Located north of the Harz mountain range, it is known for its old town center, which was largely destroyed by Allied bombings in the late stages of World War II after local Nazi leaders refused to surrender.

In World War II Halberstadt was a regional production center for Junkers aircraft, which also housed an SS forced labor camp.

[3][4] Halberstadt is situated between the Harz in the south and the Huy hills in the north on the Holtemme and Goldbach rivers, both left tributaries of the Bode.

[8] In 814 the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious made the Christian mission in the German stem duchy of Saxony the episcopal see of the Diocese of Halberstadt.

During the Thirty Years' War the town was occupied by the troops of Albrecht von Wallenstein in 1629 and temporarily re-Catholicized according to the imperial Edict of Restitution.

From 1747 Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim worked here as a government official and made his home an intellectual centre of the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) movement.

Under the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit the town became part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, a Napoleonic client-state and administrative seat of the Westphalian Department of Saale.

[citation needed] In 1912 the Halberstädter Flugzeugwerke aircraft manufacturer was founded followed by the opening of a military airbase, providing the German Luftstreitkräfte in World War I.

After the war it had to close down in accordance with the regulations of the Treaty of Versailles, until in the course of the German re-armament, it opened again in 1935 as a branch of the Junkers company in Dessau.

The aircraft factory was the site of an SS forced labor camp, one of several subcamps of Buchenwald; the production facilities and the nearby Luftwaffe airbase were targets of Allied bombing during the 'Big Week' in February 1944.

[10] In the last days of World War II, in April 1945, US forces approached Halberstadt as they attacked remaining Nazi troops in the short-lived Harz pocket.

[11] He refused, no white flag was raised and on 8 April 1945, 218 Flying Fortresses of the 8th Air Force, accompanied by 239 escort fighters, dropped 595 tons of bombs on the center of Halberstadt.

[14] In the early 18th century, Halberstadt had one of the largest Jewish communities in central Europe and was known as a center of theology and learning after Berend Lehmann (1661–1730) founded a beth midrash there in 1703.