Reports vary greatly; the Allies documented 30 bombing raids, while contemporary Italian accounts claim 54.

[1] In both cases, Allied bombs devastated a city rich in artistic and historical treasures but with little apparent industrial or military significance to the war.

Zadar (known in Italian as Zara) became part of the Kingdom of Italy as a result of the Treaty of Rapallo of 1920, which settled the status of former Austro-Hungarian territories.

[3] From the 1920s on, many more Croats[citation needed] were pressured to leave the city while their place was being taken by ethnic Italians resettling there from within Yugoslavian Dalmatia—such as the famous fashion stylist Ottavio Missoni,[4] who moved with his family from Dubrovnik.

Zara held a force of 9,000 commanded by General Emilio Gilioli that after bloody fighting on 15 April reached Šibenik and Split.

After Mussolini was removed from power, the new government of Pietro Badoglio declared an armistice, and on 8 September 1943, the Italian army collapsed.

The NDH took advantage of this chaotic situation by proclaiming the Treaty of Rome to be void and occupying Italian Dalmatia with German support.

This stopped the Partisans (the local Allied forces) from temporarily liberating Zadar, as was the case with Split and Šibenik.

The city was prevented from joining the NDH on the grounds that Zadar itself was not subject to the conditions of the Treaty of Rome, whether it was void or not.

Despite this, the NDH's leader Ante Pavelić designated Zadar as the capital of the Sidraga-Ravni Kotari County, although its prefect was prevented from entering the city.

Zadar remained under local Italian administration with German military protection, and in this unsure climate that the Allied bombing began.

The first large Allied aerial attack on Zadar was carried out on 2 November 1943 by the USAAF 12th Air Force, during which an orphanage was destroyed, among other buildings.

As with other cases of urban bombings the damage was not caused by the initial explosions but the resulting fires, which turned the city into a pile of skeletons of burnt-out houses.

[6] However, the number of casualties was much less because the population rendered homeless escaped to the less damaged outskirts (Arbanasi and Stanovi) as well as Zadar's islands.