All Quiet On the Western Front

World War One was started by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia of Austria in 1914 and than the war continued until 1918. This war was between the allied powers France, England, Russia and the United States of America and the central powers of Germany, Austria-Hungry and Turkey. The German government had sided with Austria and had agreed that they would support Austria. The political leadership in Germany didn’t really desire to be involved in the war but was pulled in by their pre-war alliance to Austria but other factors that influenced Germany’ participation were nationalism, imperialist competition, and militarism.
Nationalism was a product of unified Germany that occurred around 1871. Under Otto Von Bismark’s leadership he accomplished major architect building of a nation by the creation of a united Germany. His accomplishments were a mammoth success in land growth. This was a period in Germany’s history where a dramatic nation building was accomplished by unifying multiple territories and states using military force. Germany had been transformed into a major continental power. Consequently people of various political beliefs agreed that national unity was the ultimate goal and Germany was high on success and felt invincible.
On the home front the German citizens supported and glorified war and consequently welcomed war and cheered about it under the premise of nationalism. The feelings for the need to expand national unity were strong and people thought that war would make them even greater and all agreed that Germany could not forfeit any land. To date Germany had never lost a major conflict and many of the populous had been raised with strong feelings of nationalism. The German government had spread propaganda that the war would not last very long. The German people did not recognize the inability of their emperor Kaiser William to lead with military savvy as past leaders had done.
The government, with the support of the German people’s encouragement, recruited young, under educated boys from schools and universities. They told the boys that it was their duty to serve for their country and that if they accepted and conscripted, the war would be a very beautiful and glorious opportunity for them and if they died for their country they would be considered national heroes. These young men were usually between the ages of 18 and 19 and had no idea what war was all about. They joined the German army quickly because they were naïve, excited, sought adventure, wanted to travel and thought they would miss out on something if they didn’t go right away because the war would be short lived. In the end they would all find out that war is not glorious, that they had been misled and that they would be exposed to the most horrific horrors and 2 million would die.
After returning from the war front in 1929 Erich Maria Remarque wrote the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Remarque was a German citizen who had experienced the war first hand and was angry about being a part of it. Remarque a young German man was enticed to join the war through propaganda. He like many others was young and left school to join in the cause due to the encouragement from others. The war novel is seen through the eyes of 19 year old Paul Baumer and his classmates. The young men in the novel would find out quickly that war was not a glorious event. The war was a nightmare and there was no way out of their dilemma. “All at once everything seems to me confused and hopeless. Kropp feels it too. It will go pretty hard with us all. But nobody at home seems to worry much about it. Two years of shells and bombs-a man won’t peel that off as easy as a sock” (Remarque 87).
They would fight everyday without really knowing who or why they were fighting. The young men wanted to go home and had a better solution to war than having men fight. “Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it among them selves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting” (Remarque 40).
The western front was formed by the Germans as they continued to advance into France. The front itself really consisted of deep trenches that the men dug out, lived, built close relationships, hid and fought from for days at a time, hence the name of Remarque’s book “I listen; the sound is behind me. They are our people moving along the trench. At once a new warmth flows through me. These voices, these few quiet words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound from terrible loneliness and fear of death by which I had been almost destroyed. They are more to me that 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” (Remarque 215).
He wrote about how the soldiers would march for miles and food was very scarce. “We bagged five tins altogether. The fellows over there are well looked after; it seems a luxury to us with our hunger-pangs, our turnip jam, and meat so scarce that we simply grab at it. Haie has scored a thin loaf of white French bread, and stuck it in behind his belt like a spade. It is a bit bloody at one corner, but that can be cut off” (Remarque118). At night they couldn’t sleep because of the constant bombing outside and rats. They would dream of when they would be home again. Some of the men in the company had wives and children and farms they wanted to see again. But Paul and his friends didn’t feel that they really had anyone or anything to go back to but Paul dreamed of falling in love. He stated that “Between the glowing columns of the cloister is the cool darkness that only churches have, and I stand there and wonder whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love”(Remarque119). He was a romantic man and wanted to experience love like older men in his company had but he would never get the chance because at the close of the novel he is killed in action.
The war progressed on and bankrupted the German government. Because Germany depended upon outside trade there were no guns or ammunition and they resorted to hiring chemists to help alleviate lacking war supplies by substitution. The war lasted much longer than the German government had promised. The farmers lacked laborers to work the lands because many of the young men were dying in battle. Consequently there was a massive food shortage and many of the German people died from starvation. They had lost 50% of their milk supply and had no potatoes for the winter and experienced in 1916-1917 winters of the turnips, a food previously feed to animals, just to survive.
After the war the streets were not safe because the German government had been so disorganized that they had no system to disarm the soldiers and the streets were full of wandering, armed and disillusioned soldiers when they returned home. If the soldiers survived the war they came home to food shortage and many would die from weakness, disease or starvation. 750,000 people died after the war because of starvation.
The German people could not accept losing the war. They blamed their weak politicians for their defeat. Consequently they forced their emperor Kaiser William II out of power. The war brought with it severe economic disaster, a serious loss of manpower, traumatized civilians, and protests that included previous soldiers. The whole country was especially angry over the Treaty of Versailles. The German government and people were forced to forfeit already acquired lands and were subject to huge war debts.
Consequently when Remarque wrote his novel one can understand the tone of the book. Many have classified this book as an antiwar book, but it is also a book about the perilous of war done under an unnecessary and false rationalization. He wrote the book in 1929 exposing within his literature the bare, gruesome facts of an unsuccessful endeavor. His book was accepted by the German people and they could not dispute his explanations and human reactions. The German people had suffered a plight too by being deceived and suffered the consequences in a variety of ways. It becomes very clear why the German people were so ripe to accept the mad screaming propaganda of promises made by Adolph Hitler. As Hitler gained strength Remarque’s book came into major dispute. Hitler ordered all the books of All Is Quiet on the Western Front burned in 1933. Remarque escaped Germany with his family to America and lived out his days. However his sister remained in Germany and was eventually captured, tortured and killed by Hitler’s new regime as a substitute for Remarque. By destroying anyone or anything that disputed him, Hitler was preparing the German government for a new leadership, a promise of renewed power and recognition as a force to reckon with.

Works Cited
Remarque, Erich. All Quiet on the Western Front. Boston: Little Brown and Company. 1928. Print

Hunt, Lynn et.al. The Making of the West. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin. 2007. Print

Lualdi, Katharine. Sources of the Making of the West. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin. 2010. Print