(engines rumbling)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] On the morning of Friday
the fifth of March 1945
the American army were preparing
to enter the city of Cologne.
Before them lay a sea of rubble
which had once been Germany's
fourth largest city.
They were awestruck.
This once great thriving industrial city
throbbing with energy and power
was now nothing but a heap of twisted iron
and broken bricks.
Blown up bridges, wrecked
railways and rolling stock,
gutted churches, shattered
towers and shells of factories
now lay where this great
city once proudly stood.
At precisely 700 hours the
order was given for the corp
to advance and capture the city.
Tank engines roared into life,
their tracks screeching and squealing
over the fallen masonry.
(booming)
Steadily but slowly the infantry advanced.
There appeared to be little resistance.
The German troops had
withdrawn leaving behind
only a small token force
to defend the city.
(booming)
Street by street the American's
cleared Cologne of snipers.
(booming)
(guns firing)
By early afternoon it was all over
and the first of the fighting
patrols were about to share
an experience they would never forget.
These men had seen war battle times before
they had already seen the
effects and the devastation
that the war cause to the towns
of Karin, Clares and Aachen
but they were not prepared
for what they saw in this city, Cologne.
The sight they beheld was awesome.
The city lay in complete ruins
save only for the spires of the cathedral
which still soared
miraculously to the sky.
One war correspondent on
witnessing the ruins first hand
wrote a city is a plan on a map
only here there is no plan.
A city means movement and noise and people
not silence and emptiness and stillness,
a kind of cemetery stillness.
A city should be full of life
and when you find instead
the complete negation of life
the effect is shattering.
As the first of the
GI's crunched their way
over the broken glass and concrete
they were increasingly dismayed
at what they saw and smelt.
From below the rubble came
the stench of rotting bodies.
Gradually from out of the
charred walls from cellars
and cabins dug out of the rubble
the Cologne citizens came out
into the bright March sunshine.
Small groups of ashen faced
survivors who had lived
in candle lit cellars for weeks.
Soon more and more groups of people
cautiously emerged from the debris.
(somber music)
Behind the leading patrol of
GI's came the 104th division
spreading out across the city,
mopping up the remaining snipers.
Tanks wrestled their way
around craters and over rubble
which once was somebody's home.
In some areas the fallen
masonry was so deep
that the streets below were hidden.
All that remained was a mass
of gutted, roofless shells.
And yet beneath this debris
people were still living.
40,000 of the city's
inhabitants had makeshift homes
amongst the fallen concrete.
Before the war 800,000 people
lived and worked in the city
now only a handful remained.
(somber music)
In the wrecked square in
front of the opera house
there was a sign painted
in both english and german
it read, give me five years
and you will not recognize
Germany again, Adolf Hitler.
How did all this destruction come about?
It had all begun one
night four years earlier
on the 10th of May 1941.
Arthur Harris, then commanding
number five bomber group,
stood on the roof of the air
ministry at King Charles street
in London's White Hall.
(booming)
He was surveying the success
that the Luftwaffe were having
bombing the heart out of London.
Harris carefully observed the
effects of the blast bombs,
heavy fragmentation
bombs and incendiaries.
He noted meticulously the
effects of the mixture of all
three and considered how much
more successful the Luftwaffe
could have been if they had
concentrated more aircraft
over the target area and
had paid greater attention
to the mixture of bombs
there by creating an even
greater conflagration.
Little had Göring realized
then just how much
he was inadvertently guiding
the hand of retaliation
which was to strike back at Germany
so disastrously in the future.
It was this attack on London
that prompted Harris's famous
speech to the British nation.
- The Nazi's entered this
war under the rather childish
delusion that they were
going to bomb everybody else
and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam and London,
Warsaw and half a hundred other
places they put that rather
naive theory into operation.
They served the wind
and now they are going
to reap the whirlwind.
Cologne, Lübeck, Rostock, those
are only just the beginning.
