The blasts were felt as much as heard; booms that jolted through the chest. ‘The house shuddered,’ recalled Dr Albert Fromme, who had been sheltering with friends, neighbours and children in a cellar to the west of the city. ‘The children were very excitable.’1 The neighbour Herr Schrell, whose wife had just been celebrating her birthday, proclaimed: ‘I think we have been hit.’ They had not; they would have known nothing about it if they had.
The first wave of the attack on Dresden had started with the target indicators at 10.03 p.m., a little ahead of the schedule that the controllers had anticipated. Just moments later, the following planes roared out of the distant black sky; citizens of Dresden might have been expecting the bright beams of searchlights from the hills, the crack of defensive firepower as teenage gunners aimed flak at the invaders. But all such firepower had been moved east, and there was no resistance. Georg Frank was in the cellar of his apartment block with his parents. He was still wrapped in the blanket that he had been sleeping in. ‘From afar you could hear the muffled hum of aircraft engines and the first detonation of bombs.’2
The Lancasters, flying 10– 3,000 feet above, were dropping, in the main, two forms of lethal weapon: incendiary devices, intended to start fires in and around the wood-filled buildings, preceded by high-explosive ‘Blockbuster’ or ‘Cookie’ bombs, mostly 4,000lb in weight. These bombs were about the size of three men standing in a huddle. When the plane’s bomb aimer pressed the release mechanism, they dropped through the sky nose-first. Primed to detonate on contact with any hard surface, they delivered simple annihilation, the term ‘Blockbuster’ signalling their capacity to bring down entire blocks and terraces. A direct hit from such a bomb would simply take the architecture of a building apart with a shock wave that would radiate with such strength that even an aeroplane a few thousand feet up would be buffeted. The incendiaries, bound together in clumps, were more insidious. These were intended to capitalize on the dislocations caused by the bombs, dropping down through gaping roofs and catching fire, flame gradually joining with flame across the fresh ruins of even the grandest institutions.
In the boarding house where Mischka Danos was hosting his leaving party, he and his guests were, almost incredibly, ignoring the warning sirens, perhaps through the insouciance of youth, perhaps because they had simply heard them too often. The get-together continued until one moment of utterly surreal fright when, with no warning, Danos’s closed bedroom door came off its hinges and appeared to ‘slowly keel’ into the room.3 For a few seconds, Danos and his guests simply gazed at this phenomenon. Finally, they understood it was time to go down to the basement. The distant bass booms became gradually more distinct.
For those in other cellars, the nausea of claustrophobia was now increasingly difficult to suppress. Margot Hille was sitting with her mother in the communal shelter 150 yards from their apartment block in the south-west of the city. This too had a window; the pavement and the street outside were as ‘bright as day’ with the flares.4 And then came the approaching crashes, each one delivering its own individual shock. The Hilles’ neighbour, Frau Fischer, who had been sitting beside them, collapsed. It was assumed that she was having a heart attack.5 What help could there be as the booms grew louder? Margot’s mother tried to comfort and calm Frau Fischer as best she could.
Margot Hille was not to know that already, just moments into the attack, her cousins who lived close to the city centre were dead. Their apartment building near the Ostragehege had been torn apart. Even in their shelter they had been dismembered and burned almost instantaneously, yet their mother, in that same shelter, was somehow still alive, horribly seared by what was later presumed wrongly to be burning phosphorus. If this cellar, like so many others, had had a pavement-level window, the force and the heat of the blasts would – in a blink – have shattered it into hundreds of thousands of superheated shards, as it had innumerable others around the city.
