Encountering Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war play, “Mother Courage and Her Children” , through the analysis of David Runciman’s The Great Political Fictions podcast, I was chilled by the titular character’s haunting song of capitulation. Praising the values of silence and obedience in war time, Mother Courage has no grand ideas to share about morality, justice, or righteousness. War isn’t a duty. It’s a situation.

Victor Davis Hanson shares a similar sentiment with the Melian law “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer, what they must” (p.279).The laws of war, conceived in times of peace, carries no purchase on the battlefield. “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation” is a harrowing look at four cases where a civilization was overwhelmingly destroyed. These four cases are: the destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great, the conquest of Carthage, the third punic war, by the Romans, the imperial takeover of Constantiople by the Turks, and annihilation of the Aztec empire by Cortes the Spanish conquistador.

One reason this book is so compelling is that he is describing the pitched battles that dramatically change the course of history. With some 1,500 soldiers, Cortes roundly defeated the Aztec empire of millions, in a span of two years. Imagine the wild disparity of technology between the steel rapiers of the spanish phalanx and the wooden arrows of the Aztecs agrarian hunters. The end of the Byzantine Empire’s thousand year strong hold in Asian Minor,by the total defeat of Islamic Turkish fighters. After the slaughtering of the remaining pious waiting for an angel to descend and save the city, the great Hagia Sophia transformed from a symbol of the Christian empire to an Islamic caliphate.

Grievances factor into all the battles. Hundreds of years of battle between Rome and Carthage. Eight hundred years of holy wars, the Reconquista, gave Sultan Mehmed II a vice grip on the city, and measures of torture of execution allowed against its citizens. The conflicting Christian worldview of the Spanish conquistadors and the Aztec’s behaviors of polyamory, homosexuality and human sacrifice by priests, made the battle of Tenochtitlan existential. The stakes ratchet up as violence replaced words, and recriminations replaced communication. Total war from leaders like Alexander or Scipio Africanus was unleashed. No quarter given.

Although Hanson focuses on these four cases of total war, they often surprising insights into the ways other societies grew from the conflicts. The destruction of the Byzantine empire, laid to waste by the Turkish/Ottoman Empire, in some ways stood as a bulwark to the nascent Renaissance in western Europe. Cortes’s unparalleled conquest of the warrior society of the Aztecs was the grounds for Spanish infiltration and influence on central America, The Roman destruction of Carthage would lay groups to rebuild the city in 46 BC. With the rivals vanquished the expansive Roman Empire would build across Africa, the Middle East and all of Europe. We see the ways war itself galvanized or depletes the cultures. Additionally, we get insights into just how distorted the thinking is the conquered in their final days; often meeting submission in slavery or execution.

We might measure our time with these case studies, and conclude we are more civilized, tempered, bound to law and aware. Hanson connects the studies to these more modern times, but often finds more parallels than incongruities. The 20th century genocides of Armenians by the Turks, and Jews by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Active conflicts by Islamic terror groups, rogue nation states like North Korea, and aggressive nuclear states like Russia continue to disrupt lasting global peace. Knowing the weapons of war are more potent, unforgiving and available, we can only rely on game theory and ceaseless prayers that our societies remain unscathed.

I love history, and this book is great. These are all events I remembered learning about in high school world history. However, I never knew so many of the circumstances that lead up to these events, and some of the aftermath of each. The author did a great job of illuminating parallels between these events and others in history, as well as applications we can glean for today's world. Really fascinating book!