Lay Down Your Arms

Bertha von Suttner turned her pacifism into fiction with this 1889 novel, whose German title, Die Waffen nieder, became a rallying cry for the peace movement. The story is told by Martha von Tilling, an Austrian countess who lives through four wars over the course of her life and watches them strip away nearly everyone she loves. What begins as the memoir of a soldier’s wife hardens into a sustained argument against the glamour of the battlefield. Von Suttner does not flinch from the disease, grief, and bureaucratic cruelty that trail behind every campaign. The book made her famous across Europe and helped earn her the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.