Germans as victims during the Second World War: Air wars, memory wars

Central European History

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 7-40

  Nolan, Mary ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 14544288909     PISSN: 00089389     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/1569161053623651     Document Type: Review

References (127)

1. Günter Grass, Crabwalk, trans. Krisha Winston, (New York: Harcourt, 2002). The German original Im Krebsgang was published in 2002
2. W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Random House, 2003)
3. All references in the text are to this version. Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg, 1940-1945 (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2002)
4. Although Heinz Schön's historical research and the Frank Wiesbar 1959 film Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen had explored the sinking of the Gustloff, neither captured the popular imagination in the way Grass's novel did. J. M. Coetzee, "Victims," New York Review of Books, June 12, 2003, 26
5. Grass, Crabwalk, 122
6. Lothar Kettenacker, ed., Ein Volk von Opfern? Die neue Debatte um den Bombenkrieg, 1940-1945 (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2003)
7. Volker Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung: Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2003)
8. Volker Hage, Hamburg 1943: Literarische Zeugnisse zum Feuersturm (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2003)
9. Dieter Forte, Schweigen oder sprechen (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2002)
10. For a scathing review of Die Brandstätten, which concluded by suggesting the book should be thrown into the waste basket, see Ulrich Raulff, "Von Bombenhammer erschlagen," Süddeutsche Zeitung, Oct. 18, 2003
11. For an overview of the Historians' Debate, see Reworking the Past: Hitler, The Holocaust, and the Historians' Debate, ed. Peter Baldwin (Boston: Beacon, 1990)
12. Ernst Nolte, "Die Vergangenheit die nicht vergehen will," Historikerstreit: Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung (Munich: Piper, 1987)
13. Mary Nolan, "The Historikerstreit and Social History," in Baldwin, ed., Reworking the Past, 224-48
14. For a discussion of these controversies, see Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and Mary Nolan, eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, ed. (New York: New Press, 2002)
15. Jenseits des Krieges, a film by Ruth Beckermann made at the Wehrmacht exhibit during its showing in Vienna. See also Besucher einer Ausstellung: Die Ausstellung "Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944" Interview und Gespräch, ed. Bernd Ulrich (Hamburg: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, 1998)
16. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, vol. I, 1933-39, vol. II, 1942-1945, trans. Martin Chalmers (New York: Random House, 1998, 1999)
17. For an overview of these debates, see Mary Nolan, "The Politics of Memory in the Berlin Republic," Radical History Review 81 (Fall 2001), 113-32
18. For a longer analysis, see Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich (London and New York: Routledge, 2002)
19. Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 218
20. Niven, Facing the Nazi Past, 200
21. Klaus Naumann, Der Krieg als Text: Das Jahr 1945 im kulturellen Gedächtnis der Presse (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998), 318
22. cited in Eric Langenbacher, "Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany," German Politics and Society (Summer 2003), 59
23. Langenbacher, "Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany," 59
24. Niven, Facing the Nazi Past, 114. Some, such as Hans Apel and the FDP signatories, later withdrew their signatures. 116
25. "Die Jungen denken anders: Umfrage über Einsichten und Ansichten der Deutschen um Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs," Der Spiegel, 19 (1995), 77
26. For a virtual tour of the new exhibit, go to http://wwww.his-online.de/ english.htm#
27. The term is from Charles Maier, "WWII Bombing," H-German http://www.h-net.org/german/discuss/WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index.htm
28. "Bombenkrieg, Einleitung," Historicum.net, 1. http://www.bombenkrieg.historicum.net/einleitung.html
29. Coetzee in his review of Grass wrongly repeats the myth that German suffering was only part of the former and not the latter. Coetzee, "Victims," 26
30. Thomas W. Neumann, "Der Bombenkrieg: Zur ungeschriebenen Geschichte einer kollektiven Verletzung," in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition HIS Verlag, 2002), 330-1, 336-41
31. Y. Michal Bodemann, Forward, Oct. 8, 2003
32. Langenbacher, "Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany," 51-52
33. Sabine Behrenbeck, "Between Pain and Silence: Remembering the Victims of Violence in Germany after 1949," in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann, eds., Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 56-59
34. For the best discussion of the public debate about and collective memories of the expellees, see Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
35. Moeller, War Stories, 45
36. Ralph Bollmann, "Im Dickicht der Aufrechnung," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 147-48
