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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 14-Feb-05
Neo-Nazis rally at Dresden firebombing commemoration

Web Log - February, 2005

Neo-Nazis rally at Dresden firebombing commemoration

A wrenchingly emotional ceremony brings back battles of WW II, Vietnam and today's war on terror.

In 1969, at the height of America's "days of rage" violent protests, antiwar science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse-Five inflamed the protestors college students with this description of what he had seen when he was in Dresden, Germany, on February 13 and 14, 1945:

"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."

The two names mentioned by Vonnegut, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are the two Japanese cities that were bombed a few weeks later with the first nuclear weapons.

Many old emotions came back on Sunday, when American, British, French and Russian dignitaries attended a 60th anniversary commemoration of the Dresden bombing. The special bombs created fires that sucked the oxygen out of the city and used to create a fire explosion, while leaving behind carbon monoxide to suffocate the people. The city was flattened, and 200,000 people were killed.

The purpose of the commemoration was to promote peace and reconciliation, but the peace was disturbed by 5,000 neo-Nazi protesters who compared the bombing of Baghdad last year to the bombing of Dresden in 1944. The two situations are totally incomparable, of course, but it shows the kind of polemics that accompanied the commemoration.

The neo-Nazis, who frequently say that Germany should be for Germans (as opposed to Jews or Muslims), demanded an apology from Britain for the war crime in Dresden.

The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment, 1940-45

The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment, 1940-45

In fact, the whole Dresden issue came to life suddenly in 2002 when a new book hit the best seller lists in Germany: Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945 (The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment, 1940-45), by Jörg Friedrich. Since that time, the view that the Allied bombing of Dresden was an unnecessary act of revenge has been expressed more and more frequently.

However, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was having none of this. "Today we grieve for the victims of war and the Nazi reign of terror in Dresden, in Germany and in Europe. We will oppose in every way these attempts to reinterpret history. We will not allow cause and effect to be reversed."

Outside of the hate groups that used the commemoration for polemics, everyone had regrets that the ceremony had to be held. The Germans regret their Nazi past, and the British regretted having killed so many civilians in an undefended German city that was one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. Speakers defending the attack say that it wasn't revenge at all; Dresden had some munitions factories, and anyway, the way had to be cleared for the advancing Russian army.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Dresden bombing was indeed revenge, and quite justified. That it was revenge can be seen from President Harry S. Truman's speech on August 9, 1945, just after we had dropped the first nuclear weapon on Japan: "Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us."

The firebombing of Dresden was revenge just as much as the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima was. It was revenge for Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews, for Hitler's bombing of London and Coventry in England, killing thousands of civilians, and for slaughter of our soldiers on D-Day.

That's what happens in crisis wars, and that's what makes crisis wars different from non-crisis wars. In non-crisis wars, like the Vietnam War, we worry about "collateral damage" and killing civilians, because non-crisis wars are political wars. But every nation has genocidal crisis wars and always has.

Then what about Baghdad? If this is a new crisis period, then why didn't we firebomb Baghdad or Fallujah and simply destroy it. Isn't that what people do in a crisis war?

No, not at the beginning. At the beginning of even a crisis war, it's often the case that the genocidal aspects are muted.

But a crisis war is like a ball rolling down a hill. When the ball first starts rolling, it may go very slowly, and even stop and bounce around when it hits rocks and trees in its way. That's the time when everyone hopes that the war really isn't necessary, that if we don't any serious lines, then the other side will back down and say, "Heh heh, just kidding," and the war will end.

But in a crisis period, the other side doesn't back down. In Vietnam we pulled out; we wouldn't have done that in a crisis period. In the 1990 Gulf War, we stopped short of getting Saddam; we would go after Saddam in a crisis war and, guess what? We did just that in 2003.

So every time that the other side doesn't back down, that ball starts to roll down the hill a little bit faster. Once it's going fast enough, it can't be stopped. It rolls faster and faster until it reaches the bottom of the hill in an explosion of vengeance and genocide.

That's our future, as we approach the "clash of civilizations" world war. Despite the neo-Nazi polemics, we were quite nice in Iraq. But we won't be so nice the next time. And by the time it's all over, when we've had tens of millions of American deaths and the total destruction of someo of allies, we'll see a desire for vengeance that no one will mistake. (14-Feb-05) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 14-Feb-05 Neo-Nazis rally at Dresden firebombing commemoration

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 14-Feb-05
Neo-Nazis rally at Dresden firebombing commemoration