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Berlin -

Civilians clear rubble away from a street in front of the wrecked Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda—the Ordenspalais—in July 1945. The building was Joseph Goebbels' seat of power.

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Berlin -

The plush Kaiserhof Hotel on Unter Den Linden, Berlin's most fashionable boulevard, was completely destroyed in the last weeks of the war.

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Berlin -

The ruined Reichstag building. It was a symbolic target for the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin. Today, it is the seat of the German Bundestag.

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Berlin -

Almost completely destroyed during the final months of the war, both the Old and the New Reich Chancellery complex was later demolished. The original building is seen here from Wilhelmstraße on August 15, 1947.

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Berlin -

Prinz-Albrecht-Palais housed the headquarters of the Gestapo. It too was located on Wilhelmstraße. The ruins were cleared in 1955 and today the area is used for the Topography of Terror exhibition, which focuses on the human rights abuses of the Nazi police state.

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Berlin -

The once impregnable Führerbunker lies in ruins after demolition in 1947. Hitler took up residence here on January 16, 1945, and it became the center of the Nazi regime until the last week of the Second World War in Europe.

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Munich -

Munich was the traditional powerbase of the Nazis. Heavily bombed by the Allies, the city suffered widespread damage. Pictured: the landmark onion-domed towers of the Frauenkirche provide a post-war backdrop as civilians file through the rubble.

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Munich -

A US troop carrier drives through the center of Munich past Marienplatz and the severely damaged Old Town Hall on April 29, 1945, just a few days before the end of the war.

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Munich -

US troops chat with civilians in front of the Bürgerbräukeller in 1945. It was here that Adolf Hitler launched the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. It was also in this building that Georg Elser and others planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders on November 8, 1939. The Bürgerbräukeller was demolished in 1979.

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Cologne -

Cologne Cathedral miraculously survived the Second World War, while many other surrounding city buildings did not.

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Cologne -

The view from one of the cathedral spires clearly shows the extent of the Allied bombardment of Cologne. The Gothic church—the largest of its kind in Northern Europe—is today one of Germany's most popular visitor attractions.

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Cologne -

Cologne's railway station was a strategic target for the US Eighth Air Force and Britain's RAF.

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Hamburg -

Hamburg pictured on the day the city's defenders capitulated—May 3, 1945. The port city was devastated, and almost completely deserted. Seen here are the ruined dock and railway areas.

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Hamburg -

The center of Hamburg was obliterated. Combined Allied bombing on July 23, 1943 had created a firestorm that killed an estimated 43,000 civilians, an attack from which the once thriving port never recovered from.

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Hamburg -

Hamburg's severely damaged St. Catherine's Church was one of the few buildings left standing after the air raid. It was restored between 1950 and 1957.

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Nuremberg -

State archives record that over half of the old-walled section of Nuremberg was destroyed in air raids during the war. This is the scene of devastation looking across the north bank of the Pegnitz River.

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Nuremberg -

Nuremberg found itself in Allied crosshairs on numerous occasions, the Nazi Party having chosen the city to be the site of huge Nazi Party conventions—the Nuremberg rallies. After the city fell in April 1945, men of the US 7th Army clambered over the dais of the Luitpoldarena to wave American flags at the camera.

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Nuremberg -

Civilians mingle with Allied troops in the bombed-out center of Nuremberg. In the distance, the twin spires of the medieval St. Lorenz Church still stand; on the right, surrounded by rubble, is a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I.

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Dresden -

The bombing of Dresden by the RAF and the United States Army Air Forces between February 13–15, 1945, created a firestorm so destructive in its ferocity it left up to 25,000 civilians dead. This is the view from the Town Hall tower overlooking the totally destroyed city center.

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Dresden -

The ruins of the Frauenkirche were left for 50 years as a war memorial, before being rebuilt after the reunification of Germany, starting in 1994. In the background is the skeletal dome of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

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Dresden -

The destruction of Dresden remains one of the most controversial Allied air raids of the Second World War. While the Allies described the operation as the legitimate bombing of a military and industrial target, most of the casualties were women and children.

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Kiel -

Kiel served as one of the major naval bases and shipbuilding centers of the Third Reich, providing as it did vital access to the Baltic Sea. As such, the city was heavily bombed throughout the war, with port installations an obvious target.

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Kiel -

German U-boat pens and dry dock facilities were the prize. The success of Allied navigators in pinpointing their targets led to Kiel being dubbed the "graveyard of the German Navy."

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Kiel -

Torpedoes that German U-boats never had the opportunity to use against Allied shipping rust into uselessness in April 1945.

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Stuttgart -

Stuttgart was an important center of motor vehicle manufacture during the war, with both Volkswagen and Daimler headquartered in the city. By 1944 the city center was entirely in ruins due to Allied bombing raids.

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Stuttgart -

Over 50% of Stuttgart's buildings were either leveled or left as empty shells. This picture taken in June 1945 of the destroyed city shows the 14th-century Stiftskirche, which was largely rebuilt in the 1950s.

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Stuttgart -

Stuttgart's landmark Nachtwächter-Brunnen (Night Watchman Fountain) was left in a sorry state in 1945. The fountain and statue originally stood in front of Leonhardskirche, but the water feature was subsequently relocated to nearby Pfarrstraße.

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Frankfurt am Main -

The blackened ruins of the city's 16th-century Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew stand brittle over the near-flattened center of Frankfurt am Main in 1945.

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Frankfurt am Main -

Soldiers, sent to combat last-gasp street fighting in the final days of the war, advance warily along a street severely damaged by Allied bombing.

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Frankfurt am Main -

Only ruins, rubble, and devastation surround the Römer, Frankfurt's once beautiful medieval city hall. The historic building underwent extensive reconstruction in peacetime.

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Berchtesgaden -

The war caught up with tranquil Berchtesgaden in Bavaria when Hitler's Berghof near Obersalzberg was targeted by Allied bombers seeking to obliterate his mountain headquarters.

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Berchtesgaden -

American troops are seen looking through the huge picture-window of the Berghof—a defining interior design feature of the rural retreat.

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Berchtesgaden -

American and French troops walk among the rubble of the bombed-out Berghof. The building's shell survived until 1952, when the Bavarian government demolished it with explosives on April 30—the same day Hitler took his own life seven years earlier.

Sources: (Visit Berlin) (Munich Documentation Center) (The National WWII Museum) 

See also: Death from above: The worst bombings in the history of warfare

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