What follows Picasso's Guernica

That incomprehensible aspect of human pain you find best expressed first of all in Picasso's Guernica but for which he was also criticized by not being explicit enough in terms of what Communists demanded then, namely a truly recognizable anti Fascist statement. What to do with a broken sword, a half galloping horse, a woman stretched towards the light?

War does include the horror children experience when bombs descend and put an entire city into flames. That was the case to which Picasso responded in 1937 when he painted Guernica, that is when three waves of attacks by airplanes wiped out the civilian population and demonstrated the extent of destruction this technology in the air is capable of.

It was Bertrand Russell who said already in First World War they discovered how technology can give power over the masses of people. After 1918 many men and women, all with capable minds, devoted themselves to perfecting that technology. Russell notes they were all highly intelligent, but they lacked one important thing: human ethics.

Guernica in 1937 was but an indication for things to follow when entire cities went up in flames in Second World War, whether that was London and Manchester due to the Blitzkrieg of Hitler, or when German forces liquidated first the Warszawa Ghetto and later the entire city, or when at the end of Second World War allied forces bombed Dresden and other German cities.

And there were dropped the two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end the war, as was claimed back then. But did it really end war? Interestingly enough children painted a first mural in Nagasaki and gave it the title "Rebuilding the city after the bomb!"

"Rebuilding the city after the bomb", Nagasaki, Japan

I was born in Germany 1945 and we refer to that date as the end of Second World War, but in the country in which I live in now, namely Greece, there raged a bloody civil war from 1945 till 1948 and even after that this violent conflict between the Left and the Right was not really ended until Andreas Papandreou called for the first time for redemption in 1981, that is after having finally gained power and therefore governmental responsibility. It meant all those of the Left persecuted till then had a right to legal pensions as anyone else, as any other citizen of Greece.

And we know that there followed many more wars in the world after 1945. We need to mention only Korea, Viet Nam, but also not forget the Middle East and all the violent conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Alone the bloody coup of Pinochet in Chile 1973 send shock waves throughout the world with one clear image being that of the Victor Jara: first he was arrested and brought into the stadium, then once there his guitar was broken, then his fingers and finally he himself. Why is this?

And hardly had we experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and thought Europe would achieve social and economic cohesion in East and West, then we experienced for the first time since 1945 again war in former Yugoslavia. Sarajevo, that international city which had hosted just recently before that the Winter Olympic Games, was besieged and its ethnic diversity driven out, if not killed. It culminated in the Kosovo bombing in 1999.

In Germany after 1945 there was such an outcry due to what had taken place between 1933 and 1945, and which is known as the Holocaust and what prompted Adorno to say no more poetry is possible after Auschwitz, that those who emerged out of the ruins of war swore 'never again war'. People wished no longer any militarisation, not to see again men and boys in uniform and wanted that a true governance be given a chance for the sake of peace. But then came Adenauer and Germany joined NATO with the result that again German soldiers trained but for what purpose?

The Four Powers which reigned over both East and West Germany until reunification took place in 1989 meant a cold war with all justifications suiting on both sides of the wall. The main purpose of that cold war tension as if a security threat was to ensure that military service was justified and through that the allegiance of the youth could be secured for the next phase of development. This has to be perceived not merely out of the perspective of those who resisted military service compared to those who volunteered (see here the book by David Mantell, Family and Aggression), but what give and take states are capable of at any time and given a specific world situation. After Korea and Viet Nam and after the Cold War threat was over in 1989, there came new justifications in the form of Desert Sturm, former Yugoslavia and most crucial of all 911 which led to wars first in Afghanistan and then in March 2003 to the invasion of Iraq.

When seen out of this brief historical perspective, it seems odd but can be explained that today, there are German soldiers in Afghanistan and no one seems to notice the many broken promises which litter the road to Kabul.

Peace mural from Kabul, Afghanistan

By comparison, Japan has shown a greater restraint in becoming engaged in such far away places like Afghanistan. The reluctance stems from what has been learned since 1945 with Kids' Guernica an integral part of this learning process.

Indeed, Kids' Guernica attests to the facts of war insofar children have just painted a peace mural at "ground zero", but not the one called by a similar name in New York, but the one in Nagasaki. They did the mural at the place where the first nuclear bomb was dropped in 1945, that is besides the other one which was dropped on Hiroshima. "Ground zero" should stay connected both in meaning and in terms of the work of redemption to 1945.

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What follows Picasso's Guernica