Anton-Andreas Guha (1937–2010)

I should say, before you begin to read this review, that as you begin to read this book you know exactly how it will end. This is a story of when the nuclear bombs fell: we know what that would entail, but to read it, to spend time confronting the possibility of it, is shocking. It is horrific.

Ende is a diary of the Third World War, the war that breaks out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations. Written by a journalist, it charts the events from the beginning of the conflict as the US begins ariel attacks on Cuba in late July, to large scale nuclear exchange in the latter half of August. The narrator lives in the fictional town of Taunusrodt, near Frankfurt-am-Maim, and bears witness to the destruction of Germany, which is sacrificed by superpowers as they attack each other's advancing armies and missile sites, before escalating to full-scale nuclear strikes against population centres. Through his eyes we witness the utter collapse of civilisation: the tremors as bombs fall in the distance, the horizon blazing as firestorms burn the forests, the annhilation of nearby cities, and the destruction of normal people: the terrified refugees fleeing the cities, neighbours ending their own lives to escape, horrifically burnt soldiers, the efforts of the people of Taunusrodt to hang on, our narrator's fears and dimise...

Ende is more than only a story of nuclear war. Running throughout are the words of numerous philosophers, politicians, writers, and scientists: Nietzsche, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Thomas Mann, Max Born among others. This is an argument against nuclear weapons (the writer, Anton Andreas-Guhu was a leading anti-nuclear campaigner in Germany during the 1980s), and it is the most persuasive I've ever come across. It is the story of what we avoided (we pray, eternally so), the story of our doppelganger: "a species which advanced too far technologically to keep pace morally", pre-destined to self-destruction; a species who had tied its every member to two opposing war machines, who had lined up the dominos in such a way that to knock over just one would lead, inevitably, to the final holocaust.

Personally, I was born the year this was published, someone who grew up after the cold war had ended and the threat of nuclear war diminished, yet this takes little away and Ende was profoundly affecting nonetheless. More than anything it inspires a certain contempt for those in power during that era, who built the weapons and the command structures, how fatalistic they were, who were so convinced by the threat, by the 'evil' of those the other side of the iron curtain that they readied themselves to sacrifice the entire world, the entire human race to their blind antipathy and suspicions - to which they were but slaves.

If you can find a copy READ THIS BOOK.… (mere)