In all 1,570 French cities and towns were bombed by Anglo-American forces between June 1940 and May 1945. The total number of civilians killed was 68,778 men, women and children (including the 2,700 civilians killed in Royan).
The total number of injured was more than 100,000. The total number of houses completely destroyed by the bombings was 432,000, and the number of partly destroyed houses was 890,000. The cities that saw the most destruction were the following:
Saint-Nazaire (Loire Atlantique): 100%
Tilly-la-Campagne (Calvados): 96%
Vire (Calvados): 95%
Villers-Bocage (Calvados): 88%
Le Havre (Seine-Maritime): 82%
Saint-Lô (Manche): 77%
Falaise (Calvados): 76%
Lisieux (Calvados): 75%
Bombing in World War 2 claimed between 50,000 and 60,000 French civilian lives. Almost all died at the hands of the Allies, not the Germans. The death toll, though no more than an eighth of that in Germany, was still numerically comparable to that of British civilian victims of German bombing and V-weapons, or to that of Jews deported from France and exterminated in the camps. The Channel port of Le Havre alone is estimated to have lost some 5,000 dead.
Material destruction, too, left a lasting legacy on French towns. Of France 's 38,000 municipalities, 1,838 were officially declared war-damaged, or sinistrées, in 1946 – a designation requiring damage or destruction to at least 30 per cent of buildings. They included 20 out of France 's 27 largest cities. Some 18 per cent of all French buildings were listed as destroyed or seriously damaged. Largely untold in the literature in English, this story has received fairly scant coverage in French as well
The Bombing of France 1939-1945
By end of the 50’s the economy had restarted, but the rebuilding was still going on, so much so that you could find people with a full job sleeping under bridges because there were not enough houses rebuilt for everybody yet. This was why there was in the early 60’s that huge program to build huge blocks of flats.