For Gisela Reichelt, sitting in an ill-lit basement to the south of the railway station, just a few minutes after 10 p.m., there was not just her own fear to cope with; her mother too seemed absolutely paralysed, and the ten-year-old girl had no idea what to do. She remembered how a ‘Hitler Youth boy’ had come running down to their cellar to announce that the entire city was glowing with Christmas trees; and that the air-raid warden ‘told us in horror that it was probably going to be a terrible night’.6 The first bombs were deafening and came, she said, ‘blow by blow’. The air itself seemed to ripple. ‘Everyone in the cellar began to pray,’ she recalled. ‘Even those who did not believe in God.’7 Although she had taken her two dolls with her, she now felt too old to be comforted by them, so she joined the grown-ups in praying. ‘I was scared and I did not know what to do, the fear took control of me,’ she later recounted.8
Just to the north of the Elbe, overlooking the Neustadt and the Altstadt, Winfried Bielss, his mother and his friend Horst were sitting in the basement with the other residents of their apartment block, looking upwards towards the low ceiling. Bielss recalled that as well as the shocks, there was almost a musicality in the sounds of destruction. It produced a state of near terror in everyone. The air pressure generated by the first detonations was so powerful that the floor shook.9 There was also a poltergeist effect: doors on floors above rattling with frightening violence and being slammed open and shut, as though by a compulsive demon. ‘Paint and plaster came off the wall and there was dust,’10 Bielss recalled. The dust became pervasive, so that as well as claustrophobic unease there was a sudden unspoken concern about whether they could breathe the air itself. But above all this was the satanic music: the deep hum of all the passing aircraft, in counterpoint with a ‘swelling singing and whistling’ created by the falling bombs. ‘The light was still burning,’ he remembered, ‘but we became very quiet and looked up in alarm’ at the pressure of another nearby explosion. There was more spasmodic rattling agitation from doors above; then the silvery clangour of the house’s windows shattering.
Awful as they were, these effects were minor compared with what was happening in the close-built dwellings in the narrow streets of the Altstadt that had either been partially demolished by falling explosives or were now being eaten by climbing flames sparked by the sticks of incendiaries. And in the cellars beneath – those that had not collapsed or fallen in – huddled elderly women and men, mothers with infants, small children, sitting on floors or makeshift chairs, motionless. In some, the lights were flickering. In others, the air was growing harder to breathe. In the heart of the Altstadt, the brickwork of the underground maze of connected cellars was shaking; walls bulged inwards, doors jammed.
Many had equipped their cellars with buckets of water and blankets; moist blankets would be their only armour if they had to fight through intense heat. But these small brick chambers were beginning to seem more like tombs than sanctuaries. Those within who were not praying may have started to notice a curious pressure in their lungs. This might have been psychosomatic for some, but whatever the truth it required extraordinary effort of will not to listen to instinct: that impulse to get out into the air and run, far into the dark cold night and beyond the crashing and the inhuman whistling. But the instinct would have been wrong; those who were outside in the Altstadt were beyond all hope of such rational escape. One soldier cycling down the street was blown off his bicycle and in that split second of detonation his limbs were neatly removed, his torso coming to rest on the road. The bellowing fire of the explosions instantly charred anyone in their path and burned off all their clothing, leaving them both dead and naked.
For those below simply listening helplessly – those whose homes lay under the flight of the bombers – this was an exercise in mental endurance. Georg and Marielein Erler were tested to an extraordinary degree. ‘Apparently the first bomb exploded some distance from our house,’ recalled Herr Erler. ‘Immediately afterwards came the second one, the third one and, by degrees, the noise grew more and more thunderous. It became so furious that it seemed it might turn the house upside down.’11 He and his wife together with his neighbours and their children sat rigid in helpless silence. ‘Every moment, we were preparing for the eventuality that the next one would hit this room, that there would be a sudden end. Then, suddenly,’ Herr Erler continued, ‘the next explosion came in really terribly close.’12 Then several dreadful things happened at once: a brick in the cellar wall that had been deliberately loosened on a previous occasion to allow greater circulation of air suddenly shot out and flew across the cellar; the blast of hot air that caused this also instantly snuffed out the candles that they had been burning and the electric bulb failed. The Erlers and their neighbours were in instant darkness. ‘The walls shook and the house seemed to collapse over us,’ remembered Herr Erler. ‘A terrible bursting and shattering sound was heard.’13
Lancasters were flying over the city at the rate of one every five to ten seconds; the relentless hum high above was a source of intense psychological distress but also – to those either under it or observing from a slight distance – a cause of black wonder. To the north-west of the city, Norbert Bürgel and his uncle were still under a bridge, having watched the spectacle of the Christmas trees. It was as if the boy and his guardian were taking shelter from a rainstorm. But it was from this vantage that both found themselves hypnotized by the skyline before them; the distant booms and echoes, and the macabre brightening of the sky above the old spires.
