Book contents
Introduction: a poem and an image
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
Summary
The municipal archive of the city of Kassel holds a small file that consists of different versions of a long poem. The piece is alternatively called ‘Thus Died My Home Town’ (So starb meine Heimatstadt), ‘Thus Died My Home Town of Kassel’, or simply ‘Thus Died Kassel’. The various titles refer to a particularly devastating air attack by the Royal Air Force against the North Hessian city in World War II. On 22 October 1943, 1,800 tons of high explosives and incendiaries were dropped on Kassel, producing a catastrophic conflagration that destroyed 60 per cent of the built environment. Somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 people were killed, while 150,000 residents out of a total population of 220,000 were made homeless. According to a British post-war estimate, the attack also resulted in the production loss for the German war economy of 150 heavy tanks, 400–500 locomotives and 300 heavy guns.
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- Information
- The Allied Air War and Urban MemoryThe Legacy of Strategic Bombing in Germany, pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011