(dramatic orchestral music)
- [Narrator] Ask any citizens of Hamburg
to name those sights or features
which they think most represent their city
to themselves and to the
world, and top of their list
will almost certainly be the
graceful Rathaus, or city hall,
St. Michael's church on its hill,
the Alster Lake that
lies in the city's heart.
Along with the 20th century Chilehaus
and the city's great international port,
they are the very symbols of Hamburg.
They also represent between
them, in the city hall,
Hamburg's civic pride.
In St. Michael's, its faith.
In the Alster Lake, its beauty.
And in the port, its
commerce and prosperity.
It is still within living memory
that they were all in danger of vanishing
from Hamburg altogether in
the horrifying firestorm
in the summer of 1943.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] On my way home,
all the houses around me were on fire,
people rushing to shelters.
I saw some bodies lying in the street,
and people were shouting at me
to come into their air raid shelters.
But I only wanted to
get home to my parents.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] When we
came out of the shelter,
the dead were lying all around, all burnt.
They had caught fire and some
had jumped into the lake.
Horses jumped in as well.
But they were still
burning when they came out.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] The phosphorous
bums were horrifying.
People near the Alster Lake plunged in,
hoping the water would put out
the flames on their clothing,
but it was no use, it was just frightful.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] There was hardly
any air in the shelter.
Everybody was gasping for air.
I wished a bomb would just
drop on us then and there
to end the suffering.
- The city of Hamburg was no stranger
to destruction by fire.
Almost exactly 100 years before in 1842,
the town center had been
almost completely burnt
to the ground, and then rebuilt
on a more spacious batten.
The stronghold, or burg, of Hammer,
was founded at the beginning
of the ninth century
and gradually established itself
as a leading port, despite
the fact that it wasn't even
anywhere near the seacoast,
but more than 60 miles inland.
But due to its favorable position
on one of Western Europe's major
navigable rivers, the Elbe,
with its wide outlet to the North Sea,
and from there to the oceans of the world,
it had already become one
of the world's leading ports
by the start of the century.
Its merchant ships were trading regularly
with North and South America,
Africa, the Far East,
and Australia.
Before this, the
ocean-going merchant vessels
had anchored away from
the inner port area,
their goods being offloaded
into barges and wheries.
And from there, they were
brought to the quayside
for final unloading.
But as trade grew rapidly in volume,
larger sheds and warehouses
had to be constructed
with cranes and other facilities
for direct quayside
unloading of their cargoes.
So that already before
the war, Hamburg possessed
some of the largest
warehouses in the world.
Trade increased even further
when part of the port area of Hamburg
was established as a free port,
with no customs duties imposed
on imported goods being
stored and transshipped.
But the port of Hamburg was engaged
not only in the shipping of
goods, but of people as well.
The Hapag-Lloyd shipping line
was famous all over the world
for its passenger services,
with offices in every
major city of the globe.
And this became increasingly
so after the First World War,
during the golden age
of the great transatlantic ocean liners
and their luxury cruises.
During the interwar years too,
through the prosperity of Hamburg's port,
the city itself expanded
outwards and upwards.
With imaginative new buildings
such as architect Fritz
Höger's 10-story office block,
the Chilehaus, shaped like the
prow of a great ocean liner.
Hamburg was already Germany's
largest city after Berlin,
with a population approaching two million,
and it could also claim
to be continental Europe's largest port
by the time war broke out in 1939.
For the first few months of the war,
life in Hamburg seemed
to change very little,
and only very gradually for its citizens.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] I suppose the first time
that we really became aware
of the fact that there was a war on
was when we were issued with
food coupons all of a sudden.
The food situation hadn't been at all bad
during the first year of the war,
but they decided to
introduce rationing anyway
even if only as a precaution.
After that, the first air
attacks on Hamburg took place,
but well before the raids began,
the authorities got us to
convert our house cellars
into shelters.
We were all given ARP training
about what to do in the event of a raid.
