Jan
22
“If the whole world were soldiers, what would become of our civilization?”
Erwin Rommel
1939
miscellany relating to world war two in europe. the collection is selected for its psychological/sociological interest, not to promote or condone nazis and the holocaust. you are free to leave if you disapprove of the content.
(run by midnight radio.)
Jan
21
label: Niederlande. - Verwaltungsoffizier des Marineamtes am Schreibtisch
Jan
20
Inglorious Basterds (2009)
Am I only person that thinks Christoph Waltz is a sexy beast?
NO. NOT AT ALL.
Jan
19
taken 1944, inscribed on back by Hugo Jaeger (photographer): “One of war’s lighter moments”
Dec
17
alfred schneider
Dec
12
singing in Innsbruck
Dec
11
“Yesterday, our president mused about the inevitability of war, war’s instrumentality in the pursuit of peace and just wars. It is important for us to reflect on his words, because once we believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we are committed to war’s instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where War IS Peace, where the momentum of war overwhelms hopes for peace. And once we wrap doctrines perpetuating war in the arms of justice, we can easily legitimate the wholesale slaughter of innocents. The war against Iraq was based on lies. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are based on flawed doctrines of counter-insurgency. War is often not just; sometimes it is just war. And our ability to rethink the terms of our existence, to explore the possibility of peace without war, may well determine whether we end war, or war ends us.”
Congressman Kucinich’s Response to President Obama’s “Just War” Doctrine
(via danielholter: unburyingthelead)
“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.” - President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech
(via kateoplis)
Some of the perpetual questions concerning WWII are raised here: how can we be completely sure that a non-violent movement would not have worked?* And where is the line drawn in defining what makes a war “just”, if war can ever be such a thing?
*The Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever” deals with the potential of an American pacifist movement during WWII, and its scenario is likely one of the more plausible. (There’s also Stephen Fry’s novel Making History, but the premise of that is a bit too different for the purposes of this discussion.) Or, what about indirect conflict? Assassination, attempts at targeted bombing, et cetera. Less lives put at risk on either side. But we’re getting into subjunctive history here; there’s no way to fully determine what would have happened. Once one thing changes, everything changes.
Machine-gunner training, April 1941
Dec
10
Kriegsmarine soldiers on the African front listening to the radio, June 1942
“The [medical Nuremberg] trial’s verdict included a statement on ethical standards for medical research, the Nuremberg Code. As important as the Nuremberg Code later became in the United States-it lay behind the founding, in the nineteen-sixties, of the field known as bioethics-the trials were virtually ignored in the nineteen-forties. As the historian of medicine David Rothman has pointed out, the American press hardly mentioned the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and 1947, and largely ignored the execution of seven of its convicted defendants in 1948. To the extent that Americans drew a lesson from Nuremberg, Rothman argues, it was that the government should not have a hand in medicine. “And here,” Rothman writes, “the distinction between the Nazi government and all other governments was lost.”
Excerpt from “The Politics of Death” by Jill Lepore for The New Yorker, Nov. 30, 2009.
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