THE GUARDIAN

 

 
German tabloid demands apology from Queen for wartime air raids

Luke Harding in Berlin
Tuesday November 2, 2004

Germany's biggest selling tabloid, Bild, yesterday called on the Queen to apologise for Britain's wartime destruction of German cities, ahead of her state visit to Germany today.

In a provocative double-page spread, the newspaper urged the Queen to utter a "few suitable words of regret" during her three-day trip for the thousands of German civilians killed during British air raids.

The tabloid's campaign has attracted no support from Germany's centre-left government but comes at a tricky moment in Anglo-German relations - and when the idea that Germans were also victims of the second world war is for the first time being more broadly debated.

Yesterday British officials said there was no prospect of the Queen apologising during her visit to Berlin, where she gives a speech this evening, and opens a major conference on climate change tomorrow. They pointed out that a concert hosted by the Queen tomorrow at the Berlin Philharmonic is dedicated to the restoration of the Frauenkirche, destroyed by allied attacks on Dresden in 1945.

"There has been no serious request for an apology, so the question doesn't arise," one British diplomat said yesterday. He added: "Of course the Queen is aware of the issues. She lived through the second world war. She regrets the suffering on both sides.'

Yesterday Bild, which sells nearly 4m copies a day, ran an essay by the revisionist German historian Jörg Friedrich in which he attacked Britain's destruction of Dresden as "senseless". The "massacre" of 50,000 German civilians during the devastating allied raids contributed nothing to the allies' victory over Hitler shortly afterwards, he wrote.

The paper ran photographs of German corpses laid out on Dresden streets and asked the question: "What have the British got against Germans?"

Although no serious German newspaper has followed Bild's lead, they have recently reflected on what might have gone wrong with the Anglo-German relationship. Officially, relations between Tony Blair and Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schröder are excellent, despite the war in Iraq. The problem is at a more informal level.

Last week Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fischer complained about the British media's portrayal of Germany as the "land of the Prussian goose-step" - pointing out that the popular image of Germany in Britain bore no relation to the modern reality.

Diplomats on both sides are alarmed that youth exchanges between both countries have recently fallen away. Fewer British students are learning German than ever before - only 6,000 studied the subject last year at A-level.

In her speech tonight the Queen - who apparently understands some German - is likely to stress the need for Britain and Germany to do more to improve contacts between young people. Her presence tomorrow, meanwhile, at an Anglo-German conference on climate change has led to speculation that the "Green Queen" has complained to Tony Blair about American's lead role in global warming.

While the Queen is not known for making public her private opinions, officials in Berlin yesterday pointed to the fact that her Bentley has been converted to run on gas, and that several energy-saving devices have been installed in the royal palaces.

 

Leader: Sorry, the war is over


Tuesday November 2, 2004

Relations between Britain and Germany, it is often rightly said, are still too dominated by the memory of the second world war. Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, made the point trenchantly in London just the other day. So it is unfortunate that the Queen's state visit to Germany this week has become caught up with the question of whether she should apologise for the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. No one disputes the fact that the RAF raid on the beautiful baroque city known as "Florence on the Elbe" was a cruel act of war in the final months of a terrible conflict. Thirty-five thousand people, almost all civilians, died in the bombing and subsequent firestorm. This was a controversial act even at the time and heated arguments still rage over whether it was a pointless act of vengeance, a justified attack on a major industrial and communications hub, or a showcase operation intended by Churchill to impress Stalin.

The Queen, who faced demonstrations when she went to Dresden in 1992, will be stressing reconciliation today when she lays wreaths at Berlin's Neue Wache memorial for all victims of war and hosts a gala concert whose profits will help restore Dresden's Frauenkirche Cathedral.

The German government has not called for an apology, which is being demanded only by the mass-circulation Bild newspaper, aware of the growing readiness of ordinary Germans, fed up with decades of guilt, to see themselves as victims of war rather than perpetrators of crimes. Bild's British tabloid equivalents have also been known to focus on the past rather than the present. But Adolf Hitler's catastrophic rule has now been over for nearly 60 years. Gerhard Schroeder, the chancellor, took part in this summer's anniversary of the D-Day landings, which marked the beginning of the liberation of the entire continent, including Germany, from Nazi tyranny. Both countries are Nato allies and members of the European Union, partners in an extraordinary enterprise that rose from the ashes of war. The time for apologies is over. We need to move on, not keep turning back the clock.