A French revolutionary declared in 1791: “Because I want peace, I ask for war.” Many reasons for war in human history are shaped by this paradox: war for the sake of peace. Radical ideas, new political orders or longing for traditional stability - they have all often only been able to assert themselves by force and at the same time have claimed the ethically pure sounding idea of ​​peace. This is a paradox, but not the only thing that preoccupies Margaret MacMillan. Because wars, she says, made mankind what it is today - for better or for worse we live in a world shaped by war.

When a renowned historian, whose masterpiece was a work on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, presents a book of universal history on the subject of war, it will be exciting.

The Canadian MacMillan does not tell this time about the collapse of a certain peace or the attempt to establish a new order after a destructive, bloody war.

Rather, it deals astonishingly with the phenomenon of war, with illuminating observations and interpretations being found for every epoch of world history and every region of the world.

Amazingly brutal movies, stories and games

MacMillan begins her story on a thawed ice field in the Central European mountains. Hikers found a body there. The man had some food with him, and we still do not know what he died of on this pass. But there was blood on his knife, and an arrowhead was also found in the body of "Ötzi" (as the man was called after the place where it was found in the Ötztal Alps). Accordingly, around 3300 BC he was involved as a perpetrator and victim in violence and perhaps also in military activities.

War was and is everywhere.

Organized violence can be traced back to the earliest civilizations, even if most questions about this time remain unanswered because of the lack of relevant sources.

Even non-European societies have by no means been as peace-loving towards their neighbors as some romantic views of them asserted.

The Yanomami in the Brazilian rainforest, for example, live harmoniously with one another, but not in relation to other villages.

The same can be assumed for the Inuit, as their oral stories tell of past wars full of violence.

In the greatest historical vividness

For more than seventy years, Europe has experienced an unusually long period of far-reaching peace. But here, too, the fascination for violence persists. It is reflected in films, stories and games that are astonishingly brutal and that is precisely why they are very well received. At the same time, according to MacMillan, the absence of war has done something to societies and people: the understanding of this violent phenomenon has been lost, says MacMillan, and that is worrying. Too little research is done about war, there is too little thought, if one deals with it. Yet, in her impressive words, war is “probably the best organized of all human activities, and it in turn promoted the organization of society”.