After The Battle 148 - Wilhelmshaven

WILHELMSHAVEN THE LIVERPOOL BLITZ BANNER OF VICTORY OVER THE REICHSTAG

4 8

9

770306

154103

£4.25

Number 148

NUMBER 148 © Copyright After the Battle 2010 Editor: Karel Margry Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey Published by Battle of Britain International Ltd., The Mews, Hobbs Cross House, Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow, Essex CM17 0NN, England Telephone: 01279 41 8833 Fax: 01279 41 9386 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.afterthebattle.com Printed in Great Britain by Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH. After the Battle is published on the 15th of February, May, August and November. LONDON STOCKIST for the After the Battle range: Motorbooks, 13/15 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4AN Telephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539 United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution: Warners Group Publications PLC, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues: Renniks Publications Pty Limited Unit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019 Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355 E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.renniks.com Canadian Distribution and Subscriptions: Vanwell Publishing Ltd., PO Box 2131, 1 Northrup Crescent, St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 7S2 Telephone: (905) 937 3100. Fax: (905) 937 1760 Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136 E-mail: [email protected] New Zealand Distribution: Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, PO Box 24486, Royal Oak, Auckland 1345, New Zealand Telephone: 021 627 870. Fax: 9-6252817 E-mail: [email protected] United States Distribution and Subscriptions: RZM Imports Inc, 880 Canal St., Stamford, CT 06902 Telephone: 1-203-324-5100. Fax: 1-203-324-5106 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.rzm.com Italian Distribution: Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 Parma Telephone: ++390521 29 27 33. Fax: ++390521 29 03 87 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.tuttostoria.it Dutch Language Edition: SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 188, 6860 AD Oosterbeek Telephone: 026-4462834. E-mail: [email protected]

CONTENTS WILHELMSHAVEN UNITED KINGDOM The Liverpool Blitz IT HAPPENED HERE Banner of Victory over the Reichstag

SENGWARDEN

2 42

JEVER

48

Front Cover: One of the most famous ships constructed at Wilhelmshaven was the battleship Tirpitz. She was launched on Saturday, April 1, 1939 and destroyed by the RAF using 12,000lb Tallboy bombs on November 12, 1944. When she was scrapped in 1948, this 15cm gun, one of her secondary armaments, was salvaged and set up at Wilhelmshaven. (Karel Margry) Centre Pages: After the war the Royal Navy drew up several alternative plans to destroy the Kriegsmarine facilities at Wilhelmshaven. Plan No. 15 envisaged four large dams to close off basins and the sinking of blockships at locks and other places, but it was rejected because of the expense of dike building. Back Cover: The Soviet War Memorial in Berlin photographed in March 2010. (Gail Parker) Acknowledgements: For their invaluable help with the Wilhelmshaven story, the Editor would like to thank city Director of Culture Dr Jens Graul for arranging all the access permits; Markus Titsch for his expert guidance and free use of his extensive photo collection, and Herr Krüger of the Marinearsenal. He also thanks Maurice Laarman and Hans Houterman. Photo Credits: BA — Bundesarchiv; IWM — Imperial War Museum; NAC — National Archives of Canada; NIOD — Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam; USNA — US National Archives.

2

HORUMERSIEL

Wilhelmshaven is situated 24 miles up the Jade river on the wide North Sea inlet of Jade-Busen. When drawing his designs for the new port in the 1850s, Hafenbaudirektor (chief of port construction) Wilhelm Göker had followed local dialect and spelt Wilhelmshaven with a Lower German ‘v’ instead of with the High German ‘f’. However, Berlin bureaucrats, thinking that this was an error, subsequently changed the ‘v’ to ‘f’. When Göker discovered this on the day King Wilhelm I officially opened the new port, he immediately informed General Albert von Roon, the Minister of War, who referred the matter to the King. Wilhelm I confirmed the ‘v’, saying: ‘Indeed, that’s how I pronounced it, dear Roon’. Subsequent new ports such as Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven followed the precedent. We have marked some of the other towns that feature in our story.

Wilhelmshaven, the German port city on the North Sea, was created by Prussia in the 19th century with the express purpose of becoming the principal base and shipbuilding facility of the new Prussian/German Navy. Officially opened in 1869 and already enlarged in the run-up to the First World War, it was again greatly Wilhelmshaven is a German coastal town on the North Sea, about midway between Hamburg and the Dutch border. Situated some 35 kilometres up the Jade river on the wide inlet of the Jade-Busen bay, it was created in the 19th century for the sole purpose of serving as a principal dockyard and base for the German Navy, and served in this capacity during two world wars. It was Prussian Prince Adalbert who selected Wilhelmshaven as a site for a naval base. He had been appointed leader of the federal technical commission to identify the best way of countering naval threats from Denmark against the north German coasts. In 1848 he wrote a Denkschrift über die Bildung einer deutschen Flotte (Memorandum on the Formation of a German Fleet) in which he identified a three-stage approach to building a navy; he proposed firstly a coastal defence force which would prevent blockade and invasion; this would later develop an offensive capability to protect trade; and finally there would be a navy that could apply force at a distance in support of foreign policy. Following on from this, in 1849 he recommended the construction of two bases on the Baltic and North Sea coasts linked by a canal. The former would become Kiel (the site for it was acquired from Austria in 1865), the latter would become Wilhelmshaven. In 1853 Prussia secretly bought the village of Heppens on the mouth of the Jade river and adjoining lands from the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. Construction started in 1854 of a fortified shipyard two kilometres from tidewater and accessed through a ship canal and lock gates protected by fortified batteries. Construction by shovel and wheelbarrow was performed by an army of labourers who suffered severely from ice, floods, malaria and a shortage of drinking water. The facility that became operational in 1870 consisted of a shipyard with two slipways and three docks alongside a 400-metre square harbour (Bau-Hafen), a harbour canal (HafenKanal) and a ten-metre-wide entrance through a lock built on land reclaimed from the sea. Workshops, forges and general metalworking facilities were constructed with engineers recruited from Saxony and the Ruhr industrial area. Prussia had no shipbuilding tradition of its own, but copied and improved on the tech-

extended during the Nazi era to become the largest state-owned naval dockyard in the world, Hitler labelling it the ‘Kriegshafen des Grossdeutschen Reiches’ (War Port of the Greater German Reich). This artist’s impression shows Wilhelmshaven with its three entrance locks as it looked after the First World War.

WILHELMSHAVEN nology of the world-leader Britain, installing it in modern, purpose-built, state-of-the-art and state-owned facilities in Wilhelmshaven, Kiel and Danzig. (The Germany Navy were also able to place orders in the private yards of Blohm & Voss at Hamburg, AG Vulkan/Weser at Bremen and Schichau at Elbing.) Large areas for anchoring — known as the Wilhelmshaven Roads and the Schillig Roads — were available in the Jade estuary. The new naval base (town and harbour) was officially opened by King Wilhelm I on June 17, 1869, and the name of the town changed from Heppens to Wilhelmshaven. The Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard) opened in 1871 after Wilhelm I had become Kaiser. The first ship to be constructed from the keel up in the new dockyard was the 6,700-ton Grosser Kurfürst, begun that year. Emphasis soon shifted towards building a defensive coastal battle fleet, confirmed by a law of 1873. The shipyard and harbour were extended with an Ausrüstungs-Hafen (fitting-out harbour) and Neuer Hafen (later during the Third Reich called the Torpedoboots-Hafen); the Ems-Jade Canal built to ensure secure barge access from the Ruhr industrial area, and a second entrance, 24 metres wide and 114 metres long, opened in 1886. (Although the second to be constructed, it was named Entrance I, the original, smaller lock becoming Entrance II.) The two new naval bases — Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea and Kiel on the Baltic — had initially been linked by the narrow Eider Canal for mutual support and combined operations. As ships grew larger a new Kiel Canal was begun in 1887 and completed in 1895. The fleet laws of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, passed in 1898 and 1900, challenged British supremacy in the North Sea and required further expansion of shipbuilding capacity and harbour facilities. A Third Entrance, 40 metres wide and 250 metres

By Tony Colvin long, later called the Tirpitz-Schleuse, was begun in 1900 and finished in 1909, while a Betriebs-Hafen (commercial harbour, later called the Nord-Hafen) and three new harbours — the Grosser Hafen (later HipperHafen), Zwischen-Hafen (Scheer-Hafen) and West-Hafen (Tirpitz-Hafen) — were excavated along the south end of the town. Docks Nos. 4 to 6 were constructed in the North Quay and a 40,000-ton floating dock built. In 1907, harbour expansion required the new Kaiser Wilhelm Swing Bridge which came to symbolise Wilhelmshaven. During the First World War, Wilhelmshaven played a major role both as dockyard and naval base. Main projects carried out by the Kaiserliche Werft included the completion of the heavy cruiser Hindenburg, launched in 1915 and commissioned in 1917, and the conversion of seven blockade-breaking merchant submarines into Imperial Navy U-boat cruisers in 1917. The workforce employed in the dockyard grew from 11,500 in 1914 to 21,000 in 1918. Throughout the war, the Hochseeflotte (High Seas Fleet) — a large force of 99 ships under Admiral Reinhard Scheer — was based in Wilhelmshaven. From there they sailed to the war’s big sea battles at Heligoland in August 1914, Dogger Bank in January 1915 and Jutland (Skagerrak) in May 1916. In 1913 a cabinet decision of Kaiser Wilhelm II established a seaplane base in Wilhelmshaven. As a result, in 1914 the 2. Seeflieger-Abteilung built a Seeflug-Station Nordsee (Naval Aviation Station North Sea) on the south side of the Grosser Hafen on what became Wilhelmshaven’s ‘Fliegerdeich’ (airmen’s dike). During the war it became one of the largest seaplane facilities complete with hangars, cranes, an apron for aircraft and associated buildings. Seaplanes were built here by the Kaiserliche Werft. 3

sold, treated as icons and achieved the purpose of persuading religious Germans that the Führer was a god-fearing person. Centre and right: The church and its portal survive unchanged. As the nearby Christus-Kirche was destroyed during the war and not rebuilt, so the surviving Marinegedächtnis-Kirche, no longer with a garrison to serve, became the parish church and was renamed the Christus-Kirche. With the founding of the Bundesmarine in 1955, the church became the Christus- und Garnison-Kirche in 1959.

Scheer in 1931 and Admiral Graf Spee in 1932. However, attempts to establish Wilhelmshaven as a fishing port and seaside resort failed and unemployment in the area remained high. The Nazis had strong support in Oldenburg and during the 1931 and 1932 elections Hitler campaigned actively in the Wilhelmshaven area, on each occasion setting up his headquarters in the Strand-Hotel Zur Schönen Aussicht in Horumersiel-Schillig, one of the most popular holiday resorts in Germany, 24 kilometres north of Wilhelmshaven in Friesian Wangerland. The 1931 campaign began with 1,500 SA men marching in Wilhelmshaven on April 29. This was followed on May 5 by a packed rally in Wilhelmshaven’s Zentralhalle addressed by Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, the Kaiser’s fourth son who had joined the Nazis in 1930 and raised their social profile. Hitler himself was in the area

from May 11 to 13, speaking at a rally in Jever on May 12. During the June 1932 provincial elections, having lost the presidential election to Hindenburg on April 10, Hitler set up base in Horumersiel for a week, from May 21 to 27, going off to speak in six places; Oldenburg, Wilhelmshaven, Rodenkirchen, Delmenhorst, Cloppenburg, and Bad Zwischenahn. His work bore fruit when the Nazi candidate, Carl Röver, was voted Minister-President of Free State Oldenburg on June 16. Oldenburg was one of five Länder where the Nazis were elected (the others were Anhalt, Brunswick, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Thuringia). In Wilhelmshaven the NSDAP received 40.4 per cent of the votes while the Social Democrats polled only 24.4 per cent. However, in larger Rüstringen (where most of the dockworkers lived) the Nazis polled only 26.4 per cent against the Social Democrats 47.2 per cent.

ATB

TITSCH

In November 1918, a mutiny began on ships of the fleet anchored in the Jade and Schillig Roads and spread into the town where dock workers seized power over the naval base and proclaimed Wilhelmshaven and the surrounding area a Socialist Republic. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg abdicated and the Free State of Oldenburg was declared. The subsequent elections led to a Communist coup in January 1919, which was suppressed with force by regular troops of the naval garrison. The post-war years were difficult times for Wilhelmshaven. Building of trawlers and passenger steamers kept the dockyard facilities — now re-named Reichsmarine-Werft (State Naval Dockyard) — operating until the first cruiser ordered by the Weimar Republic government, Emden, was laid down in December 1921. Orders followed for torpedo boats; another cruiser, Königsberg, in 1925, and the pocket battleships Admiral

ATB

ATB

Left: Hitler leaving Wilhelmshaven’s Marinegedächtnis-Kirche (Naval Memorial Church) in May 1931 at the time of the national elections. Built in 1869-72 and originally named the Elisabeth-Kirche, the church was developed into (although never officially named) a Naval Memorial Church in 1918 in memory of the many losses suffered by the Kaiserliche Marine in the First World War. This picture by Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer, of a humble Hitler crowned by a crucifix became a true vote-catcher. Thousands of copies were

The Strand-Hotel Zür Schönen Aussicht in Horumersiel, the holiday resort 24 kilometres north of Wilhelmshaven (see the map on page 2), was Hitler’s regional campaign headquarters during the 1931 and 1932 elections. Hitler set up base here in May 1931, in May 1932 and again for one night in October of that year. Here a large crowd greets Hitler during his last, brief visit on June 11, 1936. 4

Horumersiel was untouched by the war but afterwards changed out of recognition when the harbour was moved several hundred metres to the south. As a result, the StrandHotel is no longer on the seafront. A new extension has also altered its frontal appearance. Hitler’s room was in the dormer facing the sea but a request by us to see it was refused without explanation.

EHRENFRIEDHOF FLAK HQ BUNKER

SURRENDER CROSSROADS MÜHLENWEG BARRACKS RATHAUS

TIRPITZ LAUNCH

RAEDER-SCHLEUSE

DE ST RO YE R

BA SE

TIRPITZ-SCHLEUSE U-BOAT BASE

LUFTWAFFE BARRACKS

SEAPLANE BASE

Map of Wilhelmshaven as it was during the war. We have marked the main locations that feature in our story. ships, the Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee. All three were laid down before Hitler came to power but they were completed during the Nazi period. Two of them, the Admiral Scheer and Graf Spee were built at Wilhelmshaven, the former being launched on April 1, 1933 in the presence of Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander-in-chief of the Reichsmarine, and the latter on June 30, 1934. (The Deutschland was built by the Deutsche Werke yard at Kiel.) In 1935 Hitler traded on British feelings of angst, guilt and appeasement to push for an Anglo-German Naval Treaty permitting

Germany to build the equivalent of up to one-third of Britain’s total tonnage, and to build 35,000-ton battleships as permitted under the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Hitler ordered the construction of two 32,100-ton battleships, which were really battle cruisers: the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, with nine 28cm (11-inch) guns. Of the twin ships, the Scharnhorst was built at Wilhelmshaven. Laid down on June 15, 1935, she was launched on October 3, 1936 and commissioned on January 7, 1939. (The Gneisenau was built by the Deutsche Werke at Kiel.)

ATB

TITSCH

BUILDING HITLER’S FLEET With Hitler coming to power in January 1933, and soon assuming an aggressive foreign policy, Wilhelmshaven and its Reichsmarine-Werft shipbuilding yards gained new impetus. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles had limited a defeated Germany to warships of no more than 10,000 tons displacement. The government of the Weimar Republic, by making clever use of technical innovations to create a lighter hull that allowed for heavier guns, in 1929 had ordered construction of three 10,000-ton heavy cruisers, or pocket battle-

Left: Hitler greeting his enthusiastic followers in front of the Strand-Hotel. It was also at Horumersiel in 1932 that Hitler first met Leni Riefenstahl, the actress and film director who later produced the classic Nazi propaganda films Triumph des Willens (1934) and Olympia (1938). She had heard Hitler speak at the Berlin Sportpalast and on May 18 had written to the NSDAP headquarters in Munich asking for a meeting. Three days later she got a phone call from Wilhelm Brückner, Hitler’s adjutant, telling her that Hitler had just been saying that the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in a film was Riefenstahl’s dance on the sea in Der heilige Berg, and inviting her to Horumersiel the next day. She travelled to Wilhelmshaven by

train, being met by Brückner, Sepp Dietrich and Dr. Otto Dietrich in a Mercedes, and an hour later Hitler greeted her at Horumersiel. They walked together on the coastal path where he pointed out various ships that he could see through binoculars. He also praised her film Das blaue Licht. They walked again after dinner. Riefenstahl was invited to stay overnight at the hotel, and to accommodate her Julius Schaub, Hitler’s aide had to vacate his room. The following morning, May 23, after breakfast, Hitler ordered an aircraft to fly her to Hamburg, where she boarded a ship for Greenland and the filming of her next movie, SOS Eisberg. Right: The hotel is one of a few surviving venues where Hitler stayed. 5

The seaplane base located on the Fliegerdeich on the south side of the Hipper-Hafen (see the map on page 5). It was first established there during the First World War and was greatly expanded during the Nazi era, this picture being taken in the autumn of 1939. Arado Ar 196s floatplanes were test-flown

Right: The old Luftwaffe barracks are today occupied by the SenckenbergInstitut, a marine research centre. 6

until 1941). Into the new facility he transferred the U-Boots-Flottille ‘Saltzwedel’ from Kiel, which comprised nine Type VII submarines, U-27 to U-35. It was initially commanded by Fregattenkapitän Werner Scheer until July 1937, then by Korvettenkapitän Hans Ibbeken until September 1939, and finally by Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartmann until the flotilla’s move to Lorient in June 1940 (by which time it had been re-named the 2. U-Boots-Flottille).

