Der Krieg  by Georg Heym 1887-1912
Now he has arisen: he, who slept so long,
from the depth arisen, out of arches strong.
Huge he stands and unknown in the twilight land,
and the moon he crushes in his blackened hand.
Broad on city's evening, broad and angrily
shadow falls, and frost of strange obscurity
makes the market's bustle stop in icy scare.
Note that the poet died long before World War Two
Enemy Targets in Hamburg
St. Nikolai in Hamburg was the tallest building in the world from 1847-1876 and was once the workplace of
Karl Philpp Emanuel Bach. It was destroyed by bombing in Operation Gomorrha
along with the other four Hamburg churches he directed, pictured below.
Peterskirche
German church members gather  
at the site of their bombed church
Jakobikirche
KatharinenKirche Ruins
St. Nikolai
And he thrusts his kiln-staff, dark and charcoal-bound
deep amongst the trees to stoke the flames around.
An important city, chocked in yellow glow,
jumped without a whisper to the depths below,
while he stands, a giant, over glowing urns,
wild, in bloody heavens, thrice his torch he turns
over stormstrung clouds reflecting fiery brands,
to the deadly dark of frigid desert sands,
down he pours the fires, withering the night,
phosphorus and brimstone on Gomorrha bright.
He stands over ramparts blue of flames around,
over darkened streets with heavy weapons sound,
over broken gates where gatemen lie across,
over bridges bending under human dross.
Through the night he chases fire across the world:
red-fanged hound of hell with savage scream unfurled.
Out of darkness leaps dominion of night,
frightful at its border shine volcanoes bright.
And a thousand redcaps, pointed far and wide,
litter up the dark plain, flicker up astride.
Who below in alleys still runs to and fro
he sweeps in the fire, that it hotter grow.
And the flames are leaping, burning tree by tree.
Yellow bats of fire clawing endlessly.
Silence reigns. They turn - and no one is aware.
In the street it comes to touch her shoulders light:
Just a question. Answerless. A face goes white.
From afar sound whining abbey bells so thin
and the beards are quaking round the pointed chin.
High up, on the mountains, he begins to dance,
and he cries: You fighters, rise up and advance!
Echoes sound: around his shaking, blackened head
swings a chain of skulls he wrenched from thousand dead.
Tower-like he squashes embers' dying gleam
and, where day is fleeing, fills with blood the stream.
Countless are the corpses swept into the reeds,
covered by white feathers, where the vulture feeds.
Neutral nations reporting bombing fatalities estimated much higher
figures at the time than we hear today. Swedish reporters described
the phosphorus bombs: "They talked of the strange sensation of
seeing gardens on fire in a city ravaged by flames. Hundreds of
people were found burned to death in the streets and the clothing
was scorched off many by the fires. About 47,000 dead bodies
were counted before search work began, and estimates of people
killed vary from 65,000 to 200,000. In Hamburg, 18,000 people
alone were reported to have been drowned there when the Elbe
Tunnel received a direct hit." Woman in Hamburg, left
A Swiss eye-witness of the Hamburg raids, writing in the National-
Zeitung, reported: "Whole streets, squares, and even districts had
been razed. Everywhere were charred corpses, and injured people
had been left unattended..Charred adult corpses had shrunk to the
size of children. Women were wandering about half-crazy. That
night, the largest workers' district of the city was wiped out."
"Of the children these dreadful nights, what can be said? Their fright became horror and then panic when their
tiny minds became capable of grasping the fact that their parents could no longer help them in their distress.
They lost their reason and an overwhelming terror took over. Their world had become the shrieking centre of an
erupting volcano from which there could be no physical escape. Nothing that hell offered could be feared more.
'By the hand of man they became creatures, human in form but not in mind. Strangled noises hissed from them
as they staggered pitifully through the streets in which tar and asphalt ran as streams. Some of these tiny
creatures ran several hundred feet. Others managed only twenty, maybe ten feet. Their shoes caught fire and
then their feet. The lower parts of their legs became flickering sticks of flame. Here were Joans of Arcs...
thousands of them. All who had perished unjustly on the fires of the Middle Ages were as nothing when
compared with what was happening that night. 'The sounds of many were unintelligible and undoubtedly many
more called for their parents from whom they were parted by death or by accident. They grasped their tortured
limbs, their tiny burning legs until they were no longer able to stand or run. And then they would crash to the
ground where they would writhe in the bubbling tar until death released them from their physical misery."
from "The Night Hamburg Died" by Martin Caidin, Ballantyne Books, NY, 1960.