The Great War

When war is depicted today, it is seen as a horrible thing that is unwanted in our society.  War is a terrible event when life is thrown away needlessly, as shown in All Quiet on the Western Front.  "To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself". The horrors of war were ever-present in their trenches. The young eighteen-year old soldiers were in the rear were always conscious of the front, which loomed like a storm waiting to swallow them on their return to it. War is portrayed as it was actually experienced, with an unromantic version of fear, butchery, brutality, and meaningless death.  This is the essential depiction that World War I needs in order to be properly represented, more so than any other war before it.  The Great War completely altered and manipulated people’s conceptions of military conflict in a whole new manner with unimaginable levels of carnage and violence.  During the Battle of the Somme, there were over 1,000,000 casualties collectively on both sides of the front.

These ideals that had been characterized in the novel were not held dearly to the Nazis.  They hoped to glorify war and promote the courage and bravery that comes with participating in such a great cause. Nazi propaganda would tend to romanticize what war was all about, emphasizing the adventure, glory, honour and patriotic duties that were instilled upon every member of the Nazi regime. The horrors of war were no consequence to the Nazi’s, for they fought for the fatherland and the Fuhur. The Nazi’s propaganda machine was quite powerful, which kept the ideals that the regime wanted the people to hear, and discarded the rest.  Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, explains the core of this. "The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it".  As Goebbels states, the people were convinced to back the Nazis in their idealism as well as support for the party itself.  This does not hide the fact that many of the sons of Germany would die for the fatherland, rather that they would die with honour, courage, and bravery.  Many of those who did not die initially or later on from their wounds would have lost more than a leg or an arm, but a piece of their soul from the rages of war.  

Nazism was more than ideas simply set out by Hitler and his followers; it was a way of life. This aspect is yet another that was kept away from the eyes and ears of the German people, in order for them to think that war is not as terrible a thing as it actually is. The truth would be covered up by the teams of propaganda that worked around the clock to try and brainwash the people into thinking whatever was told to them. Even many of the Nazi soldiers had gone to such extreme points that they had almost turned into mindless fanatics. When Hitler made the armed forces swear an oath of allegiance directly to him in 1934. In order to do this he had to kill Ernst Roehm, the leader of the SA, and dissolve them, and integrated them into the new German army. Since the armies allegiance was totally to Hitler, many of them were still fighting for their country but at the same time they were fighting for Hitler himself. The soldiers had almost turned into fanatics to the Nazi cause, especially amongst the ranks of the SS. Their minds had already been altered to such an extent that the terrors of war seemed almost natural to them.  

The effects of war on the body as well as the mind take their toll as men are subjected to the thought of death at any moment. This is particularly prevalent in the novel for the view is from soldiers fighting on the front, not being sure if they will survive the next few moments. As well as being physically harmful, this kind of stress and trauma wreak havoc on the nerves of a human being. "Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades--words, words, words, but they hold the horror of the world". The conditions that the soldiers were also forced to fight in conditions that can only be described as appalling. Trenches were filled with mud, rats, and the remains of the dead, whole or not.  The soldiers would go without any sleep or food for days on end, proper medical care was also in short supply, along with ample clothing in which to protect themselves from the elements.  Remarque shows us the effects that all these things have on the soldiers. The only way that they would be able to deal mentally with the world around them was to disconnect themselves from their feelings, suppressing their emotions and accepting the events that occur around them, no matter how horrid they may be. Being this disconnected from society, and themselves destroys a soldier’s humanity. For example, Paul becomes unable to imagine a future for himself when the war is over, as well as not being able to remember what his life was like before the conflict began.              

"We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the

world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb,

the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war".

He has also lost his ability to talk to his own family let alone other people in his home community. During the death of Kemmerich, the thought that was on everyone’s mind was not the fact that their comrade was dieing, it was who his boots will pass on to when he is gone. Among the living soldiers, many thought there was a strong sense of brotherhood and unity, which they have all gathered from their experiences shared during the war. These are some of the only emotions or actions that are romanticized in the entire novel, and virtually the only ones that bind the soldiers to whatever shred of humanity they have left in them.