Not only the men, but the women too,
and how to put out any fires
caused by incendiary bombs.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] My name is Ralf Ohlhagen.
I was born in Bleckede, a town
on the river Elbe in 1935.
My father worked there, and
he was transferred to Hamburg
in the year the war started, 1939.
We went to live in a flat
in the Ifflandstraße,
quite close to the Alster
Lake in the city center.
I started school a couple of years later.
At that time, we led a
fairly quiet life in Hamburg
even though the war was on.
I lived like any normal
boy aged about six.
Our life was occasionally
interrupted by short air raids,
but nothing very severe at first.
It was generally like
that everywhere in Germany
during the first year or so of the war.
But suddenly from April
1940, everything changed.
After a long period of inactivity,
German forces invaded Denmark and Norway
and then west across their borders
through the low countries and France.
(military band music)
As the Allied armies
withdrew when France fell,
the Germans occupied the
North Sea and channel coasts.
The next stage of the
battle was soon to begin.
Scarcely 10 minutes away in flying time,
across that narrow stretch of water
lay the shore cliffs of Dover
and the air fields and
ports of southern England.
The German air force was ready to strike,
and the Battle of Britain had begun.
For the summer weeks from the end of June
to the start of September,
the Luftwaffe pounded away
at British shipping and air bases
to prepare for the planned invasion.
With the daily attacks on the
southeast corner of England,
the Dover area became
known as Hell's Corner.
But as summer days passed by,
the German leadership decided
on a change of strategy
and abandoned their invasion plans.
Instead, they set out to
pound the British economy
into defeat with attacks on factories,
industrial and commercial
centers, and on London itself.
And especially the east end Dockland area,
the port of London.
The attacks continued night after night
from September onwards.
Til then, Britain's air
force had done very little
in the way of vital
attacks on German targets.
They had the disadvantage
that targets on German soil
were four and more hours
flying time distance
from their bomber bases,
and usually beyond the range
of their protecting fighter planes
compared to the short distances
which the German planes
needed to fly from their bases
in occupied France.
Nevertheless, they began to
launch a series of attacks
across the North Sea, directed against
the north German ports such
as Bremen, Lübeck and Hamburg.
Hamburg still traded to some
degree with neutral countries
as well as being an important center
for manufacturing u-boats
and other vital German military vessels.
At that stage, the port and city
were well defended against
attacks from British bombers.
- [Narrator] Initially, we used to reckon
you were better off going in early
because things weren't warmed up.
On the other hand, I think,
when there are fewer of you,
there was more chance of you
being sort of isolated and picked out.
- [Narrator] On the home front, too,
Hamburg's air raid precautions
were among the best in Germany.
They had had the foresight to construct
giant fortified public bunkers
as well as relying on
domestic cellar shelters.
Even some hospitals and
their operating theaters
were provided with bunkers.
During the early raids,
all those in reach of public shelters
were able to feel reasonably secure
within the walls of the
well-protected bunkers,
and the raids seldom lasted very long
because of the limited
flying time the enemy planes
could afford to stay airborne.
(people chattering)
(shots firing)
- The one thing we hadn't solved,
getting out of searchlights.
They used to put a load
of searchlights onto you,
and do what they called a comb.
Our problem was to get out of that,
because once you were lit up,
in those days we were flying about five,
four, five, six thousand
feet, something like that.
And once you were in there,
the gunners on the ground
had a target to shoot and and they used to
for a rather long time.
As well as that, they
used to have fighters,
single-seated fighters and
whatnot roaming around,
and once they saw somebody
caught in a searchlight,
I mean, it was an obvious target.
This happened to us over
Hamburg, we got caught,
and we couldn't get out of it.
And eventually we sort
of duck dived, right,
the only thing to do
is stick our nose down.
So we stuck our nose down,
down to get out of those
as quickly as we could.
But of course, they followed us down,
we flew quite low down just
on the outskirts of Hamburg.
And by the time we got clear of the lights
we would turn to try and back up again
because it was still a defended area
so we stayed on the ground.
