The war intensified societal struggles over the distribution of increasingly scarce everyday necessities. The management of the shortages accelerated the dynamic of marginalization, discrimination, and persecution. This also affected access to shelter from the deadly air raids launched by the Allied bomber squadrons. Guarantees of subsistence and protection from air raids were subject to a perfidious system of privileges and discrimination. People deemed ‘foreign to the community‘, such as Jews and forced laborers, received much less than those who were considered part of the ‘people’s community’. Access to vital, life-saving resources was controlled and granted at the expense of marginalized groups and individuals.
In Munich, the air raid protection relentlessly vaunted by Nazi propaganda turned out to be an illusion. During the 1930s, the construction of adequate shelters for the city’s population had been criminally neglected. By the time war broke out, only a small proportion of the planned bunker facilities was finished and ready for use. The people of Munich were barely aware of these omissions during the first three years of the war, since the Allied bomber fleets were unable to fly as far as Munich and bombard the Bavarian capital, also known as the ‘air raid shelter of the Reich’, to any significant degree until 1942/43. However, from the end of 1943, improved engine performance and navigation technology brought even Munich within the range of the British and American bomber squadrons, which now set the city in their sights as a primary strategic target. As a transport node in southern Germany, Munich had an important logistic function. The industrial facilities, which were a vital part of the German air munitions industry in particular, gave the city high priority as an Allied military target.
Moreover, as the birthplace of Nazi movement and the ‘Capital of the Movement’, Munich—more than any other city—was a site of paramount importance to the self-perception of the Nazi regime and its elite. Targeting Munich and leaving behind visible, lasting damage in a place glorified by the Nazi Party and home to important administrative and monumental buildings was an achievement of considerable value to the Allied strategists. On September 22, 1942, an anonymous correspondent wrote an angry letter to Reich Representative Franz von Epp, criticizing the inadequate provision of shelters and emphasizing the dangers to the civilian population: “It is a scandal and an outrage to see how we are left defenseless and exposed to aerial attack without even the bare minimum of effective protection! There are party buildings and Hitler Youth hostels, the bigwigs have built the most beautiful houses for themselves, but where are the fireproof and bombproof bunkers??? They have been formulating war policy and babbling about air raid protection since 1933, already knowing full well that they wanted the war, even though the phony speeches given by certain people claimed otherwise, but where is the adequate anti-aircraft defense?” (cited in Haerendel, p. 392)
The air raids became a life-threatening menace, especially to those whom Nazi ideologists believed to be outside the ‘people’s community’. In many cases, they were denied access to life-saving shelters and bunker facilities since priority was given to Germans seeking safety. The main group of people deemed ‘foreign to the community’ consisted of Munich’s Jewish citizens, many of whom were still living in the city at the end of the war. They were married to non-Jewish spouses or were the progeny of so-called ‘mixed marriages’, and had thus managed to avoid deportation. The chance to seek refuge in the much sought-after shelters was also denied to most of the countless forced laborers, since there was not nearly enough space for the population of a large city. This privilege was reserved for German ‘ethnic comrades’. The foreign laborers were housed in ramshackle camps, dilapidated barracks and ruins – often in close proximity to the industrial plants that were the Allies’ preferred targets. They lived in the most primitive conditions and were exposed to all weathers. Often lacking supplies of essential commodities, they were left to fend for themselves when it came to obtaining the most basic necessities of life. Apart from makeshift trenches to protect them from shrapnel, they were largely exposed and therefore constantly under threat from enemy bomber squadrons, which from 1944 flew over the city unchecked and dropped their bombs in broad daylight. The main victims of the Allied bombing raids were foreign men, women and children, who accounted for a relatively high proportion of the casualties. In contrast, large parts of the local population were evacuated to comparatively safe temporary homes and private accommodation in the surrounding regions of Upper Bavaria.
The people called upon to remove bombs and defuse duds were mostly inmates of Dachau Concentration Camp. This perilous work, which served to protect the civilian population of Munich and without which it would not have been possible to restore the city’s infrastructure and supply facilities, claimed numerous human lives. The task of clearing debris and recovering furniture fell for the most part to foreign laborers. This work was also extremely difficult and hazardous.