We cannot send a thousand
bombers a time over Germany
every time as yet
but the time will come when we can do so.
Let the Nazi's take good
note of the western horizon
there they will see a cloud
as yet no bigger than a man's
hand but behind that cloud
lies the whole massive power
of the United States of America.
When the storm bursts over
Germany they will look back
to the days of Lubeck
and Rostock and Cologne
as a man caught in the
blasts of a hurricane
will look back to the gentle
zephyrs of last summer.
It may take a year, it may take two
but for the Nazi's the
writing is on the wall.
Let them look out for themselves.
The cure is in their own hands.
There are a lot of people who say
that bombing can never win a war
well my answer to that is that
it has never been tried yet
and we shall see.
Germany clinging more and more desperately
to her widespread conquests
and even seeking foolishly for more,
will make a most interesting
initial experiment.
- [Narrator] What the Americans
have seen in the morning
on fifth of March 1945 was
the final, horrifying result
of that first experiment.
And the subsequent
results of the whirlwind
which Harris had predicted.
A catastrophic effect of the area
or carpet bombing on German cites
which had begun with the
first 1,000 bomber raid
on Cologne in May 1942.
Now, almost a lifetime has past
since that first terrifying
attack on the city.
In the intervening years
the scars on the city had gradually healed
and the devastation has disappeared.
The young of today may
ask, what was it like?
What was it like to be
flying through the sky
avoided the flak and the fighters
to drop those bombs and
cause so much carnage?
What was it like for a citizen to live
crouched in a bomb shattered building
whilst the bombs were
exploding around them?
How does a city recover
from such a catastrophe?
(somber music)
Whatever the morality of this
and hundreds of other raids on
cities throughout the world by
both the allies and Germany,
perhaps in the cold reality
half a century later,
there has been a vital lesson learned.
War is much too costly
and barbels and metals
settling quarrels amongst
the nations of the world.
(somber music)
Saturday, May the 30th, 1942.
Across 53 airfields of
England's eastern counties
a damp May mist drifted across the tarmac.
Overhead in the sky, dark
thunder clouds were forming.
The huge darken bombers
of the Royal Air Force
stood silently in their dispersal bays.
One thousand of them.
In the overcrowded messes,
6,000 aircrew waited.
The nervous tension mounting.
They all had heard the rumors
that something big was on for this day.
As the minutes and hours
ticked away, nobody knew what.
For the commander in chief Arthur Harris,
a huge decision was to be made.
Either the massive air armada
which had been assembled
with attack or disperse.
But to mount the operation
in such unfavorable
weather conditions could
be courting disaster.
Harris was about to do something
which no other commander in
history would've chosen to do.
He was about to risk the whole
of his front line strength
and the whole of his
reserves in one battle.
It was a bold venture
needing audacity and courage.
He had already achieved a
remarkable logistic feat
in assembling the massive force.
Many of his aircraft were equipped
with the new and revolutionary navigation
and blind bombing devices
which would ensure maximum
concentration of the force
over the target area.
Here now was the opportunity.
One which might not come again.
To deliver a blow to Germany,
the like of which had never
been witnessed before.
To destroy completely by fire
one of Germany's biggest
and most powerful industrial centers.
To erase from the map
of Europe, in one night,
a major German city.
The weather however,
was standing in the way.
Three times the raid had been postponed.
Now on the forth day,
the conditions looked equally unfavorable.
(chattering)
It would not had been so critical
if this was a normal raid
or 150 or 200 bombers.
But to put 1,000 bombers in the air
all heading through thick cloud
could invite a catastrophe
on an unprecedented scale.
Not only was that was a
great risk of collision
over the target area
but a much higher risk was involved
in landing the force after the raid.
The Luftwaffe had learned this lesson
after raiding London in 1940
when they lost 250 of their
returning aircraft in crashes.
There had been a forecast
that the bad weather was about to clear
over the Cologne area.
