Bombing of Lübeck in World War II During World War II , the city of Lübeck was the first German city to be attacked in substantial numbers by the Royal Air Force . The attack on the night of 28 March 1942 created a firestorm that caused severe damage to the historic centre , with bombs destroying three of the main churches and large parts of the built - up area . It led to the retaliatory ' Baedeker ' raids on historic British cities . Although a port , Lübeck was mainly a cultural centre and only lightly defended . The bombing on 28 March 1942 was the first major success for RAF Bomber Command against a German city , and followed the Area Bombing Directive issued to the RAF on 14 February 1942 which authorized the targeting of civilian areas . Main raid . Lübeck , a Hanseatic city and cultural centre on the shores of the Baltic Sea , was easy to find under the light of the full moon on the Saturday night of 28 March 1942 and the early hours of 29 March ( Palm Sunday ) . Because of the hoar frost there was clear visibility and the waters of the Trave , the Elbe - Lübeck Canal , " Wakenitz " and the Bay of Lübeck were reflecting the moonlight . 234 Wellington and Stirling bombers dropped about 400 tons of bombs including 25 , 000 incendiary device s and a number of 1 . 8 tonne landmines . RAF Bomber Command lost twelve aircraft in the attack . There were few defences , so some crews attacked at 600 metres ( 2 , 000 feet ) although the average bombing height was just over 10 , 000 feet . The attack took place in three waves , the first , which arrived over Lübeck at 23 : 18 , consisting of experienced crews in aircraft fitted with Gee electronic navigation systems ( Lübeck was beyond the range of Gee but it helped with preliminary navigation ) . The raid finished at 02 : 58 on Sunday morning . 191 crews claimed successful attacks . Blockbuster bomb s in the first wave of the raid opened the brick and copper roofs of the buildings and the following incendiaries set them afire . 1 , 468 ( or 7 . 1 % ) of the buildings in Lübeck were destroyed , 2 , 180 ( 10 . 6 % ) were seriously damaged and 9 , 103 ( 44 . 3 % ) were lightly damaged ; these represented 62 per cent of all buildings in Lübeck . The bombing of Lübeck struck a corridor about 300 metres ( 330 yards ) wide from Lübeck Cathedral to St . Peter ' s Church , the town hall and St . Mary ' s Church . There was another minor area of damage north of St . Giles ( Aegidienkirche ) . St . Lorenz , a residential suburb in the west of the Holstentor , was severely damaged . The German police reported 301 people dead , three people missing , and 783 injured . More than 15 , 000 people lost their homes . Arthur " Bomber " Harris , Air Officer Commanding Bomber Command , described Lübeck as " built more like a fire - lighter than a human habitation . " He wrote of the raid that " [ Lübeck ] went up in flames " because " it was a city of moderate size of some importance as a port , and with some submarine building yards of moderate size not far from it . It was not a vital target , but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city " . He goes on to describe that the loss of 5 . 5 % of the attacking force was no more than to be expected on a clear moonlit night , but if that loss rate was to continue for any length of time RAF Bomber Command would not be able to " operate at the fullest intensity of which it were capable " . Aftermath and retaliation . A . C . Grayling in his book , " Among the Dead Cities " , makes the point that as the Area Bombing Directive issued to the RAF on 14 February 1942 focused on undermining the " morale of the enemy civil population " , Lübeck - with its many timbered medieval buildings - was chosen because the RAF " Air Staff were eager to experiment with a bombing technique using a high proportion of incendiaries " to help them carry out the directive . The RAF was well aware that the technique of using a high proportion of incendiaries during bombing raids was effective because cities such as Coventry had been subject to such attacks by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz . Winston Churchill wrote to the US President Franklin D . Roosevelt to inform him that similar " Coventry - scale " attacks would be mounted throughout the summer . The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin congratulated Churchill on the outcome , expressing his satisfaction at the " merciless bombing " and expressing the hope that such attacks would cause severe damage to German public morale – a key objective for Churchill . A series of follow - up attacks , taking much the same pattern , was mounted against Rostock between 24 – 7 April 1942 . The German authorities mounted a prompt relief operation for the city ' s dispossessed . 