...Remarque’s anti-war novel tapped into the global sorrow and sense of nationalism created by World War I. His inspiration stemmed from his own time spent as a German soldier. War novels before All Quiet on the Western Front tended to romanticize war, as well as emphasize patriotism, nationalism, and glory. Remarque refutes this tradition by exposing its meaningless violence of war. “While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded dying. While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger” (64). Dying for one’s country is the greatest sense of nationalism, however this novel argues that there is never a just cause for war. Remarque characterizes Paul Baumer as an expression of his own political standpoint of opposition to nationalism, a major “ism” of the twentieth century. Nationalism played a valuable role in the twentieth century and is arguably one of the main causes of World War I. Although nationalism can serve for unifying a country, it can also cause intense pride and competition between countries. In the early 1900s, nationalism created a fierce competition and rivalry between Europe’s powers. These powers were the nations of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, and France. In order to advance and be the greatest nation, competition both militarily and economically broke out. Germany, especially, took advantage of this immense since of nationalism, by seducing young...
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...to error or intervention from outside influences. In addition, staff officers lacked sufficient battle experience or enemy intelligence to plan battles that their troops were capable of meeting the promised outcome. These situations are the foundation for the perception that the public held about the concept of war that differed from what the young men on the front actually faced. Prior to World War I, the Napoleonic Wars took place almost 100 years prior from 1792 to 1815. Only stories existed about the horrors of battle with those who fought long dead. Without an oral history of what the troops experienced on the battled field the public perceived service and death in combat as the ultimate sacrifice to support ones county. This also dovetailed into the perception that society was only going to get better with the improvement in science and technology (Meyers). In Rupert Brooke’s “Peace” he wrote “And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping” and “Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move” (Brooke). These phrases in his poem established that young men at home were ignorant of what was going on around them and ignoring their duty to country if they did not serve. Once overseas the young faced the realities of war. Robert Graves, an Englishman that served in the trenches of World War I, provides details of what he experienced in the trenches in his autobiography Good-Bye To All That. After his arrival at the front, he describes one of his first trips...
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...“The sound of the gunfire from the front penetrates into our refuge. The glow of the fire lights up our faces, shadows dance on the wall. Sometimes a heavy crash leans to shivers.” (Remarque 94) Winston Churchill may have been thinking about how life was a constant living hell for the soldiers that fought in World War I when he said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” That is exactly what the soldiers did in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel and Lewis Milestones selfsame named movie, All Quiet on the Western Front. The brutalities of war not only destroyed these men physically, but mentally. These soldiers lost their sense of humanity and could not experience reality like they did before they went to war. When the author says, “We reach the zone where the front begins and become instant human animals.” (Remarque 56) he wants the readers to realize that the second the soldiers were on the front they lost all sense of humanity. They lived in conditions that were mucky, fetid, and infested with disease. The English Oxford Dictionary defines an animal as “A person without human attributes or civilizing influences, especially someone who is very cruel, violent, or repulsive.” The author chose the word animal because an animal does...
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