But would the break in
the cloud hold long enough
for the 1,000 bombers to get in and out
within the planned 90 minutes.
(dramatic music)
Harris made the decision.
He would take the chance
that the weather would hold.
It would be 1,000 bomber plan tonight.
Around the operations
rooms of the airfield,
the benches were packed with aircrew
awaiting the briefing.
Now is the time for all of
them to know what was planned.
For these men, in fact,
most of them were only boys, young boys.
They knew what this raid
could mean for many of them.
Whatever the target, death.
The CV officer began the briefing.
Gentleman, the target
for tonight is Cologne.
There was a moment of
relief for the aircrew.
They had expected much worse
and much further into Germany.
The officer then went on to tell them,
tonight the raid shall be no ordinary one.
We shall be bombing with 1,000 aircraft.
The officer then explained
the importance of the target.
In fact, Cologne was a
very important target.
Being a highly industrial city
with light and heavy engineering works.
There were many factories
producing guns, tanks and vehicles
which will be used on the Russian front.
The city also had an important
railway network and center.
With many junctions being
used for the transportation
of troops and weapons.
There were large marshaling
yards and warehousing.
In the areas of Ehrenfeld,
Kalk and Mülheim
east of river there were
large chemical plants.
In fact, Cologne was one of the
most important German cities
with a population of
approximately 800,000 people.
It was important not
only for it's factories
and military installations
but also because it
was the center of trade
and political activity.
Cologne was also one of
the most heavily defended
of all German cities.
When the crews in the briefing rooms
were given details of the intended target
there was apprehension.
The briefing officers qu,
rested on a rectangular
gap in the city's center
not far from the cross which marks
the famous Cologne Cathedral.
This was the central aiming
point the crews were told
the Neumarkt.
The Neumarkt was right in the middle
of the shopping and residential
area of the old city.
They were not just going to bomb
the big Ford Motor Factory
and the Chief War Factories
but they were also going to attack
right in the heart of the city.
The few airmen that asked
why, did not like the answer.
The intention was to
bomb not just industry,
but also civilians.
The age of tele-bombing was about to begin
and the citizens of Cologne
were about to experience
a seal from hell.
Now all of the bomber command aircrews
were going through
their pre-flight checks.
Ordinary young men from ordinary homes.
For most of them the
battle had already started.
The constant battle with fear.
55,000 of these young aircrew were killed
during World War II and their
odds of surviving a raid
were less than one in four.
A 25 year old man would be
a old man in bomber command.
Despite the odds against them
and despite the fear and the horror
they can try to do what
was expected of them.
So, the final preparations were complete.
Dusk had now turned into night.
The crews were mustered
and were climbing into
their flying clothing.
They loaded onto the trucks
that took them out to
their dispersal points
where their aircraft were waiting.
At each of the bombers
the truck would stop.
Rooks of young men got out,
their parachutes clutched
and flying helmets dangling.
They scrambled inside their aircraft.
As the clock approached zero hour,
the force was ready to take off.
Not just 1,000 of them, but
1,048 aircraft were ready.
Between them they were laden
with over three million
kilograms of bombs.
The countdown was over,
the operation would begin.
(dramatic music)
At exactly 22:30 hours,
the first huge bomber took it's place
at the end of the mile long flare path.
It's engines were run up to full boost.
With the signal from the controllers lamp,
the pilot rammed the throttles full open
and the engines roared to full pitch.
The brakes came off and the
bomber rolled slowly forward,
gathering speed with each second.
Then it was airborne.
The first of the mighty fleet
taking part in this momentous raid.
All across the airfields
of eastern England,
the same scene is repeated
one after the other.
Engines thundered and roared into life.
One by one, the Stirlings,
Wellingtons, Hampdens
and Whitleys of the fire raising force
raced down the stretches of concrete.
The skies were full of
aircraft fully laden
and heavy with bombs they'd
lumbered to gain height,
all assembling for the big assault.
