In Poland, reactions to this film must have been highly emotional. "The Natural History of Destruction " is a 2022 documentary directed by Sergei Loznitsa. It deals with the bombing of German cities by the Allied air forces in the course of WW2.

  When the documentary was screened at Warsaw's recently concluded "20th Docs Against Gravity Festival" [the online edition of which ended on June 4], the director was accused of diminishing the blame of the German nation for the 1939-1945 genocide.

  There is no narrative per se in the film. For its nearly 110-minute duration, all we see is a series of unique archival clips attesting to how the idyllic life of German civilians was ruined as a result of the Allied carpet bombings.

  The director was inspired by "Air War and Literature", an essay by the German writer Winfried Georg Sebald who died in 2001. But the essay is an indictment about German cultural awareness. Sebald maintains that the terrible experiences the civilian populations of Cologne, Hamburg and Dresden, for example, underwent as their cities were razed by bombs had never been properly addressed or analyzed. In fact, he points out that when it comes to addressing this issue, German literature is dominated by silence and hypocrisy. Even in those instances where the horror of conflagration crops up in individual works, it is aestheticized and elevated in such a way that confronting the cruel reality becomes the exception. If anything, Sebald points out how his compatriots have failed to account for the evil done to the world by the Third Reich.

In Poland, the writer's attitude should doubtless be received with appreciation. So, the question arises: why has the Loznitsa documentary, inspired as it is by Sebald's essay, met with such criticism among Polish viewers? Before I attempt an answer, let me briefly remind you of the director's background. 

  Loznitsa, a nearly 59-year-old, Russian-speaking citizen of Ukraine from Belarus, has been living in Germany since 2001. His features and documentaries have won awards at numerous international festivals. Much of his work features the dark face of Russia, both contemporary and past.

  His professional beginnings are intriguing. Before becoming a director, he graduated with an engineering degree in mathematics and worked at the Institute of Cybernetics in Kiev, dealing with, among other things, artificial intelligence. This was still in the Soviet times of the 1980s-1990s, a period when he also worked as a translator of Japanese. Institutions such as the Kiev institute he was associated with remained under the supervision of Soviet special services, and carried out research in strategic areas of interest to the USSR.

Loznitsa's attitude towards Russian-Ukrainian relations is reflected in his 2018 film "Donbass", which, in a sense, is a fictionalized documentary. Its script was derived from amateur recordings circulating on You Tube. Loznitsa showed the Donbass region as a place burdened with post-Soviet moral devastation, and more or less socially marginalized pro-Russian separatists (see: "Lies and violence rule here, and politics is done by criminals”).

  After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the director left the European Film Academy, a gesture expressing his disgust with an institution he believed was behaving too passively towards the Kremlin's criminal policy. However, at the same time, Loznitsa himself was punished by the Ukrainians when he was expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy for having opposed the boycott of Russian culture.

  In sum, regardless of how the director's attitude might have been assessed, his was definitely a display of intellectual independence.

  Moreover, he is clearly not popular in Ukraine thanks to another documentary entitled "Babi Yar. Context" that he made in 2021. This dealt with the collaboration between Ukrainians and German occupiers in preparing the ground for the extermination of Jews.

Which brings us back to "The Natural History of Destruction"! One might assume that in reading the Sebald essay, Loznitsa would have focused attention primarily on the author's dramatic descriptions of the Allied bombings. However, while the German writer did not equate the nightmare that befell the German civilian population with an alibi or excuse for the Germans, it would appear that this is precisely what the Ukrainian documentary director chose to do. 

  After two screenings of the film at "Docs Against Gravity", Loznitsa met with the audience. Many bitter remarks were directed at him, not least the contention that his documentary "The Natural History of Destruction" sought to portray German civilians as the main victims of WW2. In one instance, an audience member spoke of the bombings the German air force had inflicted on Warsaw and Rotterdam.

    Loznitsa's attitude towards Russian-Ukrainian relations is reflected in his 2018 film "Donbass", which, in a sense, is a fictionalized documentary. Its script was derived from amateur recordings circulating on You Tube. Loznitsa showed the Donbass region as a place burdened with post-Soviet moral devastation, and more or less socially marginalized pro-Russian separatists (see: "Lies and violence rule here, and politics is done by criminals”).

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    After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the director left the European Film Academy, a gesture expressing his disgust with an institution he believed was behaving too passively towards the Kremlin's criminal policy. However, at the same time, Loznitsa himself was punished by the Ukrainians when he was expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy for having opposed the boycott of Russian culture.

  In sum, regardless of how the director's attitude might have been assessed, his was definitely a display of intellectual independence.

  Moreover, he is clearly not popular in Ukraine thanks to another documentary entitled "Babi Yar. Context" that he made in 2021. This dealt with the collaboration between Ukrainians and German occupiers in preparing the ground for the extermination of Jews.

Which brings us back to "The Natural History of Destruction"! One might assume that in reading the Sebald essay, Loznitsa would have focused attention primarily on the author's dramatic descriptions of the Allied bombings. However, while the German writer did not equate the nightmare that befell the German civilian population with an alibi or excuse for the Germans, it would appear that this is precisely what the Ukrainian documentary director chose to do. 

  After two screenings of the film at "Docs Against Gravity", Loznitsa met with the audience. Many bitter remarks were directed at him, not least the contention that his documentary "The Natural History of Destruction" sought to portray German civilians as the main victims of WW2. In one instance, an audience member spoke of the bombings the German air force had inflicted on Warsaw and Rotterdam.

   

Loznitsa insisted that his film was about something else, citing remarks by Arthur Harris, WW2 Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command and later Marshal of the Royal Air Force, that feature in the documentary as evidence supporting his view. He quoted Harris as saying that before the British, no one had carried out such mass bombings, that they were the first ones to do it and that the reason behind such bombings was to see if what effect they would have. According to Harrris, it was an experiment.

  According to Loznitsa, the word that stands out as most important in the British officer's statement is "experiment". The director also said that he had wanted to show in his film just how civilians could become hostage to politicians. The declaration brings to mind the term biopolitics used to describe a stream of various concepts in which society is presented as a living resource of power, thus something that acquired importance in the era of total wars.

  Considering Loznitsa’s entire oeuvre, one can arrive at the conclusion that he views the artist's role as not moralizing, but rather one of remaining uninvolved politically and ideologically so as to reveal the reality. Interviewed in 2014, the director referred to the words of the Russian writer Varlam Shalamov, noting that after the Holocaust and the Gulags and all the associated traumas European culture has had to deal with, no artist had the right to tell people how to live or to teach them the meaning of good and bad. In justifying this opinion, Loznitsa claimed it was the artists who were to blame for the atrocities of the 20th century.

  However, in the case of this particular artist, such an approach could mean adding fuel to historical revisionism since "The Natural History of Destruction" could lead one to conclude that in terms of harm the Germans suffered the same, or even more so, than other nations in the course of WW2.

  Perhaps Loznitsa merely wanted to provoke and defiantly go against the current? The hypotheses multiply.

  It is significant that the films of this excellent director are so troublesome for both Russians and Ukrainians. However, I do not know of any of his works that would pose a problem for Germans. That couold be because the director looks at the world from where he lives -- i.e. from a German perspective.

  –Filip Memches

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

–Translated by Agnieszka Rakoczy