The Ruined Picture Postcard: Dresden's Visually Encoded History and the Television Drama Dresden

The great popularity of the TV docudrama Dresden (2006) can be explained chiefly by its locale and subject matter: ever since the Allied forces bombed the city, many have seen it as the key symbol for the brutality of modern warfare. Immediately after he bombings, before-and-after pictures of the city were important national examples of the cruelty of war toward the German civilian population and against German cultural treasures, and the photographs became iconographic images of suffering. Dresden's plot offers a more complex view of the bombings and the city they struck, but by “citing” such images, the film continues to link to the powerful discourse of victimhood that has found its expression in Dresden rubble photography.