Gestörte Erinnerung. Erzählungen vom Luftkrieg
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During the post-war period, the German discourse evaluating the aerial warfare of World War II was dominated by a striking contradiction. The official discourse on World War II focused exclusively on the military front and therefore completely denied the war experiences of those who had stayed âat homeâ. The ruin and destruction experienced at the âHeimatfrontâ was not integrated into public memory. Their experience was treated as a mere private fate and was not transformed into any symbolic order of public commemoration but remained in a field of archaic metaphorical description. The reason for this surprising difference between the actual war experiences and the discourse has its roots in the gender dichotomy that characterises German society during and after World War II. The gender difference that was mirrored in the distinction between the war front as the male sphere of soldiers and the peaceful âHeimatâ as the female sphere of protected family life was integrated into the post-war periodâs discourse. This had a dual effect: womenâs experience of the bombings were excluded from the official discourse but also voluntarily denied as a true war experience by the women themselves.