By Ali Kirca
“Do you think that World War II was the last world war? Since May 9, 1945, when the war officially ended, the world has experienced perhaps dozens of wars in which hundreds of thousands of people died. However, none of these wars were great and huge enough to be called a world war.
Or were they? However, we spent our childhood under the shadow of the nightmare of ‘World War III.’ Everybody told us that this war could break out and bombs could land on us anytime. Since primary school, teachers taught us how to protect ourselves from a possible nuclear attack during civil defense lessons. In addition, this attack would be from the north, because we were surrounded by nuclear missiles. These fears weren’t limited to lessons at school. As we grew up, the dimension of these threats and dangers increased, or they were exaggerated. Certain crises which broke out from time to time scared us. For example, we thought the Cuban missile crisis between the US and Soviets Union interested us directly, or some people made us think so. This wasn’t enough: seasoned world statesmen warned us that communism would come this winter, or if not, next winter and of course with its missiles. Then one day the film ‘The Day After’ showed us the view of the disaster we would experience.
Since time later, children who learned nuclear attack defense at school became journalists and watched summits in Reykjavik, Washington and London held by Gorbachev and Reagan concerning eliminating nuclear missiles, and learned that the fears of a World War III weren’t baseless. However, these journalists also learned that World War III was actually a groundless suspicion. On the scale of the nuclear terror balance, actually the danger of war was zero and some people grew rich and the cost of this was world hunger and poverty and the collapse of one world bloc. This was the story and nobody taught us this fact during the lessons for protecting ourselves against nuclear attacks.
Maybe nobody will apologize for this. Nobody will do what German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder did for World War II for the nightmare of a World War III. Nobody will apologize like Schroeder in the name of the German people for the things done against the Russian people. Once, journalist Cetin Altan said, ‘Actually toothaches don’t happen on four feet. For example, lions and tigers don’t get toothaches. We, humans, stood up. Then the energy went to our brains and the consciousness of death began.’ Do you think this irrelevant? Haven’t you ever had a toothache?”