Mainz in Flames

A factual report on the air raid on February 27, 1945

Publisher: Richard Kurtz, Mainz, 1951

Author: Waltraud Kurtz (*20.05.1923 †10.11.2019)

Digitalization and translation: David Haberlah, grandson of the author, based on a personal copy. The author was the wife of Richard Kurtz, but was not listed as the author to support her husband’s journalistic career after the war. In the report, she describes her own impressions under the pseudonym Erika Hartmann.

* * *

The Evening Before the Attack

February 26, 1945

In the East, Soviet troops have entrenched themselves in Pomerania and Silesia. Day and night, supplies roll behind the positions on the Oder River to prepare for the decisive offensive against the Reich’s capital. From the breakthrough area near Neustettin, Soviet tank spearheads advanced to the Baltic coast near Köslin-Schlawe. In East Prussia and Courland, the last encircled German troop units are pushed back further. Again and again, Soviet infantry attacks, and their tanks overrun the German trenches. Bitter battles rage on all fronts. The elderly and children are called to “hurry to arms,” which are no longer available.

“Traveler, if you come to Sparta, report that you saw us lying here as the law commanded!”

We have seen them lying, slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands, because the Wehrmacht’s High Command demanded these senseless sacrifices. The war was long over. It was no longer a war. Germany was on the path of destruction, the path of death, which poorly equipped soldiers in the trenches of retreating fronts, women and mothers, the elderly and infants had to die by the thousands in air-raid shelters under the rubble of cities.

In the West, the Americans had thrown new forces into the battle every day, and Montgomery had launched a major offensive. The first thrust came from the area of Munich-Gladbach, Rheydt, and Krefeld. The second thrust headed towards Cologne, which was already under enemy artillery fire that day.

The German people in the cities, hammered daily and nightly by the bombs of the American and British air forces, shook their heads when the Wehrmacht reports spoke of “self-confidence, courage, and perseverance proving once again to be the stronger weapons, which Germany sets against the mass onslaught and the masses of material of its enemies from the West and East, and which will eventually thwart all plans of the enemies.” Even in the Wehrmacht reports, they no longer spoke of “victory,” replacing this once so frequently used word with more cautiously chosen expressions that did not commit.

The civilian population awaited the end. They waited with anxious hearts for the end of this unequal struggle, which demanded its toll daily and hourly.

Enough now!

We don’t want more!

We can’t take more!

Despite the severe punishments imposed by an authoritarian regime on such utterances, they grew louder every day, and in the hour of death, in cellars enclosed by rubble, smoke, and fire, they became a bitter accusation. Flourishing people, haggard women, innocent children were tormented until their last breath until death liberated them.

Most German cities lay in ruins. Mainz too was already largely destroyed and was approaching its darkest hour.

* * *

February 26, 1945, 10:00 PM

Opposite the main train station, where today the railway canteen is located, there used to be the soldiers’ home. Here, Sister Ilse from the Red Cross performed her arduous duty.

In the overcrowded room, tired soldiers in tattered field grey sat at tables, their heads and arms bandaged. Many of them clumsily held a cigarette between cut fingers, greedily inhaling its smoke. With their hands, they crumbled the increasingly rare bread and ate with rusty tin spoons from earthen bowls a thin soup, which Sister Ilse dispensed at the counter.

Everything had changed. There used to be marching provisions. The sausages had since gone up in flames. The grain, which the farmers could only harvest between day and night due to the mortal danger in the fields, was not enough to feed the many hungry mouths that were crammed together in a confined space and cut off from the outside. Livestock herds were decimated; even infants often received no more milk.

The war, which had raged at the fronts for years, had spilled over to Germany between the fronts, the Germany that seemed to be crushed by these fronts.

At the soldiers’ home, the soldiers and the sisters waited for the usual alarm. They thought about when the end would come, the end they feared and yet longed for, the end that would relieve them of the oppressive uncertainty, the end of death.

* * *

February 26, 10:00 PM

At the Café Münstertor, Flight Lieutenant Werner Hilbert sat with his fiancée Anneliese Burckardt. In front of them were two cups of substitute coffee.

“Werner, I still have 60 grams of white bread coupons, that’s just enough for two pieces of cake.”

“When I was on leave a year ago, you could still get a piece of cake at least.”

“I would gladly eat dry bread, Werner, if only I could keep you here, and this accursed war was over.”

“First, we have to win the war.”

“Win the war? Do you believe in that?”

“Do you want us to lose it?”

“No one wants that. But it’s over. When it becomes quiet in the city tonight, you will hear the approaching front from your window. Not just the enemy planes — they come anyway — but the artillery and the tanks that have already broken through at Zweibrücken. It’s over, Werner, over, over… Why didn’t they end it earlier?”

“Not so loud, Anneliese, if someone hears! — We soldiers will hold the front!”

“Hold the front? Nobody can hold it anymore. That’s just false heroism and senseless sacrifice. You are an officer, Werner. You have read Clausewitz. Do you know what Clausewitz said and would say now more than ever: ‘It is a crime to continue a war that has already been lost.’ And Clausewitz wrote this for officers, mind you, for officers.”

“But Clausewitz knew nothing of a total war.”

“Is it total war when you send the elderly and cripples, women and children without weapons training as targets to the front lines?”

“That is the sacrifice our people must make to achieve the final victory.”

“Is that a sacrifice for a fatherland that has long ceased to exist? Ceased to exist because of those who believed they had to implement the fateful thesis that war is the continuation of politics by other means.”

“After countless heavy attacks I’ve flown, I received the Iron Cross first class. That means an obligation to me.”

“Obligation? Forgive me for saying something harsh: These are just phrases! Is it an obligation to drop bombs, to kill people?”

“And what do the others do? Don’t they also drop bombs, bombs on civilians? Don’t they senselessly kill lives?”

“And that’s why it must end! One more thing, Werner: I don’t want to lose you. You have to come back, even if we lose the war.”

“And if we lose the war, what will become of us, Anneliese?”

“We want to live our lives, just as we dreamed of. I just want to be without fear one day.”

* * *

In the officers’ mess of the airfield in Dijon, Captain Walter Smith sat drinking his Coca-Cola.

“Damned Lieutenant,” he said to his counterpart, “that damn German in his Focke-Wulf 190. Today, for once, I saw one of those guys again. Over Frankfurt, he was suddenly there, flew in from above, and hit my machine with a dozen shots. Our Lightnings immediately took aim at him, and he spiraled down. Too bad for him, but he won’t come close to us again.

Have you cigarettes? — Thanks! The weather is good. Tomorrow we can fly in large formations again. Escort protection is slowly becoming superfluous. The Germans have no more material — and no more people. Good night, Lieutenant, tomorrow we’ll heat them up again, tomorrow…”

* * *

Pale moonlight over the Mainz-Bodenheim road. Everywhere there were still bomb craters, only hastily filled in, reminding the two cyclists that evening that there was a war. They moved forward with difficulty. Their hands ached from the frost. Occasionally, they listened intently to the sky. “Will they leave us alone tonight?” The two were Erika Hartmann, a student from Mainz who had been drafted as an anti-aircraft helper, and the anti-aircraft gunner Alois Wagner from Passau.

Their position was in Bodenheim. Erika Hartmann was returning from a two-day leave she had spent with her parents on the Flax Market. The soldier Alois had picked her up.

It would have been more convenient to take the train to Bodenheim. But it was February 26, and the fifth year of the war. That trains were still running at all was undoubtedly a feat of the Reichsbahn. Still, the timetable was in disarray, and the trains were so overcrowded that it was safer to use another vehicle. The routes were partially destroyed, only hastily repaired, and, moreover, there was a lack of coal. Not only at the railway, but even more so among the civilian population.

Erika and Alois, riding without lights, took a long time to reach Bodenheim. It wasn’t just the old bicycles to blame. On the road lay trees uprooted by bombs, which no one had yet found time to remove.

The war was drawing to a close. The much-praised organization began to fail. As the attacks and destruction intensified, so did the fear among the people who had already experienced death hundreds of times in the air-raid shelters of the city, afraid of the war’s finale, which was looming on the horizon, its fortissimo already reaching the city on quiet evenings from the southwest.

The soldier Alois returned to his anti-aircraft position. Erika Hartmann went to her room in a farmhouse in Bodenheim. Her landlady, Mrs. Kaufmann, had just taken the French prisoner of war, who worked for her, back to the camp.

Erika immediately went to bed. In the distance, she heard the approaching front. “Hopefully, there won’t be an alarm!” Tomorrow she has night duty again, tomorrow…

* * *

One — two — three — four — five…

Due to the delayed start of the third squadron, the attack on target “tree” is postponed by five minutes. The lead aircraft will drop incendiary bombs in the target center five minutes later. Corrections will be announced via shortwave radio on the number scale.

Attack sequence as known: 4th squadron at X-altitude, 5th squadron at Y-altitude, the remaining squadrons as ordered.

Due to the delayed start of the 3rd group of the 4th squadron, the 2nd group should reduce speed to 1.1 Atü boost pressure, 3rd group to approach starting power with boost pressure. Flight engineer of the 3rd group to watch the instruments closely.

Report immediately on the corps’ frequency if German fighters are spotted. All clear? I’m counting for tuning — one — two — three — four — five…

* * *

While part of the American flying units flew along the Rhine from the northwest towards Mainz, re-forming over Bacharach, Captain Walter Smith led his squadron from the Saône Valley to join other groups and squadrons at the Reich border, which had started from various airfields in western France, to form a formation.

