All Quiet on the Western Front Book Review
World War I is one of the bloodiest wars in history, second only to World War II. However, the origins of World War I are not nearly as straight forward as that of World War II. Radicalism had moved to become a major focus in the east, because industry and civil rights were struggling there. The great powers and nations of the world were divided into blocks of alliances (as pictured above). War seemed inevitable in the Balkans because of nationalism and threats to break the Austro-Hungarian Empire apart. In the First Morocco Crisis in 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm II made a pro-Moroccan Independence speech that was intended to hurt the French, but inadvertently hurt the British as well. This was because other nations, which Britain valued for trade reasons, wanted independence. Then, in the Second Morocco Crisis, Germany was taking large strides to grow their navy. Later, one of Germany’s ships made a port of call in Morocco; soon after, the Agadir Crisis resulted, and Germany became a threat to Britain. Thus, the Balkan Wars commence. Ultimately, the reason World War I erupted was because of tensions in the Balkans. Later, other nations were forced to join in when, in August of 1914, Austria- Hungary declared war on Serbia and the alliance system came into play. Germany gives a “blank check” of support to Austria-Hungary, so Britain is forced to enter the battle when Germany breached the sovereignty to the “BENELUX” nations.
At the start of this conflict, the attitude of German soldiers was surprisingly optimistic. From 1900-1914, all Europeans were rather positive and happy. Education and literacy were present in all social classes. The middle class was prosperous, and the wor...
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...umanity and dignity. However, my respect for Paul increased greatly as he shared cigarettes with the Russian prisoners. I appreciated that Paul could not understand why these men were supposed to be his enemy as they had never really done anything personal to him. I also appreciated that the name of the man Paul killed was revealed, because it gave his death a sense of humanity rather than making him just another dead body. Lastly, I was shocked that the men could possibly be so accustomed to bombings and desperate for food that they saved their food before evacuating a bombing. Remarque did an excellent job of making readers feel for and know Paul as a human being rather than just another body to add to a death count. He reveals the true agony and horrors behind the war that one cannot truly appreciate without experiencing the front via a first hand account.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
Paul and I are united on the grounds of age and nothing more, yet somehow, while following him through his service in the War, I feel connected to him. After finishing the novel, I ruminated on this idea for some time and eventually came to the conclusion that the connection I feel with Paul is a mixture of empathy and envy. I empathize with him because he put down the pen and took up the rifle in service of his country, just as I would do if called upon. I envy him because he exudes the qualities of a brilliant soldier, meticulous narrator, and man of faith even in times of mortal danger, especially in times of mortal danger. In the midst of the worst bombardment he has yet to face, Paul shines his brightest by illuminating in vivid detail not only the hellish onslaught unfolding around him, but also the intr...
German propaganda spread throughout Germany like wildfire. The glory and enthusiasm of going to war to fight for your country aims and ideals was the mood set. Everyone wanted to be a hero, and if you did not want to fight than you would be thought of as a coward,.. “ because at the time even one’s parents were ready with the word ‘Coward’..” (Remarque p.11). The elders glorified war by writing and talking about it, expressing that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing. The soldiers saw the hideous wounds and dying men and distinguishing the false from the true, realizing that there is nothing of their world left. That is how Paul Baumer felt when he was in the Catholic hospital with his friend and comrade Albert Kropp. Looking around at all the wounded solders he saw what a waste war was. Up until this war, nobody had ever seen such a destructive war, partly due to all the advanced technology, and therefore none of the great world powers knew what they were getting themselves into. “ To shed one’s blood for the fatherland is not difficult it is enveloped in romantic heroism” (McKay/Hill/Bucker 904) as explained by a German soldier who volunteered for the front. The fact that the whole country of Germany was patriotic, energetic, and unified towards the war effort glorified it even that much more. Who would not want to fight for their homeland at that time? “ We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character” (Remarque 21). Once these combatants experienced the real life threats such as poisonous gasses, rapid machine gun fire and a constant flurry of explosive shells, these were propelled into a New World of killing or being killed. They are fighting with animal like instincts and all their proper manners that they are raised with vanish.
To Pursue Remarque’s tone farther, his tone throughout this novel was rather easy to find because of the horrific, depressing, yet at the same time a little sympathetic, scenes. Paul explains a scene after a bombardment, “In the branches dead men are hanging. A naked soldier is squatting in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad. There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing” (93). The bombs are killing several men at a time. Paul not only observes this in real life, he ultimately has to live through it. Once a war has been going on for a long period, the soldiers know that war is all about death.
