A step back in time: The Hamburg Air Raid Shelter Museum

This article first appeared on the blog in February 2013 but to mark the 78th anniversary of the beginning of the "Gomorrah" raids, we have slightly updated the piece slightly to present it to you once again.

I first visited Hamburg's only Air Raid Shelter Museum in February 2013 and have returned twice since to this fascinating but still relatively little-known museum located in the eastern inner suburbs of Germany's second largest city.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the war will be aware that between 24th July and 2nd August 1943, Hamburg was laid waste by a series of  RAF and smaller USAAF air raids with the macabre codename Operation Gomorrah, that peaked, if that is the correct word, on 27th July with a vast firestorm that devastated the districts of Hamm, Hammerbrook and Borgfelde causing casualty figures that are difficult to comprehend even today and which left a generation of survivors scarred with mental images of the hellish scenes that they had witnessed. 

We have already covered the raid in the February 2011 edition of this blog but before one of my regular visits to Hamburg, I learned of the Air Raid Shelter Museum located on the Wichernsweg in the Hamm district, one of the hardest hit areas of the 1943 raids. The opportunity to visit such an important piece of wartime history was too good to miss and after a brief exchange of emails, a guided tour was arranged for myself and the group of friends who were visiting with me.

The steps to safety (author's photo)

We arrived at the entrance to the Shelter promptly at 11:00 and were greeted by Gunnar Wulf, our friendly and knowledgeable guide for the tour. A brisk descent down in excess of twenty steps took us out of the chilly Hamburg weather down into a subterranean world, which in the summer of 1943 would have represented the best hope of surviving the horrors about to rain down on the city. The shelter was built between April 1940 and April 1941 as part of a country wide scheme of shelter construction in anticipation of British air raids following the outbreak of war in September 1939. The shelter was built approximately five metres underground from reinforced concrete with walls one metre thick. This substantial construction provided protection from everything except a direct hit. 

At the bottom of the stairs, we entered a chamber, which during the war would have acted as a gas-proofed airlock area, from which we saw four parallel tunnel like chambers, which formed the actual shelter part of the bunker. Each tunnel is 17 metres long and has a headroom of 2.25 metres, which allows even the tallest amongst us to stand upright, which as Gunnar explained later was very important in 1943. Each chamber had bench type seating for 50 people as well as shelves for personal belongings. Each tunnel is interlinked with a small passageway into the adjoining chamber as well as being served by an emergency exit at the opposite end to the main stairs so as to allow speedy evacuation in case of a bomb breaching the shelter or blocking the entrance.

The Gas-tight entrance or Gasschleuse (author's photo)

We were then led into one of the tunnel-like chambers, now in use as a small lecture theatre where after sitting down, Gunnar formally greeted us and introduced us to Timothy Hulme, a post-graduate military history student from Wales who had been enlisted to assist with translating any technical terms. The introduction started by explaining the different types of shelter used in Germany during the wartime years. In Hamburg, there were two types of above ground shelter as well as the underground type that we were visiting. The above ground shelters consisted of the brick clad shelters, looking rather like overgrown pepperpots, which were often located close to main railway stations and of which several still survive in Hamburg. The other type of above ground shelter were the Flakturm or Flak Towers, which doubled as anti-aircraft gun emplacements and fortresses as well as shelters. These huge reinforced concrete structures have often proved impossible to destroy and one of these towers survives in the St Pauli area of the city, close to the Millerntor Stadion, home of St Pauli FC.

This is Wichernsweg in 1940 - the shelter entrance was to the left of the church (Stadtteilarchiv Hamm)

Going back to 'our' shelter, we then moved to an explanation as to who was allowed to use the shelter and Gunnar described how local residents were registered with the Shelter Warden as being permitted to use this particular shelter. Residents were expected to make their whereabouts known and if a person was travelling and unable to use a shelter for a particular length of time, he or she was under instructions to inform the Warden of their non-attendance; failure to do this and not to attend for three consecutive nights, meant that permission to use a particular shelter could be withdrawn. Most of the shelter residents were the very young and the elderly; the majority of the younger men were in the armed forces and many of the younger women by 1943, were involved in some form of war work. The unpalatable truth concerning the fate of Jewish would-be shelterers was also touched upon and Gunnar explained that the Nazis simply would not permit people of that faith to use the public shelters. Jews who by 1943 had not been shipped off to one of the death camps were expected to remain in their homes, not to take shelter and basically take their chances. The Allied bombers could do the Nazis' job for them without the expense of shipping these people away.

