193 countries are members of the United Nations.
The GLOBAL PEACE INDEX says:
There are currently 56 conflicts, the most since World War II. They have become more international with 92 countries involved in global economic impact of violence in 2023 was $19.1 trillion or $2,380 per person. This is an increase of $158 billion, driven largely by a 20% increase in GDP losses from conflict outside their borders
Historic meeting
French President François Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl shake hands in this photo on 22 September 1984 on a former battlefield in Verdun, France, to commemorate the dead of the two world wars. In the ossuary in the background and under the crosses are the graves of a total of 130,000 French, German and 592 Muslim soldiers. In addition, 15,000 French soldiers were buried in the graves in front of the memorial.
Finally the guns are silent
A large light show (staged by Michael Batz, based on an idea by Fritz Schmücker???) commemorated the end of the Thirty Years’ War on the Prinzipalmarkt in Münster during the 375th anniversary celebrations of the “Peace of Westphalia” on the evening of 24 October 2023. The noble assembly was just one of many motifs that were projected onto the walls of the buildings during the 12-minute light spectacle.
From above
With his foot on a cannonball, the larger-than-life statue of Napoleon Bonaparte, who once waged war on almost all of Europe, still stands in the Invalides cathedral in Paris today
The end of a bloody career
40 metres high is the hill that was heaped up near the Belgian village of Waterloo between 1823 and 1826 and on which a lone lion roars towards France to this day to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon suffered his final and decisive defeat in 1815. Around 86,000 soldiers lost their lives, were injured or taken prisoner. Later, archaeologists found the remains of only two soldiers. The mystery of what had happened to the thousands of bones of the remaining soldiers and horses was only solved a few years ago. The flourishing sugar factories needed bone meal to keep the sugar nice and white.
A tunnel becomes a grave
The Barbara mine near the village of Huda Jama (Evil Pit) in Slovenia. In 1945, members of the Slovenian home defence organisation ‘Domobranci’ and soldiers of the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ (NDH) were walled in alive here by communist partisans who accused them of collaborating with the German Wehrmacht. The number of dead is estimated at over 1,500.
Thrown into the ravine alive
Around 3000 corpses of Gottscheer ethnic Germans were tied up with telephone wire and thrown into the ravine in the Gottscheer Hornwald in Slovenia on Tito’s orders.
Dive into captivity
A doll of a soldier hangs on the church in Sainte-Maire-Eglise, in memory of the US parachutist John Steele, who fell from the sky on D-Day in June 1944 and landed on the church tower. The Germans brought him down and took him prisoner, but he managed to escape. Back in America, he reported to the front again, but by then the war was over.
Verdun war graves – from a ballad by Hannes Wader:
Far in Champagne in the midsummer green,
Where poppies bloom between grave crosses.
There the grasses whisper and sway gently,
In the wind that blows gently over the graveyard.
On your cross I find dead soldier,
Your name not just numbers and someone has painted
The number 1900 and 16 and you were not even
19 years old.
Steadfast despite all the torment
This mural at Chartres Cathedral commemorates Jean Moulin, one of the most important leaders of the French Resistance until his arrest in June 1943. Even under torture by the notorious Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie, who had almost all his arms, legs and ribs broken, he did not betray his co-conspirators. When he was asked to write down names, he drew a caricature of the person interrogating him.
Remains of a disaster
The cannon barrel of an American M41 Walker Bulldog tank wreck still juts into the air in the restricted military area i Brander Wald near Aachen. The ‘Battle of All Souls’ raged nearby, in which the US troops were ambushed by the German Wehrmacht in November 1944 and suffered heavy losses.
The conscience of the ‘butterfly’
Edmond Réveil, now 89 years old, was a member of the Resistance during the Second World War (under the cover name ‘Papillon’) and witnessed at the age of 18 how 52 German soldiers were killed by Resistance fighters in the forest near Meymac. It was revenge for the massacre carried out by the Wehrmacht in Oradour, around 100 kilometres away. Now, in his old age, he has gone public with the demand that the remains of the soldiers buried at the time, in whose execution he says he was not involved, be transferred to Germany so that the remaining relatives can finally mourn. Réveil still lives in Meymac. Some of the residents do not support him. They are worried that the town’s good reputation could suffer.
