“Let’s dare more humanity!”

km. In their answers to the question of who and what caused the war in Ukraine and how this war can be ended, those who once called themselves the “peace movement” in Germany do not agree. The spectrum ranges from the demand for arms deliveries to Ukraine (so even in the formerly peace-moving German official churches) to the demand for an immediate ceasefire and subsequent peace negotiations. Characteristic of this is the adherence to ideological and party-political positions as well as marginalisation and exclusion.
  In contrast, the “East German Board of Trustees of Associations” (OKV) – which is accused of being “anti-reunification”, but which itself speaks of working for the “inner unity of the German people” – had taken two letters from former high-ranking GDR military officers as an opportunity to invite speakers from East and West Germany for 27 March 2023¹, who have quite different ideological positions. They agree that the war in Ukraine poses a massive danger to world peace and that everything must be done to achieve “peace with Russia” – not because one has to be a friend of Russia, but as “an imperative of reason” – said the former GDR agent at NATO and today’s publicist Rainer Rupp at the beginning of the conference.
  We document the lecture of the former Bundeswehr officer and today’s publicist Wolfgang Effenberger and the Final declaration.

Dear Friends of Peace,
  thank you for the invitation. And thanks to Generals Manfred Grätz and Sebald Daum, without whose courageous letters this event would probably not take place.
  In 1946, I was born two months after my parents were expelled from Silesia in South Oldenburg and then became a soldier at the age of 18. In 1973, as a young captain, I had an insight into the planned nuclear battlefield in my assignment as a NATO officer during the Cold War. In my function as a response consultant, I wrote orders for the so-called emergency on this reddish order paper.
  On the back I typed my then secret tasks:
  Among others:

• Exploring ADM² blocking points
• Developing impact analyses
• Preparing ADM operations ...

In the so-called defence case, I would have had to lead a nuclear interdiction platoon at that time.
  In view of the willingness of the United States to accept nuclear devastation here in Europe, I soon realised that peace in freedom must have the highest priority. It is the prerequisite for a dignified life. Freedom and truthfulness are basic prerequisites for peace. In war there is neither freedom nor truth nor democracy, but only unimaginable suffering on both sides!
  In 1989 I hoped that real peace would finally come to Europe! But my hopes were disappointed. Russia was plundered, and NATO, contrary to its promises, was steadily expanded eastwards, culminating in the coup in Ukraine.
  The first casualty in war is always the truth. I have consciously experienced this as a contemporary witness, namely in the illegal wars of the USA: Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
  The conditions for a free, democratic society are hardly given today.
  We must not allow ourselves to be manipulated into a war by means of lies, as happened, for example, in the Yugoslavian war in 1999. As always, tangible economic and geopolitical interests were behind the usual phrases of freedom and democracy. These were bluntly explained at the end of April 2000 at a conference of the US State Department on the Balkans and NATO enlargement to the East in Bratislava: “In the forthcoming NATO enlargement, the spatial situation between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia must be restored as it was at the height of the Roman expansion. To this end, Poland must be surrounded to the north and south with democratic states as neighbours, Romania and Bulgaria must ensure the land connection to Turkey and Serbia must be permanently excluded from European development.” This plan has been consistently implemented ever since.
  The US Camp Bondsteel secures the US military presence from Kosovo to Kashmir for 99 years. The Yugoslav war also let the mischief of Polish Marshal Pilsudski out of the bottle again – 100 years ago, Pilsudski aspired to a Polish-dominated space between the Baltic and the Black Sea.
  On 21 July 2021, the USA and Germany pledged to secure Ukrainian sovereignty and energy security. And beyond that to expand the Three Seas Initiative – here the Adriatic has now been added. Poland is now the geostrategic anchor of the US aircraft carrier in Europe.
  After the USA failed to get a UN mandate for its war against Yugoslavia in 1999, it has since been mandating its wars itself. This means that the law of the jungle rules.
  In July 2009, I spoke at the Berlin Peace Festival on the topic of “New Wars for Raw Materials?”
  My main points were:

1. the Kosovo war as a “Zeitenwende” (turning point)
2. the return of geo-power politics
3. the militarisation of the EU.

