Berlin at War (11 page)

honk”’.9

A few saw the legislation as a business opportunity. For a fee, entre-

preneurs and small businessmen offered advice on how best to meet

the new requirements. Sales of kerosene lamps, thick card and blackout

curtains multiplied, and some who had previously struggled to make

a living selling items such as roll-shutters suddenly saw demand hugely

outstrip supply. Big business was not slow to get in on the act either.

The German chemical giant BASF, for instance, developed an additive

called Lumogen, which would lend luminescence to almost any colour

of paint, as well as to dyes, polishes and waxes. One report enthused:

‘He who cleans his shoes with Lumogen and crosses the street in the

dark, will see them all lit up.’10

Some ordinary Berliners received the blackout with similar enthu-

siasm and a few commentators were even moved to lyrical outbursts

by the sudden darkness that descended on a previously brightly lit and

colourful metropolis. The writer Carl Haensel may have set the mood

with a newspaper article in which he described the blacked-out capital

in the most romantic tones – from the ‘Morse-code’ of the street

markings to encounters with other pedestrians ‘like ships passing in

the night’. Berlin, he rhapsodised, was like a ‘city of dreams’ bathed

in a soft half-light that liberated the imagination. He claimed that he

had no desire to return to the garish brightness of the ‘old world’.11

Another Berliner recalled in her diary how brightly the stars seemed

to shine over the city. ‘We see stars over Berlin for the first time’, she

wrote, ‘not paling behind gaudy electric signs, but sparkling with clear

solemnity. The moon casts a milky gleam over the roofs of the town.

Not a spark of electric light falls upon the streets.’12

Most other observers eschewed such purple prose, but were no less

enthusiastic. One eyewitness recalled the party mood that descended

on the city in the early weeks of the blackout, with sightseers crowding

the city centre:

a deadly necessity

37

The streets, which otherwise would be quiet so late at night, were over-

flowing with a happy, excited crowd keen to experience the blackout.

This unusual darkness was the cause of great amusement and some

incidence of violence. One heard giggling, curses and laughter. The

huge buses, with their blue-painted windows, rocked along the narrow

gorge of the Friedrichstrasse like enormous sea-monsters.13

Yet, whether they liked it or not, Berliners had little choice but to

comply with the order. To help them, the government produced an

official booklet in 1939, entitled
Verdunkelung – Aber wie?
, ‘Black out –

But how?’, which contained a host of tips, suggestions and sketches

showing how the order might best be implemented. ‘Nobody’, it

reminded its readers,

should say that the chink of light escaping from his dimly lit room is

not dangerous, or that it doesn’t matter if the blackout measures leave

a little gap, through which a tiny shaft of light can shine. If many

thought that way, then the lights would be clearly visible from high-

flying aircraft, and pilots would know for sure that they were over a

poorly blacked-out city.14

Propaganda posters also reminded Berliners to be on their guard.

Perhaps the best known was produced in 1940. Above the silhouette

of a person standing in an undarkened doorway, an RAF bomber

appears to dive out of the clouds, with a grotesque skeleton riding

atop its fuselage, holding a bomb which it is about to hurl down onto

the house below. It bore the chilling reminder: ‘The enemy sees your

light – black out!’

For those who still contrived to forget their duty, air raid wardens

were always on hand to remind them, patrolling the streets and bellowing

‘Lights Out!’ at those who contravened the blackout order. Wardens –

who were usually Party members – also had the power to inspect all

blackout measures in any property within their jurisdiction. Repeat

offenders were publicly humiliated. As an initial punishment, wardens

affixed a placard to the offending property bearing the words ‘This

House Is Poorly Blacked Out’, reminding the building’s inhabitants that

compliance was a communal responsibility and warning that they could

endanger the entire district. The placard would only be removed when

38

berlin at war

all apartments, the stairwell and the rear of the building were satis-

factorily blacked out.15

Subsequent transgressions might earn the offenders a visit from the

authorities, or a personal lecture from the local air raid warden. In

time, a fine would be levied by the authorities, specifying the date

and time of the offence, and even the particular window that was

insufficiently blacked out. The standard fine was 10 Reichsmarks, which

was to be paid within a week. The impecunious, however, could opt

instead for a two-day stay in a police cell.16 In extreme cases, offenders

were liable to have their electricity supply cut off for eight days.17 The

most persistent among them could even earn themselves a spell in a

concentration camp.

