The bombing in WWII was brutal. Military and industrial installations were targeted, but so were cities and civilian populations. A U.S. Strategic bombing survey after the war estimated that at a minimum 305,000 were killed in German cities due to bombing and estimated a minimum of 780,000 wounded. Roughly 7,500,000 German civilians were also rendered homeless. Allied forces found that attacking German waterways resulted in tremendous traffic problems on the Rhine, eliminating the movement of coal (upon which the German railways were reliant on) except in certain limited areas.
For 65 years, the Rhine River hid two bombs and an fog-producing device that were dropped by American and British warplanes in the last years of the war. When water levels dropped to record lows in early December 2011, the bombs were finally found near Koblenz, causing evacuation of over 45,000 residents. The evacuation, the largest in Germany since the end of the war, crippled the city for days as nearly half the population was relocated.
It is estimated that 257 British air bombs were dropped on Koblenz alone during the war. It is not known how many of them did not explode and have been forgotten. Bomb-disposal squads have only managed to deactivate three of them until now.
