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All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel Mass Market Paperback – March 12, 1987

by Erich Maria Remarque (Author), A W. Wheen (Translator)

4.7 18,572 ratings

Book 1 of 2: All Quiet on the Western Front

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The masterpiece of the German experience during World War I, considered by many the greatest war novel of all time—with an Oscar–winning film adaptation now streaming on Netflix.

“[Erich Maria Remarque] is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank.”—The New York Times Book Review

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 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.

From the Publisher

All Quiet on the Western Front;military books;historical fiction;literary;wwi book;historical novel

WARNING: California’s Proposition 65

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

From the Inside Flap

Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--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 trank, 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

From the Back Cover

Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--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 trank, 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

About the Author

Erich Maria Remarque, who was born in Germany, was drafted into the German army during World War I. Through the hazardous years following the war he worked at many occupations: schoolteacher, small-town drama critic, race-car driver, editor of a sports magazine. His first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, was published in Germany in 1928. A brilliant success, selling more than a million copies, it was the first of many literary triumphs. When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerland. He rejected all attempts to persuade him to return, and as a result he lost his German citizenship, his books were burned, and his films banned. He went to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1947. He later lived in Switzerland with his second wife, the actress Paulette Goddard. He died in September 1970.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction by Norman Stone

For some years after the end of the First World War the memoirs of generals and statesmen dominated publication about it – none more prominently than Churchill’s great classic, The World Crisis (1923). Then, quite suddenly, ten years down the line, came the other side, the horror, the view from below. The British had lost almost a million men dead, the French over a million, and the Germans nearly two, mainly on the Western Front, where thousands of guns churned up the mud. War cripples hobbled the streets of Berlin, and are recorded in the bitter Twenties paintings of Georg Grosz and Otto Dix. Writers followed – in Great Britain, amongst the earliest books were Richard Aldington’s novel Death of a Hero (1929) and Robert Graves’s memoir Goodbye to All That (1929), the most famous of them all. I was given it as a Christmas present when I was fifteen and read it at a session. At the time, the mid- Fifties, there were men around, not even sixty, who had gone through the Western Front but you could never get them to talk about it. British critics did not attack ‘the system’, they tended to dwell on the incompetence of the generals. The French had a rather similar experience, in that the from-below story of 1914-18 surfaced with Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), which is brilliant black farce. Celine, who had volunteered in 1912, entered the War with the usual young man’s patriotism, and was badly maimed at an early stage; and he made a mockery of the whole business. But there is not really any French, let alone British or American, equivalent of the bitterness and edge that went into the paintings of Dix and Grosz. Two films come the closest – Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) which started off as a musical (1963) by Joan Littlewood based on the songs of the poor bloody infantry, and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957). On the literary side, the German Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) is in a class of its own. It appeared not long before the Wall Street Crash started a process that was soon to give Germany eight million unemployed, and the Chancellorship of Adolf Hitler. Not just the Nazis banned it; so did the Lord Mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, a Centre Party Catholic and later first Chancellor of West Germany. Official Germany would not accept any responsibility for the War. In 1923 the legal scholar Hermann Kantorowicz put in a memorandum to the Reichstag ‘War Guilt’ committee, showing that three quarters of the published documents from 1914 were false, and even the ‘good German’ Gustav Stresemann tried to stop him from getting a Chair, and suppressed the report.

This is all understandable, because Germany did face a war indemnity, ‘reparations’, designed to cripple her for two generations, and to suggest that she had caused the War counted as treachery. But so did criticism of the army (and the fourteen-volume official history, besides being incomplete, was almost free of it). Exposing the reality was left to a writer such as Remarque.

