WWII Imagery in Google Earth

Google Earth can be a great tool to explore places you may not be able to get to otherwise. But few people know that it can also be a great tool for exploring times we're certainly not able to 'go to' in any other way. Google Earth has a great feature called 'historical imagery' which enables you to see the imagery from a previous timeline if available for the region. Google now provides some updated historical imagery going back to World War 2. Images from 35 European cities are now available, showing the effect of the extensive bombing campaigns on the old continent.

"Many of us have heard stories, read books and watched films which show the many impacts of WWII across the world. Today we're giving you another way to understand this period in time - by exploring a new set of historical aerial images, taken over European cities during World War II," Laura Scott from Google Europe wrote. "Images taken in 1943 show the effect of wartime bombing on more than 35 European towns and cities. Imagery for Warsaw, which was heavily destroyed at the time, is available from both years 1935 and 1945," she added.

Most of us today weren't around to witness the horrors of WWII. And those that were, were probably too young to remember anything. Of course, there are countless documentaries and images or accounts abound on the Internet, which do a good job at creating an accurate enough 'image'. Google Earth is unique, though, as it enables you to compare just how much has changed since then and puts the extent of the devastation in a much greater perspective.

The images really speak for themselves and though the quality isn't always great, entire blocks razed to the ground are hard to miss. There's certainly a lesson here, one that we're unlikely to learn though, but there's also a brighter side as it shows that even the greatest tragedies can be overcome in time. Images below are from Warsaw, Poland, one of the hardest hit cities in the war and it's amazing to see just how much of it has been rebuilt, in many cases to its original, pre-war state.