May 8th, 2019 : Trümmerfrau

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Big One, WW II, was different from the thousands of previous conflicts because of the airplane.
Bombing of not only the enemy military but war materiel production facilities, and civilians too.
There existed a silly notion back then that if the people tired of war they would make the government stop.
They didn’t know what we now know, which is what the people think doesn’t mean jack shit. See May 5th.
Those daring young men in their flying machines dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs on Axis powers.

During the conflict, Royal Air Force (RAF) and other Allied planes could carry much more weight than their counterparts in the German Luftwaffe. This allowed them to deploy such monster bombs as the “Grand Slam,” which weighed in at some 22,000 pounds and left a crater some 70 feet deep and 130 feet around during a top-secret test in March 1945.
The researchers who conducted the new study found that when Allied bombs hit the ground, the shockwaves reached as far as 1,000 kilometers (or 621 miles) into the air. This heated up the upper atmosphere and caused the concentration of electrons in it to drop, resulting in a temporary weakness in the ionosphere.

When my Dad came home he was very impressed with the Germans, particularly the women, cleaning up debris in the cities,
whereas the French were sitting around wailing poor me. So when I saw this article about the Trümmerfrau, the German women
cleaning up the bombed out cities, I was intrigued.

After the end of World War 2, one of the main tasks was to clear the urban areas of ruin and start rebuilding Europe—Germany in particular, where the damage was extensive. Allied bombing had laid to waste nearly every German city, town and village, destroying millions of homes, public buildings, schools, factories, as well as centuries-old cathedrals, mediaeval houses and other historic structures. It is estimated that the war produced over 400 million cubic meters of rubble that needed to be cleared before any reconstruction plan could be undertaken. This Herculean task fell upon the German women, because a large percentage of the men were already dead or were prisoners of the war. These women were called Trümmerfrauen, or “rubble women”.

The task of removing the ruins were assigned to private enterprises, who in turn employed the women. The main work was to tear down those parts of buildings that had survived the bombings, but were unsafe and unsuitable for reconstruction. Using sledge-hammers, picks, buckets and hand-winches, each ruin was torn down and the rubble demolished further down to the bricks so that they could be reused later in rebuilding. A chain of women would transfer the bricks to the street, where they were cleaned and stacked. Wood and steel beams, fireplaces, wash basins, toilets, pipes and other household items were collected to be reused. The remaining debris was then removed by barrows, wagons and lorries. Many of debris these were used to fill up bomb craters and trenches. Others were piled up to form hillocks known as schuttberge, or debris mountains.

In both East and West Germany, Trümmerfrauen were acknowledged and celebrated by their respective government to create a positive image of women's role in building the new state. Statues were erected to commemorate their work and some of them even received the highest honor of the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany).

But then I found a paper (pdf) with another story, and I suspect it’s more accurate than the official Rah Rah for the Fräuleins,
give them medals story, just because it was such a Herculean task.
If they really did it by hand, they’d still be doing it.

The belief that ‘morale' would break as a result of bombing was never fulfilled, though the cost to the German population of the effort to justify this belief was sustantial. Estimates range between 380,000 and 420,000 German dead with an additional 60,000 foreign workers and POWs. There were in addition around half a million disabled or seriously injured. The problem of coping with large numbers of permanently disabled, particularly amputees and blind, carried on long into the postwar world. Damage to Germany's infrastructure and built environment was already estimated at the end of 1943 at 50 billion marks. Around 50 per cent of the built-up area of Germany's major cities and towns was destroyed by bombing.

I wonder where they got all than cement to put hundreds of millions of tons of bricks back together?
Making cement is very energy intensive.

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[Diaphone Jim]

"Over 600,000 Italians were sent to Germany after they surrendered to the allies in 1943."
Not sure that makes sense.

[Undertoad]

good one xoB!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Diaphone Jim

"Over 600,000 Italians were sent to Germany after they surrendered to the allies in 1943."
Not sure that makes sense.

The allies invaded from the south and the italians were probably sent north to be cannon fodder for the Russians when the Germans took over much of the resistance. But that's just a guess.

[SPUCK]

Yes! I liked this one a lot Bruce.

I would've NEVER guessed those were German ladies in the first picture, but then I only lived there 3 years.. :/

[xoxoxoBruce]

Probably the women who turned out for work were the younger ones and that bunch hand selected for the picture.