Maybe I missed something important, but I dont really think of Slaughter-House Five as an anti-war novel. I see it as the story of one man with a severe mental disease who just happens to be in a war. It reminds me very vaugely of the premise of 'Dawn of the Dead'. Obviously a movie about a bunch of idiots trying not to get their faces bitten off, but Romero structured the story so that it was also a commentary on consumerism in general. So i've heard.

Slaughter-House Five is sort of like that, in the sense that it's one crazy man's life story, part of which happens to take place in the war that brings out his unwillingness to live even more.

Of course, he's really crazy because his dad threw him into the deep end of the pool when he was a little kid.