“Halloo boys! Down there, the enemy! Where is the Luftwaffe? The war is almost over. What is the time?”

“4:00 PM!”

“Oh, that’s good! In fifteen minutes, we attack Mainz.”

February 27, 1945

One — two — three — four — five…

Third group — third group — third group…

Bomb aimer — Attention! Change bomb release settings!

Christmas trees just right of the target, driving target center. Setting: bomb spacing 50 feet, drift minus 4 degrees, ground speed 280 miles at attack direction 18 degrees. Altitude above ground 6,200 feet.

No resistance. Switch from squadron to group attack.

Attention! Commander’s order: Units in holding pattern, Captain Smith signals the drop. Others follow and drop on sight. Aircraft with time fuses not to descend below minimum height.

Units with incendiary bombs not to release too late. Lead aircraft to re-determine wind and ground speed and report!

Attention! Fleet order: Captain Smith, you understand?

“Twenty — one, twenty — two Attention — bombs away!”

* * *

In Emmeranstraße, the Schneider Printing House’s building lay. In the back house, under the technical operation, was the cellar. It was an old wine cellar with heavy and well-supported vaults. Since it was generally considered bomb-proof, it was sought not only by the company itself but also by the neighborhood during air raids, although there was a public air-raid shelter nearby. The printing house used a small part of the cellar to store materials, especially lead.

When the first bombs fell, the women — mostly women — threw themselves to the ground, pressing their faces to the earth. That’s what they had learned in the air-raid protection courses. This was the only way to protect the lungs from bursting.

Most were composed. It wasn’t their first attack, nor the first bombs they heard falling. They had put cooking pots over their heads — a poor substitute for the missing steel helmets — to protect themselves from falling masonry. Wet cloths in front of the mouth were supposed to make breathing easier. Around their necks, on a string, hung a whistle that should guide the rescue teams in case of being buried.

The ground trembled, the vaults roared, the heavy, additionally installed braces seemed to bend. A terrible detonation paralyzed the eardrums. The faces of those waiting stiffened with fear. A direct hit had struck the neighboring cellar. The wall breakthrough was torn by the air pressure, smoke and heat streamed into the cellar.

The technical building above the cellar must have taken some hits too.

The attack lasted exactly 22 minutes. Someone had looked at the clock. When it became quiet, the senior boss went to the exit. Many pairs of eyes followed him. But what everyone had feared did not happen. The cellar exit was clear.

Outside, all the forces of nature seemed unleashed. There was not a single house that wasn’t ablaze. Mr. Schneider recognized the danger and urged the others to leave the cellar.

Only a few brave men dared to follow him. The street was very narrow. They ran for their lives. Masonry collapsed, the fire consumed the oxygen. Breathing became difficult. One was killed. No one could help him. Every second was precious, as the air might only last until Schillerplatz.

In the cellar, however, the death struggle began. Biting smoke followed by murderous heat poured in from the neighboring cellar through the wall breakthrough. The exit was now also blocked by the heat. The sea of flames in Emmeranstraße drove back those who may have decided to attempt an escape. What happened then was taken to the grave by 43 staff members and 15 to 20 other people who had sought shelter in the cellar.

Death probably came quickly to them. Carbon monoxide rendered them unconscious, the heat caused their bodies to shrink and char. Heads, arms, and legs fell off. Even the lead melted and dripped into the crevices of the cellar floor.

Only after days did a rescue team approach the cellar. Only three bodies, which were still standing in a wall niche, could be identified.

They were loaded onto a wagon with many others and driven out of the city. On a staff grave in the Mainz main cemetery, there is a cross, and in the cemetery administration’s file a note: Schneider Company, field 67 R 5a number 17 to 18, remains of 40 people.

* * *

Over Bodenheim, heavy bombers turned. They followed right after the alarm given by the sirens shortly before. People fled into the wine and potato cellars, whose vaults were supported by beams to withstand not a direct hit but the collapsing houses.

Erika Hartmann also ran to the cellar with a bag containing only the most important papers and a pair of stockings — valuable items at that time. Dull detonations rumbled in the distance. The attack targeted her hometown. Her thoughts wandered over the food and preserving jars in the corner, no longer available in the city, to her house in Mainz.

The distant impacts of the carpet bombing continuously thundered in the vaults, making them tremble. Sitting next to her, indifferent, was the old Mrs. Kaufmann in the corner. Her daughter-in-law paced nervously in the cellar, flinching at every louder detonation. The children cried.

The old woman probably had nothing more to lose. Only her son, who shared the fate of countless soldiers of the Second World War: missing in Russia. Thus, she belonged to the mothers whose whole being was filled with only one thought: Will he return, is he still alive?

André, the French prisoner of war, also feared for his life. Perhaps in that moment, the people in the cellar realized that death did not choose its victims by nationality, though towards the end of the war it seemed to favor the Germans particularly. Twenty-two anxious minutes passed. The people who had taken refuge in the cellars listened, relieved. The hellish inferno was over. Slowly they came up. Thick smoke plumes rose in the north. The eerie rustling of the sea of flames was audible all the way to Bodenheim. “Dear God, when will this end?” asked the old woman.

Erika Hartmann was desperate. She had to know what had happened in Mainz. But she also had to be on duty and was under military law. So she made her way to her position in the vineyards, sat down at the switchboard, and tried to contact anti-aircraft units closer to the city. Position 31 was silent. Position 33 was silent. Position 34 was silent. Finally, position 32 responded. Position 32 was located near Hechtsheim.

“Do you know anything about Mainz?”

“No, all connections there are cut off. No connection through other positions either. Our repair teams we sent out have returned. They can’t enter the burning city. The cables are broken in so many places that repair at this moment is unthinkable. But refugees passing by all report terrible things.”

Erika put down the receiver. Countless times she had feared for her hometown, countless times it had escaped. But this time she had a sure feeling that today’s attack on Mainz had also taken away her home and her little possessions.

* * *

As remnants of the old fortress and garrison city, Mainz still had its forts. The deep-lying casemates formed natural air-raid shelters, needing only some iron doors and sluices to be equipped.

Fort Stahlberg, near the Municipal Hospital, offered more safety to the residents on the city’s periphery than the old wine cellars with their heavy vaults or the cellars in the hastily constructed new buildings, expanded upon the order of the air-raid protection services.

Unfortunately, only a few people from the city center could seek refuge in these relatively bomb-proof forts, as the distance was too great, and the attacks often followed closely after the alarms.

On the edge of the city center, especially favored by their natural steep location, were the deep cellars of the Aktienbrauerei and the Kupferberg sparkling wine cellar. The Aktien and part of the Kupferberg cellars could be reached in five minutes from Münsterplatz and Schillerplatz and were accessible from Emmerich-Joseph-Straße, Walpodenstraße, and Mathildenterrasse.

Due to this favorable location, and because they were easier to reach than the remote forts, these cellars were always overcrowded. They could accommodate several thousand people. Throughout the entire war, not a single casualty occurred in both cellars, although the Aktien cellar had been hit directly. Additionally, near the Municipal Hospital was Fort Joseph, which could shelter 3,600 people. The Municipal Hospital had its own large air-raid shelter in this fort, connected underground to the hospital buildings through heating ducts.

On February 27, a heavy bomb struck Fort Joseph. However, the old vaults withstood the pressure. There were no casualties.

At Freiherr-vom-Stein-Platz was Fort Philipp, with a capacity of 1,500 people. It had received a direct hit on September 21, 1944, killing 21 people. The section where the deaths occurred was later bricked up. The fort continued to be used.

Fort Karl at Rosengarten could accommodate 2,700 people. It had direct access to the Südbahnhof. During all air raids on Mainz, there were neither deaths nor injuries in this fort.

The Citadel, where almost regularly 2,200 people sought refuge, had suffered many direct hits during the attacks. Not once were there any casualties.

Fort Weisenau at Thingplatz could shelter 1,000 people. It received a direct hit at the entrance on February 27, which was immediately buried. Reliable sources had two completely different statements regarding the number of deaths. Some spoke of only four to five deaths, while others insisted that about 50 people had perished.

There were also smaller forts that escaped unscathed, including Fort Mariaborn with a capacity of 250 people and Fort Heiligkreuz with 150 people.

From Bastion Alexander to Fort Karl, the former mining tunnels were opened and also set up as air-raid shelters. They accommodated about 3,000 people. Here too, no one was harmed.

The rescue team of the air-raid police, led by Mr. Ludwig, had their office and accommodation in Fort Stahlberg. Here were those men who had to liquidate the grim consequences of the war that destroyed people and cities.

When the first waves of planes came, and the first bombs detonated in the city, the telephone buzzed.

The commander of the team picked up the receiver: “Where? We’ll come right away!”

Mounted on the crew truck, with only the steel helmet as meager protection, they swept through the deserted city, whose ordeal was not yet over. Often, they were targeted by fighter planes, which took aim at them, and whose machine gun fire and heavy cannon shells struck close by.

These were men who, like the medical personnel, placed the lives of others above their own and had families at home worrying about them. Men who, although formally under the jurisdiction of the NSDAP authorities, had higher-ranking officers in brown uniforms who preferred to survive the attack in a safe bunker and sent the rescue team “on deployment.”

So, on this February 27, 1945, the rescue team, consisting of five platoons with a total of 130 men, rushed to help those trapped. Each platoon was assigned one or two medical personnel for first aid.

Major deployment!

The city burned at all corners, squadron after squadron flew by. Detonations shook the air, dirt fountains shot into the sky, and the fire continued to devour, from street to street.

