Throughout history war brings sufferings and devastation to humankind, but the 1^st world war brought more disaster than before because it was the war in which more lethal weapons were used and more brutal methods were adopted by the rival countries to make each other defenceless The death of soldiers in the trenches, scenes of dangling bodies on the barbed wire, and disfigured faces of the wounded, all these images brought horrified memories of the war. Moreover, the cost in human and material term was staggering. Total casualties were 22 million dead and 21 million wounded. The young and able-bodied men, who were the pride and source of inspiration, were killed in the war. and became the’ lost generation’ .It shattered European dream of progress and prosperity for coming generation and provoked intellectuals, thinkers, and artists to question the very concept of war. They exposed the lies of the official propaganda and the ulterior motives of the ruling classes and states that exploited the emotions of patriotism and nationalism to achieve them. The also questioned the claim of those countries that were fighting for a right cause. Then the question was” What about those soldiers and their sacrifices who died for a wrong cause?” These and other such question were discussed and debated throughout Europe. There was such bitterness and anger among the intellectuals that they thought it was their moral duty to launch a campaign to subvert official and traditional concept of war and counter the state propaganda by popularising the anti war movement.

Earnst Friedrick, a German anti war activist, established a war museum in 1924 in Germany to counter the state founded war museums that glorified war. His museum, on the contrary, showed the horror of the war by displaying pictures of the war fronts. These images horrified people who were away from the scenes of war. And not fully aware of the realities of war. On the other hand, when the statues of the war heroes were erected in public places to show their heroism and glorious death. One of the German artist Kaethe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, decided to carve a statue of his son whose death was a personal loss to the parents. In the statue the parents are leaning to the dead body of their son with gloomy faces that indicate their deep sorrow and pain. There is no message of glory for death but expression of a loss of their beloved child the personal loss that is not mentioned in official history. Jay Winter in his book’ Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning” writes about Kaethe’s memorial statue: “why she and her husband are on their knees before their son’s grave. They are there to beg his forgiveness, to ask him to accept their failure to find a better way, their failure to prevent the madness of war from cutting his life short.” Such was the impact of war and loss of her son that since then she painted paintings against war.

 Aftermath of the war, memoirs, novels, dramas, short stories, and poetry revealed a wealth of ideas about war that were contrary to the traditional and official views in which war was romanticized and idealized. Jay Winter collected the excerpts from the memoirs of the soldiers who experienced the war and narrated their experience with intense feelings. Henri Barbusse, a French soldier, who fought against the German, writes about his days in the trenches: “What a life. Mud, earth, rain. We are saturated, dyed, kneaded. One finds dirt everywhere, in pockets, in handkerchiefs, in cloths, in food. It is a haunting memory, a nightmare of earth and mud, and you have no idea of what a weird-looking fellow I am.”

An Austrian, Karl Kraus, wrote a book ‘The Last Days of Mankind’. The book condemns war and accuses the ruling classes who mislead their people and forced them to die for nothing. By addressing the dead soldiers he questions them: “ you who were sacrificed did not rise up against this scheme? You did not repent…you did not spit this glory to their faces? You did not break out, did not desert for a holy war, to liberate us at home from the archenemy who daily bombarded our brains with lies? ”He then implored the dead: “So, rise up and confront them as the personification of a hero’s death, so that the cowardice of the living, empowered to command, might finally come to know death’s features and look death in the eye for the rest of their lives. Wake their sleep with your death cry. Come back and ask them what they have done with you! What they did as you suffered through them, before you died through them! Armed bearing corpses…demand your precious head back from them…it is not your dying, but you have lived through that I want to avenge.”

 G.B.Shaw, the British playwright, vehemently opposed war and scathingly writes in  ‘Heartbreak House’: When men were practically dying for their country, it is not the time to show their lovers and wives and fathers and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the plunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambitions of conquerors, the electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriot, the lust and lied and rancours and blood thirsts that loved war because it opens their prison doors and sets them in the thrones of power and popularity.”

 However the intense sentiments and feelings against war could not stop the Second World war to occur with more brutalities and devastation including dropping of Atom bombs that wiped out two cities and their population. The Second World War did not create such strong reaction, as did the 1^st world war. The probable explanation is that the propaganda to fight against Fascism and Nazism provided the justification of war, especially, as the intellectuals of Germany, and Italy were suffered by their own governments, they regarded the war against their own countries a tool to liberate their people from the dictatorial regimes. The aggression and occupation of neighbouring countries by Germany and Japan and their brutalities subdued the impact of Allied bombardments and use of nuclear weapons against Japan after their defeat.

However, the tragedy is that in spite of terrible devastation that every war brings in the end, belief that war is the only solution of all problems is still there.