TITSCH

of U-Boats) in January 1936, Kapitän zur See Karl Dönitz wanted a U-boat flotilla in Wilhelmshaven in addition to those in Kiel. In the absence of any suitable existing accommodation, he had a new U-Boot-Stützpunkt (U-Boat Base) built on empty land on the north bank of the Scheer-Hafen. Comprising quays, six barracks blocks and a mess hall, it was quickly brought into use in 1937 (although the complex — known as the Banter Kaserne — was not finally completed

A special barracks was built on the landward side of the Fliegerdeich to accommodate the Luftwaffe troops of 1./Bordfliegergruppe 196. Designed by architect Heinz-Günther Thees and comprising three blocks, it was built in 1936. This picture was taken in 1945.

ATB

In 1936 the Washington Treaty was modified by an escape clause allowing signatories to build 45,000-ton battleships in the event that a non-signatory nation built ships larger than 35,000 tons. Hitler promptly and secretly, and without justification since he was not a signatory, ordered the construction of two 51,000-ton (maximum displacement) battleships, the Tirpitz and Bismarck. Equipped with eight 38cm (15-inch) guns and with a speed of 30 knots, they would become the largest and most powerful warships yet built in Europe. The keel for the Tirpitz was laid down at Wilhelmshaven on November 2, 1936. During her two-and-a-half years’ construction, and until her baptism at launch, she would be referred to as ‘Schlachtschiff G’. (The Bismarck was built by Blohm & Voss at Hamburg.) Hitler’s accelerated shipbuilding programme made many of Wilhelmshaven’s dockyard facilities obsolete. Entrance III had already been a bottleneck delaying fleet deployment during the First World War and planning for a much larger Entrance IV had begun in 1917, but had been put on hold at the 1918 Armistice. Planning was resumed in 1935, construction began in 1936 and the entrance’s east chamber, 50 metres wide and 350 metres long (and baptised RaederSchleuse), was opened in 1942. Work also began on a new shipyard in the Nord-Hafen for building super-battleships up to 150,000tons. By now the Wilhelmshaven dockyard could claim to be the largest purely naval yard in Europe. Re-armament also saw the expansion of the seaplane base on the Fliegerdeich on the south side of the Hipper-Hafen. In 1935, a large platform was built on the dike as an aircraft apron. The following year three barrack blocks for the Luftwaffe personnel were erected a little distance west of the apron. The Luftwaffe unit occupying the Fliegerdeich base from April 1936 until March 1945 was the 1. Staffel of Bordfliegergruppe 196 (1./196). At the same time, Wilhelmshaven also became an important U-boat base. After he became Führer der Unterseeboote (Leader

from the base before being hoisted aboard warships using the crane in the background. Luftwaffe pilot training was also carried out at the base. Three Ju-W34 training aircraft are visible in the background, one of them still in civilian markings carrying the WL prefix.

KOOP

August) under Korvettenkapitän Georg Waue, and motor torpedo boats of the 2. Schnellboots-Flottille, formed in August 1938 under Kapitänleutnant Rudolf Petersen, had their berths along the south side of the Torpedoboots-Hafen. Patrol boats of the 2. Vorposten-Flottille, set up in September 1939 under Korvettenkapitän Maximilian Fels; submarine chasers of the 12. U-Bootsjagd-Flottille, created in September 1939

under Korvettenkapitän Hans Felix Korn; and the minelayers Cobra, Kaiser and Roland were also based at Wilhelmshaven. Many of these units would transfer to other bases during the war, especially after May 1940; thereafter, Wilhelmshaven would serve more as a maintenance base than as a combat station, an endless sequence of units or individual vessels spending time there for service and repair.

ATB

KOOP

In addition to the battleships and cruisers, a number of smaller warship units was stationed at Wilhelmshaven. Destroyers of the 2. Zerstörer-Flottille, created in November 1938 under Kapitän zur See Friedrich Bonte, were based on the Gazellebrücke on the north side of the Hipper-Hafen. Torpedo boats Iltis, Tiger and Wolf of the 3. Torpedoboots-Flottille, formed on February 2, 1938 (and renamed the 6. T-Flottille the following

ATB

Above: Three Z-17 class destroyers of the 2. Zerstörer-Flottille at their base on the Gazellebrücke on the north side of the Hipper-Hafen in the winter of 1939. The 2. Z-Flottille comprised the 2. Z-Division with Z-5 Paul Jacobi, Z-6 Theodor Riedel and Z-7 Hermann Schoemann and the 4. Z-Division with Z-1 Leberecht Maass, Z-20 Karl Galster, and Z-22 Anton Schmitt. Tied up with them was the flagship, Z-21 Wilhelm Heidkamp. The building on the quay is the recently completed ZerstörerKaserne (Destroyer Barracks). It would be re-named the Bonteheim in 1940 in honour of Kommodore Friedrich Bonte, the Führer der Zerstörer (Leader of Destroyers) who had been killed at Narvik in April of that year. Right: The Gazellebrücke is today called Bontekai. The Bonteheim was demolished in 1980 and replaced by a tall block of flats. Our comparison was taken from the deck of the museum ship Kapitän Meyer, which lies conveniently moored just east of the former destroyer base.

Left: Another view of the destroyer flotilla in the winter of 1939-40. Right: The Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge forms the link with the past. 7

WZ-BILDDIENST

The pocket battleship Deutschland moored alongside the Gazellebrücke quay on June 16, 1937 after bringing home the bodies of 31 sailors killed three weeks earlier in a bombing incident off Ibiza during the Spanish Civil War. Hitler insisted that the dead be brought back to Germany for a state funeral. The coffins can be

seen stacked under ‘B’ Turret while the ship’s captain, Kapitän zur See Paul Fanger, addresses the crew. Trucks stand ready to take the coffins in a torchlight procession through crowded streets to the Ehrenfriedhof cemetery. Note the newsreel camera on the roof of the lorry parked in the crowd of spectators.

8

ATB

Centre: Built as garrison cemetery in 1912-24, the Ehrenfriedhof contains over 2,400 graves. These include the remains of sailors killed in the First World War naval battles of Heligoland, Dogger Bank and Skagerrak (Jutland); the casualties of the Mariensiel ordnance explosion of December 1919, and the 31 dead from the Deutschland. There are also several memorials to the crews of lost warships and other casualties from both wars. This is how the cemetery looked in the 1930s.

NORDSEE-VERLAG

On June 17, 1937 Hitler came to Wilhelmshaven to participate in the ceremonial burial of the 31 sailors from the pocket battleship Deutschland who had been killed in an incident off Ibiza on May 29 during the Spanish Civil War. The Deutschland had been on its third voyage for the Non-Intervention Committee when she was fired on by Spanish Republican ships and simultaneously bombed by two Tupolev SB bombers of the Spanish Republican Air Force. Thirtyone sailors were killed and 74 wounded. After the incident, the Deutschland had put into Gibraltar on May 30, to bury the dead and hospitalise the wounded, sailing again the next day. However, Hitler demanded a state funeral in Wilhelmshaven, so the Deutschland returned to Gibraltar on June 11 to load the 31 exhumed bodies and take aboard 20 survivors who were by then fit to travel and return them to Germany. The Deutschland arrived in the Schillig Roads anchorage on June 15, where it spent the day repairing battle damage, repainting, and preparing coffins for burial. Next day it entered the Hipper-Hafen to re-bury its dead in a propaganda blaze of publicity. The coffins were off-loaded onto trucks for a torch-lit procession through crowded streets to the Ehrenfriedhof (Cemetery of Honour) in the northern part of the Stadtpark. Hitler attended the ceremony accompanied by Generaladmiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine (as the Reichsmarine had been re-named in 1936), and Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht.

The view today from the Battle of Jutland Cross to the Deutschland Memorial. The chapel on the left remains unchanged.

ATB

WZ-BILDDIENST

In 1937, after Hitler had disclosed his plans for war and conquest to his commanders-inchief, Raeder prepared the so-called Plan Z, which set out the goals of naval re-armament. Beginning in 1939 the plan envisaged building six H-class battleships of 62,000 tons (maximum displacement) with eight 40,6cm (16-inch) guns, to be ready by the end of 1944. After that would come the H41-class of 75,000 tons, the H42-class of 97,000 tons, the H43-class at 118,000 tons ending with the H44-class at 139,000 tons. Acting on Hitler’s promise that war with Britain would not start before 1945, Raeder’s Plan Z would result in the Kriegsmarine by that time having a strength of six H-class battleships of 52,600-tons, two 51,000-ton battleships (Bismarck and Tirpitz), two 32,100-ton battleships (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau), three 31,000-ton battle cruisers (Hipper, Blücher and Prinz Eugen), three 10,000-ton pocket battleships (Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Graf Spee), two aircraft carriers (Graf Zeppelin, launched in 1938, plus one other), 11 light cruisers, 68 destroyers and 249 submarines. The Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would dominate the North Sea, while the battle cruisers, pocket battleships, cruisers and carriers would raid commerce round the world. Two battle groups with the new large battleships would protect German commerce, while 200 U-boats would sink British merchantmen.

of War and C-in-C of the armed forces. Others in attendance were Admiral Otto Schultze, C-in-C North Sea Station, and Vizeadmiral Willy von Nordeck, commander of the Wilhelmshaven Dockyard and Arsenal. Right: The entrance to the cemetery today.

WZ-BILDDIENST

Left: Hitler striding through the Ehrenfriedhof on his way to the burial ceremony. On his left is Generaladmiral Erich Raeder, commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine. Obscured behind him is the tall figure of Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, Minister

Hitler and his group before the graves of the sailors who lost their lives with relatives of the dead standing on the right and naval and military representatives on the left.

ATB

ATB

Right: The 31 graves are today marked by individual headstones. Visible through the trees is the cross of the SkagerrakschlachtDenkmal (Battle of Jutland Memorial). The dead were remembered every June 3 at a memorial service celebrating the victory over the Royal Navy.

Left: The Deutschland Memorial was unveiled on May 29, 1938 — the first anniversary of the Ibiza incident. Right: It remains unchanged except for replacement of the swastika on the lefthand side. Hitler demanded that the name of the cruiser be

changed to avoid a propaganda defeat in the event it was sunk. Thus the Deutschland was renamed the Lützow in November 1939 and a plaque was added after the war to remember those of its sailors who had been killed. 9

ATB

TITSCH

ATB

Above: Red-letter day in Wilhelmshaven’s history: the launch of the battleship Tirpitz on Saturday, April 1, 1939. The keel of ‘Schlachtschiff G’ (as it was known during construction) was laid on a sloping ramp in slipway No. 2 in the Bau-Hafen and it had taken 29 months to complete the hull. The vessel was longer than its slipway so both the sternpost and prow overhung the ends of the dock. Before launch, the cofferdam was removed so the stern rested in the water. The spire of St Willehad Church and the Rathaus tower are visible over the prow. Right: The same view today, taken with special permission from the Bundesmarine from the roof of one of the workshops in the present-day Marinearsenal.

The bow of Tirpitz towering over the launch platform, which was built on top of the shipbuilding hall, as seen from outside the dockyard at the junction of Gökerstrasse and Peterstrasse. 10

The shipbuilding hall along Gökerstrasse is one of the few buildings to survive the wartime bombing and the post-war destruction by the Royal Navy of Wilhelmshaven’s dockyard facilities.

ATB

Left: Hitler and his entourage being greeted by Vizeadmiral von Nordeck, the shipyard director, outside the railway station. Hitler’s party included Admiral Raeder, Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch, General Wilhelm Keitel, General-

Here the party is seen walking past the dockyard workshops to reach slipway No. 2. They are just passing Dock No. 3 out of the picture to the left.

ATB

Saturday, April 1, 1939 was by far the most important day in Wilhelmshaven’s 140-year history. It was the day of the launch of the Tirpitz, the second of the two new battleships built by Germany, and at 51,000 tons and with eight 38cm guns then the world’s largest and most-powerful warship. The whole event was a well-orchestrated propaganda exercise. The launching ceremony was performed by Frau Ilse von Hassell, wife of the German ambassador to Rome, and daughter of Admiral von Tirpitz, creator of the German fleet. Hitler, Raeder and many other dignitaries were present. A crowd of 80,000 spectators surrounded the new vessel on its platform in the Bau-Hafen. It was invitation-only, with allocated seats and standing room. The ship was dressed with the Nazi colours and according to German custom the name was kept secret till the last moment; when the decorated bottle of wine smashed against her side, workmen lowered into place over the bows two great signs bearing the word Tirpitz in heavy Gothic characters. After the launch ceremony, Hitler and his party boarded a motor launch and sailed from the Bau-Hafen under the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge into the Hipper-Hafen, past a line of quay-moored warships that included the cruiser Nürnberg and the pocket battleships Deutschland and Admiral Graf Spee, to the brand-new battleship Scharnhorst, where Hitler in a short ceremony promoted Raeder to Grossadmiral. The day’s spectacle was capped at 4.45 p.m. when Hitler delivered a speech outside the Rathaus to an assembled crowd of thousands. It was one of those bellicose speeches so well calculated to rouse the enthusiasm of the German audience. The speech was broadcast worldwide (though not live but from a recording). The day’s ritual was designed to persuade Britain of the benefits of a German alliance, or at least of neutrality. The venue recalled that Wilhelmshaven had been created to break a blockade, and Germans knew they had to avoid a repeat of the First World War blockade. The choice of the name Tirpitz recalled his policy of building a quality fleet that ship for ship defeated the Royal Navy at Jutland and would again if Britain tried to ‘stop Germany from living’, as Hitler put it. The presence of the elegant Ilse von Hassell, who had attended Cheltenham Ladies College, recalled the anglophilia of both von Tirpitz and von Bismarck, and the respect for England held by the Kaiser, Hitler and the Kriegsmarine. However, two weeks previously Hitler had destroyed his credibility by occupying Prague after saying his final demands had been met at Munich. As a result, only the

oberst Erhard Milch, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, NSDAP secretary Martin Bormann and Hitler’s personal physician Dr Theodor Morrell. Right: Bahnhofstrasse has been completely redeveloped since the war but this is the same spot.

Nearly all of the dockyard buildings were destroyed by the British after the war and the site of the workshop is now a car park for the Marinearsenal compound. 11

Above: All spectators were in their places as the launch party moved through the throng along a path marked by flagpoles. The fan-shaped device welded to the hull was a water-brake to slow the vessel after launch as it had only 400 metres in which to come to a halt. Below: Hitler and his party approaching the steps to the launch platform, where Frau Ilse von Hassell, the daughter of Admiral von Tirpitz, was waiting for them.

Diagram showing how the 80,000 guests and spectators at the launch were placed. [1] Groups of uniformed NSDAP members. [2] Dockyard Team III. [3] No access. [4] Platform for launch party. [5] Naval representatives. [6] Survey section. [7] Dockyard representatives. [8] Distinguished guests. [9] Platform with officers, government and civic officials; below the platform, war wounded and shipyard cripples. [10] Flag party and NSDAP members. [11] Honour guard and band. [12] Navy League members. [13] Other dockyard teams. [14] Spectators. [15] Kraft durch Freude. [‘X‘] Members of the press, radio and photographers. The dots mark newsreel camera teams. 12

Frau von Hassell about to smash the traditional bottle of champagne on the bow. Another shot by Hoffmann.

The plaque has just been flipped, unveiling the name of the ship. The launch platform on top of the shipbuilding hall was

provided with screens to conceal Hitler’s back from any wouldbe assassin’s bullet.

Left: The launch completed, Hitler and his party descend the flights of steps. Frau von Hassell has apparently gone her separate way. (Her husband Ullrich von Hassell, until the previous year the German ambassador in Italy, later became actively opposed to the Nazi regime and, although not privy to the plot in July 1944, was still executed for it on September 8, 1944.

Frau von Hassell and her elder daughter were imprisoned but a letter to Himmler from Frau von Tirpitz written on August 31, 1944 secured her release.) Right: The shipbuilding hall and the lower building with the sloped roof survive. One end of Tirpitz’s launch ramp was anchored to the sloped roof, which was made of reinforced concrete to hold the weight.

ATB

TITSCH

TITSCH

Heinrich Hoffman photographs Frau von Hassell, holding a bouquet, being escorted up the steps to the launch platform.

13

DRÜPPEL

8,000-ton cruiser Nürnberg (right) and the 13,000-ton pocket battleship Deutschland (centre) tied up at the Gazellebrücke before circling round to pass the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and approach the brand-new 35,000-ton battleship Scharnhorst (left).

One of the museum ships berthed at the Bontekai (as Gazellebrücke is known today) stands in for the absent Nürnberg.

