All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of a German teenager and his classmates in World War I.  It tells (although not in chronological order) of how they were convinced to join the army, went through training camp, became battle hardened, were forced to find war humorous to cope with it, took furloughs home and found they did not fit in there, found what comfort they could in a miserable world, gained hope that the war would end, and finally died.

Although the details of All Quiet On the Western Front may be specific to trench warfare in the First World War, I believe its theme is applicable to all wars and professional armies.  The author, Erich Maria Remarque, was a veteran of World War One who was wounded by shrapnel.  Some of the scenes are so personal that I feel they must be semi-autobiographical.

What struck me most about the book were the intense emotions felt by the main character Paul.  The extreme sadness of the whole story is presented against the backdrop of my knowledge of the pointlessness of the First World War and my understanding of how the generals led and lived during the war.  This war did not need to be fought.  It was an entirely unnecessary accident which sprung out of European politics and the shifting of strength of the continental powers.  The war was also far different from those the Generals had personally fought in during their younger days so they had no idea what was life was like at the front.  The generals were far disconnected from life out in the trenches.

The German Army

Remarque’s judgment of the German Army is harsh.  The soldiers were given poor food when they received food at all.  Their rations were just different types of turnips.  Getting extra rations was against orders and the soldiers were compelled to constantly steal food from the surrounding countryside to supplement their diet.  Remarque compares  German army food unfavorably with Allied army food; however, I think the allied armies were skimping their soldiers as well, but not as badly as the German army.

The German army was also mired in pointless bureaucracy and pomp.  When Paul returns home, he is dressed down by an officer who had never been anywhere near the front for his lack of military bearing.  The stifling army regulations were enforced beginning just out of range of shell fire from the French and British.  The unceasingly tormented soldiers would first be hounded by the Allies and then by their own officers.

The training provided by the German army was ineffective.  It was just a way of making the soldiers miserable.  Paul never refers once to something he learned in training helping him in battle or describes performing the types of actions that he talks about being trained it.  Paul also talks about how the new soldiers arriving at the front were completely unprepared for the warfare and dropped like flies.  While it would be impossible to completely prepare someone for trench warfare, I would guess that instruction by a few seasoned infantrymen would have been far more useful than the hazing they got from soldiers who had never been to the front.

The Home Front

Paul returns home a couple of times during the book.  The first time is a furlough and the second time is to recover from an injury.  He feels alienated by what he experiences at home and when returning to the front he wonders about whether he will be able to fit in after the war.

The most common reaction Paul receives is from people eager to tell him how much they are sacrificing for the war effort.  They inform him that he doesn’t know how good he has it at the front while they sit in bier gardens and order beer–a luxury that Paul rarely has at the front.  They tell him about how he must work harder to break through the enemy lines.  Although they never condemn him openly and their words technically praise him, they always implies that they would do a much better job themselves and that the soldiers are not trying very hard.  If Paul ever tries to correct some of their misconceptions about the front, he is shushed because he does not know the big picture.

The person who Paul feels closest to at home is his mother.  It is hard not to read the scenes with Paul and his mother without tears welling in your eyes.  They both worry for each other.  Paul cannot bear the thought of his mother who is dying of cancer knowing the dreadful circumstances that he lives in.  He wants to protect her.  On the other hand, Paul’s mother knows that she does not know and wants to protect her son, but she is powerless:  the Kaiser wants her son for the meat grinder.

Paul meets two types of people at home.  Those who condemn him and will not hear his story and those who he cannot speak to because he wants to protect them.

The Front Lines

At the front lines Paul and his comrades can be with comrades and true friends, but life is brutal and can end at any instant.  The soldiers turn to a dark humor to mentally cope with the environment.  As the war continues, their jokes become darker and their thoughts become morbid.  Their health, clothes, and food deteriorate simultaneously.

The group of men who fight together develop a close bond although they are dying moment by moment.  In many battles they lose more than half of their number.  The new soldiers die especially quickly, but when a seasoned veteran dies, he is impossible to replace.  The soldiers go to great lengths to save one anthers lives although they can be randomly killed at any moment.

Paul’s classmates who were placed into his unit form friendships with other members of the unit.  One by one they die until Paul is the only one left of the original crew.  He is all alone and then he dies.

There are so many details about life at the front which are covered in the book that it is not practical to summarize them.  Suffice to say that the life is terrible.  It is not a life that one would wish on their worst enemy (unless he was a head of state).

The Enemies

One of the main conclusions you are forced to draw from the book is that the German soldiers’ real enemy is the German politicians and public who support the war and the German officers who run it.  The soldiers’ only friends are the Russian, French, and English soldiers along with their closest family members.

Although one would like to blame the war and all of the bad things on the German politicians, Remarque does not leave this option open.  When Paul returns home, he finds that the German populace all agrees with the Kaiser and the plan for the war.  If war decisions were open to the public, the war would be run even more aggressively and with less care given to human life.  The soldiers on all sides are sympathetic to one another and simply want to survive the war although they must be absolutely brutal to one another in battle.  If all feelings were put aside, the soldiers could have solved the war in a day or less.