The tour began at the Große Bleiche town hall, where Michael Bermeitinger first gave an introduction to the topic and distributed folders with photos from his archive to the participants. The photos are important documents from this period, illustrating the extent of the bombing. Despite the ban on photography, which was punishable by imprisonment, there were people who dared to take photos anyway.

"The attack crossed the city diagonally, with the bombers flying from the Gonsbach Valley towards the Mainspitze. The British strategy was to reduce Mainz to rubble with explosive and incendiary bombs – fire rained down on the houses from above," reported Michael Bermeitinger.

The extent of the destruction at that time was so enormous that ruins remained standing in Löwenhofstraße, which had been hardest hit by the attack, until the 1960s. Where new buildings now stand everywhere, bombs struck and houses burned down. "The Kronenberger bank was miraculously hardly destroyed. It was one of the last Jewish commercial buildings, which was demolished a few years after the war. Today, a Commerzbank branch stands on the same site," explained Bermeitinger.

The walk continued through Große Bleiche to Neubrunnenplatz. There, he described the effect of the firestorms, in which people died on the open streets due to the enormous heat.

The tour continued across Münsterplatz to the Altmünsterkirche, which was destroyed in 1944. Mainz did not have any large bunkers, so the residents of the old town sought refuge in cellars such as the Kupferbergkeller of the Kästirch, the Aktienbrauereikeller, or the Sektkeller. "Many people even remained underground permanently during the last weeks of the war to seek protection," Bermeitinger reported.

At Schillerplatz, Michael Bermeitinger told participants that Mainz had been 80 percent destroyed at that time. Some areas had even been completely destroyed. Aerial photographs show that Schillerplatz and Große Bleiche were the worst affected. The vertical photos were taken by British soldiers who documented the destruction in Mainz just a few days after the attack. This allows us to understand today just how enormous the damage was at the time.

The destruction and reconstruction resulted in the loss of the original neighborhood structure of Mainz's old town, with many narrow streets being widened and merged. The tour and the images impressively showed how much Mainz changed as a result of World War II and the Nazi dictatorship, and served as a reminder of the many lives lost.