For Germans the War had ended in defeat and disillusion. It had been a four-year epic of sacrifice, and there had been spectacular successes, from the capture of Russian Poland in 1915 through Caporetto in 1917, when the Italian front imploded, to the March Offensive of 1918, which destroyed the British Fifth Army. German generals had a panache lacking on the Allied side, almost to the end, and it is notable in All Quiet on the Western Front that there is very little criticism or mockery of generals, let alone officers, who come off well – understanding and humane. The Germans shot far fewer of their own men than did the British. When the armistice happened, attempts were made to imitate the Russian Revolution in which Soldiers’ Councils had challenged the authority of their officers. Far from being revolutionary, the German Soldiers’ Councils voted for Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg to be their overall president (he declined). Even so, some 25,000 German prisoners of war did join the Red Army. The end of the War saw bitter political recriminations: the Left blamed the Right for starting it, and the Right blamed the Left for stopping it, for giving the fighting troops a ‘stab in the back’. This civil war was always latent in the Weimar Republic, and it flared up again when the Wall Street Crash ended properly democratic government (in 1930: thereafter governments ruled by emergency decree). The civil war culminated in the victory, in 1933, of the Nazis. It also resulted in the emigration of Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet was one of the Nazis’ burned books.

Remarque was not a Communist or even, it seems, anything much. He was born (1898) into a skilled working-class family in Osnabruck, his father a printer, and attended Catholic schools. When he turned eighteen, in 1916, he was conscripted, and after some basic training (All Quiet is biting about that; the sadistic Corporal Himmelstoss is an archetype of military memoirs, where bright young men encounter maniacal and petty disciplinarians) he was drafted to Flanders. The British Offensive – we know it as Passchendaele, from the village the capture of which, after 400,000 casualties, allowed victory to be absurdly declared – was about to start, and Remarque was badly wounded on its first day, 31 July 1917, spending much of the rest of the War in hospital. He kept a notebook and recorded the men’s stories as he heard them. They form the basis for All Quiet.

There were two (at least) unique features of the Great War. For civilian conscripts, there was vast disillusion with everything that they had been taught by Authority; and then there was the sheer anonymity of the killing. Of Remarque’s class of twenty schoolboys in All Quiet, at least half get killed – the narrator, Paul Baumer, just a week or two before the armistice of November 1918 – five or more are wounded, and one ends up in a lunatic asylum. They are all caught up in the tremendous Materialschlachten, the industrial slaughter, that killed over nine million soldiers and maimed many, many more. This was an artillery war, and the guns multiplied in number, power and range; huge technical skill was involved (for instance, plotting by sound-range where, on a grid-map, an enemy gun was sited). Time and again, Remarque’s boys are knocked out by shelling. The ordeal involved is well-expounded in the last scene of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong (1993) where the hero digs himself out of a great mound of mud and corpses, such as these heavy shells threw up. They, rather than the legendary machine-guns, caused three-quarters of the casualties. It is extraordinary that the generals started out with an assumption that this would be a war rather like that of 1870-71, between France and Prussia – infantry charging in clumps, bayonets outstretched, cavalry sweeping forward, and fortresses holding out bravely under siege; and of course there was the widespread illusion that the war would be short, an illusion spread as much by bankers and economists as by generals. But artillery could smash even the stoutest fortress, cavalry were helpless targets for modern rifles, and the French learned in August 1914 just how vulnerable their charging infantry clumps were to shrapnel. Remarque’s schoolboys were confronted almost at once with a war that they had not imagined. And they had also been let down by men in authority. When the war broke out, Germany was vilified for the invasion of neutral Belgium (Germans became ‘the Hun’ in the British press) and over 1,300 of the most prominent academics signed a pompous Intellektuelleneingabe – ‘petition of the intellectuals’ – associating the great names of German civilization with tub-thumping nationalist nonsense, instead of appreciating that the War was a sort of suicide. On a less exalted level, schoolteachers, the pride of Prussia, shovelled their sixth forms into uniform, as happened with Paul Baumer’s class. Once they were at the front, what were they to make of these maniacal schoolteachers who had filled their heads with such useless nonsense as French irregular verbs and the population of Melbourne? In All Quiet the hero wonders whether they ever could get back to normal, after the war, but they did – those who survived. Remarque himself knocked around for a few years, which included primary school teaching (often an essential booster-stage for something else), then, aged twenty-two, published a vaguely radical-right novel he soon wished he had not written, and drifted into sports journalism for a large media concern. Then, at thirty, he produced the work for which he is remembered. All Quiet on the Western Front became an international bestseller, and was snapped up by Hollywood for a record sum. Not surprisingly, like the early works of Graham Greene or Eric Ambler, who also thought cinematically, it made an excellent film. Early in the novel, Paul recalls the population-of-Melbourne maniac getting his seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds as a class to march down the street and volunteer in 1914. One of them, Josef Behm, under-age and overweight, does not want to go, attack, and we left him for dead . . . That afternoon we suddenly heard him shout out and saw him crawling around in no man’s land. He had only been knocked unconscious. Because he couldn’t see and was mad with pain he didn’t take cover, so he was shot down from the other side before anyone could get out to fetch him.’ (This colloquially rendered passage is characteristic of Professor Brian Murdoch’s excellently readable translation.) The War, which had started with cavalry and charging infantry, turned into a long artillery epic, and there are some splendid descriptions of bombardment (Allan Mallinson recalls that no man is an atheist under bombardment, but God – and clergymen – are missing from Remarque’s pages). One after another, the boys go. Second is Kemmerich, at first unaware, in hospital, that his leg has been amputated; there is some awkwardness among his visitors as to whether they should just take his special English airman’s soft-leather boots; Muller wants them, saying his own boots are so bad that even his blisters get blisters. The soldiers’ deaths are recorded intermittently, interspersed with bitter comments and dramatically described events of trench warfare. A failed French attack gives rise to the most memorable scene in the film, which sticks in my mind sixty years after seeing it. Baumer, on forward observation, takes shelter in a shell hole, and a French soldier stumbles in. Baumer’s instinctive reaction is to stab him, and the Frenchman takes hours to die, the German dressing his wounds, giving him water and talking to him even after he is finally dead. He looks into the man’s wallet to identify him, and finds letters from his wife, photographs of his children in a village somewhere. There are other scenes of fraternization, but they are with French girls. Remarque’s general idea is that it is all hellish and that the only sort of meaning to be found is in the cameraderie involved, as Paul and his friends find ways of dealing with rats or with the lack of decent food, or take revenge on the sadistic training corporal whom they encounter again at the front. The description of a fortnight’s home leave is particularly harrowing, as Baumer finds he has nothing to say to his father. And there are still old saloon-bar wiseacres, showering him with cigars, who tell him how the War should be won: ‘aber vor allem muss die gegnerische Front in Flandern durchbrochen und dann von oben aufgerollt werden’ – as if the Flanders front could easily be ‘broken through and then rolled up’.