It is the buoy tender Kapitän Meyer commissioned in 1950 which was the first ship built in Germany after the war.

ATB

After the launch ceremony, Hitler and his party boarded a pinnace that came round from the Bau-Hafen and entered the Hipper-Hafen under the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge. Moored along the quays was the pride of the German high seas fleet. Hitler first sailed past the

Above: Hitler’s route through the Hipper-Hafen overlaid on a 1942 aerial photograph. Right: Hitler’s motor launch approaching the Scharnhorst, photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann. 14

ATB

The Scharnhorst dressed overall with signal flags waiting for Hitler’s arrival.

was removed after the war but the command building of the Luftwaffe seaplane base on top of the dike remains.

Hitler is now on the Scharnhorst’s quarterdeck and about to promote Raeder to Grossadmiral and to present him with the ceremonial baton. Other photographs show that just before

the presentation they changed places, presumably because Hitler did not want to have the sun in his eyes. Behind are the Deutschland and Nürnberg.

TITSCH

Left: Hitler inspecting the ship’s company of the Scharnhorst. Right: Every building on the landward side of the Fliegerdeich

15

TITSCH

STADTARCHIV WILMHELMSHAVEN

ATB

Above: Hitler descending the gangplank into the protection of his bodyguard, forming a convoy of eight cars, and (top right) giving a final salute before departing. Note the photographer on the right. Below: Another photographer standing among the crowd took this shot almost simultaneously. His colleague on the quay, who may well be Heinrich Hoffmann, is on the left and the photographer on the ship, who took the previous picture, can be seen in Kriegsmarine uniform standing at the rail. Admiral Raeder stands at the top of the gangplank saluting with his new baton. Right: Only the two buildings of the former seaplane base on top of the Fliegerdeich remain, the command building on the left and the mess hall on the right.

ATB

STADTARCHIV WILHELMSHAVEN

TITSCH

previous day, Britain had unexpectedly guaranteed Polish independence. The point of the day’s elaborate propaganda ritual had therefore been overtaken by events. In an attempt to regain some moral high ground, Hitler in his speech ridiculed British hypocrisy in criticising his occupation of Prague, which was a ‘German’ city, while Britain oppressed Indians and Palestinian Arabs in their own countries. He grandly pronounced Wilhelmshaven to be the ‘Kriegshafen des Grossdeutschen Reiches’ (war port of the Greater German Reich), and predicted the town of 130,000 would be a Grossstadt of 500,000 inhabitants. Large docks and locks were under construction to produce battleships of over 100,000-tons. Hitler’s speech made no mention of his real response to Chamberlain’s guarantee, which was to tell Raeder to start building H-class battleships 23 per cent bigger than Tirpitz. Orders were placed a fortnight later on April 14 with Blohm & Voss at Hamburg and Deschimag at Bremen, which laid keels on July 15 and September 1 respectively. Exist-

Left: The convoy sweeping up the ramp to the top of the dike where more crowds were assembled, and what appears to be 16

an honour guard or band was waiting. Right: The same view today with the Luftwaffe command building on the right.

STADTARCHIV WILHELMSHAVEN

In the afternoon Hitler addressed a large crowd on Rathausplatz. As this was a time when there was much talk of assassination schemes against the Führer, the security services were taking no

The advent of war changed all of these plans. Work on H-class battleships stopped on September 30, and all of the five contracts were cancelled on October 10, although on July 11, 1940, Hitler agreed work should continue on

three of them. Emphasis began to switch from a surface fleet to submarines. It was a change in policy that would also affect Willhelmshaven, with shipbuilding activities there now concentrating on U-boat production.

ATB

ing docks and lock-gates at Wilhelmshaven were unable to cope with H-class ships but urgent activity continued to complete construction of Dock 7 in the Nord-Hafen and of Entrance IV, which could.

chances in Wilhelmshaven with its strong Socialist tradition. Hitler therefore spoke from behind a bullet-proof glass screen, and with his back shielded by a high temporary wall.

Left: The backdrop was dramatic, although not quite to Hitler’s taste. Dating from 1929 and designed by the architect Fritz Höger, the Rathaus was in the Klinker-Expressionismus (Glazed Brick Expressionist) style. Note Hitler’s personal standard — the Standarte des Führers und Obersten Befehlshabers der Wehrmacht

(Standard of the Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces). Right: The Rathaus was gutted by the RAF on the night of October 15/16, 1944 but rebuilt after the war. The Admiral-ScheerSchule on the left was also heavily damaged and its place is today taken by a new Post Office building. 17

ATB

MAURICE LAARMAN

18

Left: Kommodore Karl Dönitz, the Commander of U-Boats, had his headquarters in Sengwarden from September 1939 to August 1940, Here he is pictured outside his office in Block 2. After Dönitz left, this block became the facility’s sickbay. Right: The comparison was taken by Jens Graul with kind permission of the Bundesmarine.

JENS GRAUL

Between 1937 and 1942 the Kriegsmarine built a completely new naval headquarters complex at the village of Sengwarden, ten kilometres north of Wilhelmshaven (see the map on page 2). Known as the Befehlstelle Nord, it in turn housed the command posts of the Marinegruppenkommando West (1939-40), Marinegruppenkommando Nord (1940-43) and Marine-Oberkommando Nordsee (1943-45) plus a variety of subordinate naval headquarters. Still a functioning German naval base, it is today known as the Admiral-Armin-Zimmermann-Kaserne.

WILL

Command of the Wilhelmshaven shipyard and naval base had always been under the Marine-Station der Nordsee (Naval Station of the North Sea). In June 1935 its commander’s title was raised to that of Commanding Admiral. In 1937, a new Kommandogebäude (Command Building) was opened for it on Prinz-Heinrich-Strasse to replace the smaller Wilhelmine structure dating from 1872. By the end of 1940, the station’s authority had expanded to command of the shipyard and the naval troops organised for coastal defence in two security divisions with HQs in Utrecht (in occupied Holland) and Cuxhaven. In June 1943, it was renamed MarineOberkommando Nordsee (Naval High Command North Sea). The post of Commanding Admiral was held by Admiral Alfred Saalwächter from October 1938, Admiral Otto Schultze from August 1939, Admiral Hermann Densch from November 1939 and by Admiral Eric Förste from March 1943 until the end of the war. Between 1937 and 1942 the Kriegsmarine built a completely new barracks complex at the village of Sengwarden, ten kilometres north of Wilhelmshaven, to house various naval command headquarters. Designed by architect Heinz-Günther Thees and MarineBau-Direktor Otto Lückemeyer, its Blocks 1 to 15 were completed by end 1939, and Blocks 16 to 20 in 1942. The later blocks incorporated underground bunkers for airraid protection. Two Flak bunkers were also built. A top secret site, with no rail lines leading to it, with its three radio transmitter/ receiver/interception stations off-site at Barkel, Altona and Wehgast, and with a passing resemblance to farm buildings, Sengwarden seems to have largely escaped Allied intelligence and it was never bombed. The new complex’s first occupant, from August 1939 to August 1940, was Marinegruppenkommando West (Headquarters Naval Group West), under Admiral Saalwächter, which covered the surface fleet for the German Bight (Wilhelmshaven to Heligoland), North Sea (north of Heligoland) and Atlantic. When Saalwächter’s command moved to Paris in August 1940, its place was taken by Marinegruppenkommando Nord (Headquarters Naval Group North) under Admiral Rolf Carls. In March 1943 the command was combined with the Flottenkommando (Fleet Command) and transferred to Kiel. Its place at Sengwarden was then taken by part of the Marine-Oberkommando Nordsee under Admiral Förste. The MOK was divided into two parts; the Führungsstab (Command Staff), which went to Sengwarden, and the Oberquartiermeisterstab (Supreme Quartermaster Staff), which remained in the Marine-Station building in Wilhelmshaven.

moved to the barracks ship Njassa moored at the Hafen-Insel. Right: The building today houses the Wasser- und Schifffahrtsamt which controls shipping movements. The address is 32 Mozartstrasse.

FOTO-MASCH

Left: Wilhelmshaven’s shipyard and naval base headquarters was housed in the Marine-Station der Nordsee building on Prinz-Heinrich-Strasse, which was completed in 1937. After it was made uninhabitable by the heavy RAF raid of October 15/16, operations

STADTARCHIV WILHELMSHAVEN TITSCH

Throughout the war, Sengwarden in addition accommodated some of the commands that were subordinate to the Marinegruppenkommando, including: a) the Befehlshaber der Sicherung der Nordsee (Commander of North Sea Security), responsible for mine-sweeping, provision of picket-boats, early-warning and coastal radar, pilotage, anti-submarine patrols, weather reporting and signals. The post was held in turn by Admiral Otto von Schrader (from October 1937), Vizeadmiral Eberhard Wolfram (from April 1940) and Konteradmiral Ernst Lucht (from April 1943). b) the Führer der Seeluftstreitskräfte (Commander of Air-Sea Command), providing air-sea co-ordination and rescue services in conjunction with a liaison staff from Luftwaffengruppe Nord and photographic services (the latter moved to Up-Jever in 1941). It was commanded by Luftwaffe Generalmajor Hermann Bruch. From September 1939 to August 1940, Sengwarden also housed the headquarters of the Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (Commander U-Boats). Dönitz, by now a Kommodore and soon to be promoted to Konteradmiral, divided his command into an Operations-Abteilung (Operations Department), under his personal control, covering the Atlantic, North Sea and Indian Ocean, and an Organisations-Abteilung (Administrative Department). Dönitz and the Operations Department moved to Paris in August 1940 and then to Kerneval near Lorient, but the Administrative section remained at Sengwarden throughout the war.

COLVIN

Above: The nine submarines — U-27 to U-35 — of the U-Boots-Flottille ‘Saltzwedel’ at their new base on the north bank of the Scheer-Hafen in the winter of 1938 (see the map on page 5). The U-boat barracks, known as the Banter Kaserne and comprising six accommodation blocks and a mess hall, were built in 1936-37. Right: The jetty from which the wartime photo was taken was demolished in 1948, so our comparison was taken from the quay. After the war the surviving buildings of the Banter Kaserne first served as Royal Navy headquarters HMS Royal Rupert and then from 1947 to 1971 as the Prince Rupert School, but they were demolished in 2009. Although the site is being redeveloped we have chosen to use a comparison taken just before the historical complex was knocked down.

Another view of the Saltzwedel Flotilla and the U-Boots-Stützpunkt. The flotilla moved in while builders were still paving the quay. The large structures on the far bank, to the right of the two oil tanks, were floating docks.

ATB

Right: With the 1948 demolitions having left only a small section of the original quay, the only reference point is the seaplane barracks on the Fliegerdeich in the far left background. 19

ATB

STADTARCHIV WILHELMSHAVEN

The site is now occupied by a modern office block built for the biotechnology firm Biosphere AG. In the background stands the Columbia Hotel on Jadeallee.

On September 28, 1939 — the day the German invasion of Poland ended with the capitulation of Warsaw — Hitler visited the U-Boot-Stützpunkt to award iron crosses to Kapitänleutnant Otto Schuhart and the crew of U-29 for sinking the British aircraft carrier Courageous ten days earlier. Arriving at the base, Hitler’s convoy first passed Schuhart’s U-29. In the background lies the passenger steamer Mellum. Both Schuhart and his boat survived hostilities. U-29 later became a training boat and was scuttled on May 4, 1945. Schuhart died in 1990.

Hitler then drove past Kapitänleutnant Hans-Willem von Dresky’s U-33. This boat had just returned from a 41-day patrol during which it had sunk three British ships. Von Dresky survived his next patrol from October 29 to November 26, sinking six ships, but on his third patrol his vessel was sunk in the Firth of Clyde on February 12, 1940 and he perished along with 24 of his crew. The discovery of Enigma rotors in the pockets of two survivors gave vital information to Bletchley Park about the wiring of these rotors. Note that only one person of either crew gave the Hitler salute.

TITSCH

VON DRESKY

NIOD 46312

VON DRESKY

Sailors of the Saltzwedel Flotilla relaxing on the terrace of the mess hall in 1938. The building, which after the war served as Nelson Hall of the Prince Rupert School, was demolished in 2004.

Here Dönitz introduces Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartmann to Hitler. Hartmann commanded the Saltzwedel Flotilla and, from September 25, was also captain of U-37. 20

Raeder and Dönitz conferring with Hitler in front of U-29’s crew drawn up on the roadway in front of the submarine quay. Hitler spent an hour meeting the submariners, probably in the mess hall. He told them: ‘The real and psychological pressure that U-boats spread over wide areas is huge and superior to that from the world war.’

BA 101II-MW-5567-15A

BA 101 II-MW-5613-30A

On March 2, 1940, U-50 arrived at Wilhelmshaven after a 28-day patrol around Britain and into the Bay of Biscay, during which it sank 16,089 tons of shipping. Kapitänleutnant Max-Hermann Bauer had completed his fifth and most-successful patrol and received the Iron Cross First Class, the rest of the crew being awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. Here two proud wearers of the award smile for the photographer, PK Zuber, as their vessel approaches the U-Boot-Stützpunkt.

It was during his year in Sengwarden that Dönitz perfected his hands-on leadership style and U-boat control method. His small force of 57 U-boats stationed in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel enjoyed spectacular success by sinking the British aircraft carrier Courageous off the coast of Ireland (by U-29 under Kapitänleutnant Otto Schuhart on September 17) and the battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow (by U-47 under Günther Prien on October 14). Dönitz left his Sengwarden office to meet and debrief each U-boat commander returning to Wilhelmshaven from operations. It was at Sengwarden that Dönitz developed his system of centralised command and control of operational U-boats with total reliance on radio using the Enigma cipher system. The consequences of the Enigma cipher being compromised would be devastating and were of course fully understood but it became an article of faith that codebreaking was impossible.

During the war the building in the left background probably contained the control centre for U-boat replenishment. After the war it served as the sickbay for HMS Royal Rupert and for the Prince Rupert School. Today it is used by a centre for migratory bird studies. The building on the right housed the heating plant for the base.

TITSCH

ATB

On April 18, 1940, Hartmann’s U-37 returned from a 20-day patrol around Iceland, during which it sank three ships. It was Hartmann’s third and last patrol in U-37. Here, two of his crewmen, carrying their cardboard suitcases, go ashore.

These two U-boats were probably photographed on May 8, 1940, apparently during an open day for visitors. Moored on the outside was UA, commanded by Fregattenkapitän Hans Cohausz, and alongside was U-30, whose commander was

Kapitänleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp. He is notorious for sinking the British liner Athenia against orders on September 3, 1939, and for abandoning U-110 on May 9, 1941 to be captured by the Royal Navy together with its Enigma secrets. 21

HMSO

On September 4, 1939 — the second day of the war — Wilhelmshaven was the target for the RAF’s very first raid of the war when Bomber Command sent out 27 aircraft to attack German warships at anchor in the Schillig Roads. Of the 15 Blenheims and 12 Hampdens dispatched, only the ten Blenheims of Nos. 107 and 110 Squadrons managed to find the

22

and 83 Squadrons heading for the Schillig Roads and the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, and 14 Wellingtons from Nos. 9 and 149 Squadrons heading for Brunsbüttel to

sink the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst. Low cloud required general-purpose bombs with a new and untested 11-second fuse for low-level release.

TITSCH

WILHELMSHAVEN AT WAR War for the German surface fleet began a few days before its actual outbreak when Grossadmiral Raeder secretly despatched two of his pocket battleships into the world’s oceans. On August 21, 1939, the Graf Spee left Wilhelmshaven for her operational area off South America (which would end in the Battle of the River Plate and her scuttling outside Montevideo harbour three months later — see After the Battle No. 40). Three days later, on August 24, the Deutschland sailed from Wilhelmshaven for her first foray in the North Atlantic. Ten days later — on September 3 — war was officially declared and of all the German cities, Wilhelmshaven was one of the first to feel its effect. On September 4 — the second day of the war — it had the dubious distinction of being the target of the war’s very first attack by the Royal Air Force. The raid was specifically aimed at the German surface fleet. There were several reasons for Wilhelmshaven and the warships being chosen as the first target. At a distance of only 300 miles from Britain, Wilhelmshaven was within range of every RAF bomber; with most of the route being over sea it could be safely approached, and with the British government still at pains to avoid German civilian casualties, warships at anchor outside a port offered a target suitably far removed from housing areas. The British authorities were unsure about the precise whereabouts of the German warships and a Blenheim of No. 139 Squadron, on stand-by at RAF Wyton since September 1, took off one hour after war was declared to reconnoitre and photograph the enemy fleet. Flown by Flying Officer Andrew McPherson and carrying a naval observer, it saw several enemy warships emerging into the Schillig Roads from Wilhelmshaven. However by the time they reported back it was late afternoon and too late in the day to send bombers. McPherson repeated his mission the following morning and this time spotted and photographed warships in Brunsbüttel (at the entrance to the Kiel Canal in the Elbe estuary), Wilhelmshaven and the Schillig Roads. A total of 41 bombers took off: 15 Blenheims from Nos. 107, 110 and 139 Squadrons and 12 Hampdens from Nos. 49

target. The first squadron to go in, No. 110, had one aircraft shot down but the second, No. 107, lost four out of five. This is the Admiral Scheer photographed through rain squalls from one of the two Blenheims of No. 110 Squadron that bombed her: either N6024 piloted by Flight Lieutenant Kenneth Doran or N6201 flown by Pilot Officer George Lings.

