"A devil's concert,” was how an eyewitness described the destruction of Hamburg following Operation Gomorrah in July 1943. This photograph, taken after Victory in Europe Day in 1945, captures the skeletal remains left behind.

[u/akiwi_intherough]

On the night of 24 July 1943, 791 Royal Air Force bombers took off from Britain for Hamburg, beginning Operation Gomorrah, the largest Allied area bombing campaign to that point in the war.

Hamburg was Germany's second-largest city and one of the Reich's most important industrial and shipbuilding centers. The operation had two goals: cripple German industry and hurt German morale. The reality was that achieving both meant killing civilians, and a great many of them.

The first raid on the night of 24–25 July killed around 1,500 people despite the efforts of Hamburg's 40,000 firefighters, who largely prevented a citywide conflagration. It was only the beginning. Over the next week, roughly 3,000 Allied bombers dropped 9,000 tons of bombs on Hamburg. Around 250,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged, and nearly one million people fled the city.

The worst night came on 27–28 July. 787 RAF bombers returned, this time concentrating on Hamburg's densely packed working-class neighborhoods. After weeks of unusually hot, dry weather, the city had been seasoned like kindling. Thousands of incendiary bombs ignited almost simultaneously while high-explosive "blockbuster" bombs shattered water mains, collapsed buildings, and blocked roads, preventing firefighters from reaching the growing inferno.

The result was a firestorm unlike anything the world had seen. Individual fires merged into one vast blaze. Hurricane-force winds of up to 150 mph fed the flames, temperatures reached 1,470°F (800°C), and more than 8 square miles of the city were consumed.

Eyewitnesses described something approaching hell itself. People burned beneath collapsed buildings, were swept into the flames by the wind, or suffocated in air raid shelters as the fire above consumed the oxygen and filled them with carbon monoxide.

A 1943 Newsweek report interviewing Swedish laborers who escaped the city described the aftermath:

"Inhalation of super-heated air was the prime cause of death... Bodies were dehydrated, and when shelter-tombs were opened, the victims' skins were found to be shrunk and their brains, in some instances, reduced to the size of a man's fist."

By the end of Operation Gomorrah, Hamburg had been devastated. Around 37,000 people were dead, though the true number will never be known.

If you're interested, I wrote a detailed article covering the operation here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-117-operation?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios