A Past Becomes History the Professionalizing of Military Historiography of the Air War in the Federal Republic Since the 1970S
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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) A German catastrophe? German historians and the Allied bombings, 1945-2010 von Benda-Beckmann, B.R. Publication date 2010 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): von Benda-Beckmann, B. R. (2010). A German catastrophe? German historians and the Allied bombings, 1945-2010. Vossiuspers - Amsterdam University Press. http://nl.aup.nl/books/9789056296537-a-german-catastrophe.html General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:30 Sep 2021 3 — A Past becomes History The professionalizing of military historiography of the air war in the Federal Republic since the 1970s Introduction Since late 1970s in both East and West Germany attempts have been made to place the Allied bombings of German cities in a more nuanced historical context. Unlike the situation prevailing in the 1950s and ’60s the air war was now researched by professional German historians. In West Germany, Dresden im Luftkrieg appeared in 1977. This book by Götz Bergander (1927), a Dresden native living in the Federal 169 Republic can be regarded as the first critical study of the bombing of Dresden, in which many conclusions that had been drawn in previous studies of Rodenberger, Rumpf and Irving were unmasked as popular. unfounded myths.312 Apart from this study and a few other thoroughly researched local histories313, the devel- 312 Bergander, Dresden A reissue appeared in 1994. Also see: Helmut Schnatz, Der Luftkrieg im Raum Koblenz 1944/45. Eine Darstellung seines Verlaufs, seiner Auswirkungen und Hintergründe (Boppard 1981). For more recent work by Schnatz and Bergander see: Götz Bergander, “Vom unattraktiven zum besonders lohnenden Ziel. Dresden in den Luftkriegsplanungen der Alliierten” in Das Rote Leuchten. Dresden und der Bombenkrieg, ed. Oliver Reinhard, Matthias Neutzner, and Wolfgang Hesse (Dresden: 2005) 44-57; Götz Bergander, “Wahrnehmung der Luftangriffe aus der Perspektive der Zivilbevölkerung,” in Alliierter Bombenkrieg: das Beispiel Dresden, ed. Lothar Fritze and Thomas Widera (Göttingen: 2005) 97-107; Götz Bergander, “Sachsen und der Luftkrieg über Deutschland im Spiegel von Tatsachen und Gerüchten, Erinnerungen und Legenden,” in Sachsen im Bombenkrieg. “... und dan auch noch Dresden”, ed. Christian Hermann and Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden (Dresden: 2005) 12-22. 313 Especially the work of Hartmut Schnatz: Helmut Schnatz, Tiefflieger über Dresden?: Legenden und Wirklichkeit (Köln: 2000); Helmut Schnatz, Der Luftangriff auf Schwinemünde. Dokumentation einer Tragödie (München: 2004); Schnatz, “Die Zerstörung der deutschen Städte und die Opfer”. Though many local histories narrated the air war along the lines of early West German accounts of authors like Hans Rumpf, in a few cases local studies researched the backgrounds of specific cases on the basis of thorough empirical study opment of a West German professional historiography on the Allied strategic bombing campaign has for a large part been the responsibility of Horst Boog (1928) a military historian who worked at the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt in Freiburg.314 After finishing a comprehensive study on the strategic and orga- nizational structure of the Luftwaffe leadership during the Second World War in 1982, Boog became an internationally renowned specialist on the air war and the Allied bombings, who conducted intensive archival research and participated in international academic debates.315 Though Boog’s work did not result in a mono- graph on the air war, he delivered several lengthy contributions to the multivol- ume overview Das Deutsche Reich im Zweiten Weltkrieg (DRZW) in 1983, 1990, 2001 and 2008. Taken together these can be regarded as a comprehensive history of the German and Anglo-American air war and bombing campaigns.316 Apart from his 170 and applied source criticism. Generally however, most of the academically funded and local histories, in which existing myths and dominant narrativs were critically approached were published after the late 1980s. Examples of local histories of bombed cities of serious “academic” qualtity are Dieter Busch, Der Luftkrieg im Raum Mainz während des Zweiten Weltkrieges 1939-1945 (Mainz: 1988); Gerd R. Ueberschar, Freiburg im Luftkrieg 1939-1945 (Freiburg: 1990); Johannes Volker Wagner, ed. Vom Trümmerfeld ins Wirtschaftswunderland. Bochum 1945-1955, Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Bochum (Bochum: 1989). Also: Irmtraud Permooser’s dissertation on the bombing of Munich: Imtraud Permooser, Der Luftkrieg im Raum München (München: 1993). 