The wiseacres hated the book, seeing it as an insult to the German army, and the Nazis put it about that Remarque – originally ‘Remark’ (he gave it a French twist: his forebears had been Remarques from across the border) – had in reverse been ‘Kramer’, a Jewish name meaning ‘pedlar’. They also made much of the fact that Remarque had not served in the front line. The irony was that Hitler himself, though he had two medals, did not really have a heroic war. We know from some extraordinary research by Thomas Weber (Hitler’s First War, 2010) that he was not a front-line soldier but a messenger who spent most of his time at headquarters – what other men called an Etappenschwein (‘rear-area pig’). In the British army it was called having a cushy job. Regimental colonels were sent bags of medals from time to time, for distribution, and Hitler got two of them because he was conveniently there, according to his own account, reading Schopenhauer from a pocketbook. Half of the veterans from his regiment, Bavarian Catholics,
refused to turn up when called upon to attend a reunion in 1934 to celebrate the victory of their alleged fellow-soldier, now Fuhrer. Remarque had already left Germany the day after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. He had easily enough money from royalties to live in Switzerland, and later in Hollywood and New York. He never lived in Germany again. The Nazis, in time, chased his poor sister, Elfriede Scholz, a dressmaker in Dresden. She was denounced by her landlady and a customer in 1943 for saying the war was lost, as indeed it was. An example was made of her, for Wehrkraftzersetzung (roughly, ‘demoralizing the armed forces’) and she was beheaded. After World War II Remarque remained in the USA, quite successful, though always best-known for All Quiet. In the 1950s he married the American actress Paulette Goddard, moved back to Switzerland, and died there in 1970. But All Quiet lives on, and deserves to.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0449213943
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Reissue edition (March 12, 1987)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780449213940
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0449213940
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 15+ years, from customers
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 830L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ Preschool - 1
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.14 x 0.74 x 6.88 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in War Fiction (Books)
- #173 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #542 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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A. W. Wheen
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Erich M. Remarque
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Erich Maria Remarque (22 June 1898 – 25 September 1970), born Erich Paul Remark, was a German novelist who created many works about the terror of war. His best known novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) is about German soldiers in the First World War, which was also made into an Oscar-winning movie. His book made him an enemy of the Nazis, who burned many of his works.
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Kurt Beals
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Kurt Beals is visiting associate professor of German and humanities fellow in literary translation at the University of Richmond. He is the author of Wireless Dada: Telegraphic Poetics in the Avant-Garde; translator of books by Jenny Erpenbeck, Hermann Hesse, Erich Maria Remarque, Reiner Stach, Anja Utler, and Regina Ullmann; and coeditor of Hans Richters Rhythmus 21: Schlüsselfilm der Moderne (Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21: Key Film of Modernism). In 2010 he was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award for Anja Utler's engulf–enkindle, and in 2012 he won the first ever German Book Office Translation Prize.
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Customers find the book an engaging and memorable read. They appreciate the realistic portrayal of war through the eyes of the soldiers. The writing quality is described as clear, descriptive, and poetic. Readers find the insights thought-provoking and brimming with truth. The pacing is described as quick and never rush through the pages. Overall, customers describe the book as a classic that every high school student should read for enlightenment and growth.

