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To End All Wars
A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
By: Adam Hochschild
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
4.4 out of 5 stars (463 ratings)

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To End All Wars

By: Adam Hochschild

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

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Editorial reviews

It is simply an auditory tour de force as Arthur Morey reads Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. Hochschild provides vivid and riveting descriptions of the world that lurched itself into World War I. Arthur Morey gives that world palpable energy as he voices empire proponents, socialist dissenters, xenophobic war supporters, radical suffragettes, and, most dramatically, soldiers on the various hellish battlefields.

Hochschild sets the scene for the cataclysm to come by beginning his work with Queen Victoria's elaborate Julbilee Celebration of her 60 years on the throne. It was 1897, England was at the height of imperial power, and the world was on the cusp of social change. There were growing movements for workers rights and women's suffrage, but also powerful, aristocratic colonialists whose assumptions included an accepted truth that non-whites could never rule themselves. Most damagingly, this point of view also never envisioned a world where the new weaponry of machine guns could or would ever be used against other Europeans. Such inventions were to be used against savages only.

Arthur Morey's reading of letters, speeches, and meeting notes gives Alfred Lord Milner, Sir (Gen.) John French, and Sir (Gen.) Douglas Haig an air of pomposity all three gentlemen exuded as they skillfully maneuvered from the Boer War to command posts in the French countryside and in English government. Milner was an unapologetic imperialist, while French and Haig were preposterous in their inability to acknowledge the horrendous, painful suffering on the part of the foot soldiers they so blithely put into harm's way. Morey skillfully voices the generals' preposterous sense that, no matter the amount of barbed wire, machine guns, flame throwers, or poison gas used by the Germans, a horse cavalry was still England's greatest strength.

Morey emphatically portrays the unique Pankhurst women, mother Emmeline, daughters Christabel and Sylvia, as they became more and more strident in their call for women's right to vote. Morey then deftly changes tone for Emmeline and Christabel when they became unabashed, jingoistic proponents of England's place in the war. Sylvia remained passionately committed to peace throughout the war and also to workers rights, to the needs of women and their children, and to England’s conscientious objectors. Morey gives extraordinary vocal force to the dynamo that was Emily Hobhouse, the archdeacon's daughter who could not be intimidated in her decades of work for peace and humanitarian treatment of women, children, and prisoners during wartime.

Interlaced throughout the book is the personal story of writer Rudyard Kipling, another clarion of unflagging support of the empire, whose tone became jaundiced and nativist once his own young son was killed. Morey has ample opportunity for verse, quoting not only Kipling but also the jaunty doggerel of Britain's Bantam Battalion, short in stature but incredibly courageous.

To End All Wars is a history lesson, to be sure. Through Arthur Morey the book comes alive with the emotion of secret lovers, the pathos of families whose young sons were killed, the explosive energy of workers who were finally feeling their power, and the horrific hell-on-earth that was trench warfare in World War I. Through Hochschild and Morey the listener is both mesmerized by the story and humbled by the sacrifices made by so many for ultimately, so little. Carole Chouinard

Publisher's summary

World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes.

Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain's most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other.

Today, hundreds of military cemeteries spread across the fields of northern France and Belgium contain the bodies of millions of men who died in the "war to end all wars". Can we ever avoid repeating history?

Unabridged Audiobook
Categories: History

World War I World Military Belgium Imperialism Inspiring France King War Sibling

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Critic reviews

"[Hochschild] has written an original, engrossing account that gives the war's opponents (largely English) prominent place." ( Publishers Weekly)

"The lives of the author’s many characters dovetail elegantly in this moving, accessible book...An ambitious narrative that presents a teeming worldview through intimate, human portraits." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"This is a book to make one feel deeply and painfully, and also to think hard." (Christopher Hitchens, New York Times Book Review)