* * *

Despite the Luftwaffe’s relative success in the skies, there was little cause for celebration in Germany. The RAF’s bombing had been more scattered that night, but even so it had been devastating. The chief of police claimed later that, in terms of physical damage, the raid had been every bit as bad as that of Tuesday night. In Barmbek alone a single huge fire covered six square kilometres, where a combined street frontage of 167 kilometres was burning. Other parts of the city had also been badly hit, especially the old town, the port, and some western suburbs like Eppendorf. In effect, ‘The whole of Hamburg had become one area fire.’ ²⁰

All of this had happened even though the RAF had wandered off course, and marked the target fairly badly. The British plan had always been to concentrate the bombing in the north-west of Hamburg, to destroy the suburbs of Harvestehude, Rotherbaum and Eppendorf. However, a cross-wind had blown the Pathfinders off course, and they had dropped most of their target indicators in the east of the city, directly over the part of Hamburg that had been bombed on Tuesday night. Indeed, many of the early bombs dropped on the suburb of Hamm, which was already so completely destroyed that a few more incendiaries could hardly have made much difference. But the bombing soon crept back over Eilbek

and Barmbek, causing huge destruction in the north-east of the city. The original target to the west of the Alster was also badly hit, but only because the target markers were so scattered.

After two whole days of desperate evacuation, there was hardly anyone left in the city to be killed. For those few who had stayed behind, though, it was every bit as horrific as the night of the firestorm. Helmuth Saß was sheltering in a bunker beneath the Baptist church on Weidestrasse, but was forced to leave when a collapsing building blocked the entrance. He climbed out through the shutter openings only to find himself confronted with a mountain of burning rubble, a blizzard of sparks, and four-storey houses burning all around him. As he made his escape down Vogteiweg with his mother and younger brother he suddenly became aware of the sheer absurdity of the situation:

I thought that I was experiencing some sort of macabre play. Above in the aeroplanes sat the English, who were under orders to bomb us, while we ran through this burning hell for our lives. We did not know or hate each other. Suddenly my brother’s hair was burning. Shocked, we smothered the flames, but a welt remained. Shortly afterwards, my mother screamed. A falling burning piece of wood had hit her calf, causing her to limp. We took shelter in the entrance to a shop, until a man who was hurrying past noticed that in the shop window firelighters, of all things, were on display. We had to get away from there. ²¹

They struggled onwards to an abandoned apartment building, where they found a barrel of water with which to douse themselves. Then they were off through the streets once more until they reached relative safety under a railway bridge on Barmbeker Markt. The absurdity of this kind of warfare manifested itself once more when they saw a group of men deliberately setting fire to a uniform shop at the start of the Dehnhaide. To perform an act of arson in the midst of a city that was already ablaze seems like madness, but the men justified their actions: ‘When everything is burning, the Party uniforms should burn too.’ Nobody bothered to contradict them. ²²

It was not only Helmuth Saß’s shelter that was hit in this attack. Several of the larger ‘indestructible’ public shelters were also struck. In Eilbek a high-explosive bomb hit the Hochbunkeron the corner of Wielandstrasse and Schellingstrasse, blowing a hole through two and a half metres of reinforced concrete on the seventh floor. Two women were killed, and the other two thousand shelterers were left in shock that such a thing was even possible. ²³By far the worst calamity of the night was the collapse of the Karstadt department store on Hamburgerstrasse, blocking the entrances to the store’s two large air-raid bunkers. Rescue workers managed to open one of the shelters the next day, releasing 1,200 employees from the debris. It took longer to reach the second bunker, and 370 people died inside from carbon-monoxide poisoning. ²⁴

When such disasters were possible it is not surprising that even in the biggest shelters people were afraid. Adolf Pauly took refuge in a bunker on the corner of Maxstrasse in Eilbek:

Hardly had we got there when all hell broke loose. In the bunker absolute darkness reigned, so we sat in our places, motionless, for hour upon hour upon hour. In the sweltering heat the air was suffocating. No matches, let alone a lamp, would light, so scarce was the oxygen. No ventilation flaps were allowed to be opened, otherwise the embers would have found their way in and 3,000 people would have suffocated in the bunker. Again and again the bunker shook under the resounding blows. Whether it was the collapsing walls of the neighbouring houses, or (as was claimed) actual bombs falling on the bunker, I don’t know. In the darkness we could hear general noise and cries in the floors below. There were burning people saved from the streets. Also that night two children were born in the bunker. Now and then the names of the missing would be called out… For twelve hours I sat there with my wife in absolute darkness, fastened motionless to my place. ²⁵

When he came out the following day the whole of his neighbourhood was on fire once again. His apartment, which had survived the previous two raids, was now ablaze, and there was no longer any choice but to follow the refugees who had gone before him. He was stunned by the event. The very reason he had not left the city earlier was because he did not think the British would bother to bomb his neighbourhood a third time: ‘Yet another bomb attack on this field of ruins seemed senseless.’ ²⁶

Hans J. Massaquoi was just as shocked by the sight that greeted him when he left a public shelter in Barmbek:

What awaited us was one of the saddest and most dreadful sights of our lives. The whole of Stückenstraße – no, the whole of Barmbek, our beloved neighbourhood – was practically razed to the ground. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but total devastation. In contrast to the ear-splitting noise of last night there was now a muted silence over the gruesome scenery. Here and there could be seen mummified, charred corpses. Obviously these people had decided to leave their apartments too late in order to get to a shelter. Most houses had been burnt right down to their foundations. Others were still in flames, and more still were nothing but burned out ruins. One of these smoking heaps of rubble had been my home since childhood. ²⁷

* * *

Tonight’s bombing had not caused anything like the human toll of the last attack. The official report did not attempt to put a figure on the number of dead – the city was in such chaos that it was impossible to separate the victims of one raid from another – but after the war a senior figure in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey made an estimate of about eight hundred, and later estimates range between a thousand and five thousand. ²⁸The material damage, however, was appalling. Only a few outlying suburbs now remained relatively untouched by the bombing – the rest was fire and ruins. There was seemingly nothing left to bomb.

And yet the RAF had still not finished with the city. In four nights’ time they would direct a fourth and final massive raid against Hamburg, this time attacking from the south. That they should want to do so no longer surprised anyone in Hamburg. As the final survivors straggled out of Eilbek towards the fringes of the city they came across a scene that seemed to symbolize the