Is it possible that an item as diminutive and seemingly unimportant as a novel could dig deep within one’s soul and create passionate feelings that are in juxtaposition with those described in the novel? Adolf Hitler portrayed this belief when he banned the selling of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front just prior to WWII. The novel, written by a German soldier during WWI, detailed his account of the war including the horrors of trench warfare, the lack of nutrition, and the other daily struggles he and his fellow soldiers endured. Hitler banned the selling of this book in Germany as a result of a rising fear that it would stir undesired feelings of negativity within the German soldiers as well as the common citizens of the country.
To begin with, Hitler’s primary reason for banning All Quiet on the Western Front had to deal more with his soldiers than society. At this point in time, Hitler’s top priority was to engineer a mass army to fight with the axis power in WWII. However, Hitler was well aware that upon reading All Quiet on the Western Front, no soldier would venture even remotely close to signing up for his army. The book graphically describes the repulsive lice, rats, and various other undesirable creatures the soldiers were forced to acknowledge. In one particular scene, the author explains the rigorous process of killing lice. “Killing each separate louse is a tedious business when each man has hundreds. The little beasts are hard and the everlasting cracking with one’s fingernails very soon becomes wearisome” (Remarque 75). Remarque also goes into detail about the terror the soldiers experienced as a result of viewing dead bodies throughout the war. Along with the rats, lice, and dead bodies, t...
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... of “strangeness”. He eventually finds himself regretting his visit home because it only increases the pain. Knowing this, Hitler does not wish for his civilians to see or experience the feelings of destroyed home lives that war causes. He realizes that this would prevent support for another world war.
Therefore, Hitler’s banning of All Quiet on the Western Front was performed for a myriad of reasons. He attempted to persuade the Germans that joining the army was beneficial and that Germany as a country was unbelievably strong. The book, however, suggested differently. Taking the most necessary and permanent action, Hitler banned the selling of Remarque’s genius novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, thus thrusting Germany, with one less obstacle, into the dangerous, disastrous, and deadly struggle that would forever be recorded in history as WWII.
Even though All Quiet on the Western Front showed bravery of a group of young German soldiers, the novel also showed the horror of trench warfare and the terrible conditions of war. Hitler not only knew that he had to ban the novel in order to ensure that the soldiers and German men would be willing to fight, but knew he had to ban the novel in order to get the German people on his side and gain their support. Adolf Hitler banned All Quiet on the Western Front so he could strengthen Germany and Germany’s military and achieve his goal of world domination.
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
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.
All Quiet on the Western Front. Literary Analysis The U.S. casualties in the "Iraqi Freedom" conquest totals so far at about sixteen thousand military soldiers. During WWI Germany suffered over seven million deaths.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow soldiers.
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that takes you through the life of a soldier in World War I. Remarque is accurately able to portray the episodes soldiers go through. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the change in attitudes of the men before and during the war. This novel is able to show the great change war has evolved to be. From lining your men up and charging in the eighteenth century, to digging and “living” in the trenches with rapid-fire machine guns, bombs, and flame-throwers being exposed in your trench a short five meters away. Remarque makes one actually feel the fun and then the tragedy of warfare. At the beginning of the novel Remarque gives you nationalist feelings through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war Remarque shows how pointless war really is. This is felt when everyone starts to die as the war progresses.
The main purpose of the book was to emphasize how far fear of Hitler’s power, motivation to create a powerful Germany, and loyalty to the cause took Germany during the Third Reich. During the Third Reich, Germany was able to successfully conquer all of Eastern Europe and many parts of Western Europe, mainly by incentive. Because of the peoples’ desires and aspirations to succeed, civilians and soldiers alike were equally willing to sacrifice luxuries and accept harsh realities for the fate of their country. Without that driving force, the Germans would have given up on Hitler and Nazism, believing their plan of a powerful Germany...
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.
All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Delbert Mann, is based on the novel written by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of a German schoolboy, Paul Baumer, and a group of his classmates, who journey from fantasies of heroic glory to the real horror of actual soldiering. Their journey is a coming of age tale that centers on the consternation of war and emphasizes the moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical deterioration suffered by the young soldiers.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
Adolf Hitlers’ Mein Kampf published July 18, 1925 outlined Hitler’s plan to reform Germany based on one true race. During this time period; shortly after World War One, Germany was on the bridge of economic, political, and social shambles. In 1919 the signing of the Treaty of Versailles threw Germany even closer to self destruction. The Treaty proposed new sanctions and relinquished territories from Germany, while in essence burdening the cost of the war on Germany. During this time of hardship the German people looked for a hero and a savior, who appeared in the image of Adolf Hitler bringing with him new ideas and a plan to return Germany to its hight in power. Based on the passage “A New form of Anti-Semitism” Hitler used the platform of anti-semitism to tighten his grip on an already weakened Germany referencing all that was wrong with the Jewish race and demeaning their purpose for existing. This one novella resulted in the rise of a new political party who tightened its grip on Germany and led to horrors in another World War that had never been seen before.
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth like soup left bodies to perish which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion they were murdered by fellow detainees. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war. This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through. The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.
The story of several schoolmates who symbolize a generation destroyed by the dehumanisation of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front tells of the men who died, and the tragically changed lives of those who survived. Remarque follows the story of Paul Bäumer, a young infantryman, from his last days of school to his death three years later. Whereas the journey motif is typically used to portray a positive character development, that of Paul is deliberately the opposite. In what has been dubbed the greatest antiwar novel of all time, Remarque depicts the way in which Paul is snatched away from humanity by the brutality of war. However while Paul and his comrades become separated from society, and begin to rely on their basic survival instincts, in their own surroundings they still show humane qualities such as compassion, camaraderie, support and remorse. Paul’s transformation from human to soldier begins in training camp, and is reinforced by the trauma at the front. His return home further alienates him from society, and Paul begins to feel safe at the front with his friends. Nonetheless throughout the novel suffering and mortality bare Paul’s true side, and he momentarily regains his former self. Bäumer, the German word for tree, is an early indication that Paul must remain firmly rooted in reality to survive the brutality of war.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel that greatly helps in the understanding the effects war. The novel best shows the attitudes of the soldiers before the war and during the war. Before the war there are high morals and growing nationalist feelings. During the war however, the soldiers discover the trauma of war. They discover that it is a waste of time and their hopes and dreams of their life fly further and further away. The remains of Paul Baumer's company had moved behind the German front les for a short rest at the beginning of the novel. After Baumer became Paul's first dead schoolmate, Paul viewed the older generation bitterly, particularly Kantorek, the teacher who convinced Paul and his classmates to join the military. " While they taut that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already that death-throes are stronger.... 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."(P. 13) Paul felt completely betrayed. " We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short." (P 139) Views of death and becoming more comfortable with their destiny in the r became more apparent throughout the novel. Paul loses faith in the war in each passing day. * Through out the novel it was evident that the war scarred the soldiers permanently mentally. Everyone was scared to go to war when it started.