War images by Colleen Corradi Brannigan

Colleen Corradi depicts WAR

War in the Gulf
90x98 cms
1994

Over the past few years I have been reading a series of books on WWII focusing on people's stories rather than on military operations. This extensive reading became part of my inspiration. It is crucial to remind everyone of the dangers of war: death, loss, suffering, starvation, humiliation and deprivation are only a few of the many consequences innocent people have go through. T he Great War was supposed to be the 'war to end all wars'. But an estimated ten million lives were lost. WWII should have been set as a devastating example which should never be waged again, and yet politicians and leaders don't seem to conserve what has been gained with suffering. There are lessons to be learnt from the experiences of other countries which have suffered prolonged onslaughts, attacks and acts of terrorism. But why don't we learn?
Man has always sought for power, and empowerment implies domination. O nly through personal suffering does man have a chance to regenerate. Since the beginning of mankind man has always fought for survival; when survival became power, man began to widen his horizons to the detriment of the weak. Money and personal interest seem to be what draws people towards war and destruction. But only when everything is lost do they realise the value of life. It is through loss that people regenerate and gain wisdom which, unfortunately, is never appropriately passed on to the young.

Destructive decision
1998
200 x 140 cms

The pain, the brutality, the excruciating agony of solidiers and civilians caught in the fury of battle

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it... always."
Mahatma Gandhi

"I cittadini del mondo non riescono neppure più a piangere le tragedie del terrore: a una bomba segue un'autobomba, a ogni morto una vendetta che genera altri morti e altre vendette. Nomi diversi – guerra, terrorismo, violenza – si traducono poi, tutti, in corpi umani fatti a pezzi e in pezzi di umanità perduti per sempre."
Anon

The bombing of Guernica
(130x200 cms)
1998

Here is the terror of evil times, expressed through human suffering and dread. One of the most emotive events of the Spanish Civil War, and the inspiration for one of Pablo Picasso's best-known paintings, the destruction of Guernica was the first occasion in which a town was wiped out by aerial bombardment.

Most people today do not even know that the ancient Basque village Guernica exits, let alone that during the Spanish Civil War when Franco's army was often assisted by Germany, the Nazi General Goering's policy was to use the Spanish Civil War as an arena for trying out the airmen and planes of his new Luftwaffe.

In 1937 the Condor Legion which were the best trained and most experienced airmen of the Luftwaffe, failed to score a single hit on the bridge, the presumed target. The dubious intent of the mission is evident; it was wanton, man-made holocaust: the ancient Basque village suffered the loss of a third of its citizens who were senselessly slaughtered or wounded in little more than three hours. From 4:30 to 7:45 in the evening the squadron poured an uncontested, continuous rain of bombs and gun fire on Guernica. Although normal procedure would have been to observe the fall of the bombs and record the exact location of their explosion, there are no reports of accuracy for this mission. Villagers who were not immediately killed fled to the fields to take refuge, only to be ravaged by plunging machine gun fighters.

The world was stunned and sickened when Hitler's Condor Legion bombed the defenceless Spanish village of Guernica, yet the world did nothing to punish the aggressors. On the contrary, the barbarians were 'rewarded' with Austria and the Sudetenland. That infamous day in Euskadi, the Basque Country, legitimised the murder of non-combatants of all sexes and all ages. As someone remarked, "Evil thrives when good men stay silent"

Note: On May 12, 1998, the New York Times reported that, after sixty years, the German Parliament formally apologized to the citizens of Guernica for the role the Condor Legion played in bombing the town but no formal apology to the city has ever been offered by the Spanish government for whatever role it may have played in the bombing.

The forgotten holocaust: Nanking

On December 13, 1937, Nanking, the capital city of Nationalist China fell to the Japanese.
The City was sacked and in just a few weeks it was ravaged by Japanese conquering armies who declared that all Chinese women were prostitutes and fair targets for rape. Over 300,000 Chinese were brutally murdered, buried alive, raped, and tortured - a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Read more

The world watched, sighed and did nothing.

Concentration Camps

During World War II concentration camps were established by the Nazi regime beginning with Dachau in 1933, to imprison "enemies of the state."
They served as prisons, forced labor camps, or extermination centers, particularly the death factories of Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka, as well as in the killing sections in Auschwitz and Majdanek (also called Lublin). Prisoners included the political opposition, dissenting clergy, undesirable ethnic groups, such as Jews and Gypsies, homosexuals, and numerous others classified simply as "antisocials" or "useless mouths."

Auschwitz - Heap
30x40 cms
1999

This picture is dedicated to all those people who were deported to concentration camps and who were forced to work and live in inhuman conditions.

Auschwitz was more than a camp; in fact it was a vast complex consisting of more than 40 satellite camps: it was a prison camp, a labor camp, an industrial center and a death camp. The complex included the I.G. Farben Buna rubber plant, the Monowitz camp where Primo Levi was held, the main Auschwitz camp (Auschwitz I) and the Birkenau (Auschwitz II) extermination camp, where the majority of mass murders by poison gas took place.

