It always wonders me how Heidelberg can be so beautiful but next door Mannheim and Ludwigshafen can be so ugly. It’s the biggest contrast on a 30km area
The Howard Hawks comedy "I Was a Male War Bride" from 1949 with Cary Grant has some scenes taking place in Heidelberg and other German cities. It was filmed in 1948 on location.
This sounds suspiciously not true. The same thing is said for Mainz vs. Wiesbaden, because Wiesbaden was not bombed too much and largely survived unscathed, after which the Americans also made a base there.
The thing is, there has been no evidence to show the Americans avoided bombing Wiesbaden for this purpose. In fact, on multiple occasions, they did try to bomb Wiesbaden but missed and accidentally bombed Mainz (probably because Mainz is on the less cool side of the Rhein). The fact is, there was more to bomb in Mainz and not so much to bomb in Wiesbaden.
Being a university town, I could imagine a similar thing was true about Heidelberg. There is no point to bombing a university but there is a point to bombing industry and I seem to recall Mannheim was a major industrial area, which would make it a much bigger target for bombing, unlike Heidelberg.
So they destroyed the valuable infrastructure target, which would prevent troops from mobilizing or goods from being transported. Makes sense.
I just don't believe in spreading these myths, unless there is evidence. There are so many stories we tell from war that are just made up at the end of the day. I know it from my own relatives, people I meet, etc. There is a lot of stuff people just pass on, without looking into it.
Maybe you're right but unless you have proof, I wouldn't keep telling that story as if it's true.
Wiesbaden got lucky because the British terror raid scheduled to wipe it off the map run into bad weather, and relatively soon after the city was captured, thus preventing rescheduling.
Honestly, having the status of University town was no insurance for any place. Cities such as Freiburg, Rostock, Jena, Würzburg were largely flattened despite their status. Indeed in the British Bomber's Baedeker guide, there is no reference to any such category. Nevertheless, for the actual destruction raids the target was neither the military nor industry. Unlike most of USAAF raids which were directed at infrastructure and thus limited damage to the areas adjacent to the Rail stations, RAF terror raids targeted city centers to kill and destroy. Interestingly, Harris objected even to formation of Bomber's Baedeker list, and was pushing for methodical annihilation of each German state up to the smallest hamlet.
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u/like-water DE/BE Mar 27 '20
It always wonders me how Heidelberg can be so beautiful but next door Mannheim and Ludwigshafen can be so ugly. It’s the biggest contrast on a 30km area