The air raid of 9 February 1945
A US Air Force raid aimed at the Gustloff armaments works north of Weimar. Eight of ten bombs fell in one tight cluster, killing concentration camp prisoners at their machines, and the Nationaltheater was destroyed the same day.
The bombers that came for Weimar on 9 February 1945 were not aiming at the old town but at the arms factory north of it, and most of the people they killed were the prisoners forced to work there.
The target was the factory
North of the city stood the Gustloff works, an armaments plant belonging to the Gustloff foundation, which also ran a subsidiary inside the Buchenwald camp and drew its workforce from it. Of the ten bombs the US Air Force dropped, eight landed there, inside a very small area.[1] Precision of that kind was rare in 1945 and it did nothing for the people underneath it.
The night shift
Two barrack camps of wooden buildings held the shift that was resting, and they were destroyed outright. The memorial counts 356 prisoners killed during the attack and more who died of their wounds in the days after, from thirteen European countries.[1] One of them was Raphaël Élizé — veterinary surgeon, resistance member, and the first man of mixed race and first Antillean to be mayor of a commune in mainland France, deported to Buchenwald thirteen months earlier.
The theatre ends the war as a factory
The same raid destroyed the Deutsches Nationaltheater. It had been shut since September 1944 and handed to Siemens & Halske for armaments production,[2] so the hall that held the National Assembly in 1919 and the party congress in 1926 was, by the end, a workshop — and it was bombed as one.
Sources
- Luftangriff, 9. Februar 1945 — Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Deutsches Nationaltheater — weimar-im-ns.de, retrieved 29 August 2026
Historical figures
Historical figures
1891–1945 • veterinary surgeon • mayor • resistance member
Killed in the raid on the Gustloff works, where he was among the prisoners set to armaments labour.
Historic sites
Historic sites
Markt, east side at the corner of Grüner Markt, Weimar
The raid of 9 February 1945 destroyed the building completely; only the facade was put back, between 1968 and 1971.
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
The theatre was destroyed in this raid, having been closed and used as an armaments plant since September 1944.
Stages and venues
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
The house's own account of its years under National Socialism ends with its destruction on 9 February 1945.
Period
1933–1945
The day the war reached the town itself, at the plant where camp prisoners were made to work.
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
From July 1937 the SS had prisoners build a camp on the Ettersberg, the wooded hill above the town. 277,800 people from more than fifty countries were held there; 56,000 did not survive.
The dead at the Gustloff works were Buchenwald prisoners: the camp supplied the labour that the raid destroyed along with the plant.
A house bombed down to its façade and its foyer was the first German theatre rebuilt after the war — and it opened again with Goethe.
The raid this reopening answers — it left the theatre as a façade and a foyer.