Detective work with the latest technology
The search for the German soldiers executed by the French Resistance in the forest near Meymac in 1944 is proving extremely difficult. In August 2023, members of the German War Graves Commission joined forces with French colleagues and anthropologists to search for the bodies buried in the forest at the time. Nobody knows the exact location. The geoscientist Yanick Fahlenbock uses a georadar to find the bodies.
Finally achieved
In January 1973, US presidential adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese politburo member Le Duc Tho agree on a peace treaty after long, tough negotiations in Paris. The two negotiators were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the year. And after a quarter of a century, the guns finally fall silent again in Vietnam.
Poisonous legacy
This little boy sits in a field in Vietnam with crippled hands. He is a victim of the dioxin Agent Orange, which the USA sprayed from aeroplanes
64 sprayed from aeroplanes during the Vietnam War to defoliate the jungle and destroy enemy camouflage. Around 100,000 children were born with deformities in the South Asian country as a result. Farmland and rivers are still contaminated today.
Too sick to live Deformed
children (foetuses?) in test tubes in hospital number 1 in Ho Chi Minh City. Three generations after the use of the highly toxic Agent Orange, children in Vietnam were still being born with severe deformities.
Take care, little one
Olaf Strasberg, a community service volunteer with the Peace Village organisation, hugs his new friend Hanh as he says goodbye in Frankfurt in February 1989. After the end of the war, many injured children from Vietnam came to Germany to be operated on here before returning home – often after almost a year.
Cheerful look ahead
Hoang Anh, who suffered from the after-effects of Ogent Orange, underwent surgery in Germany and now sits proudly in his new wheelchair. The neighbouring children admire him.
Into the rubbish
After returning to her parents’ Annenhof farm near Kaliningrad, Ursula Trautmann doesn’t make much of a fuss: The remnants of socialism are disappearing, even her ancestor Karl Marx has to
Practise early
Children learn to operate a miniature tank developed from a Trabant car. At the ‘National Youth Festival’ of the GDR in June 1979, the motto is ‘We protect our socialist fatherland’
Downed
After Latvia formally seceded from the USSR in 1990, Russian Omon troops stormed the Ministry of the Interior in Riga on the night of 17-18 January 1991 and shot at Latvians who had ventured too close. This man has just been shot in the stomach.
The face of pain
The mother of the motorist Robert Murnieks, who was shot dead, bursts into tears at his funeral. Her son was a victim of the riots that broke out in Riga, Latvia, in January 1991 after the country, which is home to a large Russian minority, declared its independence from the Soviet Union
With chisel, folding rule and pistol
German soldiers in Kosovo help rebuild the village of Topillo, which was destroyed by Serbs, with tools and weapons. However, the pistol is only used for self-protection. Colour Sergeant Frank Mester: ‘We want to show that you don’t have to be afraid of German soldiers and that they come with peaceful intentions.’
Always on guard
In 2020, German soldiers from the multinational KFOR peacekeeping force are preparing for a deployment along the ‘temporary border’ at the so-called ‘Nothing Hill’, which was arbitrarily drawn by the Serbs in the north of Kosovo, to which they do not want to belong.
Praying for peace
Around 14,000 soldiers from 40 countries take part in the nightly candlelight procession in front of the basilica in Lourdes during the International Soldiers’ Pilgrimage .
First pious, then joyful
In May 2023, the International Soldiers’ Pilgrimage to Lourdes took place for the 63rd time, bringing together soldiers from all over the world to pray and celebrate. This time, the German Peter Siemens brought his accordion with him and created a boundless atmosphere among the Croatian military and French gendarmerie.
That’s how it works
A Muslim woman from Saudi Arabia also welcomes people of other faiths. Like many Saudis, she is spending her holiday in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Feminist rally
Demonstrating female soldiers in Sudan for the Arab Islamic Conference in Karthoum/Sudan.
Rescue before our eyes
The sculpture ‘The Last Farewell’ by Frank Meisler and Ari Ovadia in front of Dammtor railway station in Hamburg commemorates the Kindertransports from Nazi Germany. Between December 1938 and the start of the war on 1 September 1939, thousands of Jewish children were transported from Hitler’s Germany to Great Britain and other countries. They were often the only survivors from their families.
A sign of understanding
Hannah Kröner (18) from Hildesheim has come to London on behalf of Aktion Sühnezeichen to work with other employees of the German organisation to look after Jewish refugees living in old people’s homes in the British capital. Here she looks after 92-year-old Vera Schaufeld, who was saved from the concentration camp as an 11-year-old by one of the British Kindertransports.