A just man in an unjust war

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 28, 2025

Last year when I was invited to speak at a conference on Blessed Karl of Austria, I had serious misgivings. What could I add to an event that would feature scholars who had written extensively about the man, and family members who carried on his legacy. But as I read more about this remarkable Catholic leader, I realized that I did indeed have something to say.

Needless to say, Blessed Karl was an exemplary Catholic layman, known for his deep devotion to the sacramental life of the Church, his intense love for his wife and children, and his unswerving commitment to his particular vocation. That vocation was an unusual one, to say the least: he became the head of the Austro-Hungarian Empire shortly after the outbreak of World War I. It was his response to that war, more than anything else, that fired my devotion to Blessed Karl, and convinced me that I did have something to say about his legacy. The full text of my talk will be available shortly on the web site devoted to that conference; what follows is an abbreviated version.

During the past several years I have led a tutorial at Thomas More College on traditional Catholic teachings on justice in warfare. The just-war theory sets very high standards, for judging both the reason for the war (ius ad bellum) and the conduct of the military campaign (ius in bello). War brings out the best in some men, but the worst in others, so even a war fought for a worthy cause will be marred by acts of cruelty. (The predictable fact that some individuals will behave badly is one of the many good reasons to avoid warfare whenever possible). Probably no war in history meets all the moral criteria to qualify as a just war.

But if there has ever been a perfectly unjust war, World War I should qualify. There was not adequate reason to go to war. The peaceful means of resolving disputes had not been exhausted. The carnage brought about by the war grossly exceeded the injustices, real or imagined, that were used as reasons for the military campaigns. Once the war began the use of poison gas was unjustifiable, as was the use of troops as human cannon-fodder, with thousands of lives sacrificed to gain just a few yards of scorched earth. The costs of the war, measured in human and social and economic terms, were vastly disproportionate.

The only reason for fighting a just war is to secure a just peace. But there was no justice after World War I. The war itself precipitated the rise of Soviet Communism, a brutal and tyrannical regime that killed tens of millions and subjugated hundreds of millions more. The peace treaty that ended (or perhaps, more accurately, deferred) the fight was an important cause of massive new bloodshed in World War Two. To this date, a century later, we are suffering for the arrogance of European politicians who drew arbitrary lines on the maps of Africa and the Middle East, exacerbating religious and tribal conflicts that have caused many millions more lives.

I am sure that the Emperor Karl did not foresee all of the damage that World War One wrought. He might not have believed that the phony peace after “the war to end all wars” would explode into an even bloodier war, introduce the deliberate use of obliteration bombing by both sides, and lead to the development of thermonuclear weapons. But he did see that the war was wrong: that it was disproportionate, that it was unjust. He was a military man himself, certainly not a pacifist. But he could not countenance the needless expenditure of human lives. He knew that injustice breeds injustice. He had a Christian’s innate confidence that the right thing to do is always the right thing to do—or, to put it another way, that the best moral option is always, in the long run, the best practical option as well. The truth of international politics is not separate from the truth of morality, because truth is unitary. There is but one Truth, found in Jesus Christ, and whoever follows him—as the Emperor Karl consistently did—will always be on the right path.

So the Emperor Karl did his utmost to bring World War I to an early end. He saw his duty, as a ruler, to serve the welfare of his people, and he could not reconcile that duty with the carnage on the battlefields. Humbly but stubbornly he fought for peace, even as he fought to retain his crown. He lost both those battles, was deposed, and lived in exile, in poverty, while the bloodshed continued. But in the process, by his fidelity, he won a more precious crown.

A bit more than a century later it is easy to see that Blessed Karl was right: not just morally right, but politically right as well. It is not quite so easy to imagine how our lives might be better today, if other European rulers had followed his lead and cut short the suffering of their peoples. Would Eastern Europe have been spared the ravages of Soviet Communism? Would the tribal conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa have been less acute? Would there be better prospects for a secure peace in the Middle East? We don’t know, cannot know, what lay at the end of the road not taken.

But this much we do know: The road that European leaders took was the wrong one. And the Emperor Karl, who so valiantly sought to change that disastrous course, chose instead the path to sanctity.