The drivers started the engines. The men took their places, and at a rushing speed, as far as possible due to already buried streets, they headed to the epicenter of destruction.

The trucks carried stretchers for transporting the wounded and dead, ladders to bridge missing stairs, rubber gloves to handle mutilated corpses, tarpaulins, bandages, disinfectants, picks, shovels, and blowtorches to cut through steel beams and armored doors.

The disinfectants, especially chlorinated lime, were necessary when retrieving corpses that had already begun to decompose. At the beginning of the war, there was an order that after each recovery, the crews’ clothes and equipment had to be washed and exchanged. Towards the end of the war, and especially on February 27, this was no longer possible. The men helped themselves by simply soaking their clothes in hot water, pouring chlorinated lime over them, and spraying them with a hose. Hung on the line, some of the peculiar odor of the dead faded away.

Major deployment!

The former delicatessen Philipp Magel at the corner of Große Bleiche and Zanggasse, Große Bleiche 21, was hit by an explosive bomb. The cellar had collapsed. All emergency exits and cellar holes were buried.

The rescue team jumped over debris, burning beams, through swaying and collapsing walls, and dug a trench to the facade part of the house. Their first task was to provide air to those who might still be alive. Despite the danger of planes, they dug for the trapped with light provided by a generator into the late night. Shortly after midnight, they reached the access.

14 dead were carried out on a tarpaulin. Where possible, the dead were wrapped in cloths or placed in paper bags provided by the court prison. The dead were identified on the spot.

At the beginning of the war, the police had taken over this task. As death claimed more victims towards the end of the war, and the police could no longer cope alone, the leader of the rescue team was authorized to do it himself.

If the bodies were not burned, identification was not very difficult. Everyone carried their most important papers, the ration cards with names and addresses, with them. Once the deceased’s identity was established, the name was written on a note, tied around the neck or attached to a piece of clothing.

The bodies were transported on trucks to the Mombach Forest Cemetery. Usually, there were four to six, rarely and at most ten dead, who did not take leave of this world in a slow procession with the sympathy of relatives and friends, as is customary in a peaceful burial, but were thrown together at fifty kilometers per hour on a truck without a coffin to Mombach.

Meanwhile, the relatives, if they had not perished, sought somewhere, any shelter, and held faint hope of finding their loved ones again.

The Main Cemetery on Untere Zahlbacher Straße was already overcrowded, and the cemetery workers could only dig graves in the twilight due to the alarms.

Even the dead did not find their final rest there. The victims of the air raids of September 8 and 9, 1944, who were laid out in the mortuary, burned twelve days later from the bombs that destroyed the hall on September 21, 1944.

In the Main Cemetery, it was still possible, with the exception of two staff graves, the Schneider Printing House and the Koch and Schulz butchery, to bury the dead in individual or family graves.

The large number of dead, some of whom could no longer be identified, and the constant danger of air raids forced the cemetery administration to bury them in mass graves without coffins, mostly at night.

* * *

Squadron after squadron headed for the city center and released their bombs. Incendiary bomb dispensers fell to the ground, releasing their payload just above the ground. Thousands upon thousands fell on the already burning city, penetrating the roofs and burrowing into the houses and streets.

As Captain Smith observed the effects of the attack in a steep curve, people below ran like frightened animals through the burning streets. Blinded by the glow of the fire, Smith and his crew had to shield their eyes to see anything. New bombs continued to explode, detonating one after another, together, and side by side. A high column of fire rose to the sky, often obscured by a cloud of smoke covering the dying city.

New units arrived. The bomb bays opened, and the devilish payload plummeted downward, swaying back and forth to adjust to the pre-calculated ballistic curve. But ballistic and mathematical calculations were no longer necessary. Why bother with complicated bomb targeting and release devices that relieved the pilot of the effort of calculating?

Bombs fell, triggered by a simple press of a button. Only Captain Smith had to use his calculating device, as he was the first to drop. And Captain Smith, who had given the attack order at the target, curved. Four engines kept him in the air.

The human mind, capable of devising the most sophisticated methods to kill people, had even taken over the task of curving for him. For that, like dropping bombs, was done by a simple press of a button.

The German defense was silent. Even if they had had some shells left, they knew it was better to remain silent.

Below, people ran for their lives. 6,000 feet above them, Captain Smith circled. Squadron after squadron dropped their bomb loads. Over the burning roofs, fighter-bombers swept, their machine gun volleys whipping into the streets, piercing windows and people, and chasing the desperate who had escaped death in the cellars.

Damned! Captain Smith hit his head against the cockpit. It was the storm caused by the glowing air masses. Spared by the fire, the Cathedral still stood majestically over all the destruction, a witness to a past and a cultural history that had known wars, but not such sophisticated annihilation of people on such a scale.

On the Rhine, ships burned like giant torches. Where the tracks converged, flames burst from the trains. Houses collapsed, burying people underneath. Death was rampant.

And more Fortress and Marauder bombers kept coming, carrying death on board and sending it down with a simple press of a button.

One, two, three, four, five… Heading 260 degrees, departure at 16:55 at 8,000 feet altitude.

* * *

16:20. Air raid alert!

It had been like this all day.

Werner Hilbert had visited his relatives in Weisenau and was on his way to the city to meet his fiancée at Café Münstertor at 17:00. When the alarm sounded, he initially ignored it. But he didn’t get far, as bombs started falling in Weisenau just two minutes later.

Where Westendstraße and Heiligkreuzweg intersected, a trench had been dug. Werner, a few hundred meters away, preferred to seek shelter in this trench, as he deemed the cellars in the small, weak houses insufficiently safe and didn’t want to risk being buried alive.

The people of Weisenau were reluctant to use this trench because there had been many deaths there on October 19, 1944.

At an angle of the zigzag trench, a direct hit had torn 40 to 50 people apart. The Weisenauers still talk about the fate of their fellow citizen Peter Mathes and his family.

On October 19, 1944, Mathes, like always, had worked in the “Zellulose” factory. When he returned home after the heavy air raid that evening, he found his house on Westendstraße in ruins. His wife and daughter Annemarie had fled to the air-raid trench, now sought by Werner Hilbert, from the falling bombs. He found them there, torn to pieces, both dead, along with 40 others in this section of the trench.

Peter Mathes, who helped recover the bodies, also found a four- to five-year-old girl pinned by her foot to the ceiling. He thought she was dead and was about to lay her with the other bodies when he felt the warmth of her hand. Apart from her foot, the girl was uninjured.

So, understandably, many nearby residents avoided the trench.

* * *

Karl Friedrich was a soldier and had experienced the attack on the other side of the Rhine. After the alarm ended, he immediately went to Weisenau to check on his house on Hohlstraße 2.

Under the passageway between his house and the neighboring house, Hohlstraße 4, was the air-raid shelter. An explosive bomb hit there, tearing down the sidewall of the shelter. Karl Friedrich, finding the entrance to the shelter still accessible, rushed to the steel doors, trying to open them. They were bent. He shook them and desperately called his wife’s name. No one responded.

Karl Friedrich ran to get help to cut open the door. He had barely reached the street when the house collapsed. Another bomb had hit the neighboring house, Hohlstraße 4. A Frankfurt rescue team dug from Tuesday to Sunday to clear the cellars in both houses. 28 bodies were recovered and all could be identified. They sat in their places as if still alive. The bomb’s air pressure had torn their lungs. The injuries some of them had were likely caused post-mortem by the collapsing walls.

The bombs released by Captain Smith took ten seconds to hit the ground, agonizing 10 seconds in which the people on the streets of Mainz saw death approaching and made futile attempts to flee from it. Just ten seconds.

It was just enough time to get from the Woolworth building on Große Bleiche to the Ufakeller. Ten seconds for the bombs to allow time to seek safety. And those who could not meet the enemy aviators’ ultimatum at the Ufakeller lay smashed between Ufa and Woolworth on the wooden pavement of that street in Mainz, which could once claim to have been one of the city’s most prestigious business streets. As its business buildings collapsed, this street became a street of death.

Before the Ufakeller, in front of the Gendarmerie barracks, on the sidewalks, on the road, before, in, and under the houses, people were scientifically beaten together, as precisely ordered somewhere in a headquarters to the second.

Mercilessly, the bodies burned, and those who were not lucky enough to die instantly became tortured extras in this terrible spectacle of the downfall of the city of Mainz. The relatives and friends who found them on the street could no longer recognize them. Only a necklace, a ring, or a watch could help identify them.

* * *

On Große Bleiche, opposite Schloßplatz, stands St. Peter’s Church. It was the old garrison church of Mainz and had already survived a tumultuous history: The air raid on September 9, 1944, had destroyed both towers. The valuable ceiling painting was damaged, and the beautiful Baroque structure was marked by the war.

Directly opposite, at Große Bleiche 62, was the former Gendarmerie barracks, extending to Bauhofstraße. During the war, it served as accommodation for the NS-Frauenschaft (Nazi Women’s League), which had set up a sewing school, halls for youth groups, and a kindergarten there.

The building, arranged in a square, was only one story high. In the middle was a small playground for the children. The wooden attic under the roof was the worry of the air-raid wardens, who couldn’t fully trust the high-ranking, party-approved impregnating agents, with which the old wood was periodically sprayed. Equally ineffective, in the eyes of the threatened homeowners and tenants, was the fire swatter — a better broomstick with a cotton rag smelling of petroleum — suitable at best as a fly swatter. The situation was similar with the sand meant for extinguishing phosphorus, which occasionally attracted mice and cats. Higher authorities had forgotten, in issuing these directives from the green strategy table, that American and British pilots didn’t just drop an occasional single incendiary bomb or some phosphorus, but these modern means of human annihilation rained down by the thousands in a small area, driving even the bravest air-raid warden into the cellar rather than senselessly sacrificing his life.