"Living conditions" is a poor way to describe the way prisoners were forced to live in concentration camps. The German policy was "death by work". Stripped of their individuality, prisoners were subject to unbearable conditions that eventually led to their death. Hunger and starvation rations, sadism, housing facilities, inadequate clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings, freezing, all played a major role in the organic deterioration that prisoners had to experience. This led to the so-called "Muzulman" state, extreme physical exhaustion that ended in death.

Many inmates found that the day of liberation, the day that loomed so large in hopes and dreams, brought a curious emptiness of its own. As Henry Wermeuth, an Auschwitz survivor, described liberation day, "I was lying wrapped in my blanket in the Block. Someone else was looking out the window, and I heard him say in Yiddish, 'An American soldier.' I didn't get up. I didn't move. I lay there. The feeling cannot be described. You would have to make up a new word. 'I've done it. I've made it.' But then I thought: who has survived? I, alone. My father had just died. My sister and my mother were gone. I covered my head and wept. That was the moment of my liberation."

Miguel Montesinos describes the liberation of Dachau: "All they wanted to do was get out and go home. And a lot of them did get out... The gates were wide open then, and a lot of them were confused. They didn't know what to do. Some of them couldn't walk and they were looking for direction, but there was no direction we could give them at all."

Death Heap
60x100 cms
1998

Stripped of the last scraps of their dignity, prisoners are dying. Their camp has been liberated, they are free. More dead than alive, these prisoners don't know where to go or what to do. Horrified and disgusted by the brutal conditions, the liberators found it difficult to understand all those people who pushed, screamed, clawed for food, smelled bad. It was just like walking in a cemetary except for the fact that people were still alive.
Life was stolen, and we allowed this to happen.

Death Heap
60x100 cms
1998

Masses of twisted and entangled bodies stripped of their dignity were thrown into a piles left to rot. Even those who were buried were given the minimal respect. The malnutrition, the total lack of hygiene and medical care, and the brutality of the SS guards were the main causes of the death of thousands of prisoners.

Tragedies in countries like Cambodia , Yugoslavia and Rwanda perhaps prove that the will to genocide is stronger than the sobering lessons of history. The exponential growth of communications media, particularly the Internet, ensure that the world will never again be blind to mass murder and genocide. The world's response to future incidents of mass murder and genocide still remains difficult to predict. People can easily adjust to a tragedy that does not involve them directly or the people they love. Although we can be greatly moved by events, they are immediate eruptions to horrible situations. It doesn't take long to forget, perhaps the very same evening.

May the suffering of all genocide victims impact the hearts and minds of people, making them aware of the consequences of hatred, indifference and apathy which continues to manifest itself today.

Pearl Harbour

It was early morning, December 7,1941. As the sun was just beginning to rise in Oahu, Hawaii, a fleet of Japanese naval air forces were taking off from their respective aircraft carriers in various locations in the Pacific Ocean. Just as many of the islanders were waking up for breakfast, it happened.

Pearl Harbour - 1998

The Japanese air fleet had arrived with a vengeance. No one was prepared for what was occurring. Pearl Harbor, the United States' center for military action in the Pacific Ocean, was almost completely destroyed. Anger toward the Japanese spread quickly throughout the entire country, and this anger led to the United States' entry into World War II.

Was Pearl Harbour a conspiracy? It seems that everything that the Japanese were planning to do was known to the United States. So why all this sacrifice?
The public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe, and President Roosevelt had promised not to enter war UNLESS attacked. But Roosevelt needed the attack to declare war to Hitler. He needed public outrage and that required big sacrifice. In order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to attack so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors.

Listen to Roosevelt announcing the attack to the Senate

The Japanese air raids which struck the military installations at Pealr Harbour were devastating: 18 warships were sunk or seriously damaged; 347 planes destroyed or disabled; Hickam, Wheeler, Ford Island, Kaneohe and Ewa in flames. The human loss was much heavier: 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded.
All of the ships were salvaged except for the USS Ariziona on which 1,177 men found their death .

Inferno aboard the USS Arizona
50x50 cms
1998

A Conflict of Egos:
The battle of Stalingrad

The Battle for Stalingrad was one of the most memorable events of the World War II.
Over 700,000 soldiers and civilians were killed in bitter hand-to-hand fighting at Stalingrad, while others perished of cold, deprived of proper clothing to withstand sub-zero temperatures, of hunger due to the inadequacy of supplies, and of disease.
"Soldiers went mad with hunger, cold and despair. Many soldiers did not flinch from cannibalism to roast liver and kidneys they slashed out of their dead comrades' bodies after they ate all cats and dogs in the area," said Professor Gerhard Daengler, 87, World War II veteran , "Nazi war with the Soviet Union was a criminal warfare since the day it broke out".
Paulus (the Sixth Army commander) pleaded with Hitler to allow them to attempt a fighting withdrawal but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The Fuhrer replied, 'Capitulation is impossible. The Sixth Army will do its historic duty at Stalingrad until the last man ...' .

Stalin insisted on holding the city named after him and Hitler wanted to seize it for its symbolism and propaganda value.

Through Siberia
1999
24x30 cms

Capitulation is impossible...
1999
24x30 cms