All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Two quick thoughts:
1) The author definitely hoped that this book might keep Germany, or Europe, from getting into another big war. The book was published in 1928. And was big on the Nazis book-burning lists, apparently. So the author didn't have much success there.
2) If I had to pick a war to fight in, having read a few things this summer about the Spanish Civil War as well as a couple about the First World War, I'm taking the Spanish Civil War, thank you. I think I already knew that. But now I have actual reasons. Medicine wasn't much better, the trenches were just as awful, but at least there was a lot of argument and political intrigue going on in the Spanish fracas. You could pick a random union's militia, learn a new ideology, get a new beret, and get yourself a bit of a sense of individuality on your way out to the trench. Delude yourself into thinking you were fighting for something you were interested in. First World War, these folks, at least Erich Maria Remarque and his comrades, they had no idea why they were there except that everyone else was doing it. And while out there they wondered whether or not the guy they were doing it for, the Kaiser, actually pooped like everyone else or if it was some kind of Divine Defecation going on when he visited his toilet.