Anniversary in Berlin

Berliners know the road the big planes take from England. Far out to the westward last week, soon after the sirens sounded, they could hear the first mutter of the flak, see the pale searchlights fingering the clear sky. In its nest of lakes, canals, rivers, their city lay dark and deserted, its only voice the growing clamor of the guns.

The planes came in over the hills beyond the Havel, and the people in their cellars could hear the motors' hum. The guns were speaking now in chorus, their individual bangs and roars mixed in a hell of sound that thrummed the tight air in the shelters. Talk stopped; faces craned upward anxiously, waiting for the big bombs to fall.

When they came down, they shook the earth and the walls trembled. Along Unter den Linden fountains of flame exploded. The Hedwigsdom, Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral, collapsed. Up near the Brandenburg Gate and along the Wilhelmstrasse incendiaries sprinkled the governmental quarter, where the Foreign Office, the Reich President's palace and Hitler's huge Chancellery stand in a row. This was Berlin's heart and the administrative center of the Third Reich. Here the attackers' blockbuster bombs created havoc, and there were many Berliners who never saw daylight again.

Out in Neukolln, near the big Tempelhof airfield, workers sat in the damp cellars of the old stone houses with horror in their hearts. Their city had been bombed 58 times before, but never like this (their district was the first to be hit by the R.A.F. two years and a half ago). They did not know what was happening along Unter den Linden; they could not hear, for bombs were raining all around them too. The airport was splashed with red flame. Fire and smoke mushroomed from the big power stations southeast of the field.

In Mariendorf, where the big Borsig plant turns out the stuff of war, the flak had brought down a British bomber two years before--it had fallen like a fluttering, glowing leaf into an open field. Now Mariendorf's guns spoke again. High above, the bomb bays opened and the bombs dropped, arching down with a cracking noise while the watchers on the ground ran for shelter and the plant's terrified workers covered their ears.

Berlin's biggest blitz lasted only 30 minutes, but they were minutes of eternity. When the planes' singing motors had faded again into the distance, when the flak's roar had dwindled, Berliners climbed shakily from their cellars to find their city blazing in dozens of different places. Whole blocks were pulverized by some 500 tons of bombs, parts of the city paralyzed, with no gas or electricity. At week's end Berlin still was digging out its dead--the official count was 486 persons killed, 377 seriously wounded.

Thus passed the Luftwaffe's tenth anniversary.

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