To End All Wars: A Story of Protest and Patriotism in the First World War [Unabridged] [Paperback]

Spellbinding! A truly great read and very informative. It gives an incredible perspective on the impact of the First World War and the shaping of our current society.

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 was greeted in Great Britain with a massive show of unity. Men of fighting age rushed to enlist, while organizations and factions set aside their differences in order to face their new common enemy. Yet such support was not universal. As widespread as the demonstration of enthusiasm for the war was, a committed handful stood in stubborn defiance against the conflict. Adam Hochschild's book details their often lonely struggle against the backdrop of the war they so passionately opposed. In it, he attempts to provide an understanding of the choices they made, showing why they refused to subordinate their conscience to the war effort and the prices they paid for their stance.

The people Hochschild focuses on are a select group, men and women who are bound by family and personal ties to the British elite. He starts by charting the origin of the opposition of some of them to war by detailing their opposition to an earlier conflict, the Boer War. The fighting there led people such as Charlotte Despard, Emily Hobhouse, and the Pankhursts to campaign against the British war effort. For them, opposing the war was just one of many causes they undertook, as the activists Hochschild highlights were often at the forefront of radical reform in Edwardian Britain. Yet the outbreak of the war against Germany created deep divisions among their ranks, even to the point of tearing apart families such as the Pankhursts. Their stand provoked considerable public derision, and most of them were subjected to surveillance and obstruction by the authorities. Yet Hochschild sees their fight as all the more noble for its futility, ultimately granting them the larger moral victory despite the hopelessness of their cause.

All of this Hochschild describes in an engrossing narrative that conveys well the drama and tragedy of his subject. He is especially good at detailing the relationships between his characters, such as that between Despard and her brother John French, the first commander of the British Expeditionary Force. If there is a villain in his account it is Douglas Haig, whose obstinacy Hochschild savages for fueling the bloodshed. Yet for all of its strengths Hochschild's book suffers from a lack of focus. Often his subjects disappear for pages as he describes the more familiar tale of the overall course of the war; while this can illustrate what excited the passions of its opponents, the considerable amount of space the author devotes to it distracts more often than it enhances his story. While the strengths of Hochschild's narrative outweigh this deficiency, it does limit his achievement with this book, which offers an interesting look at an aspect of the First World War often ignored by other chroniclers.

I was initially rather annoyed by this book. Like so many I am well read on World War One and have visited the Western battlefields. What that means is I know lots of "facts." I am a better general than Douglas Haig or Erich Ludendorff, I would not have embarked on Gallipoli, won the Somme in 1916 and held the gains at Cambrai. I would have outsmarted the Germans diplomatically and brought the French to heel. From my armchair 98 years on I'd have been wonderful. But we are spectators; at times voyeurs finding entertainment in the immense suffering.

I bought this thinking it was a 400-page analysis of those that stepped forward to oppose the War in Britain. It states on the dust cover "Hochschild concentrates on the men and women who, often at great personal cost, protested against the war, among them philosophers, feminists, trades unionists, aristocrats, future members of Parliament..." I assumed it would be a narrow micro history of dissent.

Rather it is a general - sweeping - social history of the war. Here is comfortable (for some) Edwardian society enthusiastically charging to Armageddon. It is reportage, vignettes of people driven by a chronological format. Hochschild takes personalities and weaves history around them - from the great like Alfred Lord Milner to the modest such as Alice Wheeldon. He introduces real characters as a novelist would. And it is as much about those that eagerly supported the conflict (for example Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan) than opposed it. Hochschild has opinions, he is not a revisionist and does not hold back in the identification of the butchers. He shows the sinister application of state power to sell the war while marginalising - or destroying - legitimate opposition.

Perhaps self indulgent Adam Hochschild seems to have gone off and written what interests him rather than fit a format dictated by a commissioning editor. This style is akin to impressionist painting, pleasing but ill defined. What he has achieved is to allow the reader to make an emotional connection to 1914-18 usual for a history book (but all too common in the relentless pulp fiction that uses and abuses the War). For those looking for a general social introduction to the Great War this is a worthwhile book. If you are tired of reading about artillery efficiency, logistics, cavalry strategy and infantry tactics, the emergence of air power etc etc give it a try.