Aerial photographs of European cities during World War II have been made available on Google Earth, giving internet users a real glimpse of the smashed-up landscape of war.

Taken between 1935 and 1945, the snaps record a series of chilling views: Warsaw’s ghetto and bombed-out old town; the decimated Renaissance bridge in Florence; and bomb craters in Berlin.

This article ties in modern history with world military history in a way that fascinates me. As a student of geography and military history, not to mention the technology making all this possible, this story really grabbed my attention. We can finally see a side by side comparison of the effects of World War II and the resulting reconstruction decades later. If you have Google Earth, it is worth a look. If not, you can get a taste of it with the photos in the original article.