Berlin 1945: The flooding of the underground railway

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What?!? You don't want Parts VI and VII too? You'll be missing some of the best bits.

Part IV: the flooding of the U-Bahn

In the previous post I focused on the flooding of the underground section of the Nordsüd S-Bahn which occurred following the breach of the rail tunnel under the Landwehr Canal. As shown the tunnel filled with water and remained so for several weeks, until the Landwehr Canal itself was dammed, and heavy pumps could be deployed. By mid-September the water level had fallen by 3 meters, and this permitted the first boat trips through the length of the tunnel.

But what about the U-Bahn? As noted earlier, the S- and U-Bahn are completely separate systems except where they intersect at exchange stations. On the Nordsüd S-Bahn there are two main such interchanges: Potsdamer Platz and Friedrichstaße, and in order for the flood to enter the U-Bahn from the S-Bahn tunnel it would have to do so at such a physical interchange. At Potsdamer Platz, the nearest S-Bahn station to the Führerbunker, this would have been impossible, since the U-Bahn tunnel lies closer to surface at the point at which it crosses the S-Bahn tunnel. In addition the S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations are physically distant from each other and, at the time, there was no pedestrian access between the two.

So, the next possibility was two stations further north, at Friedrichstraße. Here the U-Bahn tunnel not only lies at a lower level than the S-Bahn, and there is a direct connection in the form of a pedestrian stairway between the two. So, once the water level in the S-Bahn station rose above the platform level, it was able to make its way down the stairway and into the U-Bahn system. Eventually, around 25 km of the U-Bahn system became flooded, although nowhere to the extent that the S-Bahn tunnel suffered. Most accounts speak of a meter or a meter-and-a-half as being the maximum water level. The following map from the BVG shows the eventual extent of the flooding in the U-Bahn system. The caption reads “A graphic from the BVG shows the enormous scale of the U-Bahn sections affected by the flooding of the Nordsüd S-Bahn tunnel. The thick bars indicate water barriers, with the water flow was halted. Altogether about as much water found its way into the U-Bahn tunnels as in the S-Bahn tunnel.”



The flooded U-Bahn, May 1945

A couple of further points are worth noting. The flooding of the U-Bahn was not entirely due to the overflow from the S-Bahn tunnel. On April 3rd an Allied bomb damaged the tunnel under the Spree between the Klosterstraße and Märkisches Museum stations. The flooding was contained by closure of the tunnel sluice gates. In addition, as more of the city fell into Soviet hands the electricity supply to the groundwaters pumps in the U-Bahn tunnels was cut off. This resulted in some local inundation particularly along the ‘E’-line to the east of the city centre. The deep springs that caused this localised flooding are shown on the above map (Tiefbrunnen).

But what all discussion of the U-Bahn flooding highlights is what should have been rather obvious by now to anyone who wished to flood the system to prevent Russian incursions through the tunnels. The points to target for demolition should have been the tunnels that carry the U-Bahn under the Spree and the Spree Canal. If the objective was really to flood the U-Bahn, blowing up the S-Bahn tunnel under the Landwehr Canal was almost a futile exercise from a military perspective. That that act did result in some secondary flooding in the U-Bahn system, although hardly on a scale to deter Soviet troops if they been inclined to use the tunnels (which they actually weren’t), should really be considered as unintentional collateral damage.

We should remind ourselves again that it was the U-Bahn (and not the S-Bahn) that is cited as being the issue as far as Hitler’s alleged outburst (and alleged order) is concerned. It is also the case that Mohnke and Krukenberg as well (according to Beevor) were both concerned about Russians using the U-Bahn tunnels to approach the Chancellery. This actually makes complete sense when looking at the maps of the two systems. The closest station on the S-Bahn is Potsdamer Platz, and on the date of Mohnke and Krukenberg’s meeting (May 1st) that area was already in Soviet hands. The next closest station is Unter den Linden, which was still in German hands. The Sanitäts-Abteilung of 11. Nordland was located there, along with four trains of German wounded.

On the other hand, Russian troops had already crossed the Spree and Spree Canal to the east of the Chancellery and, if they were inclined to use the tunnels to get ‘behind’ the defenders that could only have meant the ‘A’-line. The Kaiserhof station on the A-line is literally across the street from the Chancellery and Stadtmitte, where Krukenberg had his command post, lies about 500m further east. Given that physical scenario, what possible sense would it have made for Krukenberg to dispatch his Nordland sappers to demolish the S-Bahn tunnel under the Landwehr Canal, which already lay almost 1 km to the rear of the Soviet positions. It just doesn’t make any sense.