Trying to fight a fire during a major attack with a fire extinguisher and two buckets of water would have been like trying to extinguish a blast furnace with a cup of water. If the wooden attic was a particularly favorable target from the opposite side, the old cellar under the building, even though not very deep, had to be considered bomb-proof. Elfriede Schwertmann had already spent half a day in the cellar on February 27, as there had been almost continuous air raid alerts since early morning.

When the sirens gave the all-clear at 15:00, she left the cellar. She was among the few families living in the building. The residents, some people from the neighborhood, and several street passersby gathered in this air-raid shelter. It was a public air-raid shelter, accommodating about 100 people. Among those who regularly sought refuge here was a mother with seven children. Almost everyone had their regular spot.

When the bombs fell at 16:30, Elfriede was no longer present. Only her mother was in the cellar. Eight heavy explosive bombs and 49 incendiary bombs hit the Gendarmerie barracks. The bombs pierced the roof and attic floor, went through the first floor, and detonated on the cellar vault. The entire building buckled inward, the cellar vaults couldn’t withstand the weight and shattered. All five emergency exits were buried.

The people who had sought shelter in the cellar were crushed. Those not hit by falling walls lay severely injured, trapped between beams, stones, and mortar, with ruptured lungs on the ground, waiting for release from their agony. Unspeakable physical pain and the knowledge of being buried alive paralyzed their minds. They beat their hands and feet bloody and screamed desperately until blood from their destroyed lungs appeared. Trapped! Dust thickly covered their faces, blocking their mouths, ears, and eyes, which could no longer see anyway. The lack of oxygen relieved them of their suffering.

At 16:50, the attack was over.

At 18:00, Elfriede Schwertmann stood in front of the house, looking for her mother. Thick smoke came from the direction of the cellar holes.

Nothing more could be saved down there. Even in front of the house lay dead, their distorted faces and bulging eyes still showing the rigid horror that had come over them in the face of terrible death. Someone later covered them with old newspapers. Surprised by the bombs on their way to the air-raid shelter, they met the same fate as those dead in the shelter they couldn’t reach.

Perhaps the dying had argued with God for not giving them a few more seconds of chance. Thus, they died, not on a soft deathbed, but on the hard cobblestones of Petersstraße and Große Bleiche. In the face of this bitter struggle for life, which about 1,200 people in Mainz had to endure that hour, the sky darkened, not wanting to witness the distress and suffering.

Smoke clouds hung over Mainz. The glow of fire replaced the light of the sun setting in the west, where those who let an entire city die were now landing on the earth.

Biting smoke lay over the Rhine. Heavy soldiers’ boots thundered over the bridge. Immediately after the attack ended, they were gathered from air-raid shelters to bring aid where it was needed. They were particularly used for clearing out the cellars. Under police leadership, they were further ordered to clear two through roads to the bridge, Kaiserstraße and Große Bleiche, for traffic within twelve hours for strategic reasons.

Elfriede’s father feverishly dug with a spade for his wife. By morning, physically exhausted and emotionally shattered, he gave up. No knocking sounds were heard.

Fourteen days later, Elfriede found her mother in the same place she always used to sit, next to the door of the gas lock. The others were recovered later. This included the mother with her seven children. The father, just returned from captivity, was present at the excavation of his family on June 15, 1945.

Forty dead found their final resting place in the Mombach Forest Cemetery. Many had taken refuge in the crypts of St. Peter’s.

When Mrs. Berner came back up, her house at Große Bleiche №59 had collapsed and was ablaze. She found nothing of her relatives. Were they killed in the house by bombs or perished in the cellar and then burned? A rescue team searched and found… nothing. Eight to ten people turned to dust and ashes.

A direct hit struck the neighboring house, Große Bleiche 61, followed by incendiary bombs that devoured everything flammable from the roof to the cellar. Here too, there must have been eight to ten dead. Only a few bone remains were found. Only a dripping tap held the remnants of a knitted vest. Its wearer must have fought his last battle at this spot. This cellar too had become a crematorium.

* * *

The duty officer at Mainz main station had his hands full and bore a great responsibility. Due to the aerial danger and air raid alarms in all areas of the Reich, maintaining the timetable was challenging, as there was hardly a train that wasn’t significantly delayed during this time. Tracks were partially destroyed, and trains had to be rerouted at the last minute.

The tasks of locomotive and train drivers were no less responsible, who often had to stop trains on open tracks or in tunnels on their own initiative, or, to reach a protective embankment or the saving tunnel, had to drive at full steam, thereby subjecting the barely properly overhauled locomotives to a load far exceeding the technically prescribed data. Added to this was the fact that the trains were completely overcrowded with military personnel, refugees, and bomb victims.

The unexpectedly rapid attack on February 27 made any contingency plan for such a case at Mainz main station obsolete. There was an alarm, and seconds later, the first bombs fell on Mainz.

Thus, the trains at the main station could no longer depart. Passengers fled to the air-raid shelter under platform 1, where old women bruised their knees on the gravel and often had to leave their little luggage behind for their own safety.

Those who could not reach a shelter tried to find a spot in the underpass of the platforms, preferably in the middle. The machine gun bullets of the fighter-bombers hit the stairs, causing ricochets, and tracer ammunition shattered the windows of the carriages, along with bomb shrapnel, slicing into the bodies of the locomotives, from which steam hissed loudly.

Incendiary bombs hit the trains, whose wooden parts immediately burst into flames, and whose iron frames glowed long after the attack. Explosive bombs destroyed the switches. The main station’s reception building was also hit by explosive and incendiary bombs. Signal box 5 was destroyed.

The station had a spike bunker in its northern part at the freight station on Mombacher Straße, a heavy reinforced concrete structure that could accommodate about 1,000 to 2,000 people. Since it was above ground, railway employees did not seek it with a feeling of particular safety during alarms and attacks. But it had proven itself. All who had sought shelter there could leave it intact after the attack ended. Incidentally, this was the only high bunker in Mainz. For the southern part of the station, the nearby tunnel under Mathildenterrasse served as a shelter. Here, trains were pulled in during other alarms. On February 27, this was no longer possible. As many people could not find a shelter and some could not even leave the trains, there were significant casualties.

The old directorate building on Kaiserstraße, already damaged in previous attacks, received a direct hit. Fortunately, the bomb detonated in one of the upper floors, so the cellar itself was not hit. All who had sought shelter there survived the attack.

Only a Frenchman, employed as a draftsman in the construction office, was surprised at the entrance to the cellar by the falling bomb and was hit by shrapnel. He was buried in the Mombach Forest Cemetery.

The new directorate building, also on Kaiserstraße, was hit only by incendiary bombs. The architect of this building might have had a good hand when he decided against a roof truss and instead constructed the modern building with a 40-centimeter-thick reinforced concrete ceiling. Thus, the new directorate building got off relatively lightly. Despite its camouflage color, it was a fairly isolated and tempting target from above. The Mosquitos used it as a target.

Another Reichsbahn building was located in Schulstraße. Explosive bombs had hit here too, and there were casualties.

* * *

February 27, 16:20.

The sirens at the University of Frankfurt sounded an air raid alert. The professors finished their thoughts while the students packed their things, left the lecture halls, and hurried to the air-raid shelters.

The wire radio reported the positions of enemy aircraft: “Weak enemy combat squadron approaching Bacharach. Single planes flying over the Rhine-Main area.”

The students used the waiting time in the shelter, as they heard no aircraft noise over Frankfurt, to discuss the military situation. In larger groups, they talked about the “fight to the final victory,” and in smaller groups, particularly those including severely wounded and discharged soldiers, about the impending capitulation. The female students, meanwhile, engaged with pre-Goethean literature, Hölderlin’s poetry, the metaphysics of the lyrical poem, or talked about their last “deployment” in factories and streetcars.

At 16:50, the all-clear was given.

When Luise Matthes left the air-raid shelter, she learned that Mainz had had to endure its most significant air attack to date. She was particularly worried because her parents’ house was near the main station, making it especially vulnerable.

Luise Matthes squeezed into the crowded tram on line 19 and rode to the station. On the way, she thought that after such a heavy attack, the trains would hardly be running to Mainz.

Moreover, they would have considerable delays.

5:10 PM.

Luise got off at Mainzer Landstraße and tried to flag down a car to get to Mainz faster. A truck gave her a lift.

Around 6:10 PM, she arrived in Mainz-Kastel. She ran as fast as she could over the bridge through Kaiserstraße to the station, tormented by uncertainty about whether her parents were still alive.

In the joy of the reunion mixed the bitter feeling of being severely bombed for the second time. They had already been bombed out in the air raids on August 12 and 13, 1942.

Her parents owned a house with a confectionery and café near the station, next to Hotel Königshof. After the first destruction, they had painstakingly rebuilt a makeshift house in the backyard, where the bakery used to stand. Luise rushed into the heavily damaged house to salvage bedding, clothes, and laundry. A high fire wall still stood in the backyard between the Königshof and their former house, a remnant of the 1942 attack. This wall was severely damaged and threatened to collapse.

Some people were working on it. Perhaps they wanted to tear down the fire wall to prevent a looming disaster. What they were actually doing there could no longer be determined. The fact remains, however, that the wall collapsed at the moment Luise was in the makeshift house. Those who saw the falling debris in time could escape to safety. Luise, who couldn’t see the danger and heard the warning calls too late, was buried under the rubble.

