Harrowing never-before-seen photos show the apocalyptic devastation in post-war Germany a year after VE Day (22 Pics)

These astonishing never-before-seen photos show the devastation across Germany after World War II.

They were taken by a British man representing the UK Board of Trade during a tour of post-war Germany in May and June 1946, visiting the all-but flattened cities of Cologne, Munich and Frankfurt.

Devastation: Two women are walking through the rubble of what was once their home town in Germany in 1946

Rebuilding: A photo of an unknown street in Germany shows what was once shopfronts, but by then just used as storage of the rocks that have been cleared off the road

Moving on: Resilient Germans walk down a street where all that is left of one building is what appears to be a corner shop

One day at a time: By 1946, the streets in this city had been cleared and the rubble piled up along the pavement, but the blocks of flats still stand in ruins

Buildings down: A man walks past the remains of the operahouse in a city in Germany

Nothing left: In 1939, Germany had some 16 million flats, but by the end of the war 2.5 million had been destroyed, and another 4 million were uninhabitable, according to Der Spiegel

Material: Some 14 billion cubic feet of rubble was recovered in West Germany alone after the war

Bombed out: The skeleton of a building seen in 1946 is all that remains, its insides reduced to rocks and dust

These images were taken by a British man representing the UK Board of Trade during a tour of post-war Germany in 1946. This photo was taken in Weissenberg, a town in Saxony

A museum is little but walls, but at least its still standing - 80 per cent of historic buildings in Germany were flattened by Allied bombing during World War II

The images seen here were taken by Briton Harry Thurgar, appointed by the UK Board of Trade to visit Germany as part of the Allied Control Council post-war

Mr Thurgar took this picture in Weissenberg in 1946 as Germany begun to rebuild post-war Germany

Mr Thurgar's photographs were discovered when a house was cleared following the death of a family member

His grandson Christopher Eve took the ten reels of film to to be developed, and was awed by the images he discovered

Overall, it is estimated that up to 70 per cent of buildings in Germany had been made uninhabitable due to Allied bombings, and in some areas it was worse

This image, taken during the tour, shows a house that had come under fire during the war

This image taken in the city of Cologne shows a bridge sent into the river by an Allied bomb 

Destroyed: The city of Cologne has 66 per cent of its buildings completely destroyed during World War II

Another snap from Cologne shows the city's famous cathedral in the background

Mr Thurgar's tourin 1946 included stops in Hanover, Hamburg, Cologne - pictured here - Munich, Weissenberg, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Weisbaden and Frankfurt

The 1946 trip to Germany was a small part of the Allied powers' intelligence gathering work after the war

Over a period of four weeks, the British Board of Trade's investigators visited 30 firms situated in the British, American and French zones of occupation