Elderly male shelterers pass the time with a card game (Stadtteilarchiv Hamm)

We then moved to what for me was the most striking part of the entire tour. We were played a recording, some of which was taken during an actual raid. For this recording, the lighting in the shelter was extinguished and we listened in complete darkness, in much the same way as if a nearby bomb falling had extinguished the lighting, as happened frequently. The recording started with a radio broadcast; the ticking metronome sound being interrupted by a voice telling us that enemy raiders were approaching and instructing the listeners to take shelter, followed by the haunting sound of the air raid sirens. We then heard the sound of approaching bombers and the steady drone of the engines of 800 plus Lancasters and Halifaxes. Up until now, I have always considered the noise of the Merlin engine to be a friendly, reassuring sound but sitting in the total darkness waiting for the bombs to start falling, even in a simulation like this, it was anything but friendly and oozed menace. Next we heard the sound of bombs falling, including one or two that must have been very close to the person making the original recording and finally we heard the somewhat distressing sound of people screaming and crying; quite possibly the sound of people being killed.

At this point, the recording finished, the lights were raised and we moved to the next stage of our tour. On the way out of this chamber, we examined the many photographs, taken unofficially at the time of various groups of shelterers; many were elderly and they made poignant viewing of people playing cards, knitting, chatting or just trying to get some sleep. These were ordinary people and looked no different to their counterparts in London, Coventry or any other city under fire.

The Shelter Wardens' Area (author's photograph)

In the next chamber, we visited the area which would have been used by the Shelter Warden and saw some artefacts from the shelter's wartime past, including a noticeboard, a shelter telephone and an air raid siren, which obviously was not originally located in the shelter but was there for display purposes. We were also showed the location of the emergency exit at the other end of the tunnel, which could be reached from the other three by means of connecting passageways between the four chambers. Also included in this area were a series of photographs from the Holborn area of London following damage inflicted by the Luftwaffe in the Blitz of 1940-41, as well as several personal accounts of Londoners during this time. Gunnar explained that he always went to great lengths to explain to visiting school groups that London was bombed first, in 1940 and that what subsequently happened to Hamburg and other German cities was a direct result of this. He also mentioned that he frequently showed school groups the Holborn photographs without captions and that the children often confuse them with photos of Hamburg. As Gunnar pointed out, one bombed city looks much like another.

Re-creation of how shelterers' luggage was stored (author's photo)

We then moved into the third chamber, the layout of which has been recreated as the shelter would originally have been in 1943. This included bench type seating on one side, with wooden luggage racks on the opposite side. Today, these racks were filled with suitcases and luggage of the period, including some donated by Gunnar's Mother. He explained that each shelterer was issued with a list of what they should bring with them. This included a change of clothing, washing things, knives and forks - basically what one would take on an overnight stay or a short camping trip. This part of the shelter also contained the toilet - a dry chemical type - and the First Aid area, which contained the only beds to be found - a bunk bed arrangement for anyone who was taken ill during the night, or who was unable to sit or stand. We also saw the air filter, designed to provide a source of 'fresh' air into the shelter and which in theory could help filter out poison gas. The outside chamber leading into the main entrance stairs was also used as a Gasschleuse or airlock, where poison gas, being heavier than air would roll down the stairs and dissipate on the floor, with the main shelter chambers being sealed by large blast and gas proof steel doors. Mercifully, neither side used poison gas during the Second World War, so this was never put to the test. However, the filter could not keep out smoke and during the raids of 1943, when fires were burning out of control up on the surface, the filter had to be switched off in the hope that the shelterers would have enough air to see the raid out.

