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The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good

We must face the horrors we inflicted on Germany’s cities in the later years of the war. But they were not futile crimes

9 May 2015

9:00 AM

9 May 2015

9:00 AM

In the early hours of 25 July 1943, nearly 800 RAF Halifaxes and Lancasters launched a 50-minute bombing raid on the Third Reich’s second largest city, Hamburg. The pilots used the neo-Gothic spire of St Nikolai’s church in the city’s historic heart as a landmark and killed 1,500 people.

Three nights later, just after midnight, the bombers returned.

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