The fault lay directly with the policies of the British and American occupying forces. One of the first things the Allies did in the direct aftermath of the war was to arrest senior members of the Nazi Party, and to remove all party members from positions of influence. It is understandable why they did this, but the immediate effect was a breakdown of order. Getting rid of all party members meant sacking virtually the entire administrative workforce practically overnight. At a stroke, all the systems that had been keeping the German economy going so miraculously throughout the war were removed. The efficient German welfare network collapsed. The ration cards issued by the Allies were worthless because there was no food in the shops – the food-distribution systems had disintegrated. The torturously slow German bureaucracy was replaced by an even slower and less well-organized Allied one. And in the administrative chaos that ensued, all those people who would once have been looked after by the state – not only the armies of orphans and homeless people, but now also concentration-camp victims and literally millions of refugees from the East – were effectively left to fend for themselves.

The next thing the occupying forces did was far more shameful. Partly to prevent the Germans rearming, but also to eliminate Germany as an economic rival, they began systematically to dismantle the country’s industrial infrastructure. Factories that had survived the war were now closed, or even dynamited. The docks in Hamburg were blown up, the warehouses emptied, the cranes dismantled and used for scrap. Even fishing vessels were scuttled, in case someone might try to convert them into minelayers – and this at a time when food was becoming desperately short. It can only have looked to the people as though the Allies were trying to carry on where the bombs had left off. In the words of Rudolf Petersen, Hamburg’s first Bürgermeisterafter the war, ‘The sea’s full of fish, but they want to starve us.’ ²²

In such conditions, the black-market flourished. Just as with other cities, the population of Hamburg had no option but to go ‘hamstering’ – that is, taking day-trips to the countryside to find food. Consequently, prices sky-rocketed. Hamburgers would barter anything for a few extra rations of meat or eggs: watches, jewellery, even their all-important winter clothes. There was soon a rather bleak saying doing the rounds in Hamburg: ‘All the farmers need now are Persian rugs for their pig-sties.’ ²³But the black-market was the only thing keeping many people alive. Official rations at the beginning of the winter provided people with only 1,550 calories per day – less than 60 per cent of the recommended amount needed to keep them healthy. In reality, most were receiving between 400 and 1,000 calories per day – a comparable amount to the inmates at Belsen. ²⁴Without the black-market to supplement their rations, the population of Hamburg faced famine.

In desperation, the people threatened riots over food, as they had done after the First World War. Martial law was declared in many parts of the country, and in Hesse the US military governor was forced to issue warnings that the death penalty would be invoked for anyone rioting over food shortages. ²⁵A curfew was strictly enforced to keep the streets clear after dark. There was a growing sense of irony that such draconian methods were being used by the very people who were supposed to have liberated Germany from a totalitarian regime. Throughout the country there were serious concerns that the youth were becoming embittered, even ‘renazified’, out of disillusionment.

Things began to improve in 1948, but in 1946 they looked impossibly bleak. There was widespread despair about what the future might bring, and the goodwill that many in Germany had felt for their liberators had vanished. In Victor Gollancz’s words – which were frequently echoed after the occupation of Iraq nearly sixty years later – the Allies might have won the war but they had ‘all but lost the peace’. ²⁶

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As if the situation was not bad enough, the winter that followed Gollancz’s visit to Germany turned out to be one of the worst on record. At the beginning of January 1947 the temperature plunged to a terrifying –28°C, and remained below –10°C for several weeks. It was so cold that the Alster lake froze solid – according to one British soldier, who was detailed to drill holes through it, the ice was three feet thick. ²⁷The surface of the Elbe froze too, and large ice floes appeared in the North Sea around the Elbe estuary, making it near-impossible for ships to enter. Such conditions would be dangerous at the best of times, but in the aftermath of war they were almost catastrophic. Even those people who had proper homes had no means of heating them. All domestic electricity was cut between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. in order to conserve power, and coal was in such short supply that goods trains from the Ruhr were routinely plundered by hordes of children trying to gather fuel. ²⁸

The temperature did not rise above zero until mid-March, more than three months after the cold snap began. For some people who lived through both events, the terrible winter was every bit as soul-destroying as the night of the firestorm – they were as powerless against the cold as they had been against the heat. Nobody knows how many perished that winter, but the number was certainly in the hundreds, and perhaps even higher. ²⁹

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For Hamburg, things did get better – eventually. Over the next ten years the bulk of the rubble was cleared away, and the huge holes blasted into the cityscape were gradually filled with new streets and buildings. Slowly, the city showed signs of returning prosperity. The shipbuilding industry re-established itself on the banks of the Elbe, and the port began to flourish once more. A new bridge was built across the Alster. In 1948 the Deutschmark was introduced as a stable currency, and a larger variety of goods at last appeared in the shops. By the beginning of the 1950s the city was free to concentrate once more on what it had always been good at – trade – and the only major battles it was forced to fight were those against the ever-fickle floodwaters of the Elbe. ³⁰

Over the coming decades, Hamburg would again become one of the richest cities in Europe. The port on the southern banks of the Elbe regained its status as one of the biggest in the world, and was soon the city’s principal employer. Trade worth billions of dollars every year now passes along the river. The city’s proud tradition as the media capital of Germany also re-established itself: national newspapers and magazines such as Die Welt, Die Zeit, Sternand Der Spiegelare based there, as are several television and radio stations, and literally thousands of advertising agencies, film studios, record labels and book publishers. ³¹Today it is impossible not to be impressed by the wealth, zeal and sheer industry of the place.

And yet, even now, one cannot visit the city without remembering what happened here. The bombsites and rubble have disappeared, but there are obvious gaps in the landscape where buildings once stood. Air-raid shelters still dot the city like a pox. The huge bunker on the Heiligengeistfeld, with its four vast flak towers, could not be demolished – it was designed to be indestructible – and it remains on the site to this day, an embarrassing, windowless eyesore. In the city centre stands the ruin of the Nikolaikirche, its Gothic spire pointing to the sky like an admonishing finger. There are memorials to the catastrophe in every quarter. In the east, in one of Hamburg’s busiest shopping areas, there is a sculpture of a terrified figure cowering in the corner of an air-raid shelter. ³²In the west, there is an ‘Anti-War Memorial’, deliberately placed next to the old Nazi monument that glorifies the patriotism of war. ³³And in the north, in Ohlsdorf cemetery, there is perhaps the best-known memorial to the countless victims of the firestorm: a sculpture of Charon ferrying souls across the river Styx to the underworld. It sits in the midpoint between the four mass graves where over thirty-six thousand bodies lie buried. ³⁴