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A review by ethanhedman
The Thirty Years War by C. V. Wedgwood
5.0
C.V. Wedgwood was under thirty when she wrote and published this history in 1938. She brilliantly follows victories, defeats, treaties, marriages, and mutinies over 30 years while bringing the reader back down to Earth - forcing the reader to realize that the population of the German Empire shrank from roughly 21 million to 13 million in three decades, due not only to battle but, on the contrary, primarily due to famine and disease created as a direct result of the conflict. Wedgwood argues that the war was avoidable, unnecessary, and brutal, and does so in a profoundly convincing fashion.
"The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict... They (European leaders from 1618-1648) wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it. They did not learn then, and have not since, that war breeds only war."
"The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict... They (European leaders from 1618-1648) wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it. They did not learn then, and have not since, that war breeds only war."