Remembering the people killed in wars
Veterans' Day USA, November 2006

July 25, 1943.

We had returned to our battery after trying to save the burning houses around us, but to no avail. There was no water.

It was 10 o’clock in the morning. It was still eerily dark, as the air was filled with myriads of small dust particles. There was a smell of burning wood in the air interwoven with a sweetish taste, which we later learned came from the burning of human flesh. We spoke in whispers. Had the world come to an end? Had the sun refused to come up again to shine at this result of human madness? But there she was in the sky, a fiery red ball in the darkness, punctuated only by the burning houses.

During the night one thousand British bombers had come und unloaded their deadly freight on my home city of Hamburg, a harbor town of 1 million people. During the days it was the American bombers we tried to shoot down with our twelve 105mm anti aircraft guns as they tried to hit industrial plants and the harbor area. The British followed a different goal: Let us attack at night and try to burn down a whole city, the homes of the people, the homes of the workers who kept the war machine running.

Only after the war I learned that a street with a number of typical German and Japanese homes had been built in Kansas to develop the most effective incendiary bombs to start fires in typical city row houses and to decide on the optimal numbers of explosive bombs to scare the people into their cellars so they would not try to put out the fires. The raid on July 24/25, 1943 was the first time this method succeeded on a grand scale. A fire storm developed in the streets of Hamburg burning 46000 people to death in this one night, mostly children and women, as the men had been sent to fight the Russians on the eastern front. It took months to load the human remains on lorries and dump them in a huge mass grave. The sweetish smell of burned flesh stayed in the air for weeks. I still can smell it today.

Can one talk about such a night, especially if one was a 15 year old boy at that time? I had been drafted with my school class to the antiaircraft to relieve the older soldiers to fight on the eastern front. We were to defend my city against the terror attacks of the enemy. No, I can’t talk about it, because if you had not experienced it yourself you would not understand. And it is too painful to talk about it. I and my generation have not come to terms with this experience.

We have not come to terms because we, the world, has hardly learned anything from it. We still believe in trying to solve our problems through the use of force, of weapons more efficient and dreadful than ever. We allow not only defensive wars but believe we have the right to start preventive ones. We report on our own heroes death but do not count the local civilians killed through our action. We entice young men with ever greater sign up payments to commit themselves to becoming a soldier instead of building a society where every one can find peaceful ways to finance his and her education. Once we are in a war we declare to owe it to our fallen soldiers, whom we call heroes, to keep fighting until we win the war rather than to stop the dying and to try to win a peace, not just for the good of our nation but for the good of the world, of all children where ever they live.

Yes, it is too difficult for me to talk about my war time experiences. But I would be willing to talk to young people, all over the world, to talk about the changes within myself which happened to me as a consequence of my participation in this killing and dying. I would tell them of my heroes, young men who are brave enough to refuse to join the killing in spite of great pressures put on them by most of our institutions, governments, parties and even churches. Young men and women are willing to take great risks in working for a peace, so that people all over the world can live without fear of getting killed or having to kill. I would discuss with them why it seems so easy for governments to convince young people to accept the risk of death by becoming a soldier rather than by becoming a worker for peace.

I would tell them to mistrust any Government which claims, God is on your side. Even in the terrible dictatorship of Hitler he told us that the Almighty was on our side and our belt buckle showed the inscription: WITH GOD. And surely, those we today call Terrorist and who blow themselves up trying to kill their enemies believe deeply in their God. And our Governments proclaim the same. Maybe there is the one God for all of us, a God, I will tell them, who is on the side of those who refuse to kill. And you, young women or men, work for peace before a war starts, as long as this is possible, and refuse to kill under any circumstances. The world has to learn:

KILLING IS OUT!

Picture: My classmates and I before one of our guns in Hamburg, autumn 1943 I am the 15 year old boy, top row, third from right