And that was about half
an hour of hectic flying.
- [Narrator] Relatively
little damage was caused
in many of the REF raids of late 1940.
And indeed, the German
authorities were even able
to turn them into useful
propaganda for themselves,
as in this news reel.
The commentator says,
English bombing attacks
against German cities seem to
be directed almost exclusively
against civilian and
non-military objectives.
In this Hamburg district,
22 children were killed.
After that action, London
assumed that Hamburg,
suffering from such an
attack, was reduced to ruin
and its streets and ports pulverized.
The German government invited German
and foreign journalists to visit Hamburg.
From the tower of the
church of St. Michael,
they saw a city undestroyed,
and whose population
went on quietly about their occupations.
Newsreels like this were
turned out of English
and other languages for
consumption by the American public
and foreign journalists to claim
how ineffectual the British raids were.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] The air raids
gradually became worse and worse.
At first it hadn't been too bad,
we just stayed in our flat,
didn't go to a shelter,
and watched what was happening
outside from our window.
The REF dropped signal
flares to mark their targets,
red and green.
We all called them Christmas
trees because of the colors.
(planes whirring)
- [Narrator] During
1941, the bomber aircraft
of the British air forces
were becoming more efficient,
carrying larger and heavier loads
and capable of greater flying time
and were beginning to cause as much damage
as the raids on London.
- (speaks in German)
- When this raid came, it
must've been in 1941, I think,
it was really frightening
because the lights went out.
The cellar timbers started cracking,
one high explosive bomb
after the other kept coming
and we thought that one of
them would surely hit us.
(bombs exploding)
(fire crackling)
- (speaks in German)
- It was really frightening.
People started to cry and scream.
There was no way out of the
house while the raid was on,
and we thought it was soon
going to be our turn to be bombed.
But thank heavens, it didn't happen.
And in fact, all the
houses in our neighborhood
escaped destruction throughout
the whole of the war.
(yelling in German)
(shots firing)
This period was beginning to see
the last of the smaller-scale
raids on specific targets,
even though their
accuracy and effectiveness
had greatly increased.
(shots firing)
The war in the air stood at the
threshold of a major change.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] In 1943, the first
carpet bombing took place.
Hamburg and its surroundings
were very heavily attacked.
This bombing began during
the end of July in 1943.
It was part of the plan
of the British chief
of bomber command.
- Let the Nazis take good
note of the western horizon,
where they will see a cloud as yet
no bigger than a man's hand.
We cannot send a thousand bombers a time
over Germany every time as yet,
but the time will come when we can do so.
- [Narrator] Nevertheless,
from this time on, the scale
of air raids over German cities
began to increase both in size and number.
Little could anyone suspect
when this raid on Hamburg began
that it would go down in history
as the world's first city
to suffer a firestorm.
It arose through an unusual
combination of factors.
The weather those last days of July 1943
had been very hot and dry.
Everything on the ground
burned more easily,
and a large number of
individual incendiary fires
gradually began to merge and
burn as one giant bonfire.
The rising heat formed violent up currents
and consequently sucked in
fresh air at ground level,
reaching speeds of gale
and even hurricane force.
The fires burned with such intense heat
that people in shelters
began to suffocate.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] The shelter was
designed for about 300 people,
but during the night up
to 500 people arrived.
We had a hand pump for pumping air in,
but we had to stop doing that later
as everything around us was
destroyed and was burning,
and the only thing that came in was smoke,
so we stopped pumping.
It started around midnight and, well,
later we could not
breathe properly anymore.
No air could get in and
there were so many people.
(fire roaring)
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] After we'd
been in our basement shelter
for about half an hour, we
smelled something burning.
When the fire brigade arrived,
they told us that our
building had been hit
by two incendiaries and
that our roof was on fire.
So we left our basement at once
and tore off to my grandparents',
who fortunately had a flat nearby.
We went into their basement shelter
and after about another two
hours, this house was hit, too,
and we were all trapped in the basement.
