This article on the horrors of the Battle of Stalingrad - based on previously unseen interviews with Russian combatants - includes some details also of the German army's 'murderous and brutal' activities on the eastern front and in its occupation of the Soviet Union. I will spare readers who choose not to click through the above link any quoted material carrying these graphic details. You can read them or not, as you prefer. But some of them prompt the following train of thought: shouldn't such horrors predispose us towards sympathy with those who take the wearing of the poppy, in remembrance, as an opportunity to sponsor a 'never again' viewpoint regarding war?
No, actually, they shouldn't. They should prompt us to realize that there are circumstances in which war is unavoidable, as it was for those under Nazi assault between 1939 and 1945, and circumstances in which it is justified even if avoidable.
