Not Dead Yet

The London Daily Telegraph announced that 8,000 acres of Berlin buildings had been devastated. Allied airmen smiled at this and similar exaggerations, were proud enough of the truth:

Of Berlin's 20,000 acres, 8,000 are "built-up" areas. When the R.A.F. obtained its latest (Dec. 21) complete set of reconnaissance photographs, the buildings on about 1,360 of these 8,000 acres had been destroyed by 9,000 tons of bombs in six major raids. Since then the R.A.F. has dropped another 5,000 tons. Exact results will be known only when smoke, weather, other factors enable reconnaissance pilots to update their photographic evidence./-

Acres of Death. But the Air Ministry's huge Berlin map already blossoms with scarlet blotches, indicating areas where the bombs have finished their work. Goriest blotch of all centers on the Tiergarten district, where some 60% of the jampacked Government bureaus and offices have been destroyed. Dead, burned-out suburbs almost surround this area.

Hitler's residence (but not the Reich Chancellery on the Wilhelmstrasse), Goebbels' home lie in ruins. Goering's offices in Prussia House were being repaired when another bomber abruptly finished them off. Other write-offs: the Foreign Office, Treasury Office, Gestapo Headquarters, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler's official residence, Home Office, Army Records Office, Ministry of Armaments & Munitions, Ministry of Education. Severely damaged factories read like a Berlin industrial directory: Siemens, A.E.G., Dornier, Rheinmetall-Borsig, Alkett Motor, B.M.W., Schering.

Britain's bomber chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur T. Harris, once said that it may take 40,000 tons to kill Berlin. Counting small-scale raids, the city has had about half of that dose. Harris has 20,000 tons to go.

/-Press association dispatches from Fort Worth, Tex. on Jan. 7 quoted habitually optimistic General Henry H. Arnold (see p. 22): "Three-fourths of Berlin already has been destroyed. . . ."

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