Of all the fruitless searches ....The Fruitlessness of War

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

War ... if we learn one lesson of the fruitlessness of war, the point of human civilization would not have been lost.

World War II, Berlin

         

Friends, Naples, 1944 ©Wayne F.Miller

 

Waffen-SS 038.( original caption). Exhausted Waffen SS soldier. Date and location unknown.

         

Berlin in ruins, 1945

          

 

After being released from Soviet captivity a former German soldier was reunited with the daughter he had not seen for 12 years, West Germany 1956.

 

                

Group of children, illegally collecting firewood from empty buildings demolished because of the fuel shortage in The Hague. (1944-1945)

Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War

 

Soviet partisan arrested by the Germans, 1944. Standing orders provided that all partisans were to be executed without trial.

                 

Waffen SS in the trenches during the Battle of Kursk (Operation Citadel) July 1943

                 

Advancing Past Enemy Corpse, Korean War, 1950 | LIFE in the Korean War: Classic Photos by David Douglas Duncan | LIFE.com

          

Marine Capt. Francis “Ike” Fenton ponders his fate and the fate of his men after being told that his company is nearly out of ammunition, Korea, 1950 - DAVID DOUGLAS DUNCAN - Life Magazine

 

15/06/1982 Argentine prisoners of war massed in Port Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands, after their surrender to the British Falkland Islands Task Force.15/06/1982

 

National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) during First Liberian Civil War.

Tuen Voeten - Liberia Ganta, June 2003 In the summer of 2003, the Liberian government of the former war lord, now president, Charles Taylor is challenged by two rebel movements.