A German propaganda picture of the September 4 raid showing a rather poor drawing of one of the Blenheims crashing into the sea near the Admiral Scheer. The destroyer Diether von Roeder is in the distance.

GREVE

The wreckage of two of the downed Blenheims of No. 107 Squadron was recovered by the Germans and deposited on the apron of the Fliegerdeich seaplane base. This is what remained of N6240 crewed by Sergeant Albert Prince, Sergeant G. F. Booth and AC2 L. J. Slattery. Prince was killed, the first Canadian casualty of the war, and Booth and Slattery were both taken prisoner. The building visible on the far side of the Hipper-Hafen, behind the Blenheim’s tail, is the Bonteheim.

TITSCH

The raid was a costly failure. Due to thick cloud and atrocious weather, a large proportion of the force — 21 aircraft, including all of Nos. 139, 49 and 83 Squadrons — got lost and failed to find the objective. Another six turned back. Of the 14 bombers that carried on, located the objectives and attacked the targets, seven — five of the Blenheims and two of the Wellingtons — were shot down — a loss rate of 50 per cent. Twenty-six airmen were killed and two captured. Damage to German ships was negligible. Emerging out of the solid cloud over the Schillig Roads, the five Blenheims of No. 110 Squadron sighted the Admiral Scheer anchored in shallow water near the bank and protected by a balloon barrage, with the destroyer Diether von Roeder a mile to the north-west and other ships nearby. Despite murderous anti-aircraft fire from the ships and from shore, the two lead Blenheims dropped their bombs on the Admiral Scheer from mast height, which however — fused for 11 seconds delay — failed to explode and harmlessly bounced overboard. The third aimed for a nearby lighter but missed. Another attacked the Diether von Roeder, dropped its bombs wide and was shot down. The fifth had to break off its attack run in the concentrated flak. The five Blenheims of No. 107 Squadron, next in line, received the full blast of the antiaircraft fire, four of them being shot down. They flew south up the Jade right up to Wilhelmshaven’s Entrance III, being fired at by the light cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig and the destroyer Paul Jacobi, before returning northwards to attack the Scheer. The lead aircraft was in flames when it overflew the ship, dropping its bombs into the sea 30 yards from it, and crashing into the water killing the entire crew. The next Blenheim was hit while still 4,000 yards away from the Scheer and crashed near Mellum. A third, already hit, nursed out to sea to machine-gun a submarine hunter, wounding three of the crew, before itself being shot down. A fourth, seeing that nothing could survive Scheer’s flak, tried to attack one of the alternative targets, the Mariensiel arsenal or the floating dry dock. Approaching Wilhelmshaven, it passed over the dockyard by the Tirpitz, circling round looking for its targets. Mortally wounded by shore and ship’s flak, the bomber disintegrated while trying to attack the cruiser Emden. Its starboard engine hit the Wiesbaden-Brücke, its bombs fell into the water just short of the ship, exploding in a great fireball, and the rest of the aircraft slammed into Emden’s port-side, killing 11 sailors and wounding 30. Thousands of people in Wilhelmshaven saw the raid come in without warning, and thought the fate of Guernica was descending on their city. Mass evacuation occurred by train and car into the surrounding countryside. Being the first raid it made an indelible impression on everyone who saw it. The 14 Wellingtons despatched to the Brunsbüttel anchorage (75 kilometres northeast of Wilhelmshaven) achieved next to nothing. Of No. 9 Squadron, three attacked the Gneisenau but without result, one claimed a hit on a merchant ship, and two were shot down by Bf 109 fighters of II./JG77 operating out of Nordholz airfield. The eight of No. 149 Squadron did even worse: one dropped its load on the town of Esbjerg in neutral Denmark, killing a Danish woman; one released its bombs off Cuxhaven, and the others discarded their bombs in the sea and aborted.

The wreckage of Blenheim N6189 of Flying Officer Herbert Lightoller, Sergeant Owen Howells and AC1 Ernest Lyon which crashed into the cruiser Emden in the HipperHafen. Only the numbers 618 are visible but Hugo Stockter, who has studied the raid in detail, identified it as N6189 by a process of elimination. It cannot be Flight Lieutenant William Barton’s N6184 because other photographs show that the ‘N’ was written, unusually, above the numbers. It cannot be Pilot Officer William Murphy’s N6188 because its crew were buried separately on September 8 and 24 indicating that the bodies were recovered from the sea. The Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge is in the background.

ATB

Right: The seaplane apron, from which the photos were taken, has been removed so our comparison had to be taken from the steps of the Helgolandhaus apartments which replaced it. The Bonteheim across the water has been superseded by a modern block of flats but the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge remains. 23

NH 86214

After her launch in April 1939, the Tirpitz remained in the BauHafen for another 22 months, fitting out taking until February 1941. This picture was taken in February 1940, with the ‘Langer Heinrich’ floating crane on her port side. Built by Demag and installed on a pontoon built by AG Weser in 1915, displacing 3,900 tons and able to lift 250 tons, ‘Tall Henry’ was for a decade

the world’s largest floating crane. It was used to load machinery and weapons into all the warships built in Wilhelmshaven. In 1946 it went as reparations to the US Navy in their Bremerhaven enclave where it remained until 1985. Next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge, it was another hallmark of Wilhelmshaven but today it is in Genoa in Italy.

ATB

Right: Departure at last. The Tirpitz moving along the Hafen-Kanal on March 9, 1941.

TITSCH

The heavy losses suffered in this and other early raids forced Bomber Command to withdraw completely from the daylight battle and turn to night area bombing. However, the threat from the Tirpitz, which was fitting out in Wilhelmshaven until March 1941, was so overwhelming that Bomber Command was instructed by Cabinet to attack it regardless of the outcome. Between September 1939 and March 1941, they mounted 17 raids with 281 sorties against the battleship without inflicting a scratch. (The closest Tirpitz came to destruction was on the night of July 20/21, 1940, when Flight Lieutenant Dudley Davis of No. 61 Squadron dropped two seamines in the Bau-Hafen before being shot down.) Meanwhile, in spite of all the air raids, the warships stationed at Wilhelmshaven departed on their combat missions. Scharnhorst’s first wartime operation was a sortie into the Iceland-Faroes passage, which lasted six days, from November 21-26, 1939.

The same view, taken from the Jachmann Bridge over the Hafen-Kanal with special permission from the Bundesmarine. 24

TITSCH TITSCH

No pictures exist of the Tirpitz departing through the Tirpitz-Schleuse (Entrance III), which was a tight fit, but this is the Scharnhorst entering the lock on February 20, 1940, after its return through the ice from Operation ‘Nordmark’.

The Tirpitz-Schleuse was blown up, filled with rubble and covered over by the British in 1948 as part of the Royal Navy’s programme to demilitarise Wilhelmshaven. All that remains today is the signal tower and the lock’s southernmost mole.

ATB

TITSCH

The Gneisenau was in Wilhelmshaven from December 4, 1939 until February 18, 1940 when she left with the Scharnhorst, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and the destroyers Z-9 Wolfgang Zenker, Z-21 Wilhelm Heidkamp and Z-20 Karl Galster on Operation ‘Nordmark’. The purpose was to intercept British convoys between Bergen in Norway and Britain but no ships were sighted and the task force returned to Wilhelmshaven on the 20th. The high point of Wilhelmshaven’s war occurred on April 6-8, 1940, when the majority of the German surface fleet left for Operation ‘Weserübung — the German invasion of Norway (see After the Battle No. 126). Departing from Wilhelmshaven at midnight on April 8 was one of the six assault groups employed in the operation: Group 3, comprising the light cruisers Königsberg and Köln, the artillery training ship Bremse, the torpedo boats Wolf and Leopard, five motor torpedo boats of the 2. Schnellboots-Flottille (S-19, S-21, S-22, S-23 and S-24) and the transport Karl Peters with 1,900 troops sailing for Bergen. All troops of all six assault group were successfully landed on April 9 but the large number of German surface units lost in the operation — the cruisers Blücher, Königsberg and Karlsruhe and ten destroyers were sunk — could not be replaced and made the victory pyrrhic. The Admiral Scheer, by now modified to a heavy cruiser, sailed from Wilhelmshaven on October 14, 1940, beginning a long career as merchant raider. She would not return to the port city that built her, using Kiel as her home base for the duration of the war. The Tirpitz, after her launch on April 1, 1939 stayed in Wilhelmshaven for another 23 months, being fitted out in the Bau-Hafen and remaining a priority target for the RAF throughout that time. She finally departed on March 9, 1941, moving to the Baltic for training and first operations. On January 14, 1942, having stealthily returned to the Schillig Roads via the Kiel Canal, she sailed from there to go to war in Norwegian waters (where she would stay until finally sunk by British bombers on November 12, 1944). On February 13, 1942, the Scharnhorst arrived back at Wilhelmshaven after her audacious Channel dash from Brest (Operation ‘Cerberus’) in company with the Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen. Damaged by mines off Flushing and Ameland laid by Hampdens, she arrived at Entrance III, breaking the ice on February 18 to get to the 40,000-ton floating dock for damage assessment. It was decided to send her to Kiel. Damage to the Kiel Canal delayed her departure, so she stayed at her berth and underwent engine maintenance. She left Wilhelmshaven on February 24, never to return.

Left: On November 7, 1942, Grossadmiral Raeder opened Wilhelmshaven’s new harbour Entrance IV — christened the Raeder-Schleuse — in the cruiser Emden. Right: Entrance IV was blown up by the British in January 1949. Reopened after

rebuilding in October 1964, it is still one of the biggest locks in the world. Today it is part of the Wilhelmshaven naval base and our comparison was taken with special permission from the military authorities. The view is looking inland. 25

USNA

Wilhelmshaven under air attack. This vertical aerial shows the bomb plot of the large USAAF raid on June 11, 1943. The operation was carried out by 218 aircraft, of which eight were shot down with 83 airmen being lost. No German civilians were killed although 16 houses were destroyed and 28 heavily damaged.

against the U-boats and slightly damaged only one, U-757 on the night of January 8/9, 1941, while the US Eighth Air Force on their very first raid destroyed two, U-769 and U-770, thereby proving that accuracy depended entirely on daylight bomb-aiming. After ending Type VII production in August 1944, the Kriegsmarine-Werft became the sole supplier to the Deschimag and Blohm & Voss shipyards at Bremen and Hamburg of Section 2 (containing the vital electric motor room) of the fearsome Type XXI U-boat, supplying nearly 200 of these without loss before the end of the war. Wilhelmshaven was a priority target for the Allied air forces throughout the war but there was little commensurate damage of a military nature. In all, there were 82 raids

comprising 5,668 sorties, which dropped 19,048 tons of bombs, at a cost of 146 Allied bombers and 856 dead aircrew. The RAF destroyed the Mariensiel ammunition depot on February 12, 1943 in what was said to have been the biggest explosion of the war, while the USAAF destroyed the two U-boats and two oil tanks. But Mariensiel was not the only naval ammunition depot, and its loss had no observable effect on Kriegsmarine effectiveness. There was widespread destruction of civilian housing, 5,600 houses being destroyed, but only 452 deaths and 1,125 injured in total on the ground and little damage to plant and machinery. Shipyard production was never interrupted for more than an hour or so. The air war in Wilhelmshaven’s case was an Allied failure.

TITSCH

THE AIR WAR In January 1940 the Wilhelmshaven shipyard began construction of U-751, the first of 29 Type VIIC submarines (U-751 to U-779) built there during the war. Allied aerial reconnaissance soon showed that the Kriegsmarine-Werft was building submarines and this became an extra reason for attention from the Allied air forces, both the RAF and the USAAF. (Wilhelmshaven holds a unique place in the history of the air war in that it was the target both of the very first RAF attack of the war — the ill-fated daylight attack of September 4, 1939 — and of the first-ever American bomber raid on Germany, which occurred on January 27, 1943.) Bomber Command used area bombing

The bombing was through cloud and scattered. The oil tanks in the Scheer-Hafen (off to the left) were hit but it had no effect on U-boat production. The bomb plot shows most of the bombs falling into water with a dozen others hitting the target. However, many more bombs were dropped than are plotted here.

Smoke billows up from the burning oil tanks on the ScheerHafen dike set alight during the raid. The view is eastwards, looking across the Bante-Lager which was the hutted camp built to house the construction workers of the Westwerft, 26

and the six air raid bunker towers were for their protection. In 1944, the south-western part of the workers camp became a satellite concentration camp of Neuengamme. No meaningful comparison is possible today because of obstruction by trees.

TITSCH ATB

Flak in the Wilhelmshaven area was the responsibility of the 2. Marine-Flak-Brigade. A purpose-designed Flak headquarters bunker was built in Rosenhügel in the Stadtpark (see map on page 5) between 1940 and 1942.

Partly blown up after the war, the bunker lies overgrown and forgotten in the yard of what is now a training centre for rescue dogs of the municipal Civil Defence.

ATB

TITSCH

Wilhelmshaven received 1.2 per cent of all of the bombs dropped on Germany (19,048 tons out of a total of 1,588,062 tons), so could statistically have expected to incur 1.2 per cent of the total casualties, or 4,920 deaths. The reasons why Wilhelmshaven was relatively safe for its inhabitants are clear. The port city was newly built of brick and stone and so relatively incombustible. It lacked the old half-timbered quarter that was the key to Bomber Command’s fire-raising technique developed in places like Lübeck and Hamburg where the idea was to create a firestorm in the city centre. Water was available for firefighting and there were servicemen in barracks available to fight fires and perform rescue. Furthermore a significant proportion of bombs fell harmlessly into the extensive harbours and the sea. The port city was well defended by radarassisted and, later, by radar-directed Flak, and by fighter aircraft. Flak in the area was the responsibility of 2. Marine-Flak-Brigade. Its HQ command and control began the war in Fort Schaar on the north-western edge of town, but moved at the end of July 1942 into a new bunker in Rosenhügel in the Stadtpark north of the city centre. Forming a ring around the Jade from Schillig to Langwarden were 24 emplaced heavy batteries and two floating heavy batteries on ships. Collectively they had 92 105mm and 16 128mm guns. There were also a great many 2cm Flak guns both emplaced and on ships. The nearest Luftwaffe airfield to Wilhelmshaven was Jever. The 2. Staffel of Küstenjagdgruppe 136 equipped with He 51s arrived in June 1937, followed in October by the entire I. Gruppe, and in November 1938 the I. Gruppe of Sturzkampfgeschwader 162 ‘Immelmann’ with Ju 87b Stukas. On November 12, 1939, Stab/JG1 was formed at Jever under Oberstleutnant Carl Schumacher, his task being to reorganise air defence of the German Bight after the poor Luftwaffe response to the September 4 RAF raid. By December, the Stab controlled 10./JG26 with Bf 109 night-fighters, II./JG77 with Bf 109 and I./ZG77 with Bf 110 fighters. Later Ju 52s carrying coils for exploding magnetic mines operated from Jever, and night-fighter Ju 188s spent periods there but for most of the war it housed a variety of Bf 109-equipped fighter units. Jever was never damaged or even attacked, and locals believed the Allies failed to recognise it as an airfield.

Left: The bunker was camouflaged to look like a farm with dormer windows painted on canvas, although the disguise was

unnecessary as the Allied air forces had not undertaken any lowlevel recconnaisance. Right: Today all the brick facade has gone. 27

Left: A multitude of tracer fire piercing the night sky during the RAF raid on the night of September 15/16, 1940. The photographer was standing on the sea dike looking westwards with the Jade on the left and the Fliegerdeich seaplane barracks on the right. There were two separate alarms that night, one squadron of four bombers arriving at 0030 hours and a second at 0040, and the picture was probably taken during the first attack. Travelling from south to north (left to right) at 10,000 feet, one of the bombers dropped six high-explosive 250lb bombs near the U-Boot-Stützpunkt, which was one kilometre distant from this spot, and the extensive light flak seen coming up behind the building was from that direction. Centre: The barrack block after the war became Collingwood House of the Prince Rupert School. Today it houses the Senckenberg Institute.

Left: Admiral Hermann Densch, commander of Marine-Station der Nordsee, inspecting the 3. Batterie of the 262. Flak-Abteilung of the 2. Marine-Flak-Regiment in March 1942. On the left is Kapitän zur See Walther Oehler, the regimental commander. As from the following May 1, his regiment would be redesignated a brigade and Oehler be promoted to Konteradmiral. In the background is the Sperrzeug-Amt, the port depot for torpedo nets and booms. A searchlight can be seen on its roof. Centre: The building, just visible through the trees, remains as a link with the past. 30

ATB

ATB

GREVE

ATB

TITSCH

The key, however, to the low death rate was air raid protection provided by bunkers. Civil defence was first organised in Wilhelmshaven in 1930 and in 1933 it became part of a national organisation, the ReichsLuftschutz-Bund (Reich Air Raid Association — RLB), under Hermann Göring, then Reich Minister for Aviation. The RLB produced criteria for triaging the largest 500 towns, placing 94 in the most vulnerable category, and 201 in each of the second and third categories. The criteria for the first group were a population of 100,000, important war industries and facilities. Wilhelmshaven qualified on all counts, and in the late 1930s action was taken to protect the shipyard and naval buildings by reinforcing cellar roofs. A national code of practice for the building of air raid shelters was implemented, and the mayor made Luftschutzleiter (Civil Defence Leader). An early experimental air raid shelter tower was built in 1938. However, the impetus only became pressing through the so-called Führer-Sofort-Programm (Führer Immediate Programme) of October 10, 1940 (see After the Battle No. 124) that required immediate air raid protection for all threatened towns. On October 13,

Wilhelmshaven had over 300 air raid bunkers to protect its civilian population. This tower shelter on Gökerstrasse, built in 1940, could accommodate 700 people. An early design, it had walls two metres thick, reducing to 1.5 metres at the top, with a roof 2.5 metres thick.

