The War in the Empty Air

Author| Dagmar Barnouw
Language| English
Genre| Non-fiction, history
Publisher| Indiana University Press

Publication date

| 2005
Pages| 303
ISBN| 978-0253220400
OCLC| 59401904
Preceded by| Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence
Website| Archive.org (to borrow)

The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans is a non-fiction work by Dagmar Barnouw, then Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Published in 2005 by Indiana University Press, the book explores the situation of the German people after their government's surrender to the Allies on 8 May 1945 at the end of World War II.

In particular, Barnouw discusses the absence of mourning for Germans, their dead, and their lost cities and artifacts destroyed by the Allied air war. Germans themselves could not mourn, because the strong message from the victors was that a just war had been fought against an evil regime, one regarded as uniquely evil for having caused the Holocaust. The politics of memory permitted no regret for Germans, the Tätervolk, the guilty people. Divided by the Allies into the democratic Federal Republic of Germany in the west and the communist German Democratic Republic in the east—with the former capital, Berlin, split by a wall from 1961—Germans were forced to look forward only and to view the hour of their surrender, Stunde Null, as a rebirth.[1]

Barnouw examines the air war, representations of the Holocaust, and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from their homes in Eastern Europe, weaving in her own story of becoming a refugee with her mother after the bombing of Dresden in February 1945.[2]

## Publication details

[edit]

* Barnouw, Dagmar (2005). The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. OCLC 59401904

## See also

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* Collective guilt
* Historikerstreit
* List of books about Nazi Germany
* Vergangenheitsbewältigung

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Barnouw, Dagmar (2005). The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ix.
2. ^ Rasch, William (February 2007). "Reviewed Work: The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans by Dagmar Barnouw". German Studies Review. 30(1), 221–223. JSTOR 27668266

## Further reading

[edit]

* Biess, Frank (March 2006). "Biess on Barnouw, 'The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans'". H-Net.
* Greene, Larry A. (October 2007). "Reviewed Work: The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans by Dagmar Barnouw". German Studies Review. 30(3), 665–666. JSTOR 27668401
* Henningsen, Manfred (Spring 2008). "Reviewed Work: The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans by Dagmar Barnouw". Shofar. 26(3), 171–174. JSTOR 42944760

* v
* t
* e

Strategic bombing during World War II

* Area bombardment
* Aerial bombing of cities
* Area bombing directive
* Firestorm
* Strategic bombing
* V-weapons

European theatre|

| Denmark|

* Nexø
* Rønne

|

Estonia|

* Narva
* Tallinn

France|

* Caen
* Le Havre
* Royan
* Saint-Leu-d'Esserent

Germany|

| Battle of
the Ruhr|

* Bochum
* Cologne
* Dortmund
* Duisburg
* Düsseldorf
* Essen
* Gelsenkirchen
* Krefeld
* Wuppertal

|

Other cities|

* Aachen
* Augsburg
* Aschersleben
* Baden-Baden
* Berlin
* Bocholt
* Braunschweig
* Bremen
* Breslau
* Chemnitz
* Crailsheim
* Darmstadt
* Dessau
* Dietzenbach
* Dresden
* Emden
* Frankfurt
* Freiburg (Axis)
* Freiburg (Allies)
* Friedrichshafen
* Giessen
* Halberstadt
* Halle
* Hamburg
* Hanau
* Hannover
* Heilbronn
* Hildesheim
* Innsbruck
* Jena
* Kaiserslautern
* Karlsruhe
* Kassel
* Kleve
* Königsberg
* Leipzig
* Lübeck
* Ludwigshafen / Oppau
* Mainz
* Magdeburg
* Mannheim
* Moers
* Münster
* Munich
* Nordhausen
* Nuremberg
* Osnabrück
* Paderborn
* Peenemünde
* Pforzheim
* Potsdam
* Rostock
* Saarbrücken
* Schweinfurt
* Siegen
* Stuttgart
* Ulm
* Wesel
* Wiener Neustadt
* Wilhelmshaven
* Worms
* Würzburg

Italy|

* Alessandria
* Ancona
* Bari
* Benevento
* Bologna
* Cagliari
* Cassino
* Catania
* Ferrara
* Foggia
* Frascati
* Genoa
* Gorla
* Grosseto
* Livorno
* Messina
* Milan
* Naples
* Padua
* Palermo
* Pescara
* Pisa
* Reggio Calabria
* Rimini
* Rome
* Terni
* Treviso
* Trieste
* Turin
* Verona
* Vicenza
* Viterbo
* Zadar

Netherlands|

* Amsterdam
* Eindhoven
* Enschede
* Enkhuizen
* Middelburg
* Nijmegen
* Rotterdam (Axis)
* Rotterdam (Allied)
* The Hague

Poland|

* Frampol
* Warsaw
* Wieluń

Romania|

* Bucharest
* Ploiești

Soviet Union|

* Gorky
* Leningrad
* Minsk
* Stalingrad

United
Kingdom|

* Battle of Britain
* Baedeker Blitz
* The Blitz
* Barrow-in-Furness
* Bath
* Belfast
* Birmingham
* Bournemouth
* Brighton
* Bristol
* Cardiff
* Clydebank
* Coventry
* Exeter
* Greenock
* Hull
* Leeds
* Liverpool
* London
* Manchester
* Norwich
* Nottingham
* Plymouth
* Sheffield
* Southampton
* Swansea

Yugoslavia|

* Belgrade
* 1941
* 1944
* Podgorica
* Sarajevo

Other cities|

* Budapest (Hungary)
* Dublin (Ireland)
* Hammerfest (Norway)
* Helsinki (Finland)
* Namsos (Norway)
* Prague (Czechoslovakia)
* Schaffhausen (Switzerland)
* Sofia (Bulgaria)
* Vienna (Austria)
* Zagreb (Croatia)

Pacific War|

| Burma|

* Burma campaign
* Mandalay
* Allied Rangoon

|

China|

* Chongqing
* Hong Kong
* Nanjing
* Shanghai

Indonesia|

* Sukabumi
* Surabaya

Japan|

* Akita
* Aomori
* Fukui
* Fukuoka
* Gifu
* Hamamatsu
* Hiratsuka
* Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
* Kobe
* Kōfu
* Kure
* Nagaoka
* Nagoya
* Naha
* Numazu
* Okazaki
* Osaka
* Rabaul
* Sendai
* Shizuoka
* Tokyo (10 March 1945)
* Toyohashi
* Toyokawa
* Utsunomiya
* Yawata
* June 1944
* Yokkaichi

| Colonies|

* Taihoku (Taiwan)

|

Singapore|

* Allied Singapore
* Axis Singapore

Australia|

* Broome
* Darwin

United States|

* Pearl Harbor
* Unalaska

Other cities|

* Bangkok (Thailand)
* Colombo (Sri Lanka)
* Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
* Manila (Philippines)

Mediterranean and
Middle East|

| Mandatory Palestine|

* Acre
* Haifa
* Jaffa
* Tel Aviv

|

Other areas|

* Bahrain
* Cyprus
* Gibraltar
* Malta

North Africa|

| Chad|

* Fort Lamy

|

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