37. Andrei Markovitz, Forward, Oct. 8, 2003
38. Andreas Huyssen, "Rewritings and New Beginnings: W. G. Sebald and the Literature on the Air War," in Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 147-48
39. Hage, Zeugen der Zerstörung, 118-122
40. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 10, 4
41. Carole Anne Constabile-Heming, Review of Luftkrieg und Literatur, H-German, http://www.h-net.org/german/discuss/WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index. htm
42. Olaf Groehler, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1990)
43. Horst Boog, Gerhard Krebs, and Detlef Vogel, Das deutsche Reich in der Defensive. Strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa, Krieg im Westen und in Ostasien 1943-1944/45 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001)
44. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 11
45. For a full discussion of these divergent memories, see Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)
46. Monika Maron, "Der Fisch und die Bomben," in Hage, Zeugen, 215
47. Gilad Margalit, "Der Luftangriff auf Dresden, Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegserinnerung im Westen," in Narrative der Shoah. Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographie, Kunst und Politik, ed. Susanne Düwell and Matthais Schmidt (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), 191, 194-99
48. See also Gilad Margalit, "Dresden und die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR," http://www.bombenkrieg.historicum.net/ themen/ddr.html
49. Atina Grossmann, "A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers," in Robert G. Moeller, ed., West Germany Under Construction: Politics, Society and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 33-52
50. Nicholas Stargardt, "Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 57
51. Bernd Greiner, "Deutsche Amerikabilder im Umbruch der 60er Jahre," Mittelweg 36, 12: 4 (August/September 2003), 26-45
52. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, who worked on the documentation about the expellees in 1950, insisted, contrary to Moeller, that no one paid attention then or later to the issue. See interview with Wehler, "Die Debatte wirkt befreiend," Der Spiegel 13 (March 25, 2002)
53. Grossmann, "A Question of Silence."
54. Frank Biess, "Survivors of Totalitarianism: Returning POWs and the Reconstruction of Masculine Citizenship in West Germany, 1945-1955," in Hanna Schissler, ed., The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 57-82
55. Frank Biess, "Between Amnesty and Anti-Communism: The West German Kameradenschinder Trials, 1948-1960," in Bartov, Grossmann, and Nolan, eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (New York: The New Press, 2002), 138-160
56. Sebald suggested this is one reason for silence; On the Natural History of Destruction, 4-5
57. Forte, Schweigen oder sprechen, 53
58. Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 326-27
59. For an American discussion of air wars and a similar blurring, see Robert McNamara in Errol Morris' film Fog of War
60. Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, Karoline Tschuggnall, "Opa war kein Nazi": Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust in Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002), 10, 123, 15-16, 82-7
61. Grass quoted in Julia Klein, "Germans as Victims of World War II," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 18, 2003
62. Christian Schütze, "On That Terrible Night...," London Review of Book, August 21, 2003, 28
63. "Der Luftkrieg über Europa," Der Spiegel Special 1(2003), 10
64. Schütze claims such a sense of national humiliation was only felt by diehard Nazis; "On That Terrible Night...," 28
65. The phrase is from Klaus Naumann, "Bombenkrieg - Totaler Krieg - Massaker: Jörg Freidrichs Buch Der Brand in der Diskussion," Mittelweg 36 12:4 (August/September 2003), 49-60
66. Peter Schneider, "Deutsche als Opfer," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 163-5. Quote 165
67. Published in English as "The Germans Are Breaking an Old Taboo," New York Times, January 18, 2003
68. Naumann, "Bombenkrieg," 51-2, 59-60. Quote 60
69. Douglas Peifer, Review of Friedrich, H-German, http://www.h-net.org/ german/discuss/ WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index.htm
70. Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski, The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 23
71. Robert Moeller, "Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany," Contemporary European History, 12:2 (2003), 171-72
72. Hans-Jaochim Noack, "Die Deutschen als Opfer," Der Spiegel, March 25, 2002, 39-40
73. Andreas Huyssen, "Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad," New German Critique 90 (Fall 2003), 163-76, 165
74. Interview with Grass, New York Times, April 8, 2003
75. Hans Mommsen, "Moralisch, Strategisch, Zerstörerisch," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 150
76. Daniel Johnson, "Breaking the Silence," TLS, April 25, 2003, 7-8
77. Huyssen, "Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad," 164-5, 171-2
78. Atina Grossmann, "War Burnout," paper delivered at Goethe Institute New York panel on "German Civilians as Victims? The Evolution of a Perception." October 29, 2003