As they circled,
never before had the
Luftwaffe's night fighter force
been offered such a golden
opportunity for targets.
But no fighters came.
Hitler, against the
advice from his commanders
and making yet another of
his costly, tactful mistakes
of the war had forbidden
the fighters to attack
that RAF over British soil.
Considering that 70% of all RAF bombers
shot down by the Luftwaffe
had been over their own bases
as they took off and landed,
this order was an absurdity.
Had Hitler not given the order
this raid could've been not
only the first 1,000 bomber raid
but also the last.
And possibly the costliest
raid ever for the RAF.
As the controllers monitored
the force across the channel,
one of the biggest attacks
ever in aerial warfare
was underway.
It was disaster that was
going to be experienced either
by the citizens of Cologne or
by the air crews of the RAF.
Ahead on the horizon lay the Dutch coast
and with it the ground
control and deception zones
ready and waiting with fighters and flak.
At 23:14 hours the first contact was made.
The first of the bombers stream
had been spotted on radar.
The night fighters were scrambled.
They now knew that the
bombers were coming,
the question for the night
fighter controller was,
how many?
With Cologne still a long way off,
the front of the bomber
stream came under attack
from flak over the Dutch coast.
(chattering)
(rumbling)
Search lights were picking
out the bombers in the sky
but there was little resistance
from the night fighters.
Only anti-aircraft shells.
In England, the plans
were still taking off.
But now it was the turn
of the heavy bombers.
The ones that carried the heavy bomb loads
that would spread the fires.
By now the first of the bombers
were approaching the target.
It was 00:45 hours as two of the bombers
began their run-up
towards the aiming point.
Right in the center of the
ancient city, the Neumarkt.
(siren wailing)
The air raid alarms had
already begun to sound
throughout the city.
In fact, they had started at 23:45,
but Cologne's sleepy citizens
were slow to stir themselves.
There had already been over 100 raids
since the beginning of the war
and the people of the
city were inclined to wait
before rushing to the shelters.
On this night, the sky was clear.
There was a bright moon
but there was no sound of
the approaching bombers.
But one hour later, the horror
of the night unfeld itself.
Below, while families
asleep in their beds,
completely unaware of how
dramatically many of their lives
would be transformed by the
time this night was over.
The first button was pressed, bomb's gone.
Sticks of incendiaries
showered the Neumarkt
followed by small 30 pound bombs.
This was the start of funeral fire
that the other bombers would
spread throughout the city.
Cologne's defenses suddenly
sprang into action.
The bombers came under heavy attack.
Shells burst around
them below the bombers,
but still they came.
The bomber converged on the
city, one every six seconds.
They came in from north
to south, south to north
east to west and west to east.
It was an air traffic nightmare
as they crisscrossed each other
paying no attention to the briefing
which had called for all the bombers
to approach the target from one direction.
Every crew member was on the look out.
Not so much for enemy fighters,
but to warn their pilot
when another bomber got too close.
Below, the city was badly shaken.
Incendiaries crashed downward,
splashing brilliant white
as they hit the ground
and then turning red as
the timber caught fire.
As the citizens rushed to
the safety of the shelters
the fire engines could be heard
racing through the streets,
their siren's wailing.
(speaks in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] This particular
Sunday I went to Purnapas,
this is a residential area nearby
about half an hour from Cologne.
I stayed with my relatives overnight.
I remember being awoken during the night.
The sirens had stared to howl
and we could hear the approaching bombers.
We all went to the basement
and I remember I was very frightened
as I was separated from my parents.
We stayed there for about three hours
and all we could hear was the
terrifying sound of the bombs.
They were exploding all around us.
- [Narrator] As house after
house, building after building
began to burn and fall,
the children began to howl.
The air was thick with black
smoke and clouds of dust.
Cologne's nightmare had begun.
One pilot on the raid recalled,
I had never been on an easier target.
We just floated in, making
no attempt at navigation.
