Memorial to Würzburg Bombing Victims

Jim Parker

Cruzbike, Inc. Director
Staff member
On a bicycling vacation one does not expect to confront the horrors of World War II. Maria has been blogging elsewhere about our trip to Europe with our Cruzbike Q45s. This post is about a moving experience not directly related to Cruzbike.

Bicycling all day through Bavaria and strolling the ancient streets of Rothenburg ob der Tauber had been fabulous, but quickly depleted our stock of clean clothes, thus requiring a trip to Würzburg, the closest city with a laundromat.

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After starting the drying cycle, Maria and I walked down the city street with exactly 32 minutes to kill. We passed many young people on the streets coming home from work to the tall apartment buildings all around us. We came upon an old stone wall with an open door and stepped into a small green field in the corner of the city cemetery, with flat markers overgrown with grass and weeds. Many names were etched on each stone, with a wide variety of birth dates, but all ominously had the same death date: March 16, 1945. There was no one else on the field with us, and no historical markers to explain what we were seeing.

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With phone-in-hand, I googled “Würzburg bombing” and immediately saw the date was the same as on the stones under my feet. I learned that on that date RAF bombers flew from England and dropped approximately 1200 tons of bombs and incendiary devices over Würzburg, killing 5000 people and destroying most of the city. Suddenly I realized I was standing over the remains of the 3000 victims whose remains could be identified. Because the bombing created a firestorm with temperatures of 1500-2000 degrees C, many remains could not be found (for reference, both glass and steel melt between 1300-1400 degrees C).

I have been a student of World War II, having watched countless documentaries and dramas portraying the major battles and, of course, the Holocaust. I have not spent much time pondering the suffering of innocent Germans, who are seldom the subject of those documentaries and dramas. The story told in the grave marker (photo above) brought home the bombing of Würzburg with a vision of the Ullrich sisters, Petra, Kirsten, and Andrea, clutching their mother as the firestorm swept through the town. Their older brother, Rainer, turned six-years-old the day he perished with his mother and sisters. Had they had a party for him? Was that why they had not made it into a bomb shelter in time?

Their mother, looks like her name was Anne, was 29. On adjacent stones were other family names: Stern, Schlitter, Schmitt, and Steinrichter. This small German town lost 5000 lives in a 20-minute bombing raid. That’s more deaths than the Allied forces suffered during the D-day invasion of Normandy, and I would venture to guess that most Americans have never heard of Würzburg, or its bombing. I found this Wikipedia article fascinating in its explanation of why and how the city was selected, and how its destruction was accomplished. The bombing was judged to be proportionally more successful than even the famous bombing of Dresden in terms of the percentage of death and destruction.

Our tour continues through the peaceful villages of Germany, but I cannot forget either the suffering the Germans caused, nor the suffering they endured during the nightmare period when Hitler’s National Socialist party had control of an otherwise great nation.


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ed72

Zen MBB Master
Würzburg, Bamberg, Pforheim, Erlangen, Nuremberg, and many villages and small Franconia cities are so beautiful and peaceful. Today. I lived in this area early in my career. The German people suffered but what could a young American possibly say to a throng of skinheads in Dresden, who demanded in angry tone to know why I (me) bombed their city, when obviously none of us were alive back then. However, one could have asked them to read of the butchery of my fellow Poles at the hands of their soldiers but they could also realize London was bombed every night for two months straight.

I've hired professional historians while in Germany on vacations trying to understand. Read books and took a class in College on the rise of Nazism. Finding myself seated next to Elie Wiesel on a flight to Austin, I wanted so much to pick his brain but he was so busy writing and rewriting a speech that I had to respect his privacy. I have none other than that war could not be lost and utter amazement that an entire nation could be so deceived bu evil.

Unfortunately, the rise of Hitler and the entire WW2 history is barely taught in most public high schools, even at the AP level. So, I would have to agree that few Americans know of Würzburg other than maybe it is an exit on the A3 and hour south of Frankfurt airport.

Thank you for sharing your experience.
 

3bs

whereabouts unknown
jim i am glad you took the time.

i think this evidences one of my most pressing concerns for the present and future peeps. no personal experience of history, direct or second hand, and no learning of it in schools. my grandfather got his citizenship fighting for the usa in ww1. my great grandmother on the other side never spoke outside of the house because she only knew German. i had many good friends as i grew up who fought in ww2 both theaters. even their experiences were utterly different. likewise korea and viet nam/laos/cambodia. my contemporaries went to everything after that. i have been honored to have many friends and relatives who experienced many oppressive regimes across the world, and were willing to talk to me about them and their experiences. similarly extreme poverty. its not just nazis and ww2. that is a good example, but what about pol pot, mao, and the long list of others. what about the simple act of looking at the map when you are a kid knowing that your town was a primary icbm target because they made jeeps and fuel controls in your town, and knowing that you lived in the primary blast zone. school air raid drills just meant you would die with your friends in a basement.

i too have been a long student of ww2, and conflict in general, both overt and covert. humans can do some terrible stuff, and running the world is a dirty business.

the next gens have no idea about these things. they glamorize, romanticize and rationalize things that have no justification. they they are insulated and anesthetized. blood and death have very precise smells.

we all know the phrase those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. consider that our next gens are more like those who never learn history cant help but repeat it.

here is a young guy writing some nice books. not complex, not great works of literary renown, but great fast reads, with some great first person experiences and interrelations.
https://www.adammakos.com/
 

bladderhead

Zen MBB Master
Bomber Harris was a war criminal. My parents both said so, and they were both born before the war, on the Essex edge of London. For most of the British, WW2 is all the history they know. But what Britain experienced was a sideshow compared to the hell in Germany and further east. Germans exterminated Jews, Germans exterminated Poles, Poles exterminated Jews, everybody exterminated everybody else. What could ed72 say to the skins in Dresden? Tribalism begets atrocity. Try telling them that. And what is a tribe? Consider a white person with an English name, living in Illinois. Is a white Canadian with an English name in the same tribe? Or a black a USA citizen in California with a Spanish name? Why do people insist on categorising themselves?

