Heligoland (26 page)

Hitler’s suicide that very day, 28 April, and the meeting of American and Russian troops on the Elbe on the 26th, meant the end of the war could not be far off. It came on 4 May, after a surrender document was signed in a small tent on Luneburg Heath. The following morning
The Times
reported the German capitulation with the headline ‘Biggest Mass Surrender’. Astonishingly, in this historic report of the war’s end in Europe, Heligoland was apparently regarded as being of such noteworthy significance that it had its own piece titled ‘Heligoland’s War Ends’. Field Marshal Montgomery had insisted in his ultimatum to the Germans at Luneburg that they ‘must surrender to me unconditionally all German forces in Holland, Friesland, and the Frisian Islands, and in
Heligoland
’.
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Subsequently puzzled by what to do with the captured island, Montgomery’s headquarters wrote on 22 May 1945 to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, to sound out his views on the prospect of Heligoland being utilised by the British Army as a concentration camp. Eisenhower immediately considered the idea, but the British Army declined the opportunity to use Heligoland for such a purpose.

Even on the very day of the Luneberg signing the Admiralty was taking no chances that the RAF had finally accomplished the silencing of Heligoland’s huge guns. It stood ready to bring into action monitors similar to the pugnacious HMS
Mersey
and HMS
Severn
, which Churchill had ordered to be constructed in 1913 in anticipation of a British invasion of the island. On 4 May the English admiral in command of naval forces in the Heligoland Bight issued a memo concerning the monitors, which ‘have been brought to 4 hours’ notice to steam and I consider these should accompany the minesweeping force to provide retaliatory action against Heligoland, should interference be experienced’.
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Given the severity of the bombing of Heligoland on 18–19 April 1945, German military losses there were surprisingly light: just over one hundred men were killed, mostly at the flak guns. Miraculously, all but three Heligolanders had survived unscathed, deep in their air-raid shelter. But for all of them, life was to change dramatically. With every house in the Oberland and Unterland either destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, the entire population was now homeless. The only protection afforded them from the elements were the air-raid shelters, but those cramped spaces could only realistically serve to provide a few hours’ refuge. Apparently there was not enough space for them in the labyrinth of military underground tunnels, either. It seemed to the German naval authorities that the only alternative was for them to be deported to the mainland. This immediately meant a few new and entirely unexpected worries: where would they go, how long would they be gone, and what would happen to their beloved island in their absence? By the evening of 21 April four available German steamers had taken the islanders across the dangerous waters of the Bight – during which journey they were at risk of being sunk by Allied submarines or aircraft – to the mainland to begin their uncertain future.

Victorious though Britain was, she struggled to muster enough of her own warships for the purpose of communicating with Heligoland. Astonishingly, the British occupation of the island began when an English admiral and an infantry company of Scots Guards were conveyed there in captured enemy warships. On 11 May 1945 Rear-Admiral Muirhead Gould, the naval commander in north-west Germany, travelled to Heligoland with a staff of gunnery and disarmament experts in a German R-boat (a small but powerfully armed coastal escort vessel), with a German crew. Before the admiral was piped aboard, the breech-blocks of the guns were removed and the scuttling charges disarmed. During the voyage the German crew gathered aft, except for the commanding officer who remained on the bridge. As they approached the island this officer, proudly wearing the Iron Cross, respectfully addressed the Admiral: ‘Heligoland in sight, Sir.’

At that stage there appeared five ships of the 7th German Minesweeping Flotilla, ships of the famous M-class which had given the Royal Navy so much trouble during the war. These ships carried the Scots Guards detachment who were to form the temporary garrison under the command of Major Raeburn. As they steamed into the dock at Heligoland they passed two merchant ships full of some 2,500 German prisoners. These men had made up the island’s garrison and manned its guns: not just the great guns of the fortress, which had never been fired in anger, but also the flak guns, which had become busy only late in the war. Admiral Muirhead Gould stepped ashore on a jetty still strewn with debris from the last RAF raid. One member of his staff produced a document by which the Germans bound themselves to keep the surrender terms faithfully and in detail. Kapitan Roeggeler, the most senior German officer present, signed at once, using an overturned water-tank as a table.

