All Quiet on the Western Front

by

Erich Maria Remarque

Paul Tansey


About the Author

Erich Maria Remarque, born on June 22, 1898 in Osnabruck, Germany, was the son of Peter Maria Kramer, a bookbinder. The German Nazis, who banned and burned his books in 1933, claimed that his real name was Erich Paul Kramer and the pseudonym Remarque was his father’s surname, Kramer, spelled backwards. The public reason they gave the German people for destroying all copies of All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Back, the only two books he had written at the time, was that Remarque was the descendant of French Jews. They also banned and burned films made from the books and revoked his German citizenship in 1938.

In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Germany was a country on the verge of economic collapse. It had lost the First World War, which it started by invading Belgium and France in 1914, and the economic blockade by the allies during the war, and the economic sanctions placed on Germany after the war, all but crippled a once thriving economy. Prior to signing the Versailles Treaty (1919), which officially ended the war, the German soldiers fighting on the western front had little or nothing to eat, sometimes going for many days without food, and, in Germany, people were literally starving to death.

The country was also leaderless, the German people having no faith in, or respect for, the Weimar Republic government that had taken them to war, lost the war, and then signed the humiliating and economically devastating treaty. This gave rise to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party. Hitler, a charismatic leader and eloquent speaker, told the people he would restore the honor the country had lost and rebuild the economy. He would give them jobs and food and make them proud of their German heritage.

Needing someone or something to blame for the failure of Germany, the Nazis decided that the Jews were the blame for all of Germany’s problems, past and present. Hitler told the people that they were a racially superior nation, and it was not the German people who were responsible for the loss of the war and the plight of the economy, but the fault of the Jews, who had ruined their country. He would eventually take

them to war again- WWII (1939-1945) - and attempt to eradicate all European Jews. Over 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War, a tragic period referred to as ‘The Holocaust’.

Remarque had barely started at the University of Munich when he was called into the German army in 1916. The war had been going on for two years and he was 18 years old, fresh out of high school – very similar to his protagonist in All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer. He was supposedly harassed by

H a Sergeant Himmelreich while in training, a character much like Corporal Himmelstoss, the detested, strict, disciplinarian leader of Paul Baumer’s platoon. He was wounded in the arms and neck by artillery fire in 1917 and returned to Germany, where he studied to be a teacher. He taught school, was a race car driver, and worked as a sportswriter while working on his first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front (1924), a story about the life of a young German soldier on the front lines in France, which questions the value of war while illuminating its senseless destructiveness. The book was an immediate success, selling over 1 million copies in Germany and another million internationally. His second novel, The Road Back, which was about a group of ex-soldiers trying to live in defeated Germany, was published seven years later, in 1931.

Both books were controversial and hated by the Nazis. Most previous war novels had been about patriotism and heroism, and doing the right thing by fighting for your country and destroying the enemy, but All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Back told a different story; painted a different picture. They spoke of the horrors of war and its aftermath, and how war took bright, happy, innocent young men and turned them into dull, unthinking, hopeless, instinctive animals.

Modern weapons were introduced for the first time in WWI. Poison gas, mustard gas, high-explosive shells, flame throwers, tanks, aircraft, and machine guns turned the battlefields of honor of previous conflicts into impersonal killing fields. Artillery barrages of 6,000 guns, pounding a small piece of the front, desolated whatever vegetation there had been and left a cratered landscape filled with the dead and dying, often stacked on top of each other.

During the First World War, over 9 million soldiers were killed, with several million killed on the Western Front- the British losses alone on the Western Front were over 750,000. Eleven percent of the French population, nine percent of the German population, and eight percent of the British population, were either wounded or killed during the war, while the Americans, who didn’t enter the war until 1918, had casualties of one third of one percent of its population.

On November 11, 1918, a hastily drawn up, unilaterally punitive, armistice that ceased the fighting, was forced upon what remained of a thoroughly defeated German army. The Treaty of Versailles was signed early the next year.


The Story

The story opens as Paul Baümer, a volunteer German soldier fresh out of high school, and others from his company, are resting a few miles behind the front. They have just returned from two weeks in the trenches where they were heavily shelled on their final day there. Those around Paul include Albert Kropp, Müller, and Leer, three of his classmates from high school who were prodded and badgered, along with Paul, into joining the army by their schoolmaster Kantorek, who pumped them full of the glory of fighting for their homeland. “Won’t you join up, Comrades?” Kantorek ardently believed in his convictions and had a romanticized, illusionary concept of war. Kroop, a lance-corporal, is the clearest thinker of the four, while Müller still thinks about high school, and Leer dreams of girls. They are waiting in line for lunch and are joined by their friends; Tjaden, a young, skinny locksmith; Haie Westhus, a 19-year-old peat digger; Dettering, a married, peasant farmer; and, Stanislaus Katczinsky (Kat), a former cobbler, the shrewd, cunning, 40-year-old leader of their small group.