I like this forum. Just the forum on the website of a bicycle manufacturer, but it has threads like this one.
 
Today I visited the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation near Norte Dame.
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The capacity for mankind to do such things throughout history and continuing today astounds me.

By the way, I wish I had a Q45 to make my Paris trip more enjoyable.
 

jond

Zen MBB Master
Great stuff Jim.

Salutary palpable experience.

I wish I had a q45 and s40 .......don’t tell my wife.

World agreed open history should be mandatory for everyone.

We must all “never forget and remember them. .” The sacrifice.

it was by far the russians whom paid the highest price with 20 million deaths as much as the allied forces and Germans put together in the Second World War.

All war is hell with innocence the first casualty .

The war criminals were in fact sentenced during the Nuremberg trials .

Bomber Harris had to live with his conscience as did everyone else in the war cabinet.

Statistically you had a very small chance of surviving the war in a bomber crew British night runs or American day runs.

Britain was alone after the six week capitulation of the French for over a year. Dunkirk was an example of humanity at its finest and worst.

Why would any British person forget the Battle of Britain and what it meant.

Germany bombed Britain targeted and indiscriminately first including using incendiary bombs. .Hitler stupidly mistakenly ran at the Russians. America were hit at pearl harbour by the Japanese and America declared war on the Japanese . Hitler went on to insanely declare war against America. Thank god or I would be living in Slavic territory most likely and slim would be talking Japanese.

Atrocities happened on all sides but it was the Germans and Japanese whom were the instigators of targeted racist genocide killings and otherwise sub human aggression.World War One did not end with the armistice.

It was Germany Italy and Japan the aggressor in total war.

Like world war 1 the Great War the Vietnam conflict etc etc history and judgement in retrospect is always late.

It should never of happened. Ever. That is the whole point. Not one innocent lost.

We must depend on our leaders to live peace from past lessons. To err is to be human but with stark historical lessons I hope perhaps naively world conflict is over.

I doubt with education standards rising that the real people of world war 1 could be so easily manipulated.

Even now there is pushback against populism and nationalism. Be interesting to see how Donald goes 500 days n countin to make ........sorry keep merica great.

Yet there is nothing wrong with a healthy respectful informed tribalism.

Empires come and go.

I hope the Chinese and Indians are as “benevolent” as the Americans when they inevitably take the reign of world power.

There is otherwise surely our very own unnecessary Waterloo waiting for us.
 

Suz

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the post Jim, there's nothing like being there to better understand the true weight of the atrocities of that era.
 

3bs

whereabouts unknown
speaking of GSP, another great read https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Rivals-Victors-Eisenhower-Partnership/dp/0451232127

could it be that a Q45 would have changed the course of war? could we substitute q45's for taxi at marne? (yes i know, but i love the story anyways) could the Q45 be the modern rally cry for peace and prosperity? instead of a chicken in every pot, a q45 in every bike rack? Beat your swords into q45's? ride a q45 on selma?

i hope i can get to the ky conclave. as i Jack Daniels guy, i could put down my shot glass and ride the bourbon trail for peace.... https://kybourbontrail.com/?gclid=C...K_uMNFtakG5TH26GRmeXFdbBH_EE-VvBoCfrEQAvD_BwE

(its very hard for me to be serious for more than 5 minutes....)
 

ed72

Zen MBB Master
I am sure Jim and Maria will always remember that moment in Würzburg.

I want to tour again, maybe buy a Q45 or a trike.

35+ years ago touring thru Normandy, I had one of those strong, rainy headwind days. I reached my planned lunch stop at 2:40. That is no mans land in France food-wise. I slipped into the kitchen of a country restaurant where a seemingly "old" French lady was doing dishes and cleaning up. I sheepishly asked in French whether I could get something to eat and to apologize for being so late and soaking wet. She waves me to go sit down with one hand as she was bent over the sink doing pots and pans. She hauls me 4 lamb chops, a mound of puree (mashed potatoes), a ton of asparagus, and a bucket of bread. I was pretty much starving fighting a wind all day from Belgium. She sits down and thumps two huge ceramic containers onto the thick table and says, "red" or "white". I hesitated but then took red. She took the white and then told me of being saved by the American paratroopers, she was a little girl on June 6, 1944. She told me stories of those ensuing days and how the GIs were so nice to them. She asked if any family served (yes) and if any were killed or wounded (yes). She thanked me over and over. I kept saying I was not even born but her gratitude in general was overwhelming to me... although it could have been the wine that we both drank. I don't remember being asked to pay. She sent me on my way into a cold, wet, grey afternoon with bon routes and bon courage glarour. To this day, I can feel her emotion over having been freed 35 years earlier. I thought I would share that memory as the other side to the horror of war.
 

jond

Zen MBB Master
If you’ve not seen “The world at war “ 1973-76 television series I recommend it thoroughly narrated by Laurence Olivier some 26 episodes .

It is a landmark series with interviewed. Speer Nimitz Harris etc etc.

A salutary moving informative cautionary experience .

Ed 72 thanks for your beautiful story.

I thank God every day for a peaceful world and am grateful my generation has enjoyed a conflict free world by and large.
 
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