The Ugly Reality of War
This remarkable novel conveys the true face of war in ways that no memoirs, no academic monographs, and no movies can. There is no romance in war, only mud, blood, starvation, and death. World War I was the war to end all wars, and it is quite appropriate that the Great War is the setting of this novel. Any idealism was quickly torn asunder by month after month, year after year of trench warfare. This is the story of one German soldier, a boy who was talked into joining the German army along with all of his classmates. At the front lines, Paul Baumer becomes a soldier. He and his buddies become primitive and animalistic because it is the only way to survive in that environment; thoughts of home or "the war" deprive them of the instincts they must rely on to avoid being killed. Baumer is philosophical enough to realize that he has essentially died inside, that every member of his generation has died spiritually if not physically and been robbed of a future. His trips home are perhaps the most painful days he spends; his family is living in poverty and his mother is dying of cancer. The emotions and feelings he takes back with him to the front are dangerous because they distract him. As for the fighting, the men seem to have no reason for being there. They speak of the fact that the enemy is just like them, young and scared. The French are fighting and believe that their cause is right, just as the Germans are. When he is guarding Russian prisoners, he sees them as men just like himself. There is a noticeable absence of commanders in the novel. What middling superior officers there are come across as cruel, cowardly pretenders. Himmelstoss, the "drill sergeant" type who trained these men to fight is a sickeningly cruel man who deserves the revenge the men are able to exact upon him when he finds himself sent to the front. When the Kaiser comes to review the troops, the men cannot understand why he let the war happen--after all, he supposedly did not want war, the German people did not want war, the French did not want war, yet there is war.
Remarque pulls no punches in describing man's inhumanity to man. The mud, the lice, the rats, the blood and gore, the gas attacks--that is...