They dug feverishly for her. Shortly later, they pulled her from the debris and took her to the hospital, severely injured, where she soon died. She left behind desperate parents, whom the war had robbed not only of all their possessions for the second time but also of their only child. Many parents in Mainz and other German cities, devastated by the war and buried under rubble, suffered a similar fate, leaving behind distress, misery, despair.

The war was drawing to a close, wearing down the starved, the hounded, who had lost husbands, fathers, and sons at the front, and driving them to despair. “Lord God, when will all this end?”

* * *

Several other people lost their lives in the collapse of the fire walls behind the Königshof. In addition to the dead, ten injured were rescued. It was in the middle of the night to February 28 when someone from the Königshof hurried to the Red Cross aid station, located in the basement of the former Wehrmacht supply office, now the railway station hotel.

One of the helpers immediately went to the injured, who had been brought into the hallway of the Königshof. Most had suffered skull and bone fractures or severe contusions. When the helper entered the hallway, some had already died. Among the dead was a senior non-commissioned officer of the Wehrmacht. The person who had fetched the Red Cross nurse couldn’t comprehend it all:

“He was just talking to me a moment ago.”

The surviving injured were brought to the Red Cross cellar. The nurses, hardly out of their clothes for weeks due to continuous alarms and attacks and partially ill themselves, administered first aid.

The house above them burned. They stood with their legs in water. They did not interrupt their work.

Over 250 injured were helped at this Red Cross site on the day and night of February 27.

According to the nurses, there were sufficient medicines and bandaging materials. Most of the injured brought in had smoke poisoning. Many had severely inflamed eyes from the smoke, others bone fractures, bruises, and other injuries.

The severely injured were taken to the hospital, as far as transport was available. Some had to wait a long time before it was possible to arrange a vehicle.

In this hour of the night, when the terrible experience had strained the nerves to breaking and now pain was added, the wounded writhed on the stretcher in dirty and bloody clothes.

The damp air and musty cellar smell, mixed with blood, burning, and medicine, weighed on torn lungs and made breathing difficult.

“Help, nurse!” — “Water, nurse!” -

“My — my — child — where…?” -

“I’m dying, help!” — “… but deliver us from evil, Amen!” -

* * *

Dusty, dirty, with torn clothes, people slowly returned to the streets when no more engine noise was heard. What they saw exceeded everything they had experienced in countless bombing nights. But what they had feared since the first major air raid on Mainz on August 12 and 13, 1942, when the entire old town area between Schusterstraße and the Rhine had been destroyed, had now become a certainty.

In all air raids on Mainz (including the four suburbs Gonsenheim, Mombach, Bretzenheim, and Weisenau), according to the information from the Building Department, 53.82 percent of all apartments were destroyed, 67.68 percent in the city center alone. 43.35 percent of buildings in Mainz and 64 percent in the city center were destroyed. Approximately 69,414 people were made homeless in all air raids on Mainz.

According to approximately consistent data from the cemetery administration, the city administration’s statistical office, and the rescue teams, about 2,400 people, including military personnel, were killed.

* * *

Lotharstraße was burning. In the cellars of the butchery Koch and Schulz, besides the house residents, some passersby had taken refuge from the falling bombs. Opposite the butchery Koch and Schulz in Lotharstraße 11 was the butchery Beetz.

The harried emerged from the rubble, forced to watch helplessly as their belongings, painstakingly saved and gathered over generations, were destroyed in barely half an hour. It was a bitter feeling to have suddenly become beggar-poor. The first concern was for one’s own life and the lives of relatives, threatened by collapsing walls, flames, and devilish heat.

Lotharstraße threatened to become a dead-end of death. The passage was blocked, and the way to freedom led through the flames, which most feared to traverse. Should they risk escape through the fire? Should they return to the momentarily still safe cellar? Or should they at least try to save what could still be saved?

“Back to the cellar!” said butcher master Beetz, “it’s safe, it withstood the bombardment and will protect us until the fire dies down and we can safely cross the debris out of the street.”

In the backyard of the butchery Koch and Schulz stood the Stoll roller blind factory. It was housed in a large five-story building. About 3,000 roller blinds were stored there, some new, others brought in for repair by bomb victims. The wood provided a welcome feast for the phosphor bombs that had fallen there. The back building was ablaze.

Incidentally, not many phosphor bombs had fallen in Mainz. Two-thirds of the dropped bomb load (about 3,000 tons, dropped by an estimated 1,000 planes) were explosive bombs, one-third incendiary rods, filled with dangerous knock salts, making them nearly as effective as phosphor bombs.

The butchery Koch and Schulz had not been hit, neither by explosive nor incendiary bombs. While butcher master Beetz and some of his co-inhabitants returned to the cellar, the residents of the house Koch and Schulz participated in the firefighting efforts of the Stoll company. It was, after all, about saving their own property.

As the heat grew, they too retreated to their cellar. It was the only cool refuge, where one breathed a sigh of relief upon entering.

“We can easily endure a few days down here,” they thought. “There’s plenty of food.” But they had forgotten that life requires not only food but above all, air. The fire outside consumed the oxygen. When the lack of air in the cellar became noticeable, Mr. Reith, the brother of a house resident who was coincidentally caught by the attack there, urged to leave the cellar. Everywhere he met rejection. People didn’t want to leave; they felt safe.

Mr. Reith went upstairs, felt the all-consuming, ever-increasing, and approaching heat, which already threatened to spread downwards through the vaults. He turned around again.

“This is madness, sitting numbly in the cellar while the house above you burns. Get out! You don’t want to? Are you crazy? Have you lost your minds? Get out, save yourselves!”

The men, women, and children hesitated. Mr. Reith tried to pull one with him, push another ahead, and yelled at the apathetic crowd. He shouted until he was hoarse. Only a few submitted to his personality and followed him.

At 4:50 PM, the attack was over.

At 5:50 PM, Mr. Reith, with his daughter and about eight other people, protected by wet cloths and wearing air-raid goggles, left the shelter.

The escape was not easy. If they had decided to leave immediately, it would have been simpler to get through. Precious minutes that could have saved everyone’s life were spent on the street and in the cellar, debating the feasibility or impracticality of fleeing.

When the group led by Mr. Reith reached the outskirts of the city and left the danger zone behind, they had time to think about themselves. The phosphorus had burned through their footwear and scorched their feet. It might have been less than ten minutes since Mr. Reith had left the cellar when the Stoll roller blind factory collapsed, and the back building fell with all its might onto the front building. What remained was engulfed in flames. The cellar had held up, but heat and smoke penetrated through the vaults. The air-raid shelter became an oven. The oxygen began to thin out. Slowly, the people inside fell asleep.

At midnight, Mr. Koch, the brother-in-law of butcher master Schulz, stood in front of the burnt-down building. He had the emergency exits opened by the rescue teams. The beam of a flashlight illuminated corpses. They were sitting exactly as Mr. Reith had left them. Mr. Koch wanted to go down to the dead through the cellar opening, but the rescue team blocked his way. The dangerous carbon monoxide in the cellar would have endangered his own life.

Down there, no one could be saved anymore. So Mr. Koch decided to postpone the recovery of the bodies until the next day. However, when he stood at the same spot again, the cellar was also on fire. Smoke and flames burst out of it.

For three months, the ruins smoldered. After the cellar burned out, a Polish team recovered a handful of skeletal remains. Mr. Koch himself retrieved 32 charred skulls, not counting the children’s skulls, which crumbled as soon as he touched them. The remains of 32 dead were buried in a single coffin at the Main Cemetery on Untere Zahlbacher Straße. Butcher master Beetz, who had felt safer in the cellar than on the street, was among the dead.

A few houses further, at the corner of Lotharstraße and Große Bleiche, Lotharstraße 12, there was a public air-raid shelter. Those who sought shelter here also preferred to stay and suffocated. Among them were the Mainz doctor Dr. von Himmen and his wife. About 30 dead were identified. The shelter remained intact. In the public shelter at Lotharstraße 28, nine dead were officially recorded.

* * *

The Frauenlob pharmacy stood at Frauenlobplatz, one of the two city pharmacies in the new town. The pharmacy’s interior had an aura of antiquity and, combined with the scent of medicines, exuded a solemn atmosphere, making men, unlike in other shops, even remove their hats or caps when entering.

It was the mysterious aura that surrounded the old shelves, retorts, and bulbous bottles, evoking the image of an alchemist’s kitchen. People came up the steep, narrow stairs with the doctor’s prescription in hand, hoping for healing and help.

For the older pharmacist living here with his sister, who had spent years mixing cough drops and tea, always having a powder for all ailments, and conscientiously compiling prescriptions according to the doctor’s instructions, it was not easy to satisfy all demands with the sparse allocations towards the end of the war. However, he always had at least a helpful remedy, often obtained through personal sacrifices. It was also a personal sacrifice to serve the increasing number of patients during night shifts, as lack of sleep and nights spent in damp, cold cellars deteriorated people’s health, who needed the doctor’s and pharmacist’s help.

The pharmacist, too, often had to close his shop, grab his personal belongings — like everyone else, kept ready behind the apartment door — when the sirens’ howling drove the weary people of Mainz into the cellars.

Anneliese Burckardt also lived in this building. Together with the residents of the neighboring house, she hastily sought shelter in the cellar when the air raid alarm sounded at 4:20 PM. Most had brought their folding chairs so they wouldn’t have to stand. Not everyone had such a chair. Those who did cherished it as a precious item. Only those with good connections could obtain one during that time, when money had lost its value, by bartering.

