Apart from the distraught behaviour of the people themselves, the most striking change in the natural order of the cities during the weeks after a devastating raid was undoubtedly the sudden and alarming increase in the parasitical creatrues thriving on the unburied bodies. The conspicuous sparsity of of observations and comments on this phenomenon can be explained as the tacit imposition of a taboo, very understandable if one remembers that the germans, hwo had proposed to cleanse and sanitise all Europe, now had to contend with a rising fear that they themselves were the rat people..."Rats and flies ruled the city. The rats, bold and fat, rolicked in the streets, but even more disgusting were the flies, huge and iridescent green, flies such as had never been seen before."

on the aftermath of the destruction of German cities during the Second World War, in W.G. Sebald's "Air War and Literature."