The first world war in German art: Otto Dix's first-hand visions of horror

In 1914 Otto Dix joined the German army as a fierce patriot; two years later he was mowing down British soldiers at the Somme. Yet few artists did more to reveal the true horror of the first world war

Art of the apocalypse: Otto Dix's hellish first world war visions in pictures

In 1924 the German artist and war veteran Otto Dix looked back at the first world war on its 10th anniversary, just as we are doing on its 100th. What did he see? Today there is a fashion, in Britain, to celebrate the heroism of our grandfathers and their hard-won victory of 1914-1918. It's as if the clock is being turned back and the propaganda of the war believed all over again. Even the German war guilt clause written by the victors into the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 has been turned into "fact" after all, who wants to trawl through the complex causes of this conflict and face the depressing truth that it ultimately happened because no one in July 1914 understood how destructive a modern industrial war could be?

We need to shake off the nostalgia of a centenary's forgetful pomp and look at the first world war through fresh eyes German eyes. For no other artists saw this dreadful war as clearly as German artists did. While British war artists, for example, were portraying the generals, Germans saw the skull in no man's land.

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