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THE CAPTURE

OF BREMEN

Number 135

3 5

770306

154080

£3.95

NUMBER 135

After the Battle

2007

Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey

Managing Editor: Gordon Ramsey

Editor: Karel Margry

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Massive clouds billow up from Bremen after an American daylight raid in 1943. The

picture was taken from the Altstadt looking north-west. The road bridge in the fore-

ground is the Kaiserbrücke with the Adolf-Hitler-Brücke and the railway bridge in the

distance further downstream. The church is the St Stephani. (Husmann)

Bremen, Germany’s second biggest port

after Hamburg, lies on both sides of the

River Weser, some 50 kilometres upstream

from the river’s mouth into the North Sea. A

city steeped in history, it traces its roots back

to Roman times. A bishop’s seat since 787,

Bremen joined the Hanseatic League in

1260, building up a vast trade in the later

Middle Ages, and gained the status of ‘Free

City’ in 1646. The Altstadt, the old town, lies

on the north bank of the Weser, while the

Neustadt, the new town begun in the 16th

century, is on the south bank. In the 19th

century, the city played a major role in devel-

oping Germany’s overseas trade. In 1857

Bremen entrepreneurs founded the Nord-

deutscher Lloyd Line, making the port a

prime departure point for cross-Atlantic voy-

ages. As a result of its rich past, Bremen’s

inner city possessed many historic buildings,

churches and museums, and fine examples of

Gothic and Renaissance architecture.

Traditionally a centre of international

trade, shipping and ship-building, modern

Bremen was also one of Germany’s most

important industrial cities and included

many plants and factories that were vital to

the war economy of the Third Reich. Prime

among them were the shipyards along the

Weser: the Deschimag-Weser AG and Atlas

yards in the north-western part of the city

and the Bremer-Vulkan yards at Vegesack, a

few kilometres further downstream. During

the war more than one-third of Nazi Ger-

many’s U-boats was built in Bremen and

Vegesack. No less vital were the Focke-Wulf

aircraft works, which had factories at three

sites in the city: at the aerodrome and in the

eastern suburbs of Hastedt and Hemelingen.

Other important war plants were the Borg-

ward automobile factories in Hastedt and

Sebaldsbrück, producing tanks, lorries, trac-

tors and torpedoes for the Wehrmacht; the

Lloyd-Dynamo electrical engines factory in

Hemelingen; the Norddeutsche Hütte steel

factories, the Weser Flugzeug-Bau aircraft

factory (another part of the Deschimag con-

cern) and the Vacuum Öl and Korff oil

refineries, all in the port area.

With such importance as a centre of war

production, Bremen quickly became a target

for the Allied bomber fleets. In five years of

war the city experienced over 1,200 air raid

alarms and 173 actual attacks. The first raid

already hit the city on the night of May 17/18,

1940, when 24 Whitleys attacked the oil

refineries in the docks, starting six fires,

killing 16 people and injuring 55. From then

on, Bremen remained a regular target for the

RAF. The first major raid came on the night

of January 1/2, 1941 when some 140 bombers

hit the Focke-Wulf factory at the airport and

the Borgward and Lloyd-Dynamo works in

Hemelingen, causing serious damage to fac-

tories and housing and killing 11 persons.

Over the next 17 months there was a steady

series of attacks by groups of between 30 and

150 bombers, culminating in the raid of June

3/4, 1942, when 170 aircraft struck the city,

hitting housing areas and warehouses, killing

83 and wounding another 258.

From mid-1940, the city authorities

began to build air raid shelters to protect

the population against the aerial onslaught.

Construction of the first large air raid

bunker was begun in November 1940 and

by the end of the war, 131 such bomb-proof

shelters had been completed: 126 of them

were multi-storied, above-ground bunkers,

five were underground shelters built below

inner-city squares. In addition there were

nine shelter tunnels, either existing caves or

especially drilled, in the rocky hills lining

the Weser river in northern Bremen; six

hospital bunkers, and numerous shelters

for industrial and railway personnel. In all,

and with full occupation, the bunkers and

tunnels provided protection for some

200,000 people, nearly half the city’s pre-

war population.

