The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

Hamburg was not unprepared for its ordeal, but the scale of the three nights of attack on July 24–25, 27–28, and 29–30 overwhelmed the thousands of trained personnel. After declaring a state of emergency, the Reich defense commissar, gauleiter Karl Kaufmann, called in mutual assistance from outside the city from as far away as Dresden. At the height of the crisis there were 14,000 firefighters, 12,000 soldiers, and 8,000 emergency workers, but although they were able to achieve limited containment of the fire area, the conflagrations soon grew out of control, consuming everything in their path.104 The firestorm caused by the second raid fed on the oxygen in the thousands of cellars used as “air-protection rooms,” where people sat slowly asphyxiating from carbon monoxide poisoning or were burnt so completely that doctors afterward had to estimate the number of dead by measuring the ash left on the floor. Others died with apparently no external injuries because their body temperature rose above 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit), causing the body’s natural regulator to collapse from “over-warming.”105 By the end of the year it was estimated that 85 percent of deaths in German cities were caused by fire rather than high-explosive bombs.