BRITAIN took an important step towards moral closure with Germany last night by publicly acknowledging the horrors of RAF bombing raids on the cities of the Third Reich.

Last night’s gesture comes shortly before a state visit to Germany by the Queen and marks a new stage in relations between the two countries. The Queen will host a concert in Berlin next month to raise money for the final restoration of the Dresden Frauenkirche destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in February 1945.

In a moving ceremony in Brunswick Cathedral, Sir Peter Torry, Britain’s Ambassador to Berlin, paid tribute to the victims of the RAF’s bombing raid, exactly 60 years ago, on the north German city. A firestorm raged through Brunswick’s wooden-gabled houses, killing 560 people.

“It was a bleak and terrifying moment in the modern history of Brunswick,” Sir Peter said in the echoing nave of the cathedral. “How can we explain to our children the madness that was unleashed in those days? How can we explain that such a beautiful and historical city as Brunswick became the target of attacks from the air?” Some survivors of the attack, who were in the congregation, had tears running down their cheeks. Never before has a representative of the British Government given voice to their suffering.

“This is a highly significant moment for our city and for relations between our two countries,” Werner Hempel, the cathedral dean, said. The subtle realignment of the relationship has been under way for some time, but the past few months have been critical. In speeches in Hamburg and Dresden British officials, including the Duke of Kent, speaking in German, have accepted the German wish to mourn their dead openly and without shame.

The brutality of war is regretted but not to the extent of a British apology for its bombing missions. No apology was offered by the ambassador last night. Brunswick, he said, had military targets including a tank factory, an aircraft repair works and a railway junction. Moreover, British cities were also under heavy bombardment. “Two years before the Brunswick attack, in April 1942, Bath was bombarded two nights in succession by German aircraft. Over 400 people were killed, 12,500 homes damaged or destroyed.”

The new mood in the British-German relationship stems from two facts. The first is a British recognition that the partnership is still mired in the Second World War. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as shocked as the Germans by surveys showing Hitler to be the best-known German among teenagers, has been trying to boost youth exchanges and first-hand contacts. The state visit by the Queen will focus on presenting a new alliance free of the wartime obsession.

The second element is that Germans — led now by politicians with no direct experience of the Second World War — feel that they should no longer be judged against the yardstick of Hitler’s crimes. Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, declared the D-Day anniversaries to be the closing of the wartime chapter. In Brunswick yesterday the mood was far less hostile to the British than it is in Dresden where four decades of East German Communist rule kept anti-British resentments alive for longer.

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