How long to cleanup?

[MetalCrue1]

Didn`t find any thread about this but im wondering the following:....

How long did it take to clean up all the ruins and all the rubble from Germany after the war?
And is there any pictures where you can see like the "last pile of rubble from the destruction"and where the cities slowly are born again?

I will see if you get my point ,thanks!

[António Fragoeiro]

Didn`t find any thread about this but im wondering the following:....

How long did it take to clean up all the ruins and all the rubble from Germany after the war?
And is there any pictures where you can see like the "last pile of rubble from the destruction"and where the cities slowly are born again?

I will see if you get my point ,thanks!

Hi, the reconstruction lasted well until the 90`s but even today some areas are still being rebuild.
A nice article about it.
http://www.google.pt/url?sa=t&rct=j&...48293060,d.ZGU

[ObKrieger]

I have seen photos of Berlin that were taken in June of 1945 which show most of the rubble was cleared from the streets by that point, even though the buildings were still in ruins.

If you go on Google Earth and look at aerial photos of Berlin that were taken in 1953, you can still see that the streets were clean, but that there were still quite a few skeletons of buildings left.

Here is some interesting information:

"In Germany in 1945-46 housing and food conditions were bad, as the disruption of transport, markets and finances slowed a return to normal. In the West, bombing had destroyed 5,000,000 houses and apartments, and 12,000,000 refugees from the east had crowded in. Food production was only two-thirds of the pre-war level in 1946-48, while normal grain and meat shipments no longer arrived from the East. Furthermore, the large shipments of food from occupied nations that had sustained Germany during the war ended. Industrial production fell more than half and reached pre-war levels only at the end of 1949." -Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe: 1945-51 (1984) pp. 356, 436.

[MetalCrue1]

Thanks about the article ,really intresting!

[bigmacglenn]

Having grown up in West-Germany in the 1970s-80's, I clearly recall the odd empty lots between buildings in Mannheim and in Worms...But these were a scarcity in the West, as compared to the Eastern part of Germany, where rebuilding lagged behind...I also recall the closer you got to the East German border, the more you would encounter houses with bullet-holes and other damage...It was like stepping back into time near the border, as there appeared to be less investment in those parts....
cheers, Glenn

[MetalCrue1]

Yeah i have somewhere in my mind that it was just like that BigMac.
The western seemed more..full of life and better care taking.

[Stinkpotpete]

I was in Cologne in '88 and there was a small church about a block away from the cathedral there that was still being rebuilt. We found a building on the outer edge of Muenster that still had chips in the bricks from bullet strikes. We found that very odd because all of the other damage had been repaired or disappeared by then. My girlfriends father had pictures of the ruins and rubble from the 60's that he showed me. When I first saw those, I couldn't help but think, but he's not old enough to have been an adult at the end of the war. The destruction was hard to fathom, a country so old and with so much history could be reduced like that.

[bigmacglenn]

The Cathedral in my town (Lampertheim) was damaged and rebuilt after the war, and you can see the difference in the color of the stones used in reconstruction...they are much lighter in color than the original stones of the building...
cheers, Glenn

[MetalCrue1]

I work with a man that comes from germany,so bad that he only can speak german and nothing else...would be intresting to hear his stories where he grew up and how it was.
I also have a friend who worked as a border police at the Berlin wall during the time,he aint that good at english he either so its kinda sad, feels awkward to ask about WW2 and other stuff to them since you never know how they will take the questions.

[robin morley]

In the East there are still buildings/areas that have still not been repaired fully and bullet/artillery strikes can be seen pretty much everywhere that there was any action.