All Quiet On The Western Front Sparknotes

All Quiet on the Western Front is a very largely anti war book. Erich Maria Remarque bases the story off of some of his experiences in World War 1. Remarque writes about soldiers from the German perspective in World War 1. This discusses the brutality and senseless portion of war which really takes a toll on soldiers’ lives. It also broaches the idea of how world leaders are so disconnected from what atrocities that these soldiers are committing and how this is slowly ruining their life. War is described here as a “Chronic Illness”. Furthermore, Remarque writes this to also take a stab at the faulty idea of Nationalism which causes way more harm than good and basically forces people to enlist in the army who have no business being involved

Paul encounters an enemy soldier in no-man’s land and says “Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony–Forgive me comrade; how could you be my enemy?” (215)Paul is starting to realize that the enemy is basically the same that they are and he is starting to question war in general. But with him witnessing Gerard Duval, it definitely starts to change his sense of perspective because Paul witnessed him die and wants to write to Duval’s Wife after realizing that he too has a family who loves him. This whole idea of questioning the war really comes into play when the Kaiser visits their army. The army realizes that the Kaiser is no more special than anyone else and that the Nationalism and propaganda they were forced into seeing made people think that the Kaiser was their supreme leader, but realistically he was just a normal man and it disappointed the soldiers. Furthermore, the scene of the Kaiser using the same “latrine” as the other men is added by Remarque to show that he is no different than them and still has to use the very disgusting latrines. The discussion of war amongst the men though is very intelligent in the sense that they say “ True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of

Nationalism clearly does not help people and really damages the homefront and morale of soldiers because it gets them into pointless conflicts which cause them a lot of struggle. Furthermore, it pits people against their other neighboring countrymen for no reason. Some people might say though with Nationalism that people of the same ethnicities and languages should belong in the same country. For example with the states of Alsace and Lorraine, but this clearly caused large issues for Germany and France. This possibly could have been resolved with the idea of plebiscite for the people in those countries. Also, the fact that war created a lost generation really is another idea that should support being anti war. Having large amounts of displaced veterans is even something that we experience in the United States today, because people who are outside just wouldn’t understand what these people are going through mentally and physically and how it changes one's mind permanently because they are constantly seeing their close friends just