Erich Maria Remarque

The testament of Paul Baumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I, illuminates the savagery and futility of war

All Quiet on the Western Front

casey

Our legs refuse to move, our hands tremble, our bodies are a thin skin stretched painfully over repressed madness, over an almost irresistible, bursting roar. We have neither flesh nor muscles any longer, we dare not look at each other for fear of some miscalculable thing.

We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from 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.

fira

Shells, gas, clouds, and flotillas of tanks—shattering, corroding, death.

Dysentery, influenza, typhus—scalding, choking, death.

Trenches, hospitals, the common grave—there are no other possibilities.

These voices, these quiet words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound from the terrible loneliness and fear of death by which I had been almost destroyed. They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.

I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, done in the darkness;—I belong to them and they to me; we all share the same fear and the same life, we are nearer than lovers, in a simpler, a harder way; I could bury my face in them, in these voices, these words that have saved me and will stand by me.

Roman. Mit Materialien

Im Westen nichts Neues

anne

Denn das können wir: Kartenspielen, fluchen und Krieg führen. Nicht viel für zwanzig Jahre-zu viel für zwanzig Jahre.

Roman

Lina 

Wir waren noch nicht eingewurzelt. Der Krieg hat uns weggeschwemmt. Für die andern, die Älteren, ist er eine Unterbrechung, sie können über ihn hinausdenken. Wir aber sind von ihm ergriffen worden und wissen nicht, wie das enden soll. Was wir wissen, ist vorläufig nur, daß wir auf eine sonderbare und schwermütige Weise verroht sind. obschon wir nicht einmal oft mehr traurig werden.

Ja, so denken sie, so denken sie, die hunderttausend Kantoreks! Eiserne Jugend. Jugend! Wir sind alle nicht mehr als zwanzig Jahre. Aber jung? Jugend? Das ist lange her. Wir sind alte Leute.

-er ist noch, und er ist doch nicht mehr, verwaschen, unbestimmt ist sein Bild geworden, wie eine photographische Platte, auf der zwei Aufnahmen gemacht worden sind. 

-aber wir unterschieden jetzt, wir hatten mit einem Male sehen gelernt. Und wir sahen daß nichts von ihrer Welt übrigblieb. Wir waren plötzlich auf furchtbare Weise allein; - und wir mußten allein damit fertig werden. 

Man kann Kantorek natürlich nicht damit in Zusammenhang bringen;- wo bliebe die Welt sonst, wenn man das schon Schuld nennen wollte. Es gab ja Tausende von Kantoreks, die alle überzeugt waren, auf eine für sie be- queme Weise das Beste zu tun. 

Darin liegt aber gerade für uns ihr Bankerott. 

Sie sollten uns Achtzehnjährigen Vermittler und Führer zur Welt des Erwachsenseins werden, zur Welt der Arbeit, der Plicht, der Kultur und des Fortschritts, zur Zukunft. Wir verspotteten sie manchmal und spielten ihnen kleine Streiche, aber im Grunde glaubten wir ihnen. Mit dem Begriff der Autorität, dessen Träger sie waren, verband sich in unseren Gedanken größere Einsicht und menschlicheres Wissen. Doch der erste Tote, den wir sahen, zertrüm- merte diese Überzeugung. Wir mußten erkennen, daß unser Alter ehrlicher war als das ihre; sie hatten vor uns nur die Phrase und die Geschicklichkeit voraus. Das erste Trommelfeuer zeigte uns unseren Irrtum, und unter ihm Stürzte die Weltanschauung zusammen, die sie uns gelehrt hatten.

Es ist übrigens komisch, daß das Unglück der Welt so oft von kleinen Leuten herrührt, sie sind viel energischer und unverträglicher als großgewachsene. Ich habe mich stets gehütet, in Abteilungen mit kleinen Kompagnieführern zu geraten; es sind meistens verfluchte Schinder.

Dem Soldaten ist sein Magen und seine Verdauung ein vertrauteres Gebiet als jedem anderen Menschen. Dreiviertel seines Wortschatzes sind ihm entnommen, und sowohl der Ausdruck höchster Freude als auch der tiefster Entrüstung findet hier seine kernige Untermalung. Es ist unmöglich, sich auf eine andere Art so knapp und klar zu äußern. Unsere Familien und unsere Lehrer werden sich schön wundern, wenn wir nach Hause kommen, aber es ist hier nun einmal die Universalsprache. 

»Häng dich auf!« fauchte die Tomate. Sie war geplatz. so etwas ging ihr gegen den Verstand, sie begriff die Welt nicht mehr. Und als wollte sie zeigen, daß nun schon alles egal sei, verteilte sie pro Kopf freiwillig noch ein halbes Pfund Kunsthonig. 

Im Westen nichts Neues.