79. Scott Denham, Review of Nossak and Rhen, H-German, http://www.h-net.org/ german/ discuss/WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index.htm
80. Johnson, "Breaking the Silence," 8
81. Mary Nolan, "What difference does a Cold War Make? Reflections on the German-American Relationship," in Ruud Janssens and Rob Kroes, eds., in Post-Cold War Europe, Post-Cold War America (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004), 30-44
82. and idem in Andrew Ross and Kristen Ross, eds., trans. "Anti-Americanism in Germany," Anti-Americanism (New York: New York University Press, 2004)
83. Schütze, "On That Terrible Night...," 29
84. Huyssen, "Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad;" italics in original, 167
85. Maier, "WWII Bombing;" Kettenacher, in Ein Volk von Opfern? Die neue Debatte um den Bombenkrieg, 1940-1945, forward, 14
86. Max Paul Friedman, "The Hohmann Affair Revisited: Unspeakable Traditions in German Political Thought?" H-German, February 25, 2004. http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse. pl?trx=vx&list=h-german&month= 0402&week=d&msg=EhG1L/ 5ikaZbFA52xL%2bjDA&user= &pw=
87. Neue Züricher Zeitung, cited in Noack, 40
88. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, "Wer Wind sät, wird Sturm ernten," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 143-4
89. Peifer, Review of Friedrich
90. Jörg Arnold, "A Narrative of Loss," H-German, http://www.h-net.org/german/discuss/WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index.htm
91. Horst Boog, "Kolossalgemälde des Schreckens," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 136
92. Maier, "WWII Bombing."
93. Cora Stephan, "Wie man eine Stadt anzündet," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 95-102. Quotes 102, 98, 97
94. Martin Walser, "Bombenkrieg als Epos," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 127-30
95. Arnold, "A Narrative of Loss."
96. Stargardt, "Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung," 63
97. Willi Winkler, "Nun singen sie wieder," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 106, 108
98. Ralph Giordano, "Ein Volk von Opfern?" in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 168
99. Frederick Taylor, Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 6
100. Andreas Huyssen, "Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia," in idem, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 16
101. Stargardt, "Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 61
102. Jean Marc Dreyfus, "WWII Bombing" in H-German, http://www.h-net.org/german/ discuss/WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index.htm
103. "Wir haben ja nichts mehr," Der Spiegel Special: Als Feuer vom Himmel fiel (1/2003), 94-95
104. Der Spiegel Special, 95
105. "Witze über den Führer," Der Spiegel Special, 86
106. Grossmann, "War Burnout," 6
107. Julia Torrie, Review of Gert Ledig, Payback. H-German, http://www.h-net.org/german/ discuss/WWII-bombing/WWII-bombing-index.htm
108. Ulrich Herbert, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 359-63
109. Herbert, Hitlers Foreign Workers, 363-64, 372
110. Giordano, "Ein Volk von Opfern?" in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 166
111. Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, vol. II, 415-16
112. Taylor, Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945, 306-8
113. Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 209-11
114. For the most comprehensive and provocative survey of twentieth-century bombing, see Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: The New Press, 2001)
115. Joachim Trenkner, "Wieluń 1. September 1939: 'Keine besondere Feindbeobachtung,'" Ein Volk von Opfern?, 15-23
116. Kettenacher, Ein Volk von Opfern?, 52
117. Boog, "Kolossalgemälde des Schreckens," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 134
118. Friedrich, Der Brand, 63
119. Pieter Lagrou, "The Nationalization of Victimhood: Selective Violence and National Grief in Western Europe, 1940-1960," in Life After Death, 246
120. Asian statistics from American Airpower Heritage Museum. http://www.airpowermuseum.org/trafter.html. The GDR never equated Dresden with Hiroshima, but in the wake of David Irving's 1960 book on Dresden, which mistakenly gave the death toU as 130,000 instead of 35,000, many West Germans did. Margalit, "Der Luftangriff auf Dresden, Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegserinnerung im Westen," 204
121. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1995), 127-28, 343, footnote 65
122. Taylor, Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945, 355-56, 416-17
123. Overy, Why the Allies Won, 20, 124-5, 129-31. Quote 131
124. Frank Bajohr, Talk on the air war, delivered at Goethe Institute New York panel on "German Civilians as Victims? The Evolution of a Perception," October 29, 2003
125. Richard Overy, "Barbarisch, aber sinnvoll," in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 183
126. Eric Langenbacher, "The Allies in World War Two: The Anglo-American Bombardment of German Cities," 19 http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/ government/faculty/langenbe/ BombardmentofGermany.pdf
127. Mommsen, "Moralisch, Strategisch, Zerstörerisch," 150-51. Quote 151