CONTENTS

THE CAPTURE OF BREMEN

PRESERVATION

Pickett/Hamilton Fort Recovery

IT HAPPENED HERE

The Secret Tunnels of

South Heighton

PERSONALITY

The Tommy Roberts Story

Front Cover:

Men of the 52nd (Lowland) Division

patrolling the Europahafen docks in Bremen on

April 26, 1945. The north-German port city was

captured by British troops after a two-fold attack

by three infantry divisions along both banks of the

Weser river. (IWM) Inset: The same view along the

Buffkaie quay today. (Karel Margry)

Centre Pages:

Extract from GSGS 4416 1:100,000

map of the Bremen area showing the Allied

advance on the city between April 15 and 27. The

British 3rd Division launched an attack from the

south while the 52nd (Lowland) and 43rd (Wessex)

Divisions drove in from the east.

Back Cover:

The remains of the log cabin built by

Tommy Roberts still stands on a hillside overlook-

ing the valley of the Williams Fork river in Colorado.

Acknowledgements:

For help with the Bremen

story, the Editor would like to thank Robin Brooks,

Johan van Doorn, Hans Houterman, Frau Melitta

Thomas of the Staatsarchiv Bremen and, in par-

ticular, Manfred Tegge, webmaster of Relikte in

Niedersachsen und Bremen (www.relikte.com),

who also made available pictures from his private

collection.

Photo Credits:

FHMSF — Friends of HMS

Forward;

IWM — Imperial War Museum, London.

The north-German port of Bremen was one of the last great

cities to be taken by the British army in the European cam-

paign, being captured in the last week of April 1945. The city

fell to a two-fold attack by three infantry divisions, supported

by tanks and special armour, and aided by a massive tactical

bombardment by nearly 800 aircraft of RAF Bomber Command.

Most of the fighting took place outside the city proper and on

the outskirts, but there remained some strong pockets of resis-

tance to be cleared inside the town before the last of the garri-

son finally capitulated on the morning of April 27. British Army

photographer Lieutenant Peter Handford took this panorama

of the bomb-gutted inner city from the south bank of the

Weser on April 26. In the foreground the Kaiser Bridge, blown

by the Germans the day before. (IWM)

THE CAPTURE OF BREMEN

On the night of June 25/26, 1942, Bremen

became the third city after Cologne and

Essen to suffer a 1,000-bomber raid, a force

of 1,067 aircraft hitting the city and docks. A

total of 572 homes were destroyed and 6,108

damaged, 85 persons were killed, 497 injured

and 2,378 bombed out, but damage to facto-

ries and shipyards was less than hoped for.

The RAF lost 48 bombers.

There followed two more heavy attacks,

by 251 aircraft on September 4/5 and by 446

more on September 13/14, but thereafter

Bremen was given a five-month respite. The

RAF returned on February 21/22, 1943 with

143 bombers, and on October 8/9 with 119 —

their only two major raids on the city in the

whole of that year. However, by then the US

Eighth Air Force had joined the air offensive

(their first mission to Germany occurring in

January 1943) and their daylight attacks

added to the destruction of the city. The first

American attack, by 97 B-17 Fortresses,

occurred on March 18 and was directed at

the Bremer-Vulkan shipyards at Vegesack.

The second, on April 17 by 115 B-17s,

blasted half the Focke-Wulf factories.

Bremen’s worst attack of the war in num-

ber of casualties was on August 18/19, 1944,

when 274 British bombers (out of 288

despatched) dropped 68 land mines, 2,323

HE bombs, 10,800 phosphor bombs and

108,000 incendiaries on the city, a load that

caused a firestorm. The whole of the centre

and north-western parts of Bremen were

devastated. A total of 8,635 dwellings were

burnt out, another 611 damaged, 1,054 peo-

ple were killed, and over 49,000 others lost

their homes.

There followed one more major RAF raid,

by 253 aircraft on the night of October 6/7. It

finished off Bremen as a Bomber Command

target: shipyards and factories were seriously

hit; 4,859 houses, five churches, one hospital,

18 schools and 16 public and historic build-

ings were destroyed or damaged; 65 persons

were killed, 766 wounded and 37,724

bombed out.

There was a final series of raids in March

1945. On the 22nd, in an RAF daylight oper-

ation, 133 Lancasters and six Mosquitoes

attacked the Vacuum oil refineries in the

By Karel Margry

dock area. The following day, another 117

Lancasters attacked the city’s railway bridge

over the Weser. The structure was damaged

but provisionally repaired. A week later, on

March 30, US Eighth Air Force bombers hit

and destroyed both the railway bridge and

the adjoining Adolf-Hitler-Brücke, the city’s

main road bridge. Now only two bridges

were left intact, the Kaiserbrücke and the

Lüderitzbrücke.

