"That's What Hell Must Look Like"

SPIEGEL cover story and first part of a series about aerial warfare: Adolf Hitler ordered Coventry to be “coventried”, and Winston Churchill retaliated by having Hamburg “hamburgised”. This summer will see the 60th anniversary of the Allied air raids on the German civilian population, which cost more than 600,000 lives including almost 80,000 children – a necessity, a crime or a necessary crime?

"Comparing – Instead of Moralising"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler about the debate over the bombardment:

“These issues were perhaps not a taboo, but they were associated with so many traumas that the people involved were not able to talk about the terrible events until very much later. … Hitler initiated the ‘total war’ by ordering the bombardment of the residential districts of Warsaw, Rotterdam and two dozen English cities – rather than the industrial plants. That backfired … Dresden was a pure massacre, no matter from what military or political angle you look at it. … According to the ‘Strategic Bomb Survey’, in which the USA took stock of events, ‘area bombing’ clearly failed to achieve its goal of terrorising the civilian population to a point of psychological collapse and perhaps joining an opposition movement against Hitler.”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, about the domestic and international policies of the red-green coalition.

“The Maker of Decals”

Music television: Simon Fuller, the man behind the television show “Germany Seeks the Superstar”, became rich and infamous as a wirepuller behind the scenes of the German pop industry. He created the Spice Girls and invented “Idol”, last year’s most profitable television show. Now he wants to revolutionise the entertainment industry. His admirers claim that Fuller has reinvented pop management, and put him on a par with Colonel Parker, the manager of Elvis Presley, or Brian Epstein, the secret force behind the Beatles. His critics call him an “exploiter”, describe him as “money-grubbing and ruthless” and accuse him of “ugly artificial pop”.

“The Fruits of Wrath”

Terrorism: Three months after the bomb attack, Bali resembles a ghost island. In previous years, tourists from Germany and half the world basked in the sunshine during the Christmas season; now the locals are struggling with the consequences of the attack, which has turned three million Balinese into victims. The terrorist attacks blasted the island off the global tourist map, casting it back into the times of seclusion when it was cut off from the rest of the world.

“The Monster in the Cupboard”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with actor Michael J. Fox about his life with Parkinson’s disease, his role as a presidential advisor and George W. Bush’s plans for war:

“That was the reason I wrote the book. I wanted to close the gap that existed between the star and the Parkinsonian. In the ten years that I have known about the disease I’ve been through all the stages: anger, denial, depression, becoming accustomed. I drank, I saw a therapist, I had brain surgery. I have described all of that. I wanted to show that it wasn’t that easy. I wanted to explain how I became a new person through the illness. … I’m a Democrat. I didn’t vote for Bush. I dislike a lot of things that are happening at the moment. But to be honest, I’m very confused. … I try to keep informed, I read a lot, watch a lot of TV. But I don’t get the impression that I’m really finding out anything. I think America’s centre has this sense of unease at the moment. No one really wants to go to war against Iraq. … So much is happening in stem cell research, in gene therapy. And once Parkinson is understood, we’ll be able to understand other diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer and multiple sclerosis. It can open up doors. And the nice thing is that many of the achievements that are now being reported were financed by our foundation.”

SPIEGEL interview with political scientist Charles Kupchan about the threat of a war with Iraq, the looming end of American supremacy and the rise of Europe to become the only counterweight to it:

“The United States has to convince the European public of the necessity for an armed encounter. If it doesn’t provide convincing evidence of this, it will march into the desert alone, or else only with the British. However, that would do irreparable damage to the relationship between America and Europe. … There’s no doubt that we’ll win the war, but not the subsequent peace as an occupying force. Bush is hopelessly overestimating what military power is capable of achieving. We cannot shape the political future of a country using bayonets. … I can only advise Europeans to stick to their current position. At the moment, the world has become unbalanced because of an excessively powerful USA. On the domestic front too, there is no counterweight, due to the predominance of the neo-conservatives in the government and Congress, and the ailing Democrats. Only the European Union can grow to become such a counterweight.”

“Disastrous Passage”

Semiconductor chips: Brandenburg’s local government is moving heaven and earth for a microchip factory to be built in Frankfurt (Oder), but the US company Intel could very simply wipe out their dream of such a source of jobs. According to the plans of its operator, Communicant Semiconductor Technologies AG, the high-tech factory is to manufacture super-modern chips. The principal investors into the start-up company are the emirate of Dubai, the American semiconductor giant Intel and the state of Brandenburg itself. But the chances of semiconductor chips ever being produced on the Oder River are in fact extremely remote. The party that stands to profit most from the deal is the US company Intel. According to high-tech experts, the contract casts severe doubts on the allegedly serious interest of the Americans in the factory in Germany. These awkward conclusions all follow from the most important part of the contract, a 39-page “Intel Communicant R&D and Technology License Agreement”.