GREVE

By the end of the war an estimated 65 per cent of Wilhelmshaven had been destroyed by bombing. This picture taken from the Rathaus tower shows the devastation in the city centre. The church is the St Willehad on Bremer Strasse. The BürgermeisterBunker, seen at lower left, stood until 1966. Between July 1941 and October 1944 it held Russian prisoners of war. From January 1945 it was used to house some 1,000 Dutch civilians arrested by the Gestapo, who were put to work in debris removal, bunker construc-

tion and dockyard jobs. Daily death rate was five prisoners per day. By April 1945, 65 per cent of Wilhelmshaven had been reduced to ruins and the population had declined to 60,000.

ATB

1940, Göring gave 78 towns, including Wilhelmshaven, top priority under the direction of Fritz Todt, chief of the Organisation Todt (the Reich’s central construction agency). The following month, November 1940, Wilhelmshaven began constructing bunkers with roofs 1.4 metres and walls 1.2 metres thick. In the summer of 1941 specified thicknesses were improved to 2-metre walls and 3-metre roofs. A total of 304 bunkers to a variety of designs were built in Wilhelmshaven, most of them between 1940 and 1943, and the speed of construction was due to the presence of construction companies that were building Entrance IV and the new dock. Since the town’s population declined from 133,000 in 1940 to 73,000 in 1943, everyone soon had a place in an air raid shelter and bunker construction came to an end. The cost of civilian bunkers was estimated at 34 to 50 million Reichsmarks, or about one quarter of the cost of the Tirpitz (RM182 million). Not one bunker was damaged and there were no fatalities among bunker occupants. Most of the deaths in Wilhelmshaven occurred before all of the bunkers were completed. Wilhelmshaven fared very well in comparison to other cities affected by the air war. In Dresden it took 0.2 tons of bombs to kill one person, in Coventry 0.9 tons, London 2.6 tons and in Wilhelmshaven 42 tons. In addition to civilian air raid shelters there were numerous Kriegsmarine bunkers. Three bunkers for warship crews and maintenance staff were built on the Fliegerdeich. Two large personnel bunkers were added to the U-Boot-Stützpunkt in the Scheer-Hafen in 1942. The heaviest bomber raids on the city occurred in the second half of the war. In February 1943, the RAF mounted four particularly heavy night attacks within a fortnight — dispatching 177 bombers on the 11th/12th, 195 on the 18th/19th, 338 on the 19th/20th and 115 on the 24th/25th — the USAAF capping this off with a daylight attack by 65 bombers on the 26th. In all, these five raids unleashed 5,584 tons of bombs on the city but they caused surprisingly little damage. The heaviest USAAF raid of the war occurred on February 3, 1944, when 553 B-17s dropped 1,415 tons of bombs on the city. Only 11 people were killed and 62 wounded but the raid caused enormous damage to housing and facilities. The death stroke came with the RAF raid on the night of October 15/16, 1944, when 503 bombers — 257 Halifaxes, 241 Lancasters and eight Mosquitos — dropped 3,502 tons of explosive. Fifty-six people were killed and 139 wounded. The raid made the Marine-Station HQ building uninhabitable, so operations moved to the Njassa, the barracks ship moored at the Hafen-Insel. On March 30, 1945, a raid by 358 US bombers scored an important hit when they sank the cruiser Köln, which was undergoing repair in the Bau-Hafen since February, causing her to come to rest on the bottom of the harbour basin. The ship’s 15cm gun turrets stayed above water and remained serviceable. Between September 1944 and April 1945 there existed in Wilhelmshaven a satellite concentration camp of Neuengamme. Located on the Alter Banter Weg, at the western end of town, and comprising four wooden huts surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, it housed some 1,125 prisoners, mostly French and Dutch, who were employed as workers in the naval and Westwerft dockyards and in bomb disposal work in the city. At least 234 of them perished from hunger, cold, torture and executions. In April 1945 the camp was evacuated. Another internment camp, known as Lager Schwarzer Weg, was located on Mühlenweg in the north-eastern part of town.

Some pre-war buildings survive, including the long row of houses on Grenzstrasse, the big apartment blocks on the corner of Mozartstrasse and Bremer Strasse, as well as the St Willehad Church. 31

ATB

The view down Oldenburger Strasse to the crossroads. The house on the near corner has since disappeared. defending the eastern flank was the LXXXVI. Armeekorps with the divisional staffs of the 471. and 490. Infanterie-Divisions commanding miscellaneous naval units. At the end of April, the 1. FallschirmArmee with the II. Fallschirm-Korps transferred into OKW reserve in Schleswig-Holstein, and took with them much of the 7. and 8. Fallschirmjäger-Divisions. Left behind was the inexperienced 11. Fallschirmjäger-Division, under Oberst Walter Gericke, whose component Fallschirmjäger-Regiments 37, 38 and 39 had been formed as late as March 1945 in Leeuwarden from surplus Luftwaffe personnel. They were not up to strength nor fully equipped.

Added to these were a diversity of Kriegsmarine troops. In April 1945, Admiral Erich Förste, the commander of Marine-Oberkommando Nordsee (C-in-C Naval High Command North Sea), put Vizeadmiral Gustav Kleikamp, Admiral Deutsche Bucht (German Bight), whose HQ was in Cuxhaven, in command of all naval troops in the EmdenWilhelmshaven salient. Kleikamp combined the old coastal defence commands (Sicherungs-Divisionen) with parts of the Sicherung der Nordsee, the command responsible for the naval coastal artillery that secured the North Sea coast against enemy seaborne landings. Those reporting to Kleikamp included Konteradmiral Johan-

ATB

CONDER

SURRENDER OF WILHELMSHAVEN (May 6, 1945) By the last week of April 1945, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s British 21st Army Group was rapidly advancing into northern Holland and north-west Germany, with Canadian First Army on the left and British Second Army on the right. Wilhelmshaven lay in the area of the Canadian First Army. Its Canadian II Corps, under Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, operating on the army’s right wing, had been charged with protecting the left flank of British XXX Corps of Second Army while that formation was racing for Bremen but, as soon as Bremen was taken, Simonds’ corps was to turn north to capture Emden and Wilhelmshaven. Canadian II Corps’ front at that time extended from the Ems estuary in northeastern Netherlands to the left bank of the Weser below Bremen. In the line, from left to right, were the 5th Canadian Armoured Division aiming for Delfzijl in the Netherlands; the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division advancing on Leer and Emden; the 1st Polish Armoured Division aiming for Jever via Neuenburg, south-west of Wilhelmshaven; the 4th Canadian Armoured Division driving for Bad Zwischenahn and Varel, south of Wilhelmshaven, and the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division advancing on Oldenburg. By April 20 the 1st Polish and 4th Canadian Armoured Divisions had achieved crossings over the Küsten Canal, which sealed off the Emden-Wilhelmshaven peninsula from the south, but progress in the endless stretches of wet ground to Stickhausen, Astederfeld and beyond proved difficult and slow. Opposing them were German formations belonging to Heeresgruppe Nordwest of Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch. Until the end of April, the defenders of the EmdenWilhelmshaven salient had been the 1. Fallschirm-Armee under General der Infanterie Erich Straube, comprising two corps with five divisions: defending the western half was the II. Fallschirm-Korps with the 7., 8. and 11. Fallschirmjäger-Divisions, and

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

Right: On May 6, 1945 — two days after the capitulation of all German troops in northern Germany — Wilhelmshaven surrendered without a fight to a battle group of the 1st Polish Armoured Division. Here the mixed tank/infantry force under Colonel Antoni Grudzinski, commander of the Polish 10th Armoured Brigade, is approaching the junction of Oldenburger Strasse/Bismarckstrasse and Schaarreihe (see map on page 5) where the Poles and a delegation of Wilhelmshaven dignitaries had arranged to meet.

Left: Captain Edward Conder’s Naval Party 1735, charged with taking over Wilhelmshaven’s naval facilities, met up with the Poles before the German delegation appeared. The seamen had been bivouacking near Rastede with the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, who expected to take the surrender, when, at 1 a.m., Conder was informed that the 1st Polish Armoured Division would be taking it instead. Ignoring all danger, Conder personally 32

drove the first of a small convoy of four Jeeps to the rendezvous. Here his vehicles have drawn up beside the Polish tanks. After a quick conference with Grudzinski, Conder hurried off again to capture his priority object, the naval headquarters at Sengwarden, ten kilometres north of the city. He had already left before the German surrender delegation arrived. Right: The junction has been re-engineered but the house in the background survives.

ATB

The historic junction today. The Shell garage has been moved a few yards further down Bismarckstrasse. Naval Party 1735 for Wilhelmshaven had been set up in February 1945. Its commander was Captain Edward Conder who would also be Naval Officer In Charge (NOIC) Wilhelmshaven. He would be reporting to the Flag-Officer Wilhelmshaven (Rear-Admiral Gerald Muirhead-Gould). In terms of hierarchy, Conder was at the same reporting level as an army’s corps commander. The commanders and lieutenant-commanders of his party would liaise with the army’s divisional, brigade and battalion commanders. The party numbered 130 men dressed in khaki and blue.

On April 10 Admiral Burrough reviewed Naval Party 1735 at Hayling Island, off the Hampshire coast, and sent it essential transport. Conder divided his force into three: his recce party; an advance party under Lieutenant-Commander Eyre, and the main party. The recce party of four officers and 14 men (Captain Conder, Lieutenant Arnold Foster, Lieutenant-Commander Burton Cope, Lieutenant Joseph Thompson, three Royal Marine drivers, and 11 telegraphists, cooks and coders) left Britain on April 15 to meet Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould at 21st Army Group Main HQ. They crossed from

ATB

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

nesson (Seekommandant Elbe/Weser with HQ in Cuxhaven) and Konteradmiral Kurt Weyher (Seekommandant Ostfriesland with HQ in Norden). These two commanded the mixed force of paratroops and marine infantry that defended the swamps of the Küsten Canal for a week against the II Canadian Corps. The marine infantry units had been raised locally in November 1944 as Marine-Festungs-Bataillonen (Naval Fortress Battalions). MFB 363 was raised in Schillig, MFB 364 in Varel, MFB 365 in Wilhelmshaven, MFB 366 and 367 in Emden, and MFB 368 in Delfzijl. These battalions were assembled into various formations, among them the 20. Marine-Einsatz-Regiment (also called Regiment Leissner after its commander, Kapitän zur See Helmut Leissner); a miscellany of battle groups under command of the divisional staffs of the 471. and 490. InfanterieDivisions, and Festungskommando Wilhelmshaven (Fortress Command Wilhelmshaven) under Kapitän zur See Walter Mulsow. The latter command also included the powerful but immobile 2. Marine-Flak-Brigade that ringed Wilhelmshaven with high-velocity anti-aircraft guns that could double in the anti-tank role, and the cruiser Köln. Though resting on the bottom of the Bau-Hafen after being sunk by the American bombers on March 30, the Köln could still fire her guns and is said to have fired on leading elements of the 1st Polish Armoured Division south-west of Varel during the last two days of hostilities. As the formations of II Canadian Corps advanced northwards, another much-smaller force prepared to enter Wilhelmshaven with the leading troops. In order to secure the German ports and naval installations, Admiral Sir Harold Burrough, the Commander of Naval Expeditionary Forces, had created a number of special naval parties, one for each of the German ports, their tasks being to seize and take control of vital harbour and dockyard installations, to capture German naval commanders, begin the vital task of clearing mines from the approaches to the larger ports to allow in supplies, and disarm the Kriegsmarine.

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

Right: The German delegation comprised (L-R) Kapitän zur See Walter Mulsow, fortress commander of Wilhelmshaven; a translator (just visible behind Mulsow); chief of police Ferdinand Heske; NSDAPKreisleiter Bernd Horstmann; Oberbürgermeister Dr. Wilhelm Müller, and city administrator Georg Seiffe. Horstmann, Müller and Seiffe were not wearing their usual ‘gold pheasant’ party uniforms. Confronting them were Colonel Grudzinski; the Brigade Adjutant; Major Michal Gutowski, commanding the 2nd Polish Armoured Regiment, and Captain Jerzy Wasilewski, the Recce commander.

Left: Another view of the surrender scene. Right: The old Apotheke on the corner survives basically unchanged. 33

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

They were at the southern end of the Kraftwagenhalle (vehicle garage) that enclosed the western end of the Mühlenweg Barracks. Today it is called the Seippel-Halle. However, there would be no fight for possession of Wilhelmshaven. A battle for the port city was prevented by the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Holland, north-western Germany and Denmark, signed at Montgomery’s tactical headquarters on Lüneburg Heath at 6.30 p.m. on May 4 (see After the Battle No. 48). Following the cease-fire, on May 5 General Simonds and General Straube met at Bad Zwischenahn to implement details of the surrender. The approximately 30,000 German troops in the Emden-Wilhelms-

haven sector were declared ‘capitulated troops’ without POW status. They remained armed and retained their command structure, receiving orders from Straube who attended co-ordination meetings with Canadian divisional staffs. Following the meeting, General Simonds directed the Polish 1st Armoured Division to drive through Neuenberg to Wittmund and Jever, north-west of Wilhelmshaven, while the 4th Canadian Armoured Division with Conder was ordered to occupy Wilhelmshaven itself. However, at the last

ATB

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

Tilbury to Ostend on a tank landing craft, spending the night of April 16/17 at the Antwerp naval depot. On April 17 they crossed the Maas at Venlo, called in at Kevelaer, where they exchanged notes with the Emden party, and reached Muirhead-Gould, probably at Bonninghardt, on about April 18. The admiral briefed Conder and told him to meet up in Enschede with the First Canadian Army, which had orders to take Wilhelmshaven, and to make contact with the 27th Royal Marine Battalion (LieutenantColonel Norman Tailyour), which would be his enforcers. The main party moved up to Bourg Leopold in northern Belgium, while the advance party joined Conder in Enschede with the Hamburg Port party. On April 19, Conder’s party linked up with the II Canadian Corps and on the 21st the recce party and the 27th Royal Marine Battalion motored forward to join the 4th Canadian Armoured Division fighting towards Wilhelmshaven in the Bad Zwischenahn area. Bremen capitulated on April 26 (see After the Battle No. 135). On the 28th the 3rd British Infantry Division transferred into II Canadian Corps and this triggered the final all-out assault on Wilhelmshaven. The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division captured Oldenburg on May 3, but progress north of the Küsten Canal remained slow due to the swampy terrain and the fierce German opposition. By May 4, the 4th Canadian Armoured Division (and Conder’s advance party) was at Rastede, some 35 kilometres south-east of Wilhelmshaven and the 1st Polish Armoured Division, which had veered to the right to aid the Canadian 4th Armoured, had reached the hamlet of Astederfeld, 22 kilometres south of Wilhelmshaven.

The two Royal Navy lieutenant-commanders speaking to a Polish officer are believed to be Eyre and Webb. Eyre accompanied the Polish armour in occupying the Mühlenweg Barracks, while Webb took over the Flak HQ bunker in Rosenhügel.

ATB

After accepting the city’s surrender, Colonel Grudzinski moved his force into town, concentrating his armour in the Kaserne am Mühlenweg in the north-east part of town. Here he consults an unidentified Wehrmacht officer before entering the barracks.

Left: The Mühlenweg Barracks was built in 1912 for the 2. Matrosen-Division that crewed the warships. It was renamed the Admiral-von-Schröder-Kaserne in 1936. Having entered the 34

barracks, the Polish Shermans parked on the parade ground in front of Block 2. Right: Today the buildings house schools, kindergartens, sports facilities and workshops.

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE ATB

These Shermans were on the south side of the parade ground.

