Baedeker Blitz for the German Foreign Office, is reported to have said on 24 April 1942, "We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide", a reference to the popular travel guides of that name. Goebbels was furious; keen to brand British attacks as "terror bombing", he was equally keen to designate German efforts as "retaliatory measures". Stumm's off-the-cuff remark "effectively admitted the Germans were targetting cultural and historic targets, just what the German leadership did not want to do, and Goebbels took steps to make sure it did not happen again". The
Baedeker Mairs publishing group, were merged and housed together in Ostfildern/Kemnat as "Karl Baedeker GmbH" with a branch in Munich. The ownership of the new venture was split down the middle between Langenscheidt and Mairs. In 1997, Mairs Geographischer Verlag, now known as , became the 100% owner of Verlag Karl Baedeker, along with all rights attached to Karl Baedeker's name and firm. The new English Baedekers produced by MairDumont dispensed with the "Allianz" logo in the title, with the German editions doing the same in 2013. This marked the beginning of a new era in the appearance and content of