cover image War Against War

War Against War

Ernst Friedrich. Real Comet Press, $9.95 (263pp) ISBN 978-0-941104-18-0

First published in Germany in 1924 as a protest against war, this collection of gruesome photographs and disgusted, sarcastic captions (in many cases, juxtaposing official slogans and rhetoric with brutal reality) will shock and dismay the reader. The images here include the dead on battlefields, destroyed buildings, starving civilians, army executions, cemeteries and, perhaps most disturbing, shots of soldiers disfigured in battle. Kellner, a University of Texas professor, provides a biographical sketch of Friedrich, who, as a socialist, refused to serve in World War I, was placed in a mental institution and eventually went to jail. After the war, he became an anarchist and pacifist and founded the Anti-War Museum in Berlin, which was shut down by the Nazis in 1933. Friedrich, who survived the Nazi era, died in 1967. (June)