Part of the cellar stored bandages, chemicals, and medicines that the pharmacist had placed there to save something in case the house was destroyed.

The crowded cellar was filled with suitcases and packed boxes, dragged up and down the stairs in rhythm with the alarms. In the corner was the radio, brought down from the apartment in the last year and a half, as people didn’t want to miss the wire radio broadcasts during the many hours spent in the cellar, even though it became increasingly unreliable.

The pharmacist had new electrical lines installed to ensure sufficient lighting. In case the electric light failed — a frequent occurrence — several paraffin candles were ready, part of the iron inventory of every air-raid shelter. They had to be used sparingly, as they were scarce and consumed oxygen when the hatches were closed.

The elderly huddled around a small electric heater, which, of course, was no substitute for a stove. Many older women wore straw slippers over their leather shoes to better protect against cold and dampness from below.

Even the external appearance of the people in the cellar revealed their character, peculiarities, and attitude towards life. Some were very poorly dressed. Among them were many who still had better clothes in their closet or luggage. They belonged to those who had conserved their good clothes for years, wearing them only on Sundays and holidays, as they had learned from their ancestors. Modest and simple people, who even the long war, the devaluation of money, and the destruction of all savings had not deterred from remaining modest, even in the face of death. Others sat in luxurious fur coats, wearing the best shoes and valuable old family jewelry in the cellar. These were the people who wanted to have their best items with them, as what one wore was, if at all, safer to carry than in a suitcase or Persil box.

Air-raid luggage consisted of one or two suitcases, often relics of better days. They were among the unaffordable items that were no longer available towards the end of the war. Those who owned a backpack were fortunate, as it was easier to carry in an emergency than the suitcases, which often had to be left behind.

Women packed the essentials: underwear, stockings, shoes, and some food; for small children, woolen clothes and rusk; for infants, a milk bottle and a can of powdered milk. Students carried their “Faust,” clergymen their breviary or the Bible, everyone their most valuable and indispensable material and ideal possessions.

Particularly carefully guarded were the pictures of close relatives. Among the most important items carried were the ration cards, more important in the city than an official ID card, as they alone entitled their owners to live. Many, thinking they might not be able to take their luggage in an emergency, sewed these papers and photographs, along with their savings book and some money, into a bag and hung it around their neck.

Wrapped in pillows and blankets, the toddler sat on the mother’s lap. She repeatedly tried not to show her own fear and to calm, entertain, and lull her children to sleep.

Many women discussed newly tried cooking recipes with their neighbors, i.e., ways to extend meals with substitute foods. Men occasionally left the poorly ventilated room to check the situation upstairs or to get some fresh air and smoke one of the few cigarettes available on ration.

4:20 PM. No one dared to smoke a cigarette. No one had time for it, as the sirens had barely faded when the first bombs fell.

Among those who rushed into the cellar was Anneliese Burckardt. She had no time to set up her folding chair. When the bombs hit, she threw herself to the ground and, like everyone else at that hour, feared for her life and that of her fiancé.

At about 6:30 PM, an explosive bomb fell. Masonry collapsed, and the floor buckled. Anneliese was aware that remaining under the collapsed house meant certain death.

Anneliese Burckardt had spoken with her fiancé about the bitter end of the war the previous evening at Café Münstertor. When parting, she had called out to him, ‘I don’t want to lose you!’ And she hadn’t thought that death would not pass her by the following afternoon.

The exit was still free. But outside, carpets of bombs were falling. Walls crashed onto the vaults like the heavy drum beats of a drum during an execution. A city was being executed. The sentence was pronounced in Tehran and Yalta. Thousands of planes were designated to carry out the execution.

Instead of hearing the officer’s command ‘Fire’ while blindfolded and tied to a wall, the armored doors to the air-raid shelter were closed, and an Allied pilot gave the order to drop bombs.

What is granted to everyone who walks to execution, the company of a clergyman and the last letter to relatives, was denied to them. They didn’t even know, led a thousand times to the place of execution in the cellar, whether this time it would be their turn.

For the people in the cellar under the city pharmacy at Frauenlobplatz, the time had come. The bombs drummed, the debris falling onto the vaults drummed, drumming them on their last and hardest journey. The exit was still open, the way through the fire, the way through collapsing houses and falling bombs.

Anneliese Burckardt implored the women with children to take it. She escorted them to the cellar door, already breathing the air polluted with powder and dust, and wanted to take the leap to the opposite side during a brief lull in the fire.

Then, heavy chunks came into the entrance, stones and mortar followed, bounced off the walls, and dragged Anneliese down. While the two women with their children, as the only survivors, hunted by the bursting incendiary bombs, managed to escape to safety, Anneliese Burckardt lay dying, enclosed by masses of stone, with severe internal injuries. The others couldn’t even help her anymore. Each had to fend for themselves, fighting desperately for their lives. With their hands, they clawed into the dust, trying to crawl to the exit. The air was running out.

The fire heated the ceiling.

Anneliese thought of her fiancé: ‘Werner, come to me, help me — I’m dying…’

The temperature rose. The blood began to boil. The chemicals and bandages burned, consuming the last bit of oxygen needed for life. Death, after torturing its victims enough, finally brought relief. It was followed by fire that burned the bodies. It’s estimated that about 28 people were in the cellar. Only a few skeletal remains could be recovered. No one was identified, many still lie under the rubble.

Werner Hilbert, after the American planes had flown away, left the trench and hurried to Mainz. It took him over two hours to get from Gaugasse to Frauenlobplatz. A few days later, he was present as skeletal remains were excavated. Was Anneliese among them? Nobody knew.

‘I don’t want to lose you…’ He thought of the conversation at Café Münstertor. His future was shattered by the bombs.

What was the point of this human destruction? What was the point of ‘holding out until the end’? Empty phrases! ‘Cursed be the war that mercilessly lays cities in ruins and extinguishes all life!

Why keep fighting? — For what — for what?…’

On February 27, 1946, when Werner returned from captivity, he laid a wreath on the ruins of the Frauenlob pharmacy. It was for Anneliese and the dead who had found their grave with her under the city pharmacy.

* * *

Welschnonnengasse 9.

Here lived Joseph, a soldier of the Salvation Army. In the evenings, he went through the old Mainz taverns, sang the well-known songs of the Salvation Army, and sold the ‘War Cry’, a booklet outlining the tasks and goals of this charitable organization.

At Welschnonnengasse 9 was the meeting room of the Salvation Army, where Officer Wagner lived with his family, along with Soldier Joseph, whose duties included supervising the tipplers and homeless people who stayed overnight there. For just a few pennies, they could find a place to sleep. Those who couldn’t afford even these few pennies for a bed and morning soup with a crust of bread had to chop wood under Joseph’s supervision.

Officer Wagner was a Czech from Prague. He had brought his wife from the Bergisches Land. They had two grown sons and a four-year-old boy, whom they had sent to relatives on the Lower Rhine due to the air danger. One son had fallen, the other was with the soldiers.

When the bombs fell on February 27, Officer Wagner, his wife, Joseph, and a few men who had just been chopping wood, also went into the cellar. A direct hit ended their lives.

The fire that subsequently entered the cellar burned their bodies.

* * *

For Sister Ilse, who served at the Soldiers’ Home, relief had come. It was late afternoon. As there was just a ‘preliminary’ alarm, she wanted to use the time to do her shopping and take over this dangerous way for her old mother, who lived at the market.

She walked through Steingasse when the sirens wailed over the rooftops of the city, driving people from the streets and their apartments into the cellars. With the fading of the sirens, the bombs also immediately fell. Since she had previously been stationed at Rescue Station 1 (Commercial School, Steingasse) and had great confidence in the air-raid shelters there, she went through the gate of the Commercial School into the middle courtyard and from there into the public air-raid shelter. Not a second too soon.

The heavy armored doors were closed. Bombs fell. The light went out. The ceiling trembled, the walls wavered. The building must have been hit several times. The air pressure had torn away the hatches on the ceilings. People lay on the ground and screamed. Some prayed. Amidst the explosive bombs, the disgustingly bright hissing of incendiary bombs. Smoke poured in unhindered through the ventilation hatches.

Even as the bombs were still falling, people fled the cellar, fearing they might suffocate there. They fled across the corridor to the rooms of Rescue Station 1, established here in 1939.

The city of Mainz had six such rescue stations: 1 in Steingasse, 2 in Eisgrube, 3 on Mathildenterrasse, 4 in Sautanz (all destroyed on February 27), 5 in Goetheschule (already destroyed on September 21, 1944, with casualties among the medical staff), 6 in Kastel. This one suffered the least damage. Only the accommodations for the nurses burned out there; the rescue station itself remained intact.

Each rescue station was led by a doctor, typically assisted by six to eight nurses and the same number of medics. Rescue Station 1 in Steingasse was very well equipped. The corresponding operating room, where, however, no operations were ever performed, was adequately supplied with bandages and medicines, even on February 27. It also included a dormitory for women, a dormitory for men, and a decontamination room. At the end of the broad corridor, in a smaller room, was the heating system. From this corridor, another air-raid shelter could be accessed, preferred by many because it lay particularly deep and had especially thick vaults. However, others shunned it because it had no direct access. One couldn’t reach it via stairs but had to descend through a hatch in the wall using an iron ladder. Secluded from the outside world and lying deeper than the other underground rooms, it resembled a pit. It was separated by steel doors from the cellar in Welschnonnengasse 9.