We just couldn't get out.
There was an elderly lady
in the basement with us
whose sister was outside the house
and was actually trying to
remove the rubble to get inside.
The firemen outside
thought that she was mad
and tried to restrain her.
And while they were doing so,
they gradually became aware of us knocking
and screaming inside the basement.
So they set to to make their
way into our blocked basement,
and finally they reached
us and got us out.
If it hadn't been for the determination
of that lady's sister, we
would've all died in that shelter.
(fire roaring)
The raids continued
over the following days,
and engulfed the port of
Hamburg with its warehouses,
sheds, quays and bridges.
(fire roaring)
Thousands of bombed out people took refuge
after the firestorm at one
or other of the city's parks.
With what few possessions
they had managed to rescue
and take with them in
handcarts, cases, prams.
Many of them left the city,
never to return again.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] After our rescue
from my grandparents' basement,
my mother decided to return to our flat.
But when we got there, we
found the building burnt out.
The whole of the street
was completely bombed out.
Since we didn't have
anywhere to live in Hamburg,
my mother decided to move
to our grandparents' house in Lüneburg.
So we set off with hundreds
of people out of the city.
With my brother and me,
the only possessions my mother left with
were what she could
pack in a tiny suitcase
and we made our way on
foot on a long, long road
to Lüneburg 30 miles away.
It took us at least a
couple of days or so,
sleeping on the roadside along the route,
til we were picked up by a lorry
and taken the last mile or two
to our grandparents' in Lüneburg.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] The Americans
attacked during the day.
Sometimes we had to go to
the shelter three times a day
and three times a night, and
slept with our clothes on
as there was no time to get dressed.
However, everything was put
back in order very quickly.
Everything was well organized.
Things were put back in order
so that people could
go back to their flats,
if the flats were still there.
However, in the second attack,
during which we got bombed
out, the bombs started to drop
immediately after the air raid warning.
(planes whirring)
- [Narrator] After America
had entered the war,
her aircraft and crews very soon added
their enormous bombing
capacity to the conflict,
carrying out most of their raids
during the day following
nighttime raids of the REF
on a round-the-clock basis.
(bombs whistling)
The Americans and British
were bombing towns and cities
all over Germany now.
It was around this time that Germany
began flying bomb attacks on Britain,
and London in particular.
And later, the Allied
bombers were seeking to bomb
the V2 sites in North
Germany at Peenemünde.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] My name is Günter Hossfeld.
I was born in 1938, and
we lived here in Harburg,
a suburb on the south side of Hamburg.
In 1944, Harburg was
attacked by American bombers.
It was a heavy raid.
When my mother and I finally came out
of the neighborhood shelter,
we could see that all the
houses along the street
had escaped any serious damage
except for the house that we lived in,
which was completely destroyed.
That's the house behind me, since rebuilt.
The American bombers were probably aiming
for our oil refineries, but
because the visibility got worse
that day, they couldn't see the target,
so they just dropped their
bombs in the general area.
We were very lucky to survive
that attack on our shelter,
just across the street from our house.
I can remember there was
just a pile of rubble
in place of our house, and the ladies
who had been in the shelter
with us began to cry
when they saw that our house
had been totally destroyed.
I suppose I was still too young
to be really upset by that sight,
and more important to me was a toy
I found on top of the
rubble, which I've still got.
The destruction of our house
had stirred up a lot of dust,
which still hadn't settled when
we came out of the shelter,
and there was this dust
cloud that seemed to hover
above the pile of rubble
which had been our house.
From central Germany to Hamburg,
the synthetic oil plants
had become primary targets
by the middle of 1944,
to deny oil to the German armed forces.
(fire crackling)
On the 20th of June, 1944,
a special raid was launched
against the Hamburg refineries
by American bombers.
The seven hour flight
took them along the coast
past Heligoland to their
target destination,
the oil storage and refining
plants along the Elbe River.