As we are discussing the Kaiserhof station this is an opportune moment to bring up the Soviet film mentioned earlier. This is the seven-hour 1969 epic Befreiung, a Soviet-DDR-Polish co-production which depicts the heroic Soviet forces on their campaign to defeat Nazi Germany and its Allies from the Battle of Kursk in 1943 to the fall of Berlin. The flooding of the underground appears in Part V from which the following still is taken. Unfortunately this is almost a complete fabrication, the Kaiserhof station was not inundated until several days after the cessation of hostilities and ther would have been no way that armed German soldiers would still have been present, let alone civilians and Soviet troops all jostling each other for space.



A Soviet depiction of the U-Bahn flooding

What would have made better sense would have been to demolish the U-Bahn tunnel in the vicinity of Potsdamer Platz, and this is probably the most rational explanation since it is the same ‘A’-line that passes through Kaiserhof, the next station to the east and, as noted, adjacent to the Chancellery and the Führerbunker. Recall again what Beevor cites:



But then he goes on to infer that although Krukenberg ..



In my view this inference is unwarranted, given the date concerned (May 1st) and the military situation on the ground. If the defence of the remains of the Zitadelle are the objective, what could possibly be gained by sending sappers to demolish a rail tunnel now far behind the Russian positions, and whose destruction would have negligible effect on the military situation?

The following map shows the Russian and German positions on April 30th, i.e. the day before Mohnke and Krukenberg met for the last time. Dark rectangles denote Soviet units, white German. Note how far behind the front the Landwehr canal is even two days prior to the explosion of May 2nd.




Situation map as 30.04.45

Next up, a key source and then some concluding remarks.

Part VI

Here then are Meyer’s summary and concluding remarks, followed by my own.


The kernel of the Legend and the Unanswered Questions


Life in the Underground, in caverns, vaults or tunnels exercises a fascination, and not just for children. It seems that there is a macabre satisfaction to be found in the sinister darkness, which translates into an enormous interest in events in the ‘Underworld’. In the case of the tunnel flooding, for many people the unscrupulousness of the Nazis, who cared little even for their ‘own folk’, holds a special, horrible fascination. Like all catastrophes, the saga of the flooding grabs the attention. Nor surprisingly, the flooding of the Nord-Süd S-Bahn tunnel, and its consequences, have given rise to various legends, which have been disseminated over time by a wide variety of commentators.

Hardly coincidental, then, that the many books and other writings devoted to the subject should diverge wildly in their depictions of the extent of the flooding, its timing, and the identity and numbers of the victims. All rely to a greater or lesser extent upon the testimony of eyewitnesses. The witnesses themselves have necessarily placed their own experiences within the framework of other events and occurrences, and established connections in order to make their own recollections more explicable. Inconsequential water incursions in the tunnel become in this way associated with the Landwehr Canal explosion, and the people believe themselves to have been there when it happened.

Similarly there is the conviction, which surfaces again and again in the personal witness accounts, that the explosion occurred not at the Landwehr Canal, but in the tunnel where it passes under the Spree. Actually there also damage to the roof of the under-Spree tunnel, but this was a consequence of the demolition of the Ebert Bridge over the Spree. [One of the bridge pillars became lodged in the tunnel roof and, when removed by Soviet sappers to permit navigation on the river, exposed the hole in the roof, which then led to another flooding of the tunnel – Ed.] People who later saw the repair works in progress, and who had heard about the earlier flooding of the tunnel, easily arrived at the conclusion that the two were connected. For commentators who were not very familiar with the geography of the city came the additional handicap that when the underground rail system is referred to, it is the U-Bahn that is commonly meant, rather than the S-Bahn. Undoubtedly the authors of the numerous works that have dealt with the situation in Berlin in 1945 could have been more careful and reflective in avoiding such mistakes and half-truths.

