Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:08:36.918Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Air Wars, Memory Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Mary Nolan
Affiliation:
New York University

Extract

The German preoccupation with the Nazi past, with issues of guilt, responsibility, and victimization “… doesn't end. Never will it end,” to quote the resigned note on which Günter Grass concluded his latest novel, Crabwalk. It manifests itself in ever new forms, as different parts of the past, which may or may not have been repressed, come to the fore and are painfully reconstructed, tentatively probed, and reluctantly and often only partially accepted. Each new perspective on the past reorders, sometimes even shatters, the previous mosaic. Recall the impact of the film Holocaust or of the Wehrmacht exhibition. A similar phenomenon is now occurring—or so some hope and others fear. Since 2002 German suffering, rather than German guilt, has become the principal theme in discourses about the past. The firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, “moral bombing,” mass rape, and ethnic cleansing dominate historical and literary production and public debate as the Eastern Front, war crimes, and the pervasive knowledge of the Holocaust did in the mid- and late-1990s, and the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its central place within the Third Reich did a decade before that.

Type
Articles Germans as Victims During the Second World War
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Grass, Günter, Crabwalk, trans. Winston, Krisha, (New York: Harcourt, 2002). The German original Im Krebsgang was published in 2002.Google Scholar

2. Sebald, W. G., On the Natural History of Destruction, trans. Bell, Anthea (New York: Random House, 2003)Google Scholar. All references in the text are to this version. Friedrich, Jörg, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg, 1940–1945 (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2002).Google Scholar

3. 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. Coetzee, J. M., “Victims,” New York Review of Books, 06 12, 2003, 26.Google Scholar

4. Grass, , Crabwalk, 122.Google Scholar

5. Kettenacker, Lothar, ed., Ein Volk von Opfern? Die neue Debatte um den Bombenkrieg, 1940–1945 (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2003).Google Scholar

6. Hage, Volker, Zeugen der Zerstörung: Die Literaten und der Luftkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2003).Google Scholar

7. Hage, Volker, Hamburg 1943: Literarische Zeugnisse zum Feuersturm (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2003).Google Scholar

8. Forte, Dieter, Schweigen oder sprechen (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2002).Google Scholar

9. For a scathing review of Die Brandstätten, which concluded by suggesting the book should be thrown into the waste basket, see Raulff, Ulrich, “Von Bombenhammer erschlagen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10 18, 2003.Google Scholar

10. For an overview of the Historians' Debate, see Reworking the Past: Hitler, The Holocaust, and the Historians' Debate, ed. Baldwin, Peter (Boston: Beacon, 1990).Google Scholar

11. Ibid.

12. Nolte, Ernst, “Die Vergangenheit die nicht vergehen will,” Historikerstreit: Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung (Munich: Piper, 1987).Google Scholar

13. Nolan, Mary, “The Historikerstreit and Social History,” in Baldwin, , ed., Reworking the Past, 224–48.Google Scholar

14. For a discussion of these controversies, see Bartov, Omer, Grossmann, Atina, and Nolan, Mary, eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, ed. (New York: New Press, 2002).Google Scholar

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 and Gespräch, ed. Ulrich, Bernd (Hamburg: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, 1998).Google Scholar

16. Klemperer, Victor, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, vol. 1, 1933–39, vol. 2, 1942–1945, trans. Chalmers, Martin (New York: Random House, 1998, 1999).Google Scholar

17. For an overview of these debates, see Nolan, Mary, “The Politics of Memory in the Berlin Republic,” Radical History Review 81 (Fall 2001), 113–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a longer analysis, see Niven, Bill, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Ladd, Brian, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Niven, , Facing the Nazi Past, 200.Google Scholar

20. Naumann, Klaus, Der Krieg als Text: Das Jahr 1945 im kulturellen Gedächtnis der Presse (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998), 318Google Scholar, cited in Langenbacher, Eric, “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” German Politics and Society (Summer 2003), 59.Google Scholar

21. Langenbacher, , “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” 59.Google Scholar

22. Niven, , Facing the Nazi Past, 114. Some, such as Hans Apel and the FDP signatories, later withdrew their signatures. 116.Google Scholar

23. “Die Jungen denken anders: Umfrage über Einsichten und Ansichten der Deutschen um Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs,” Der Spiegel, 19 (1995), 77.Google Scholar

24. For a virtual tour of the new exhibit, go to http://www.his-online.de/english.htm#.

25. The term is from Charles Maier, “WWII Bombing,” H-German http://www.hnet.org/~german/discuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm. “Bombenkrieg, Einlei-tung,” Historicum.net, 1. 1. http://www.bombenkrieg.historicum.net/einleitung.html.