“The Hunt for Sükrüya”

Foreigners: More and more often, police officers are having to protect young women belonging to the religious sect of the Yazidi from their own relatives – and to help them to escape. For if necessary, the clans are prepared to impose their archaic matrimonial rules by force. The tenacity with which the Yazidi persecute their renegade girls stands in strange contradiction to the contents of their religion, which is regarded as being extremely peaceable. There is no proselytization, as in Islam or Christianity – you can only be a Yazidi by birth. Religious fanatics are rare. There are no official scriptures since the religion is mainly handed down orally. Parents therefore keep a constant eye on their children, full of anxiety that they could slip away from them. The more the young generation tries to adapt to the German way of life, the more vehement the older generation’s countermeasures.

“Mietek’s Trip to a Little Happiness”

Poland: Every Friday, buses bring cleaning women, babysitters, construction workers and gardeners from the eastern Polish town of Siemiatycze to Brussels to work there illicitly. While Poland is preparing to join the European Union officially, it has long become a member through the back door. Over 20 years ago, when Poland was being enveloped by the long winter of martial law, Solidarity activists sought asylum in liberal Belgium. More and more relatives and friends followed them, and nowadays some 5000 Poles commute between Siemiatycze and Brussels alone. There are few jobs in the little town with its 15,600 inhabitants which lies some 30 kilometres from the Belorussian border. Those who have a job in Brussels never relinquish it again. In anything, a job is lent, hired out or sold; and even then, only to reliable friends or relations. The little happiness in Eastern Europe depends on these quiet and illicit foreign earnings.

“Candles for the Ancestors”

Diplomacy: In the quarrel between Tokyo and Moscow over the Kuril Islands, the two sides are becoming entrenched. Now that the Russian inhabitants have achieved a certain degree of affluence, they no longer want to leave. More than a dozen years after the end of the Cold War, the argument over the Kurils is still blocking the signing of a peace treaty between the dissimilar neighbours in the Far East. The much longed-for return of the islands to Japanese sovereignty seems more remote than ever.

“A Game without a Referee”

Movies: The film directors of the Danish “Dogma” brotherhood have declared the end of their ascetic art mission. But their “chastity rules” are still proving fruitful: the last Dogma film from Denmark is called “Open Hearts”. Lars von Trier and his colleague Thomas Vinterberg had drawn up ten commandments, dictating how they felt a feature film ought to be made. It should have no scenery, no costumes, no special effects from a bag of tricks, and no film music. “Dogma 95” was actually intended as a set of principles, not as an appeal to start-up film-makers to stop feeling ashamed of their lack of means, and to demonstratively admit to it as an aesthetic quality. But after they had set two brilliant examples, the appeal met with acclaim and attracted followers all over the world, particularly among debutants. The promise it holds for the latter is: poverty is a virtue! They are showing off to the best advantage the benefits in terms of creative freedom that can be achieved by dogmatically abstaining from intimidating, paralysing photographic machinery. Dogma films are actors’ films; the intensity, immediacy, vividness of the actors is their lifeblood. And although the office may have closed up the shop, people are continuing to make films, and to sin, in the spirit of “Dogma 95”.

“Afraid of Little Brothers”

SPIEGEL interview with sci-fi author Neal Stephenson about the limits of predictability and eavesdropping in Internet:

“In 'Snow Crash', I saw the Internet as one big temple of business, very commercialized and very simple. Luckily, it turned out differently and the Net has become much more decentralized and variegated. … Many of the representatives of high-tech culture are still afraid of an eavesdropping central power. However, the real threat is posed not by one Big Brother, but by lots of Little Brothers: your neighbour, your boss, or the software company itself… Computers really aren’t for kids.”

“Carpet in the Wing”

Cars: The first Rolls Royce to be designed by BMW is being launched onto the market. The Bavarians have succeeded in creating a novelty in automobile design: the first high-tech veteran car.

“Searching for Clues in a Perpetrator's Mind”

Psychiatry: Imaging techniques are revealing conspicuous patterns in the brains of sex offenders and murderers. Is there a biological basis for evil?

“The Saxon Dialect Is Like Singing”

SPIEGEL interview with Russian author Vladimir Kaminer about his play “Marina”:

“The individual episodes which 'Marina' is made up of are miniature forms of behavioural research. They are about the wavering between hope and disappointment, which is not only experienced by Russians in Berlin, but also by the people in East Germany. It's about a world that is changing very rapidly. … I am now working on my new prose project, a German 'Jungle Book'. … In it I want to describe how different the various small German towns are, and show how a new world opens up every twenty kilometres. … Nowhere else will you find as many different flowers blossoming as in the German language. … There is no such thing as clear language. Only a right way of using a language.”