All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

   1929; 291 pages.  Book 1 (of 2) in the “All Quiet on the Western Front” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Highbrow Lit; German Literature; War Fiction; World War 1.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    World War One.  The Great War.  The War to end all Wars.  What image comes into your head when you hear those phrases?

 

    Probably you envision American (or British, or French) soldiers, huddled in a long trench replete with pools of stagnant water, all wearing helmets and looking up at the camera with miserable eyes.

 

    Alternatively, you might picture those soldiers climbing out of the trench, rifles in hand, all wearing gas masks (there was no griping about constitutional rights back then), preparing to throw themselves across a mine-laden no-man’s land, knowing that many of them are about to die, and carried out to gain a couple of yards of meaningless muck.  Could life get any worse than this?

 

    Well, yeah.  You could be a German soldier, in a sopping-wet trench, with a gas mask on, in the same miserable conditions, but outmanned and outgunned, and having to face all those charging doughboys.

 

What’s To Like...

    When it was published in 1929, All Quiet on the Western Front was an immediate hit in the United States despite the fact that the war had been over for more than a decade.  It was subsequently made into a movie twice, once in 1930, then again in 1979.  Although fictional, the book is based upon the author’s own front-line war experiences in 1917.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, that of 19-year-old Paul Baumer, who, along with his fellow German soldiers tries to cope with horrendous battle conditions, heavy casualties, incompetent officers, well-meaning but clueless civilians, and the required blind loyalty to a futile cause.

 

    Despite being a translation (by A.W. Wheen) from the original German, the writing is powerful.  You can feel the terror and despair when the German lines are bombed or shelled: there is no escape from it; you just hope that the explosives don’t happen to fall on you.  Your life is in the hands of a few trusted comrades; when one of them dies it is crushing.  Duties such as guarding Russian prisoners-of-war are gut-wrenching because you can empathize more with those fellow sufferers than with your own military and political leaders. Even getting to go back to your hometown on leave doesn’t relieve the stress (PTSD hadn’t been discovered yet) because your family and friends cannot possibly  understands what you’re going through and you desperately don't want to talk about it.  

 

    The missions Paul goes on further emphasize his wretched situation.  Laying down barbed wire is a life-threatening affair, since it by definition means you’re on the front lines.  Going on patrol means risking getting separated from your comrades, being stuck in a shell hole in no man’s land, and praying that the next person that drops into your tiny shelter is a friend, not an enemy.  Keep your gas mask with you at all times, learn how to quickly yet properly put it on, and for heaven's sake, don't take it off too soon.

 

     There are a few blessed moments of brightness.  At one point Paul and his comrades manage to find some female companionship.  It involves considerable risk and some bartering (civilians trapped on the front lines are starving too), but provides a brief but much-needed relief from the fighting.  At another point, Paul, wounded and confined to a stretcher, is embarrassed as he tries to find a way to tell a cute nurse that he needs to take a leak.  I had to google an obscure reference to a salty quote from Goethe’s “Gotz von Berlichingen”, but it was surprisingly easy to find and made me chuckle.

 

     The ending is easy to anticipate, but it nevertheless left a lump in my throat.  Unfortunately for Paul, there aren’t any plot twists, and the final resolution almost brings a sense of relief.  The title reference doesn’t occur until the final page, and isn’t a direct translation: in German, it is “Im westen nichts neues” which literally means “Nothing new in the west”.  All Quiet on the Western Front is a standalone novel, although I learned there is a sequel.

 

Excerpts...

    Morning is come.  The explosions of mines mingles with the gun-fire.  That is the most dementing convulsion of all.  The whole region where they go up becomes one grave.

    The reliefs go out, the observers stagger in, covered with dirt, and trembling.  One lies down in silence in the corner and eats, the other, a reservist-reinforcement, sobs; twice he had been flung over the parapet by the blast of the explosions without getting any more than shell-shock.

    The recruits are eyeing him.  We must watch them, these things are catching, already some lips begin to quiver.  (pg. 105)

 

    “Almost all of us are simple folk.  And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks.  Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us?  No, it is merely the rulers.  I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as regards us.  They weren’t asked about it any more than we were.”

    “Then what exactly is the war for?” asks Tjaden.

    Kat shrugs his shoulders.  “There must be some people to whom the war is useful.”

    “Well, I’m not one of them,” grins Tjaden.  (pg. 207)

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Importune (v.) : to harass (someone) persistently for or to do something.

Others: Perambulator (n., British); Dixie (n.); Baldaquin (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 6,049 ratings and 1,996 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.01*/5, based on 386,474 ratings and 12,221 reviews.

 

“We are losing the war because we can salute too well.”  (pg. 39)

    There’s not much to quibble about in All Quiet on the Western Front.  The tone is dark and grim, yet has very few cusswords: I counted only four “damns” through the first quarter of the book, proving once again that great writers can get their message across with only a paucity of vulgarity.

 

    The translation is from German to "English", not  "American", so I occasionally encountered weird things like bathing-drawers, lorries, nerve-centres, and a carcase.  Yet distances were given in miles, not metres, so maybe the translation was into Canadian.

    Also, please be advised that horses played a major role in World War One, and inevitably suffered major casualties as well. 

 

    All Quiet on the Western Front conveys a sobering message about the horrors of war and the need to resort to it only as a last resort.  The fact that we witness this through the eyes of an enemy soldier just makes it all that more powerful.  It is easy to see why this book became an instant classic.

 

    9 Stars.  Reading All Quiet on the Western Front enables me to reach my yearly goals for reading both “Highbrow Literature” (at least one per annum) and “Banned Books” (also at least one per annum).  The latter one is a bit of a stretch, since the countries that banned it were Nazi Germany (for the rather obvious reason of portraying the Fatherland in a bad light); and Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy (all of which objected to its “anti-war” theme).  AFAIK, it was not banned here in the US.