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Calamitas virtutis occasio (Seneca, De providentia, 4, 6)

 
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GWA PRESS RELEASE
13. February 2007

Never again Dresden, never again Hiroshima !

Sixty-two years ago, on the night of 13 to 14 February 1945, Anglo-American bomber swarms firebombed Dresden, a city devoid of military significance, world-renowned for its ancient churches and beautiful baroque architecture, a common heritage of mankind.

Tens of thousands of civilians perished, including many Silesians who had fled West into Saxony to escape the onslaught of the Red Army as well as allied POWs who were quartered in the city. The exact number of victims will never be known, since thousands of victims were reduced to ashes by the firestorm, dismembered or remained buried under the rubble. The estimates span from 25,000 to 300,000.

Under international law applicable in 1945, the saturation bombing of population centres was illegal. Bearing in mind that the Allied bombing of German population centres killed an estimated 600,000 German civilians during World War II, there can be no doubt that such indiscriminate bombing, in particular, the firebombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Kassel and Pforzsheim and the militarily senseless bombing of Würzburg and Potsdam in the closing days of the war entailed both war crimes and crimes against humanity. The death of
civilians was not "collateral damage" - it was intended.

At the 1960 Godkin Lectures at Harvard University, the British physicist C.P. Snow spoke with indignation about the 1942 British cabinet meeting where a paper by Lord Cherwell was approved concerning the so-called strategic bombing of Germany. This "strategy" meant abandoning the policy of targeting only military objectives, which were difficult to find and to hit, and deliberately targeting the civilian population and destroying their homes (C.P. Snow, Science and Government, Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. 47-53). Snow's warnings are as valid today as in 1960, when he shocked
the academic world into a measure of self-criticism. Like Victor Gollancz, Snow was concerned about "Our threatened values". Could we fight an enemy because of his methods and then practice those same methods ourselves?

International law applies equally to all parties in armed conflicts, regardless of who started a given war. The Hague and Geneva conventions were adopted in times of peace by States -- all of them potential aggressors -- with a view to limit the horrors of war, in particular to civilians. These conventions were not drafted to give privileges to any side in an armed conflict. The conventions allow no discrimination among the civilians of
belligerent countries. Similarly, human rights law is unequivocal with regard to the overarching principle of equality: Discrimination among victims is not allowed A German victim shares the same human dignity with French, Polish, Czech, British, American, Jewish or Russian victims.

In this sense, the principle of collective guilt must be abandoned as both immoral and incompatible with the rule of law. Guilt and innocence are individual, not collective phenomena. The common dignity of human beings requires the rejection of frivolous approaches to the loss of life, including the callous statements of some journalists that "The Germans had it coming to them". Such statements are racist and obscene. No one deserves being burned alive. No one deserves dying in a terror attack on civilians and refugees.

We owe it to all victims to recognize their suffering and to condemn the root of it all -- aggressive war. The Germans do not stand alone in history as aggressors. Alas, there were many aggressors before 1939, and there have been many more aggressors since 1945. The leaders of countries that have planned and conducted aggressive war merit severest punishment.

We owe respect and compassion to the millions of victims of indiscriminate air bombardment in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan. Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, etc. In the name of humanity, and as a continuing commemoration for the dead of Dresden, we must condemn all bombardment of civilians and prevent the future murder of women and children by cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs. We are profoundly alarmed by the unthinkable scenario of a nuclear strike against Iran, and say:

Never again Dresden, never again Hiroshima !


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