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

by Richard Overy

According to yet another Hitler decree published in August 1943 after Operation Gomorrah, the aim of all the new emergency arrangements for coping with air raids was “the restoration of normal life as quickly as possible.”85 Though this was not easy in the few major cities where repeated heavy bombing began in 1943, the object of the new “action culture” was to make sure that one way or another the problems of welfare, compensation, rehousing, damage repair, and evacuation allowed an adequate community life to continue. A good example of how this worked was the post-raid activity in the Berlin suburb of Schöneberg, bombed heavily on March 1–2, 1943, leaving 11,000 temporarily homeless. They were gathered first in the seventy-one emergency rest centers, with room for between 25,000 and 40,000 people in converted cafés, schools, restaurants, and boardinghouses.86 There they were given food, spirits, cigarettes, substitute ration cards, and a provisional sum, in cash or vouchers, for the most urgent replacement clothing and household goods. Those who could not be placed with friends or relatives at once could be found substitute housing, particularly former Jewish homes, with priority for families with children whose houses had been completely destroyed. Evacuation was recommended only in exceptional circumstances, and then to areas if possible within the same urban region, or the same Gau. Over 7,000 were rehoused within two days. The salvaged goods had to be left in the str...