26. 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.Google Scholar

27. Neumann, Thomas W., “Der Bombenkrieg: Zur ungeschriebenen Geschichte einer kollek-tiven Verletzung,” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Naumann, Klaus (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition HIS Verlag, 2002), 330–1, 336–41.Google Scholar

28. Bodemann, Y. Michal, Forward, 10 8, 2003.Google Scholar

29. Langenbacher, , “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” 5152Google Scholar. Behrenbeck, Sabine, “Between Pain and Silence: Remembering the Victims of Violence in Germany after 1949,” in Bessel, Richard and Schumann, Dirk, eds., Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 5659Google Scholar. For the best discussion of the public debate about and collective memories of the expellees, see Moeller, Robert G., War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).Google Scholar

30. Moeller, , War Stories, 45.Google Scholar

31. Bollmann, Ralph, “Im Dickicht der Aufrechnung,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 147–48.Google Scholar

32. Langenbacher, , “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” 52.Google Scholar

33. Markovitz, Andrei, Forward, 10 8, 2003.Google Scholar

34. Huyssen, Andreas, “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.Google Scholar

35. Hage, , Zeugen der Zerstörung, 118122.Google Scholar

36. Sebald, , On the Natural History of Destruction, 10, 4.Google Scholar

37. Hage, , Zeugen der Zerstörung, 123.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., 128–30.

39. Carole Anne Constabile-Heming, Review of Luftkrieg und Literatur, H-German, http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm.

40. Groehler, Olaf, Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1990)Google Scholar; Boog, Horst, Krebs, Gerhard, and Vogel, Detlef, Das deutsche Reich in der Defensive. Strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa, Krieg im Westen und in Ostasien 1943–1944/45 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001).Google Scholar

41. Sebald, , On the Natural History of Destruction, 11.Google Scholar

42. For a full discussion of these divergent memories, see Herf, Jeffrey, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

43. Maron, Monika, “Der Fisch und die Bomben,” in Hage, Zeugen, 215.Google Scholar

44. Margalit, Gilad, “Der Luftangriff auf Dresden, Seine Bedeutung für die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und für die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen Kriegsermnerung im Westen,” in Narrative der Shoah. Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographic, Kunst und Politik, ed. Düwell, Susanne and Schmidt, Matthais (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), 191, 194–99Google Scholar. See also Margalit, Gilad, “Dresden und die Erinnerungspolitik der DDR,” http://www.bombenkneg.historicum.net/themen/ddr.html.Google Scholar

45. Moeller, , War Stories, 25.Google Scholar

46. Moeller, , War StoriesGoogle Scholar. Grossmann, Atina, “A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers,” in Moeller, Robert G., ed., West Germany Under Construction: Politics, Society and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 3352Google Scholar. Stargardt, Nicholas, “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 57.Google Scholar

47. Langenbacher, , “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” 55Google Scholar. When condemning the war in Vietnam, German students accused Americans of acting like Nazi criminals. They did not compare the bombing of North Vietnam to that of Germany during the World War II. Greiner, Bernd, “Deutsche Amerikabilder im Umbruch der 60er Jahre,” Mittelweg 36, 12: 4 (08/09 2003), 2645.Google Scholar

48. Moeller, , War StoriesGoogle Scholar. 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 (03 25, 2002).Google Scholar

49. Grossmann, , “A Question of Silence.” Frank Biess, “Survivors of Totalitarianism: Returning POWs and the Reconstruction of Masculine Citizenship in West Germany, 1945–1955,” in Schissler, Hanna, ed., The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 5782Google Scholar. Biess, Frank, “Between Amnesty and Anti-Communism: The West German Kameradenschinder Trials, 1948–1960,” in Grossmann, Bartov, and Nolan, , eds., Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (New York: The New Press, 2002), 138160.Google Scholar

50. Sebald suggested this is one reason for silence; On the Natural History of Destruction, 45.Google Scholar

51. Forte, , Schweigen oder sprechen, 53.Google Scholar

52. Jarausch, Konrad and Geyer, Michael, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 326–27. For an American discussion of air wars and a similar blurring, see Robert McNamara in Errol Morris' film Fog of War.Google Scholar

53. Welzer, Harald, Moller, Sabine, Tschuggnall, Karoline, “Opa war kein Nazi”: National-sozialismus und Holocaust in Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002), 10, 123, 15–16, 82–7.Google Scholar

54. Niven, , Facing the Nazi Past, 67.Google Scholar

55. Grass quoted in Klein, Julia, “Germans as Victims of World War II,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 04 18, 2003.Google Scholar

