The Allied air war and urban memory
Subtitle: the legacy of strategic bombing in Germany
By: Jörg Arnold
Series: Studies in the social and cultural history of modern warfare -- 35
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 387
ISBN-13: 9781107004962
Subjects: Collective memory; Aerial Bombing; World War, 1939-1945; HISTORY / Military / General; Campaigns; History
Description: "The cultural legacy of the air war on Germany is explored in this comparative study of two bombed cities from either side of the subsequently divided nation. Contrary to what is often assumed, Allied bombing left a lasting imprint on German society, spawning vibrant memory cultures that can be traced from the 1940s to the present. While the death of half a million civilians and the destruction of much of Germany's urban landscape provided 'usable' rallying points in the great political confrontations of the day, the cataclysms were above all remembered on a local level, in the very spaces that had been hit by the bombs and transformed beyond recognition. The author investigates how lived experience in the shadow of Nazism and war was translated into cultural memory by local communities in Kassel and Magdeburg struggling to find ways of coming to terms with catastrophic events unprecedented in living memory"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. From experience to memory; Part I. Commemorating Death: 2. 'Soldiers of the Heimat', 1940 to 1945; 3. 'In quiet memory'? 1945 to 1975; 4. The return of the dead, 1975 to 1995; Part II. Confronting Destruction: 5. 'What we have lost', 1940 to 1960; 6. From celebration to lamentation, 1960 to 1995; Part III. Writing Histories: 7. The 'night of horror', 1940 to 1970; 8. The 'greatest event in municipal history', 1970 to 1995; Conclusion.