A note from the director:

On the night of July 27th 1943, a new phenomenon was born. This strange amalgam of the work of man and the forces of nature was to become known as ‘firestorm.’ It was witnessed by the citizens of Hamburg, as their city consumed itself in flames that leapt hundreds of feet into the sky. The British pilots saw the glow from their aircraft windows, even long after the city had vanished beneath the horizon. The rest of Germany saw it too, in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of refugees set adrift by the raids, carrying the charred leftovers of their possessions, sometimes even, terrifyingly, the baked remains of their loved ones, in their suitcases. This was neither a silent nor a momentary phenomena. And yet, when I first came to read Rolf Hochhuth’s ‘Soldiers,’ I had never heard of the bombing of Hamburg.

This sense of vanished history was one of my primary motivations for reviving this passionate, epic and contentious play. I believe the same scant knowledge to be true for most of my generation, and, perhaps more shockingly, for many of the same generation in Germany. We have heard of the birth of aerial bombardment in the skies over Franco’s Spain, heard the stories of our forbears from the skies over London and Coventry, yet for both those who inflicted and those who suffered, the advent of aerial warfare as a tool of accepted and widespread destruction has been swept under the carpet.

On that night, the growing ferocity of the Allied bombing of the German homeland reached such a level that a city destroyed itself. 45,000 people lost their lives as the bombing fires grew beyond control, rapidly, greedily consuming oxygen, and drawing in new supplies with winds of over 100 miles per hour. Roads melted. Trees were uprooted and tossed along streets like kites. The city was returned, within a night, to a state of primordial civilisation, inhabitable only by tempestuous storms of flies and maggots. Yet this huge loss of civilian life was not the decisive final blow of the war. German industry was not paralysed. German morale was shaken but not shattered. Many claim that little was achieved. Many claim less.

‘Soldiers’ is a play that cannot disguise its own relevance. I leave members of the audience to draw their own parallels between 1943 and the present, and to take from such comparison what they will. For me, the strength of ‘Soldiers’ is its universality – its timelessness. It speaks of the ‘necessary’ evils encountered and enacted on the road to achieving any greater good, to speak in the axioms of the current international stage. It speaks of war leaders, and the extraordinary power that they wield and millstones that they bear, but it speaks too of the smaller men. It speaks of the uncompromising loneliness of the pilots and aircrew in the planes over Hamburg, of the loss of individual control over a war machine grown beyond the means of its makers.

It is no easy thing to be British these days. In the age of Fallujah and Afganistan, where solely residential districts lie flattened once more, Soldiers calls not for shame or contrition, but to remove our crusading armour, and to look with unflinching honesty at that which has been done in our names.

This, then, is a production for the servicemen as well as the victims. Whilst it questions the morality of the acts they were asked to carry out, it never questions their integrity, loyalty or bravery in the face of the darkest years of the war. Nevertheless, there is an unflinching message behind all this. As the soldier becomes safer, more distant from the field of battle, so the cross-hairs will wander more often towards the undefended civilian.

- John Terry (Director, Soldiers)

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

‘His Majesty’s government will never resort to the deliberate attack on women and children and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.’

- Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, 14th September 1939.

‘it has now been decided that the primary object of your operations should now be focused on the morale of the enemy civilian population’

– Air Ministry directive, February 1942.

Extract from personal memoirs of the Hamburg firestorm, by Margit Alm:

Here is how I remember the 1943 air raids over Hamburg. It had been a particularly beautiful sunny summer's day in July when the howl of the sirens sounded and simultaneously the buzzing roar from the squadron bombers filled the air. We were torn from our beds, hastily dressed, my mother grabbed her handbag with the family documents and some photos and we raced down the stairs from our 4th floor flat to the cellar. As we passed the window between the 4th and 3rd floor I could see the bombs falling and the "Christmas trees" lighting the sky to guide the bombers.

