Mises in Wartime

Introduction First Year in Battle The Home Front Mises’s War Medals

Back to the Front New Life A Last Mission Notes

Like many others, writes Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Ludwig von Mises anticipated the outbreak of World War I years in advance.

Unlike many others, he dreaded it.

He was a Lieutenant of the Austro-Hungarian Army and dearly loved his country, but he was no chauvinist and despised the militarism and statism that were about to drag an entire continent into catastrophe. But the ruling philosophy of government glorification under the guise of patriotism had made its cause irresistible.

After the war, Mises would write on these subjects in detail. He explained how the war had resulted from state worship, in this case, from worship of the nation-state. But for now he thought that he — the agnostic Jew, cultural German, political individualist, scientific cosmopolitan, and Austrian patriot — had to fight the nationalists’ war.

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