The public library of Bielefeld was burned out and lost 40,000 volumes.
Bochum's was completely destroyed and lost 50,000 volumes. Essen lost its
main public library building and four branches and a total of 163,000 vol
umes, as well as the famous factory library at the Krupp works that had
been a pioneer in German public library development. The count goes on
through the alphabet.5 Further losses had come when what was left standing had been vandalized by the local population or plundered by invading
troops in the chaotic closing days of hostilities. No library was remote
enough to be immune. In the French zone of occupation, a predominantly
rural area, reports show library after library completely destroyed. The
story was the same in the southwest area administered by the Bayreuth
Beratungsstelle. Somehow the fate of the public library of Steinhagen, a
small town in the British zone, summarizes the catastrophe; there one
book, Kramarz's Dies M?del ist Hanne, survived.7 Whatever those libraries had been, they had been built with the hard-earned money of the local populations.
Book-burners like their Nazi heroes.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25542532 The same paper, full text: https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.2307/25542532
The allies sure were the good guys.
Compared to who they were fighting, yes.