We picked our target
carefully, dropped our bombs
and had time to look down at
bomber command's handiwork.
It was an awesome sight.
We could see the river clearly,
running through the mass of fires.
Every street was etching in fire,
stretched right across the city.
The light from them was so bright
that I could see the other
bombers coming into bomb.
It was appalling, really sickening sight,
we should definitely stop.
I felt so sorry for all the
women and children down there.
While some of the bombers
flew in and out of the target
completely unscathed,
others in the same wave
were ferociously engaged
by flak and fighters.
All over the city, thousands of men, women
and in some cases children
were rising to the occasion
with the steadfastness of nerves.
(bombing)
Kasmann was 14 at the time of raid.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] On the 31st of May 1941
in the Valeska Straße,
a warehouse full of building
material was on fire
and we all knew there was also petrol
stored in this building.
I was with a friend who
was a solider on leave.
We had been great friends before the war.
We both attempted to put the fire out
with sand bags and water.
But the flames were too great.
So we rushed over to the
headquarters of the fire brigade
and tried to borrow a hose
to connect the hydrant
near to the warehouse.
They didn't have anything
so we just went into the
Balthasarstraße and
found a cart with wheels.
One of those things which used to be
on top of the fire engines for the hose.
We weren't allowed to just take the hose
without a fireman accompanying
us and luckily one did.
The three of us rushed back
to the warehouse with the hose
and connected it to the water supply.
Then the three of us dragged
the hose up the stairs
and tried to extinguish the flames.
We didn't put the fire out completely
but we did manage to save
the part of the building
where the petrol was stored.
A lot was destroyed but
thankfully the petrol barrels
did not explode which
would have been disastrous.
- [Narrator] Fireman from
neighboring towns were now
coming into the city to help
deal with the spreading fires.
Reaching the burning buildings
was becoming increasing difficult.
The roads were pitted with craters
and strewn with the dead and dabering.
After the Franz Clout
Rubberworks received a direct hit
and then the Railway
works of Cologne neaps,
fire sprang up all around the area.
Rats in their 1,000s ran out
of the gutted warehouses.
It was an unforgettable sight.
The glare was like daylight.
The waterlines were broken,
severely hampering the fire services.
Special lines were laid from the Rhine
and pumping equipment was brought in
but soon the extra lines were crushed
below the falling buildings.
Mutilated bodies lay everywhere.
In every street, in every shelter,
there were horrific scenes
alongside heroic efforts
of gallentry amongst the people.
Everyone in Cologne was finding
a new and bitter meaning
in the propaganda minister,
Dr. Goebbels words,
we're all in the front line now.
(speaking in foreign language)
Ninety minutes later, it was over.
The faint rumble of the bombers stream
could still be heard in the distance.
The dazed population of Cologne
came out from the shelters
to gaze with horror on
the scene of desolation.
Throughout the city,
the people picked their
way through the debris
to find their homes.
(bombs exploding)
The last of the heavy bombers
were now well on their way home.
Behind them, the sky was
burning a bright orange.
With this massive armada
now returning to the airfields of England,
the airfield controllers
faced a formidable problem.
The skies were still clear of cloud
but not all of the aircraft
could get back to their own bases.
Battle damage, shortage of
fuel and navigational errors
caused pilots to seek permission to land
at the nearest airfield sighted.
The long night at the 53
bomber command airfield
was coming to an end.
The dawn light was coming up.
One by one the bombers returned.
As each one landed the count was taken.
Did they all come back?
Who was missing?
As the crews landed their aircraft
they were a different body
of men than had taken off.
They were not longer the fresh young men
that had set out on the
mission earlier that night.
These men were now physically
tired and mentally exhausted.
Their posturs slumped
as they made their way
across the tarmac to the debriefing rooms.
One by one they gave their
account of the nights raid
to the debriefing officer.
Finally, they went to
their quarters and beds.