Article 42 of the EU Treaty makes military missions “to safeguard the values of the Union and serve its interests” real. In plain language, this means wars of aggression to protect economic and strategic interests.
  In 2010, I received an invitation to the Dresden Symposium for the first time. I gladly think back to Colonel Professor Dr Dr Ernst Woit, who repeatedly invited me not only as a speaker, but even personally. The working papers of the Dresden Study Group consistently dealt with trend-setting topics, such as “Multipolar Collective Security instead of Pax americana” in 2011. Since then, I have been advocating for a multipolar peace order in my books, e. g. “Wiederkehr der Hasardeure – Schattenstrategen, Kriegstreiber, stille Profiteure 1914 und heute” (Return of the Plungers – Shadow Strategists, Warmongers, Silent Profiteers 1914 and Today), together with Willy Wimmer.
  In July 2014, we wrote in the foreword: “The same circles that instrumentalised national conflicts for their own interests a hundred years ago are at work again today. Once again, poker is being played without hesitation and the danger of a world war, and with it new and immeasurable suffering, is being accepted.”
  This was followed in 2016 by “Geoimperialism – the Destruction of the World”. In 2020 the “Black Book EU & NATO – Why the World Cannot Find Peace” and in 2022 “The Underestimated Power – From Geopolitics to Biopolitics – Plutocrats Transform the World”.
  On 21 September 2022, the International Day of World Peace, I spoke as a former member of the Bundeswehr together with retired as well as active colonels and generals of the Austrian Armed Forces on Human Rights Square in Vienna. There they called for Austria’s legally enshrined neutrality to be maintained. While the Federal Republic of Germany rejected Stalin’s offer of neutrality in spring 1952 in favour of integration with the West, the Austrians implemented perpetual neutrality with constitutional rank in 1955.
  On 27 October 2022, the Biden administration adopted the new National Security Strategy. First on the list is the growing multidisciplinary threat from China and its challenge in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as the challenge in Europe emanating from Russia. North Korea and Iran follow. The new nuclear strategy explicitly rules out any renunciation of a nuclear first strike. The US Congressional handouts of 15 November 2022 quote from the new National Security Strategy: “The United States is a global power with global interests. We are stronger in every region because we are engaged in the other regions.” The Congressional paper goes on to say: “[...] US policymakers pursue the goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia [...]; US military operations in World War I and World War II, as well as numerous U.S. military operations and day-to-day operations since World War II [...] have apparently contributed in no small part to supporting this goal.”
  For a century, it has been mainly about increasing the wealth of a group of tycoons in the City of London and on Wall Street. A look at current financial flows confirms this. For example, the financial elites in the US and the UK seem to have little interest in a settlement of the Ukraine conflict. Today, the same circles would like to lead us into a third world war.
  It would be extremely tragic if Thomas Mann’s appeal to European listeners in 1953 were to go unheard. In his American exile, he had recognised the tendency of the USA “to treat Europe as an economic colony, a military base, a glacis in the future nuclear crusade against Russia, as a piece of earth that may be antiquarian and worth travelling to, but whose complete ruin they will not give a damn about when it comes to the struggle for world domination.”
  Chinese President Xi bid farewell in Moscow on 22 March, saying “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years. And we are driving this change together.”– Change towards a multipolar world.
  The globe must no longer be the plaything of an irresponsible financial oligarchy that prepares the ground for ruthless exploitation. Let us throw the sinister narrative of “good here, evil there” into the dustbin of history! Let us outlaw war! And above all: let us dare more humanity! Thank you!  •

¹ See for an overview https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=95840 of 3 April 2023 (editor’s note).
² ADM is the abbreviation for „Atomic Demolition Munition“, i.e. tactical nuclear weapons. It is often also referred to as atomic mines, nuclear mines or nuclear landmines (editor’s note).