For many, however, the greatest risk from the blackout did not come

from the threat of prosecution. A spate of accidents in that first autumn

of the war swiftly highlighted the dangers involved in the sudden

switch to darkness. In September 1939, Berlin police reports concluded

that nine out of ten accidents involving trains had been directly caused

by the blackout.18 A serious rail crash in Berlin that autumn was also

attributed to the new legislation. On the evening of 8 October, an

intercity train overran a set of signals before ploughing into the back

of a commuter service near the Gesundbrunnen Station in the north of

the capital. In the mêlée that followed, the wreckage caught fire and

twenty-four passengers were killed. The accident was initially attrib-

uted to the driver’s inattention, combined with the new and difficult

conditions of the blackout. However, when the driver was subse-

quently cleared of negligence, only one cause remained.19

Berlin’s roads were not much safer. Driving in such conditions was

fraught with danger. Cars crawled along the street, picking their way

through the darkness, while other vehicles appeared as scarcely visible

hulks with only pinpricks of light emanating from their darkened

headlights. In open squares, such as Wilhelmsplatz or Potsdamer Platz,

it was not unusual for drivers to become completely disorientated as

they lost sight of the rooftops and trees that might mark the approx-

imate direction of the road. In consequence, though most private

traffic had disappeared from the streets with the outbreak of war, due

to the strict rationing of petrol, road accidents rose by 82 per cent in

Berlin between August and November 1939. And although an increase

in alcohol consumption was considered to be a contributory factor in

a deadly necessity

39

that rise, the blackout was deemed to be the dominant cause. In

October, 28 out of 33 serious traffic accidents were attributed to the

new legislation; the following month, it was found to have been respon-

sible for 12 out of 15 road deaths.20

Curiously, the high rate of deaths did not fall, as the city grew used

to the new measures. Rather, it continued to climb, reaching new heights

in winter, when the public’s exposure to the enforced darkness was

greatest. In January 1940, for instance, 43 of the 162 accidental deaths

registered in Berlin were attributed to the blackout;21 in December that

year, the rate was 75 out of 221.22

Aside from the evident dangers on the city’s streets and railways,

the blackout was implicated as a factor in a number of crimes. Police

files suggested that Berlin’s criminals saw the darkness as an opportun -

ity rather than a nuisance. Most prominently, a spate of widely publi-

cised murder cases in the autumn of 1939 caused alarm and fascination

in equal measure. One of them concerned a man who had apparently

murdered his wife in a fit of rage. To dispose of the evidence, he

bundled the body into a packing case, which he perched on the back

of his bicycle. Under cover of the blackout, he then rode across the

city to dispose of the corpse in the Havel River.23

The second case was more gruesome. In early October 1939, a

dismembered female body was discovered in three locations across

the city. The arms and legs were found in the stairwells of apartments

on Elsässerstrasse and Auguststrasse, while the torso – minus its head,

breasts and internal organs, which were never found – was discovered

at the Circus Busch on Monbijouplatz. It later transpired that the

victim; one Käthe Kessler, an eighteen-year-old girl from Breslau, had

been murdered in a crime of passion. The murderer – who had dismem-

bered the body with a pocket knife and disposed of the head by baking

it in his oven – confessed to two similar murders under interrogation

and was duly sentenced to death. His attempt to conceal his victims’

identities, by scattering their remains across the capital, had certainly

been aided by the blackout.24

The incidence of mugging, robbery and crimes against property also

showed a marked increase in that first winter of the war.25 In late

December 1939, for instance, three Czechs – named Zikmund, Oplatek

and Zalenka – were sentenced to death for a spree of crimes in the

German capital. They had stolen from a shop window in Tempelhof

40

berlin at war

and snatched a handbag from a passer-by in Leipziger Platz. In both

instances, the news report stated, they had ‘exploited the blackout’ in

carrying out their crimes.26 The following month, another mugger, Karl

Ratzke, was executed for committing a street robbery under cover of

darkness. He had escaped with a mere 18 Reichsmarks.27

The blackout certainly came as a boon for Berlin’s prostitutes. Not

only could they escape arrest easier, the enterprising among them could

even turn the new legislation to their advantage. As one observer recalled:

‘certain girls made easy pickups . . . even the old girls, the wrinkled

ones, stood on street corners with their ugly features safely hidden in

the darkness and shone their flashlights on their legs in invitation’.28 The

downside was that women were also more liable to be raped than before.

Indeed, in the first year of the war, fully thirty-five rapes would be

reported in the capital, a dramatic increase on the previous year’s figure.29

In consequence, the enthusiasm and bravado shown by some

Berliners in the first few weeks of the blackout soon dissipated, and

most began to feel uneasy about travelling through their city at night.

Women, especially, tended to stay at home, but the unease was

universal. As one commentator noted:

walking home in the dark is not only adventurous but distinctly

uncomfortable . . . Many Berliners are saying to themselves, ‘I don’t

want to come home in the dark’ and have given up going out at night

for this reason . . . It is no fun to walk down the Friedrichstrasse or

Unter den Linden in darkness so complete you scarcely see your hand

before your face.30

One of the most common and peculiar effects of the blackout was

that it made people whisper and speak in hushed tones. The silence

that resulted was all-pervading, seemingly deepened by the accom-

panying darkness. It could be profoundly unnerving. ‘At night’, an

American visitor reported,

the silence deepens. To drive in the main streets in the blackout is like

driving through a dark country lane. The buildings are completely

blotted out and no sound issues from the invisible doors and windows.

Groping along the tunnel-like streets you almost never hear a voice.

Other gropers are just shadows and footsteps.31

a deadly necessity

41

According to some commentators, there was another, rather more

sinister, consequence of the blackout. One socialist critic, for instance,

complained that the darkness had encouraged ‘the unmistakeable symp-

toms of a collapse in moral standards’ in the city, and that drinking

and ‘pleasure-seeking’ had increased exponentially once the lights had

been turned off.

From all parts of the city, it is reported that bars . . . of all types are

suddenly being placed under exceptional pressure. In this way, the face of

the city centre is being changed. Everybody remarks with astonishment,

that they have never in their lives seen so many drunk people on the

streets as at this difficult time.32

An American commentator agreed, concluding that the blackout

represented the suspension of civilised life in the capital. ‘Civilisation’,

he wrote, ‘has turned back a century or more and Edison’s electric

lamp may just as well be the foolish pipe-dream it was considered to

be fifty years ago.’33

Though such prognostications of doom were doubtless exagger-

ated, it should come as no surprise that the capital felt a sense of