Considered by many the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich Maria Remarque’s masterpiece of the German experience during World War I.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. . . .This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the … enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches.
Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive.
“The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.”—The New York Times Book Review
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I don’t know why, but this book grabbed when I first read it in high school, and I have read it over and over again on a somewhat annual schedule. Although it is about the German army, it has a universal application to every soldier in every war on every side. The thing that sticks with me the most is the loss of innocence and the lack of ability for society, universally, to reincorporate its soldiers. I think that i re-read this book because of the prose and because of the ideas and because it keeps me mindful of how we ought to treat those that make sacrifices for the rest of us.
Brilliant book, the greatest anti-war novel of all time. An indescribable up-close view of characters you love surviving through World War I.
I watched the movie with Robert Wightman (John Boy of The Walton’s fame) when I was a boy but the book is, like most movie adaptations, much better in the way of communicating Remarque’s experiences in the Great War.
I’m not sure why I’d never read this book before though I knew it was a classic. Was recommended by a combat vet who said All Quiet on the Western Front described “Coming Home” accurately. Moving and powerful. Highly recommend for anyone who wants a glimpse into a soldier’s life.
Perhaps the best war novel ever written.
We all need far more stories like this, especially now. Maintaining an unsustainable world and order of things can only lead to suffering and death. It’s a tough lesson but also compelling fiction.
A German soldier gives life to the tragedies of WWI.
A masterpiece, for which the Nazis beheaded the author’s sister when they couldn’t catch the author himself: in those days it was treason, I suppose, to refuse to glorify war.
Recommended.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a story narrated by Paul Baumer, a young German man who, a long with his friends, enlists in the German army during World War 1. No jingoist, he is clearly disillusioned at the opening pages, and becomes only more so throughout. His enlistment, we learn, was largely due to social pressure, personified by an arrogant teacher who bombarded his students with stories of false glory.
The story is episodic, with the only overarching narrative e being the course of the war, which Baumer, as a lowly soldier, barely glimpses. We see through his eyes, and what he sees are generally periods of boredom and hunger punctuated with week-long stretches of terror at the front. Stints on leave and at a military hospital broaden the picture further, giving a cross-section of life as a soldier at that time and place.
The descriptions are frank and horrific without being melodramatic. Indeed, the almost casual way in which Baumer details life as a soldier serves to reinforce the horror of the war. However, the prose isn’t always plain, and Remarque allows Baumer the odd poetic digression, without going beyond what a young German intellectual might reasonably say.
All told, the book deserves its reputation as a preeminent work of World War 1 fiction. It’s interesting to read as a Canadian with German heritage, as I have relatives who fought on both sides of that conflict. Baumer’s reflection on the war’s futility, and the perversion of killing men who share more in common with you than the generals and leaders who insist you do the killing, is a simple one, but its truth is profound.
Another moving novel. A real masterpiece.
This book showed the human side of WW1 from the German perspective. They were just boys in a war that changed them into men. They had seen things that they could never unsee and it showed their compassion for each other. Great read! Truly a classic.
Quite simply the best book written about the experience of the common soldier in World War I. It may also rank as one of the greatest pieces of literature dealing with young men in battle.
In its day it was ground breaking. It has had its day.
It still remains the classic story of the tragedy of war overspreading a young men’s lives.
Great story of how perceived glories of war meet the harsh realities of war.
I read this realistic portrayal of trench warfare during WW1 as part of my research on my work in progress about WW2. Although written in 1928 nothing feels dated about the writing. It takes the reader on a journey with the main character where he goes from a patriotic and idealistic teenager to a soldier tormented by the reality of war. One of the great works of all time.
Considered one of the best war novels ever written (i think Red Badge of Courage was better) we get a story of youth being smack in the face with the hammer of truth. Eager to do their part to serve their country 5 German students enlist, seeking the romance, the adventure and the glamour of service they find instead the waste and horror of war.
The book is relentless in its visualization of the nightmarish visuals of war and it holds back no punches. The book brings us face to face with flash backs of how life was before the enlistment and what life might have been.
“All Quiet on the Western Front” is anything but quiet and the book does a marvelous job of reminding us of that fact.
Ultra-realistic novel of WWI, “the war to end all wars” as seen by the men who fought and died in the infamous trenches. A must-read to understand war and the human condition.
Poetic, Brutal, and Hopeless Account of War
A remarkable and poetic book! No wonder this World War I novel, when it appeared in the late 1920s, almost singlehandedly refashioned the way in which World War I was viewed. It’s the single most powerful anti-war novel I’ve read — and I have read many books about the two World Wars. In fact it’s hard to do this book justice in a simple review.
Remarque lays out the utter futility of war. In language that is direct, concise, and eloquent, he unravels all its bleak layers. Through one German soldier’s narration (Paul), we learn about an entire generation of young men — lost in the inhumane reality and callousness of years in the trenches, overwhelmed by the deeply complex and mixed feelings a few days leave can cause, and relentlessly facing the randomness of sudden injury and death. These are boys really, forced into an initiation into adulthood that involves total immersion into filth, disease, hunger, fear and death — with virtually no respite. They no longer connect with their families of origin and hold no expectations for any future.
Nothing is left to the imagination. Paul starves, hides, kills, watches inept officers, examines prisoners of war, buries comrades, visits home, and witnesses the uneven quality of medical care to the injured. It’s a world where soldiers have only one another for support and comfort. “More intimate than lovers” as Remarque puts it. And yet, at the moment one of their own is about to die, the most pressing concern is who takes possession of the dying friend’s still-intact boots.
Often, while reading, I found I needed a break from passages that were so raw, disturbing or poignant. This is certainly not a book for the faint-hearted. It takes stamina to complete. At the same time, I wish it were required reading for any politician or general who thinks conflict is a responsible way to problem solve.
German teenager Paul Baumer tells his first person tale of enlisting into the German army with classmates and fighting on the western front in WW1. Baumer’s account, which is loosely auto-biographical based on the author’s own army service, is most memorable in a couple of ways. First, the moving emotional transformation of young soldiers during the war years from patriotic, energetic and optimistic to beaten, fatalistic and disillusioned. Second, the author’s use of short, declarative sentences paints intense images of battlefield death and misery that will not soon be forgotten. This title is familiar to millions from high school English class, when instructors offered their subtle insights to teach us that war is not to be glorified. The book was condemned and outlawed by the Nazis as inconsistent with the German spirit. No doubt it was antithetical to Nazi thinking and, for that reason alone, should continue to be read by generation after generation.
Was this review helpful? I am an avid world war based fiction reader and author. You can read more of my takes at https://brodiecurtis.com/curtis-takes/.
I barreled into this novel with very little information, and emerged absolutely amazed. What was presented to be a typical war narrative turned into something more haunting and altogether profound. The parallels that the authour is able to draw between the men torn apart between nation lines is astounding; for a good portion of the novel I believed Paul, the main character, to be American rather than German. This novel is a blatant apostle of truth, one that will stun you and impact you on a level that spans nearly a century.