Allied air assaults in the movie Jugend by Alessandro Pepe

[This article appeared previously in Dutch here. It has been translated and adapted into the current form.]

In the movie Jugend by filmmaker Alessandro Pepe about a soldier in the Waffen-SS division Hitlerjugend the relationship with a SS soldier and his girlfriend at home is examined. The twist at the end of the film is -spoiler alert- that his girlfriend has already died in an Allied bombardment. In this article we will examine the mentioned numbers to see if these are correct and what the consequences of this are.

France 1944

In the slightly less than twenty minutes movie a young SS soldier is introduced as the main character. He is in France in 1944 after the Allied armies had landed in Normandy and he regularly writes to his beloved in Germany. He notices that she has not answered his most recent letters and this frustrates him. At the end of the movie, after the death of the main character, it turns out that his girlfriend didn’t write to him because she was killed two months previously in an allied bombardment.
At the end of the movie two remarkable claims are made to put the movie in a certain perspective. “Indoctrinated since young ages, some of these boys were pushed to commit war crimes,” and “more than 550,000 German civilians died after bombs.” Another article would be needed to clarify the mistakes in the first comment, about the simplifications in it, and about absolving guilt. This article will focus on the second quote because the context is important in which it is made.

Suffering of German soldiers

In the movie, the girlfriend is shown as an example of the suffering of German soldiers and their families, because she has passed away earlier and the main character never found out what happened to her. The audience is supposed to feel pity for the German civilians who were the victims of these bombardments. Yet certain things are just not right and certain remarks need to be made to put the film in the right context.

Wrong numbers

It’s indeed true that the Allied air forces bombed many times over Germany and the occupied territories. These bombardments were not always precise and there were many casualties, including elderly, children, and babies. Not only Germans, but also people that worked (voluntarily or involuntarily) in Germany, were threatened by these attacks. For every single ton of bombs that the Germans had used on the United Kingdom, there were 315 tons of bombs thrown at Germany. These are remarkable numbers and it's indeed good that attention is drawn to this.
However, the problem with the movie is not that it mentions these numbers. According to the movie, there were 550.000 Germans killed. Research gives different numbers. Richard Overy, claimed in 2015 that there were 353,000 Germans killed as a result of the bombings. In the books by the East German historian Olaf Groehler, between 360,000 and 370,000 Germans fell victim to the bombs. Other numbers talk about 410,000 dead. The only one that remotely comes close is a report by the German Red Cross, which mentions 500,000 victims.

A B-17 Flying Fortress bomber of the 91st Bomber Group over Osnabruck, Germany. (Courtesy of NARA: NAID: 204898733)

Dresden

The discussion about victims and people killed is difficult. Take the bombing of Dresden as an example, where there were between 25,000 and 60,000 casualties. Understandably it is difficult to determine the exact number of fatalities, especially when even a single attack has an error margin of 35,000 casualties. However, that doesn’t mean that the number of 550,000 is absurdly high. Where these numbers come from and what considerations Pepe made before he decided to mention this number is not clarified. A source could have prevented a lot of discussions, but the discussion about the exact numbers of casualties is not deemed important to this movie and instead, a too high number of German casualties is just given.

Cities targeted by bombardments

To discuss the bombings of cities during the Second World War a certain perspective needs to be given. The first bombardment of the Second World War was on the Polish town of Wielun, where there were 127 casualties. In the Netherlands the bombing of Rotterdam is infamous and one can still see the traces of this bombardment in the city center. There were between 650 and 900 people killed.
In the Third Reich, there was even an euphemism to refer to the destruction of cities, ‘coventrieren’, named after the bombardment of the English town Coventry. It’s saying a lot that there existed a term to refer to the ruining of cities. Also, the Allied forces conducted bombardments on cities, where the bombing of Dresden, where there were a lot of casualties shortly before the end of the war, or the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forced an end to the Second World War. There were around 199,000 casualties.

The devestation in the city Wielun after the German bombardment.

Germany as the victim

By leaving out these facts and just focusing on one aspect, a one-sided view is given. Germany is presented more as a victim of the Second World War instead of the aggressor. The numbers are enlarged and the past is treated unjustly. Pepe tries to give an interesting perspective of the Second World War, but the only thing he does is help Second World War revisionists.

Das Boot

A film that gives a good perspective of one aspect of the Second World War is the German movie Das Boot. The battle takes place under the sea instead of in the air. Attention is given not just to moments of tension when there is danger or the titular boat is under attack, but also to how the men are forced to cooperate with each other in confined spaces and always be in each other's proximity.

Reproduction uniforms

The concerning aspect is that Pepe in the making of this movie has been helped by Progetto900, a historical organization. Their goal is to take history out of the museums and they do this by wearing reproduction uniforms with partially authentic equipment. Remarkable is that they inform the reader on their website that they reject the nazi worldview, but they do cooperate with films that Pepe has made. Respect for the past doesn’t Pepe seem to have, because he carries out a pretend-idealistic projection of the past or potentially to quickly earn money with a barely disguised revisionist movie. The choice to depict a German army soldier in the movie would be a lot less controversial than deciding to reenact an SS soldier. As such, by cooperating with making this movie Progetto900 inadvertently aids in furthering the goals of a worldview, which they claim to reject on their website.

Less positive aspects of the Allied campaigns

While it is good to devote attention to the Second World War in all its forms and features, including the less positive sides of the Allied soldiers, it is important to remember the context of the Second World War. This context makes certain aspects stand out, but also reminds us that one party systematically exterminated people based upon their beliefs, race, sexual or political preference. The film would have been better if it mentioned how many forced laborers died due to the bombing or how many French civilians died during the Allied bombings in Normandy in preparation for the landings. Another aspect would be to discuss the bombing of Nijmegen, a city in the Netherlands, on 22 February 1944. Instead, it seems that Pepe seemed eager to produce a film about nazis as people we should pity because they suffer from the evil allied air forces.

Sources:

NIOD, Duitse en geallieerde bombardementen op Nederland (cijfers), link
The Avalon Project, The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chapter 10 - Total Casualties, link
Modris Ekstein, Rites of Spring, page 302.