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Readability War history Writing quality Insight Pacing Reading level Heartbreaking story Emotional content

696 customers mention "Readability"691 positive5 negative

Customers find the book engaging and memorable. They describe it as a master piece of literature, well-written, and powerful. Readers say it's a must-read for anyone interested in WWI and should be required reading for students. The story is told entirely through the experiences of young German recruits.

"...All in, this is one of the most emotional and memorable books I have ever read." Read more

"...how he used diction and syntax especially because it illustrated to the reader his story, and so many others during war and what life is really like...." Read more

"...War I ended, of course, but I still think this is an important book to continue reading from a history perspective, but also a human perspective." Read more

"...for a class at my university, but it is a book that I think is a very valuable read...." Read more

310 customers mention "War history"276 positive34 negative

Customers find the book insightful into the tragedy of war through the eyes of soldiers. They appreciate the realistic portrayal of the horrors and the deep-rooted controversy surrounding it. The book is described as an excellent novel about the First World War.

"This book got into the deeply rooted controversy of war, is it good or bad?..." Read more

"...The horrors of trench warfare are tastefully, yet explicitly described in such a way that you feel as if you are there, but still have the..." Read more

"This is a fantastic take on what warfare is all about...." Read more

"...on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is an excellent novel about the First World War...." Read more

275 customers mention "Writing quality"250 positive25 negative

Customers find the writing quality of the book excellent. They praise the clear and easy-to-understand prose, as well as the descriptive language. The author does an excellent job blending introspective language with a quick-paced story. The book is described realistically, capturing the reader's imagination.

"...Personally, I love his take on it and how he used diction and syntax especially because it illustrated to the reader his story, and so many others..." Read more

"...The horrors of trench warfare are tastefully, yet explicitly described in such a way that you feel as if you are there, but still have the..." Read more

"...It is well written with a wonderful flow. However, let’s get down to the brass tacks of story...." Read more

"...In all, the writing is irredeemably blunt and yet does not offend. Remarque speaks to us through Paul, and he speaks for all of us...." Read more

147 customers mention "Insight"144 positive3 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and insightful. They appreciate its humanity and human perspective on suffering. The book explores war, innocence, and morality with well-written prose.

"...for a book with a good story filled with action, emotion, and morals." Read more

"...book to continue reading from a history perspective, but also a human perspective." Read more

"...Obviously times are different, but the same themes and humanity cut across generations...." Read more

"...melancholic prose of ceasefire days; of camaraderie and glimpses of civil life on leave; of broken families and former acquaintances - all of..." Read more

70 customers mention "Pacing"49 positive21 negative

Customers find the book has a good pacing. They say it's a quick read with a wonderful flow. The action and descriptions are visceral, and the events are powerful. It's a great mix of action and contemplation about life and war.