Bremen’s riverfront today, pictured in August 2006.

NSDAP-Gauleiter Paul Wegener (right)

and Reich Defence Commissioner Hans-

Joachim Fischer (left).

By April 1945, over half of Bremen’s

houses lay in ruins. Some 3,800 inhabitants

had been killed. Of the original pre-war pop-

ulation of 424,000, only about 290,000 still

remained in the city. Added to them were

some 42,000 foreigners — forced labourers,

prisoners of war (mostly Russians), and con-

centration

camp

inmates

(from

Neuengamme). Housed in some 160 build-

ings and hutted camps all over the city, they

kept the factories and shipyards running,

were put to work building two huge U-boat

bunker factories (‘Hornisse’ in the city docks

and ‘Valentin’ in Bremen-Farge) and

employed to clear up the street rubble.

It was this city, shattered by five years of

war but nonetheless with large sections of its

industry still functioning, that the Nazi and

Wehrmacht authorities began preparing for

defence in early April 1945. The most power-

ful man in the Bremen region was the

NSDAP-Gauleiter (Nazi Party District

Leader) of Gau Weser-Ems, Paul Wegener, a

37-year-old fanatic who had joined the party

in 1930 and made a meteoric career since. His

main assistant was the deputy Reichs-

verteidigungskommissar (Reich Defence

Commissioner) of the district, Dr. Hans-

Joachim Fischer. In Bremen itself, power was

in the hands of not the Burgomaster but

NSDAP-Kreisleiter (Nazi Party Local

Leader) Max Schümann, another fanatical

National Socialist. It was Schümann who set

up the Volkssturm (home guard) units,

organised the construction of road-blocks,

mining of roads and, if still possible, evacua-

tions of parts of the civilian population. Next

to him came the Bremen chief of police and

Gestapo, Generalmajor der Polizei Hans

Schroers. By this stage of the war, the Acting

Burgomaster, Dr. Richard Duckwitz, and the

Bremen Senate had been relegated to carry-

ing out the Gauleiter’s and Kreisleiter’s

instructions.

Military command in Bremen was initially

in the hands of the local Wehrmachts-

kommandant (Garrison Commander), Gen-

eralmajor Werner Siber. Although he had

been designated Kampfkommandant (Com-

bat Commander) of Bremen in February,

Siber had little front-line experience and so

on April 5, with the Allied armies approach-

ing Bremen, Generalleutnant Fritz Becker, a

veteran soldier who was then in command of

the 389. Infanterie-Division in encircled

Danzig, was appointed to replace him as

Kampfkommandant with orders to defend

the city ‘until the last drop of blood and the

last round’. Siber remained in function as

garrison commander but he was now subor-

dinate to Becker.

Becker set up his command post in the

headquarters bunker of the 8. Flak-Division,

NSDAP-Kreisleiter Max Schümann, the

local Nazi party leader of Bremen, who

remained fanatical until the very end.

a low, brick-clad structure located in the

Bürgerpark, the large municipal park that

stretches north of the inner city. There were

two other HQ bunkers nearby in the same

park, both civilian air raid bunkers taken

over by the authorities. One, bunker B31

opposite the Benquestrasse, was the com-

mand post of Generalmajor Siber; the other,

bunker 32 opposite Bulthauptstrasse, was

known as the Regierungsbunker (Govern-

ment Bunker) and reserved for use by the

civil and party leaders of the city.

The forces available to Becker were a

hotchpotch of Wehrmacht, SS, Flak, police

and Volkssturm troops. His main units were

SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatz- und Ausbil-

dungs-Bataillon 18 (a Waffen-SS training

battalion), the 4. Alarm-Bataillon Weser-

münde (containing soldiers on leave in the

area and convalescent soldiers) and the 5.

Granatwerfer-Einheit Dummel (a unit oper-

ating Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled mortars),

comprising a total of 262 officers and 1,533

men. A powerful back-up was formed by the

city’s anti-aircraft defences. Organised under

the 8. Flak-Division, commanded since

December 1944 by General der Flieger Max

Schaller, its batteries formed a ring of steel

around the city. Crewed by some 3,000 gun-

ners, the division’s 100 heavy and 50 light

AA guns, ranging from 128mm to 20mm,

could be effectively used against ground tar-

gets but they were static, immobile defences.

