May 1, 1999
Berlin, Belgrad, Bergen-Belsen.
Nothing forgotten.

It is war, peace is over. When on earth was it realistic to assume that the airplanes, the bombs, the mines we are producing day by day would never be used? Humanity is bombing and killing the people of former Yugoslavia. Those who commit these crimes are workers and brothers and sons of workers.
The four powers - USA, Great Britain, France and Germany - share a common interest in this war with all other imperialists: After the defeat of socialism which prevented the imperialists from attacking the people of their and other countries as well as each other for many years, they now want the defeat for the working class to be final and total. The aim is to make the international working class accept pure slavery. The aim is to make the international working class forget every single achievement of the time during which working class was in power. The aim is to put an end to proletarian dignity and organization. The responsibility of the German working class is a particular one: The fall of the Wall has always been the goal of the revanchist policy of West Germany. The fall of the Wall was the starting signal for the „peaceful“ annexation of the former DDR. The annexation of the DDR by German Imperialism changed the post war area and its balance of forces fundamentally. (As said Herr Thierse, the socialdemocratic president of the German „Bundestag“: There is an evident link between the war against Yugoslavia and the fact that the Bundestag moved into the „Reichstag“ just a few days before Hitler‘s birthday: Both events have been made possible by the fall of the Wall 1989.) The question is to be asked whether the war against Yugoslavia would have been at all possible would the DDR continue to exist. The German proletariat did not have the strength to defend the DDR, to defend one of the main barriers against imperialist war. This makes the burden of the German working class in the struggle for peace so particularly heavy.
We do not know whether it was World War III that started at March 24, 1999. But it was equally unknown to everybody that it was the beginning of the first one, when Germany for the first time in this century took part in a war against Serbia (1914). And the second one did not appear to become a world war when the German aircraft bombed Belgrad (April 1941). Two months later the Soviet Union was attacked. Maybe all is different from the two earlier occasions as long as Germany does not fight against her former enemies but attacks another country like Serbia together with them, while Russia still keeps quiet. There are German politicians and leaders who claim that they are against this war - merely because they do not want to make the same „mistakes“ as the US, how they call it. They prefer Germany to walk its own way - the German „Sonderweg“ that has been so fruitful in producing war. The poet Walser, like the editor of the „Spiegel“, Herr Augstein actually argue against the war, at the same time they fight the idea of a Holocaust memorial. This is more than a coincidence. They want Germany to return to normality and German normality starts with the declaration that Auschwitz is nothing but propagandist lies. Both peace and war are disastrous for the working class if peace and war are the result of the will of the imperialists.
If the working class wants to live in peace, peace with the imperialists must come to an end.