This book is a study of the personal tales of many single mothers, with intentions to understand why single mothers from poor urban neighborhoods are increasingly having children out of wedlock at a young age and without promise of marrying their fathers. The authors chose to research their study in Philadelphia’s eight most devastated neighborhoods, where oppression and danger are high and substantial job opportunities are rare. They provide an excellent education against the myth that poor young urban women are having children due to a lack of education on birth control or because they intend to work the welfare system. Instead, having children is their best and perhaps only means of obtaining the purpose, validation and companionship that is otherwise difficult to find in the areas in which they live. For many of them, their child is the biggest promise they have to a better future. They also believe that though their life may not have been what they want, they want their child to have more and better opportunities and make it their life’s work to provide that.
In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul, the main character is a nineteen-year-old man who voluntarily joins the German army to fight in World War I against the French. Paul went into the war full of nationalism and ready to fight for his country. Soon after entering training, Paul began to realize that there is way more to war than just fighting for his country. Because it contains evidence of dehumanization and disconnectedness with the world, Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front reveals soldiers who are blindsided by the effects war has on them.
All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and
In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Maria Remarque reveals a dimmer sense of the cost of war. The main character in the book, German soldier, Paul Baumer, embodies the cost of war before he reaches his ultimate fate. The tactics and weapons used in World War 1 were more advanced compared to the past as a result of the industrial revolution. Germany was forced to fight a two-front war and this intensified the losses suffered by soldiers like Paul and the other men in the Second Company (Gomez 2016, German Strategy for a Two-Front War – Modern Weapons: War and the Industrial Revolution). Remarque’s observations that he shares with readers are not to World War 1 because it portrayed not only the physical but mental consequences of combat. Regardless of what era of war soldiers were involved in they were the ones who paid the price for facing so much death.
Paul Baumer is a 19-year-old volunteer to the German army during World War I. He and his classmates charge fresh out of high school into military service, hounded by the nationalist ranting of a feverish schoolmaster, Kantorek. Though not all of them want to enlist, they do so in order to save face. Their first stop is boot camp, where life is still laughter and games. “Where are all the medals?” asks one. “Just wait a month and I’ll have them,” comes the boisterous response. This is their last vestige of boyhood.
The Forgotten Soldier is not a book concerning the tactics and strategy of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Nor does it analyze Nazi ideology and philosophy. Instead, it describes the life of a typical teenage German soldier on the Eastern Front. And through this examined life, the reader receives a first hand account of the atrocious nature of war. Sajer's book portrays the reality of combat in relation to the human physical, psychological, and physiological condition.
The underlying cause of World War 1 were the alliances within Europe. An alliance meant that if one country goes to war than the country associated will also fight. All the countries were picking sides before the war started. Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor that led the unification of the German states, did not like the fact that Germany was between Russia and France. “Bismarck formed the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy in the year preceding
Remarque introduces Paul at the beginning of the novel as a veteran. We never see his first days in combat, but we do see comparable experiences in the battles of the replacement soldiers. Paul comments in the beginning on the secrets to staying alive in the trenches by learning the skill of differentiating between the different kinds of shells by the sounds that they make. He can distinguish between gas shells, trench mortars, and long range artillery by saying, “That was a twelve-inch, you can tell by the report. Now you’ll hear the burst (52).” and imparts this key knowledge to the recruits. These actions exemplify Paul’s character at the beginning of the novel. He cares about the other soldiers and uses his veteran’s status as a source of knowledge for the volunteers. Paul has light humor in regards to a soldier’s life as well. This quote exhibits Paul’s carefree attitude toward his situation,
Although France and Britain were natural enemies, their fear of Germany united them together with Russia. These alliances set the final stage for the beginning of World War I. Each country in each alliance would help each other during warfare. For example, if Germany attacked France, Britain and Russia would help France, and Italy and Austria would help Germany, dragging Europe into a state of chaos and violence. & nbsp;& nbsp;& nbsp;& nbsp;& nbsp;Militarism was also an underlying cause of World War I. As the alliance system divided Europe into opposing groups, each nation began to increase spending on its military.
There were several long-term events that led to the outbreak of World War One. The most prominent factors include: nationalism, militarism, imperialism, the Balkan and Morocco crises, and the alliance system. Ironically, these things were either started in response to, or upheld because of, one of the other factors. The alliance system was one of the last factors to emerge before the war. Consequentially, the contributions of this system to the beginning of the Great War have to be considered. Although the alliance system was a main cause of the First World War, it arose because of several other factors, and did not cause the war single handedly.
There are many reasons why World War One occurred in 1914, many are complex and remain controversial which is why the matter has been disputed to this day by historians all over the world. My theory is that a lot of those reasons and the trigger factor all links to one thing; the alliance system. The alliance system is what made countries oppose each other and become rivals making it the most significant factor. It had an impact on who supported who when Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. This was only the spark that started war in Europe; there were long term causes that contributed to the war and were the origins. This answer will explain the causes focusing on how they contributed to World War One and what the important links are between them.