00:00And then came March 22nd, but in Frankfurt there was a difference compared to the major attack
00:05that had just been endured on March 18th.
00:08On March 22nd, the sirens remained silent.
00:12This attack, with a force never experienced before, completely destroyed old Frankfurt.
00:17And this time, the fire department could no longer extinguish the more than 8,000 fires.
00:23However, the people of Frankfurt who remained in the city and were especially hard hit
00:28immediately wondered why they had not been warned in time
00:31by the Air Raid Warning Center at police headquarters.
00:34The civilian assigned to air raid duty on duty that night remembers.
00:38I am here at police headquarters, at my old post with the Frampt Warning Command,
00:44where I had to serve from 1943 to 1945, where I was assigned and served.
00:51I also experienced the heavy attacks between the 18th and 24th.
00:56I went through March 1944 as well.
00:58And as I said, on the 22nd, March, our group was on duty.
01:03The very bad, very heavy attack was on Frankfurt.
01:07And I was personally sitting at the airfield and took the reports, took one report.
01:14Two to three nuisance aircraft over Frankfurt in a public area and also over Limburg.
01:21It was about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, where we kept getting only this one report.
01:27Two to three nuisance aircraft over Frankfurt.
01:29Of course, we didn't trigger an alarm because of that.
01:32It wasn't necessary, right?
01:34And then, from one minute to the next, they came in waves.
01:39Many, many of them.
01:41How insane.
01:42And what especially interested me after the war, I'll come back to that, is that many,
01:48no, not just after the war, but even in the days right after, we were, of course, criticized
01:55here for not giving any alarm.
01:57But we couldn't give any.
01:59It was impossible to give an alarm at that point.
02:03And again and again, it was said that the warning unit was to blame, no alarm, and so on.
02:09And, of course, we couldn't get to the bunker or the cellar in time to take cover.
02:14But it really was something.
02:16It just wasn't possible.
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