Altona, Hamburg surrounding cities) with the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1938. On 1 February 2007 the "Ortsämter" (precincts) in Hamburg were dissolved. In Altona the precincts of Blankenese, Lurup and Osdorf had existed and had local offices. On 1 March 2008 the Schanzenviertel neighborhood, which had spanned across parts of the boroughs of Altona, Eimsbüttel and Hamburg-Mitte, became the Sternschanze quarter, the entirety of which is now in the Altona borough. The border of Altona to the south is the River Elbe, and across the river the state Lower Saxony and the boroughs Harburg and Hamburg-Mitte. To the east
Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Legion against the cities of Guernica and Durango in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. This led to an escalation of various cities bombed, including Chongqing, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. All of the major belligerents in World War II dropped bombs on civilians in cities. Modern debate over the applicability of the Hague Conventions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolves around whether the Conventions can be assumed to cover modes of warfare that were at the time unknown; whether rules for artillery bombardment can be applied to rules for aerial bombing.