Some to sleep and some to the nightmare
of what they had just witnessed
they had been part of.
Operation Millennium
was now a one line entry
in their log books.
Later that day would
make a two column entry
in the national newspapers.
After that, it would be forgotten.
Buried under the news of the sea battle
raging in the Atlantic.
But for the citizens of Cologne.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Well, we
had survived the night
and I went home to my
parents the next morning.
I was very worried that
something might have happened
to my mother and father.
When I turned the corner of my street
I could see my parents
carrying buckets of water.
They were trying to keep
the roof of our house wet
as our neighbors house was on fire.
They then helped the neighbors
to put the fire out in their house.
The damage was dreadful.
I remember this was Trinity Sunday.
I just thought to myself that
was everything was all right
because at least we were
alive, we had survived.
- [Narrator] As the morning light came up
and the city smoldered,
the damage was surveyed.
13,000 homes had been destroyed,
over 45,000 people were now homeless,
15,000 commercial
buildings were obliterated
and 630 more badly damaged.
There was extensive damage to
the water, electricity, gas
and telephone systems.
And 469 people were dead,
another 5,027 were injured.
Within hours, Himmler
had issued a directive,
that any person leaving the
city had to sign a declaration
of silence about the raid.
Anybody breaking this
order would be executed.
He was taking no chances
on the breakdown of moral
throughout the nation.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] It was the
attack which was described
as the terror attack to
the Wehrmacht Report.
It was the attack that
was described as the 1,000
bomber raid by the British.
This was the attack
which hit Cologne's soul.
I would like to say, very badly.
- [Narrator] Before the morning was over
the sound was heard, yet again,
of bombers approaching the city.
This time, however, it was
three lonely Mosquitoes,
but they didn't drop bombs on the city.
Only leaflets.
The message was,
the RAF's offensive in
it's new form has begun.
It was certain that on this
morning the Royal Air Force
had left no doubts in the minds
of the citizens of Cologne
as to the horrors that were still to come.
But war has a peculiar effect on people
and just as the Luftwaffe
had not broken the spirit
of the British when
they had bombed London,
the moral of the people of Cologne
had actually strengthened.
One woman recalled,
never before that night
had I known such terror,
but I know one thing now,
I shall never be afraid again.
The aerial bombing of
Cologne continued up until
January 1945 when the all clear
siren sounded over the city
for the last time.
Few people realized that the
last real air raid was over.
There was nothing to mark
the end of the terror
that had begun with the
1,000 bomber raid in 1942.
Nothing to celebrate.
But as one peaceful night
gave way to another,
there came a dawning of hope.
Hope that at last, those
terrifying whistles
of bombs dropping and the
nerve shattering thuds
as they hit the city
were now only memories.
Many of Cologne's citizens
today still have memories
of those endless raids which
devastated a complete city.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Another very bad attack
happened during the night
before Peter and Paul
on the 29th of June 1943.
It was very bad and again
we heard the bombers flying
over our heads.
I remember listening to drone
and praying that the bombers
would spare Cologne.
Well, they didn't
and the inner city got
badly hit once again.
The next morning, the air
was full of smoke and dust.
It was like a thick fog all around
and I had to go to work.
When I went to the town center,
I made a bit of a detour
just to see what damage had been done.
I wish I hadn't.
In Landsberger Straße,
I saw some people putting burnt corpses
into a bathtub which was on the street.
It was a horrible sight and
one I shall never forget.
I could also see horses
that had been mutilated by bombs.
It really was a dreadful sight.
After that attack, it was our turn.
The augnasfatil were
we lived got attacked.
This happened during the night
before the 10th of July 1943.
We'd already been warned
by the previous attack
so we went to a wine
cellar in Krefelder Straße.
The wine cellar was below another cellar
and it made a safe bunker to stay in.
We stayed there overnight
and the cellar was so deep
that we couldn't hear the attack.
When we went out the next morning
we saw that all of the houses
in our street were on fire.