In addition to these regular forces there were

a few Volkssturm battalions — formed in the

autumn of 1944, composed of old men and

Hitlerjugend boys, and with a strength on

paper of 1,100 — and a unit of 361 municipal

policemen, mostly elderly men untrained for

battle. The military value of both these

forces was low. Becker had no artillery, tanks

or mobile anti-tank guns whatsoever to back

up his troops.

To help the defence of the city the Ger-

mans had made preparations to inundate a

wide strip of low-lying meadowland just

south of the city. Planned by a special staff

since October 1944, the inundations were to

be effected by closing downstream locks in

the little Ochtum stream, by holing the

Ochtum’s southern summer dike and by

channelling water from the Weser into the

Ochtum basin. On April 2, General Siber

ordered the inundations to be started (a deci-

sion fully endorsed by General Becker after

his arrival on April 6) and by April 8 a strip

of land some 12 kilometres long and two

kilometres wide — stretching from the vil-

lage of Dreye close to the Weser in the east

to the embankment of the Bremen—Del-

menhorst railway in the west — had been

flooded to a height of about one metre. The

inundations were not high enough to block

Generalleutnant Fritz Becker, appointed

Kampfkommandant (Combat Commander)

of Bremen on April 5, 1945.

the roads, which remained passable for vehi-

cles, but at least, so the Germans hoped,

would funnel an enemy advance to them.

Strangely enough, instead of putting their

defending forces behind the floods, the Ger-

man commanders decided to place one of

their main units in front of them. On April 5,

SS-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18, a

training unit commanded by SS-Obersturm-

führer Johannes Oblik and consisting of four

companies each of between 150 and 200

young and fanatical SS recruits, took up posi-

tions around Brinkum blocking the roads

leading into it from the south. Volkssturm

and Kriegsmarine soldiers occupied either

flank. The German decision to put their units

forward of the floods would prove a costly

tactical mistake. Had they put them on the

far side, they would have been in a much bet-

ter position to repulse the subsequent British

attack.

In the big picture, the overall defence of

north-western Germany was the responsibil-

ity of Heeresgruppe Nordwest of General-

feldmarschall Ernst Busch. Assigned to hold

the army group’s middle sector between the

Weser and Elbe rivers, an area that included

Bremen and Hamburg, was Armee Blumen-

tritt, a special force hastily created on April

10 under General der Infanterie Günther

Blumentritt and comprising all units and

staffs of Wehrkreise (Army Home Districts)

VI and XI, plus some naval troops. Holding

the central section of Blumentritt’s army was

Korps Ems, also newly set up and com-

manded by General der Infanterie Siegfried

Rasp, and it was this corps to which

Kampfkommandant Becker and the Bremen

garrison were subordinated. Rasp’s corps

comprised three main formations: north-west

of Bremen was Division Nr. 480 and east of

Bremen were the remnants of the 172.

Reserve-Infanterie-Division and the 2.

Marine-Infanterie-Division. As the front got

closer to Bremen, Becker’s force would be

inserted into the corps line.

Despite the hopelessness of the military

situation, the top Nazis in Bremen refused to

think of capitulation. Kreisleiter Schümann,

in almost daily broadcasts on the local radio

and newspaper articles in the

Bremer

Zeitung,

again and again expressed his belief

in final victory, exhorting the population to

hold on and threatening anyone who showed

signs of defeatism. On April 4, he declared in

a radio speech: ‘Whoever shows the white

flag, should expect a death sentence.’

On Sunday, April 8, the people of Bremen

for the first time heard the dark rumble of

artillery fire away in the distance to the

south. On Tuesday, April 10, the first enemy

shells fell on the city. The battle for Bremen

had begun.

To prevent the enemy having an easy approach to Bremen, the

Germans had flooded a wide strip of land to the south, inun-

dating the valley of the Ochtum river from Dreye in the east to

Mittelshuchting in the west. Strangely enough, they then put

one of their main forces, SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatz- und

By the second week of April 1945, having

successfully crossed the Rhine on March 23

and then the Ems on April 1, British 21st

Army Group was rapidly advancing into

northern Holland and north-west Germany,

with Canadian First Army on the left and

British Second Army on the right. On April

10, Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the

army group commander, decided that he

would push on to the Elbe river without

pause. He instructed Lieutenant-General

Miles C. Dempsey, the commander of Sec-

ond Army, to have his two leading corps —

XII and VIII — outflank Bremen, and leave

it to be dealt with by the army’s third forma-

tion — XXX Corps.

