If the War Goes On - Reflections on War and Politics

Hermann Hesse

Farrar Straus & Giroux

1971

191 páginas

6h 22m

ISBN-13: 9780374509255

One of the most astonishing aspects of Hesse's career is the clear-sightedness and consistency of his political views, his passionate espousal of pacifism and internationalism from the start of World War I to the end of his life. The earliest essay in this book was written in September 1914 and was followed by a stream of letters, essays, and pamphlets that reached its high point with Zarathustra's Return (published anonymously in 1919, the year that also saw the publication of Demian), in which Hesse exhorted German youth to shake off the false gods of nationalism and militarism that had led their country into the abyss. Such views earned him the labels "traitor" and "viper" in Germany, but after World War II he was moved to reiterate his beliefs in another series of essays and letters.

Hesse arranged his anti-war writing for publication in one volume in 1946; an amplified edition appeared in 1949 and that text has been followed for this first...