The British personnel soon began to explore the island, their main concern being to see how many guns had been put out of action in the two RAF raids. Several big ones had been knocked sideways, with great gaping holes in their turrets. One gun turret was pointing skyward – but little was left of it apart from the barrel. It seemed evident that no emplacement could withstand a direct hit from the earthquake bombs.

Just outside the submarine harbour were seven sleek black U-boats. Whether or not they had been stationed at Heligoland was not apparent. Close inspection showed that – in contrast to the turrets – the huge, long U-boat shelters with three pens had suffered no damage, except that bits of concrete had been chipped off the roof. Inside, the 14ft thick roof showed no sign of even a crack and all the apparatus for repair and maintenance was in good condition. Outside, the spring sun blazed strongly down on the wreckage of homes and gun batteries, but inside the U-boat shelter it was cool and refreshing.
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The surviving fortifications at that time were mainly centred on the island’s south-east corner. Beneath the gun emplacements lay a honeycomb of underground shelters, vaults and passages. They contained machines and other items worth millions of pounds which might serve the cause of peaceful reconstruction – modern machines, a completely equipped power station, diesel trains all ready to take to the rails, plus materials and tools of all kinds. What has never been brought to light is that Lt-Com. Kenneth Aylwin, who had been left in charge by Muirhead Gould, between 11 and 17 May 1945 (when the island was finally abandoned) gradually discovered the island’s defences, contrary to what had been assumed, were anything but formidable. In a secret memo to the Admiralty,
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Aylwin soon reported that a minefield against Aphrodite radio-controlled bomber attackers had been found at the harbour entrance; although in all other respects the fortress’s remaining armaments were astonishingly out of date. The sighting and control systems in the red flak tower were pre-war; throughout the island all the guns were only fired by percussion; the daunting 12inch guns at the Schröder battery had originally been made for the old battleship
Derfflinger
; while the 6inch guns at the southern battery, which had come from another heavy WWI warship, had been made in 1901! Other than some barbed wire there were so few defences against a landing taking place the island could have been captured from the sea had an assault been made a few hours after the 1,000-bomber raid. Three German officers, having been quizzed as to why most of the gun equipment was so old, said: ‘First came the Luftwaffe, then the Navy, then the West Wall, then the Eastern Front, then everything else, and finally Heligoland.’ They regarded themselves as the fifth front.

During the interrogation of Kapitan Leutnant Deckert, a specialist in torpedo work, Aylwin was astonished to learn that the island had
not
been used as a U-boat base, and no U-boat had ever drawn any torpedoes or mines from the huge stockpiles there. Orders had been received from the German Admiralty, in conformity with the general scorched earth policy, to blow up the military installations; but this was never done. But also, as the war neared its end there had evidently been an intention to turn Heligoland into a supply base as part of a wider German scheme to establish a northern redoubt. Accordingly, Aylwin was able to report, he had uncovered a huge intact store of food on the island – enough for 5,000 people for three months. The significance of that, which was never publicly disclosed, was that those foodstocks were of such quantity that the means were available to enable the Heligolanders to survive on the island. Yet the mass deportation of civilians had gone ahead.

Britain’s formal need to bring about the destruction of all of these defences resulted from the terms of the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, which established the political and economic principles governing the treatment of Germany in the initial period of Allied control. It was held that Potsdam required the complete disarmament of the German armed forces and the destruction of all German fortifications and military installations surplus to Allied requirements. In the process of calculating what would be required to destroy the fortifications on each of the Frisian Islands, in 1945 Field Marshal Montgomery’s planners carefully estimated that the effort needed to accomplish that on Heligoland would be 48,400 hours of labour, and 730 tons of explosives.

