JG 54 pilots Thyben and Pahl in Courland, December 1944
By Christmas 1944, the war was going extremely badly for the Germans. Since the Allied landings in Normandy and the huge Russian offensive in the East launched in June and July 1944, both Eastern and Western Fronts had been drawing ever closer. Some two months prior to Christmas 1944, the city of Aachen had become the first major German town to be captured by the Allies. The Soviets had driven into East Prussia in October 1944. The Red Army has already liberated two concentration camps, while the SS was already clearing the Auschwitz extermination camp. SS man Karl Höcker was nonetheless photographed lighting candles by the Christmas tree in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In his Christmas speech, Goebbels referenced the on-going offensive in the Ardennes - the last major attack launched by the Germans on 16 December 1944; ‘What German heart would not beat faster with pride in Christendom when I think here of our soldiers who have now been back on the offensive in the West for over a week?' But even on Christmas Eve the Allies flew massive bombing raids, the war having long since returned to the country from which it started - the 3rd BD of the US 8th AF launched nearly 2,000 B-17s and B-24s against airfields in south-west Germany. ‘There were several heavy air raids here during the Christmas of 1944, all of which I survived in a shaky cellar,’ reported one eyewitness from Bonn. The sirens also sounded in Cologne on 24 December 1944. The official statistics record the dropping of 490 high-explosive bombs between 6.15 pm and 7.25 pm alone.....(from a Westdeutscher Rundfunk WDR2 radio recording, 'Letzte Kriegsweihnacht')