They were mercifully removed from the raw spectacle of panic among other refugees, not least those who had sought safety beneath the central railway station. The station itself had not been marked out as a target, it lay just a street or two outside the radius of the glowing, fizzing markers, but the geometry of the raid – the intricacy of the calculations to ensure maximum impact – meant that bombs and incendiaries were being released to rain down destruction upon an ever-wider area. Those gathered in the echoing tunnels beneath the station were beginning to feel the full effects of the Allies’ savage assault.
There was a train on one platform that had been due to leave, pointing along the silver rails to the western night; the passengers who had rushed to board now found themselves sitting targets beneath that vast glass-vaulted roof. The stairs that led down to the concourse and the tunnels were still crowded when, with shattering detonations, the monsoon of superheated glass from the station’s roof combined with the searing flare of fire on the platforms and at the stairheads to create a primal surge of panic-fuelled strength from the top of the stairs that pulsed down to crush those below. People at the bottom suffered the lethal asphyxiating weight of dozens upon them while those above were burned, disfigured and torn open by shrapnel. Screams were superfluous, or at least not remembered by witnesses. Somehow, in the midst of so many people acting wholly on terrified impulse, the railway police elsewhere in the sheltering tunnels were able to persuade other passengers to remain still.
The majority of the high explosives were falling in the streets north of the station. The nearby hotel used by the vicious bureaucracy of the Gestapo – the Continental – had been bisected with such a bomb. The incendiaries were quick to start gnawing at its highly flammable innards: the wooden furniture, the textiles. In two other Nazi strongholds, however, the defences were holding firm. There was a shelter beneath the Albertinum which was being used as a base for the city’s civilian defenders – the firefighters and the police. Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann was to be found neither here nor in the smart shelters beneath the Taschenberg Palace half a mile west, so he was probably taking cover in the private shelter constructed beneath his own commandeered residence. No one appears to have missed him.
Other Nazi officials were on view, though. In the cellars of the Taschenberg Palace, soldier Lothar Rolf Luhm and his comrade Günther Tschernik were observing the ‘well-fed burghers in brown uniforms’14 who appeared to be in radio contact with other Nazis around the city. But ten minutes into this rhythmically jolting onslaught, they were clearly as helpless as all their fellow citizens, if rather better insulated. The impact of the detonations could be felt but this cellar seemed secure. There was one focus of clear anxiety: the idea of a fire starting above, flames taking possession of the palace and creating an inferno directly above their heads, cutting off the exits. Even as the bombers continued to fly over, Luhm and Günther noticed ‘the men with golden tassels’ looking at them, and Luhm guessed that the two soldiers in this shelter would very soon be sent out into the dark on fire-watching duty to ensure that any rooftop flames were extinguished, regardless of the danger.
Even in this cataclysm, some were a fraction more relaxed than their fellow Dresdeners. Otto Griebel was still in the brick-lined cellar of the Altstadt tavern with his friend Scheinpflug. They had been drinking spirits before the attack began and it seemed – as a heavy blast shook the foundations of the cellar and caused the lightbulb to go out, leaving all the guests sitting in perfect, eye-pulsing darkness – that they were managing to control their panic. They were not yet to know that they were at the heart of the catastrophe; even after only ten minutes of bombing, there were streets around them that were deformed beyond any recognition. Perhaps there was a belief that this had to end; that the Allies would not spend the entire night sending plane after plane over. Perhaps also too there was the first inkling – which was to be reflected across the city – of a hideous curiosity. If only the cellar could withstand the next few minutes – and when the bombers were swooping away into the distance, back to their own country – what then would the friends see outside? What would their world look like?