By then, Second Army was already

approaching the next major river line, that of

the Weser. While XII and VIII Corps

crossed the river and its tributary, the Aller,

and swept north and east towards the Elbe,

aiming for Hamburg and Lauenburg respec-

tively, XXX Corps began preparations for

the attack on Bremen.

At that time XXX Corps, led by Lieu-

tenant-General Brian Horrocks, was advanc-

ing with three divisions abreast: the 51st

(Highland) Division on the left, the Guards

Armoured Division in the centre, and the

43rd (Wessex) Division on the right. Follow-

ing Montgomery’s new orders, there was a

reshuffling of units within Second Army. To

provide XXX Corps with four infantry divi-

sions for the capture of Bremen, Dempsey

ordered the 3rd and 52nd (Lowland) Divi-

sions to be transferred to it, and the Guards

Armoured Division to move from XXX

Corps to XII Corps and join the race to

Hamburg. The 3rd Division came under

command of XXX Corps on April 11 and the

52nd Division followed on the 19th.

Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18, in front of the water obstacle, hold-

ing the town of Brinkum. Between April 15 and 20, the British

3rd Division fought its way to the southern edge of the flooded

land, capturing Brinkum after a stiff fight on the 16th. The map

shows the battlefield.

two squadrons of Crocodile flame-throwing

tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment (from

the 79th Armoured Division) and the power-

ful guns of two medium artillery regiments.

The plan was for the 2nd Warwicks and 1st

Norfolks of the 185th Brigade to drive on

Brinkum from the right, while the 1st Suf-

folks of the 8th Brigade would attack from

the crossroads on the left. The enemy,

SS-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18,

was known to have one company holding the

crossroads, one the village of Leeste, another

the hamlet of Erichshof, and the fourth

remaining with Battalion HQ in Brinkum

itself. The Warwicks would take Leeste and

Erichshof, and the Suffolks would clear their

crossroads, after which the Norfolks would

pass through the Warwicks to capture

Brinkum.

The attack began at midday on the 15th.

After a ten-minute preparatory artillery bar-

rage, the 2nd Warwicks (Lieutenant-Colonel

Ronald MacDonald) jumped off at noon. A

feint attack staged from Kirchweyhe further

east by the 2nd King’s Shropshire Light

Infantry (Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Daly)

in the morning had put the German defend-

ers on a wrong footing and the Warwicks’

move from the south took them by surprise.

Leeste was quickly taken, C Company taking

70 prisoners, as was Erichshof after some

outlying farms had been assaulted and cap-

tured by A Company.

The 1st Suffolks (Lieutenant-Colonel

Richard Goodwin) at their crossroads met

stubborn resistance and came under heavy

fire from German artillery, small arms and

snipers. The supporting tanks engaged every

enemy-occupied house but were unable to

silence the German fire and the advance

remained slow. Just before dusk, two troops

THE 3rd DIVISION CLOSES UP ON

BREMEN FROM THE SOUTH

Arriving in the area south of Bremen on

April 11, the 3rd Division, commanded by

Major-General Lashmer (‘Bolo’) Whistler,

took over territory captured by the 7th

Armoured Division of XII Corps earlier that

week. On the 13th, the division’s 8th Brigade

(Brigadier Eddie Goulburn) pushed the lines

some ten kilometres closer to Bremen, the

1st Suffolks advancing to a crossroads two

kilometres south of the town of Brinkum.

Although A Company reached the intersec-

tion, they were unable to hold it, being

thrown back by fierce resistance from

SS-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18

during the evening. However, the move put

the 8th Brigade closest to Bremen, the

embattled crossroads being only nine kilo-

metres from its southern outskirts. The 185th

Brigade (Brigadier Francis Matthews) on the

right had earlier taken over the twin villages

of Kirchweyhe and Sudweyhe, only three

kilometres from the Weser and ten kilome-

tres from Bremen. The 9th Brigade

(Brigadier Dominic Browne) was holding

the rear, occupying the towns of Bassum and

Harpstedt.

On April 14 the 51st (Highland) Division

came up on the 3rd Division’s left, taking

over the sector around Wildeshausen.

Before the big attack on Bremen could

begin, the 3rd Division had first to clear the

territory remaining between its positions and

the flooded land north of Brinkum. The cap-

ture of Brinkum was a necessary prelude to

the capture of Bremen. The attack was set

for Sunday, April 15, and to be carried out by

185th and 8th Brigades. Support would be

provided by tanks of the 4th/7th Dragoon

Guards (from the 8th Armoured Brigade),

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