The Air Filter with the only two bunk beds visible in the background and the toilet behind them. The emergency exit is at the far end of this area (author's photo)

Gunnar described how, although the shelter was designed for 200 people, during the great raids of 1943 anyone and everyone was allowed in. He related one story told to him by a shelterer of the time that during the firestorm raid of 27th July 1943, so many people were crammed into the shelter that it was impossible to move from one end of the tunnel to the other and consequently toilet visits were impossible. Combined with being in near darkness, the sound of bombs falling and the air fetid with smoke and unwashed bodies, the conditions do not bear thinking about. Despite this, everyone who sheltered here during the raids of 1943 survived to tell the tale; many others elsewhere were not so lucky. 

Bottles twisted into fantastic shapes by the intense heat of the Firestorm (author's photo)

This room also contained many other artefacts of the wartime years, including a misshapen bottle found buried outside the shelter. The bottle was intact but had assumed a very peculiar shape. Hamm was in the centre of the firestorm and this bottle had been partially melted and it was explained to us that the temperature required to achieve this was between 800 - 1200 degrees Celsius. Obviously people could not survive outside in these conditions and eye witness accounts tell us of people seeing what they thought were 'tailors dummies' lying around on the streets, including the nearby main thoroughfare, the Hammer Landstrasse. These 'tailors dummies' were human bodies, charred often beyond recognition. Usually though, there was even less left to find - the official death toll is usually shown in the region of 42,000 to 45,000 but the true human cost of these terrible nights will probably never be known.

Knives and Forks suffered the same fate in the heat (author's photo)

For the final part of our tour, Gunnar took us to a part of the bunker that is not usually open to the public but which is used for storing artefacts not normally on display. These included more partially melted bottles which had assumed crazy shapes, knives and forks also twisted in the firestorm as well as many items of wartime ephemera unearthed from the ground around the area. In the main entrance hall as we gathered to leave the shelter was a large piece of shrapnel from a British 500 lb bomb, also discovered close by.

A large piece of shrapnel from a British bomb (author's photo)

After bidding our farewells, it was a somewhat more reflective group which climbed the stairs back to the surface and as we crossed the Hammer Landstrasse on our way back to the U-Bahn Station, it was hard to imagine that this was the same road, that almost seventy years ago was strewn with 'tailors dummies' and a scene of unimaginable hell on Earth.

Thanks are again due to Gunnar and Timothy for guiding us so expertly around the shelter and for making us so welcome. A short article of this nature cannot possibly compare with making a personal visit and if visiting the city of Hamburg, this is to be recommended. The museum is open to the public on Thursdays but private visits for groups of upto thirty in number can be arranged by prior appointment and this can be arranged via the museum's website.

Finally, apart from the February 2011 blog post linked earlier, for further in depth reading of the 'Operation Gomorrah' raids, I can thoroughly recommend 'Inferno - The Devastation of Hamburg 1943' by Keith Lowe, published in 2007 by Penguin Viking, which is a superbly written study of the raids dealing with the background, the planning, the raids themselves both from the viewpoint of the airmen and those on the ground and also dealing with the aftermath.

Lest we forget.

Published Sources:

Bomber Boys: Fighting Back 1940-1945 - Patrick Bishop, HarperPress 2007

Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 - Keith Lowe, Penguin Viking 2007

Weblink:

Hamburg Air Raid Shelter Museum website

Splinters, Shrapnel and London's 'Honourable Scars'

Steve pointing out the splinter damage on General Wolfe's statue (Sam Dorrington, Surrey Photographer)

For clients taking one of my Blitz walks, the enjoyment and interest comes in many forms. For some, it is the aspect of walking the ground and imagining just what it was like to be in London, or any other town or city when the bombs were falling, whilst for others, it is the wonderment of seeing the 'then and now' perspectives to be gained by comparing the present day view with that of some seventy years ago. One aspect that does seem universally popular however, is when at various points along a given route, the 'props' appear. These period artefacts really help to bring the walks alive and the fact that people can touch and feel something from the period helps them to better understand the subject matter being discussed at that particular 'stand' on the walk.

