| Kleve was heavily bombed during the 2nd World War, and over 90 percent of the buildings in the city were severely damaged. On September 22, 1944, Allied bombers attacked the Kleve region. On Saturday October 7, Kleve was subjected to another huge bombardment, led by Lancaster and Halifax bombers, followed by another on Emmerich. These attacks not only resulted in huge damage to the town, there were also many casualties: according to the latest estimates 500 civilians alone were killed. The bombardment, which destroyed the historic center, including the Schwanenturm (“Swan Tower”) at Schwanenburg Castle, has come to symbolize the entire war for Kleve. When it took place, Operation Gatwick (an eastward thrust intended to reach the Rhine near Krefeld), had already been postponed and later replaced by Operation Veritable, the April 1945 Rhine crossing. Most of the destruction was the result of a raid late in the war on the night of February 7-8, 1945, conducted at the request of Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks (September 7, 1895 – January 4, 1985) in preparation for Operation Veritable. Horrocks recounted his decision in the 1973 television documentary The World at War: “Then they came to me and they said, ‘Do you want the town of Cleves taken out?’ By ‘taken out’ they meant the whole of the heavy bombers putting on to Cleves. Now, I knew that Cleves was a very fine old historical German town. Anne of Cleves, one of Henry VIII’s wives, came from there. I knew that there were a lot of civilians in Cleves, men, women and children. If I said no, they would live. If I said yes, they would die. A terrible decision you’ve got to take. But…everything depended on getting a high piece of ground at Materborn. The German reserves would have to come through Cleves, and we would have to breach the Siegfried Line and get there. And your own lives, your own troops, must come first, so I said yes, I did want it taken out. But when all those bombers went over, the night just before zero hour, to take out Cleves, I felt like a murderer. And after the war I had an awful lot of nightmares, but always Cleves.” Horrocks later said that this had been “the most terrible decision I had ever taken in my life” and that he felt “physically sick” when he saw the bombers overhead. As a result of the bombing, relatively little of the pre-1945 city remains. Those structures spared include a number of historic villas built during the heyday of the spa Bad Kleve, located along the B9 near the Tiergarten. Of those buildings destroyed, many were reconstructed, including most of the Schwanenburg and the Stiftskirche, the Catholic parish church. Constructed on high ground, many of these landmarks can be seen from the surrounding communities. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2236.jpg |
| Image Size | 492.05 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1871 x 1440 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Royal Air Force Official Photographer |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | February 11, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Kleve |
| State or Province | Düsseldorf |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Royal Air Force Museum |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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