The purpose of Nazism was to cleanse the world of anyone that did not fit the description of the master race, according to them. The Aryan race was above all others on the hierarchy of mankind, with Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies at the bottom of this ladder. The Nazis had a sense of brotherhood that was based on race. Their brothers in combat were the white man of pure blood, pure Aryan blood. Their bonds were not forged through experience, but through ties of racial background. Basically, if he was anything else he was not his brother. They had been brainwashed into thinking that they are the mightiest race, and they will prevail over the rest; that this was their destiny. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, was one of the driving forces in the carrying out of this plan. These ideas formed the basis of Nazi racial philosophy that was to have such an impact on history. As soon as the Nazi party came into power, Himmler strived to create the SS, an elitist force comprised solely of the purest Aryans. They were to become Hitler’s personal bodyguard, and eventually grew to numbers as high as 300,000 men. These elite soldiers did have a strong sense of brotherhood as well but it was not among their fellow man, but only to their specific Aryan racial comrades.  

The Love that is shared between brothers is a very strong bond, and it is no different between Paul and his comrades. The hardships that the soldiers had to face in order to stay alive are horrid and gruesome, and one of the only ways that they stay alive and together is that fact that they have their friends to help them out and support each other.  This bonding is exemplified when Paul and the rest of the soldiers are in the rear sitting down on boxes having a gossip session. “Not for nothing was the word ‘latrine-rumor’ invented; these places are the gossip-shop and common-rooms”. The down time that the soldiers share with their comrades is something that strengthens their ties of brotherhood to one another, not to mention keeps them sane when they are on the front. “We set the lid of the margarine tub on out knees and so have a good table for a game of skat… One could sit like this forever”. This is the time that the soldiers cherish before they have to go back to the front to wage the war that was thrust upon them by politicians and other leaders.  

Wars are fought with the blood of the young and the guidance of the wise, and it was always the young that suffer the most because of this. The young had their lives taken from them, in a literal sense as well as a metaphorical one, for their lives were ever changed and scarred because of the times that they had to endure. “Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? That is long ago. We are old folk”.  Paul and his friends are devastated when Joeseph Behm becomes the first of their group to die. They then blame their old school master, Kantorek, for he is the one that convinced them all to go. His ugly, painful death shattered Paul and his classmates' trust in the authorities who convinced them to take part in the war. The Leaders in charge of these decisions to go to war are the ones who should be fighting it, for it is they that have the quarrel with their other rivaling nations, not the farmer or factory worker, or any other common man. “Then in the arena the ministers and gererals of the thwo countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out amongst themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting” .  These leaders are the people that demonize opposing side look to be savage, and beastly so their soldiers will fight against “things” not people.  

When many soldiers were fighting for their country they fought the unknown adversary who were battling at them, for all the soldiers knew their enemies did not even have a name. Paul did not consider their enemies to even be humans, rather animals until the encounter with the French soldier in the crater close to the end of the novel. “But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. 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?” Paul came to the realization that their enemies were regular people just as he was, not monsters that they had been built up by their superiors to be.  Paul found out that the French man has a name, it being Gerard Duval.  A whole new level of comprehension had been reached; it is now plain to see that it is the common man fighting the common man, both fighting another mans war, both dieing for a senseless cause.  

“Tomorrow we march on our enemies land with music… Our Heaven is the great war on earth. We live in battle our eternal life”. The war was a glorious crusade to the Nazis, in which they wanted to cleanse the land of anyone who is not Aryan. This was all to be accomplished through war, and if they were to be successful in their aims, they would have to make sure there were no opinions available anywhere. Whether these opinions would be people, radio broadcasts, or in the case of all, quiet on the western front, literature was all to be wiped out of society. It was wiped out due to the themes that it portrayed, the horrors of war, it’s psychological and emotional effects on the soldiers, and brotherhood among others. “’Then what exactly is the war for?’ asked Tjaden. Kat shrugs his shoulders. ‘There must be some people to whom the war is useful’”. It is evident that war is useful to some people, particularly those of the Nazi regime. War in the eyes of Remarque is a useless waste of life, that has caused the tragedy of millions of people around the world, and will continue to do so if works such as All Quiet on the Western Front are censored and burned for the ideals that are portrayed within it.  

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Bibliography

James J. Weingartner, Hitler’s Guard, (U.S.A: Southern Illinois University Press,      

  1975).

Peter Levende, Unholy Alliance, (New York: The Continental International      

   Publishing Group, 1995).

Joseph Goebbels, Speech on Nazism or Bolshevism (1925)

Joseph Goebbels, Speech on the Success of Nazism (July 14, 1933)

        Unknown Author.  The Rise of Nazism.  

            7 April 2003 http://www.leesaunders.com/html/NewGerm.htm.

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