We’re concluding our look at Lee Miller’s article ‘Germany—the war that is won’ with this photograph of a bombed chemical plant in Ludwigshafen which accompanied the text in British Vogue. . The chemical plants of Ludwigshafen and Oppau were of immense importance to the German war effort, supplying necessities such as synthetic rubber. As a result, these areas became a key target for allied bombing raids: “Ludwigshaven is a mess. It’s a worthy mess, however, and doesn’t look like so many cities, such monotonously similar ruins that you can’t remember one from the other. More than one fifth of the city had been one of the greatest chemical plants in the world before the Air Force adopted it as a target. Now it was tangled and razed and beaten up and never would deliver the nitric acid which is in the tank cars, tossed crazily around and leaking vapour and dripping poison. Here they made enormous quantities of fertilizer and plastics. They had experimental laboratories for the production of what was probably the hydrogen-peroxide combination which drove their rockets. Acres and acres and tons and tons of steel and glass and things with queer shapes were flotsammed around in a lunatic landscape”. . The cities were bombed around sixty-five times during the conflict and upon the end of war they were left in a sort of quiet chaos that Lee captured so well. . . . Image: Bombed chemical plant, Ludwigshaven, Germany 1945 by Lee Miller © Lee Miller Archives, England 2022. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk . . . . . #leemiller #leemillerarchives #femalephotographer #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #noiretblanc #noiretblancphotographe #fotographia #fotografo #fotographie