Slaughterhouse-Five

I read it again.

The first time I read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, I had just come from my own space-time journey through the Cascade mountains and emerged on the other side with a new appreciation of time, which is what struck me most about the book. Seeing the universe in four dimensions, stars appearing as luminous spaghetti in space time, etc.

This time however, I was reading an anti-war book, the Horrors of War being the most prominent thing many people think of when they think of War. Vonnegut and his main character Billy Pilgrim being no exceptions.

I believe the author isn't necessarily against stopping a madman bent on killing millions and taking over the world (he doesn't say one way or the other). But I do think he is adamantly against how military operations in modern wars are often carried out, which is a different question entirely from "Should we go to war to stop injustice?" He is particularly horrified by the wiping out of an entire civilian town overnight by fire-bombing, which he compares to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by God Almighty. I'm horrified at what happened in Dresden too. It seems an unjust way of carrying out military operations, and even the contemporaries of the commander who ordered it seriously questioned its legitimacy (which implies that there may be legitimate and just military operations).

In any case, I didn't even know about the fire-bombing of Dresden until I read Vonnegut's book the first time. I didn't know that it was perhaps the single largest military massacre in all of history, probably killing more people than the atomic bomb did in Hiroshima, and using just conventional weapons (estimates of the death toll range from 30,000 to 135,000). But I don't think it's analogous to Sodom and Gomorrah. The Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force were not acting on orders from God to kill everyone in Dresden. They were under human orders from human commanders, fallen, frail, and fallible.

Vonnegut claims to be, like Lot's wife, looking back at the terrible destruction. When Lot's wife did it, it was against God's command, and she became a pillar of salt. Vonnegut claims also to be a pillar of salt doing what is forbidden. But in this case, I don't think the Lord has forbidden him to look back. What happened in Dresden should perhaps never happen again. And in order to understand that and never repeat it, one must look back.