For a regime that worshipped the right of might, ‘terror bombing’ raised the spectre of German weakness and demoralisation. Goebbels was anxious not to broadcast anything like the real toll on civilian life, and so the media stuck to reporting on the destruction of cultural monuments, painstakingly listing the number of churches desecrated and destroyed, and, in the case of Cologne, describing in detail the damage sustained by the cathedral.