314 Udo Volkmann, Die britische Luftverteidigung und die Abwehr der deutschen Luftangriffe während der “Luftschlacht um England” bis zum Juni 1941 (Osnabrück: 1982); Klaus A. Maier et al., eds., Die Errichtung der Hegemonie auf dem Europäischen Kontinent, vol. 2, Das Deutsche Reich im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: 1979). 315 Horst Boog, Die deutsche Luftwaffenführung 1935 - 1945: Führungsprobleme; Spitzengliederung; Generalstabsausbildung (Stuttgart: 1982); Horst Boog, “Das Offizierkorps der Luftwaffe, 1935-1945,” in Das deutsche Offizierkorps 1860-1960, ed. Hans Hubert Hofmann (Boppard am Rhein: 1980) 269-325. 316 Horst Boog et al., Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, DRZW 4 (Stuttgart: 1983); Horst Boog, “Der anglo-amerikanische strategische Luftkrieg über Europa und die deutsche Luftverteidigung “ in Der globale Krieg. Die Ausweitung zum Weltkrieg und der Wechsel der Initiative 1941-1943, ed. Horst Boog, et al., DRZW 6 (Stuttgart: 1990) 429-565; Horst Boog, “Strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa und Reichsluftverteidigung 1943-1944,” in Das Deutsche Reich in der Defensive: strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa, Krieg im Westen und in Ostasien, 1943-1944/45 ed. Horst Boog, Gerhard Krebs, and Detlef Vogel, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg 7 (Stuttgart: 2001) 3-418; Horst Boog, “Die strategische Bomberoffensive der Alliierten gegen Deutschland und die Reichsluftverteidigung in der Schlußphase des Krieges,” in Der Zusammenbruch des Deutschen Reiches 1945. Die militärische Niederwerfung der Wehrmacht, ed. Rolf Dieter Müller, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg 10/1 work for this series, since the late 1970s, Boog has produced numerous academic and popular articles for journals and volumes.317 With this, Boog became argu- ably the most important West German expert on the air war and strategic bomb- ing during the Second World War. In this chapter I will first address some general developments in West German historiography and memory culture, before discussing the work Bergander and Boog and looking at their work and the context of more general debates in West German historical culture. Together with Bergander and a few others like Klaus Maier, Horst Boog was responsible for the emergence of a serious historiography on the Allied bombings in Germany. His work, which was more thoroughly researched than previous German accounts, demonstrates the process of professionalization of the German historiography of the Allied bombings. By focusing on Horst Boog 171 in this chapter I will look at the process of “professionalization” which took place in the historiography of the Allied bombings. Horst Boog will be seen not only as an individual historian, but as a professional who worked in an academic institute. Working for the MGFA and contributing to its most important project, the compre- hensive military historical overview Das deutsche Reich im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Boog’s work can only be understood if this academic context is taken into account. (Stuttgart: 2008) 777-884. Currently, Boog is preparing a compilation of these different accounts in one monograph Luftkrieg über Deutschland 1939-1945. A publication date has not yet been established. See: Ibid. 777, note 1. 317 Horst Boog, ‘Der anglo-amerikanische strategische Luftkrieg über Europa und die deutsche Luftverteidigung ‘ in: Horst Boog e.a. ed., Der globale Krieg. Die Ausweitung zum Weltkrieg und der Wechsel der Initiative 1941-1943, DRZW 6 (Stuttgart, 1990) 429-565; Horst Boog, Die deutsche Luftwaffenführung 1935 - 1945: Führungsprobleme; Spitzengliederung; Generalstabsausbildung (Stuttgart 1982); Horst Boog, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa und Reichsluftverteidigung 1943-1944’ in: Horst Boog, Gerhard Krebs en Detlef Vogel ed., Das Deutsche Reich in der Defensive: strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa, Krieg im Westen und in Ostasien, 1943-1944/45 Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg 7 (Stuttgart, 2001) 3-413; Manfred Messerschmidt, “Kriegstechnologie und humanitäres Völkerrecht in der Zeit der Weltkriege”, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 46, no. 1 (1987) 87-110. With regard to this professionalizing of