Delusions, Carnage is the story of the origins of World War I and its first battles. Ernst Frieslaven is a government worker at the German War Ministry in Berlin and is a witness to the secret meetings of bureaucrats who plan a war they think will be short, glorious and cost-free.

All the major planners of the war are here, including Bethmann Hollweg, the German Chancellor who convinces himself the war can be limited to just Austria, Hungary and Serbia, and Arthur Zimmermann, the German Foreign Affairs Secretary, an evil man who loves hatching secret plots to increase his own power.

The leaders, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, an erratic and pompous egomaniac, the aged and senile Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, and Nicholas II of Russia, the at times timid and vacillating Czar.

Frieslaven’s girlfriend Rosa Lieber is an activist member of the Social Democrat Party and determined to sabotage the German war plans. A fiery feminist, she isn’t afraid to mount a soapbox and give a speech or call a man to his face when he deserves it a “blaggard” (or use harsher words).

When Zimmermann hires a professional killer to silence Frieslaven, the woman Lieber is stalked by the killer and ends up taking him on in a freight elevator in a scene reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

Delusions, Carnage is a history of foolish optimism and mindless stupidity, when the world went mad. It is also a snapshot of Berlin as seen in 1914 from its shabby criminal underworld districts and grim government buildings to the posh ultra-rich luxury of its upscale hotels and restaurants.