"They show a land which no longer exists," author Katya Iken wrote in Spiegel Online. Photographers were dispatched across the country between 1943 and 1945 by Albert Speer, with orders to capture the country from the air as it was then.

A newly discovered collection of more than 3,000 aerial photographs of Germany before and during the allied bombing campaign of the second world war presents the most comprehensive record yet of how devastating the campaign was on the country's cultural heritage, historians claim.

Experts have called "spectacular" and "unique" a wooden box full of negatives found in an attic in the northern city of Kiel, describing them as an inventory of 1940s Germany which throw a new focus on the systematic nature of the allied bombing policy.

Bracht (head of the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg) said he was shocked to see the extent to which cultural centres such as Lübeck, which he said had no military significance, had been destroyed. "This clearly indicates the extent to which the campaign was aimed at destroying German morale." guardian

  

     

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1-2. Мюнхен 3. Любек 4. Лейпциг 5. Кёльн
6. Франкфурт-на- Майне 7. Дрезден 8. Гамбург