The Kommandantur block on the right has since been demolished. formal surrender. The German delegation that came out to meet Colonel Grudzinski comprised Kapitän zur See Walter Mulsow, the Festungskommandant Wilhelmshaven (Fortress Commander Wilhelmshaven); Polizeipräsident Heske; NSDAP-Kreisleiter Horstmann; Oberbürgermeister Dr Wilhelm Müller; Stadtrat (chief city administrator) Georg Seiffe, who was also the Gau-PropagandaLeiter (District Propaganda Chief); and a translator presumably fluent in English (but not required because Grudzinski could speak fluent German). The Germans were probably surprised to discover that their opposite party were Poles — ‘Untermenschen’ according to Nazi ideology — and when the news got around Wilhelmshaven it appar-

ently induced some panic. In a short ceremony around noon, Colonel Grudzinski accepted the surrender of the city. He then took his armour into the town to the Mühlenweg Barracks accompanied by Lieutenant-Commander Eyre, while the rest of Conder’s men dispersed to their targets. Five Marines seized the Langewerth telephone exchange; Lieutenant-Commander Webb took over the Flak HQ in Rosenhügel in the Stadtpark; Lieutenant-Commander Fergusson occupied the zonal naval HQ in the Njassa passenger liner at the Hafen-Insel; Leading Signalman Potter crossed the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge on a bicycle, because his tank was too heavy, to take control of the signal station at Entrance III; and the RN Engineer Officer took control of the dockyard.

ATB

SIKORSKI INSTITUTE

moment Simonds changed his mind. At 11 p.m. that night, he ordered the Polish division to occupy Wilhelmshaven instead of the Canadians, presumably because the Poles were nearer to it and spoke German. MajorGeneral Stanislaw Maczek, the Polish divisional commander, thereupon ordered Colonel Antoni Grudzinski, commander of the 10th Polish Armoured Brigade, to send a battle group to Wilhelmshaven to take its surrender. That same day, May 5, a Canadian armoured car holding a Canadian sergeant and two soldiers had arrived at the Westbahnhof command bunker and removed two of the German commanders — NSDAPKreisleiter (Nazi Party Local Leader) Bernd Horstmann and Polizeipräsident (chief of police) SS-Oberführer Ferdinand Heske — to Rastede, where the 4th Canadian Armoured Division was encamped, to arrange the surrender, the Germans returning to the city on the following morning to take part in the capitulation ceremony. Grudzinski’s battle group, consisting of the 2nd Armoured Regiment of his own brigade and the 9th Rifle Battalion of the 3rd Polish Infantry Brigade, broke camp at 6 a.m. on May 6 in full battle order, armed and prepared to fight their way into Wilhelmshaven if necessary, but aware that arrangements had been made the previous day about surrendering the town. They approached Wilhelmshaven in two columns on parallel roads following the standard drill of an approach to contact by an armoured division. Grudzinski travelled with a Wehrmacht officer who guided them through roadblocks and mined areas. Reaching the city limits around noon, they stopped at the junction of Bismarckstrasse and Schaarreihe. Grudzinski then sent a message to the military and city authorities to come out and meet him, and waited for them in his tank in the rain. As he was waiting, Captain Conder arrived with the advance group of his naval party. Simonds’ last-minute change of mind had caught Conder somewhat wrong-footed. The 4th Canadian Armoured Division did not receive the new orders until 1 a.m. on May 6, which left him and his small force of Jeeps scrambling to find their own way up the Oldenburg-Wilhelmshaven road. Delayed by a blown culvert and speeding past cheering camps of foreign forced labourers, they arrived at the surrender crossroads before the German delegation had appeared on the scene. Conder conferred with Colonel Grudzinski in a nearby cafe to co-ordinate their plans, then quickly departed again in three Jeeps, accompanied by two Polish armoured vehicles and a detachment of Royal Marines, heading for the Sengwarden naval headquarters and communications centre, his priority target, to secure its surrender. The rest of his men stayed with the Poles to await the city’s

Left: Soldiers who had been manning the defences of Festung Wilhelmshaven return to their quarters in Block 9 which was called Cöeln, the old spelling for Köln (Cologne), which was

named in memory of the cruiser sunk in August 1914 in the battle of Heligoland Bight. Right: The entrance remains more or less unchanged. 35

36

to Wilhelmshaven and Emden. Canadian II Corps was relieved on June 15 by the British XXX Corps District and the 27th Royal Marine Battalion left for Plymouth and the Pacific Theatre at the same time.

NAC PA-152508

Emden-Wilhelmshaven salient from May 25 in groups of 10,000, and remain there under Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz’s command. German troops on the Dutch Friesian Islands were repatriated in their own boats

On the morning of May 7, the Polish tanks made a ceremonial drive through the town as a show of strength. Here, a Sherman Firefly rolls past the ruined Oldenburgische Landesbank on Gökerstrasse, pictured by Canadian Army photographer Christopher Woods. Being close to the Bau-Hafen shipyards, this was one of the most destroyed districts of Wilhelmshaven.

ATB

Right: Gökerstrasse was widened after the war but this is the same spot.

CONDER

Meanwhile, Captain Conder’s party had reached the Sengwarden naval headquarters. Arriving at the gate, which was still guarded by armed sentries, they demanded to speak immediately to the barracks commander. Konteradmiral Kurt Weyher — the Seekommandant Ostfriesland, and, in the absence of Admiral Förste, who was in Glückstadt, the senior Kriegsmarine officer present — was eating lunch in the mess with his officers, and he coolly finished the meal first before coming out to talk to the Allies. Conder accepted the surrender of Weyher and the establishment’s personnel, which included 400 Marine-Helferinnen (German female naval auxiliaries). As per the surrender agreement, the German troops were disarmed by their own authorities. Fearing that scenes might occur between the Polish troops and the German populace, Conder ordered all of his Naval Party except Leading Signalman Potter to leave Wilhelmshaven for Sengwarden. He need not have worried. The Poles behaved impeccably and nothing untoward occurred. On May 7, Naval Party 1735 continued to assemble in Sengwarden. That day, Conder told Weyher to move his headquarters to the Njassa, and to start minesweeping, collect all breech blocks, seal all magazines ‘and so on and so forth for about 16 pages of foolscap’. The Kriegsmarine appeared eager to follow orders and perform their tasks. Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould also arrived at Sengwarden, established his Flag Officer Wilhelmshaven headquarters in Block 20, and conferred with Admiral Förste, who had by then returned. (Muirhead-Gould’s title was soon changed to Flag Officer Western Germany and he moved his HQ to Buxtehude. After he died during a cocktail party on June 26, he was succeeded by Rear-Admiral Fitzroy Hutton.) On May 8, Conder ordered the two U-boat training flotillas (the 22. and 31. U-Flottillen) to pack and leave the U-Boot-Stützpunkt in the Banter Kaserne and move to the Ebkeriege Barracks by May 10. He commissioned the submarine depot ship Weichsel and the Banter Kaserne as HMS Royal Rupert and set up his own headquarters there. While Conder took command over the Kriegsmarine and its facilities, the civil administration of Wilhelmshaven was assumed by the Town Major, Captain Buckle, under Major R. M. Hall of No. 630 Military Government Detachment. To coordinate the various functions between the three services, Conder formed a Port Executive Committee. On May 22, the 1st Polish Armoured Division withdrew to Jever and Aurich to be replaced by the British 31st Anti-Aircraft Brigade under Brigadier Eric Coley (relieved by Brigadier Morden Carthew on September 23) and by the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division under Major-General Bruce Matthews, whose main task was to receive the masses of German troops — some 117,629 in all — withdrawing from the Netherlands. These were to march into the

JENS GRAUL

Right: Captain Conder accepting the surrender of the Sengwarden naval headquarters complex. Here he is shaking hands with Konteradmiral Kurt Weyher, the Seekommandant Ostfriesland and the senior officer present at the headquarters. Behind Weyher is Fregattenkapitän Werthmann who acted as translator. Far right: The steel anti-blast shutters on doors and windows have been removed but this is the same entrance to the officers’ mess on the east side of Block 11. The barracks complex was returned to the Bundesmarine in 1957.

ATB

CONDER

DEMILITARISATION (1945-1948) Royal Naval planning for post-war German naval disarmament, and for the elimination of German capacity for sea warfare, had begun in June 1942. Determined to avoid past mistakes, notably having trusted Germany with implementing the Versailles Treaty, the Royal Navy insisted that German naval disarmament was its special preserve. They were determined this time to leave no foundation on which the Germans could ever rebuild a navy. Their sense of purpose, amounting to obsession, allowed them to prevail over Americans, Russians and domestic critics. Naval demilitarisation comprised several phases: firstly, the capturing intact of as many ships and naval facilities as possible; then, after Germany’s capitulation, accepting the surrender of German surface and submarine fleet and concentrating them in specific places; next, deciding on which ships were to be destroyed and which to be distributed among the victors, and carrying out these decisions; and, finally, destroying the naval bases and dockyards in Germany. The Royal Navy determined to demolish the naval facilities at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel completely. In March 1944 planning responsibility for naval demilitarisation was given to Admiral Bertram Ramsay as Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Force in SHAEF. The Royal Navy wanted the army to provide the manpower under Navy direction. The lengthy argument was finally settled when 21st Army Group refused to provide troops and the Royal Navy agreed to use its own Royal Marine brigades instead of sending them to the Pacific. As it eventually evolved, the German surface fleet was assembled at Wilhelmshaven, with the exception of destroyer Z-39 and torpedo boat T-35 that had already been sailed to the United States. Officers and crews of U-boats that surrendered at Wilhelmshaven were interned at the Ebkeriege Barracks. On May 25, after news of the arrest of Admiral

The 31st Anti-Aircraft Brigade served as British occupation force after the war. Right: Breiter Weg is today Friedenstrasse and the old Jugendherberge at No. 1 now a home for the mentally disabled. The name of the idol of former times has been erased.

CONDER

Left: Brigadier Morden Carthew, commander of the 31st Anti-Aircraft Brigade, and his staff on the steps of their headquarters in Wilhelmshaven’s Youth Hostel on Breiter Weg. Opened in 1935, it was named after First World War U-boat ace Otto Weddigen.

Captain Conder set up his headquarters in the Banter Kaserne, the barracks of the U-boat base, known during the Royal Navy’s two-year tenure as HMS Royal Rupert. Here he poses with his staff of approximately 100 sailors, soldiers, marines and Wrens for a group photo in front of the complex’s air raid bunker in the winter of 1945. All have crossed their right legs except for one individualistic Wren!

ATB

Right: The last of the barrack blocks was pulled down in 2009 but the bunker still survives. 37

ATB

NAC PA-155019

Right: We already saw the filled-in lock from the air on page 25; this is how it looks from the ground. The signal tower is the original one from before the war. 38

A fleet of seven captured U-boats — U-150, U-291, U-720, U-739, U-779 (built in Wilhelmshaven), U-1194 and U-1198 — arriving in the Tirpitz-Schleuse under command of Korvettenkapitän Heinrich Bleichrodt, holder of the Knights Cross with OakLeaves, on May 13. All except U-739 were in the 31. U-Flottille in Wesermünde, whose commander, Korvettenkapitän Carl Emmermann, had left to form the infantry MarineBataillon Emmermann. Without ships to command after he had scuttled those of his own 22. U-Flottille in the Raeder-Schleuse, Bleichrodt was sent to oversee the return of the submarines. U-739 of the 13. U-Flottille — a combat unit in Trondheim — had to be recovered from Borkum where it had gone with engine trouble. In all 14 U-boats surrendered in Wilhelmshaven.

ATB

Dönitz and his government in Flensburg on May 23 (see After the Battle No. 128) had led to unrest among the U-boat officers, the Royal Navy agreed that the Flag Officer Submarines, Konteradmiral Eberhard Godt, address the U-boat commanders and answer their questions. Three days later, on May 28, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the light cruiser Nürnberg, which had both surrendered to, and been disarmed by, the Royal Navy in Copenhagen, arrived in Wilhelmshaven. The only other heavy warship to survive the war afloat, the damaged light cruiser Leipzig, surrendered at Aabenraa in Denmark and arrived in Wilhelmshaven on July 1. U-boats that surrendered at Wilhelmshaven were soon sailed to concentration areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland in anticipation of their destruction. Britain went into the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 in possession of the entire German fleet except for the two ships that had been sailed to the United States. None had surrendered to the Russians. Britain wanted to sink the entire fleet in a repeat of Scapa Flow but, when the Soviet Union demanded a one-third share, fell back on demanding only the destruction of all submarines. The foreign ministers finally resolved the issue on August 1, 1945, agreeing on the destruction of all submarines except for 30 that would be saved for technical evaluation. These 30 together with the rest of the fleet would then be divided equally between the three powers and delivered within prescribed time limits. A Tripartite Naval Commission hammered out the details of allocating the German fleet among the Allies. Britain wanted the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen for technical evaluation; they wanted U-1406 and U-1407, which were of the chemical Type XVIIB, for themselves and for the United States; they wanted the best destroyers to go to France; they wanted retention of sufficient minesweepers to get the job done; and they wanted floating dry docks, cranes, dredgers and other harbour equipment treated as reparations outside the agreed ship allocations. There were arguments about individual ships: the Russians wanted the destroyer Friedrich Ihn (Z-14) and the light cruiser Leipzig repaired, but finally agreed that Leipzig should be sunk in the Skagerrak, while Friedrich Ihn was repaired and sailed to the Soviet Union. The three negotiators, British Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Miles, American Vice-Admiral Robert L. Ghormley and Russian Rear-Admiral Gordei I.

the cruiser Nürnberg. Having been emptied of ammunition, and being low on fuel, she is high in the water. (The lock’s incomplete west chamber was found to contain 23 U-boats that had been scuttled on May 2.) Right: Lock IV today, looking seaward.

IWM A-28659

Left: Captain Conder (right) and two lieutenant-commanders watching the arrival of the Prinz Eugen and her escort HMCS Iroquois in the east chamber of the Raeder-Schleuse on May 28. The battleship had surrendered at Copenhagen together with

IWM A-28662

Above: Having entered the Hipper-Hafen under the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge, the submarines tied up to Quay H1 which had been Scharnhorst’s berth. An armed reception party of Royal Navy and Royal Marine members of Naval Party 1735 was on hand as the crews disembarked. Right: The wooden quays have gone but the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge (which was condemned and reprieved from demolition only in May 1949 after a public outcry) serves to pinpoint the comparison.

ATB

IWM

ATB

Levchenko, agreed to divide the ships into three collections for which they would draw lots: the United States, which wanted it least, won the Prinz Eugen and six destroyers; Russia got the Nürnberg and ten destroyers; and Britain 13 destroyers. The Tripartite Naval and Merchant Marine agreements were signed in December 1945. Admiral Burrough, by now British Naval C-in-C Germany, was made responsible for their implementation. The result of this Allied agreement was

Left: Across the road, Korvettenkapitän Bleichrodt, using a bollard as a rostrum, addresses the crews before their transfer

to the Ebkeriege Barracks. Right: The former Luftwaffe mess hall on the dike and the steps up the embankment remain. 39

ATB

CONDER

Left: The captured cruiser Leipzig leaving the Gazellebrücke quay under tow by F2023 Heros and F54 Enak on July 9, 1946. Condemned as economically irreparable due to its wartime collision

Right: Destruction found in the BauHafen pictured on May 6, 1945. In the foreground are the Sperrbrecher Eider, lying on its side in Dock No. 6, and the tug Boetic, flooded in Dock No. 5. Sitting on the bottom of the east quay (left) is the light cruiser Köln, while at the north quay is the supply ship Ostfriesland. All these ships had been sunk in the big USAAF raid of March 30, 1945. 40

Considering how to implement the Yalta Agreements and destroy the Kriegsmarine’s facilities at Wilhelmshaven, the Royal Navy drew up a series of alternative plans. All allowed the city a commercial port at the end of the Ems-Jade Canal and the preservation of Entrance I. In the end the cheapest solution was implemented: building of three dams and blowing up all the facilities except for those serving the Ems-Jade Canal. This is the Hipper-Hafen (where the German battleships and destroyers had had their berths) after destruction was completed. The Grodendamm (lower left) was built to close off the Hipper-Hafen from the Scheer-Hafen (where the U-boats had been stationed) and Tirpitz-Hafen. The result was that these latter two basins became a brackish lake, known as the Banter See. The Groden ferry, which ran at this point until September 1949, went to Bremerhaven.

USNA

seen in Wilhelmshaven, where the German surface fleet was assembled. In spite of Russian objections, the Royal Navy employed large numbers of Kriegsmarine personnel under their own command structure and discipline to maintain the German warships. German sailors were employed in Dienstgruppen (service groups) and working parties under the command of Konteradmiral Weyher. The Kriegsmarine-Werft continued under its commander, Konteradmiral Paul Willy Zieb. Both worked amicably and closely with Captain Conder and accepted personal responsibility for the safety of the surrendered warships. The Royal Navy feared a repeat of the mass scuttling of 1919 in Scapa Flow. Afraid that Russian entry in the port would trigger such an action they refused the Soviets access to Wilhelmshaven. However, remembering the communist uprisings of 1918, Weyher and Zieb ruled the Kriegsmarine sailors with an iron discipline. They were backed by the Kriegsmarine, Royal Navy and the Canadian Occupation Force (2nd Canadian Infantry Division) which patrolled the port areas and the town with orders to shoot first if scuttling began and to ask questions only after securing the ships. Between November 25, 1945 and February 12, 1946, the Royal Navy sank 115 U-boats in deep water off Ireland in Operation ‘Deadlight’ (see After the Battle No. 36). This event galvanised Burrough to replace all of the crews of the German ships lying in Wilhelmshaven. He heard rumours that the ships might be scuttled on Christmas Eve. So on December 14, 1945, the Prinz Eugen was sailed to the American base at Bremerhaven and handed over (she was later sunk in the Pacific — see After the Battle No. 28). Two days later, Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers and men boarded all of the ships, mustered the German crews, and took them ashore to barracks with the support of Canadian and British soldiers. On December 18 the Russians arrived, took over their ships from the British, let German steaming parties back on board, and sailed during the following three weeks. The Nürnberg and its group left on January 2, 1946 through the Kiel Canal, and all Russian ships were gone by February 6, 1946. Destruction of German naval fixed

with the Prinz Eugen, it contained gas munitions and was heading for the Skagerrak to be scuttled. Right: The museum ships Weser and Kapitän Meyer stand in for the Leipzig along Bontekai.

