““the combined heavy bombers of the RAF and USAAF attacking from airfields in Britain the northern German city of Hamburg — Operation Gomorrah. Employing not hundreds but thousands of bombers in rolling attacks, night and day for an entire week, the Allies created a literal firestorm — with temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, hurricane winds of 150 miles per hour, and melting asphalt in the streets. By its end, Operation Gomorrah had killed some forty-two thousand people — the majority, civilians — injured thirty-seven thousand more, left the center of Hamburg in utter ruin, and had caused a million people to evacuate the burning city.””
![“The British bombed German cities [during World War II] to keep the workers awake at night. So instead of dropping one bomb, we sent a thousand planes and, yes, we took out the factory sometimes, but we also took out the city. It reached the point where we wanted more efficient ways to destroy a…” quote by George Friedman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/09e/george-friedman-7436_awake_the-british-bombed-german-cities-during_2073212.jpg)
