Between 1939 and 1945, hundreds of European cities, towns and villages were devastated by aerial bombing; around 600,000 Europeans were killed and more than a million injured. In this first full narrative history of the air war, Overy deals with the whole of Europe, Scandinavia and the USSR; he considers bombing as part of broader strategies; and he looks at the campaigns from two perspectives: what they were meant to achieve and the impact they had in reality on bombed populations.