There were flames everywhere.
My mother was always very well organized
and I remember how she
kept wet cloths in her bag.
We used these cloths to cover our mouths
to keep out the choking smoke.
We were running through
the streets like this
and there was complete
pandemonium everywhere.
It was horrible, dreadful.
I don't think that I've
ever been so frightened
in all my life.
- [Narrator] Günter Kasmann remembers
rescuing his own mother.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] At the time
my parents lived in the
Regerr Straße, number 69
and it happened that three
large bombs hit the LA
which we used to call it, the Reger Straße
The third one hit our
block, number 69 to 71.
Shortly before it happened, my
mother and a few others said,
let's go to the hall of the basement.
It will be safer there than
staying here in the basement,
which was normally used for filing,
as part of the building
was used as an office.
It was very lucky.
This was the attack in
which the allied forces
used dynamite bombs for the first time.
These bombs were much stronger.
They hit the basement with a direct hit.
It was very lucky that
my mother and the others
had taken the initiative together.
The house was hit and the
basement that we had been in
just before was completely destroyed.
It was virtually just the
little space in the hallway
where they were all standing
which remained untouched.
They tried to get out but
everything was blocked.
They did however have air.
I was outside with the rescuers
trying to get them out.
And they were calling for help.
They were calling and calling.
And I remember that my mother
never screamed or cried.
In fact, you could only tell by her eyes
that she was ever upset.
She told me that she had started to pray.
She had done this before
when situations got bad.
She started to pray very loudly.
Maybe it is hard to imagine
this nowadays, but people,
not matter what religion they were,
people and by saying people,
I also mean the 150% Nazis
who had to go the shelters as well.
Even they all knew this prayer.
Everybody just joined in.
We heard the praying and
knew they were alive.
We managed to get them all out safely.
- [Interpreter] You have just mentioned
that the people started to pray
even if they had nothing
to do with the church.
I've seen this as well.
When we were in the air raid shelters
during the heavy attack
on the 20th of April 1944,
there was a friend of our
family who shouted out,
dear mother of God, please help us.
My father and mother and
myself hugged each other very
tightly and I remember thinking
our lives would come to
an end this night.
Thankfully, it didn't and every
morning after such an attack
my mother would always
comfort us and tell us,
it does not matter how much we lose.
Everything can be replaced again.
The most important thing is, we are alive.
- [Narrator] Another irony of was is that
in such adverse conditions
people never lose their sense of humor.
- [Interpreter] During the
attack on the 29th of June 1943
when I walked into the town
and saw the dead bodies,
I went to a friends house
and saw that it was bombed out as well.
Completely destroyed.
I feared for my friends and her family.
Then I saw that here was a little note
pinned on the front door which read,
everything lost apart from
the key to the front door.
I thought this was quite funny,
but I knew by this note
that they were alive
and I wasn't worried about them anymore.
- [Narrator] Today, the modern
European city of Cologne
has recovered.
The spires of the cathedral
which miraculously
survived the bombardment
tower above the skyline
in the heart of the city.
Post war, Cologne underwent a
major reconstruction program.
Wolfram Hagspeil works as a city planner.
He is responsible for the city's 19th
and 20th century architecture.
(speaking in a foreign language)
- [Interpreter] Many
people will be surprised
that after the war the
reconstruction of Cologne
was completed relatively quickly.
The reason for that is that before 1945
with the advent of the Hitler era,
the town planning had
already been very extensive.
It had already been planned to knock down
a large part of the city.
Virtually, 25% of it.
In fact, quite a lot of
buildings had already been
knocked down in Cologne and
large areas had been cleared,
ready for redevelopment.
There was planning team, a
so called planning society.
When war broke out the society
continued the redevelopment
program, the Galforum.
When the city was destroyed,
it was the planning society
that planned the
reconstruction of Cologne.
