After the great success of "Cologne Before the War" and "Cologne After the War," Reinhard Matz and Wolfgang Vollmer now present the middle volume of the trilogy. This completes the gap of the 1940s, a time when Nazi terror and the bombing war forced nights in air raid shelters, the rescue of the last belongings, and the presence of the injured and dead. 262 air raids turned Cologne into a landscape of ruins. Yet, against all war clichés, everyday life continued: snapshots show women feeding pigeons and children jumping rope. Cinema and theater reached record visitor numbers, and the beer still tasted good in the breweries. Cologne's reconstruction in March 1945 seemed hardly imaginable, but it was achieved with Allied help. More than 300 mostly unknown images remind us of the city's deepest crisis in history and illustrate what life was like in the city during the war.