Henri Barbusse's War

The Great War unleashed its madness on the European continent in 1914, opening the door to the most violent century in mankind's dark history.

One of those enraged by the audacity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's opening salvos of aggression was the Frenchman, Henri Barbusse (1874-1935). Like untold multitudes of his countrymen, Barbusse was seized by a fervent nationalism at the onset of the war. With the slaughter unfolding around him, it did not take Barbusse long to realize the errors in his thinking. Having been fortunate enough to survive the trench warfare and mass bombings (15 million would not be as lucky), and having witnessed the inhumanity close-up, Barbusse set about writing Under Fire, published in 1916.

The first anti-war novel to come out of the Great War, the book created bitter controversy in France, even as the war raged on and the U.S. debated whether to join the French-British alliance in 1917.



Here is a fragment of my essay on Barbusse and Under Fire from Alt-Everything.


Among the best anti-war novels, Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire (1916), is a story of anger and newly discovered ideals. It has elements of comedy and tenderness that transcend the vicious nature of hatred and war by demonstrating how men and women can rise above their most barbaric tendencies and glimpse anew their fundamental humanity.

Barbusse had published poems and a novel before he volunteered to fight with his countrymen in the Great War, in 1914 France. The experience turned him into a pacifist, and before the war was over he had written Under Fire, the first anti-war novel to come out of World War I.

An episodic story, the novel slogs along like its main characters, the soldiers who have not bargained for the misery that consumes them in France’s muddy, corpse-strewn fields of fire, or in the boredom of small French villages that house the fighters as they are pulled inexorably into the catastrophe of the war.

The historian Jay Winter, in his introduction to the Penguin edition of the novel, translated by Robin Buss, argues Barbusse’s “moral standing” as one who had seen and participated in the fighting won over those disposed to deny the war’s waste. Truth trumped idealized notions of a higher heroism and nobility of cause, and the novel gained popularity, winning France’s highest literary honor, the Prix Goncourt.

Debate, mainly among academics, does show that not everybody thought the award deserved. The book’s critics have called its dialogue unrealistic and skewered certain passages they insist did not happen, or could not have happened. These arguments will remain unresolved and unaddressed here. Every truth or indiscretion of a novel that is nearly a hundred years-old cannot be ascertained. Nor does it matter for the purpose of arguing that anger and an enlightened viewpoint, as well as comedy and pathos, can be taken from the book. It has then elements of truth that are understood to be somewhat real, if not universally accepted.

To tell the truth, one must shed the idealized rationalization of war by its purveyors and profiteers. This is the core of Barbusse’s pacifism. As it unfolded for Barbusse, the war became increasingly transparent as he began to see through the illusions he kept of himself sharing the supposed noble cause of French Nationalism. At the same time, he grew angry with what he suddenly realized was a huge mistake by everyone responsible for the outbreak of the war.


TS