"As you can no doubt imagine, we often say in despair, 'What's the point of the war? Why, oh, why can't people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction?'
"The question is understandable, but up to now no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out new houses for construction? Why are millions spent on the war each day, while not a penny is available for medical science, artists or the poor? Why do people have to starve while mountains of food are rotting away in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?
"I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago! There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start all over again!"
Anne Frank, (ed. Otto H. Frank and Miriam Pressler), The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1991), 277. Excerpt from entry for 3 May 1944.
