Erich Maria Remarque and Charles Chaplin: The Glorification of Nationalism and War in World War One

In contrast to Chaplin’s comical interpretation, Remarque ridiculed the glorification of military and war in his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by illustrating the forlorn and catastrophic tale of protagonist Paul Baumer’s lost of humanity. Baumer, having seen childhood friend and fellow comrade Kemmerich passed away, fought off “corpse rats”2 in name of food, and spent every waking moment anxious for his own survival have transformed from a naive schoolboy to a man consumed so completely by a war so great, he could no longer relate to the world beyond the front lines. During nights of bombardment in the trenches, dread was felt all around because there was nothing soldiers could do to increase their chance of survival except to hope for the best that one will come through this “howling waste” 2 alive. All glory and nationalistic instincts of war were lost when soldiers were subjected to emotional and physical torture so awful “one have lost all feeling for one another” 2 and became “insensible dead men” 2 who fought not to win the war, but for their own lives. Remarque criticized with his novel that it was the wrong people who had to fight in the war, and that too many soldiers had died for the wrong reasons. Most soldiers signed up for army under pressures of societal obligations, and to prove themselves because the older generation threw around the word “coward” 2 way too often and way too easily.  Soldiers like Baumer, through the experience of the war became cold, heart “killing-machines,” 2 unable to detach themselves from being stoic as it was what kept them alive. When fellow comrade Kemmerich died, what mattered to Muller was not to mourn the lost of his friend, but a pair of good, sturdy boots was gained.

When Baumer returned home from the front lines on leave from the army, he felt “a sense of strangeness” 2 that became “a veil” 2 and distanced him from his home and he can no longer connect with his pre-enlistment life and society. Baumer felt “awkward” 2 when he took off his uniform and put on civilian clothes. When his mother asked if the war was bad, he lied to her because of his inability to connect with her and also because she could never understand nor realize the terror of war on the front lines. Baumer found his Father’s curiosity regarding the war “stupid and distressing” 2 because the brutality and the immensity of the War were so great that it cannot be conveyed through words. Baumer found himself unable to comprehend the world he was once a part of, it has become foreign to him and he felt no connection to it at all. He sat in the familiar room he grew up in and tried to retain what little of his former innocent and young self as best as he could.

I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the colored backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait. 2        

But, the quiet rupture did not occur and the pre-enlistment world was still alien to him. “A sudden feeling of foreignness suddenly rises in me. I cannot find my way back. " 2 Baumer was already lost to the military and the war.

Remarque disputed the nationalistic fervor of World War One by juxtaposing the opposing attitudes of war between the soldiers, who experienced the bloodshed first-hand, and the foolish opinions of those who stayed behind on the home front. The true weight of the war was burdened only by those who fought in it, others on the home front, the Majors who trained, lectured and disciplined the soldiers and the elders who followed the news might understood, and might have even felt it too, but “only with words, only with words." 2 An elder man dismissed Baumer’s opinion in regards to a break-through in the war as he has “only seen [his] little sector and so cannot have any general survey.”2 Baumer was disgusted by the elder men because he realized that the words of his father’s generation, of those who have not been on the front lines, are meaningless in that they do not reflect the true realities of the war that Baumer has come to understand. Baumer could no longer connect with his former pre-enlistment days and thus, realigned himself with his comrades who have undergone the same ordeals.

Chaplin expressed the stupidity and meaninglessness of nationalism by mockery of Chaplin’s idiotic heroism for his country in Shoulder Arms. Chaplin’s character volunteered and went on a secret mission in which he “may never come back”1 as a spy camouflaged as a tree to gather information on the enemy, Germany.  In the end Chaplin escaped from the German soldiers by outsmarting them.

Erich Maria Remarque and Charles Chaplin wrote the novel and made the film respectively to convey their anti-war message in hope that future generations will learn from their accounts of war. Remarque and Chaplin both criticized the over-glorification of war and nationalism that brainwashed an entire generation to fight in the First World War. Chaplin’s comical interpretation of warfare was something war veterans could relate to and in a way, relieved them of their pain through humor while Remarque’s somber and realistic tale of a young and sensitive schoolboy hardened into man by the burden of war provided the home front the truth about combat and bloodshed through the eyes of a soldier on the Western Front.