Competing narratives

As one of the major symbols of German suffering, the Allied bombing war left a strong imprint on German society. After 1945, to a much wider extent than is often claimed, the Allied bombings became part of German debates on the Second World War. Contrary to the often proclaimed idea that the memory of the bombings had been taboo in Germany, in both the GDR and the Federal Republic the air war became a topic of public and political interest as well as the subject of many popular and academic historical accounts. In both cases this historiography until the 1970s, consisted mainly of popular accounts that were written by non-academic authors.

To a large extent, East and West German historiography clustered around two competing views on the air war. The discussions of the Allied bombings reflected a direct competition over the past between East and West German narratives during the Cold War. East German authors integrated the Allied bombing war into the central ‘anti-Fascist’ master narrative of German history and the Second World War. According to this overarching perspective, ‘Western imperialism’ shared basic characteristics with Nazism. Both political systems were forms of imperialism, ruled by ‘reactionary circles’, which represented capitalist interests of powerful industrialists and made use of similar inhumane methods. Moreover, according to the official East German vision, Britain and the United States had only half-heartedly joined an alliance with the Soviet Union and had left the larger part of the struggle to defeat Hitler to the Red Army. But even before the war ended the Western Allies had already become primarily driven by fear of Soviet influence in Europe and had attempted to frustrate the progress of the Red Army.

The bombing of cities during the Second World War provided a very useful example to support the East German narrative. The massive bombing of civilians seemed to mark an important parallel between the ‘Anglo- Americans’ and the Fascist Germans. Contrary to the ‘humane’ Russians, both Nazi Germany and the Western Allies had conducted the cynical ‘terror bombings’ of innocent civilians.