25 , 000 people had been left homeless by the raid . The local branch of the National Socialist People ' s Welfare ( NSV ) organisation opened food stores and distributed 1 . 8 million oranges , 10 tonnes of apples , 40 , 000 loaves of bread , 16 , 000 eggs , 5 , 000 pounds of butter , 3 , 500 cans of food , 2 , 800 boxes of smoked herrings and 50 barrels of Bismarck herrings . However , substantial amounts of luxury goods such as champagne , spirits , chocolates , clothing and shoes were pilfered by NSV officials . A number of them were arrested and in August 1942 three were sentenced to death for embezzlement with a further eleven jailed . The incident harmed the NSV ' s image , which had been positive up to that point . The Nazi leadership was alarmed at the possible impact of the raid on civilian morale . In the opinion of Joseph Goebbels , the Propaganda Minister , the raid fulfilled the RAF ' s directive , as he wrote in his diary : " The damage is really enormous , I have been shown a newsreel of the destruction . It is horrible . One can well imagine how such a bombardment affects the population . " He commented : " Thank God , it is a North German population , which on the whole is much tougher than the Germans in the south or south - east . We can ' t get away from the fact that the English air - raids have increased in scope and importance ; if they can be continued on these lines , they might conceivably have a demoralising effect on the population . " Despite Goebbels ' fears , civilian morale in Lübeck held up and the effect of the bombing on the city ' s economic life was soon overcome . To help offset the damage the raid had on German morale , the German hierarchy launched a well publicized raid on Exeter on 23 April 1942 , which was the first of the " Baedeker raids " . Red Cross port . In 1944 Eric Warburg , liaison officer between US Army Air Forces and RAF , and Swiss diplomat Carl Jacob Burckhardt , as president of the International Committee of the Red Cross , declared the Lübeck port a " Red Cross port " to supply ( under the Geneva Convention ) allied prisoners of war in German custody with ships under Swedish flag from Gothenburg , which protected the city from further Allied air strikes . The mail and the food was brought to the POW camps all over Germany by truck under supervision of the Swedish Red Cross and its vice president Folke Bernadotte , who was in charge of the White Buses too . ( Bernadotte met Heinrich Himmler in Lübeck in spring 1945 , when Himmler made his offer of surrender to the allies . ) Lübeck martyrs . A group of three Catholic clergymen , Johannes Prassek , Eduard Müller and Hermann Lange , and an Evangelical Lutheran pastor , Karl Friedrich Stellbrink , were arrested following the raid , tried by the People ' s Court in 1943 and sentenced to death by decapitation ; all were beheaded on 10 November 1943 , in the Hamburg prison at " Holstenglacis " . Stellbrink had explained the raid next morning in his Palm Sunday sermon as a " trial by ordeal " , which the Nazi authorities interpreted to be an attack on their system of government and as such undermined morale and aided the enemy . Film . The bombing of the city served as the climax of the 1944 German film " The Degenhardts " directed by Werner Klingler . The film , featuring the home front activities of a family in Lübeck , attempted to use the raid as moral justification for continued resistance against the Allies . Reconstruction and memorial . Under wartime and postwar conditions it took until 1948 to remove most of the construction waste and demolition rubble . The remaining and the rebuilt parts of the old town are now part of the World Heritage Site . The bells that fell from the burning tower of St . Mary ' s church in a partly melted state have been left in the south tower as a memorial to the event . Since the reconstruction of St . Mary had priority , the reconstruction of the cathedral was not finished before 1982 , the reconstruction of St . Peter not before 1986 . Another memorial to the people who were killed or displaced by the bombing is found in the Lübeck Ehrenfriedhof ( cemetery ) where there is a cenotaph and memorials to both wars . The memorial of the bombing of Lübeck is a statue by the sculptor Joseph Krautwald , who was commissioned in the 1960s to produce a work that reflected the experience of the victims . The statue , named " Die Mutter " ( the mother ) , was carved from local coquina and shows a mourning woman with two little children . It is placed in the center of the circle surrounded by the tombstones of those who died that night .