‘Miss U.S. Embassy, Hit Brandenburg Gate…

…Germans Say.’
– The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940 –

Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung.

On September 10/11, 1940 (OTD 84 years ago last night), RAF fliers raided the centre of Berlin again. First air-alarms sounded starting at 23.54 hrs[1] with searchlights and Flak guns scanning the dark skies to repel the intruders. The raid, which lasted one hour and a half, was described as “more intense than any Berlin has yet experienced.”[2] Actually, the air attack was one of the weakest of the entire war, but it produced one of the most iconic photos of World War 2, at least of the early years of the conflict.

The bombers, which arrived over the German capital in small numbers (just six according to German sources of the nearly twenty sent by the British) dropped just a few bombs[3] on that night, hampered by ground haze and clouds covering the city.[4] Intended to hit the Tegel gasworks, Tempelhof and the nearby marshalling yards (including Potsdamer Bhf)[5], several bombs landed at the city centre (Mitte district) damaging famous landmarks including Unter den Linden and Pariser Platz, where both the Brandenburger Tor and the Akademie der Künste were hit by some fire bombs which caused minor damage.[6] Bomb hits were reported also at Wilhelmplatz and immediate vicinity of the Reich Chancellery, the Bebelplatz and Dorotheenstr, and up north in the Charite and Invalidenstraße areas, with small fires caused by incendiaries too.[7] Bombing pattern was scattered with other bombs hitting far areas as were Wilmesdorf or Spandau, and apparently (at least it was not reported) not inflicting damage to the aimed industrial targets of the night. Some reports included the old Reichstag in the list of buildings struck by bombs too.[8]

But without no doubt the image that caught most people attention was the one shot by a German photographer hours after the raid. Taken at Charlottenburger Chaussee, then part of the Nazi triumphal avenue Ost-West-Achse (today’s Straße des 17. Juni) a few metres from the famous Brandenburg Gate and surrounded by Tiergarten woods, Berliners take a look curious and amazed into the huge crater caused by a high explosive bomb dropped by the RAF.

[“Three hundred yards up the “East-West Axis” a bomb estimated at between 500 and 1,000 pounds in weight (sic) smashed into the broad asphalt speedway, rocking buildings in a half-mile radius” reads the original text from the American correspondent in Berlin Percival Knauth which witnessed the raid’s aftermath in the German capital.][9]

Photo: ullstein bild

Photo: Associated Press AP4009110398

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

Photo: still from film, German newsreel

The image, passed by Nazi censorship to Associated Press, was widely shared and reproduced all across the globe by international press in the next few days, its power and impact were far from evident, especially when it had the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop. Some US papers even accompanied the picture with the caption “Bomb crater in Unter den Linden” and German press evidenced —for Nazi propaganda purposes, of course— the indignity of the Berliners seeing “hospitals, hotels, residential districts and monuments being bombed.“[10] In the following days the striking scene, filmed by some PR cameraman quickly sent by Goebbels where the bomb crater was, appeared on a German newsreel all across the country too.

The German communique issued hours after the raid stated: “During the past night British planes again flew into North Germany. Several succeeded in reaching Berlin. The English fliers dropped isolated bombs on residential quarters of the capital. They succeeded in striking objectives not only of national importance but to a great extent of international importance. Thus is the house of the Union of German engineers, were students and scientists and technicians reside, was struck. Living rooms and assembly rooms were set afire. In addition the Academy of Art, near the Brandenburg Gate, in the immediate neighborhood of the American Embassy, was struck.”[11]

[Front page of The New York Times the following day describing the British raid on Berlin, September 11, 1940].

Photo: The New York Times

[On the very next day, German authorities placed an anti-aircraft gun (Flak) a few metres next to the crater at Charlottenburger Chaussee (in this case a 2cm FlaK 30 on a Horch PKW heavy car). This solitary small battery was an useless and late effort to show Berliners that the capital was defended, as Berlin was still unable to repel the British air raids in those early stages of the war.]

Photo: bpk | Heinrich Hoffmann

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Notes:

[1] see LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 19 ff
[2] “Raid Nazi capital” by Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 4
[3] On that night RAF aircraft dropped just 1 ton of bombs according to Prof Demps’ study in DEMPS, Laurenz. Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Die Berichte der Hauptluftschutzstelle. Ch. Links Verlag, 2014, p 285
[4] see TNA: AIR-27-543-21. The National Archives of the UK (TNA) © Crown Copyright
[5] see TNA: AIR-27-659A; a brief description of the raid can be seen in DONELLY, Larry. The Other Few: The Contribution Made by Bomber and Coastal Aircrew to the Winning of the Battle of Britain. Red Kite/Air Research, 2004, p 141
[6] see LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 19 ff
[7] “Raid Nazi capital” by Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 1
[8] see LAB, A Rep. 001-02, Nr. 700, Bl. 19 ff; The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 2, AP comunique
[9] “Raid Nazi capital” by Percival Knauth wireless to The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 1
[10] The New York Times, Thursday September 12, 1940, page 2
[11] “CENTER OF BERLIN POUNDED BY R.A.F.” The New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 1940, page 4

Bibliography:

BRITISH BOMBING SURVEY UNIT. The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939 - 1945 - The Official Report of the British Bombing Survey Unit. Frank Cass, 1998.
Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at war. Life and death in Hitler’s capital, 1939-45. Vintage Books, 2011.
Overy, Richard. The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Allen Lane, 2013.
Tress HB. Churchill, the First Berlin Raids, and the Blitz: A New Interpretation. Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift, Volume 32, Issue 2, Pages 65–78. 1982.
Wildt, Michael and Kreutzmueller, Christoph. Berlin 1933-1945 - Stadt und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler Verlag, 2013.

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