Right: All the machinery on the BauHafen was collected by the Soviets and everything else of military value was destroyed. This is the south quay looking eastward towards the Hafen-Kanal. defences was specified by the Royal Navy and carried out by the army through corps district HQs. Over half of the defences were destroyed by the end of 1945. Allied Control Directive No. 22 ordered that submarine and warship shelters should be destroyed within 18 months and naval bases within four years, which meant a deadline of the middle of 1949. As long as the German ships were in Wilhelmshaven, the Kriegsmarine-Werft continued to function, repairing the German ships for delivery and patching up those which would be towed for scuttling in the Skagerrak. When this work was completed, the workers dismantled and packed the shipyard machinery into 38 Russian freighters which then took the equipment to the Soviet Union as reparations. The Royal Engineers then proceeded to blow up and demolish the entire dockyards and port. The harbour basins, locks, docks and some bunkers were destroyed in Operation ‘Bailiff’. Three of the four harbour entrances were blown up, only Entrance I (the original Entrance II) being retained. Entrance II (the original Entrance I) was closed off with a dam at the harbour end and Entrance III (the Tirpitz-Schleuse) was completely filled in. The U-boat quay on the north bank of the Scheer-Hafen was taken out in 1948, the entire quay walls (except for two sections) being removed. Every building on the land-ward side of the Fliegerdeich, from the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge to the Grodendamm, with the exception of the three ex-Luftwaffe barrack blocks, and all the wooden quays were removed. All of the naval Flak batteries were systematically destroyed. Formal policy was to leave nothing standing, and nothing by which to remember the Kriegsmarine. There were proposals to relocate the citizens and let the sea in to wash away the town and harbour. Protests in Britain were ignored, as the Royal Navy hardened its heart to act fast and forestall opposition to blowing up buildings that could house displaced persons. Rear-Admiral Stephen Arliss, Flag Officer Commanding British Naval Forces in Germany, rejected protests and expressions of humanitarian concern in Wilhelmshaven and Eckernförde (the torpedo experimental station) in particular. German shipbuilding capacity was eliminated except for trawler construction and ship-repair. Having achieved their objective of comprehensively and systematically eliminating all German potential for sea warfare, the occupation forces departed Wilhelmshaven, leaving their children at the Prince Rupert School, the English boarding school for children of British servicemen set up in 1947 in the former Banter Kaserne of the U-BootStützpunkt.

A dam was built at the site of the Jachmann Bridge to close off the Bau-Hafen basin and all the rubble removed, leaving the former dockyards a desolate wasteland. This is how the area looked in the early 1950s.

MARINEARSENAL

Right: When the Bundesmarine re-occupied the site in the 1950s, a new basin area was excavated alongside the old Docks Nos. 4, 5 and 6 (which had been covered over) and new facilities and workshops built, but there was no postwar shipbuilding in Wilhelmshaven. Today known as the Marinearsenal, the facility is used to maintain the Bundesmarine frigates. Currently the basin is also the berthing place for a decommissioned frigate and submarine awaiting selling or scrapping. The grassy area in the foreground is where Docks Nos. 1-3 used to be and to the left of that is the former site of Slipway No. 2 where the Tirpitz was built and launched. 41

Although the Luftwaffe described this target map as Liverpool, in fact it shows Bootle to the north of the city centre. Although many of the iconic images of the Blitz were taken in London, numerous other cities outside the capital suffered heavy damage and loss of life. As a major port with extensive docks, Liverpool was an obvious target for the Luftwaffe, which began its first operations against the city in August 1940. Sporadic raids damaged goods stations, docks, hospitals, churches and houses. The local papers reported the latter incidents with

THE LIVERPOOL BLITZ references to ‘terrorist raids’ and questions such as ‘a military objective?’ Despite some extensive damage the city was coping reasonably well to this point, but worse was to come.

In 1904 Edward VII laid the foundation stone for Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral on the site of a former quarry. Designed by Giles Gilbert Scott it is the largest cathedral in the UK and one of the largest in the world. This view shows the oldest part of the building, the Lady Chapel, which was completed in 1910. It suffered minor damage during the war and numerous nearmisses such as the one that caused the crater shown here. 42

By Neil Holmes

After the war the terraced housing in the foreground was cleared away making space for a car park and modern accomodation blocks which lie behind where this photograph was taken. The cathedral, which was only half built when war broke out was not finally finished until 1978. The thanksgiving ceremony was attended by Edward’s great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Left: On a press cutting from the Liverpool Echo dated September 5, 1940, someone had written in pencil ‘Leopold Road?’. By cross-checking local street directories for 1938 with the Civilian War Dead records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Neil Holmes was able to determine that five members of the Birch family had died at No. 81 Leopold Road on September 4, 1940. Charles Birch would somehow have to

pick up his life after losing his wife Margaret and his four daughters. Right: The bomb destroyed four houses but only two were rebuilt after the war, each one receiving the luxury of a garage. The 1940 press report mentioned only that ‘several people received fatal injuries’ before moving on to say that two people in the house on the far left had a miraculous escape having been rescued from their bed.

Left: On the night when the first bombs fell in a built-up area of Liverpool, one landed in Caryl Street, between the Brunswick goods station on the left and Brunswick Gardens on the right. Although some damage was done to the goods yard the people in the tenements were very lucky to have escaped from such a near-miss. Right: Today Caryl Street is largely pedestrianised and the site of the old goods station is now occupied by business premises. Brunswick Gardens was demolished in the 1990s and replaced with modern housing.

Left: Originally the site of Liverpool Castle (demolished in the 17th century), Derby Square was an important venue close to the Town Hall, Pierhead, and Custom House. This photograph shows the view from Lord Street to Cable Street on the right with the square in the foreground. The workers are enjoying a much-needed tea break courtesy of the Women’s Royal

Voluntary Services. This area was considered a priority as many of the city’s tram routes passed through the square. Right: Derby Square is currently undergoing a major facelift making a comparison difficult. The tower in the far left background is a ventilation shaft for a shopping centre. The revolving platform near the top once contained a restaurant. 43

Left: On the corner of Durning Road and Clint Road in the Edge Lane area of the city stood the Edge Hill Training College. Its large basement was frequently used as a shelter during air raids. In the early hours of November 29, 1940, a parachute mine hit the building, collapsing it into the shelter below and burying around 300 people. A fractured gas main and boiling water from September 1940 saw the city’s Custom House set on fire and the Anglican cathedral slightly damaged. Both of the underground stations in the city also suffered damage along with grandstands at Everton Football Club’s ground. The city’s docks were hit and, because the dockers frequently lived in densely populated housing nearby, the population suffered at the same time. October witnessed further destruction to the dock system and the area around the Pierhead and by the 23rd Liverpool had experienced over 200 alerts since the war began. From November it was rare for the city to go more than two nights without a raid, culminating at the end of the month with the Durning Road incident. The first three weeks of December were quiet with little more than reconnaissance flights although the Luftwaffe returned with a vengeance on the 20th with what were to become known locally as the ‘Christmas Raids’. During this eight-day period, the Town Hall, Cunard Buildings, a hospital and St George’s Hall were damaged. High explosives also brought down railway arches on one of the main lines into the city and breached the Leeds-Liverpool canal. Destruction was also wrought to docks and warehouses close to the river, hindering port operations. The New Year seemed to bring some respite as there were only raids on 12 separate nights during January and February. March brought a return to heavy attacks and during the month important communication buildings such as the Head Post Office and South John Street Telephone Exchange were damaged. More dock facilities were hit and two ships were sunk mid-river. Over 500 Liverpudlians were killed during March, mostly on the nights of the 12th/13th and 13th/14th. There were only 44 fatalities in April but if anyone hoped that they had seen the worst of the bombing they were sadly mistaken. The first week of May became known locally as the ‘May Blitz’ and has lived long in the memory of local people. May 1 saw comparatively little damage although Lime Street station was closed by unexploded bombs. The following night was more serious as land mines and HE bombs rained down on residential areas with Wapping Dock, the overhead railway, the White Star Building, the Port of Liverpool Building and the Corn Exchange all being hit. The heaviest raid of all came on the night of May 3/4, when a larger than normal number of raiders combined with a water shortage and failure in communications amongst the fire services. Notable landmarks destroyed that night included the depart44

a damaged central-heating system added to the chaos and loss of life, despite the best efforts of the rescue workers seen here. In all 166 people died, prompting Winston Churchill to describe the event as ‘one of the worst single incidents of the war’. Right: The college was rebuilt after the war and later became a secondary school. On the site now is modern housing.

The main building is the Wapping Dock Warehouse, which stands alongside the Dock Road, just south of the Pierhead. The second section from the left was damaged during a raid in September but patched up. On the night of May 2/3, 1941, a land-mine exploded in the area causing further damage. In the foreground a section of the overhead railway has been brought down. This ran most of the length of the docks and was the first electrically-powered overhead railway in the world.

After the war the nearest section of the warehouse was demolished and the remainder converted into luxury flats. The overhead railway was found to be suffering from corrosion after the war and in need of repairs costing £2 million. It was eventually demolished in 1957 leaving very little trace save for a wider Dock Road. The castlelike building on the far left is part of the pump-house that controlled the dock gates.

Lewis’s department store (seen here on the left) stood on a prominent site at the corner of Ranelagh Street and Renshaw Street. It was one of Liverpool’s most famous shopping venues. On the night of May 3/4, 1941, a high-explosive bomb hit the building knocking out the sprinkler system. Further HE

and incendiaries struck later that night and the fire was soon beyond the control of the firemen in the area who were hampered by a lack of water. The building was left a gutted shell which was so dangerous that it was soon partially demolished to prevent collapse.

With the exception of the administration block (out of shot to the left), the building was demolished after the war and replaced with the modern premises seen here. The statue above the entrance is by Jacob Epstein and is officially called Liverpool Resurgent.

However, it was recently announced that the store (better known to locals as ‘Dickie Lewis’) is now about to close its doors for the final time after 153 years. The building is due to be incorporated into a new development linked to the nearby Central Station. 45

In Great Charlotte Street stood Blackler’s department store. During the big raid on the night of May 3/4, cinders from the fire at Lewis’s landed on the building setting it alight too. This resulted in the store being gutted, forcing the company to relocate for the remainder of the war.

The ruins were demolished after the war and replaced by a building similar to the old one which Blackler’s occupied until closing in 1988. A popular store with locals, it was famous for having an enormous rocking horse in the toy section. Since closure the old department store has been converted into shops and a pub.

ment stores of Lewis and Blacklers, public buildings such as the main library, William Brown Art Gallery and Mill Road Hospital (so badly damaged it was out of use for the remainder of the war) and even some already damaged but patched-up buildings such as the Head Post Office. Extensive destruction was caused to the buildings near the Pierhead including the

Telephone Exchange again in South John Street. Equipment was salvaged and, with the help of workers from the Head Post Office, lines were put back in working order in just four days. This was vital as close by was Western Approaches Command, the control centre for the Battle of the Atlantic (see After the Battle No. 81). Shelters such as those at Holy Cross School

During that same raid on the night of May 3/4, when over 440 bombers targeted Liverpool and Birkenhead on the south side of the Mersey, the ammunition ship Malakand received a direct hit, the resulting explosion flattening South Huskisson Branch Dock No. 2. Above: This was the scene which greeted workers the next morning. The SS Malakand had been berthed here the night before with a thousand tons of HE bombs in her hold. Fires from the nearby dock sheds spread to the ship and, despite the best efforts of the crew and the limited number of firemen available, they took firm hold. Around 7.30 a.m. the ship exploded, devastating the surrounding area. A part of the ship landed on a car travelling along the nearby Dock Road, killing both people inside. Officially the death toll was given as four although it could be as high as 20. This view looks towards the river from the vantage point of the overhead railway.

Today the overhead railway has gone, preventing Neil from gaining a higher perspective for his comparison.

46

and St Mary’s Church near the city centre collapsed, with over 100 people killed in the former. The docks once again took a hammering and this led to one of the best-known incidents of Liverpool’s Blitz: the explosion of the SS Malakand in Huskisson Branch Dock No. 2 (see The Blitz then and Now, Volume 2). The total number of deaths for this one night is thought to have been close to 850.

The next two nights were light in comparison, which was fortunate as it gave some respite for incidents which were still being dealt with. Notable casualties on those nights include St Luke’s Church on Leece Street (now a memorial to Blitz victims) and the Rotunda Theatre. During the day on May 6, streets were cordoned off throughout the city to prevent people travelling further than was necessary. This action by the authorities led to rumours of martial law and extraordinary casualty figures. The night of the May 6/7 saw incendiaries gut the Custom House, leaving it a shell. The Town Hall was also damaged again along with Riverside Station and the Albert Dock. More damage occurred to the dock area the following night and even one of the Mersey ferries was sunk. Although additional labour was drafted in from outside the city, repairs proceeded slowly, with priority being given to the docks and railways. Casualties in that May were higher than in many other major targets, like Hull and Swansea, for the entire war. Mercifully the raids now abated as the Luftwaffe turned its attention towards the Soviet Union, and just three people were killed in Liverpool during the whole of June. Although there would still be occasional raids, the worst had clearly passed. The final attack on the city occurred on February 4, 1942, when a single raider dropped bombs in the south of the city. Ironically one of the houses demolished during this raid had once been the home of Alois Hitler, the halfbrother of Adolf. It has been estimated that around 4,000 people were killed and 10,000 houses were completely destroyed in the Merseyside region during the war. Apart from London, no other British city suffered so many deaths but nevertheless Liverpool continued to play its part in the war effort. Despite a dip during the May Blitz, the docks were in use throughout the raids, with 55 million tonnes of goods and 4.7 million Allied soldiers passing through

This area of Liverpool is known locally as ‘Holy Corner’ due to the names of the roads that meet here. In front is Paradise Street, to the left Church Street, to the right Lord Street and behind the camera is Whitechapel. Badly bombed during the war, the area was frequently cordoned off whilst clearance took place. This was usually a high priority as the city relied heavily on its electric tram system which was vulnerable to any blockages. The first week of May 1941, with raids taking place on seven nights in a row, became known in Liverpool as the ‘May Blitz’. All told, at least 1,900 people were killed and a further 1,450 seriously injured during it. them. Western Approaches Command also stayed in operation, guiding the Battle of the Atlantic to its successful conclusion. Much of this can be attributed to what Churchill saw as ‘The spirit of an unconquered people’.

A wealth of wartime photographs exists for which a comparison can be made. Hopefully this short article will give readers an idea of the heavy toll Liverpool paid for being a crucial part of the Allied war machine.

Very few buildings on Paradise Street survived the war intact and much of the area remained under-used for decades. Today a large part of the site is occupied by the Liverpool One development which can be seen in the background. 47

BANNER OF VICTORY OVER THE REICHSTAG In a speech delivered on November 6, 1944, Stalin said: ‘The Red Army is now coming up to its last conclusive mission; together with the armies of our allies, we have to complete the defeat of the German Army, kill the fascist beast in its own lair and raise the banner of victory over Berlin.’ This was the first occasion that the term ‘Banner of Victory’ was officially used in Soviet parlance and it was quickly seized upon as a source of inspiration to drive the troops on to final victory. For the Red Army soldier ‘the lair of the fascist beast’ meant only one thing; the Reichstag building in Berlin. Although Hitler might lurk in his subterranean Führerbunker beneath the Reichs Chancellery nearby, the paradoxical symbolism for the evils of fascism lay not so much with him as in the ruins of the building whose destruction by fire in 1933 had provided him with the excuse to overturn whatever democratic forces existed in Germany and then eventually to conquer most of Europe. In any case, in practical military terms, the Reichstag remained an easily identifiable building in the chaotic confusion of Berlin’s ruins in 1945. Although no specific instructions on the subject had been issued, it was generally assumed that whoever succeeded in raising ‘The Banner of Victory’ on the Reichstag would be awarded the title ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ and his companions also suitably decorated with him. However, although several groups attained the aim and were awarded high decorations, unfortunate circumstances led to only one of these groups receiving full public recognition. When in April 1945 it became known that the Third Shock Army would be participating in the storming of Berlin, that army’s Military Council issued each of its nine divisions with a Special Red Banner for hoisting over prominent objectives in the city. At that time no one knew to which army, let alone to which corps or division, the honour of storming the Reichstag would fall, for the whole battle developed 48

By Nikolai Bodrikhin and Tony Le Tissier into a race for that objective with the ability to celebrate the victory with May 1 as the deadline. It so happened that Major-General Semen Perevertkin’s 79th Rifle Corps of the Third Shock Army fighting its way south and east through the district of Moabit were the first to sight the building on the afternoon of April 28. Amid the excitement this news caused, orders arrived from the Third Shock Army for the 79th Corps to take the Reichstag, hoist the ‘Banner of Victory’ over it and link up with the forces attacking from the south.

