Past overshadows present in Dresden
Right-wing ideology persists in Dresden, a city that was ‘not innocent’ and where the truth has been slow to emerge.
After a decade of commemorations blighted by far-right rallies, Dresden is hoping for the first ‘‘Nazi-free’’ anniversary of the World War II bombing that devastated its baroque centre 70 years ago.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will be among speakers at a ceremony today to mark the firebombing of the eastern German city, which claimed 25,000 lives and came to symbolise the wanton destruction of modern warfare.
His message of reconciliation remains relevant in a city that has long struggled with extremism and recently spawned a protest movement against ‘‘Islamisation’’ that proved to be a cover for racist opponents of immigration.
About 6000 neo-Nazis from across Europe gathered in 2009, but they have faced increasing opposition from residents who formed human chains in recent years to prevent them marching into the centre. No official neoNazi demonstration has been registered this year.
Historians believe that the founding of Pegida – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West – has its roots in Dresden’s long-standing view of itself as a victim, first of the Allies and now of globalisation.
The bombings were used by the Nazis and later by the Soviet Union for propaganda against the West, and the truth has been slow to emerge.
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, inflated the number killed in Allied bombing raids to 200,000 and it was only in 2010 that a commission of inquiry said that the true number was, at most, 25,000. The myth of Allied planes shooting survivors as they walked alongside the River Elbe was shattered when no bullets were found along the banks.
A widespread belief that temperatures during the firestorm were high enough to reduce bodies to ash was also rejected. ‘‘We disproved the notion that tens of thousands of people disappeared without trace,’’ Thomas Widera, of Dresden’s Technical University, said.
He also criticised the view that the bombing was pointless, having come so close to the end of the war. ‘‘Dresden was the last operational centre in the German armament industry and manufacturing plants were spread all over the city,’’ he said. ‘‘Dresden was also the last functioning transportation hub at this stage of the war. All connections to the north, south, and west crossed here.’’
The city’s importance as a transportation centre was underlined by the fate of a group of Germans whose lives were saved by the raids. More than 100 people in Saxony who had married Jewish Germans or were the children of ‘‘mixed marriages’’ were waiting to be transported from Dresden to concentration camps.
‘‘The bombing of Dresden was terrible but it saved my life, and that of my mother,’’ said Myriam Schutze, who was four years old at the time.
Her father had been sent to his death at Majdanek. Her mother was in prison at Magdeburg, 200km from Dresden, awaiting transportation for marrying a Jew. In the chaos after the bombing, her mother was released and went into hiding with Myriam until the end of the war.
Schutze views it as important for today’s commemoration to remember why Dresden was a target. ‘‘The bombing was a result of the war,’’ she said. ‘‘Without the war, the bombing would not have happened. If you are just remembering the wonderful buildings, painted by Canaletto and known as the Florence of the Elbe, that is too backwardlooking.’’
Klaus Vogel, director of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, a science museum in the city, said that the myth of Dresden’s victimisation had been built up with no account taken of its support of the Nazis. ‘‘Dresden was not an innocent city,’’ he said. ‘‘Here was where the first book burnings took place, where ‘degenerate art’ was attacked years ahead of Munich, and here there was intense arms production.’’
He also said it was important to emphasise that, for all its beauty, Dresden was not a unique case and that other cities such as Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin were also targets.
Poor education also failed to counteract myths still propagated by the National Democratic party, which refers to the ‘‘bombing Holocaust’’ of Dresden. The University of Oldenburg placed Saxony bottom among the 16 German states in a league table of political education to challenge such stereotypes. It believes that the city’s failure to come to terms with its past helps to explain today’s anti-Islam movement.