Under the Bombs: The German Home Front, 1942-1945

Illustrations

Under the bombs in Berlin. Rescue workers search the rubble for survivors. Unless otherwise indicated, photos are from the German Information Center, New York. No escape: the effects of the dreaded phosphorus bombs. Firefighters in Berlin attempt to extinguish fires caused by bombings on the night of January 31,1944. Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv , Freiburg i. Br. Above, fires consume Hamburg after an Allied air attack. Below, emergency first aid is set up for possible survivors after a bombing attack in Berlin. BundesarchivMilitararchiv , Freiburg i. Br. After the February 1945 firebombing of Dresden, bodies are collected and brought to the Old Market for identification and eventual incineration before being buried in mass graves. Opposite, Dresden lies in ruins. A woman searches for relatives among air raid victims. Life goes on in Berlin at war's end, despite 75 million cubic meters of rubble in the city. Below, the Reichstag, Germany's Parliament building, was heavily damaged by both bombing attacks and sabotage and looting in the course of the war. The city of Mainz lay in ruins on February 27, 1945, following an air attack. The spires of Cologne Cathedral rise over a devastated city, with the wreckage of the Hohenzollern Bridge in the foreground . Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Atlanta. By war's end the Nazis were fighting the war with children. Above, the Hitler Youth were called upon to man antiaircraft stations when they reached the age of 16. Below, captured youth await imprisonment in December 1944. German refugees from the east fled the advancing Red Army as the war drew to a close. seeking food and shelter in the west and traveling by whatever means they could. including cattle cars (left). Wartime refugees, joined by expellees, swelled the population of West Germany by seven million in 1945. Many, like this man in Berlin , found no roofs available. The survivors of air raids left messages for relatives and new addresses on their bombed-out homes. Above, the "rubble women" begin the cleanup of Berlin. In East Berlin (below), the first place cleaned was Stalinallee. At the end of the war, Frankfurt (above) and Wesel on the Rhine (below) were ruined cities. Within a few years both had been rebuilt (opposite) with modern structures and reconstructions of historic buildings, such as the old Town Hall in Frankfurt. Wesel photos from Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Atlanta. For years, many Germans, like these Berliners in 1948, continued to live amid the ruins of war-ravaged buildings. ...