Photo Gallery Emerging from the Ruins
When World War II came to an end in the spring of 1945, Germany lay in ruins. The latter years of the war in particular had seen massive Allied bombing raids on Nazi Germany's biggest cities. Dresden was destroyed by a firestorm on Feb. 13 and 14, 1945. Some 25,000 people were killed and the city center was reduced to rubble.
Now, large swaths of Dresden look very similar to how the city looked before the bombing. The city is one of the few in Germany which sought to recreate its prewar beauty. It has been largely successful.
The Main River metropolis of Frankfurt was a favorite Allied bombing target and there was little left of the medieval city once the bombs stopped falling.
Nowadays, Frankfurt is Germany's financial capital and boasts a skyline dominated by high-rises. The city, however, lacks charm and very little was reconstructed in the prewar style.
Cologne, on the Rhine River, is another city which was hit hard by Allied bombs. Indeed, about the only building which survived intact was the monumental Cologne cathedral. This image shows the mangled Hohenzollern Bridge leading across the Rhine into the city shortly after the end of the war.
The bridge has since been rebuilt, as has the city. But while Cologne has become a favored destination for tourists to Germany, few would argue that the city has regained its beauty. Much of central Cologne is dominated by modernist concrete structures that clearly emphasize function over form.
The war ended for Berlin at the very beginning of May, 1945, when the Soviets marched into the city. Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker under the Third Reich capital on April 30. Here, the German house of parliament, the Bundestag, is pictured after the war. Not long later, the shell of the dome collapsed.
Reconstruction has been going on in Berlin virtually since the end of World War II. While the first wave of rebuilding began to slow down in the 1970s, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall triggered a renewed spate of construction. Here, the Bundestag today, complete with a new glass dome designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster.
An image of central Berlin in 1945. The dome in the upper right shows the Berlin Cathedral. The Nazi capital was bombed again and again in the latter months of the war.
East Berlin was rebuilt by the communist regime installed by the Soviets after the war. Here, the cathedral can be seen in the center of the image with the gigantic television tower rising above the city.
Some cities have done what they could to rebuild formerly iconic structures. This image shows the Dresden Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) well after the war in 1967. Much of the rubble at the site still had not been cleared.
Now, the Frauenkirche has been completely rebuilt and serves as a beacon for those across the country which would like to see some of Germany's finest prewar architecture rebuilt.