Sustained bombings had reduced
Germany's oil production
so far by over 60 percent,
and the Hamburg raid
was designed to put that source of fuel
out of action once and for all.
Though this and other such
raids were largely successful,
these storage and refinery areas
were very heavily defended.
The American bombers met
with great resistance
and suffered their share
of losses during raids.
(shots firing)
Also high on the list of priority targets
during the last months of the war
was Germany's communications system.
Under Operation Clarion,
strikes against the railways
overwhelmed the repair
capabilities of the railway system
and contributed to the general
disruption of transport.
Bombers continued to
strike at marshaling yards.
(bombs exploding)
As well as the railways, strikes
were carried out
successfully on other aspects
of communications including
roads, canals and bridges.
Along with the aerial onslaught,
the Allied ground forces
had been making strong advances
during the early part of 1945.
The American ninth army and other units
were thrusting forward into Germany
across the maze of canals and streams,
often flooded at that time of the year,
parallel to the advances of their British
and Canadian allies further north.
The British troops had met
with unexpectedly stiff
resistance in taking Brehmen.
The situation regarding
any resistance from Hamburg
was still unclear, not
only to the British troops
but to the citizens of Hamburg as well.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] We didn't
know whether Hamburg
would be defended or not.
One time the answer was yes,
and then it was no again.
And Karl Kaufmann, the mayor,
said that Hamburg had
suffered quite a lot already
and that there was hardly anything left.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] The British arrived
at the beginning of May 1945.
The war was more or less over.
At that time, we were pretty
scared because we'd heard
that the Russians had
already advanced to the Elbe,
and we didn't know whether they
would get to Hamburg first.
We prayed that it wouldn't be the Russians
because their troops had
a frightening reputation
for looting and raping.
However, one night we
heard that the British
were on their way and we
were all very relieved.
Before that, we'd been
given orders to hold out
and even attack, but as
the British army drew near,
our mayor Kaufmann said over the radio
that we shouldn't do anything
but just wait and see.
And then next day we saw a
single first tank arrive.
It stopped on the corner of our street.
For us, the war was over.
- [Narrator] In the first days of May,
the entry into Hamburg
finally took place peacefully,
to the relief of the troops
and the people of the city.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] Thank goodness
the city wasn't defended.
The British came in and
just took over peacefully.
Every half hour we
listened to news bulletins
and we were told what we
could and couldn't do.
There was a nightly
curfew from 10 o'clock,
and we weren't allowed out
on the streets after then,
though we younger ones
often went out anyway.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] We were very
relieved to see that the city
was to be occupied by English troops.
They marched down our
street, the Harlestraße,
and we put out white flags and waved them.
At first the people weren't allowed out
freely on the streets.
The English troops were cautious
in case anyone would still shoot at them
though none of the troops were
shot during the occupation,
to my knowledge.
The situation faced by the
British occupying power
and the people of Hamburg
was truly formidable.
(simplistic solemn music)
Over 50 percent of the homes
and a tenth of the entire
built up area was in ruins.
The port itself was
littered with the wreckage
of warehouses and ships, along
with its neighboring area.
The whole communications system
of the city was devastated,
roads and rail bridges,
viaducts, trains, goods yards,
stations, not only within the city,
but in its links with the outside world.
But restoration of
communications was urgent.
This was needed as much
by the occupation forces
as by the city itself,
especially in the port area.
The Blohm and Voss submarine yards
and the entire factory area
bordering the harbor were devastated.
Across the Elbe, the
Harburg industrial area
was equally damaged.
The port was littered with the wreckage
of cranes and bridges and
some three thousand ships.
And clearance seemed an
all but impossible task.
Yet by the end of May, Allied
supreme headquarters announced
that the port was cleared enough
to be opened to Allied
shipping within days.
There were enormous human
problems for the people, too.
Thousands of them simply
sat around in a daze.
Other searched for food, shelter,
missing friends and relatives.
Street notice boards were
covered with inquiries
about separated husbands, wives, children.
