What These War-Torn WWII Spots Look Like Today

World War II was the most destructive conflict in history, a global conflagration filled with stories of heroism and depravity on a scale never seen before or since. Many of the stories are common knowledge: The horrors of the Holocaust, the massive D-Day landings, and the carnage at Iwo Jima all have corresponding sights and sounds that we know well. Less well-known are the details of those tragedies, such as what exactly does D-Day mean? (Per the US Army, explanations vary.) For that matter, what was "the Bulge?" 

We remember many of the battles. We remember the atrocities. We don't remember to check in afterward and see how — or if — the Earth healed her scars, whether buildings knocked down were ever rebuilt or if forests burned ever regrew. Here are 12 of the most atrocious events of the Second World War and what their locations look like today. Be warned, there is a steep angle into hell ahead. 

Founded as a humble fishing village on the southern end of Japan's largest island, Hiroshima sits in a region with deep religious significance. In the late 16th century, the city of Hiroshima was formally established as a fortified castle town by one of Japan's many warlords, becoming a cosmopolitan center for intellectuals as well as for commerce. By the time Japan's feudal period ended some 300 years later, the city was a significant urban center. 

The new Japan embraced modernization, and Hiroshima was an important cog in imperial Japan's industrial and military ascendancy. A manufacturing powerhouse, Hiroshima produced everything from cotton to steel. Its strategic location was bolstered with modern railways and ports, transforming the city into a critical transportation hub. By the 1940s, Hiroshima was building everything from civilian cars to naval warships and was an essential piece of Japan's war-fighting capability. During the war, Hiroshima had escaped the destruction of Japan's other industrial cities in large part, says Indiana University professor Scott O'Bryan, to provide the US military with "a virgin testing ground for measuring the effects of an atomic weapon on a modern city." When the atomic bomb detonated 2,000 feet above the city, instantly killing 80,000 people, Hiroshima became a synonym for devastation. 

Hiroshima today, however, has emerged as a bustling city of over two million people. Designated a "City of Peace" by the government, Hiroshima now hosts regular international peace conferences. 

The invasion at Normandy is typically thought of as when the Allies finally reached European soil, and it's often forgotten that the invasion of Nazi Europe actually began a full year earlier. In September 1943, the Allies landed in the Italian peninsula, what Winston Churchill referred to as the "soft underbelly" of Europe. It proved to be anything but. The rugged terrain and a determined enemy created some of the fiercest fighting of the entire war to that point, especially in the port town of Anzio. 

Italy's geography is defined by long coasts separated by a spine of mountains and hills running down the middle of the country. The Germans had been using these features to great effect, and by January 1944, the Allied advance was halted. A second front was needed, and on January 22, 36,000 troops landed on the beach in Anzio. The Germans moved quicker than anticipated and within a day had surrounded the narrow beachhead. Squeezed between the coast and the hills, the British and American troops were subjected to five months of blistering attacks. Artillery rained down at random for 136 days, forcing the soldiers to half-crawl everywhere they went in what they called the "Anzio amble." 

Just an hour south of Rome, Anzio today has regained what it had been for centuries: a relaxing Mediterranean getaway filled with amazing restaurants, beautiful sunsets, and some of western Italy's finest beaches. 

Almost exactly seven months after bombing Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Alaska and controlled several thousand square miles of American territory for over a year. Alaska's location grants control over Pacific transportation and shipping routes. As General William Mitchell told Congress in 1935, "He who holds Alaska will hold the world."

The attack was launched simultaneously with the infamous Battle of Midway. The Alaskan Islands of Kiska and Attu were taken, and the 42 Aleut Natives living on Attu were sent to Japan, where half of them died in prison, according to the Anchorage Daily News. The Aleutian Island Chain stretches over 1,200 miles, and the US had to slowly build up to retake them. The Battle for Attu finally began in May 1943, and — fighting hand-to-hand in thick fog and 120-mph winds — it was among the worst in the Pacific Theater. Starvation and exposure to the bitter Alaskan cold killed more Americans than Japanese bayonets and bombs. "The whole damned deal was rugged," said Lt. Donald Dwinnell, "like attacking a pillbox by way of a tightrope ... in winter." In mid-August, after three weeks of heavy bombardment, US troops tried to repel the Japanese on Kiska but found that they had withdrawn two weeks earlier during a dense fog. 