As smoke and heat came through the ceiling, people fled the public air-raid shelter. They stumbled and fell over each other, as it was dark and only very few carried a flashlight. Candles couldn’t be lit due to the scarce oxygen.

People dispersed randomly, without thought, into the opposite rooms of the rescue station. Many lay on the beds. Others retreated to the heating system, as it was the furthest away and therefore the smoke was least felt there initially. Others ran desperately into that ‘pit’. Among them was a soldier named Schramm, who had just come on leave. His parents had sought refuge somewhere in another cellar, probably in Welschnonnengasse, where they lived.

In the operating room, about seventy people were crammed into the smallest space, including Sister Ilse. She was lucky to find a seat, a bucket of chlorinated lime. Nearby, the sink dripped. Sister Gretel, who was on duty here, filled the sink with the water that was still in the reservoir. They moistened cloths in it and handed them out to the people. They were returned periodically and re-moistened. This helped somewhat against the biting smoke that now penetrated here.

Trapped, trapped in a rescue station, exposed to smoke, fire, perhaps even death. There were medicines, but they could no longer be used. There was no light to find them. Sister Gretel made her way, giving one person a few drops of valerian, another a glass of water. That was about all they could do.

The lack of air was increasing. In the operating room, there was an oxygen cylinder with the necessary equipment to supply several people with air simultaneously. But it could not be used. Its operation was difficult, impossible without light. The amount of oxygen to be administered needed to be monitored precisely. Pumping too much oxygen into the lungs would have resulted in immediate death. Thus, the oxygen cylinder stood among the people who had no oxygen left to breathe.

Next to Sister Ilse sat a woman who had just come from fetching milk. She passed her bottle to her neighbors from time to time, letting them take a sip.

The hours passed. The air-raid warden opened the armored door again to see if they could retrace their way through the public air-raid shelter and get outside. It was impossible. The smoke thickened, and the temperature rose. The staircase from the public shelter was also half-buried by fallen masonry.

“Open quickly, I’m suffocating!” The air-raid warden pounded on the door to the rescue station with both fists. They let him back in.

Trapped, doubly trapped by the stone masses blocking the entrance and the breakthroughs in the walls, by fire and smoke, making any attempt to escape seem utterly hopeless. The heat and the realization of being buried alive drove the doomed to madness. The burning debris muffled their shrill, inarticulate cries, and the wild roar of the flames drowned them out.

“What time is it?” Sister Ilse asked the colleague next to her, who for the hundredth time with the same unchanging patience, moistened the cloths in the sink, and distributed valerian drops for the hundredth time.

“10:00 PM.”

Five and a half hours after the attack.

“Do you think we’ll get out? — I have no more hope.”

Slowly, people began to fall asleep. Sister Ilse also lost consciousness. Sister Gretel gave her the usual valerian drops and placed a wet cloth on her forehead. This brought her back to her senses.

“Sister, help me,” someone called out. But this time, the flicker of the flashlight was missing. Sister Gretel had fallen asleep. She, too, received valerian drops. Thus, one prevented the other from dying. The hours passed.

They began to scream. — They were heard outside. Six soldiers dug their way through fire and stones. And it was as if heaven wanted to help them: The firestorm that had blocked the exit of the public air-raid shelter turned. The soldiers worked their way to the armored door, entered the shelter, and ordered the people to follow them.

The men rushed to the now freed staircase first. The soldiers stood in their way: “Women and children first!” The soldiers pulled out one person after another. In small groups, they held hands and reached freedom through and over fire.

It was 11:50 PM.

Many who stumbled over the debris during the march suffered burns. Some caught fire. “Help, help, I’m burning!” They ran back into the shelter, where they remained. Those who did not dare to escape at that hour had no more chances. On the beds of the dormitories, in the corridor, in the heating system, dead bodies were later found everywhere.

Even those who had sought refuge in the rear cellar, the “pit,” did not come out alive. A 1.5-ton bomb, set with a delayed fuse and detonating on the cellar vault, pierced the ceiling and killed everyone. There were talks of 70 dead in the cellars of the Commercial School. The bodies were removed and placed in front of the district office on Umbach. There they lay until they could be identified and loaded into paper sacks onto trucks to be taken to the Mombacher cemetery.

The well-known Falk butcher’s shop in Große Langgasse was also destroyed. The old master butcher had already died before the attack. His wife was buried under the rubble. At Große Langgasse 2, Rupp’s sheep butchery, there were 30 deaths.

Likewise, 30 people died in the cellar of the Schirm-Lietz house, Pfandhausstraße 1.

Unmentioned are the many others who died between Große Bleiche and Ludwigstraße, Schusterstraße and Schillerstraße, and elsewhere.

* * *

In Gymnasiumstraße was the Convent of the ‘Eternal Adoration’. The founders had committed to praying day and night in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and atoning for the sins of their fellow human beings. After 1933, the convent, like all others, had its life made difficult. For example, at the beginning of the war, they were deprived of clothing and textile ration cards.

The danger hanging over the sisters of being taken away from the convent and ordered to work in an armaments factory was averted by taking on home-based work for Werner and Mertz. Fifteen machines were installed in the convent, with which they produced 45,000 wick holders for Hindenburg candles daily. Often they had to work until late at night to meet the imposed quota. Nevertheless, they did not forget their primary task, prayer. Already on February 1, 1945, a heavy bomb hit the convent, and on February 14, the choir, hit by an incendiary canister, completely burned out.

Since air-raid alarms were almost continuous on February 27, the sisters had already gathered for choir prayers in the cellar at 3:30 PM. When the first bombs fell after 4:20 PM, the remaining sisters working in the convent rooms hurried to the cellar. Incendiary bombs hit the convent building. Nearby, explosive bombs struck. The ground thundered. The sisters remained assembled in prayer. The bombs hammered ceaselessly.

The Mother Superior took the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle and went with the sisters to the front part of the cellar under the chapel. When it quieted down outside, some sisters went upstairs. The convent was burning, but the exit was still free. They immediately returned and urged the others to leave the cellar. The sisters stayed. Only three dared the way through the fire and survived.

At 9:00 PM, the convent walls collapsed.

The next morning, Father Manuwald from the seminary and one of the three survivors entered the cellar. The Mother Superior and her 40 fellow sisters were dead. A candle was still burning. The ciborium was empty. The Mother Superior had given her sisters Holy Communion in their hour of death until the paten was empty…

Together with the 41 sisters, the sexton and his wife, the two portresses, a woman with her child, and a 17-year-old girl died. On March 6, at 7:00 AM, the convent was buried in a single grave in the convent garden. The Mother Superior lay in the middle, and her fellow nuns to her left and right.

A large wooden cross stands over the grave of the 41 Capuchin sisters. They died true to their prayer: “We offer ourselves to You and are ready to take upon ourselves the punishments which the world has deserved for its wickedness.”

* * *

In the already burning city, where bombs had been hammering for almost a quarter of an hour, the heavy modern reinforced concrete building of the General Local Health Insurance Fund stood in Hinteren Bleiche.

Robert Niedhammer, accustomed to checking that all windows were open before seeking the air-raid shelter, made his round. The hellish inferno of the falling carpet bombs drove him, like everyone else in the city, into the cellar. Under the building of the General Local Health Insurance Fund, the two underground floors were converted into air-raid shelters. The top floor housed the safe.

Mr. Niedhammer was on the stairs to the lower cellar when explosive bombs hit the AOK (General Local Health Insurance Fund). The heavy steel doors were ripped open by the air pressure, and the concrete, still held together by the iron framework, crumbled. The falling debris and air pressure hurled him down the stairs. Unconscious, with a severe eye injury, he lay there.

When it quieted down outside and people had regained their composure, he was found. He must have regained consciousness by then, as he was carried outside. How Robert Niedhammer ended up back in the cellar again, he himself did not remember. The next morning around 9:00 AM, he was found there. Only after ten days could he see again.

During the time he lay unconscious at the bottom of the stairs, 21 people above him, on the first floor, met their death. They had died in the main air-raid shelter, which only had two exits and was not supported by any braces. The ceiling could not withstand the air pressure and subsequent debris and collapsed. The pressure tore the lungs of the people, who were sitting against the walls, taken by surprise by death. No one made it out alive. Right next to it, on the same floor, was a smaller room whose walls better supported the ceiling and therefore did not collapse. Those who had sought shelter here survived.

Before the rescue team could reach the death cellar, enormous masses of debris had to be removed. The heavy concrete pillars and iron beams blocked the way. The excavation of the houses in the old town was usually easier than from the modern concrete blocks smashed by the bombs. A thicket of wire, beams, steel, and stone, created by the dynamic force of the ignited explosives, not only crushed the shelter of those doomed to death, but also cut off their air and sealed them in. The rescue teams had to work with the most modern means of technology. Steel doors had to be welded open, and iron beams cut through. Only the excavators, deployed five months after the attack in July 1945, dug a way to the dead.

While the noise of weapons had long since faded and starving people wandered through rubble-strewn city parts, hoping to find something usable under the debris of their homes, the heavy excavators’ claws loudly slammed into the stones. They grasped the burnt, melted, and now worthless possessions, once painstakingly saved by many generations. Everything shattered: possessions, memories, loved ones. What remained was life, desperately yearning for bread, life that demanded its right and perhaps even ordered to give away a rescued precious keepsake to escape the creeping death, hunger.

Often the excavator operator turned off the steam when his claws had grabbed something else. Work ceased until the hearse had loaded its burden. When a house ruin was cleared under which corpses were suspected, relatives often appeared to be present at the discovery of their dead. Day after day, they stood there waiting.

