In the Wake of War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II

In 1945 Germany's cities lay in ruins, destroyed by Allied bombers 'hat left major architectural monuments badly damaged and much of the housing stock reduced to rubble. At the war's end, observers thought that it would take forty years to rebuild, but by the late 1950s West Germany's cities had risen anew. The housing crisis had been overcome and virtually all important monuments reconstructed, and the cities had reclaimed their characteristic identities. Everywhere there was a mixture of ...