A total of 25 million Germans, almost a third of the nation’s wartime population and nearly half its industrial workforce, was bombed heavily. And somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 noncombatants residing in the Reich, free and unfree, perished under the bombs. This is roughly twice the number of combat fatalities sustained by American forces in combat in Europe and the Pacific. (Of the 405,399 members of the armed forces who died in the war, 291,557 were killed in combat operations.) At least 800,000 other noncombatants were seriously injured. The overwhelming majority of those killed and
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