One set of 'props' in particular always arouse a particular fascination - this is the shrapnel fragments. The fascination is always a mixture of interest in finally handling the stuff that is so often mentioned in personal accounts, in documentaries and books as well as an appalled understanding as to what this stuff that can easily scar solid masonry could actually do to the human body.

With the final bomb sites in London and elsewhere finally now built upon, the splinter and shrapnel scars left on many buildings are perhaps the remaining most tangible reminder of the daily ordeal that London and Londoners, as well as many other towns and cities endured eighty years ago and sometimes from the First World War too.

The author's shrapnel fragments from a British anti-aircraft shell (Author's photo)

Before going any further, perhaps we should examine the derivation of the word 'shrapnel' and how it has passed into everyday usage.

In 1784, Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel, of the Royal Artillery, perfected what he called "spherical case" ammunition, which was basically a hollow cannon ball, filled with musket balls which was designed to explode in mid-air over concentrations of enemy soldiers. This first anti-personnel weapon was demonstrated in 1787 at Gibraltar and was adopted by the British Army. By 1803, they had evolved into an elongated shell that was christened as the "Shrapnel Shell" and continued to be manufactured with little basic change, until the end of the Great War. The name stuck and by the Second World War, Henry Shrapnel's surname had become the generic description for any bomb or shell fragments.

This writer is lucky enough to possess several such fragments, all of which were discovered on the Thames foreshore in Greenwich by the excellent Nicola White of Tide Line Art and which are invaluable 'props' to my walks.

These pieces take many forms; first we have the shell fragments, which in this case come from the driving bands of British 3.7" anti-aircraft shells. Modern gun barrels are "rifled" with helical grooves that are machined on the interior bore of the gun barrel and at the base of a shell is a brass or copper alloy band with corresponding grooves that engage with those inside the gun barrel, thus causing the shell to rotate upon firing.

People sometimes overlook the fact that apart from the fragments from German bombs, there was a spirited anti-aircraft barrage emanating from London's defences and whilst in 1940, it has to be said that this fire was largely ineffectual, it did help boost the morale of the beleaguered Londoners, who felt that there was at least some opposition being generated to the unseen night time raiders. Of course, the theory of "What goes up, must come down" applied and as well as being peppered with bomb splinters, those who had reason to be out on the streets during a raid had to contend with this added British generated hazard.

Spent British 0.303" bullets (Author's photo)

Another similar item in my possession is a collection of spent bullets. In 1940, the Battle of Britain was raging overhead and some of the Luftwaffe's early daylight raids over London were fiercely contested by the RAF's Hurricanes and Spitfires. Many of the dogfights took place over London itself and whilst most civilians wisely took cover, there were many who watched these deadly duels taking place over their own homes and workplaces. The daylight battle over London culminated on September 15th with the Luftwaffe suffering heavy losses. At the time, the Air Ministry claimed that 185 German aircraft (of 201 bombers and approximately 530 fighters deployed) had been destroyed. The actual figure was 56 destroyed but still represented a major defeat for the Luftwaffe. Combined with earlier heavy losses, the German high command decided to switch their attacks on London and other British cities to night-time area bombing methods.

The bullets that I have are from British 0.303" calibre Browning machine guns, which were the standard armament of the Hurricane and the Spitfire, the versions of these iconic fighters in use during the Battle of Britain each being equipped with eight of these weapons. Nicola also kindly (and unwittingly) gave me two live rounds, which were promptly and safely disposed of!

Neil Bright's bomb splinter (Author's photo)

Then of course, we have the pieces that come from German bombs, more correctly described as splinters rather than shrapnel. Neil Bright, formerly of this parish, is the owner of a fearsome fragment from a German bomb, which is roughly the size of the palm of my hand. The prospect of a fragment of this size striking a person simply does not bear thinking about. There are many similar pieces on display in museums, at home and abroad. The church of St Edmund, King & Martyr is perhaps unique in containing splinters from a bomb that was actually dropped on the building by a German Gotha aircraft in 1917 and which fell through the roof. Not only are pieces of the bomb still on display inside the church but the entry point was converted into a window, located in the roof!

