Schweinfurt male citizens are interned near a concrete air raid shelter shortly after the U.S. Army entered the city on 11 April 1945. This area was a detention and/or processing area set up by the U.S. military authorities. The shelter was the so-called Goethe-Bunker, located today on Degner Straße. This photo and the one below were taken by the famous Life Magazine photographer Margaret Bourke-White.  (TimePics collection) (see also Margaret Bourke-White, "Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly" (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1946)

Lining up at the Goethe-Bunker in 1945, and the same view today.  (TimePics collection)

This U.S. Army Signal Corps photo dated 11 April 1945 shows the other side of the Goethe-Bunker.  (U.S. Army photo, courtesy Mike Haines)

The Goethe-Bunker was numbered A4 in the scheme of Schweinfurt air-raid protection bunkers, built in 1941 to  hold 966 people, mostly intended to shelter workers from the nearby Kugelfischer factory. It is apparently unused today. The iron grille door in the right-hand photo leads inside. This door still carries a stylized version of the insignia for the Luftschutz Service (seen below).

Air raid shelters in Schweinfurt appeared in several different configurations. This large brick-clad Luftschutzbunker is located on Ernst-Sachs-Straße, and was intended for workers at the Fichtel & Sachs and VKF bearing factories. It was numbered A8, built in 1941 to hold 1019 people.

Shelter A7 is located on Galgenleite street. It was commonly called the Gartenstadtbunker, and was built in 1941 to shelter 598 people. The families of many of the industrial workers lived in this area, and took shelter here during the bombing attacks.

Shelter A5 is located on Kleinfürleinsweg in Gartenstadt. It was built in 1941 to hold 348 personnel. The concrete shelter on the right, similar to the Goethe-Bunker, is at Blaue Leite and Fritz-Soldman Straße in the Gartenstadt area. It was numbered A6, built in 1941 for 829 people.  

This large concrete air raid shelter is located across the street from the Hauptbahnhof, on Wohlfahrtstraße. Bunker A10, also called the Kirdorfbunker, was built in 1941 to protect railway workers at the main city train station, as well as the nearby Kugelfischer factory, a total of 1400-1500 personnel.  (My thanks to Mike Haines for pointing this bunker out to me.)

The largest air raid shelter in Schweinfurt was this concrete bunker at the Spitalsee Platz, built in 1943 to protect 1639 people. A display in the shelter commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1995.

The photo on the left shows the Spitalseebunker in the ruins of Schweinfurt, following the U.S. occupation. On the right, the Spitalseebunker can be seen at the upper right.  (Left - U.S. Army photo; right - Stadtarchiv Schweinfurt)

Monument beside the Spitalsee air raid shelter, erected in 1998 to the memory of the bombing attack victims on both sides, military and civilian. The wording is in both German and English, but while the German honors all the victims, 1943-45, the English is written only for the casualties of the "Black Thursday" attack, 14 October 1943, since this memorial was erected by the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association (founded to honor those who fought in the 14 October battle).

Monument in the Schweinfurt city cemetery, over a mass grave containing the bodies of 143 citizens who died in the bombing attacks from 1943-1945. "Black Thursday" was the day of highest casualties for the Allies, but the most costly attack to Schweinfurt civilians was the combined 8th Air Force and RAF attacks on 24-25 February 1944, during which some 700 aircraft dropped some 3500 high explosive bombs and 33,000 incendiary bombs, killing 362 civilians - a third of the total for the war (1079). Many of these victims were French and Russian prisoners of war, forced to work in the ball bearing factories to take the places of German men who were serving at the front.

Several large plots in the Schweinfurt city cemetery contain the graves of bombing victims. On the left is a photo of a memorial ceremony in 1944 (the large banner carries the common runic symbol for death). On the right, the same plot today - in the background is the memorial to Ernst Sachs, inventor of the freewheeling bicycle pedal-brake mechanism.