The Dresden Firebombing

Memory and the Politics of Commemorating Destruction

Tony Joel

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781780763583
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857736352
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The firebombing of Dresden marks the terrible apex of the European bombing war. In just over two days in February 1945, over 1,300 heavy bombers from the RAF and the USAAF dropped nearly 4,000 tonnes of explosives on Dresden's civilian centre.Since the end of World War II, both the death toll and the motivation for the attack have become fierce historical battlegrounds, as German feelings of victimhood complete with those of guilt and loss. The Dresden bombing was used by East Germany as a propaganda tool, and has been re-appropriated by the neo-Nazi far right. Meanwhile the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche- the city's sumptuous eighteenth-century church destroyed in the raid-became central to German identity, while in London, a statue of the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, has attracted protests. In this book, Tony Joel focuses on the historical battle to re-appropriate Dresden, and on how World War II continues to shape British and German identity today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Destruction of Dresden and the Shifting Dynamics of German Victimisation
• 1 The Western Allies’ Strategic Bombing Offensive and Dresden’s Transformation from European Kulturstadt to Germany’s Opferstadt
• 2 The Fashioning of Dresden’s Destruction into a Political Asset: 1946 to the Early 1980s
• 3 Dresden’s Last Milestone Gedenktag before the Fall of the Wall: 13 February 1985
• 4 Dresden Memory Politics in the Schwebezeit: 1989–90
• 5 A British Dimension to Dresden Commemorative Politics: 1992–2000
• 6 Dresden as a Memory Battleground: 13 February 2005
• Conclusion: Memory Work in Progress: Remembering the Past, Reflecting on the Present and Future
• Notes
• Bibliography