Bomb fragments at St Edmund, King & Martyr Church in the City of London (author's photo)

The entry point of the bomb at St Edmund, King & Martyr (author's photo)

The museum at the Royal Hospital Chelsea goes one better by having a complete bomb on display, in this case a 250 kg HE bomb which was one of three that fell in the grounds of the Infirmary on 16 October 1940, all of which failed to explode.

Unexploded 250 kg bomb on display at Royal Hospital, Chelsea (author's photo)

In Hamburg, two museums in that city display bomb splinters of impressive proportions; the Bunker Museum at Hamm has a substantial fragment of a British 250 lb bomb found in the immediate area when clearing the ground prior to the opening of the museum. The thought of this scything through the air is truly frightening. The museum in the crypt of the Nikolai Kirche also has some large splinters on display, as well as some complete bombs, again of the unexploded variety.

British 250 lb bomb fragment at Hamburg Bunker Museum (author's photo)

Bomb fragments at the Mahnmal St Nikolai, Hamburg (author's photo)

Unexploded RAF 250 lb bomb at the Mahnmal St Nikolai (author's photo)

Today, many buildings in London still display the "Honourable Scars" of their Wartime past, amongst them General Wolfe's statue in Greenwich Park, St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London, St Clement Danes Church in The Strand, Lord Clyde's statue in Waterloo Place as well as Edward VII's equestrian statue in the same location. Other buildings still bearing their scars are St Paul's Cathedral and the Victoria & Albert Museum, whose pockmarks are accompanied by a helpful plaque, which explains what these marks are and why they remain unrepaired. The Guards' Memorial also proudly displays splinter damage as do humbler structures such as the abutments of a railway bridge across Blackfriars Road and buildings in London Street, near Paddington Station.

Wartime scars on St Clement Danes Church (Author's photo)

Damage to the base of Lord Clyde's statue in Waterloo Place (author's photo)

All of these, as well as others serve to remind present day civilians here in London and elsewhere what our forebears had to endure during the dark days of the Second World War.



Printed Sources:

Battle of Britain Day: 15 September 1940 - Dr Alfred Price, Sidgwick & Jackson 1990
The Narrow Margin - Derek Wood with Derek Dempster - Tri Service Press 1990

A visit to Hamburg

The Hasselbrook shelter rises from the trees (author's photo)

As regular readers of this blog will know by now, I've been visiting the city of Hamburg on a fairly regular basis since the late 1980s and over that period of time have come to know and love the city as well as building a great liking and respect for the people of that great Hanseatic port on the River Elbe.

On my most recent visit to the city, I had a little more free time than usual and so took a day to seek out and photograph some of the surviving relics of the Second World War, mainly but not exclusively in the shape of air raid shelters.

I wrote about one of the surviving shelters in February 2013 when I was lucky enough to visit the Shelter Museum at Hamm and would highly recommend a visit to anyone who has the chance to do so. This type of shelter is the conventional (to the British at least) underground type and is known in German as a Rohrenbunker or literally Tube Bunker, consisting as it does of four parallel tubes, linked by a connecting passageway and each, in theory, capable of housing fifty people, although in practice, considerable more than this number were crammed in each night of the 'Gomorrah' raids of July and August 1943. 

A view along one of the tube shaped bunkers at the Hamm Shelter (author's photo)

Unlike the British, who began their Civil Defence preparations in 1938, albeit on an inadequate scale, Germany did not seriously start thinking about arrangements to protect civilians from air attack until after the Blitz on British cities in 1940-41, at which point it began to dawn on the authorities that German cities were highly vulnerable to air attack and that Reichsmarschal Goring's words, uttered in 1939, that "No enemy aircraft shall fly over Reich territory" rang somewhat hollow. Construction of the Rohrenbunker was achieved in 1940 and many of these structures were built across Hamburg and other German cities. Most of these are now derelict and in many cases have filled with water but the one in Hamm was restored by a dedicated team of volunteers and is well worth a visit.

