War Is Hell: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[All Quiet on the Western Front]]'': The enemy that a soldier kills and maims are not faceless targets but people very much like himself.
* Wilfred Owen's poems. The most famous example is probably ''Dulce et Decorum Est''.
* ''My Brother Sam is Dead'' by James Lincoln Collier revels in this. Perhaps it is to much for a Newberry, except for the fact that the people who read it are going to have the authority of citizenship (and thus of war and peace to some degree) in a few years. In any case, it gives the portrayal of [[The American Revolution]] as something involving putting family members on opposite sides. As well as showing a sordid mess of [[Feuding Families|feuds,]] [[Cycle of Revenge|cycles of revenge,]] and [[Kick the Dog|bullying of civilians]], by soldiers. The hero's brother, who is enrolled with the Continental Army is executed on false charges. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Hence the books title.]] In general the book gives the impression that whether or not [[The American Revolution]] was a glorious cause or a gift of liberty or whatever, it was certainly a nasty war.
* ''[[The Forever War]]'': We're fighting them because they are fighting us because we are fighting them because ... a war without any sensible objective that no-one can stop. Soldiers that return home find it utterly alien: who are they fighting for?
* ''[[Slaughterhouse-Five]]'' by Kurt Vonnegut: the [[World War II|WWII]] firebombing of Dresden haunts the book. You could see all of Vonnegut's work as an extended [[Creator Breakdown]] in the face of his hellish wartime experiences.
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* Almost any ''[[StarCraft]]'' novel where the main characters are soldiers will have this as one of its themes. The notable examples are ''Speed of Darkness'' (in which a forcibly-conscripted Confederate marine takes part in one of the first engagements with the Zerg) and ''Heaven's Devils'', featuring Jim Raynor as a fresh Confederate recruit who bought into the [[War Is Glorious]] propaganda before finding out for himself that it's far from it. The latter case actually takes place ''before'' the game's storyline and features the war between the Confederacy of Man and the Kel-Morian Combine, with both governments being full of corruption and greed. There is plenty of both heroic and senseless deaths (such as one of the main characters' [[Love Interest]] being suddenly shot [[Eye Scream|through the eye]] by a sniper).
* In [[Honor Harrington]] the main characters are intensely burdened by the death they have weighing on them which is up to the millions by the end of the war and much of it is brought on by mistakes or corruptions in high power. The descriptions of even the more-or-less [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen|honorable]] fighting between the Royal Manticoran Navy and the Havenite Navy(when it is not being overruled by political ideologues) are just less horrific then the descriptions of the non-millitary doings of villains like Masada, or Mesa or StateSec. The theme seems to be War is Hell but Tyranny is worse hell.
== Live Action TV ==
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