(reading in German)
Though many were stunned for
days by what had hit them,
life in the city soon began to stir again
in the efforts of people to cater
for their ordinary everyday
needs of food and shelter
and looking after children.
From a state of shock to immobility,
everyone was soon on the move again.
The streets of Hamburg seemed to be filled
with countless people, walking,
cycling, in carts, everywhere.
One of the very first priorities
was to organize the resuming
of a central services again
as quickly as possible.
Services that needed the involvement
of the citizens themselves
through carefully selected
responsible representatives
as well as the military authority.
The clearance of rubble,
the restoring of power lines
and public utilities.
And then there was the
enormous problem of housing.
14 million cubic meters of
gutted houses and rubble.
According to some authorities,
the highest in European history.
Housing had been given
less a priority status
behind the port, industry
and public buildings.
Now the problem had
become pressingly urgent.
Thousands of people were
trying to make a home
within the rubble.
Some living in cellars,
or upstairs in top story
rooms without walls.
Some were supplied with
ex-army Nissen type huts,
those whose needs were greatest.
Many living without light, fuel, soap,
living alongside open drains,
the neighborhood pumps their
only source of clean water.
Another top priority
for the occupying power
was to organize the output
and distribution of coal.
One of the nearest major coal
fields was the Ruhr region.
They set up Operation Coal Scuttle,
taking no less than 30,000 ex-miners
from the former German armed forces.
But the biggest problem
was to move the coal
from the pithead to the power plants
due to scarce transport facilities.
For the people themselves,
there is no coal to spare.
They can go into the woods
to cut trees and brushwood.
Meanwhile, the railways are organized
to carry the loads when needed,
and what can't go by
rail goes by autobahn.
As the months go by, people
scan the newspaper ads daily
for any news of missing relatives.
In Hamburg, there's a
British-run postal search service
indexing inquiries, coming in
at the rate of 50,000 per day.
Anyone contacting relatives
and wanting to travel by train
must get a permit.
Others traveling to
outside the city by cycle,
horse-drawn truck or on
foot, must wait in queues
to cross the guarded bridges out of town
behind the military
traffic, which has priority.
The occupation rail office personnel
vet all non-military journeys by rail
since space on the train
is absolutely at a premium.
(loudspeaker blares)
It seems that the world and his wife
were having to make some
train journey or other
during the first months after the war.
Part of the reason for overcrowded trains
was the desperate shortage
of other public transport
between the city and its
neighboring towns and villages
as well as within the city itself.
Hamburg's main station at this time
was one of the constantly
busiest places in town.
There was also the fact that
Hamburg had become packed
with refugees fleeing from the
advance of the Russian army
and who now wanted to return
to those hometowns in the east,
which fell within the borders
of the British occupation zone.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] Transport in the city
had come to a complete halt.
There were hardly any cars, and anyway,
there wasn't any petrol if you had one.
There were only a few bikes left at first,
and no public transport,
everyone had to walk.
My father was in hospital at
the time in Blankenese suburb,
about nine miles away from our house.
Each time we visited him it
took us half a day to get there
and the same to get home.
We didn't get back til nightfall,
and we saw my father
for only half an hour.
Meanwhile, the nightly curfew
brought problems for the homeless.
The former air raid shelters
officially became their
home each night after 10 PM.
The siren, which used to warn
them of impending air raids,
now signaled it was time
to get off the streets,
at least this time not
to escape from bombs.
No matter was too small for the attention
of the occupying power.
There was, for instance, the subject
of renaming some city streets.
Such former names as Adolf-Hitler-Platz,
Horst-Wessel-Allee, were now
clearly out of the question.
It was time, too, to start handing back
some matters of law and
order to the people,
with non-military public courts,
and a new German police force
whose powers were regulated
according to common law,
respecting the rights of every citizen
and understanding that they
were the protectors of a public,
not their master.
Then there was the
matter of public health.
The people were getting
1,000 to 1,200 calories a day
according to the type of work,
about half of normal rations.
