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Schweinfurt, Part
4
Air Defense Shelters
Several concrete
bunkers were built in various parts of the city of Schweinfurt, to provide
protection for the inhabitants against bombing attacks. There were originally 13
above-ground Luftschutzbunker
shelters built. Ten of these remain today, numbered A1 - A10 (including one with no number
designation), as
follows:
A1 - at Nutzweg 8 in the Bergl
district - built in 1942 to protect 350 people
A2 - at Nutzweg 36 in the Bergl district - built in 1942 to protect 500 people
A3 - at Am Wasserturm 10-12 in the Bergl district - built in 1942 to protect 350
people
A4 - the Goethebunker - at St. Killian Straße 18 (on Degnerstraße) - built in
1941 to protect 1000 people
A5 - at Kleinflürleinsweg 21-25 in the Gartenstadt district - built in 1941 to
protect 350 people
A6 - at Gartenstadtstraße 77 (on Blaue Leite) in the Gartenstadt district -
built in 1941 for 830 people
A7 - the Gartenstadtbunker - at Galgenleite 76½ in the Gartenstadt district -
built in 1941 for 600 people
A8 - the Fichtel & Sachs Bunker - at Ernst Sachs Straße 73 - built in 1941 for 1020 people
(The bunker numbered A9 was apparently one of the three that was demolished
after the war.)
A10 - the Kirdorfbunker - at Wohlfahrtstraße 10 - built in 1942 for 1400 people
Spitalseebunker - on the Spitalseeplatz - built in 1943 for 1640 people
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| All of
these bunker shelters still exist in the city. This is Bunker A1 in
Bergl. The shelter was built in 1942 with walls of concrete slightly
over one meter thick. |
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| Bunker
A2, also on Nutzweg in Bergl, was similar in construction to Bunker A1,
although slightly larger. These two bunkers were in a city section that
mainly housed factory workers. |
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| Bunker
A3 was the third shelter in Bergl, similar to the other two. In the
mid-1990s this bunker was converted to an apartment house, by cutting
windows and balconies into the 3.5 feet thick concrete walls. The famous
Bergl water tower, a Schweinfurt landmark, can be seen in the photo on
the right. |
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| Bunker
A4 on Degnerstraße was commonly called the "Goethebunker,"
due to its location adjacent to the Goethe School. It was one of the
first air defense shelters built in Schweinfurt, during the period when
there was an attempt to camouflage these structures from aerial
recognition. Accordingly, these bunkers were given tile roofs and fake
windows. The walls of this large bunker were two meters (6.5 feet)
thick. This shelter was intended mostly for workers at the nearby Kugelfischer
factory. |
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| The
Goethe-Schule and the Goethebunker itself were used as a final command
post by the Nazi leadership of Schweinfurt at the end of the war - the
original buildings of the Goethe-Schule can be seen behind the shelter.
When the U.S. Army captured Schweinfurt in early April 1945, they
apparently took over this area for their command post. This area was
used as a processing and detention area by the U.S. military authorities,
who commanded all male Schweinfurt citizens to assemble near the
Goethebunker for registration. The photo
above is a U.S. Army photo taken on 11 April 1945. The photo below was
taken by the famous Life Magazine photographer
Margaret Bourke-White (see Margaret Bourke-White, "Dear
Fatherland, Rest Quietly" (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1946).
(above - U.S. National Archives, RG111SC, courtesy Mike Haines;
below - TimePics
collection) |
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Bunker A5 was built in 1941 on a hilltop
in the Gartenstadt section. Similar to the
Goethe-Bunker, it also had a steeply sloping roof with red tiles and fake
windows in the walls.