It was around that point that the angular Gothic construction of the Kreuzschule was hit, the bomb punching straight down through it, stone and wood offering no resistance. That moment brought annihilation to eleven boys and three priests who had been in the shelter. The fires took hold quickly afterwards. The other boarders, together with their choirmaster, Rudolf Mauersberger, escaped the building into the stinging, cindery air outside; the boys were corralled eastwards, across the burning forecourt, in the direction of the Great Garden park a couple of streets away. The pulse of the blast on the Kreuzschule had forced out every window, every pane of glass, every door.
Nor was there was any comfort for anyone taking shelter near the dark stones of the Kreuzkirche, which stood close to the Renner department store. Part of the roof of the Kreuzkirche was hit, and the nave of the vast church was fragmented in the shock waves. The church was now open to the sky; and to the seemingly endless cascade of magnesium incendiaries. The fires were fed with splintered pews. In the ear-shattering pandemonium, the mighty bell in the tower of the Kreuzkirche tolled violently with the repercussion. Just yards away, Renner, the shop that represented the modern secular life of the city, was penetrated in a flash, the vast bomb unravelling in an instant the complex structure of its impressive escalator. In every department the fabrics, the furniture, the clothes, the household goods, the bedding, the linen immediately caught fire.
In the streets around it there were still substantial numbers of rural refugees and terrified horses. Even those who were not pulverized or shredded by metal and stone shrapnel, or simply burned alive, could not escape the lethal effects of the high explosives. The bombs changed the very air itself, replacing breathable oxygen with a momentary supersonic shock that could either dismember a human body in under a second or leave its internal organs squeezed, lungs drawn almost inside out. Hearts would be violently contracted and expanded; innumerable blood vessels and veins and arteries would burst at once. As the blast radiated out, the composition of the atmosphere was elasticated, expanding and instantly compressing as though the sky itself was struggling to breathe.
Those standing under the low stone ceilings of the crypt beneath the Frauenkirche a few streets further north experienced the attack as a series of almost subsonic booms, so deep they were more a visceral than an aural experience. Like Gisela Reichelt in her cellar, many that night surely prayed with a passionate faith that they had never before acknowledged even to themselves. Perhaps there was a sense that the Frauenkirche would be spared; that such a sacred space could never be a target. The pillars of the church, mighty blocks of sandstone, might have afforded a more immediate stability; unlike all the brick cellars in which the walls were beginning to crumble, the temperature was rising and the atmosphere was becoming more and more airless, the crypt of the Frauenkirche and the cold flagstones of its floor might have seemed comfortingly serene.
But outside, the studied elegance of Dresden was being mutilated; several streets down, the upmarket shops of Prager Strasse and the smart apartments of the wealthier citizens nearby were crushed, the glass of window displays shattering. Boutiques, perfumiers, jewellers: the exquisite ornaments and fragrances scorched to their base constituents. Elegant hotels were punched inwards; silk curtains shredded and flaming, marble floors cracked, beds and linens and carpets eaten – slowly at first but with fast-gathering strength – by more fire. A street of once haughty grandeur was now hissing and spitting with burst pipes, dissected pavements, the crackle of tables and chairs in exposed restaurants as the flames met. The people sheltering in basements directly beneath these smart shops now found exits blocked with burning rubble; they knew they were buried alive.
