old Warsaw

A map produced in Germany from the late 19th century. Weichsel is the German name for the Vistula

Like Berlin, the destruction of Warsaw during WW2 was substantial.  Much of it occurred on Hitler's orders after the Warsaw uprising of 1944, while Stalin's Red Army stood around nearby and let it happen.

After the war, the city was substantially rebuilt in Stalinist-Russian and ugly communist style, but most of the old town area was recreated which today provides a good sense of what the rest of the city would have once been like.

The Germans produced this propaganda art about their conquest of Warsaw in 1939.