# Warsaw
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 28, 2002, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992 "2002-08-28T21:28:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@typeopogo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typeopogo)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2002, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/1 "2002-08-28T21:28:52Z")
I read that supposedly 90 percent of Warsaw was destroyed in World War II. This number seems a little unrealistic to me, I mean if this were true wouldn’t they still be rebuilding it- Ks Danyllo De Pogorzelli
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### Author:  [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2002, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/2 "2002-08-28T23:51:49Z")
WWII has been over a long time and we sent over shiploads of money via the Marshall plan to rebuild all of Europe after the war. Not sure what is so hard to believe.
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### Author:  [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2002, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/3 "2002-08-29T00:20:18Z")
Poland didn’t receive any Marshall Plan assistance - it wanted to, but the USSR prevented it.
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### Author:  [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2002, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/4 "2002-08-29T03:14:41Z")
Thanks for the correction. Fight ignroance! peace out. 😃
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2002, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/5 "2002-08-29T09:54:29Z")
I don’t know about the 90% figure, but I can believe it. Have you ever been to Warsaw? I have, several times. Except for small section called the Old City - the part that wasn’t destroyed - the rest of Warsaw is pretty much either a dismal, grey mass of communist blockhousing or a dismal, jagged, glassy mass of modern office architecture. Whatever the case may be, it’s plainly evident that the vast majority of buildings came up in the last 50 years. And I don’t think Warsaw is particularly exceptional in this regard either. There were several towns and cities across Europe that had to have been pretty much completely rebuilt after the war.
But I cannot factually confirm the 90% figure. I can only say it sounds reasonable.
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### Author:  [@tarokaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tarokaja)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2002, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/6 "2002-08-29T12:07:25Z")
Actually, the Old City _was_ destroyed during the war, but was rebuilt afterwards exactly the way it had been before. Hence the “perfectly accurate museum replica” atmosphere–the buildings lack the patina of centuries. Warsaw’s Old Town still is beautiful. Krakow’s, on the other hand, is beautiful and original.
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### Author:  [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2002, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/7 "2002-08-29T12:49:11Z")
According to the Warsaw Tourist Office, ‘84 percent of the urban fabric was destroyed’.
[http://www.warsawtour.pl/GB/index\_ang.html](http://www.warsawtour.pl/GB/index_ang.html) (then click on ‘History’)
Obviously, the precise figure depends on how the calculation is done.
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### Author:  [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2002, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw/125992/8 "2002-08-29T14:26:59Z")
On a slight tangent, here’s a site that shows the [damage done to Frankfurt, Germany](http://www.altfrankfurt.com/Krieg1.htm) by the bombings in 1943-4. A lot of interesting pictures, the text is in German and English. This site says the raids wiped out half the city and pretty much the entire core of the Altstadt (old city). I’ve seen postcards and the old cathedral was pretty much the only thing left standing. Supposedly they didn’t bomb the cathedral because they needed it as a guide to find the other parts.
As a further side note, a friend of mine lived in an apartment (not too far from the Altstadt) that was near a large, walled in building with gardens. One day I walked over to that building to see what it was. A bronze plaque in front indicated that it was once the Gestapo headquarters during the Nazi regime. Apparently it was not even scratched in the bombing. Not sure if from chance or intentionally (because prisoners might have been kept there?)