Many things you find in
the reconstruction plans
and in the finally reconstructive Cologne,
are things which had already been planned
in the third rife.
Those plans included
the massive road system.
A new railway station and rail network
was also planned during the Hitler period.
The Severinsbrücke was built in the 1950s,
again, from much earlier plans.
But a great many of the cities buildings
have been restored to their
original historic form.
One feature which has been
retained is that of creating
residential areas around
the city's many churches.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Interpreter] A peculiarity
of today's Cologne
are the quarters which have a
church in the middle of them.
This was developed in the post war period
and it became much more dominate
than it had been before the war.
These areas are dominated by
their individual churches.
Many of the families which
used to live in these areas
before the war still live there now.
People from Cologne are
especially proud of their dome
and of their Roman churches
which were rebuilt after the war.
These churches are very
important for Cologne
because people related them
because there were none
of the castles or palaces
that other German cities have.
Churches have always been
the most common buildings in Cologne
ever since the middle ages.
If you look at the
paintings from that time
it appears as though Cologne
consisted entirely of churches.
In the middle ages there
were as many churches
as there are days in the year.
It was therefore important after the war
to maintain this picture
of the holy Cologne.
Especially after the Nazi era
when people desperately wanted
to forget what had happened.
- [Narrator] The inner city is
no longer a residential area.
These have been moved out to the suburbs.
The center has now been
turned into a shopping area.
(speaking in a foreign language)
- [Interpreter] There is another
separation within the town
which is very important
and which is reflected
in the larger municipal building.
The city will split up
into cultural areas,
residential areas and a
recreational area with park lands.
The cultural area includes
the dominate area of the opera
which was built in the inner city
and has a large area around it
which was designed by Wilhelm Riphahn
The cultural area also includes
the Wallraf-Richartz Museum.
And all other museums.
It is surprising that the
industrial buildings in Cologne
had hardly been damaged.
The Ford works, for example,
were hardly touched by the bombing.
Other buildings and Colognes industries
were left virtually unscathed.
On the other hand,
the town itself was completely destroyed.
At the time this was mainly
the residential areas.
The reason for that is
that the bombing strategy
did not target industrial,
only residential areas.
It is easy to reconstruct how
the bombers flew into Cologne
and to see how it was bombed.
The Aachener Straße
served as an orientation
a landmark towards the center of the town
and this is what the bombers hit.
These quarters were bombed very hard
and were almost completely destroyed.
The Linden Tower, for example,
which used to be a very posh area,
was totally debolished by the bombs.
Surprising again, part of
the new area of Cologne
was hardly hit.
This was the area between the rail tracks
and the Rudolfplatz
which has now become the Belgium quarter.
On the other hand, so many
bombs hit the center of town
that a staggering 97% of it was destroyed.
There is a Tran and Helle joke.
Tran and Helle are the
the two central figures,
Cologne comedy, which
I would like to tell.
Tran meets Helle a short time
after the war and he asks,
where do you live?
Helle answers, "Oh, I have
a house just two houses down
from the dome."
Well, back then just after the war,
two houses down from the dome
meant three or four kilometers away
because everything else in between
was flattened during the war.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] Many of Cologne's residents
that lived through the
horrors brought by war
are still tormented by the nightmares.
But they are not alone.
Even today, a lifetime
later, those that suffered
or inflicted the carnage,
whether on Cologne or London
or any other corner of the
globe all share a common bond.
Living with the ghosts
of the past even today
still wondering what it was all about.
One RAF pilot recalled.
When I think back to that
terrible night we bombed Cologne,
it makes me feel sick to
think of the destruction
and suffering I caused.
Another on visiting Cologne
at the end of the war stated,
the devastation, the cold and
the despair on people's faces
helped me grasp but for the first time
what saturation bombing
meant for the victims.
Piloting a bomber was a
cold impersonal occupation.
We were concerned with switches
and maps and avoiding flak.
Not with life and death.
But now, I understand the
other side of the problem.
