The drama that happened during the air raid was explained to me by a surviving POW: A petroleum incendiary bomb fell on the center of the trench badly burning some POWs. A number of them ran towards one end of the shelter, the others towards the other end. This is where the most unexpected happened. It does not occur once in a million times, two explosive bombs falling so close to one another and in a straight line. One bomb fell on one end of the shelter, the second bomb falling on the other end of the trench, leaving an horrible carnage of mangled bodies. The following day the valid and the wounded were forced to come to work escorted by their guards pushing them along. It was a vision of hell: Men walking with self-made crutches, some of them had their wounds covered with filthy rags soaked with blood, the valid helping the wounded.

The RAF had begun the war with just light and medium bombers with limited range and poor defences – and the majority of bombs fell miles from the target. Half way through the war, with virtually no other means of hitting back at Germany, the expansion of RAF Bomber Command had been made a priority. The enormous heavy bomber fleet that could now be deployed regularly was a product of these earlier decisions. Bombing techniques had also become more refined and well practiced. When conditions were right, bombing could now be highly concentrated and utterly devastating.

Several German cities that had so far been relatively untouched would suffer as a consequence of this culmination of putting resources into bombing. Nuremberg, home of the Nazi mass rallies before the war, had particular significance on the RAF target list. Beyond that there was no consideration given to the historic value of any particular town or city – this well preserved medieval town within Nuremberg was, like most other towns, also close to an industrial centre and a rail hub.

The RAF Bomber Command Campaign Diary records:

2/3 January 1945 Nuremberg: 514 Lancasters and 7 Mosquitos of Nos 1, 3, 6 and 8 Groups. 4 Lancasters were lost and 2 crashed in France. Nuremberg, scene of so many disappointments for Bomber Command, finally succumbed to this attack. The Pathfinders produced good ground-marking in conditions of clear visibility and with the help of a rising full moon. The centre of the city, particularly the eastern half, was destroyed. The castle, the Rathaus, almost all the churches and about 2,000 preserved medieval houses went up in flames. The area of destruction also extended into the more modern north-eastern and southern city areas.The industrial area in the south, containing the important MAN and Siemens factories, and the railway areas were also severely damaged. 415 separate industrial buildings were destroyed. It was a near-perfect example of area bombing.

In this raid 1,780 civilians were killed and an estimated 10,000 made homeless. The city would be revisited by the USAAF in February. The total casualties for the city were over 6,000 dead, 90% of the old city was destroyed, ultimately it was ‘easier to record the historic buildings that were just damaged’ rather than try to list all this that had been lost.

Not included in the casualty lists were the numbers of Russian POWS who were killed in the raid. They were already suffering murderous conditions at the hands of the Nazis, surviving in desperate circumstances where they were forced to work, on pain of being beaten or shot, in miserable conditions with inadequate food. George Beeston, a Belgium slave worker was friendly with the Russian POWs and saw how they suffered during the raid and after it:

The January 2nd 1945 [air] raid was also particularly mortal for the Russian POWs ‘surviving’ in the camp located somewhere near the Nuremberg railway marshalling yard and the MAN factory. The camp had one air raid shelter, one trench covered with metal sheeting and a thin layer of soil. It was the same type of protection we had in the Suedfriedhoflager [forced labourers camp near the southern cemetery]. The drama that happened during the air raid was explained to me by a surviving POW: A petroleum incendiary bomb fell on the center of the trench badly burning some POWs. A number of them ran towards one end of the shelter, the others towards the other end. This is where the most unexpected happened. It does not occur once in a million times, two explosive bombs falling so close to one another and in a straight line. One bomb fell on one end of the shelter, the second bomb falling on the other end of the trench, leaving an horrible carnage of mangled bodies. The following day the valid [fit] and the wounded were forced to come to work escorted by their guards pushing them along. It was a vision of hell: Men walking with self-made crutches, some of them had their wounds covered with filthy rags soaked with blood, the valid helping the wounded. A Russian POW friend told me that the dead and the dying were incinerated, the dead and the dying being piled up on top of one another. A few days later some of the valid and the non-valid were employed on recovering the German victims from the ruins, others were digging mass graves. The most dangerous activity Russian POWs were compelled to carry out was to remove un-exploded bombs and mines. An extra ration of food was their reward, one may call this “Price of Death”. The bombs bedded deep in the ground first had to be cleared. This was the job of a team who was constantly exposed to an explosion. When the bomb was cleared a bomb disposal POW carried out the most critical part of the exercise, that is diffusing the detonator and making the bomb safe for removal. In some cases the bomb had entered a building which made the excavating more difficult.

See Soviet Prisoners Of War 1942-1945 in Nuremberg; An Eyewitness Report