The ongoing conflict in Syria has much in common with the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated the heart of Europe – particularly the German city of Magdeburg, the Aleppo of the time – from 1618 to 1648. Viewed from a distance, the war was a succession of conflicts that visited immeasurable suffering upon Europe’s population, ending, with the Peace of Westphalia, only when all of the parties involved had become utterly exhausted