The Bombing of Berlin: An Eyewitness Account

THE BOMBING OF BERLIN: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT. My mother-in-law Gerda Kernchen, who is 86 and living in a senior residence in Berlin, after some coaxing agreed to tell me about her wartime experiences. This is IN NO WAY a criticism of the Allied bombing initiative or the men who took part. It is just a factual account of daily life for one young woman during that time. Next week, I will describe her experiences after the Russians arrived. Click on Wartime Wednesdays to read her story.

 

Thank you for posting this Elinor. I have just recently started to look for accounts of German civilians on their home front and their thoughts on the war. I am looking forward to the next instalment.

 

Accounts from Dresden would be particularly interesting...

 

Elinor, a couple of things stand out....

Firstly, I have always heard it said, and have read too, that the Allied bombing "brought people together", in the manner of Londoners and the blitz. Reading this, it seems that this was only so with people you knew. The group of women gossiping and then stopping, silent, when your mother-in-law approached bespeaks a very frightened populace, not just of the bombs, but their own people. So, bombing can be seen as divisive, as much as it can be seen to be bringing people together. It's the jokes that stand out for me. Hermann Goering was said to have declared, soon after the war began, that "No Allied bomber will ever bomb our homeland, or my name is 'so-and-so', and I'll eat my hat." So, when Goering was in public in a bombed town/city, he would be greeted by ordinary citizens with "Hi there, Mr so-and-so. Hows your hat?"

Berliners always had a reputation for a wicked sense of humor. I do feel it was this that allowed them to endure so many raids.

The other thing that stood out is the arrival home of one of their relatives, (complete with lice in his hat!). What his comments and those of his fellow frontschwien reveal is the dramatic effect that the bombing must have had on their morale. Who knows what sort of debilitating effect this must have had on their performance. How many soldiers simply went through the motions, and did their job, not to the limits of their ability, but only so much as their superiors knew? What frontwide effects on the military situation this must have had, for everyone knows, as Napolean said, that "The morale is to the physical as three is to one."

Albert Speer, at the end of his life, justified the allied bombing as certainly no waste of time and resources. The BBC interview I saw when he was a lot younger in the seventies featured him claiming that the Air Campaign was, in fact, the 'Second Front' that the Soviets had been agitating and propagandizing for. It tied down much in the way of men and materials that were sorley missed on the Ostfront, and everywhere else. It sapped morale, maybe not to the degree that was hoped, but certainly to the point that Germany would have been a much more agreeable wartime place to exist than without it. The tens of thousands of Flak guns alone could have had a significant effect on the Ostfront, let alone the fuel and fighter aircraft sucked into to the fighting.

All in all, it was worth the effort.

BTW, the Luftschanz volunteer child is actually a still from a German newsreel. I've never seen a translation or exactly what city this little guy is in, but I suspect that it is Berlin.

The bombing campaign certainly lifted Allied morale. In their parlance, "It certainly was a wizard prang!"

 

Another excellent blog.
You might want to consider posting a link to these over on the axishistory forum. There's a lot of interest in personal accounts over there as well. Here's a link:
www.axishistory.com

 

I'm certain the women that hushed up were afraid of being denounced as traitors or "defeatists". These charges could have very serious consequences. In another German account (The Burden of Hitler's Legacy by Alfons Heck) it was reported that after a raid people who were in a heavily bombed section or who had lost their homes had a couple of hours to freely rant and rave. They could even cuss Hitler during that time. German authorities thought it best for people to release their anger and shock.

 

That's interesting! Of course, I am hearing the memories of someone who was only a teenager at the time, and a very sheltered one. It would have been fascinating to hear what her father had to say about things.