The sergeant-cook has prepared food for 150 men, the company strength of 2nd company when it left for the front lines, but only 70 have returned, the rest being either killed or wounded, and he refuses to dole out the extra rations to those waiting in line. He is finally order to serve everything by the company commander and the men are overjoyed that they will be getting nearly double portions, since they seldom have enough to eat. They see it as a windfall and callously rationalize that the men not there are either dead and therefore don’t need the rations, or wounded, and will be fed at the hospitals and aid stations.

After lunch, Paul started to think about Behm, who had volunteered along with Paul and eighteen others from the same class. Behm was the only one of the twenty young, gullible classmates who had resisted Kantorek’s patriotic rhetoric, and he was the first to die. He was killed while trying to blindly return to the German side of the front line after first being wounded by being shot in the eye. Paul’s anger and frustration at the deceptions foisted on youth by supposedly better informed elders overcomes him.

“Naturally, we couldn’t blame Kantorek for this. Where would the world be if one brought every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best- in a way that cost them nothing.

And that is why they let us down so badly.

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress-to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards-they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from the true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”

Later, Müller, Paul and Kroop set out to visit Franz Kemmerich, another classmate, who is in a nearby hospital after suffering a flesh wound to the thigh. At the train station as they were preparing to leave for the front, Kemmerich’s mother had tearfully asked Paul to look after her son. Kemmerich weakly greets his friends and tells them that he feels alright except for a pain in his foot and that someone has stolen his good watch while he was unconscious. His friends lie and tell him that he looks fine and should be going home soon, although his dull, flat eyes are sunk deep into his skull and his face has the pallor of death. Müller asks Kemmerich about a fine pair of soft, supple, leather, airman’s boots that belong to him. He asks Kemmerich if he will be keeping them. Kemmerich, who doesn’t know that his leg has been amputated, is reluctant to part with his most prized possession, even to his friend. Müller keeps pressing Kemmerich until Paul stops him by stepping on his foot. Paul understands that his friend Müller wouldn’t really want to hurt Kemmerich in any way and is only being practical. Of course, the soft leather boots will be of no use to Kemmerich, as they were no longer of any use to the airman from whom they had probably come, and they were certainly much better than the regulation, dried-out, hard leather, hob-nailed ones he had, that only caused blisters and did nothing to ease the discomfort of the front. He also realizes how much they have all changed. They were merely a group of young carefree schoolboys before they came to the front, with little more to worry about than their homework assignments or simple chores around the house, and now the instinct for survival was strong within them and they had somehow lost the innocence of their youth along the way.

The army had taken them at a time in their lives when their minds and souls were vulnerably malleable; when they were just at the point of no longer being children but were not yet adults; when ideals were being formed about life and its meaning; when girls were starting to be looked upon questioningly, and were no longer just considered silly; when thoughts of a career and a family were starting to form; when the influence of their parents was no longer omniscient. In other words, it was a critical time in the lives of those young men, an impressionistic time, and when it should have been filled with love, hope, and optimism, it was instead, filled with death, despair and cynicism.

In ten weeks of basic training, they learned that everything they had been taught in school was basically worthless in the army, that a highly polished button and a proper salute were the things of importance here, not a volume of Schopenhauer or a thoughtful sonnet. They learned that a corporal who had been a postman before the war, now held more authority over them than their parents or teachers ever had. They became calloused and indifferent.

Corporal Himmelstoss, the leader of the 9th platoon, to which the classmates, Paul, Müller, Kroop and Kemmerich, were assigned, was known as the strictest disciplinarian in camp. He took an instant dislike to Paul, Kroop, Tjaden and Westhus, in whom he sensed a quiet defiance, and made their lives miserable by having them repeatedly redo whatever they did and assigning them the hardest and dirtiest tasks in an attempt to break their spirit. But, in the end, all it did was stiffen their resolve and awaken in them their comradeship, traits that would serve them well in combat. The night before they were reassigned to another platoon, they caught Himmelstoss as he was coming out of his favorite saloon, threw a sheet over him and gave him a good beating. He never found out who attack him, and the guys had a good laugh over their prank that night.

Paul goes again to visit his friend Kemmerich, who has since learned that his leg has been amputated. Paul tells him he looks fine and should be going home soon. He whispers to Paul that he doesn’t think so and tells Paul that he can take the airman’s boots with him for Müller. He then begins to cry softly. When his condition worsens, Paul runs to get a doctor, but the doctor tells him he is too busy and sends an orderly with Paul. By the time they return, Kemmerich is dead and the orderly hurries to ready the room for the next patient. Paul leaves the hospital with Kemmerich’s belongings and breathes in the night air deeply. He is severely saddened by his friend’s death but relieved that he lives on. The boots fit Müller just right.

One evening, Paul, Kat and some of the new recruits assigned to 2nd Company go to the front to string barbed wire and are caught in an artillery bombardment. Paul is so tired after stringing the wire, he falls asleep. He awakens disoriented, not knowing where he’s at, seeing only the fireworks of rockets, mortars, and artillery rounds in the darkened sky but is calmed and comforted when he sees his friend Kat quietly smoking a pipe. Kat tells him that it was only near miss that awoke him and not to worry.