Many of the German shelters took the form of above ground bunkers, extremely sturdy structures built of brick and concrete, of which large numbers still survive. These were known as Rundturm, literally Round Towers and were quite elegant looking buildings in their own way, built of concrete clad in brick with conical roofs designed to deflect incendiary bombs. These were typically built at or near public transport hubs, such as S-Bahn or U-Bahn stations and because of their stout construction, many survive to this day, sometimes derelict but more often than not, in use for more peaceful purposes.

Baumwall Shelter - now in use as a Portuguese Restaurant (author's photo)

The shelter pictured above is conveniently located adjacent to Baumwall U-Bahn Station as well as being withing easy walking (or running) distance of Landungsbrucken on the S-Bahn and today serves as a Portuguese restaurant, although I have yet to sample their wares. The building was built in 1940 and like all of the Rundturm, was built with a nominal capacity of 600, although during the great raids of 1943, would have undoubtedly held many more than this. It also has the remnants of a Nazi eagle or Reichsadler embossed above the main entrance, although as the Swastika understandably remains an illegal symbol in modern Germany, this has been removed and replaced by a blank panel.

The Nazi eagle above the Baumwall shelter - minus Swastika (author's photo)

I paid a visit to a few more of these shelters which remain dotted across the city and two of the more interesting examples can be seen below. The first, immediately adjacent to Sternschanze S-Bahn Station, has been attacked over the years by graffiti vandals. This does seem to be a serious problem in Hamburg and hasn't been tackled with as much vigour as in London but on this occasion and for this structure, the graffiti has softened the warlike appearance of the structure, although as it is still partially in use by a local football club, the occupants may take a different view!

Sternschanze shelter (author's photo)

There is no graffiti on the Hasselbrook shelter, which once again is located adjacent to the S-Bahn Station but like the Baumwall example mentioned earlier, this tower has a Nazi eagle above one of the entrances, albeit of a simpler, perhaps more stylized design. Of course, the swastika has been removed and in this instance, has been replaced by a simple panel showing the year of construction, in this case 1941. The other entrance is adorned by a representation of the City of Hamburg coat of arms.

The Nazi eagle and year of construction at Hasselbrook shelter (author's photo)

 

Hamburg coat of arms at Hasselbrook shelter (author's photo)

There are other similar examples of this type of shelter at Berliner Tor, Barmbek (which has a 1939 date embossed above the door) and Billhornerbrucke Strasse (dated 1940) all of which seem to be in varying uses today. There are other shelters surviving which I will try to visit and photograph on my next visit. 

The final type of shelter still very much extant in Hamburg, as well as other German cities, is the Flakturm or Flak Tower. These massive structures doubled up as shelters and defensive positions, armed (as the name suggests) with heavy anti-aircraft, or flak guns. There are two of these to be seen in Hamburg, one at Heiligengeistfeld, close to FC St Pauli's Millerntor Stadion, which is now in use as a nightclub and music school.

Heiligengeistfeld Flakturm (author's photo)

These vast structures had concrete walls in the region of 3.5 metres thickness and contained air raid shelters with accommodation for a staggering 10,000 persons, gas proof rooms (the fear of poison gas attack dominated thoughts on both sides), hospital facilities and were surmounted by gun emplacements for heavy 128mm anti-aircraft guns, as well as lighter 37mm and 20mm cannon, although these latter would have been next to useless against the high-flying British and American bombers. The second Flak Tower in Hamburg is located south of the River Elbe, at Wilhelmsburg and has been converted into a most interesting peacetime use, being today known as the Energiebunker, a renewable energy power station which supplies power to the local power grid as well as providing an exhibition space, cafe and spectacular views across the city.

The Energiebunker (iba-hamburg.de)

There are many more relics to be seen in Hamburg but alas, time ran out for me on this visit as I had to meet some friends for lunch before leaving for the airport for my return flight to London. My next visit won't be too far delayed and hopefully, I will get the chance to visit and photograph some more Hamburg history.

All photos used in this article are © Steve Hunnisett, with the exception of the Energiebunker photo which is duly credited.