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 !
German World Alliance/Deutsche Weltallianz
www.germanworldalliance.org
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