All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque #theclassics

Introduction: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque #theclassics

All Quiet on the Western Front

Born on June 22, 1898, in Osnabrück, Germany, Erich Maria Remarque fought in World War I. The Nazi government banned and destroyed All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel and his other book, The Road Back. All Quiet on the Western Front deals with the desolation of war, and it depicts the lives and deaths of eight frontline soldiers in the trenches of World War I.

An international bestseller, Remarque gained instant fame and recognition with the publication of All Quiet on the Western Front. He was exiled from Germany and went to the United States to live.

As a rule, I avoid reading books about war, but in the course that I took, Books that Changed the World, All Quiet on the Western Front was among the list of books. I should have stuck to my rule because it was very upsetting to read this book because the author, Erich Maria Remarque, having fought in World War I, has done his job with his vivid descriptions in the story to bring the book to life, and to take you right to the frontlines of combat.

Published in 1928, the theme of All Quiet on the Western Front is duty to your country. Set during World War I, then, one of the noblest things a young man could do was to die for his country. In school, kids were taught about patriotism, and Remarque captures those sensibilities in his story. The story demonstrates that only soldiers on active duty can understand the true horrors of war.

What is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque About?

The story is told through the eyes of Paul Baumer, who is not yet 20 years old. His schoolmaster, Kantorek, encouraged him and his classmates to fight in the war because it is a noble thing, and the right thing to do. Young and impressionable, they sign up for active duty. Shortly after they enlist, and start to take part in the war, they lose their innocence. The story begins in 1916, two years after World War II has started, and Paul Baumer has been in the German military for two years now. The narrator’s company starts off in a unit of 150 soldiers, they experience major losses and are down to 80, and the number keeps on dwindling down.

New recruits do not get enough training, and they die quickly. “Although we need reinforcement, the recruits give us almost more trouble than they are worth. They are helpless in this grim fighting area, they fall like flies. Modern trench-warfare demands knowledge and experience; a man must have a feeling for the contours of the ground, an ear for the sound and character of the shells, must be able to decide beforehand where they will drop, how they will burst, and how to shelter from them.” In one scene in the book, a new recruit defecates in his underpants because he is so scared when they are under attack, not long after that, he is killed. The unrelenting shelling is terrifying.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, the soldiers are depicted as the lost generation, and their world of childhood, school and parents no longer have any meaning. This is demonstrated when Baumer gets six-week leave and he returns home in 1917 to his family. His mother has cancer, but she takes the time to make a special meal – potato pancakes, for him.

There is a lot being said between them in the silence. He feels displaced – as if he is in no-man’s land – and cannot relate to anyone. He cannot bring himself to tell them about the real horrors and atrocities of war, and others who haven’t shared his experiences have this romantic notion about combat soldiers. These young soldiers are stripped of their youth, and Remarque aptly describes them as “young old men.”

“If we were not automata at that moment we would continue lying there, exhausted, and without will. But we are swept forward again, powerless, madly savage and raging; we will kill, for they are our mortal enemies, their rifles and bombs are aimed against us, and if we don’t destroy them, they will destroy us.”

As the story unfolds, one thing is clear, is that the soldiers are always tired and hungry because it is difficult to sleep when you are constantly being shot at, and you do not have enough strength because you never get enough to eat. Add to that, the difficulty of seeing people who you have known all your life, die in front of your eyes. Imagine the sense of hopelessness they feel when one of their own is dying, and there is nothing that they can do about it.

I asked myself, “Why the hell am I reading this book?” while I was reading this section of the book,

““If a mortar gets you it blows you clean out of your clothes. It’s the concussion that does it.” I search around. And so it is. Here hangs bits of uniform, and somewhere else is plastered a bloody mess that was once a human limb. Over there lies a body with nothing but a piece of the underpants on one leg and the collar of the tunic around its neck. Otherwise it is naked and the clothes are hanging up in the tree. Both arms are missing as though they had been pulled out. I discover one of them twenty yards off in a shrub.”

Only a soldier who has been on active duty could write something like that. You cannot imagine this, you have to experience it.

At one point in the story, Baumer realizes, that the French soldier who is dying is no different from him,

“Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother just like Kat and Albert…”

Final Thoughts: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel by Erich Maria Remarque was well-received because at the time when it was first published, there was a great debate going on about the great cost of World War I. In my class, Books That Changed the World, I learned that

“The message of All Quiet on the Western Front, is that war is a great fraud perpetrated against ordinary people by incompetent leaders. This is the greatest novel about war ever written. It’s the story of war and its costs through the eyes of an ordinary soldier, Paul Bäumer.”

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