Press Release of the German World Alliance
on the firebombing of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945
www.germanworldalliance.org, February 12, 2005

Sixty years ago, on the night of 13 to 14 February 1945, thousand-bomber Anglo-American swarms firebombed Dresden, a city with no significant military targets, located at the time of the attack hundreds of miles away from the front. More than 100,000 civilians perished, including many Silesians who had fled toward Saxony, trying to escape the onslaught of the Red Army.

There is no doubt that under international law applicable in 1945, the carpet bombing of population centres constituted a grave breach of the laws and customs of war. Bearing in mind that the Allied bombing of German population centres killed an estimated 600,000 civilians during World War II, there can be no doubt that such indiscriminate bombing and, in particular, the firebombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Kassel and the militarily senseless bombing of Würzburg and other cities when the war was practically over entailed not only war crimes but also crimes against humanity.

International law applies to all parties in armed conflicts, regardless of who was the aggressor. The Hague and Geneva conventions were drafted and 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. Said conventions were not drafted to apportion guilt or to give privileges to any belligerent. They allow no discrimination among the civilians of belligerent countries, and their protection extends equally to victors and vanquished.

Human rights law is clear with regard to the overarching principle of equality. Accordingly, there must be no discrimination among the victims of violations of human rights. A German victim shares the same human dignity with French, Polish or Russian victims, and is as deserving of our compassion.

Collective guilt does not exist in international law, or in morality. Indeed, guilt and innocence are individual phenomena. The common dignity of human beings requires the rejection of any frivolous approach to the loss of life, including the callous and unthinking statements that have recently appeared in the press : "Dresden was bad, but the Germans had it coming to them". This is an obscenity. No one deserves being burned alive, no one deserves dying in a terror attack on civilians and refugees.

We owe it to all victims -- Germans and Allied alike -- to mourn over their suffering and to condemn the root of it all -- aggressive war. The Germans do not stand alone in history as aggressors. Alas, there have been many wars since 1945, and there have been many aggressors. The leaders of countries that have planned and conducted aggressive war merit severest punishment. But the civilian populations and the victims on all sides of these conflicts demand our respect and compassion.

Copyright ©2004 Alfred De Zayas. All contents are copyrighted and may not be used without the author's permission. This page was created by Nick Ionascu.