During World War II, more than half a million tons of bombs were dropped in aerial raids on German cities, destroying about one-third of the total housing stock. This paper provides causal evidence on long-term consequences of large-scale physical destruction on the educational attainment,...

This paper examines the long-term direct and spillover effects of large-scale human capital loss caused by the persecution of Jewish professionals in Nazi Germany. Using region-by-cohort variation in the Jewish population as a quasi-experiment, we find that on average German children who were of...