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496 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 2020
War creates its own nauseous gravity, and towards the end of a six-year conflict, with millions dead, all sides exhausted, could it be that these city bombings [Dresden etc] were not vengeful or consciously merciless, but ever more desperate reflexive attacks launched to make the other side simply stop? Just as it cannot be assumed that individuals always act with perfect rationality, so the same must be said for entire organizations acting with one will. Much as the Frauenkirche and its dome and its might stones were (and are) held in place by unseen counterbalancing geometric forces, so war might be viewed as analogous to the dislocation of society's fine balance; that any conflict of such duration and scale will in the end create repercussions that start to chip away at the foundations of sanity itself, and in so doing reveal the inherent delicacy of civilization. The question after all this time is this: given the unalterable horror of 25,000 people being killed in one night, and given that the bombing was unquestionably an atrocity, intended or not, is there anything at all to be gained now in terms of solace or restitution by pursuing legally precise accusations [ie, was it a war crime?]?