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Rather than glorifying the romance of combat, antiwar works demythologize war by illustrating the debilitating effects of warfare on the individual combatant, typically a young man whose wartime experience leaves him psychologically or physically shattered. Antiwar literature aims at debunking popular myths about war: The soldier as romantic hero, war as a proving ground for manhood, and death in combat as the patriotic ideal. Antiwar literature subverts these illusions about war through realistic, frequently first-person portrayals of the horrors of combat and its destructive aftermath. Although some writers have a discernible political perspective, most antiwar texts share a broader concern for exposing the horror and brutality of all war. Thus, there is a timeless, universal quality to antiwar literature that aims to provoke a rejection of, rather than a fascination for, war and warfare.

In contrast to most of the major wars that have occurred in the twentieth century, the Korean War resists attempts to render it in literature. Most of the literature that exists about the Korean War was written long after the war was over. Some of the best literature about the Korean conflict has been written by American soldiers who were introduced to the country by tours of duty as peacekeepers. These soldiers saw Korea after the fighting ceased. The Korean War is the subject of a crop of Hollywood films, but writers have been largely silent.

On June, 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Nationalist fervor had been brewing in Europe, and Serbia was then under the dominion of the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination was the spark; the accumulated tinder was composed of imperial and economic rivalries among major European powers. These rivalries had produced an arms race and a tangle of military and economic alliances.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, was appointed chancellor of Germany. He immediately began to prepare for war, rearming the country, engaging in aggressive foreign policy, and establishing dictatorial powers for himself. German rearmament and aggression were in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany had signed at the end of World War I, and which the Nazi Party repudiated. Even after Hitler annexed Austria and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, attempts were made by other European powers to placate him. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, however, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The war of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) against the Allied powers (Great Britain and its allies, France, China, Denmark, Greece, Norway, and Yugoslavia) had begun.

The Vietnam War, the longest war in American history, left a permanent scar on the American psyche. American advisors, following the general United States foreign policy after World War II of the containment of communism, began in 1950 to aid French forces seeking to maintain their colonial presence in Vietnam. Vietnamese Communists sought to oust the French. In 1954, the French lost on the battlefield. Negotiations in Paris resulted in the South’s being ceded to colonial forces and the North’s being ceded to the Vietminh. Where the French no longer wished to tread, the Americans stepped in, supporting the government of the South as the French left in 1954. American military and civilian advisors came to Vietnam in increasing numbers. In 1965, after years of mounting conflict, regular United States Army forces began an open, direct, and undeclared war against Communist North Vietnamese forces. United States participation in the controversial war continued until 1973, when a peace treaty was signed in Paris. Without U.S. military support, the government of the South did not last long. The North gained victory over the South in April, 1975, resulting in massive, panic-stricken evacuations of remaining U.S. personnel and of Vietnamese members and supporters of the Southern government. In the eyes of many, the United States lost a war for the first time in Vietnam.

In 1931, thousands of Spaniards danced in the streets celebrating the abdication of the king, Alfonso XIII, and the establishment of a republic. This euphoria was short-lived. The new government, besieged on all sides by bitter partisanship and impossible demands, began to flounder as unrest grew into violence in the streets. The assassination of the Monarchist leader José Calvo Sotelo provided the spark that would lead to three years of brutal civil war, culminating in the victory of the Nationalist forces under the command of General Francisco Franco. The war was a foreshadowing of what was to come in Europe and around the world. The Soviet Union on the Loyalist side, and the Axis powers on the Nationalist side, used Spain as a training ground for men and weapons.