Today, Kiska is a part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, and special permission is needed to visit. None of Attu's surviving residents ever returned, and today, it is America's largest uninhabited island. 

In April 1945, the Third Reich was crumbling, its army in full retreat, while Hitler cowered in his bunker in Berlin and Berliners prayed the Americans would reach them before the Russians. Since breaking their treaty with Russia in 1941, the German army and air forces had killed over 20 million Russians — revenge for places like Stalingrad loomed large in the imaginations of many. The Eastern Front was a slaughterhouse, a staggering 30 million dead soldiers and civilians on all sides. The Eastern Front accounted for 80 percent of Germany's military deaths. German General Gotthard Heinrici summed up Berliners' feelings when he heard the Soviets, and not the Americans, would be taking the city: "This is a death sentence." 

Allied bombings of the German capital began in 1940. Now, 2.5 million Russian soldiers, 6,000 tanks, and more than 40,000 artillery pieces were preparing the final onslaught. The roads around Berlin were littered with the dead and dying of Germany's last defenders as ancient buildings were razed by artillery. The Red Army ravaged the city, 100,000 women were raped, and Berliners were further besieged as Soviet troops would "stop to ring numbers in Berlin at random" mocking whoever picked up. 

Berlin today is once again Germany's capital and one of Europe's most beautiful and vibrant cities. Hundreds of corpses are still found there each year, per Deutsche Welle.

The day after Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded the Philippines, then an American territory. General Douglas MacArthur had lived most of his life in the Philippines and, hoping to avoid a futile and destructive battle for Manila, removed his troops. The city was quickly taken. Manila endured great privation and suffering over the next three years as casual brutality and starvation claimed up to 500 lives every day. "I was worried about a lump in my stomach," American prisoner Louise Goldthorpe wrote, "Then I found it was my backbone."

In February 1945, MacArthur's full failure to protect Manila was laid bare. As American troops returned to the Philippines that month, the ensuing 29-day battle to retake Manila was characterized by savage street combat that saw soldiers fighting house-by-house. The city once known as the "Pearl of the Orient" was leveled as the retreating Japanese troops engaged in an orgy of destruction and terror rivaling the Rape of Nanking. Sancho Enriquez hid his family to go find fresh water, returning to find "the mutilated bodies of our four children almost beyond recognition." Up to 100,000 civilians were killed, homes were systematically burned, countless women were raped, and cultural landmarks were destroyed. 

Manila is now the capital of the Republic of the Philippines and home to nearly two million people. A thriving metropolis, Manila attracts over three million tourists a year and is the fastest-growing luxury market in the world.  

In 1940, less than a year after the war began, France had fallen, and Britain knew she was next. The epic route at Dunkirk, while nominally a retreat, foreshadowed the British fortitude that would quickly come to characterize their military and the civilians they protected. The Battle of Britain was fought in the skies over England, Scotland, and Wales as the Home Front become an actual front. 

For eight months, British citizens faced a withering Luftwaffe bombardment, and it would be two years before British military casualties would outpace the death toll from the Blitz. Cities all over the nation suffered, but none demonstrated the shock and horror like Coventry, a manufacturing center in the middle of England with a renowned and beautiful medieval heritage. The iconic St. Michael's Cathedral had graced the Coventry skyline for seven centuries and was flattened in an evening. The destruction of the city was nearly total, and residents emerged from their shelters to an unrecognizable dystopia. Per the BBC, Jean Taylor was 14 when she saw "a dog running down the street with a child's arm in its mouth. There were lines of bodies stretched out on blankets." More than 400 German planes reduced over 41,000 homes to rubble, killing hundreds.

Coventry persevered, though. While the husk of St. Michael's remains, so does the magnificent Holy Trinity Church, the legend of Lady Godiva, and Coventry's many marvels that make it the UK's Capital of Culture.