Josephina Lucke

Subject matter isn't my cup of tea, but the message holds up: War is bad! 

elizabeth

Great, emotive story with not a moving plot but a slice-of-life type of drama. Following Paul and his troop of friends, we see how life is like on the german side, and look into their minds. It's still sad and heartbreaking to see them all drop off one by one, until Paul himself dies. Amazingly written/translated and I appreciate the Forward and Afterthought in my copy. Did lose marks just because I did really feel engaged reading it, but this story is probably pivotal in understanding life as a soldier.

surtified™

Powerful depiction of war which provides a level of sobering detail I've yet to comeacross. 

Joe Mccaffery 

The testament of Paul Baumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I, illuminates the savagery and futility of war.

one of the most profound books ive ever read; when i finished it i had to sit in silence for a few minutes to take it all in. the author did a great job building immersion and getting you attached to the characters.

it really makes you think about war and the way it impacts families and children.

hannie

one of the most profound books ive ever read; when i finished it i had to sit in silence for a few minutes to take it all in. the author did a great job building immersion and getting you attached to the characters.

it really makes you think about war and the way it impacts families and children.

altlovesbooks

"I soon found out this much: terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks, but it kills if a man thinks about it."

There's approximately eleventy bajillion other reviews that will probably summarize this book better than I ever could, so I won't bother with a summary. 

What I will say is, in a sea of WWI/WWII fiction, this one rightfully stands head and shoulders above the rest. It captures the feeling of boys, fresh out of school, enlisting to do their country proud, being sent to the front lines, and learning what World War I was all about. Reading about their forced transition from boy to man in a very short time was heartbreaking, and there's scene after scene that sticks in my head even after being done with the book.

This book isn't for everyone. It's graphic, pulls no punches, and is heavy on detail. It's also more stream of consciousness and one man's observations than plot-driven, so if that isn't your cup of tea, you might not get a lot out of this book. 

It broke my heart and made me cry. That's a hallmark of a good book to me.

Kehinde Adeleke

** spoiler alert **
           I don't even know what to say other than: this is an amazing book. It shows the anguish, pain and suffering soldiers participating in the way go through.

It shows that they are people. Fathers, brothers , husbands, with family, goals, aspirations and not just mere pieces in a needless show of power and a need for conquest.

I have never read a book like this and this will always have an impression on my heart. 

War is needless and never justified. No one, absolutely noone should have to go through this.

One particular except, I'd leave you with it this: 

"Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction stabbed. But now, for the first time. I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle: now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony-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. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up-take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now."

Einfach nur unglaublich geschrieben. Es fesselt einfach nur und man fragt sich wie es mit der Gruppe weitergeht. Vor allem ist das Thema ein sehr wichtiges.

Oh God, what a novel! I’ve gained a lot of insight on war reading this and I’m very thankful for that. The writing style is cruel and cold and emotionless and insanely beautiful (but it does mess with your head after the first hundred pages). I loved all the characters so so much and Remarque could make me feel like I knew them personally. Overall, I’d have nothing to criticise except for one thing; what on Earth happens the last ten pages? Did Remarque have a word limit writing this? Events are barely described (events which are quite very important, more so than earlier ones that were luckily described in great detail) and I feel like in the end the novel was speedrunning and cosplaying a short essay. What even. It was still very worth it though, every minute I spent looking at the paper and black ink. What an experience. Now I feel like I went to war, too, haha.

Iuno <3

I just couldn’t put this book down. It’s about the experience in the largest meat grinder ever known to mankind: the western front in WWI, and it is absolutely horrifying … to say the least. I can only say - read this if you haven’t already!

Mihai Nueleanu

linda

Poignant and vivid description of the brutalities of war; beautifully written. A reminder of our shared humanity.

Todd Luallen

Now I know why this is such a classic; this book is a phenomenal read. Somehow I missed out on reading this in High School, but I'm glad I took the opportunity to read it later in life. Such a powerful commentary on the reality of war.

I don't remember crying when I read this in 11th grade 20 years ago (😱), but I definitely shed some tears this time around. Recommended re-reading for adults who might've forgotten how powerful this WWI novel is. 

Ashlyn

Amir M 

I've never felt so deeply emotional by any other book / movie / videogame regarding the world war.

Nick Bicko

[In der zum 100-jährigen Kriegsbeginn herausgebrachten Ausgabe 2014 gelesen, die die Orignalausgabe von 1929 abgedruckt hat und die sich laut Nachwort teilweise von den Veröffentlichungen nach WK II unterscheidet.]

Wow, was für ein Brett an Kriegsliteratur. Extrem lebendig und gleichzeitig nüchtern/sachlich, umgangssprachlich und nah aus der Ich-Perspektive des Protagonisten des Paul Bäumer geschrieben, geht es neben der eindrucksvollen Beschreibung der Schrecken des Krieges in all seinen Facetten vor allem um die Nachwirkungen des Krieges auf die Soldaten. 

