Dehumanization In All Quiet On The Western Front

As Winston Churchill states: “You ask: what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, no matter how long and hard the world may be; for, without victory, there is no survival.” This quote applies to times of war because in a war in order to try to achieve victories many countries are willing to sacrifice and go to the extremes. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the German army sacrificed millions in order to attempt to win World War One. However what they sacrificed is appalling. The German army went to high measures to try to achieve victory in World War one: including sacrificing the sanitary conditions of men, the civilized nature of men, and the value of their youth.

In All Quiet on the Western Front, many young soldiers around seventeen years old are being sent to fight in the war without sufficient training. These young recruits are not being sent into this war because they are powerful and prestigious soldiers, but are rather sent in because the German soldiers are losing hundreds of thousands of men and are desperate for replacements. These are teenagers who have a whole life ahead of them, but in All Quiet their lives are being wasted and destroyed in the cruel war, showing that these soldiers are dehumanized because their lives and futures are not valued. In the book, Remarque is able to show the harsh consequences the war does to adolescents that destroy and dehumanize them. One soldier that Paul encounters in All Quiet on the Western Front to a young recruit, described as “such a kid,” (73), by Kat, suffered from a serious injury: “a hip covered with blood,” (71) only recently after arriving at the Front. The clear lack of experience and training from the boy shows that in World War one the cruel practice of sending young boys to fight in a grown man's war is utilized, which in turn leads to ghastly injuries. Another example showcasing this cruel practice zooms in on the trauma experienced by young boys in war. During the shellings, one of the new recruits, “ has a fit. I have been watching him for a long time, grinding his teeth and opening and shutting his fists,” (109), according to Paul. As Kropp utters, “two years of shells and bombs-a man won’t peel that off as easy as a sock,” (87). This means that even the most-seasoned war veteran has trouble handling the anguish caused by war. If the most experienced soldiers struggle to handle the mental intensity of war, just imagine the unbearable magnitude of trauma a boy experiences in only a few days worth of fighting. These boys are already mentally traumatized in minutes of