Air raid on the Copenhagen Gestapo headquarters

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British fighter-bomber attack, Copenhagen, March 21, 1945

The air raid on the Gestapo headquarters Copenhagen (also Operation Carthage [dt. Carthage ]) was established on 21 March 1945 by the Royal Air Force (RAF) to the Gestapo headquarters in Shell House in Copenhagen flown. A school was hit hard by an error.

history

Destroyed shell house

Since late autumn 1944, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) had been working with the RAF on plans for an air strike on the Copenhagen Gestapo headquarters. Due to the associated risks in densely built-up Copenhagen, the plans for such a difficult precision attack were only held up for an emergency situation.

At the end of February 1945 the Gestapo broke into the leadership structure of the Copenhagen Resistance with the arrest of 79 people, including numerous company leaders , so that the entire Copenhagen resistance movement was on the verge of being rolled up. On February 28th, Ole Lippmann from the Danish resistance gave the agreed code word "Carthage" for the attack to London, but the necessary preparations and the weather delayed the attack until March 21st.

Shortly after the successful air raid on Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus in October 1944, arrested Danish resistance fighters were housed on the top floor of the Shellhaus to protect Gestapo headquarters from such air raids. Therefore, the bombers had to approach extremely low and the sixth machine of the first wave of attack hit a mast and crashed near the Joan of Arc school. The second and third waves of attack were deceived by the column of smoke and dropped their bombs on the school and its surroundings.

Memorial stone at the Jean-d'Arc School

A total of 72 people died in the Shellhaus, including 26 German Gestapo members, 30 Danish Gestapo employees and 8 of the 26 prisoners housed in the building. 93 students and 16 adults were killed, 67 children and 35 adults were injured in the school. Most of the prisoners were able to escape and the shell house burned down completely. Unpredictable for the British planning, the Sipo boss Otto Bovensiepen , the head of the Gestapo Karl Heinz Hoffmann and other senior Gestapo employees were not in the Shellhaus at the time of the attack because of the burial of a Gestapo officer.

literature

Web links

Commons : Air raid on Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 . P. 268
  2. ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 . P. 266 ff.
  3. ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 . P. 274
  4. ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 . P. 274 f.