Fifteen couples had been looking forward to the special moment when they would say “I do” for weeks. But their weddings at Cologne’s historic town hall on June 4 were cancelled, since the building was right in the middle of an evacuation zone.But they were still able to get married, in a district town hall instead.Three bombs left over from World War II were responsible for the massive evacuation, the biggest since 1945. They were found during preparations for construction work on the city’s Deutz Bridge. The US-made bombs — one 100-pound (45-kilogram) and two 200-pound bombs — both had impact fuses and could not be moved for safety reasons. They had to be defused on site, and thus it was necessary to evacuate several districts of the city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany.
Thousands evacuated
Around 20,500 people had to leave their homes on Wednesday. Hospitals and retirement homes were evacuated, with people being moved to other facilities. Almost 60 hotels shut down, with guests being accommodated elsewhere.Bomb disposal is a mammoth logistical task, but Germany is very familiar with it. More than 1,600 bombs were defused last year in North Rhine-Westphalia alone. As construction work increases in the city, for example to put in new fiber optic cables, renovate bridges or improve the road network, excavations are bringing to light unexploded aerial ordnance that dates back to the 1930s and ’40s.
Major problem in Hamburg, Verdun, Poland
Metropolitan regions such as Hamburg and Berlin were some of the main targets of Allied bombing during World War II. These places also saw civilian infrastructure targeted and so are particularly affected. In addition to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg is heavily contaminated. In 2024, explosive ordnance clearers found 90 mines, 48,000 grenades, 500 firebombs and 450 bombs weighing more than 11 pounds, as well as around 330,000 shells.The problem is also omnipresent in many neighboring countries. Unexploded ordnance from the two world wars is often found in France and Belgium, and particularly from World War I in the regions of Verdun and the Somme. Three years ago, the drought in Italy’s Po Valley revealed unexploded bombs. In the UK in 2021, a German 2,200-pound aerial bomb was detonated in a controlled explosion in the southwestern city of Exeter and more than 250 buildings were damaged.The situation in Poland and the Czech Republic, where there are tons of unexploded ordnance from the two world wars in the ground, is also critical. In 2020, a 5-ton British-made Tallboy bomb was defused in the northwestern Polish town of Swinoujscie. Recently, there have even been fatal accidents in the Czech Republic.And in the Balkans, lives are in danger from unexploded ordnance that dates back to the wars of the 1990s and evacuations are a frequent occurrence.
Deadly hazards in Vietnam, Laos, Gaza
On the world’s other continents, the situation is also critical. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, people continue to be killed by US-made cluster bombs that were used in the 1960s and ’70s. According to the UN, 80 million unexploded ordnances remain in the ground in Laos, from 500,000 US attacks conducted covertly between 1964 and 1973.There are also tons of unexploded ordnance in Syria and Iraq, where masses of people are at risk of being killed or wounded. In neither country have ordnance disposal structures been developed sufficiently.The UN says that unexploded ordnance in the war-torn Palestinian territory of Gaza has already left behind deadly hazards, even as Israel continues to bomb the strip.
A quarter of Ukraine contaminated
The situation in Ukraine is dramatic. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022, about a quarter of the country is thought to be contaminated with mines, cluster bombs and other explosive devices.Over half a million explosive devices have already been defused, but millions more remain. The humanitarian and economic consequences are enormous: hundreds of civilians have died, large areas of agricultural land are unusable, and crop failures are exacerbating the economic crisis.When the war ends, demining will be one of the tasks of the coming years.
German federal states bear brunt of costs
In Germany, where most of the bombs that are defused are from World War II and were made by the Allies, it is the federal states that bear the majority of the costs of their disposal. It is the German state that is responsible for German-made bombs going back to the era of the German Reich (1871 – 1945). Attempts to make it responsible for all the unexploded bombs in Germany have so far been unsuccessful. Last year, explosive ordnance disposal cost North Rhine-Westphalia €20 million ($23 million).While the costs rise, the technology used for bomb disposal has evolved. While in the 1990s, clearers still used their own hands, hammers, chisels and water pump pliers, today abrasive waterjet cutting is used to neutralize explosive devices. A waterjet cutter that is operated at a safe distance can cut through the explosive device and remove its fuse. Experts believe that there are tens of thousands of unexploded explosive devices, weighing up to 100,000 tons, in Germany alone.Even though modern probing and detection techniques and digitized aerial photographs can help to minimize the risk, every bomb disposal operation is a race against time. The older a bomb is, the greater the risk of corrosion and explosion. It is also more difficult to defuse an older bomb because of the chemical changes that occur over time inside the bomb itself, between the casing and the fuse.The defusing of the three bombs in Cologne is not just an operation that has disrupted weddings and people’s daily routines but it bears witness once again to the destruction of war, whether in Germany or France, Vietnam or Laos, Syria, Ukraine or Gaza.