"...yet somehow it held me to the edge of seat, and I read through it at a pretty quick pace...." Read more

"...It is well written with a wonderful flow. However, let’s get down to the brass tacks of story...." Read more

"..."All Quite on the Western Front" is terribly difficult to read. It is grisly and graphic. But read it we must." Read more

"...The writing is to the point, Hemingway-esque, and rarely slows...." Read more

63 customers mention "Reading level"63 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They say it helps them grow as individuals and is an important read at any age. Readers appreciate the author's skill in capturing their attention with vivid descriptions and depicting horrific details.

"...As I approach middle age, I think it has an even more profound effect on me. What drew me to this book in my teen years still holds true...." Read more

"...if you've read it as a teen, it is worth revisiting as its impact with greater context and a life lived will make you appreciate this novel even more." Read more

"...Overall I believe Remarque did an outstanding job in convincing me as the reader on what kind of horror they went through, and how mentally impaired..." Read more

"...Recommended for everyone ... even urged." Read more

125 customers mention "Heartbreaking story"87 positive38 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the story. Some find it heartbreaking and imaginative, conveying pathos and intense emotions. Others find the background and events depressing, with a lack of plot twists. The message and story vary widely, with some finding it too sad and graphic.

"...I'm often moved by the sincere and intense emotions - and abrupt lack thereof. Paul becomes almost a friend...." Read more

"...Remarque reached acclaim across the world as an intimate portrayal of life during the war from the "enemy's" point of view...." Read more

"...Battles are not named and have so little relevance to the story that whether they are won or lost is not even revealed...." Read more

"...Incredibly touching and almost painfully truthful at times, this novel should definitely be on everyone’s must-read list...." Read more

55 customers mention "Emotional content"30 positive25 negative

Customers have different views on the emotional content. Some find the story heart-rending and authentic, providing a sense of the extreme physical and psychological stresses of being a front-line WWI soldier. Others mention it's very gruesome at times, with scenes on the battlefield that are both realistic and traumatic.

"...to anyone searching for a book with a good story filled with action, emotion, and morals." Read more

"...Blood, death, despair, inhuman conditions, and frailty abound. Lice and rancid food characterize their daily life...." Read more

"...This is a human, painful, sometimes funny but mostly mind-boggling script of politicians' insanity that leads to human decay and suffering...." Read more

"...It's all here: the blood and guts; the horrifying injuries, amputations and pre-antiseptic gangrene; the rats; the putrefying and spoiled food..." Read more

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Robbie Cheadle
An emotional and memorable book
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2021
Verified Purchase

Overview
This book is a first-hand account of the life of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a squad of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlisted in the army at the end of their high school career as a result of the impassioned patriotism and relentless coaxing of their teacher, Kantorek.

All Quiet on the Western front tells the story of Paul and his friends experiences in the trenches. There is a lot of fighting, death, and destruction in this book, but there are also scenes of comradery, friendship, and bravery that break up the ‘heaviness’ of this read and give the reader some short periods of lighter relief.

