The War in the Empty Air

Sixty years after the end of World War II, its impact on German civilians remains a subject that is still difficult to broach in public discourse. The war experiences of ordinary Germans have been little studied, as if the memories of the defeated were not deserving of preservation. In Germany, the [...]
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Sixty years after the end of World War II, its impact on German civilians remains a subject that is still difficult to broach in public discourse. The war experiences of ordinary Germans have been little studied, as if the memories of the defeated were not deserving of preservation. In Germany, the subject sparks intense debates about the official national memory that the defeated were collectively guilty. In the United States, evidence that these memories are surfacing is apparent in the publication of "Crabwalk" by Gunter Grass, "The Natural History of Destruction" by W. G. Sebald, and "The Fire" by Jorg Friedrich. Steering her path between the Scylla and Charybdis of the notions of "victim" and "perpetrator," Dagmar Barnouw seeks a place where the memories of the horrors of Nazi persecution and the horrors of war together might create a more complete historical remembrance for post-war generations.