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

More from The Hamburg Bunker

The Heiligengeistfeld Flakturm (All images author's photos)

Following the last edition of the blog which covered the Hamburg Air Raid Shelter Museum, this week's edition is mainly a pictorial effort in order to share some more photographs taken during my recent visit to the Hanseatic port on the River Elbe.

The first picture shows one of the remaining Flakturm or Flak Towers, of which numerous examples survive across Germany, mainly by dint of the their sound concrete construction. This particular tower is a Flakturm IV, dating from 1942 and can be found on the Heiligengeistfeld, adjacent to St Pauli FC's Millerntor Stadion. The concrete walls are 3.5 metres thick and were designed to be able to withstand anything that the RAF and USAAF had in their arsenal at the time. The RAF's 22,000 lb Grand Slam bomb, introduced in 1944, could undoubtedly have penetrated the bunkers but these bombs were never used in area bombing and instead were used on precision military targets such as railway viaducts and U-Boats pens; indeed Hamburg was the target for some of these massive bombs, when right at the end of the war, on 9th April 1945, they were used to successfully destroy the U-Boat Pens at the Blohm & Voss Shipyard.

The Light gun platform on the Flakturm

Going back to the Flakturm, they were designed to carry four heavy anti aircraft guns - usually 88mm or 128mm pieces on each corner, with smaller guns, usually 37mm or 20mm - on the surrounding gallery. Inside, each tower was designed as an air raid shelter, with space for upto 10,000 civilians in reasonable comfort, also including a hospital. During the Operation Gomorrah raids on Hamburg in the summer of 1943, space in these towers would have been much sought after. The similar towers in Berlin became extremely overcrowded during the final days of Nazi rule over that city in April and May 1945, when some 30,000 civilians crowded into each shelter as the Red Army encroached upon the city. Needless to say, with those number crammed into the towers, conditions rapidly deteriorated and soon the towers soon became scenes of unimaginable squalor.

Today, the Hamburg Flakturm sees a much more peaceful usage, being used as a nightclub, music school and a music store, as well as benignly overlooking the Hamburger Dom funfair three times a year as well as numerous exhibitions and circuses and the fortnightly football crowds visiting St Pauli FC's Millerntor Stadion. There is also a second Flakturm in Hamburg, on the southern side of the River Elbe, in the Wilhelmsburg district which I have yet to visit but will hopefully do so on my next trip to the city. Due to their immensely strong construction, these towers have often proved difficult to demolish; indeed, one local informed me that if explosives were used to destroy the Heiligengeistfeld tower, half of neighbouring St Pauli would be taken out with it!

The Baumwall Shelter

Nazi Eagle over entrance

The other bunker that I photographed in Hamburg was an example of a Rundturm or Round Tower, of which there are several surviving examples, usually located adjacent to a convenient S-Bahn station. The example shown here is located at Baumwall, close to the Landungsbrucken Station as well as the Baumwall U-Bahn Station. These shelters were somewhat more aesthetically pleasing to the eye, being brick clad and having a conical shape roof. This roof, despite it's pleasing shape, actually had a practical use, being reinforced to allow incendiary bombs to bounce off harmlessly onto the ground. Inside, these shelters were of smaller capacity than the Flakturm, being normally able to accommodate 600, although during the 1943 raids, no doubt a much larger number managed to squeeze inside. These towers were completed very quickly during the early months of 1940, but despite the rapidity of their construction, they proved very sturdy and in Hamburg alone, some twelve of these Rundturn survive to this day, their modern day usage varying from a Portuguese restaurant in the Baumwall shelter, to that of a bar and also for industrial storage. One detail that has survived almost intact on all of these shelters, is the large Nazi Eagle over the entrance. Almost intact except for one detail; the Swastika has been chiselled off or cemented over in every instance.

So, to return to the Air Raid Shelter Museum in Hamm. In the previous edition of this blog, we described the Museum in some detail as well as some background information concerning the Operation Gomorrah raids of July and August 1943 but space precluded the inclusion of all of my photographs, so in answer to various requests to see some more, here goes.

An Air-Raid Siren on display in the museum

Luftschutz helmets

Some of our group examining the artefacts on display

Warped bottle and head of British 4lb incendiary bomb

The first shot shows an air raid siren on display - obviously, in wartime, these were located all across the city in various locations, usually on top of public buildings where the sound could be easily projected across the city. The second shot shows steel helmets used by the Luftschutz - the German equivalent of the ARP or Civil Defence Wardens. Like their British equivalents, these wardens were largely volunteers and could be male or female. The next shot shows some of the members of our group examining some of the various artefacts on display within one of the shelter tunnels, whilst finally in this series of four images, we see another of the bottles discovered outside warped into an odd shape by the incredible temperatures generated in the firestorm of 27th July 1943, whilst alongside it we see the remnants of one of the approximately 350,000 British 4lb incendiary bombs dropped on Hamburg and which were largely responsible for the conflagration.

'Public Air Raid Shelter This Way'

Child's Gas Mask

No Smoking!

The next series of three photographs show a sign that would have been prominent across all towns and cities across Germany and basically is a direction sign that say 'For Public Air Raid Shelter' with a large arrow pointing in the direction of safety. Next we see an example of a child's gas mask. In the Second World War, both sides feared a repetition of the horror of the First World War's use of poison gas and equipped their civilian populations and armed forces with gas masks. Indeed both Allied and Axis powers did have stockpiles of Mustard Gas as well as other gasses but mercifully, neither side ever used them. Finally, in this series, we see a 'No Smoking' sign still extant on one of the tunnel walls.

Luftschutz members at work

Cutlery twisted by the Firestorm

Diagram of a British 500lb High Explosive Bomb

Our final set of three photos show female Luftschutz wardens disposing of British incendiary bombs in an article taken from a contemporary publication. The second image is another view of some cutlery twisted into fantastic shapes by the intense heat of the Firestorm - these items were found buried in the ground surrounding the bunker, whilst the final shot is a diagram of a British 500 lb High Explosive bomb, from one of which the large piece of shrapnel on display inside the museum is taken.

On my next visit to Hamburg, I will visit the Museum again in order to purchase some more archive images so as to produce some 'then and now' comparisons from the neighbourhood to show just how the area was altered almost beyond recognition by the Firestorm.

In the meantime, thanks again to Gunnar Wulf for guiding our group around this excellent museum and for ensuring that the people of Hamburg remain aware of this terrible page in their past history.

Published Sources:

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