Among these lighter scenes is one when Paul and his friend ‘Kat’ decide to poach a goose from a local farm. They roast the bird and enjoy a midnight feast, even venturing to share some of their spoil with friends who are in prison for insubordination towards a senior officer.
There are also some interesting insights into life for the French civilians trying to survive amid the disruption and decimation of the war. Russian prisoners of war also feature in this story and their pitiful plight is almost too much to bear.
My thoughts
Why do young men volunteer for war?
I look at my two sons and I wonder why young men hurl themselves into the teeth of the storm through voluntary subscription to the army. I read about this in The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, and I read about it again in this great, but disturbing, novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.
I have decided there are a few reasons that lead to this rash action. The first, is the expectation of parents and other older members of society that their sons throw down the gauntlet and risk all for “king and country”. Secondly, I believe there has historically been a terrible ignorance about the reality of war. War is glamourized and young men enter the fray with no concept of its harsh conditions or the horror of death.
I wonder if the young men of today would be as eager to take up the role of ‘cannon fodder’ with their greater knowledge of the world through internet access and better educational opportunities.
Leaders and war mongers pray on the passionate fervor of the young to achieve their ill-gotten ends when it comes to war. Wars are all fought either for purposes of greed and power or over religion. More recently, greed and power have trumped the possibly purer intentions of religion. Have recently explored in great depth the reasons behind the Anglo Zulu War and both Anglo Boer Wars in South Africa, as well as the First and Second World War, power and the gain of wealth have been the overarching reasons for placing young men in the line of fire and, often, ending their lives before they have even started.
All Quite on the Western Front is a book that is written in a war setting and exposes with a sharp and unerringly accurate pen, the absolute horror of the First World War. The book is not, however, about the war, but rather about the loss of innocence the young soldiers experience and their inability to ever adapt back to civilian life afterwards. This is quite clear by the manner in which the story is told. Battles are not named and have so little relevance to the story that whether they are won or lost is not even revealed. Battles feature as a regular feature of the lives of Paul and his comrades; one during which death is a high possibility and survival is the only goal.
The obvious themes of war and patriotism that present in this novel are not the ones that resonated with me.
Given my status as the mother of two teenage boys, not much younger than the boys featured in this novel, it is understandable that the following themes are the ones that have stayed in my mind. I am sharing select quotes that explain these themes as they do so far better than I could.
Loss of innocence
“While they went on writing and making speeches, we saw field hospitals and men dying: while they preached the service of the state as the greatest thing, we already knew that the fear of death is even greater. This didn’t make us into rebels or deserters, or turn us into cowards – and they were more than ready to use all of these words – because we loved our country just as much as they did, and so we went bravely into every attack. But now we were able to distinguish things clearly, all at once our eyes had been opened. And we saw that there was nothing left of their world. Suddenly we found ourselves horrible alone – and we had to come to terms with it alone as well.
Loss of individuality
“I can still remember how embarrassed we were at the beginning, when we were recruits in the barracks and had to use the communal latrines. There are no doors, so that twenty men had to sit side by side as if they were on a train. That way they could all be seen at a glance – soldiers, of course, have to be under supervision at all times.
Since then we’ve learnt more than just how to cope with a bit of embarrassment. As time went by, our habits changed quite a bit.,
Out here in the open air the whole business is a real pleasure.”
Home
“It gets dark. Kemmerich’s face gets paler, it stands out against his pillow and is so white that it looks luminous. He makes a small movement with his mouth. I get closer to him. He whispers, ‘If you find my watch, send it home.’
I don’t argue. There is no point any more. He is beyond convincing. I’m sick with helplessness. That forehead, sunk in at the temples, that mount, which is all teeth now, that thin, sharp nose. And the fat, tearful woman at home that I shall have to write to – I wish I had that job behind me already.”
Hopelessness
“But our mates are dead, and we can’t help them. They are at peace – who knows what we might still have to face? We want to chuck ourselves down and sleep, or stuff as much food into our bellies as we can, and booze and smoke, so that the passing hours aren’t so empty. Life is short.”
Primitiveness
“It’s a nuisance trying to kill every single louse when you’ve got hundreds of them. The beasts are hard, and it gets to be a bore when you are forever pinching them between your nails. So Tjaden has rigged up a boot-polish lid hanging on a piece of wire over a burning candle-end. You just have toss the lice into this little frying-pan – there is a sharp crack, and that’s it.”
Conclusion
All Quiet on the Western Front is a book we should never forget and which must never be removed from its place as a historical classic. Its primary role in literature, in my opinion, is that it illustrates the pointlessness of war which descends into a series of actions and day-to-day survival with no real meaning or even importance to those involved in the fighting. This sentiment is generally presented through the character of Albert Kropp, one of Paul’s previous school friends.
This book also highlights the destruction of young men’s innocence and their inability to ever reconnect with ordinary civilian life. It doesn’t mention post-traumatic stress syndrome specifically, but this is alluded to throughout the book.

All in, this is one of the most emotional and memorable books I have ever read.

