Bodies and Ruins: Imagining the Bombing of Germany, 1945 to the Present by David F. Crew (review)

From the Kaiser’s cumbersome yet imposing Zeppelin airships and the more threatening Gothas during World War I, to the Condor Legion’s obliteration of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, through to heavy Luftwaffe assaults during the early phases of World War II, Germany played a pioneering role in directly targeting—or terrorizing—an enemy’s home front population. Hermann Göring’s bombers had “sowed the wind,” remarked Royal Air Force Bomber Command chief Sir Arthur Harris in his postwar memoir Bomber Offensive (1947), and in time all Germans living in the Third Reich were to “reap the whirlwind” (52). The Western Allies’ bombing offensive, which gained momentum from February 1942 onward and continued until the final weeks of World War II, damaged or wholly destroyed over 130 German cities and towns. Statistics on the devastation caused by the bombing war against Germany are imprecise, but commonly accepted estimates include some 600,000 civilians killed, around 900,000 others wounded, and 7.5 million left homeless. Countless historically and culturally significant public buildings and artifacts were also lost. How all these “bodies and ruins” have been imagined and reimagined, particularly by German authors of local publications in the half-century following the war’s end, is the central focus of this new book by David F. Crew.

Bodies and Ruins explores both textual and pictorial representations of the bombing war against Germany, but the role of visual imagery is given special consideration. Crew’s stated aim is to gain an understanding of “how authors of local publications tried to use pictures to create meanings and to tell stories” (8), and, furthermore, to search “for what were considered to be the ‘right’ stories and the ‘right’ pictures of the bombing war in local publications and picture books from 1945 to the present” (9). Crew’s repeated emphasis on local representations should not be misconstrued as a sign that this work restricts itself to a few carefully chosen case studies. On the contrary, a wide range of cities feature—some fleetingly, others more prominently—throughout this temporally and topographically ambitious survey of how Germans have imagined the bombing war through selected books and other media spanning seven decades. Bodies and Ruins is structured around six chapters, which follow a loosely chronological order while each is driven by its own thematic bent. Chapter 1, for instance, examines the “local master narrative” (10) established by (West) German accounts in the immediate postwar period, whereas chapter 2 explores the “essential role played by images, primarily photographs, in these local publications” (10). Chapter 3 asks why “shock pictures” (of dead bodies) were not as prevalent as photographs of ruins. Chapter 4 probes how the themes of “mourning, denial, and celebration” were visually conveyed in picture books (again, limited to West Germany). Chapter 5 claims to focus on the anticapitalist/anti-Western Marxist interpretations of the bombing war promoted in the GDR. The sixth and final substantive chapter covers the post-reunification period, especially how the advent of the internet shapes and reflects ways in which Germans now attempt to remember the bombing war. Crew can be commended for attempting such an ambitious project, and for producing a thoughtful and at times thought-provoking account.

While there is much to like about this highly readable work, it ultimately suffers from trying to do too much. A tighter focus—perhaps on a shorter time frame or fewer cities—would have enabled deeper analysis and greater clarity of argument. To cite just one frustrating shortcoming: there are periodic, vague references to the Cold War throughout the book, but it is unclear what function it actually serves. The early chapters concentrate on West Germany almost exclusively, so there is no comparative analysis. Then, suddenly, Dresden emerges as the main case study in the latter chapters. Again, however, no comparisons are made with West German...