European Cities are Destroyed

Fighting on the European continent lasted nearly six years, from the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 to the final surrender of the last German armies in Berlin in April 1945. The fighting took an immense toll on the civilian population in areas where the fighting occurred. The advent of strategic bombing, in which nations used large, heavy bombers to attack civilian population centers with the goal of breaking the popular will to continue fighting, caused some of the greatest destruction. From 1942 to 1945, American and English bombers leveled cities in German-occupied territory. Some of those targets were industrial centers that produced the tanks, planes, and guns the Germans required to continue waging the fight; others, like Dresden, were civilian centers whose destruction was intended to create a logistical nightmare for German authorities as “de-housed” civilians fled the cities in desperation.