck . ( Memento from September 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) District government Münster; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Historisches-Centrum.de , Ralf Blank : Hagen 1939–1945 ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Ralf Blank : Hagen in World War II: Bombing War, Everyday Warfare and Armaments in a Westphalian City 1939–1945 . Klartext Verlagsgesellschaft, Hagen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8375-0009-7 .
- ↑ Put strengths in the light . DerWesten.de, WAZ portal, March 5, 2009; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Daniel Schaffer: The Allied air war around the Ruhr area and the effects on Lünen . ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2012 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. FSG.Un.In.Hagen.de ( MS Word ; 343 kB); accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Bezreg-Muenster.NRW.de ( Memento from July 24, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), District government Münster: City of Recklinghausen ; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ The Second World War ends for Wattenscheid . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wattenscheid.net; accessed in May 2009.
- ^ Andreas H. Blesken: Wittener Heimatbuch: Pictures from the history of the city of Witten . Catholic educational institute of the Dortmund deaneries, Witten 1948.
- ^ Fabricius-Klinik.de ( Memento of April 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), Festschrift; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Kriegsende.ARD.de ( Memento from July 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Solingen: City center completely destroyed ; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Wolfgang Ispert: Ascent from rubble and ruins . Scientific archive, certificate, picture - Chronik Verlag, Bonn 1960, p. 15 .
- ↑ From the First to the Second World War . City Archives Düsseldorf; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ In the bombing war . City Archives Düsseldorf; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Timeline-IX . City Archives Düsseldorf; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Exhibition: “Learning from History”. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Duesseldorf.NRW.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Kölnischer Geschichtsverein, Jost Dülffer (ed.): Cast shadow on the "brown Cologne": the Nazi era and afterwards. ( Publications of the Cologne History Association , Volume 49). SH-Verlag, 2010. ISBN 3-89498-202-0 , p. 207.
- ^ Cologne in World War II . Anicursor.com; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ San-Salvador.Diplo.de (PDF) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , City information of the "Germany Poster" ; accessed in April 2009.
- ^ Munster City Museum : History of the City of Munster . Münster 2006, p. 270 .
- ↑ Student notes: Was bombing justified? RAFbombercommand.com (English) accessed May 2009.
- ↑ Veterans' Affairs, Proceedings on: ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The CBC Series: The Valor and the Horror , Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology , February 4, 1993, issue No. 10; accessed in June 2009.
- ^ John Keegan : The Second World War . Penguin Books, London 1989, ISBN 0-14-011341-X , pp. 433 (reprint).
- ↑ Minutes of speeches of February 9, 1944. Hansard , House of Lords , Volume 130 cc737-55 (English) accessed in June 2009.
- ^ Wong Tze Yung: The Morality of Area Bombing On Germany By Bomber Command During World War Two . In: Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces V24 N2, April – June 1998 (English) accessed June 2009.
- ↑ No offsetting . Berliner Morgenpost , June 5, 2009; accessed in June 2009.
- ^ AC Grayling : Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan . Frank R. Walker Co., 2006, ISBN 0-8027-1471-4 , pp. 276 ff .
- ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Why the aerial warfare was a war crime . In: The world . February 1, 2007.
- ^ Frederick Taylor : Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 . Perennial, New York 2005, ISBN 0-06-000677-3 .
- ↑ Wolfram Wette , Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): War crimes in the 20th century . Primus, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-89678-417-X , p. 382-396 .
- ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The man who carried out his orders . In: Die Welt , November 3, 2004.
- ↑ Brandtcomputer.de , wording of the proclamation No. 3705 of the Reichs-Gesetzblatt No. 2 of January 25, 1910 , p. 107 ff., Agreement on the laws and customs of land warfare .
- ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Bomb warfare and martial law: The example of Dresden . In: Die Welt , February 9, 2005.
- ↑ Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, Additional Protocol on the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflict (PDF; 315 kB), accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Jörg Friedrich : The fire. Germany in the bombing war 1940–1945 . Propylaen Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-549-07165-5 .
- ^ Review notes on Jörg Friedrich: Der Brand. Germany in the bombing war 1940–1945 . Perlentaucher.de; accessed in May 2009.
- ↑ Ralf Blank : Review of Jörg Friedrich: Der Brand. Germany in the bombing war 1940–1945 . Sehepunkte.de; accessed in June 2009.
- ↑ Review of the brand . FAZ.net; accessed in April 2009.
- ↑ Dietmar Süß: "Home Front" and "People's War": New literature on the history of the air war (review) . In: Sehepunkte , 4, 2004, No. 7/8, Sehepunkte.de, accessed in June 2009.