Then there was the landscape that was shared by all, the common cultural and religious focal points that between them seemed to contain the different shades of the city’s soul. The Zwinger Palace and Pavilion and ornamental gardens were hit. Although the art works contained within the palace had long since been removed to safety, the building itself – in part a baroque fantasia – was one of the city’s most cherished landmarks, a signifier of a light-hearted, droll sensibility that had been advertised to a wider world. There was little here for the flames to get a grip on, but the finely ornamented pavilion was instantaneously made gaunt and hollow. Just a few yards away from this was the even greater splendour of the Semper Opera House; that night, its reception rooms, gilded boxes, the vast auditorium of velvet and fine-grained wood, were opened up and incinerated. Like the Zwinger Palace, this completely incidental target was one that struck at the city’s heart, its entire view of its own ethos and special place in modern civilization.
Yet the historic soul of the city lay some yards to the south-east, across a cobbled square: the Catholic cathedral, an eighteenth-century baroque construction, in the crypts of which were contained the remains of Saxon kings and princes. It also housed one of the city’s more extraordinary relics: when the great elector Augustus the Strong died, his heart was removed and buried within the cathedral walls. Sacrilege comes in various forms; the high explosives that fell nose-first through the roof of the cathedral were tokens of pure nihilism.
This was not a factory producing optical equipment, or spare parts for planes or tanks. This was a holy place that had held on to its own unique life even throughout the coming of Hitler and the Nazis. The effect of its destruction – upon those left to see it – would be that of simple despair and fury as opposed to crushed morale. Of course, while those hundreds of planes filled the sky, no one was giving consideration to heritage; in the small brick cellars of the Altstadt, the elemental need to protect flesh and bone was almost the only conscious thought among so many thousands, recoiling at every crash. The roar of the cathedral collapse was part of the cacophony that a few streets to the east had made the occupants of the cellar beneath the Judenhaus inhabited by the Klemperers hold increasingly close to one another. Victor Klemperer recalled hearing – above the sudden repeated shocks of explosions – the small sound of whimpering.15 He and his wife Eva found themselves, by impulse, lowering themselves to the floor and putting their heads under the chairs. Another deep impact, and suddenly the back window of their cellar was blown in. To Klemperer’s horror, the courtyard outside was as ‘bright as day’.16
The light was coming from a hideous combination of magnesium flares and fire. Another of the cellar’s occupants was fast-witted enough to perceive the hazard from spreading flames and remembered that the cellar had a stirrup pump and some water. There were frantic efforts to douse and moisten the incipient blaze, and as the explosions continued all around Klemperer recalled that he lost any objective sense of time. It was as though the people in the cellars had been part-hypnotized by the ordeal; that in the act of anticipating the instant blackness at any moment, free will was held in a state of suspension.
Gisela Reichelt recalled that in her own cellar, through the booming tumult, everyone was quiet. Her heavily pregnant mother could not bear to sit; instead, in what appeared an attitude of perfect terror and despair, she was simply lying on the floor.17
What none of them could know was that this was only the beginning. Victor Klemperer remembered that even if it had ended there, with the first raid, it would have been understood as a horrific and unparalleled disaster. The fires, beginning to flare into greater strength, as the smashed roofs, doors and windows caused eviscerated buildings to act like giant chimneys, were starting to eat not only thousands of homes, shops and businesses but also shared and collective memories. In the space of just a quarter of an hour, that first wave of 244 bombers and nine markers had dropped some 880 tons of bombs on Dresden, 57 per cent high explosives and 43 per cent incendiaries. The 4,000lb air mines and other assorted explosives had displaced architecture; the hundreds and thousands of incendiaries, primed to ignite with different triggers and delays, were fuelling the flames that grew obligingly amid floorboards, furniture, wooden beams and clothing. The bass hum of the first wave of bombers was now receding into the night, leaving not silence but the cracks and crashes of structural collapse. The cruellest noise of all, however, might have been the lighter notes of the all-clear sirens that echoed from distant, as yet undamaged streets around thirty minutes after the first marker flares had been dropped. This was the signal to those in the cellars to emerge. It was unintentionally cruel because the civic authorities were telling the people of Dresden that the worst had passed.