The 79th Corps’s battle for the Reichstag was then fought virtually independently within an area barely 700 metres square and without air support because of the proximity of other Soviet forces converging on the Brandenburg Gate. The open space of the Königsplatz facing the main entrance to the Reichstag was cluttered with the debris of an abandoned construction site and bordered along its northern edge by a large flooded excavation pit forming an impassable obstacle.

In April 1945, the Soviet Third Shock Army’s Military Council issued each of the army’s nine divisions with a special Red Banner for raising over the German capital. Top: Here the flag of the 1814th Self-Propelled Gun Regiment is pictured on the road to Berlin. Above: The ultimate prize was the Reichstag building even though it had remained unrepaired since it was set on fire in 1933.

Major-General Perevertkin decided to use one battalion each from the 150th and 171st Rifle Divisions to storm the Moltke Bridge across the River Spree, first taking the surviving segment of the diplomatic quarter on the left-hand side of Moltkestrasse, where the 171st Division consolidated while the 150th Division attacked across the street into the vast Ministry of the Interior building. The latter, which the Soviet soldiers dubbed ‘Himmler’s House’, took until 0400 hours (Moscow Time) on May 30 to secure and, time being short, the 150th Rifle Division was immediately ordered into a frontal assault on the Reichstag. However, as the surviving 756th and 674th Rifle Regiments emerged from the cover of the Ministry of the Interior and wheeled to face the Reichstag, they came under murderous fire from their rear where German guns and heavy machine guns were ensconced in the ruins of the Kroll Opera. The attack quickly fizzled out. The 207th Rifle Division was then called across the river from the reserve and tasked with clearing this unforeseen obstacle to progress. While they were so engaged, tanks and guns were brought across to reinforce the Ministry of the Interior position and provide covering fire for the next assault. Several of the 420th Anti-Tank Artillery Division’s ZIS-3 guns were manhandled into the upper stories, while heavier artillery pieces and self-propelled artillery lined the exterior of the building, and ten M-31 rocket-launchers were deployed in the inner courtyard. The second attack was launched at 1130 hours after a preliminary bombardment and this time the 150th’s 756th and 674th were joined by the 171st’s 380th Rifle Regiment on the left flank. However, the troops only reached as far as a flooded tunnel cutting that crossed the centre of Königsplatz before they were pinned down by the heavy fire coming from the German defences. Another assault was tried at 1300 hours but this time was held in check by the anti-aircraft guns firing from the Zoo flak-tower three kilometres away across the Tiergarten. It was then realised that further attempts would be of little avail without the cover of darkness. The heavy pall of smoke hanging over the city meant dusk falling at about 1800 hours. During the course of the afternoon the rest of the 171st Rifle Division managed to take the eastern half of the diplomatic quarter to the north of the Reichstag, which enabled them to bring forward tanks and self-propelled guns to provide enfilade fire for the forthcoming assault. Meanwhile at 1425 hours, Major-General Vasily Shatilov commanding the 150th Rifle Division, reported up the chain of command that he thought he had seen a red flag over the steps of the Reichstag near the righthand column. As the leading battalions contained several dare-devils eager to have a go at planting a flag on the Reichstag, including a group of volunteers from Corps Headquarters under the commander’s ADC, Major M. M. Bondar, with the 380th Rifle Regiment and some gunners under Captain V. N. Makov with the 756th, the possibility that someone had got forward with a flag was not totally unlikely. However, the wild enthusiasm with which this report was received resulted in Marshal Georgi Zhukov issuing his Operational Order No. 06 of that day in which he said: ‘Units of the Third Shock Army . . . having broken the resistance of the enemy, have captured the Reichstag and hoisted our Soviet Flag on it today, April 30, 1945, at 1425 hours.’ This erroneous report was flashed on to Moscow and reported abroad, but when the war correspondents and photographers started converging on the Reichstag they found the Soviet troops still only half way across Königsplatz and pinned down by gunfire.

The 79th Rifle Corps was selected to take the building which the Soviets viewed as symbolising the heart of the German government, even though the Nazis had never used it, the Kroll Opera on the far side of the Königplatz having served as a replacement. This plan is from Tony Le Tissier’s Berlin Battlefield Guide published by Pen & Sword (ISBN: 978 1 84415 7 662).

Because the final assault took place at night, the flag-raising was re-enacted later for the cameras. 49

Captain V. N. Makov’s section were responsible for raising the first banner on the building which they placed on the statue aptly named the Godess of Victory, overlooking the portico. Left: This is another re-enactment with Captain Stepan Neustroev of the 1st Battalion of the 756th Rifle Regiment. Right: The Communists frequently doctored photographs to make them look more dramatic. This shot was taken at the same time and issued by the Soviet press agency TASS. Clearly painfully aware of his error, according to Captain S. A. Neustroev, Major-General Shatilov was now dementedly ordering his troops: ‘Somehow you have to hoist a flag or pennant, even on the columns at the main entrance. Somehow!’ The first attempt is said to have been made during the day by two groups of pilots of the 115th Air Fighter Regiment, who dropped some six-metre-wide red silk panels inscribed with the word ‘Podeba’ (Victory) on the dome of the building while flying at minimum height and speed. The final attack at 1800 hours, supported by the 23rd Tank Brigade and spearheaded on the left by Lieutenant K. I. Samsonov’s battalion of the 380th, in the centre by Captain Neustroev’s 1st Battalion of the 756th and on the right by Captain V. I. Davidov’s 1st Battalion of the 674th, was successful and the Soviet troops were able to break into the Reichstag. The first troops into the building were from Senior Sergeant I. J. Sianov’s 1st Company of Neustroev’s battalion. Sianov had been appointed company commander at noon that day when he rejoined the battalion after discharging himself from hospital. It was only by firing two light mortars horizontally at the bricked-up entrance that an opening large enough to take one man at a time was effected. One of the first to get a flag to the building was Sergeant P. N. Pyatnitsky, but he was killed on the steps. Lieutenant R. Koshkarbaev managed to hoist a flag on the outside of the building from ground level sometime shortly after 2100 hours. As the troops progressed their route was marked by private, battalion and regimental flags, and this process was continued by military tourists well after the fighting was over. The fighting within the totally dark and unfamiliar building was difficult and chaotic. The German defenders put up a fierce and vigorous resistance. Furious hand-to-hand fighting took place on the stairs and corridors, and then each room had to be taken in turn. A stack of documents was accidentally set alight by a Panzerfaust, a weapon both sides were using, and soon filled the building with choking smoke. 50

The first flag on the roof of the building was that of Captain V. N. Makov’s group of gunners, which comprised Senior Sergeants A. P. Brobov, G. K. Zagitov and A. F. Lisimenko, and Sergeant M. P. Minin, who placed their flag on the statue of the Goddess of Victory right above the front entrance at about 22302240 hours Moscow time (two hours ahead of Berlin time). Makov excitedly reported his feat by radio direct to Corps Headquarters and when he was asked by Colonel Lisitsin exactly where he had put it, answered in clear that: ‘the banner was placed in the crown of some German woman.’

However, the 150th Rifle Division, whose task was now to clear the Reichstag while the 171st secured the exterior, had their own ‘Special Banner No. 5’ to identify their success. This was under the care of a picked group of Communist Party and Komsomol members awaiting their moment of glory in the cellars of the Ministry of the Interior, where the divisional headquarters were located. Sergeants M. A. Yegorov and M. V. Kantaria, both scouts belonging to the 756th Rifle Regiment, later narrated in their book The Banner of Victory that Captain Kondrashov suddenly appeared saying excitedly: ‘Come on lads, it’s time to go. The second echelon are about to attack and you are going with them.’ They took the banner, adjusted their helmets and sub-machine guns and ran out to join the attack. When they reached the building, other groups were ordered to provide them with covering attacks. Eventually they found their way through to the rear of the building and then up a staircase to the rear parapet, where they secured the standard to the equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The timing of this achievement was declared as 2250 hours Moscow time, i.e 70 minutes before May Day. The hoisting party included Lieutenant A. P. Berest, two sub-machine gunners and Sergeant P. Scherbina with a machine gun. This was the official ‘Banner of Victory’ of the 150th Rifle Division, the formation responsible for taking the Reichstag, and so it was decided that this would make the most appropriate symbol of their victory. The interloping gunners of Captain Makov’s party were all recommended for the award of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ and their feat was acknowledged in the 12-volume official history of the Second World War, but in effect their story was binned to obscurity and their awards downgraded to the ‘Order of the Red Banner’, as was also the case with the scouts of Lieutenant S. Sorokin’s Reconnaissance Platoon who too hoisted a flag on the roof of the Reichstag before Yegorov and Kantaria. Nevertheless, the Reichstag had yet to be captured. There were still German machine gunners in the nest on top of the ruined dome above them, and other German troops elsewhere in the building, including the cel-

However, it was not until the 50th anniversary in April 1995 that Sergeant Mikhail Minin, a member of Captain Makov’s group, was officially acknowledged as the soldier who actually carried the first flag, even though he described it as ‘a red rag on a pole’. It appears that Stalin wanted the honour of raising the Red Banner on the Reichstag to go to a soldier from his native Georgia, rather than Russia which was Minin’s homeland. Hence, because of politics, Sergeant Minin had to wait five decades for recognition. He died in January 2008.

On May 2 a propaganda photo shoot was specially staged on the roof at the rear of the Reichstag with two photographers covering it. Yevgeni Khaldei’s photos achieved most prominence as he was reporting for Pravda and the TASS news agency. He shot off a whole roll of 36 on his German Leica and then flew to Moscow with the film the following day. lars. The bitter fighting in smoke-filled, dark and murky rooms was to continue until the city’s garrison surrendered at about 1300 hours local time (1500 hours Moscow Time) on May 2. As the flag-hoisting had taken place at night, the event had to be re-enacted for filming for posterity in daylight over the next two days. The famous pictures showing two soldiers precariously securing the ‘Banner of Victory’ to a pepperpot-like ornament on the parapet of the Reichstag with the Brandenburg Gate in the background are apparently not of Yegorov and Kantaria, and appear to have been posed to give the banner a more significant and identifiable background than could be achieved at the original location. Once the garrison had capitulated, the ‘Banner of Victory’ was transferred to the top of the dome, but there its dimensions (188 × 92cm) failed to provide the significance required, so next day, May 3, the Corps Commander had it replaced by a larger red flag.

In 1991, before Sir Norman Foster added the modern glass dome to the Reichstag, we gained permission to climb on the roof to where the historic photos were taken.

The second photographer was Viktor Grebnev, standing on Khaldei’s right, hence the different angle of view. In 1941, he joined the army newspaper, Krasnaya zvezda (Red Star) and later transferred to Frontovik (Front-line Fighter). He remained in the Soviet Zone of Germany, later returning to the USSR as a

sports reporter. In 1995 the three soldiers were identified: holding the flag is Alexei Kovalyev; assisting him are Abdulhakim Ismailov and Aleksei Goryachev. Ismailov was wearing two looted wrist watches (circled), one of which Khaldei erased from his negative to prevent his picture from being censored. 51

The soldiers in the Khaldei-Grebnev sequence have frequently been identified as Sergeants Militon Kantaria and Mikhail Yegorov which is now certain to be incorrect. Here are the two sergeants, pictured on the roof on May 7. Left: Kantaria (left) with Yegorov, but in the picture (above) Yegorov is now seen second left.

Heralded by Stalin, both were decorated with the hightest Soviet honour: Hero of the Soviet Union. 52

Colonel-General Nikolai Berzarin of the Fifth Shock Army was appointed commander in the Soviet Sector. Here he conducts the parade held to send the Banner of Victory to Moscow. (Berzarin was killed in a road traffic accident on June 16, 1945.) Then on May 20 General Nikolai Bersarin, the Soviet Commandant of Berlin, held a parade outside the Reichstag in which the ‘Banner of Victory’, to which had since been added the inscription showing that it belonged to the 150th (Idrisk) Rifle Division, 79th Rifle Corps, Third Shock Army, was handed over to its escort of Sergeants Yegorov and Kantaria, Senior Sergeant Sianov, and Captains Samsonov and Neustroev, to take to Moscow, where they would all receive the award of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. It was originally intended that they would carry the ‘Banner of Victory’ on the Victory Parade, but, probably because their drill was not up to standard, Marshal Zhukov eventually decided against it. Instead the ‘Banner of Victory’ was given a permanent place of honour in the Central Museum of the Soviet Army, now the Central Museum of the Armed Forces. Nevertheless it was carried twice on subsequent Victory Parades, once on the 20th anniversary by the then Colonel Samsonov and Sergeants of Reserve Yegorov and Kantaria, and once on the 40th anniversary by Air Marshal N. M. Skomorokhov, Hero of Soviet Labour P. A. Litvinenko, Colonels Neustroev and N. M. Fomenko, and N. I. Kuznetsov. Other recipients of the award of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ in connection with the taking of the Reichstag were Major-General Shatilov, Colonel Zinchenko, Lieutenant I. F. Klochkov, Senior Sergeants N. P. Berdnikov and A. S. Balnikov. Sergeants I. N. Lysenko (Borokin’s platoon) and V. I. Chuidaikin (23rd Tank Brigade), and from the supporting artillery, Captain N. M. Fomenko, Lieutenant I. F. Klochkov and Senior Sergeants N. P. Berdnikov and A. S. Balnikov. The fate of Captain Makov’s banner is not known.

At the Victory Parade held in Moscow on the 20th anniversary — May 9, 1965 — Sergeants Yegorov (left) and Kantaria (right) were still being feted as the first to place the Banner of Victory on the Reichstag. In the center is Colonel Konstantin Samsonov.

Twenty years later the Banner was removed from its display in the Central Museum of the Soviet Armed Forces for the 40th anniversary parade. The inscription reads: 150th (Idrisk) Rifle Division, Order of Kutuzov (2nd Class), followed by the abbreviation for the 79th Rifle Corps, Third Shock Army, 1st Byelorussian Front. 53

The capture of the Reichstag was not only the climax of the battle for Berlin but it was also a symbolic victory for the Soviets who lost no time in building a fitting tribute to their fallen troops on the actual battlefield . . .

LANDESBILDSTELLE BERLIN

The 79th Corps claimed to have killed 2,500 and taken a similar number of prisoners in the battle for the Reichstag. While the German dead were unceremoniously tumbled into the nearest trenches and shellholes, the Soviet dead were to be buried at a huge memorial to be built on the actual battlefield. This was deliberately sited on the Prussian Siegesallee — the Victory Avenue — where Hitler’s East-West Axis (originally the Charlottenburger Chaussee but today renamed the Strasse der 17. Juni after the uprising in East Berlin in 1953) and Albert Speer’s North-South Axis would have crossed. This of course meant that it would be located within the British Sector of Berlin which was to cause problems in later years. Stone from the Reich Chancellery was used in the construction and it was to be completed by Armistice Day in November 1945. William Shirer, the American press correspondent who had left Berlin in 1941, returned to see ‘hundreds of workmen labouring like beavers behind an enormous scaffolding’. The 2,500 Soviet dead were interred behind the hedges on either side. Representatives from all four Allies attended the unveiling by Marshal Zhukov on November 11. Bronze plaques recorded the names of holders of the Hero of the Soviet

. . . and to rub salt into the wound, it was positioned right where the Prussian Siegesallee crossed Hitler’s East-West Axis. 54

ECPAD

The security of the Soviet War Memorial was an on-going problem for the British authorities, especially because of the antiSoviet feeling among the population. At one stage, the British Army had to maintain a guard and, after an incident when a German student fired at one of the Soviet sentries from the Tiergarten opposite, the whole section of road from the Brandenburg Gate to the Entlastungsstrasse (now the YitzhakRabin-Strasse) was sealed off with gates, with access restricted to vehicles belonging to the Western Allies. With the impending reunification of Germany in 1990, Russia came to an agreement with the German government for the maintenance and safe-keeping of all the Soviet cemeteries and memorials in the former German Democratic Republic including the Berlin Soviet War Memorial. On December 22, 1990 a moving ceremony was held as soldiers finally bade farewell to their former comrades in arms. Following its unveiling by Marshal Zhukov on November 11, 1945, the Russians maintained a day and night ceremonial guard at the memorial.

MAURICE KANARECK

Union award killed in the Battle for Berlin between April 14 and May 1, while the columns bore the insignia of the services involved. Later two guardrooms were added behind the memorial to accommodate the 24-hour Guard of Honour. The memorial was the scene of annual parades commemorating Soviet Army Day (February 23), May Day, and Victory over Fascism Day (VE-Day), the participants having to be escorted by British Royal Military Police from the crossing point from the Soviet Sector on the Invalidenstrasse. A procession of Soviet generals and Eastern Bloc diplomats, headed by the Soviet Ambassador and the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Forces in Germany, would form up on the northern side of the street and walk up to the memorial to lay their wreathes after which a large military band would play for the march-past.

The final farewell. With the withdrawal of Russian forces from Germany, the guard kneels in tribute before leaving for the last time. 55