“A signal is needed against the one-sided mourning in Germany,” declared Peter Lauer, a sixty-four-year-old schoolteacher taking part in a neo-Nazi counterdemonstration to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden, on February 13 of this year. “We must also mourn the German victims.” The emotionally charged anniversary was also marked by an official ceremony and a mass processionin which many of the marchers bore white roses as a symbol of opposition to the presence of Lauer’s group, the largest neo-Nazi gathering in decades. But while Lauer identifies himself as a supporter of the rightist National Democratic Party (NPD), which now holds twelve seats in the local Saxon parliament, his sentiment does not represent merely Germany’s fringe. Indeed, this year’s anniversary of the end of the war has seen not only official commemorations of the enormous death toll brought about by the Nazi regime but also much attention paid to German suffering and German civilian casualties incurred during the Allied bombing of cities like Dresden.

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