‘The Battered Face of Germany’: Ruins of the Reich, Pictured From the Air
‘The Battered Face of Germany’: Ruins of the Reich, Pictured From the Air
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Aerial view of bomb-damaged buildings after an Allied air attack on Nuremberg, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
In early June 1945, not long after the German surrender at Reims ended the Second World War in Europe, LIFE magazine published an article titled, “The Battered Face of Germany.” Featuring photos made from the air by Margaret Bourke-White — America’s first accredited woman photographer in WWII and the first authorized to fly on combat missions — the pictures, in LIFE’s words, “show the devastation of Germany at its worst and reveal the overall pattern of Allied air strategy”:
In the closing months of the war, chemical plants and oil refineries were hit hardest and most frequently. Although the Germans went right on producing planes and tanks, they were unable to supply them with enough fuel.
The heaviest destruction was wreaked on the centers of large German cities which are today only dunes of rubble surrounded by gaunt windowless walls. The smaller towns, villages, farm country and even the suburbs of the big cities were relatively undamaged.
Not mentioned in that June ’45 issue of LIFE, but certainly worth noting here, is that the Allied bombing campaigns directed at some German cities — especially world-renowned cultural centers like Dresden — were controversial even at the time they were carried out. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., famously based much of the most brutal elements of his classic novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, on what he witnessed as a POW in Dresden in the aftermath of the attack, which killed tens of thousands of civilians.)
In fact, the strategy of bombing German cities — and German-occupied cities in France and elsewhere — throughout the war has been both defended and excoriated through the decades. But in light of Bourke-White’s stark, masterful aerial shots, there’s little room for debate on one salient point: if the bombings were meant to rain down maximum destruction, they succeeded with a grim thoroughness that remains shocking even today, seven decades after the air-raid sirens, the explosions and the screams of the living and the dying echoed in the ruins.
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Caption from LIFE. Gas storage tanks of I.G. Farbenindustrie at Ludwigshaven, one of largest synthetic plants in Europe, wrecked by RAF and U.S. 8th Air Force.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Jülich is a small German frontier town (pop. 8,500) 15 miles northeast of Aachen, 25 miles west of Cologne.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesMainz, not far from Frankfurt, Germany, after Allied bombing, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. The picture above shows the center of the Krupp Compound [Essen], with wrecked steel mills (foreground) and blasted gas tanks (right background).Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Nurnberg [Nuremberg], second largest city in Bavaria, was famous for its Gothic churches. One of them, St. Sebaldus, can be seen here.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. On June 2, 1945, RAF night raid of tremendous proportions wrecked key objectives in the center of the city (Nuremberg), leaving skeletal walls and leveled areas pictured.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Just before the Normandy invasion last year the Reich's transport system became the No. 1 target for all bombers, day and night. One of the largest railroad marshaling yards in Germany was at Nurnberg [Nuremberg].Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of sunken ship and bombed-out shipbuilding installation after Allied air attack on Germany's chief naval base at Kiel, near Baltic harbor.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of bomb-damaged buildings in Mainz, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesDestruction by Allied air attacks, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of bomb-damaged buildings after an Allied air attack on Nuremberg, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of a bomb-damaged churches among the buildings in the center of Worms, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of bomb-damaged churches in the center of Wurzburg, northern Bavaria, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of bomb craters in the residential section of Nuremberg, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of the bomb-damaged Krupp works in Essen, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAerial view of bomb-damaged residential areas, Essen, Germany, 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
![The picture above shows the center of the Krupp Compound [Essen], with wrecked steel mills (foreground) and blasted gas tanks (right background).](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140507-germany-aerials-wwii-04.jpg?quality=75&w=2400 "00734290.JPG")
![Nurnberg [Nuremberg], second largest city in Bavaria, was famous for its Gothic churches. One of them, St. Sebaldus, can be seen here.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140507-germany-aerials-wwii-05.jpg?quality=75&w=2400 "Bomb Damage in Ger. (also Aerial)")
![Just before the Normandy invasion last year the Reich's transport system became the No. 1 target for all bombers, day and night. One of the largest railroad marshaling yards in Germany was at Nurnberg [Nuremberg].](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/140507-germany-aerials-wwii-07.jpg?quality=75&w=2400 "Bomb Damage in Ger. (also Aerial)")
