O Jesus, Make It Stop: The Great War No One Knew How to Begin or End

By: Blake, Christopher

The Great War of 1914-1918 did not have to last four years. By early 1916, after eighteen months of unprecedented slaughter, the nations of Europe stood at a crossroads. O JESUS, MAKE IT STOP examines the pivotal year when the war might have ended, and why it did not. Drawing on diplomatic archives, military histories, and private writings, this book traces the failed peace initiatives, from Woodrow Wilson's moral diplomacy to the doomed House-Grey Memorandum and Germany's miscalculated overtures, revealing how leaders who sleepwalked into war proved incapable of finding the exit. The leaders of 1916--Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, Bethmann Hollweg, Raymond Poincare, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Czar Nicholas II, and others--inherited dire circumstances yet retained the agency to choose differently. At every critical juncture during 1914, 1916, and 1918, men lacking courage or imagination failed to understand why they went to war. Different choices would have yielded a better twentieth century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H4WJ9WJL
• ISBN13: 9798897360499
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Mercer University Press
• Length: 280 Pages