What Is All Quiet On The Western Front Fact Or Fiction

If there was one word to describe WW1 it would be death. That was it, battle after battle filled with death, and it took a major toll on everyone both on and off the battlefield. The story All Quiet on the Western Front had no short of that. Characters who had just been introduced would be killed by a shell just a few moments later. Death was a similarity between real life and the book. But what else is similar between real and fiction and what is different? This comparative essay will review the similarities and differences between the actual war and the events that take place in the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. This includes both the book and history confirm they had the use of trench warfare and the PTSD or “Shell Shock”that came

In All Quiet on the Western Front Paul Bäumer and his friends of the second company experience the brutality of trench warfare from a first hand perspective. In the story they had to spend time digging in the mud to get the trenches they needed. After they would fight through enemy bombardments, where hundreds of shells destroy the front line leaving them woke with a constant uncertainty if they would be killed. It is even stated by Paul that in the trenches life is no more than an avoidance of death. Each person must not think about anything but to kill or be killed. It was also a means of cover for everyone. When they were hit heavily by the gases of the allied forces Paul, “..seize[s] the mask, pull[s] it over his head, ... and with a jump drop into the” trench (Remarque 67). These events are very similar to the events that occurred in real life. In WW1 on all fronts (Western, Italian, Eastern etc.)Where trenches, according to Gale History in Context, were “a defensive system of extraordinary strength and density, especially on the western front” This meant that like the book both sides used the trench systems as defense and it worked well for cover and protection against the weapons of the

One crucial difference is the incorrect condition the book viewed the German army as in spring of 1918. During the final year of war, Germany did this thing called the the Spring offensive. Under the command of General Ludendorff the German army did a major push back into France. The offensive “pounded first the British and then the French from February to July 1918. It destroyed one entire British army, reached the Marne, and exposed Paris” (Gale History in Context). This is very different then what was described in the book. Paul says that after winter in the Spring of 1918 which in real life was when the offensive occurred the “trenches have been shot to pieces… the front line has been penetrated… the English are coming down obliquely, they are turning our flank and working in behind us. We are surrounded.” (Remarque 277). These contrast each other as the book says that the germans were in a terrible condition when in reality they were destroying the