While this last point seems unlikely, it is important to note that Germans seem to live in constant fear of a resurgence of right-wing extremism. Nowhere is this fear more prevalent than in Hamburg. In 1992 neo-Nazi violence provoked an anti-Fascist demonstration on the streets of Hamburg 400,000 strong. There were more demonstrations when the American neo-Nazi publisher Gary Lauck was tried and sentenced there in 1996. I myself experienced a hint of the city’s anxieties when I first visited Hamburg in 2001, during a book tour. A complete stranger approached me and asked me to wear a badge bearing an anti-Fascist slogan: he had heard that I would be appearing on local television, and wanted his badge to appear with me. As I was unaware of Hamburg’s political landscape at the time, I declined – but not without a measure of surprise at the strength of his feelings. It struck me then, as it has struck me many times since, how politically active Hamburgers seem to be when compared with my own countrymen. Sometimes it seems as though the city is vigilant to the point of paranoia when it comes to avoiding the political mistakes of the past.

* * *

It is against this background that the demonstration in the Michaeliskirche took place. The anti-nationalist students claimed to be protesting against the fact that churchgoers were mourning allof the deaths that took place during the catastrophe, rather than making a distinction between the guilty and the innocent. However, as they blew their whistles and sounded their horns, their objections seemed to go much further. Their banner claimed that there was no reason to mourn whatsoever, thus implying that every Hamburger who died in 1943 got what he or she deserved. Since all of Germany had stood by and allowed the Nazis to march to power, all of Germany was to blame. ²²

As an outsider, this strikes me as a bizarre form of self-flagellation. I find it shocking that a group of Germans will go so far as to deny their countrymen the right to mourn the deaths of thousands of undisputed civilians, simply in the name of expiating their guilt. Even the most hard-hearted proponents of British bombing expressed regret at what they felt forced to do. Even those theorists who claimed that women and children were a legitimate target recognized that bombing them was a horrific idea – indeed, they believed that the very horror of it would prevent civilized nations going to war in the first place. None of those groups would ever consider denying Hamburgers the right to mourn their dead. I doubt that such a denial would get much support in Germany either, but that a group like this can suggest it seems significant. If German war guilt has grown so great that it takes precedence over the city’s capacity to mourn, it is unsurprising that there has been a right-wing backlash against it.

The more rational reasons behind the demonstration – that there should be a distinction between the civilian victims of the firestorm and those people who were legitimate targets for the bombs – are also much more interesting. Shouldsuch a distinction be made, or should we avoid distinctions, in the same way that the bombs did? Since it is Christian doctrine to pray for allsinners, are churchgoers right to mourn the soldiers, arms manufacturers and Nazi Party members along with the housewives and children who were killed? And, further, is it possible to go so far as forgiveness, even for those who went enthusiastically to war in 1939? Or would this merely lend legitimacy to the atrocities the Nazis committed?

To consider these questions, the first thing we must do is to draw a distinction between public and private mourning. This is important because they are two very different acts. A private act of mourning is exactly that – something personal, unique to the individual who suffers through loss. A public act of mourning is a statement to the world, declaring openly the values that collectively we hold dear. The same person, commemorating the same event, can profess very different sentiments, perhaps even conflicting ones, depending on whether he is acting in a private or a public capacity.

Privately, of course, any individual has a right to mourn whomsoever they choose. A mother will naturally mourn her son even if he turned out to be a murderer. A husband might forgive his wife things in death that he could never forgive her while she was alive. Love, as Nietzsche wrote, is beyond good and evil; mourning for a loved one, therefore, takes no account of whether they were worthy of that mourning or not.

The same is true of Christian love for one’s neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be – a civilian, a soldier, or even a Nazi. A storm trooper in the firestorm was no less human than a Hamburg housewife, and also deserves some empathy – if not for the factof his death then at least for the mannerof it. A Nazi prison guard might have committed countless crimes during his lifetime, and might even have intended to commit more, but at the point of death he was merely a human being undergoing a form of hell, and for this he, too, can be pitied. From a Christian point of view it is every individual’s dutyto try to forgive others, even those who have committed the most heinous crimes.

In a public ceremony, however, this duty dissolves into the background. The whole point of a public commemoration is, first, to remember what happened, second, to explain why it happened, and third, to show the world what you have lost. When commemorating an event as huge as the Hamburg firestorm, the ceremony is as much about the loss of ideals as it is about the loss of human life. In the years since the war, the firestorm has come to be symbolic of an even greater tragedy: the fact that civilians, not only in Hamburg but all over Europe, should involuntarily have found themselves caught up in the fury of aerial bombardment. The loss that is being commemorated, therefore, is not simply human life, but innocenthuman life.

During a ceremony like the one that took place at the Michaeliskirche in 1993, the Church authorities have to walk a fine line: on the one hand they need to provide a venue in which people feel able to express their private grief at what happened; but on the other they have an obligation to present the tragedy of the firestorm in terms of the public symbol it has become. If the firestorm is to be seen as a tragedy for the innocent, they cannot also include the guilty in their prayers. In short, a distinction must be made.

Furthermore, it is the duty of the Church to direct the moral values of the community it leads. In an atmosphere where there is already a widespread fear of a resurgence of neo-Nazi activity, any public forgiveness of the sins committed by the Nazis during the Second World War is unthinkable. Indeed, anything that goes even a tiny way towards an implied acceptance of Nazi crimes must be vigorously shunned. These things are important not only for those Hamburgers who happened to be present at the commemoration, but for the whole city, and indeed the whole of German society. Such ceremonies are a template for the way the German people think about themselves, and for the way they remember both what they did during the war and what they suffered.

For these reasons, I believe the protesters at the Michaeliskirche were right to demand a distinction between those who should be publicly mourned and those who should not (although I am less sympathetic to the methods they used to get their point across). One would never consider having a ceremony devoted onlyto those militant Nazis who died in the firestorm – so why include them in a ceremony that should have been devoted to the innocents? I have argued that the Allies should have drawn a line between combatants and non-combatants, even if it was an arbitrary one; likewise it is fitting for the Germans to draw a line between those who should be mourned, and those who should not.