We hovered in the cellar together with other people from the building, everyone preoccupied with their own thoughts and fears. My father meanwhile raced up and down the four floors, scouting for fires. He put out some 18 spot fires. Eventually he reappeared in the cellar, took my mother in his arms, told her that everything was lost, and then ordered everyone out. A huge load of fire bombs had hit the building next door and the fire was now spreading to neighbouring buildings and streets.

The air raid was still in full swing, so my father took our group some 50 m down the burning street into another building that had not yet caught fire and temporarily "parked" us there whilst he continued on his way to investigate the air raid shelter another 100 m away. As we left our temporary abode I cast a last glance to our building where my childhood dreams and toys were turned to ashes. It stood there, a dark and silent silhouette in the fire-lit sky, seemingly untouched by what was going on around it. However, a blaze of flames escaping through the roof shot skywards and I knew that the building was burning itself out from within.

Five metres away from us, across the street, a whole building came crumbling down and rained a shower of phosphorous sparks on us. One of them must have hit me in the face as my mother was for a while fearful that I could become blind. Thank heavens, not so. I cannot remember whether I was scared. This air raid was a totally new experience for me. They provided some excitement to us children. But this air raid was not child's play. Maybe it was a practice run for what was to come next.

The second night the sirens once again forced us into the building's cellar. This time there was a much larger group, the building being residential only. A time bomb had fallen into the small courtyard and it could explode any time. But escape where to? The whole suburb was burning.

When we emerged from the cellar and I stood on top of the stairs leading into the street I could only see fire: all buildings were ablaze, fire was raining from the sky, and as the sparks were ricocheting from the stones it looked to me as if the road was burning. I jerked away from my mother's hand and told here I was not running through that. My mother followed my father, screaming "I lost Margit" No one noticed me, or so I thought. Suddenly I felt swept off my feet and strong arms held me. It turned out that my rescuer was a young Dutchman who lived in the apartment building and knew us quite well.

We were lucky, everyone in the building was saved.

We spent the remainder of the night cowering and squatting on the rail tracks. When my father investigated the devastation from the previous night, he not only found the rubbled buildings but piles and piles of corpses just lying in the streets. He wanted to spare us such a sight.

They say, 45000 people perished during that night.

By the way, more than 30 years ago I saw ‘Soldiers’ here in Melbourne. At the time a Swiss girl from work was in our group of theatregoers. She was quite devastated after the play and said to me: "but they never carried it through". I had to tell her that they did.

Thanks to Margit Alm for the use of this personal account.

‘When Winston was born, lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle with gifts – imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said ‘No one person has the right to so many gifts,’ picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgement and wisdom. And that is why while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.’

– Baldwin on Churchill.

‘INTENTION – To destroy Hamburg’

– Bomber Command operation order no.173, 27th May 1943.

‘It was a day to live and taste and enjoy, a day to spend on the river at St. Neots with a girl and a drifting boat. I was in no mood for war.’

– Flight Lieutenant A.J.F. Davidson, 35 Squadron.

‘We soon heard the humming of engines, like a thousand bees.’

– T. Bauer-Schlichtegroll, schoolboy and flak cadet in Hamburg.

‘You could almost ‘feel’ the planes; they sounded really heavy with loads of bombs.’

– Irena Chmiel, Polish child labourer in Hamburg.

‘I was amazed at the awe-inspiring sight of the target area. It seemed as though the whole of Hamburg was on fire from one end to the other and a huge column of smoke was towering well above us – and we were on 20,000 feet! It all seemed almost incredible and, when I realised that I was looking at a city with a population of two million, or about that, it became almost frightening to think of what must be going on down there in Hamburg. It is a memory which sometimes haunts me, especially when I helped, even if only in a very small way, to cause that cataclysmic event.’

– Sergeant J.D. Whiteman, 10 Squadron.

‘ The sight of Hamburg burning, apparently from end to end, will be remembered all my life.’

– Flying Officer W.A. Lennard, 158 Squadron.