After we had reviewed over 50 sources and reports dealing with the final battle in Berlin and the flooding of the Nord-Süd S-Bahn tunnel for their soundness and conclusiveness, as well as holding discussions with over two dozen contemporary witnesses, we were able to reconstruct at least part of the story and to refute certain myths. There can be no remaining doubt that the tunnel under the Landwehr Canal was blown up, and that this resulted in the flooding of the Nord-Süd S-Bahn. It is equally clear that the effort was professionally executed, and was not the result of an accident or a stray bomb. Although it is not possible to arrive at a precise death-toll, we can state that the number of victims lies between 100 and 200. It seems also indisputable that the explosion did not take place before the morning of May 2nd. It was not possible to establish a definitive time for the event, the possibility exists that it could have happened later.

This is supported by the testimonies of several witnesses who claim to have been present in the tunnel after the morning of May 2nd, and who experienced no sign of flooding. It seems likely however that it would take some time for the tunnel to become fully inundated. To bring clarity to this question one would need access to detailed construction plans to perform highly complex calculations. The question also remains open, as to how nobody present in the tunnels recalls either hearing a detonation or experiencing a pressure wave, which would have been very forceful inside the tunnel itself. Also indeterminable is the matter of who gave the order for the demolition and in whose interest it was to do so. It is not a foregone conclusion that German troops were responsible. Their motive for doing so is unfathomable. Conceivably it could have been done as a ‘scorched earth’ measure. From a military perspective, however, it seems more rational that the Red Army would implement such a measure in order to ‘flush out’ the last remnants of resistance from their tunnel-bastion. Whether the Soviets possessed the necessary local knowledge to position the explosives in the tunnel is another matter. Interestingly, however, the contemporary reports from the Soviet information bureau ‘Pravda’ contain no mention of the tunnel flooding. In view of the otherwise highly detailed reporting of the battle itself, and each minor advance, this is somewhat intriguing. The flooding of the tunnel by the Nazis would seem to have been ideal propaganda material, being a prime example of the malicious disregard for humanity on the part of the NS regime.

Whether any further light can be shed on this remains to be seen. The available source materials have been thoroughly examined, and can provide little further enlightenment. One might hope that in the future the Deutsch Reichsbahn will provide greater access to its archives than is presently the case, and that the currently dispersed depositories can be amalgamated and properly catalogued, as to facilitate further research. [At the time of writing the DRB was still a separate entity – the East German State Railway - as it had been during the entire period of the DDR – Ed.] Finally it is to be hoped that the gradual opening up of the contemporary Soviet archives might one provide a new perspective on the event.


My own conclusions

Based on everything that I have read thus far, I have come to the following conclusions.

1. There was no Hitler Flooding Order, or if there was, it was never executed. All accounts that mention such an order refer to an order to deliberately flood the U-Bahn, which would have made some practical sense but which never happened, and not to a flooding of the S-Bahn, which made absolutely no sense from the German perspective, but which actually happened (and subsequently led to some secondary flooding of the U-Bahn, but after the cessation of hostilities). The scene depicted in the Soviet film “Liberation” never happened since the Stadtmitte U-Bahn station had long since been evacuated before it became flooded. It is pure Soviet propaganda.
2. It is likely that the S-Bahn tunnel under the Landwehr Canal had been prepared for demolition (as had all other bridges and underwater tunnels) by the defending forces.
3. Nobody on the German side, not even Krukenberg who was in Soviet captivity for ten years. has ever come forward to admit an complicity in the explosion.
4. The area affected by the explosion was far behind the Russian lines by May 2nd. It seems most likely that the order for the actual demolition was given by a local Soviet commander on his own initiative, after Russian troops had come across the prepared charges in the tunnel. The motivation would have been to ‘flush out’ the last fanatical resistance in the tunnels, however anybody familiar with the disposition of the last defending units or the Berlin municipal rail system would not have chosen to flood the S-Bahn tunnel for that purpose. Whoever did it was obviously unaware that the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn are physically separate systems, and it was only the serendipitous presence of the pedestrian tunnel at the Friedrichstaße Bahnhof 5 km to the north that enabled the flood water to pass from the S-Bahn system into the U-Bahn.
5. The Soviet perpetrators must have been silenced in one way or another, and any reference to the operation censored out of Soviet accounts. Meyer recounts in the foreword to her book the fact that key files relating to the events are missing from the Berlin State Archives (they are listed in the general catalogue but not physically present). The rationale for the Soviet silence would of course have been the propagation of the HFO myth.
6. Since all the key archives and source materials, particularly those relating to the post-war activities of the BVG and Deutsche Reichsbahn, remained under East German control until 1990 at least, there would have been ample opportunity to remove compromising material.

The End