helpless, German cities are defenceless … Each night brings the threat of

devastation closer. It is only a question of time.

British propaganda leaflet, 1943 ¹

To claim that the people of Hamburg had no inkling of what was about to befall them on the first night of Operation Gomorrah would not be quite true. Most had heard of what had happened to the cities of the Ruhr over the preceding months, and while German radio and newspaper reports were deliberately vague on the details, the city’s anxious housewives allowed their imaginations to fill in the gaps. Rumours abounded. People told each other furtive stories about factories and houses being blown sky-high, men and women rushing frantically for the rivers, their clothes on fire. Some claimed that the British had deliberately targeted the cathedrals at Cologne and Aachen in an attempt to destroy German heritage. Others swore that when the Americans bombed Kiel and Flensburg they had dropped fountain pens and other everyday articles filled with explosives. ²

The Allies did whatever they could to fuel such fears. BBC broadcasts to the continent became progressively more triumphant in tone. ³British and American planes dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets on northern Germany, many of which fell on Hamburg. These gave a variety of lurid statistics about what had happened to other German cities, and went on to imply that the people of Hamburg would be next to feel the devastating bite of the bombs. ⁴

Despite all this, however, many people refused to believe that the bombers were heading their way, for the simple reason that they did not wantto believe it. After four long years of fighting they were sick of war, and some even hoped that the Allies would hurry up and invade so that the whole thing could be over quickly. ⁵More rumours claimed that the Allies were being deliberately lenient on Hamburg because they would need the city when they invaded. ⁶Regardless of everything that had happened since 1939, Hamburg was still largely an anglophile city: many people could not bring themselves to believe that their friends and allies of the past 150 years would ever have the will to inflict such suffering on them. ⁷

Besides, the city had not been targeted properly for four and a half months. What few alarms there had been recently had all proved false. Despite constant warnings from the authorities to remain alert, while the skies were clear and the sun shone, it was easy to pretend that they were safe from attack.

* * *

Were it not for the war, the day before the bombers arrived would have been idyllic. It was a hot Saturday in July, and the whole city seemed to have come outdoors to enjoy the sunshine. Hamburg had been experiencing an unusually lengthy spell of glorious weather, and the long, warm days reminded people of peacetime. Now that the school holidays had begun the city’s many parks were thronging with children playing Völkerballor Kippel-kappel, and the open-air swimming baths at Aschberg and Ohlsdorf were filled with teenagers splashing and calling to one another as they dived from the railings. Down by the Elbe, off-duty workers rolled up their trousers and strolled through the shallow water, or rested on the river’s sandy banks beneath the trees. Old couples walked arm in arm along the Alster, or sunned themselves on their balconies and in their gardens. In the absence of any air raids the atmosphere in the city was fairly calm, perhaps even relaxed. A gentle breeze blew in off the river, caressing the spires of the churches, while those in the city streets below went about their everyday business undisturbed. ⁸

Despite the shortages, there were still plenty of ways to relax in the city. At the beginning of July the famous Althoff Circus had been in Wandsbek, delighting children with a combination of clowning and breathtaking acrobatics. Lovers of horse-sports were looking forward to the Preis von Deutschland at Farmsen Racecourse, and the Hitler Youth were holding their area championships in canoeing. In the evenings there was also a wide variety of entertainment. A Hungarian dance orchestra had been playing in the Orchideen Café, and Strauss’s Die Zigeunerbaronwas on at the Volksoper on the Reeperbahn. The cinemas showed a variety of escapist films, mostly adventure movies or romances such as Der dunkel Tag( The Dark Day) and Du gehörst zu mir( You Belong to Me). ⁹

There was double summertime in Germany, as there was in Britain, so it stayed light in the evenings almost until ten o’clock. As the fleet of RAF bombers took off across the North Sea, many Hamburgers were coming out of the cinemas and theatres. Others were still finishing their evening meal, or sitting out on their balconies to enjoy a cool drink before bedtime. Those who didn’t have to get up for work on Sunday celebrated the end of the week with friends or family, perhaps even with sons or husbands on leave from the front, but towards midnight most of the city was turning in. It was hot and sultry, so many people had dragged mattresses out into the courtyards to sleep in the open air. ¹⁰As they lay looking up at the bright stars above them, the war seemed far away.

Awake or asleep, the whole city was brought back to reality when the quiet of the night was broken by the sound of sirens. The noise did not produce panic – in fact, it was greeted with little more than weary sighs. The alarms had already gone off once that night, at around nine thirty, but they had been cancelled ten minutes later. Now, at half past midnight, people expected a repeat performance and many rolled over to go back to sleep. Hamburgers were used to sirens: in the previous three years they had endured no less than 318 air-raid warnings, the vast majority of which were false alarms. Even the actual attacks they had experienced – 137 in total – were mostly fairly minor, especially during the past twelve months. ¹¹Familiarity had bred complacency.

In Lokstedt, in the north-east of the city, Wanda Chantler was struggling to wake a room full of women and convince them to come to the air-raid shelter. She was a twenty-year-old Pole who worked in a forced-labour camp packing cans of fish for soldiers at the front. As first-aid officer at her barracks, she was obliged to go to the shelter, but few of the others would join her.

First of all there was a great big howl of sirens. And the girls all said, ‘Oh, it’s like this every night – nothing will happen.’ They went off so often, those sirens: we sometimes got them twice a night. We all got so fed up, particularly those that were on the day shift, because they had no sleep – the planes never came in the daytime, they always came in the night. But these girls said, ‘We’re not getting up. Nothing will happen.’ ¹²

Reluctantly, she and five other women trudged down to the makeshift underground shelter on the other side of the compound – a move that probably saved her life.

Elsewhere, other Hamburgers were showing similar reluctance to go to the shelters. Hannah Kelson was fourteen, and had a typical teenager’s response to any suggestion that she should leave her bed just because the RAF might be coming: ‘Let them come, I don’t care.’ ¹³For some it was the conditions in the bunkers kept them away. Martha Bührich, a fifty-seven-year-old teacher who lived in Barmbek preferred to sit on a stool in the doorway of her bathroom rather than go to the ‘community bedlam’ of the air-raid bunkers. ¹⁴Some of the shelters were uncomfortable because people brought as much as they could carry ‘just in case’ – not only jewellery and important papers, but suitcases, pet dogs, cats and even chickens. ¹⁵It is not surprising that many wanted to avoid the shelters unless it was absolutely necessary.