“In the sky, like creatures from a completely different, future world, German airships were flying. All exactly the same in shape and size, aiming at the same goal, like a wolf pack, where each wolf knows exactly its place … Moving forward, the airships crushed block after block with the same ease with which a child crumbles a city made of cubes. Ruins and blazing fires were left behind, piled and scattered dead bodies. Men, women, and children lay interspersed, like some Arabs, Zulu, or Chinese. The central part of the city turned into a huge bonfire, from which there was no escape. Cars, trains, ferries – everything stopped, and in this gloomy confusion the maddened fugitives met only the horror of destruction and the fire of fires.
This excerpt is taken from the novel The War in the Air by the English science fiction writer H.G. Wells. It describes how the gigantic German air fleet attacks England and the United States, how huge German airships mercilessly sink squadrons of battleships in the Atlantic, bombard factories and factories with bombs, and turn cities into ruins.
The author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds wrote these lines in 1907, when the bombing of London by German airships seemed no more real than the landing of the Martians at Woking (Surrey).
In the same 1907, Ferdinand von Zeppelin was teetering on the brink of despair. The German count had already spent all his considerable fortune, pledged family jewels, but the devices he built stubbornly refused to fly. With great difficulty, they rose into the air, unsuccessfully fought the elements, and then fell, fell apart, burned and drowned in Lake Constance.
It seemed that the idea of creating large controlled aircraft lighter than air, but with a rigid frame would remain a bold fantasy of the “mad count”. However, the 69-year-old fanatic did not want to give up. Having survived another catastrophe, he started all over again with true German tenacity.
And as a result, seven years later, the horror that H.G. Wells foresaw and described became a reality. The First World War began, and the German zeppelins turned into a nightmare of big cities – they bombed Antwerp, Warsaw, Paris, London, Liverpool …
On January 21, 1915, the German Kölnische Zeitung wrote in an editorial: “Our Zeppelins have raised a fiery right hand over Britain. Arrogant England trembles, awaiting with horror more irresistible blows. The most perfect weapon, created by the genius of German engineers – the airship – is capable of striking our enemy in the very heart. An eye for an eye, blood for blood. This is the fastest way to end the war victoriously, and therefore the most humane. “