I hope I'm not breaking any rules here as I don't really have a particular question to ask. Rather, I've been studying the rhetoric of the First World War and, between everything from nationalist propaganda and photos of cheering crowds sending soldiers off to the war, the general idea I have of WWI seems to be one of unanimous support.
I would like to do some research into the rhetoric of anti-war groups before and during WWI, with the intention of writing a paper on the subject. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some resources to read into. I have a pretty wide scope for this project and all suggestions are welcome, including academic essays, literature and poetry, music, personal accounts and whatever else might help me get a sense of how and why people opposed the war.
I've read the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, which is poignantly anti-war, and concerns itself with WWI (however it was written in 1938, and so has a retrospective anti-war message regarding WWI). I've also been reading The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, which covers individual accounts of British soldiers during the war.
Thanks in advance.
For an excellent and thorough examination, I would recommend "To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion" by Adam Hochschild. It is a fascinating read and a study of contrasts. Two families which he examines in depth are the Pankhursts and French families. The Pankhursts were on the forefront of the women's suffrage movement. The issue of World War I split them, permanently. Also Sir John French was the British Commander-in-Chief for the first two years of the war, yet his sister, Charlotte Despard, was bitterly critical of the war and led the opposition.
You would also do well to look into some of the anti-war poets, like Sigfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The poems themselves are very powerful, but you might be interested in the movie made about them. It's called "Behind the Lines" and is available on Netflix instant if you're in the US. If you're UK, the flick is called "Regeneration" and I dunno about Netflix.
There is also the classic anti-war novel, "All Quiet on the Western Front" written from a Geman POV.
The BBC has just been doing a series of podcasts on the anniversary of World War 1 - find them here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ww1
I would particularly recommend the ones on the 'Cultural Front', which detail the ways in which very quickly the literary figures of the various nations lined up behind their respective nations, particularly in Britain. One outstanding anti-war figure was the playwright George Bernard Shaw whose pacifism based on socialism saw him ostracised in the British intellectual community and in wider society (such as having booksellers refusing to sell his books). The Bloomsbury Group (including Virginia Woolf) were notably anti-war.
It also details some of the interesting transitions that happened during the war. There's an interesting snippet from Wilfred Owen saying the war will 'effect a little useful weeding' and didn't become so noticeably anti-war until he'd experienced the trenches and returned with shell shock.
The 'Great War of Words', episodes looking at the assignation of guilt during and after is also useful (check the 'see all episodes' tab). In particularly the reaction to the Versailles Treaty and John Maynard Keynes attack on it, as certain Western opinion, especially in the US and the UK began to turn towards it being too harsh - a view which the episodes suggest was manufactured by selective histories. I don't know if you're interested in the post-war history but there's a lot in there on the retrospective shift towards anti-war feeling in the 1920s such as 'Goodbye To All That' by Robert Graves.
For particular documents and groups mentioned in the podcasts:
'The Appeal of 93 Intellectuals' - the German intellectuals' justification of Germany's role in the war.
Wellington House - the home of the British War Propaganda Bureau and its secret sponsorship of authors and some of its artistic discontents (the artist and pacifist Charles Nevinson for example)
George Bernard Shaw and his 'Common Sense About the War'
A huge number of documents can be found at Project Gutenberg in the form of the New York Time's 'Current Histories', collections of various contemporary documents. See the first one here - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13635/13635-h/13635-h.htm
Wwi was a high time of Anarchism in America. People like Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman have lots of public anti-war speeches around.