Counting the Cost

After eight years of gathering and verifying statistics, the city fathers of Frankfurt (prewar pop. 550,000) counted the cost of the war that Hitler started. Between 1939-45, reported the municipal bureau of vital statistics, 14,701 Frankfurt men were killed in action (64% on the Russian front); 5,000 more are listed as "missing in action," but of these, 75% are almost certainly dead.

By age groups, 43% of all Frankfurters born in 1917 were killed, along with 40% of those born in 1918. Though Frankfurt ranked 15th on Germany's list of war-damaged cities,* more than half of its homes were destroyed by Allied bombs, and in the rubble 5,559 civilians perished. Half of all the city's military dead were killed in the last 18 months of war.

* Dresden (pop. 468,000) lost 250,000 civilian dead in three nights of air bombardment in February 1945.

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