56. Schütze, Christian, “On That Terrible Night…,” London Review of Book, 08 21, 2003, 28Google Scholar. “Der Luftkrieg über Europa,” Der Spiegel Special 1(2003), 10.Google Scholar

57. Sebald, , On the Natural History of Destruction, viiiGoogle Scholar. Schütze claims such a sense of national humiliation was only felt by diehard Nazis, ; “On That Terrible Night…,” 28.Google Scholar

58. Sebald, , On the Natural History of Destruction, 13.Google Scholar

59. Langenbacher, , “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” 63.Google Scholar

60. The phrase is from Naumann, Klaus, “Bombenkrieg—Totaler Krieg—Massaker: Jörg Freidrichs Buch Der Brand in der Diskussion,” Mittelweg 36 12: 4 (08/09 2003), 4960.Google Scholar

61. Schneider, Peter, “Deutsche als Opfer,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 163–5Google Scholar. Quote 165. Published in English as “The Germans Are Breaking an Old Taboo,” New York Times, 01 18, 2003.Google Scholar

62. Naumann, , “Bombenkrieg,” 51–2, 5960. Quote 60.Google Scholar

63. Such antimilitarism was framed in terms of lessons to be learned from the crimes of Nazism. It does not seem to have invoked the experience of bombing in the way post-1989 German antiwar sentiment has.

64. Douglas Peifer, Review of Friedrich, H-German, http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm.

65. Markovits, Andrei S. and Gorski, Philip S., The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 23.Google Scholar

66. Moeller, Robert, “Sinking Ships, the Lost Heimat and Broken Taboos: Günter Grass and the Politics of Memory in Contemporary Germany,” Contemporary European History, 12:2 (2003), 171–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Langenbacher, , “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany,” 62Google Scholar. Noack, Hans-Jaochim, “Die Deutschen als Opfer,” Der Spiegel, 03 25, 2002, 3940.Google Scholar

67. Huyssen, Andreas, “Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad,” New German Critique 90 (Fall 2003), 163–76, 165.Google Scholar

68. Forward, 10 8, 2003.Google Scholar

69. Interview with Grass, , New York Times, 04 8, 2003.Google Scholar

70. Mommsen, Hans, “Moralisch, Strategisch, Zerstörerisch,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 150.Google Scholar

71. Johnson, Daniel, “Breaking the Silence,” TLS, 04 25, 2003, 78.Google Scholar

72. Huyssen, , “Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad,” 164–5, 171–2.Google Scholar

73. Grossmann, Atina, “War Burnout,” paper delivered at Goethe Institute New York panel on “German Civilians as Victims? The Evolution of a Perception.” 10 29, 2003.Google Scholar

74. Scott Denham, Review of Nossak and Rhen, H-German, http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm.

75. Johnson, , “Breaking the Silence,” 8.Google Scholar

76. Nolan, Mary, “What difference does a Cold War Make? Reflections on the German-American Relationship,” in Janssens, Ruud and Kroes, Rob, eds., in Post-Cold War Europe, Post-Cold War America (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004), 3044Google Scholar and idem in Ross, Andrew and Ross, Kristen, eds., trans. “Anti-Americanism in Germany,” Anti-Americanism (New York: New York University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

77. Johnson, , “Breaking the Silence,” 8.Google Scholar

78. Schütze, , “On That Terrible Night…,” 29.Google Scholar

79. Huyssen, , “Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad;” italics in original, 167.Google Scholar

80. Maier, , “WWII Bombing;” Kettenacher, in Ein Volk von Opfern? Die neue Debatre um den Bombenkrieg, 1940–1945, forward, 14.Google Scholar

81. Friedman, Max Paul, “The Hohmann Affair Revisited: Unspeakable Traditions in German Political Thought?” H-German, 02 25, 2004Google Scholar. http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-german&month=0402&week=d&msg=EhGlL/5ikaZbFA52xL%2bjDA&user=&pw=.

82. Neue Züricher Zeitung, cited in Noack, , 40.Google Scholar

83. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, “Wer Wind sät, wird Sturm ernten,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 143–4.Google Scholar

84. Peifer, Review of Friedrich.

85. Arnold, Jörg, “A Narrative of Loss,” H-German, http://www.h-net.org/~german/dis-cuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm.Google Scholar

86. Schütze, , “On That Terrible Night…,” 28.Google Scholar

87. Boog, Horst, “Kolossalgemälde des Schreckens,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 136.Google Scholar

88. Johnson, , “Breaking the Silence,” 7.Google Scholar

89. Maier, , “WWII Bombing.”Google Scholar

90. Stephan, Cora, “Wie man eine Stadt anzündet,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 95102. Quotes 102, 98, 97.Google Scholar

