G K Chesterton

The Appetite of Tyranny G K Chesterton

On June 28th of the year 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a small group of Serbians, an event which would begin Europe's spiral into what was to be deemed "the war to end wars," otherwise called The Great War or World War I. In his book The Appetite of Tyranny, G. K. Chesterton endeavors to assess the events which followed the assassination, primarily the psyche of Prussia as it sought to wrest control of Europe and bring upon the world the 'progress' of the 'superior' Teutonic race. Chesterton's main goal is to analyze what made for the incoherence and barbarism of the Prussian philosophy of that era, where 'barbaric is defined as "one who is hostile to civilization, not one who is insufficient in it."