The bombs on Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen, Stein am Rhein
Further reading: Aerial incidents in Switzerland in World War II (Wikipedia), Art follows bombs (Swiss National Museum)
1 April 1944 (Schaffhausen). Shortly before 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning, a formation of American B-24 «Liberator» bombers, which had taken off from England to strike the IG Farben chemical works in Ludwigshafen, about 200 kilometres further north, mistook Schaffhausen for a German city: bad weather, a strong tailwind and faulty radar had taken it off course. In about forty seconds some 370 high-explosive and incendiary bombs fell on the city. Many inhabitants, used to air-raid alarms, went out into the street to watch the aircraft instead of going down to the shelters.
A city in flames. 40 people died, about 270 were injured and more than 400 were left homeless; over a thousand workers lost their jobs because the factories were destroyed. The station, houses in the old town and the Natural History Museum on the Herrenacker burned. At the Museum zu Allerheiligen, opened in 1938, an incendiary bomb destroyed the room devoted to the Schaffhausen Renaissance painter Tobias Stimmer: more than 80 paintings were lost. It is the most serious bombing ever suffered by a Swiss city.
Apologies, compensation and solidarity. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented the apologies of the United States, which by October 1944 paid 4 million dollars in compensation. A few days after the bombing the Neue Zürcher Zeitung launched a collection for the museum that raised about 150,000 francs, and cantons, cities and private individuals from all over Switzerland donated some eighty works. For a long time it was believed to be a deliberate punishment of Schaffhausen industries working for Germany; American and British archives show that it was a mistake. Every 1 April the city's bells ring in memory of the victims.
Neutrality violated from the sky (1940–1945). Swiss airspace was constantly crossed by aircraft of both sides: in 1940 Swiss anti-aircraft guns and fighters clashed with the Luftwaffe, and later about 1,700 American airmen landed in Switzerland and were interned. Allied bombs fell on Swiss territory by mistake some seventy times: on 22 February 1945 nine people died in Stein am Rhein, and on 4 March 1945 Basel and Zurich were hit. In 1949 the United States paid Switzerland a further 62 million francs in settlement of all war damage.
The old town of Schaffhausen after the bombing, aerial photograph of 2 May 1944
Swiss Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, Wikimedia Commons
A rebuilt house in the Neustadt of Schaffhausen: «destroyed by the airmen on 1 April 1944»
Photo: Paebi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The buildings hit between the railway and the Rhine, aerial photograph of 2 May 1944
Swiss Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, Wikimedia Commons
B-24 «Liberator» bombers of the US 8th Air Force in flight, around 1943: the same type of aircraft that hit Schaffhausen
U.S. Army Air Forces, Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Schaffhausen a month after the bombing, aerial photograph of 2 May 1944
Swiss Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, Wikimedia Commons
The Zum Thiergarten house, destroyed by the bombs on 1 April 1944 and rebuilt in 1945
Photo: JoachimKohler-HB, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The plaque on the Untertor in Stein am Rhein commemorates the nine victims of the bombing of 22 February 1945; it was donated in 1995 by the Ulrico Hoepli Foundation
Photo: Roland.h.bueb, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The bombing of Stein am Rhein, 1945 (in German)
SRF Archiv