A simple and honest statement.

[sabrinaseyes]

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war

Comments

[anonymous]

Little did Siegfried realize that he was taking part in one of the most significant events in modern history. Without the political blunders of WWI, there would have been no reason to have WWII. Without WWII, the current generation of living humans would most likely not have seen men walk on the moon (the saturn V rocket was invented by a captured nazi scientist).In fact, most modern aviation technology can be traced directly to roots in German wartime aeronautical research. Without WWII, most free-thinking humans would not have witnessed the birth and death of much of the world's socialism and communism within their own lifetimes

[mycastlesblue]

Since when is the technological advancement of the human race a reason or excuse for war? Remind me at what point the value of a single human soul ceased to greatly outweigh that of our material possessions? The dehumanization of men put through war is never to be overlooked. Surely these brave men didn't pay with their sweat, blood, and sanity so that we could be discussing it like this in a medium as "advanced" as livejournal. Who wouldn't give up these technological "byproducts" of war if it would mean that countless men wouldn't have to have been broken on the battlefield? How dare you try to equate the value of our "technological innovations" to the plight of a generation. I'm forever grateful for my own existence, but it's defined by the ideals fought for and achieved in the past rather than the "gadgets" obtained through scientific advancement.

[anonymous]

You seem to have missed the larger point. I'll try again without the fluff. We could debate the "rightness" or "wrongness" of war from a philosophical standpoint till we're blue in the face. Yet no one can deny the profound changes war has brought to the political, social, cultural, economic, and technological existence of mankind since the first two cavemen threw rocks at each other(or was it Cain and Able?).

[sabrinaseyes]

I understand that good things come out of bad circumstances. That is pretty much something that I've always been told. Looking at World War I, the main cause of artistic, musical, and literary development was due to the disillusionment people felt after World War I. So I suppose I should be grateful. Look at the entire Lost Generation- such Fitzgerald and his colleagues- and the rise of new artistic movements such as Dadaism and in architecture,the Bauhaus school. This was the start of the literary Modernism movement. People were definitely thinking outside the box