Walking around a bend of the Rennsteig (see my last post for a description of this wonderful foot trail in Germany), I came upon a stone memorial to a military engagement that occurred there in 1944.
This Memorial stands beside the Rennsteig Trail.
The world being full of these stone and iron reminders of the valor and bravery of "our side" in some past struggle between right and wrong, I usually just walk past them. Its not that I do not appreciate the sacrifices made by people who have come before me. It is just that I often think we memorialize the wrong things. Worse, these memorials sometimes preserve in the minds of yet another generation the idea that there were only two sides in any war, our side and "evil." Twice worse, evil would have prevailed had it not been for the military prowess of our side. War was the answer and the solution. It often seems "God Almighty" needed to borrow the United States Military for a few years because evil was getting a little too much for him to handle.
The "Other Side" as seen through propaganda posters. (Click on them to see them in more detail.)
Thrice worse, there is evidently some psychological need to dehumanize our enemy. In order to justify to ourselves the great wrongs we think we must accomplish to "win" a war, our enemy must not be imagined to be people. They have to be monsters, devils, animals...but not people. Else, how could we ever use nuclear weapons on cities, chemical weapons on agricultural efforts, "shock and awe" theatrics against civilian populations, torture against their soldiers whom we capture in battle. No, we must first think of the other side as somehow less than human. Then we can live with our actions, no matter how inhuman these actions may become.
Nuremberg 1945
Camp x-Ray, Guantanamo, Cuba 2002
Dachau Concentration Camp, Bavaria 1945
Bataan Philippeans 1942
Chemical Warfare against Agricultural Lands in Mekong Delta in 1970
Largely Civilian City, Nagasaki Japan in Fall and Summer of 1945
Mai Lai Vietnam in 1968
Resisting the urge to think of my own side as "right" and the other side as "evil," I normally just walk on by war monuments.
But this time I stopped and translated. I don't know why, perhaps I was tired and in need of a short break from hiking. But I stopped and translated.
The original monument explained simply, "In memory of the fallen American and German pilots in an air battle over the Thuringen Forest on September 11, 1944."
I thought to myself, "How interesting, how civilized, to include the attacking enemy flying over your homes in the memorial."
Then I read the explanatory sign positioned several meters away.
"On September 11, 1944, roaring through the sky of the Thuringen Forest, an air battle between the German troops and the Allies was underway. This battle involved 84 young men, six German ME 109 and two American P51 Mustang aircraft. The result was 5 deaths on the German side and 2 deaths on the American side. This memorial should remind us of this air battle so war does not ever repeat."
"The result was..." Now that was a nice touch!
This little battle was not amplified to have been the most important turning point between the progress of the forces of light over the forces of darkness. It was not reinterpreted as a strategic victory. The benefits, if any, gained by the loss of life are not listed. And the actions taken by the various pilots are not spun into heroic ballads. In fact, we do not even learn about the reasons the battle was fought. The result was seven dead young men.
Can we ever control that all too human need to conveniently de-humanize our enemies? I look forward to the day in the future when we will be far enough removed from current struggles "between good and evil." Perhaps we will even count the dead humans on all sides of our current wars when we sing the songs of triumph and claim to have "won" anything at all in return for their "sacrifices."
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