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Mo
A True War Novel
Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2024
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This book got into the deeply rooted controversy of war, is it good or bad? Personally, I love his take on it and how he used diction and syntax especially because it illustrated to the reader his story, and so many others during war and what life is really like. I only found time to read this between classes, yet somehow it held me to the edge of seat, and I read through it at a pretty quick pace. I would highly recommend it to anyone searching for a book with a good story filled with action, emotion, and morals.

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Andrea C
Still holds up and is an important read
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2022
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This is one of those books that was required reading back when I was in high school that has held up for me well into adulthood. I've read it several times, though probably not in the past decade (until recently). As I approach middle age, I think it has an even more profound effect on me.

What drew me to this book in my teen years still holds true. You almost forget that this is told from the point of view of a German soldier - one of our enemies in the Great War (aka WWI). Instead it personifies almost any soldier - the chaos and destruction of battle, the importance of friendship, the fear and hunger of the unknown, the frustration of not really understanding what you are fighting for while someone else - in a safe place - is calling the shots.

The horrors of trench warfare are tastefully, yet explicitly described in such a way that you feel as if you are there, but still have the protection of not being there. Remarque, through Paul, waxes rather poetically about all of the trials and tribulations of being on the front and how it changes a man. I'm often moved by the sincere and intense emotions - and abrupt lack thereof. Paul becomes almost a friend. And though he is the enemy as a German soldier, my humanity roots for him and his friends to come out of it okay in the end

It's been over 100 years since World War I ended, of course, but I still think this is an important book to continue reading from a history perspective, but also a human perspective.

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Fantastic!
Reviewed in Canada on February 3, 2025
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The book "All Quiet on the Western Front" is excellent! Our teenager doesn't actually read books. However, this book is fantastic. Such a captivating and fascinating tale. Strongly advised!

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Guilherme Elias
com quantas vidas se faz uma guerra?
Reviewed in Brazil on September 5, 2024
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esta é uma daquelas obras onde você fecha o livro e a história permanece com você, os personagens, suas dores, suas lutas e angustias passam a ser suas também, é triste e impactante ao mesmo tempo que é belo e tocante, uma obra necessária para que os horrores vistos na guerra não sejam esquecidos e jamais repetidos.

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Guilherme Elias

com quantas vidas se faz uma guerra?

Reviewed in Brazil on September 5, 2024
esta é uma daquelas obras onde você fecha o livro e a história permanece com você, os personagens, suas dores, suas lutas e angustias passam a ser suas também, é triste e impactante ao mesmo tempo que é belo e tocante, uma obra necessária para que os horrores vistos na guerra não sejam esquecidos e jamais repetidos.

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jose mejia
glad i decided to read this after watching the netflix film
Reviewed in Mexico on August 7, 2023
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Great novel that gives you a deep perspective on the great war. The netflix film was great but it doesn’t compare at all to what the book has to offer.

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Sevgi Ö.
Beklediğim gibi 👍🏻
Reviewed in Turkey on March 5, 2025
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İçeriğinden memnun kaldım. Teşekkürler.

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Truly amazing book
All quiet on the western front
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2025
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This book was something special, as an English guy reading about the other side of things, to hear about how the lads formed their friendships and battled together until the very end it really quite truly makes you appreciate coming across this fantastic author and his work, the attention to detail, the banter, the grittiness and everything else that came with it I had to buy the sequel because I haven’t stopped thinking about it I will definitely read it again some time and then again and then watch the film again it’s that great, if your contemplating buying this book then definitely just press buy it’s quality man! 👌

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5.0 out of 5 stars An emotional and memorable book

5.0 out of 5 stars A True War Novel

5.0 out of 5 stars Still holds up and is an important read

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!

5.0 out of 5 stars com quantas vidas se faz uma guerra?

com quantas vidas se faz uma guerra?

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5.0 out of 5 stars glad i decided to read this after watching the netflix film

5.0 out of 5 stars Beklediğim gibi 👍🏻

5.0 out of 5 stars All quiet on the western front

An emotional and memorable book

A True War Novel

Still holds up and is an important read

Fantastic!

com quantas vidas se faz uma guerra?

glad i decided to read this after watching the netflix film

Beklediğim gibi 👍🏻

All quiet on the western front