Im Vorwort wird geschrieben, dass das Buch über eine Generation berichtet, die vom Krieg zerstört wurde, trotz des Überlebens. Wie man als unschuldiger Schüler zum freiwilligen Melden als Soldat plötzlich im erbarmungslosen Schützengraben sitzt, wie man sich während eines Urlaubs von der Front im heimischen Alltag nicht mehr zurechtfindet und sich beinahe wieder an die Front zu den liebgewonnenen Kameraden zurückwünscht.

Im ausführlichen Anhang dieser Ausgabe gibt es noch einige zusätzliche Szenen, von Remarque niedergeschriebene Anekdoten oder Ausschnitte aus ersten Entwürfe, die bspw. wegen Kritik am Krieg oder Politisierung aus der final gedruckten Ausgabe gekürzt wurden. So enthält der Anhang bspw. eine längere Abhandlung über den Kaiserbesuch an der Front sowie ein längeres Kriegsfazit am Ende. 

Ein Meisterwerk von Erich Maria Remarque. Ein Makel, das ich das Buch erst jetzt gelesen habe.

Barbora Zakourilova

All Quiet on the Western Front is probably the most famous anti-war novel ever written. The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war; under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war - of any war - told for a whole generation of victims.

I.m. ruzz

This book deserves a proper review, which I have no time to write. I will simply say it burst onto my top 5 favorite books list. 

There is so much beauty, and such well expressed ideas about the disenchantment of war (and i think modern life) that it really should be read by everyone at some point.

Bryan Alexander

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.” (263)

“My subject is War, and the pity of War.” - Wilfred Owen

All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues,1928) is probably the best known work of prose fiction written in any language to emerge from the First World War. From its first appearance, the novel kicked off Remarque’s lifelong literary career. It was influential enough in its antiwar message to earn special and deadly ire from the Nazis, who took care to lethally prosecute the author’s sister, Elfriede Scholz .It has been filmed (1932, 1979) and referenced repeatedly by war writers ever since. It serves for many as the 20th-century great war novel. I believe the novel has remained in print since 1928.

What does the novel tell us now, in 2018, during this centenary of World War I?

For those who haven’t read it, All Quiet on the Western Front follows our narrator, Paul Baumer, and his group of fellow soldiers (Kat, Tjaden, Muller, and more) as they fight, survive, suffer, and (most of them) die in the trenches against British and French enemies. The text’s focus is very small, zeroing in on this handful of people. We see little of campaigns and strategies. There isn’t much contextual detail. Instead, Remarque gives us a microcosm of the war through an account of daily life within it. 

There isn’t much of an overarching plot as such, although there are many small stories, and Paul’s experience offers something of a frame. The novel doesn’t offer much of a sense of forward motion or progress but instead consists mostly of a series of episodes or short-short stories that might remind us of subsequent works like Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam book The Things They Carried. Baumer endures a bombardment, is sequestered in a hospital, hunts rats, travels home on leave, falls in love with a French woman, complains about food, enjoys free time on latrines, and so on. The most famous episodes, like the confrontation with a French soldier in a shell hole, can stand on their own.

Remarque’s style is clear and simple, accessible to any reader, at times lyrical and passionate. He can offer elegant, heartbreaking passages like this:One morning two butterflies play in front of our trench. They are brimstone-butterflies, with red spots on their yellow wings. What can they be looking for here? There is not a plant nor a flower for miles. They settle on the teeth of a skull. (126)

Or this: How long has it been? Weeks - months - years? Only days. We see time pass in the colorless faces of the dying, we cram food into us, we run, we throw, we shout, we kill, we lie about, we are feeble and spent, and nothing supports us but the knowledge that there are still feebler, still more spent, still more helpless [new recruits] who, with staring eyes, look upon us as gods that escape death many times.(133)

Readers interested in World War One can extract a good amount of historical detail from the novel. Trench life appears throughout in good detail. Artillery bombardment episodes are terrifying. Other historical characteristics appear, as when the novel touches on Germans’ starvation thanks to the Entente’s blockade, as, for example, we learn of new recruits who previously lived mostly on turnips (36), or we follow the narrator and his sister in a long line “to get a pound or two of bones. That is a great favor” (179). Baumer’s unit spends time near a Russian prison camp, giving us a hint of the terrible Eastern Front and of defeated Russians (189ff). Later there is a glimpse of the shock of first encountering tanks:From a mockery the tanks have become a terrible weapon. Armored they come rolling on in long lines, more than anything else embody for us the horror of war… these tanks are machines, their caterpillars run on as endless as the war, they are annihilation, they roll without feeling into the craters, and climb up again without stopping, a fleet of roaring, smoke-belching armor-clads, invulnerable steel beasts squashing the dead and the wounded - we shrivel up in our thin skin before them, against their colossal weight our arms are sticks of straw, and our hand-grenades matches. (262)