But there was a survey team in the fields
staffed by the Red Cross,
checking the effects
of those rations on the population.
The tests were performed regularly
and reports sent to the control commission
for them to judge whether
the food was sufficient
to allow the people to keep at work.
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] For a long time,
there was a real shortage of food.
Even bread was scarce,
in the towns anyway.
There was a basic ration,
but it wasn't enough,
and a black market soon started up.
Anything people still had
left, personal possessions,
they sold them on the black
market to get food, cigarettes.
Getting food was all we
ever seemed to think about.
And of course, there were the children.
A large proportion of
the citizens of Hamburg
were children of school age.
For the younger ones who
came through unscarred,
the ruins in the city were a
giant adventure playground.
But for the city
administrators and the parents,
education was the main problem.
There was a severe shortage
of teachers and classrooms.
In midsummer of 1945, all schools
were temporarily closed by order
so that a proper program of
education could be set up
as well as the
reconstruction and provision
of adequate new classrooms.
Finally on a welcome day in early August,
the schools of Hamburg were reopened,
at a time of year when most
children elsewhere in the world
were breaking up for the summer holidays.
But that didn't bother
the children or parents,
for since the end of the war,
life had been one long
holiday from the classroom.
But perhaps the biggest
problem for Hamburg
and other German cities
was the destruction
of their industrial capacity.
Their factories had been left
mostly a mass of twisted metal.
How then to restore them
to the needs of peacetime
and to those who are to work in them?
(simple solemn music)
Well, one thing there wasn't
a shortage of was labor.
The end of the war in
Europe brought with it
a great mass of able bodied
men with nothing to do,
ex-members of the German armed forces.
But they couldn't all
be demobilized at once,
and constitute a new army,
an army of the unemployed,
even though a vast
amount of reconstruction
would eventually have to be done.
Examined first by a skilled
selected German interrogator,
the longest serving men first,
were put through a screening process
filling in their demobilization papers.
Then, past history and
character were checked
by German-speaking British
intelligence officers.
The majority of men got
through this process
and were demobbed.
Finally, there were German
judges to be sworn in.
- [Judge] Now gentlemen,
you'll raise your right hands
and take the oath with me.
I swear by almighty God,
(group responds in German)
that I will at all times,
(group responds in German)
- (speaks in German)
- [Narrator] Clearing the rubble away
was one of the most remarkable things.
Everyone really set to it with a will.
The main streets were
very quickly cleared,
and any undamaged material,
any bricks and building stone,
were salvaged and cleaned
up to be used again.
The less damaged sites were soon cleared
and buildings started going
up again, shops and houses.
The harbor was one of the
priorities for reconstruction.
All the damaged ships
were very soon removed
and the waterways opened up again.
The river Elbe was quickly
cleared of wreckage
and the Alster Lakes were
soon clean once more.
One could enjoy going for
a walk again in the parks,
ice skating out of doors in winter.
It was a new world out there.
The road to recovery was long and hard,
but the Alster lies at the
heart of a vastly recovered home
of almost two million people.
Its symbols were
fortunately mostly spared,
Hamburg city hall,
St. Michael's, now
visible within a new frame
of the 20th century.
But St. Nicholas in contrast,
severely damaged and still
unrepared, once one of Germany's
finest Neo-Gothic churches.
And in fact, designed
by a British architect,
Sir George Gilbert Scott, 100 years ago,
and now a war memorial.
(peaceful minimalistic music)
And there are the bright
newcomers to the scene,
such as the over 800 foot
high television tower,
probably a new symbol-to-be
for the Hamburg of the future.
And of course, the port,
at the foot of Hamburg's
hill above the Elbe.
In spite of its total wartime destruction,
the port today is still one of
continental Europe's busiest.
Some 15,000 ships each year
carrying over 50 million
tons of cargo of all kinds,
from over 100 countries across the world,
sailing in to unload at one
of its 40 miles of quays.
The port, which helped above all else
to make the free and Hanseatic
city-state of Hamburg.
(triumphant horn music)