91. Walser, Martin, “Bombenkrieg als Epos,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 127–30.Google Scholar

92. Arnold, , “A Narrative of Loss.”Google Scholar

93. Stargardt, , “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” 63.Google Scholar

94. Winkler, Willi, “Nun singen sie wieder,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 106, 108.Google Scholar

95. Arnold, , “A Narrative of Loss.”Google Scholar

96. Giordano, Ralph, “Ein Volk von Opfern?” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 168Google Scholar. Taylor, Frederick, Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 6.Google Scholar

97. Huyssen, Andreas, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia,”Google Scholar in idem, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 16.Google Scholar

98. Stargardt, , “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 61.Google Scholar

99. Ibid., 62–3.

100. Dreyfus, Jean Marc, “WWII Bombing”Google Scholar in H-German, http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm. “Wir haben ja nichts mehr,” Der Spiegel Special: Als Feuer vom Himmel fiel (1/2003), 9495Google Scholar. Stargardt, , “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 65.Google Scholar

101. Der Spiegel Special, 95.Google Scholar

102. “Witze über den Führer,” Der Spiegel Special, 86.Google Scholar

103. Grossmann, , “War Burnout,” 6.Google Scholar

104. Torrie, Julia, Review of Gert Ledig, Payback. H-German, http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/WWII_bombing/WWII-bombing_index.htm.Google Scholar

105. Stargardt, , “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 62–6.Google Scholar

106. Herbert, Ulrich, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 359–63.Google Scholar

107. Stargardt, , “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” in Ein volk von Opfern?, 66.Google Scholar

108. Herbert, , Hitler's Foreign Workers, 363–64, 372.Google Scholar

109. Giordano, , “Ein Volk von Opfern?” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 166.Google Scholar

110. Klemperer, , I Witt Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, vol. 2, 415–16.Google Scholar

111. Taylor, , Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945, 306–8.Google Scholar

112. Kaplan, Marion, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 209–11.Google Scholar

113. For the most comprehensive and provocative survey of twentieth-century bombing, see Lindqvist, Sven, A History of Bombing (New York: The New Press, 2001).Google Scholar

114. Trenkner, Joachim, “Wieluń 1. September 1939: ‘Keine besondere Feindbeobachtung,’” Ein Volk von Ogfern?, 1523Google Scholar. “Wir werden sie ausradieren,” Der Spiegel Special2627.Google Scholar

115. Kettenacher, , Ein Volk von Opfern?, 52.Google Scholar

116. Boog, , “Kolossalgemälde des Schreckens,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 134.Google Scholar

117. Friedrich, , Der Brand, 63.Google Scholar

118. Taylor, , Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945, 411.Google Scholar

119. Lagrou, Pieter, “The Nationalization of Victimhood: Selective Violence and National Grief in Western Europe, 1940–1960,” in Life After Death, 246.Google Scholar

120. “‘Wir werden sie ausradieren,’” Der Spiegel Special, 27Google Scholar. 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 toll 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.Google Scholar

121. Life after Death begins to explore these issues for Western Europe.

122. Overy, Richard, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1995), 127–28, 343, footnote 65.Google Scholar

123. Taylor, , Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945, 355–56, 416–17.Google Scholar

124. Overy, , Why the Allies Won, 20, 124–5, 129–31. Quote 131.Google Scholar

125. Ibid., 20, 113.

126. Bajohr, Frank, Talk on the air war, delivered at Goethe Institute New York panel on “German Civilians as Victims? The Evolution of a Perception,” 10 29, 2003.Google Scholar

127. “Wir haben ja nichts mehr,” Der Spiegel Special, 95.Google Scholar

128. Stargardt, , “Opfer der Bomben und der Vergeltung,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 69.Google Scholar

129. Overy, Richard, “Barbarisch, aber sinnvoll,” in Ein Volk von Opfern?, 183.Google Scholar

130. Johnson, , “Breaking the Silence,” 7.Google Scholar

131. Interview of Grass, , New York Times, 04 8, 2003.Google Scholar

132. “Luftkrieg iiber Europa,” Der Spiegel Special, 20.Google Scholar

133. Langenbacher, Eric, “The Allies in World War Two: The Anglo-American Bombardment of German Cities,” 19 http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/governrnent/faculty/langenbe/BombardmentofGermany.pdf.Google Scholar

134. Kettenacher, , Ein Volk von Opfern?, 55.Google Scholar

135. Ibid., forward, 13.

136. Mommsen, , “Moralisch, Strategisch, Zerstörerisch,” 150–51. Quote 151.Google Scholar

137. Maier, , “WWII Bombing.”Google Scholar

138. Arnold, , “A Narrative of Loss.”Google Scholar