In the final chapters we see 1918 and the beginning of German defeat:Our lines are falling back. There are too many fresh English and American regiments over there. There’s too much corned beef and white wheaten bread. Too many new guns. Too many aeroplanes. (290)

One theme familiar to readers of WWI poetry and fiction is the gap between soldier and civilian, between those who experience war and those who promote it. Remarque doesn’t neglect this, as one can see in an early passage: “We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than [their elders’]… 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 know that death throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers…” (12–13; yet see below). Spending time in a field hospital and overwhelmed by horror at woundings and deaths, Paul muses:How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. (263).

Here we also get a sense of the civilizational shock of the Great War, how radically it ruptured Europe’s sense of itself as the acme of progress. 

All Quiet on the Western Front offers a powerful and clear picture of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, but which the Allies then referred to as “shell shock”. Remarque emphasizes the psychological transformation Baumer and his peers experienced, which would shatter the rest of their lives. Paul describes the break between his civilian and postwar lives in terms of different wants: "…memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow - a vast, in apprehensible melancholy. Once we had such desires - but they return not. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us…" (121)

The novel’s treatment of PTSD as not just a psychological symptom but as human destruction might be its strongest theme. It’s announced right from the start with an opening note: “This book…will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” Toward the novel’s end Baumer reflects on himself: “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.” (263). On the penultimate page: “if we go back [home] we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way anymore. And men will not understand us…” (294)

All Quiet on the Western Front is famous for not only depicting one war but also encouraging the reader to oppose war in general. Time and again passages argue for war’s futility and uselessness. In a famous scene the soldiers around Paul dissect the reasons for war and show them to be groundless, even surreal or silly:‘A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.’

‘Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?’ growls Kropp. ‘I don’t mean that at all. One people offends the other -‘

‘Then I haven’t any business here at all,’ replies Tjaden. ‘I don’t feel myself offended…’” (204)
Elsewhere the Russians in detention aren’t terrible foes but "desperate, kind, and nearly holy fellow people."‘A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that every crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severs penalty fall, becomes our highest aim. But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles’ beards.’ 

Immediately after those sentences Remarque shifts register to sound a strongly anti-authoritarian note: “Any noncommissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us.” (194–5). Here we see how far Europe has come from the regimented social order of 1914, and gives us a hint of postwar unrest to come. Here is a true “lost generation”. This theme of near-rebellion builds through the novel. Toward the end, Baumer rails:I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world are experiencing these things with me. (263)
Recall his earlier pledge to not be a mutineer when he continues:What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing… Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us? (263-4)

More openly, later: “If there is not peace, then there will be revolution.” (293). That extreme claim, is defused in the next chapter, but its inclusion among an account of the discipline-intensive German army is as astonishing glimpse of how far things had fallen by 1918. 

All these themes are heightened by the novel’s famous conclusion, its last four sentences, where the title appears for the first time, and which I won’t spoil here.

Seen among its contemporaries, All Quiet on the Western Front has much in common with British antiwar writing. The tonal and thematic connections are clear. Episodes echo in verse, like Baumer’s shell crater encounter with a poilu and Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”. There are connections as well to the great British memoirs, Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933) and Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That (1929). Like Brittain, Remarque concludes with a pacifist message. 

American readers would find a similar theme and intensity of expression in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun (1939). The German novel has a great deal in common with Gabriel Chevallier’sFear (1930), which presents a similar approach: a narrator and a small group of fellow soldiers, brutal and intense frontline fighting. More precisely, Fear may owe a great deal to All Quiet.

It differs greatly from more adventure-themed contemporary novels. Remarque and Ernst Jünger both served on the Western Front, and Storm of Steel (1920) is a very different novel, often emphasizing the heroism of overcoming challenges and a sense of personal satisfaction. John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1916) is almost diametrically opposed to All Quiet, as it features an exciting espionage plot conducted from the highest reaches of the British command. There is suffering, but clearly in a good cause.

Considering literature and the past generation of historiography, we can see All Quiet as a fine novel that passionately takes one side in the great arguments over the first World War. There is no ultimate good to be achieved by the horrors Paul Baumer and his fellows endure. They don’t experience a learning curve of adapting to modern war. Instead, they represent the breakdown of Europe’s prewar order and the insurrectionist spirit it released. Remarque throws down a gauntlet to war and its leaders. Many subsequent creators and analysts have picked it up, but not all. It remains World War One’s great novel.

(originally published on the Roads to the Great War site)

All Quiet on the Western Front

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