After the work at the AOK on Hinteren Bleiche was done, the excavators moved on to start work in Frauenlobstraße. They were called back again. At a spot where no one had suspected, the bodies of five people were found. At the stone staircase to the safe, there was a small room where typewriters were stored during air-raid alarms. These five people had retreated here. The air pressure must have been particularly strong. The heavy armored doors were bent, and the typewriters were flung from the tables to the other side of the room. Five months seemed to have passed almost without a trace on the dead. While outside, American tanks rolled through the rubble and a war came to an end, time had stood still down there. Completely sealed off from the air, the bodies remained preserved. Among them was a girl who was to celebrate her wedding the next day, on February 28.

When the cellar was opened and air entered, the phosphorus ignited. Six families, who had stored furniture in the adjacent room, lost their possessions five months after the war ended. All that remained was fine white ash.

* * *

From Große Bleiche to Ludwigstraße, from Schusterstraße to Schillerstraße, was the part of Mainz’s old town that had been relatively spared in previous attacks. It was especially the focus of destruction.

Even though the Neustadt and other parts of the city were severely affected, and entire street blocks were wiped out there as well, the destruction did not reach the same extent as in the maze of those small historic Mainz alleys like Steingasse, Spritzengasse, Welschnonnengasse, Lotharstraße, Kötherhofgäßchen, Emmeranstraße, Pfandhausstraße, Große and Kleine Langgasse, and others.

Those who later wandered through here no longer recognized the old Mainz. No streets, no houses, just a single stone desert where weeds thrived. Particularly in these streets, a large number of incendiary bombs fell, which penetrated the roofs and almost always detonated in the stairwell. The old rotten wooden stairs provided rich nourishment for them. The narrow, winding staircases drew the fire upwards like a chimney.

Thus, in these old Mainz houses, the stairwell and then the entire house burned down from top to bottom, without the fire brigade being able to intervene. Moreover, not just one house was burning, but entire street blocks from the first to the last house were engulfed in flames.

This was the reason why this part of the old town had the most casualties. People who emerged from the cellars after the attack found themselves enclosed by flames and heat. The falling debris put those trying to escape in great danger.

This was not the case to the same extent in the Neustadt, as the houses there — except for a few exceptions — were not built so closely together. Their concrete foundations prevented them from burning down as quickly, and the broader streets often still allowed a way of escape.

The wooden stairs, the Mainz fire brigade’s concern, were probably largely to blame for the complete destruction of Mainz’s old town and the many casualties.

In the aforementioned part of the old town, most deaths on the street were also recorded, those killed by the falling debris during their escape. In the cellars of Lotharstraße, Große Bleiche, Welschnonnengasse, Steingasse, Emmeranstraße, Große Langgasse, Pfandhausstraße, and elsewhere, people met their death.

Under many ruins, they still lie today. According to estimates by the corpse recovery teams, a total of about 2,400 people lost their lives due to bombing during the war years. Of these, 1,200 died on February 27, 1945, alone, including some Wehrmacht members and people who happened to be in Mainz that day.

February 27, 10:00 PM.

The wind swept over the airfield at Dijon. At the edge of the field, Captain Smith’s plane and his crew stood. In the accommodation near the airfield, Captain Smith extinguished his cigarette and turned off the light.

But the fire he ignited in a city on the Rhine could not be extinguished with the press of a button. It continued to devour and destroy the last possessions of tens of thousands of people, who wandered wearily through shattered streets towards an uncertain fate, leaving behind fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, parents and children as nameless victims of war in cellars, in the rubble, on the streets.

* * *

February 28 1945

5:00 AM.

After a roughly three-hour march through the darkness, Erika reached the outskirts of the city. Already in Weisenau, she saw the devastation. She could only move very slowly through the streets.

In front of the burning houses, firefighting brigades pumped water from the Rhine through long hose lines. Despite an abundance of water, the fire department was unable to combat the flames. The detonating salts from the incendiary bombs had covered every square meter of surface, preventing the fire from spreading from a single source as in normal fires.

There were thousands upon thousands of fire sources, which over 40 firefighting units in Greater Mainz on February 27 couldn’t handle. According to the responsible fire chief engineer, several hundred modern firefighting units from the surrounding areas, including Groß-Gerau, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Bingen, Bad Kreuznach, Alzey, Oppenheim, Worms, were involved in fighting the fire.

Bomb craters had torn open the streets again. Ships were burning on the Rhine and sinking into the depths. Burnt-out cars stood by the road, horse-drawn carriages blocked the passages. Torn, bloated, and burnt horse carcasses lay over the yoke, spreading that repugnant smell of fire and decay, making one clench their teeth to suppress the disgust.

Erika pressed her handkerchief to her mouth and put on her air-raid glasses. She walked along Rheinstraße and turned into Ludwigstraße at the Fischtor. Every house was burning. The debris lay meters high over the street, leaving no passage. With every step, there was a clinking sound. Shards, nothing but shards! How quickly a city could burn down!

Twelve hours after the attack, the remains of once beautiful and prosperous Mainz still smoldered. The silence and emptiness on the streets were eerie. Where had the residents gone? Had they already left the city? Had they fled to the casemates of the forts on the outskirts? Were they lying in cellars, suffocated, charred, burnt?

Not a human sound. Only the eerie crackling of the dying flames. Shaken, Erika climbed over debris, bumped into burnt-out incendiary bombs, and reached Schusterstraße, which was somewhat passable because the bombs on August 12 and 13, 1942, had already turned it into a rubble field.

Thus she reached the Flax Market. The house where she had lived was no longer standing. In its place was a pile of rubble. The cellar entrance was buried. On a neighboring house, she saw a woman writing with chalk on a remaining block: “We are alive!”

“We are alive.” Was this still a life? A life between heaven and hell, where God seemed to have forsaken people, a life between the first floor and the cellar, where an old wooden staircase couldn’t even withstand a single incendiary bomb, a life from today to tomorrow with the bitter feeling of already being delivered to the devil.

“We are alive!” We live on a hundred grams of bread, fifty grams of meat, ten grams of coffee substitute, and a water soup. “We are alive!” We live in fear, not only of being bombed from above but also of being crushed by the advancing fronts.

“Yes, we live!” Actually, it was a miracle what ordinary people were capable of enduring and how they tenaciously fought for every minute of their lives.

* * *

The tasks of the recovery team were not limited to clearing cellars, recovering the wounded and dead, identifying them, and removing the corpses. The many unexploded bombs that had landed at important traffic points had to be removed and defused to avoid new casualties. This was not always easy.

Where an unexploded bomb lay in the middle of the street, the recovery team had relatively easy work. Due to their penetration power, they usually penetrated several meters deep into the ground, leaving a clean edge of impact that was very easy to recognize. Finding them was more difficult and dangerous where debris lay on the unexploded bomb.

Fifteen to twenty percent of all dropped bombs were duds. The Ludwig Explosive Ordnance Disposal team alone had removed, detonated, or defused 5,500 bombs and shells weighing a total of 150,000 kilograms, as well as 1,500 land mines, 35,000 flak shells, and 62,000 rounds of infantry ammunition by May 2, 1949.

During the war, including February 27, these bombs were carefully loaded and detonated outside Mainz. After the war, Mr. Ludwig conducted the detonations between Weisenau and Laubenheim near the Portland cement works. As the detonations increased, it became irresponsible to continue working there, as the nearby houses were endangered by the air pressure. From then on, the dangerous load was transported near the Wackernheim airfield and detonated there.

Many bombs, which could not be removed, had to be defused on the spot at the risk of life. The attempt to detect unexploded bombs using dowsing rod operators failed. A radar device initially seemed to offer valuable help but became unusable because it indicated every tin can, and digging would have been necessary at every point.

Many unexploded bombs were only found later when the excavators’ claws grasped them during rubble removal.

On Fischtorplatz corner Rheinallee lived Dr. Georg Müller, a physician. A two-and-a-half-hundredweight bomb fell into his house, into his apartment on the first floor, onto the bed. The springs bounced it back up and it landed on the bedspread. There it lay. This bomb was also collected by the explosive ordnance disposal team, loaded onto a truck, and taken out of the city to be detonated.

* * *

The hours passed. The firestorm whipped through the streets of burning Mainz, sweeping away the smoke and carrying it across the river. There they sat, weary, battered, impoverished in 22 minutes. They pulled the still rescued and fire-singed blanket tighter around the body shivering from cold and fear. They huddled closer together to warm each other. The icy cold of the night came from the Rhine.

Yes, night had fallen. In the distance, they heard the sound of engines. They were no longer afraid. The rushing of the Rhine, the crackling of the fire, the rolling thunder of the guns from a collapsing front blended together. When will they come? Tomorrow? The day after?

They were alive. They lived in this fateful hour, which had left them only the memory of the past and better days. The husband fallen. The mother slain. But in her lap slept, shivering, the child that did not yet sense the full harshness of loss, the child that had asked for a bit of milk. Nothing, not even a piece of bread, not a cup of coffee. Nothing and yet something: Escaped with life. What was to become?

Slowly, the bombed-out people, as dawn broke, made their way along the river, not knowing who would give them a home.

Afterword

It was not easy to gather authentic material, especially numerical data, about the air raid on February 27, 1945, almost seven years after the destruction of Mainz. The chaos of the last weeks of the war claimed all available documents, if any had existed at all.

The author attempted to come closest to the truth by consulting as wide a range of people as possible for some disputed figures. No significant deviations emerged. The names were mostly kept, only changed in a few cases at special request.

Thanks to all those who contributed to the creation of this booklet by providing documents.

The Author