The War etching cycle encompassed 50 images. Otto Dix made the series in 1924 as a protest against the conservative and nationalist celebrations throughout Germany commemorating the 10th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. He was one of many artists, including Käthe Kollwitz, who created antiwar works at this moment. Throughout Dix’s series, he emphasized the particularly modern and destructive capacity of industrial warfare. In this image, the contrast between the casually posed, emotionally blank soldiers on the left and the bloated gas victims on the right speaks to the brutality of this new kind of war.