In July 1945 a naval party, NP 1746, under the command of Commander F.W. Sandwich RN, came ashore and started work on primary disarmament. Some 4,300 tons of machinery, equipment and all the food were transferred to Cuxhaven and 500 tons of ammunition were dumped in the sea, just a few hundred yards due north of the roadstead between Heligoland and Dune. A careful glance at the latest Admiralty chart shows that the remains of those bombs are still there. Significantly, this clearance operation was already in progress before the Potsdam Conference, which took place on 17 July and 2 August 1945.

The Heligolanders suspected at the time that Britain’s overriding wish was to destroy the island itself. When they had been compelled to leave their island they had been allowed to take with them only what they could carry. It was for this reason that, in addition to the German naval and military officers who had awaited Muirhead Gould’s arrival on the island, there stood a crowd of passing fishermen, many of them hoping that the mass evacuation of the island might be rescinded. It was a forlorn hope. The islanders’ suspicions of British motives were well founded. At the Potsdam Conference British negotiators evidently made no effort to spare some of the island’s fortified facilities for the peaceful use of the Heligolanders. The diplomatic process rolled on and soon the term ‘fortification’ was defined for the purpose of Potsdam in Control Council Directive no. 22. That scheduled the Heligoland U-boat shelters as a Priority One target, due for destruction by June 1947; the remainder of the fortifications were Priority Two, to be destroyed by December 1948.

Soon after the Potsdam Conference, Sandwich’s naval party was withdrawn. This was to enable the RAF to do special bomb trials with the submarine shelters as the target, for the next few months. By 1946 the most curious aspect of Britain’s handling of this postwar bombing activity against Heligoland was that no one seemed to be in overall charge. And yet, almost by a hidden hand, various military activities were being arranged to take place there. It was almost as if someone, or some secretive small group, had reason to be especially careful not to be seen to be associated with such activities. Whatever it was, it was a dangerous game because the consequences were becoming lethal. On 19 July 1946 a team of Royal Marine demolition experts had just arrived by boat to reconnoitre the island when they realised something was very wrong. Overhead there was the roar of approaching heavy aircraft and RAF bombers passed over on their final sortie to drop experimental bombs on the island. Furious messages were sent between the differing forces as the bombs were already falling. By sheer chance there were no casualties. Heading the reconnaissance party was Captain L.P. Skipwith RN, the naval officer in command at Cuxhaven. He was furious as he stormed about the already badly cratered island. On completing his inspection he turned to a subordinate, Frank Woosnam, who was to supervise the implementation of the Potsdam directives, and instructed him to arrange to ‘blow the bloody place up’.

It was to be a historic act of demolition, perhaps the greatest the Royal Navy had ever performed. Preparations for Operation ‘Big Bang’, the purpose of which was to destroy the fortifications in one massive explosion, commenced on 15 August 1946 when the Royal Navy took to the island the accommodation hulk
Royal Prince
, aboard which was a demolition team consisting of a Royal Marine captain, 3 officers, 3 petty officers, 12 German technicians and 70 German labourers. Some of the explosive power was already there in the form of many hundreds of torpedo warheads and depth-charges, tens of thousands of shells and grenades, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition. The problem was how to make absolutely sure it all exploded simultaneously. The simple answer to this puzzle unexpectedly came to Woosnam while he was having a bath: he would rig the detonator wires like the ring main-type arrangement of a battleship. Thus if some of them were fractured at the moment of explosion the necessary current to the other detonators would reach them by other wires.

It was less clear what he would need to import from the mainland to be sure of achieving such a massive explosion. Wanting to be certain that all the munitions exploded, Woosnam sent a request to the British authorities in Germany for appropriate-quality explosive detonators. Inexplicably he was ordered to accept a massive consignment of TNT – 455,591 boxes! Also being sent from the mainland were many hundreds of tons of old munitions. Notionally these were also to be used to enhance the explosion in more inaccessible quarters of the fortifications. The transportation of these unsuitable and unwanted explosives to the island was a perilous operation. That winter was bitterly cold; the Elbe froze solid and conditions on Heligoland itself were bleak indeed. Bad weather and storms in the Bight greatly hampered the process of transferring the astonishing number of boxes of TNT to the island in the unseaworthy, shallow-draft landing-craft supplied.
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