War is a very different creature when looked at from the standpoint of a soldier. Often this isn’t realized by soldiers entering battle. Paul Bäumer and Lt. Hans von Witzland were among these soldiers who had traveled to war only to find it wasn’t what propaganda and the Führer had made it out to be. In this state of disarray the laws of war were lost and replaced with savagery. In order to survive soldiers had to put away these ideas of fair fighting and fair treatment of the enemy. The soldiers had been trained for an ideal war, and the one they were thrown into was far different. The once true ideals of the men were destroyed in the war, and eventually they like most men were killed. Men were like a number on the battlefield. People fought …show more content…
You may not want to kill your enemy, but you must to survive. In All Quiet on the Western Front Paul Bäumer found this out on the battlefield. He became trapped with the dying body of an enemy Frenchman whom he stabbed in the heat of battle. As he puts together what he has done he realizes that he is fighting and killing normal, possibly innocent people which he never would have done back home. Instead of enemies now he must fight an army of German fathers and brothers. Through his thinking alongside the Frenchman he thinks about the families and loved ones of every man on the other side. He goes on to realize he is just the same as the man dying next to him. This is pure war, the killing of one another with no clear goal other than survival. We see the battle against inhumanity in Stalingrad when Witzland refused to give the order to shoot the line of Russian men containing the boy they befriended. Fritz speaks out against the shooting as well and is threatened and made to stand back in the firing line. All the men in that line were forced to go against their basic beliefs of human rights and equality, and there was nothing that could be done about it. War takes away the right of choice. Soldiers, especially in Germany, were