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Selected as a target due to its status as a regional transportation hub and medieval town centre that made it especially vulnerable to fire-bombing and with relative destruction surpassing the raid on Dresden a month prior, commenced by the same Royal Airforce Bomber bomber group, the city of Würzburg (previously, see also) was on this day in 1945 in the course of twenty minutes destroyed, with only a little more than a tenth of the historic buildings remaining. Over five-thousand individuals perished. After the war and the city’s occupation by American forces (which continued until 2008), in the ensuing decades, Würzburg was rebuilt as true to the original as possible.