‘Then a storm started, a shrill howling in the street. It grew into a hurricane so that we had to abandon all hope of fighting the fire. It was as though we were doing no more than throwing a drop of water on to a hot stone. The whole yard, the canal, in fact as far as we could see, was just a whole, great, massive sea of fire.’

– Hermann Kröger, factory foreman, Hamburg.

‘We got to the Löschplatz all right but couldn’t go on across the Eiffestrasse because the asphalt had melted. There were people on the roadway, some already dead, some still alive but stuck in the asphalt. They must have rushed on to the roadway without thinking. Their feet had got stuck and then they had put out their hands to try to get out again. They were on their hands and knees screaming.’

– Käte Hoffmeister, milliner, Hamburg.

‘I carried my little sister and also helped my mother climb over the ruins. Suddenly, I saw tailors’ dummies lying around. I said ‘Mummy, no tailors lived here and, yet, so many dummies lying around’ ; My mother grabbed me by my arm and said, ‘Go on. Don’t look too closely. On. On. We have to get out of here.’

– Traute Koch, schoolgirl, Hamburg.

‘I have to make this reproach against our enemies of 1939-45: that they directed their attacks quite consciously on to the civilian population. It was hell on earth. It was obvious that Hitler had to be destroyed, but did this method have to be used? How can people live with such a responsibility on their conscience?’

– Lady Clerk in Hamburg trading firm.

‘To bomb cities as cities, deliberately to attack civilians, quite irrespective of whether or not they are actively contributing to the war effort, is a wrong deed, whether done by the Nazis or by ourselves’

– Bishop George Bell, Chichester Diocesan Gazette.

‘Had the Germans won the war, should we or ought we to have been tried as war criminals? If we believed it morally wrong, should we have spoken out to our squadron commanders and refused to participate? What would have been the result? Court martial.’

– RAF Navigator.

‘There was a feeling of ‘if only we can make this work, it will be a quick way to end the war.’ The more quickly the war was ended, the more lives would be saved. This was total war and anything went.’

– RAF Staff Officer.

‘Investigation seems to show that having one’s house demolished is most damaging to morale. People seem to mind it more than having their friends or even their relatives killed.’

– Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell, in a memorandum to Churchill, 30th March 1942.

For anyone interested in looking further into any of the historical, moral and political themes of Soldiers, Shapeshifter recommends the following further reading as the best, most pertinent or clearest coverage:

The characters involved:

Brooke, Alan, Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke. War Diaries 1939-1945. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001.

Fort, Adrian. Prof: The life of Frederick Lindemann. Jonathan Cape, 2003.

Fraser. David. Alanbrooke. HarperCollins, 1997.

Harrod, R.F. The Prof: A personal memoir of Lord Cherwell. Macmillan and co., 1959.

Irving, David. Churchill’s War. Focal Point, 1987 onwards.

Jasper, Ronald C.D. George Bell: Bishop of Chichester. Oxford University press, 1967.

Jenkins, Roy. Churchill. Pan Books, 2001.

Waszak, Leon S. Agreement in principle: the wartime partnership of General Wladyslaw Sikorski and Winston Churchill. Peter Lang, 1996

Wilson, Thomas. Churchill and the Prof. Cassell, 1995.

The Bombing of Hamburg:

Carter, Ian. Bomber Commmand 1939-45. Ian Allen Publishing, 2000.

Middlebrook, Martin. The Battle of Hamburg: The firestorm raid. Penguin and Cassells Military, 1980 et al.

Musgrove, Gordon. Operation Gomorrah: The Hamburg firestorm raids. Janes, 1981.

Other issues:

Irving, David. Accident: The death of General Sikorski. Focal Point et al, 1967.

Sebald, W.G. On the natural history of destruction. Hamish Hamilton, 2003

Shellard, Dominic. Kenneth Tynan: a life. Yale University Press, 2003.

Tynan, Kathleen. The life of Kenneth Tynan. Weidendfeld and Nicolson, 1987.