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| Bunker
A6 was another of the 1941 bunkers built to resemble a civilian
building, complete with steep red-tiled roof and fake windows. The
shelter is located on Blaue Leite at Fritz-Soldman-Straße and
Gartenstadtstraße. It was similar to the Goethebunker (A4), a larger
bunker with 2-meter-thick concrete walls. |
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| Bunker
A7 - the Gartenstadtbunker - was the most ornate air defense shelter
built in Schweinfurt, complete with an attached tower, civilian-style
roof, and stone casings around the doorways and fake windows. The families of many of the
industrial workers lived in this area, and took shelter here during the
bombing attacks. |
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| Bunker
A8, built in 1941 on Ernst-Sachs-Straße, and was intended for workers at
the nearby Fichtel & Sachs and VKF bearing factories. It was
a large shelter, built to protect 1020 people (although as many as
1500-1800 people took shelter there at times), and was clad on the
outside with brickwork to disguise it as a civilian structure. The
bunker has a short pyramidal roof (not seen in these photos) covered
with tiles to disguise it, but the actual reinforced concrete roof
beneath is flat. On the
left below is a 1945 photo from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey,
showing the ruins of the VKF-Werk
II factory in the foreground, with the Fichtel & Sachs
facilities across the street. Bunker A8 can be seen in the distance. The
staircase seen on the right below is an exit to an emergency tunnel
which led away from the bunker. (below left - U.S. National Archives) |
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| Bunker A10, also called the Kirdorfbunker,
is located across the street from the Hauptbahnhof, on
Wohlfahrtstraße. It was built
in 1942 to protect railway workers at the main city train station, as
well as workers from the nearby Kugelfischer bearing factory, a total of 1400-1500 personnel.
(My thanks to Mike Haines for pointing out the location of this
bunker to me.) |
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| The largest air raid shelter in
Schweinfurt was this five-story concrete bunker at the Spitalsee Platz, built in
1943 to protect 1500 people, particularly those living in the inner part
of the city. The concrete walls were two meters (6.5 feet) thick and the
roof was 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) thick. The roof was hit by bombs several
times during the war, but was never penetrated. According to Schweinfurt
sources, this type of bunker was found only here and in Berlin. A display in the shelter commemorated the
50th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1995. |
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| During
the war, the shelter rooms would have been crowded with wooden benches.
The entrances lead to right-angle anterooms with steel blast doors
closing off the interior corridors, all of which was designed to keep
bomb blasts or direct fire from penetrating through the outside doorway
directly to the interior of the bunker. Metal shields were installed
over the air intake vents on the outside of the bunker (below left), for
the same purpose. (Although these metal shields may have been installed
in the 1980s, along with the interior doors as seen here, when all of the Schweinfurt bunkers were reconditioned for
possible use during the Cold War (such as the fluorescent ceiling lights
and upgraded ventilation systems now found in the Spitalseebunker and
others.) In 1998 a coalition of U.S. bomber crew veterans and local
flak crew veterans installed a joint monument adjacent to the
Spitalseebunker (see
here). |
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| The
aerial views above contrast the area around the Spitalsee Bunker at the
end of the war (left) and 1971 (right). The widespread destruction in
the inner city area is also seen in the 1945 photo below (the bunker is
at the left rear). (Stadtarchiv Schweinfurt) |
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| In
addition to the government built Luftschutz bunkers, many of the
industrial sites had underground air-defense shelters, and some privately
built underground cellars and shelters existed in the city. This is believed to be the entrance
to one such underground shelter near the downtown area. It has a steel
door of the type commonly found in bunkers, and the entrance of brick
and concrete covers a stairway leading directly underground. (Thanks to my friend Tom for pointing this site
out to me.) |
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| The U.S.
Strategic Bombing Survey found these bomb shelters in the bearing
factories in 1945. On the left, a concrete roof over an underground
shelter. On the right, ground story walls of a building in the VKF-Werk
I factory were reinforced with added bricks and concrete. (U.S.
National Archives, RG 111SC) |
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| Citizens
hurry through the Schillerplatz toward an air-raid shelter during an
alarm. The large building is the 1905 Justizgebäude (Justice Building).
The person at the left is probably a member of the Hitler Youth, perhaps
serving as a Luftschutz warden, directing the civilians to
shelter. (Stadtarchiv Schweinfurt) |
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| The air
raid wardens were members of the Reichs Luftschutz Bund, which
also recruited women and Hitler Youth members. In addition to guiding
civilians to shelter, the Hitler Youth members were often assigned to
rooftops to attempt to extinguish incendiary bombs, or minimize the
damage from fires. (Gerd Rühle, ed., "Das Dritte
Reich," Berlin, 1938 ed.) |
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| Above
left - pin insignia of the RLB Reichs Luftschutz Bund; center -
service book of an RLB member; right - a sticker that warned children of
the dangers of dud bombs (Blindgänger). (author's collection) |
Click here
to see air-raid shelters in Fürth, near Nürnberg.
I wish to acknowledge the kind
assistance of the staff of the Stadtarchiv Schweinfurt provided during my photo
research there.
Continue to Schweinfurt, Part 5 --
End of the war in Schweinfurt (April 1945)
Back to the Third Reich in Ruins homepage
Click
here for a link to a MapQuest map of Schweinfurt.
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