massive Red Air Force raids. Thus Hammerfest became their main shipping port in Finnmark in the autumn of 1944.
Hammerfest was bombed twice by the Soviet Air Forces; on 14 February 1944 with little damage and again on 29 August 1944 with more significant damage to buildings and infrastructure and with ships sunk in the harbour. The ships lost were the local transports Tanahornand Brynilen.
The population was forcibly evacuated by the occupying German troops in the autumn of 1944 after a Soviet offensive at the northern extremity of the Eastern Front pushed into eastern Finnmark. All of Finnmark including the town was looted and burned to the ground by the Germans when they retreated in 1945, the last of the town having been destroyed by the time the Germans finally left on 10 February 1945. Only the town's small funeral chapel, built in 1937, was left standing. The Museum of Reconstruction in Hammerfest tells the story of these events and the recovery of the region. The Soviet troops in eastern Finnmark were withdrawn in September 1945.
Mines and munitions left over from the Second World War are still being found and disposed of in the Hammerfest area
