In East Germany, Olaf Groehler (1935-1995) was almost solely responsible for the development of an academic perspective on the air war. His major works Geschichte des Luftkriegs (1975) and Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland (1990) together with various essays, smaller works, and contributions to historical overviews form the output of the research, which Groehler had committed himself to for almost three decades. His works can be seen as the only real academic approach to the Allied bombing in the GDR. In the academic historical field in the GDR, Groehler was considered to be the absolute expert on the Allied air war and strategic bombings, and was even nicknamed ‘Bomben-Groehler’.

In this chapter I will analyze Groehler's perspective on the bombing war in light of the official GDR memory politics and of the position of academic historiography in the GDR. For this I will also elaborate on the institutional framework Groehler worked in, considering that he was not only a leading historian at the Zentral Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft, but as party secretary for the SED and informant of the East German Staatssicherheit (secret service) he played an active part in the academic politics of his institute.

His work and position raise a couple of questions. Should his work be regarded as a more elaborate repetition of the official view or did his work collide with official memory politics? Since on a few important matters the latter seems to be the case, the additional question is: to what extent was Groehler's perspective different and how is this difference to be explained? Can one even go so far as to say that Groehler created a specific Eastern German academic narrative, in opposition to the interpretations that were dominant in the West? And to what degree did Groehler change his position after the collapse of the GDR in 1989/1990? With regard to these questions I will try and look beyond the differences of opinion that existed between these historians and look for similarities in the way historians from East and West Germany interpreted the Allied bombings. While they themselves seemed to be focused on ideological differences, the question remains to what extent they truly provided different narratives of the air war.