The city of Dessau was, beyond the Bauhaus, a culmination point of industrial modernity. During the 13 years of the Nazi regime, the city experienced an unparalleled rise and fall that continues to shape it today. Dessau was a center for armaments, the capital of the Gau, and a "company town" for the Junkers Aircraft and Engine Works, as well as the main production site for the poison gas Zyklon B, which was used to kill hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps. This volume tells the contradictory history of the Bauhaus city during National Socialism. It reflects on the connections of devastation and addresses both the destroyed modernity and its destructive potentials. 39 photographs by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who captured the return of forced laborers in Dessau with his camera in June 1945, complement the work with many previously unpublished images.