All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, about the horrors of that war and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front. The book was first published in German as Im Westen nichts Neues in January 1929. It sold a million copies within a year in Germany and a further million abroad. In 1930 the book was turned into an Oscar-winning movie of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone.

The story follows the experiences of Paul B�umer: a soldier who joined the German army shortly after the start of the war. After his training, however, he regrets joining the military. He arrives on the frontline on the western front with his friends (Tjaden, M�ller, and a number of other characters) and meets Stanislaus Katczinsky. Kat soon becomes Paul's mentor and teaches him about the realities of war. Paul and Kat swiftly became almost brothers, bonded by the hardships of the war.

Paul and his friends have to endure day after day of non-stop bombardment. Eventually it all becomes clear to him: war is entirely pointless. All his friends say that they are fighting the war for a few persons whom they have never met and most likely never will. They are the only people that can gain anything from this war, not Paul and his friends.

Themes

The story is narrated by Paul B�umer. It begins with Paul and M�ller visiting their friend who has been recently wounded. These three, with 17 others, have joined the army after the start of the war, after being persuaded by their schoolmaster, Kantorek. The book focuses not on heroic stories of bravery as do so many other war stories, but rather gives a realistic view of the hell the soldiers found themselves in. The monotony, the constant artillery fire, the struggle to find food, and the overarching role of chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers, all are described in detail. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally depleted and hardened. "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces."

Occasionally Paul receives leave from the army, and returns home temporarily. He finds it difficult to understand people at home anymore. While all the soldiers at the front wish for nothing more than peace, knowing that they are losing the war, people back home talk about marching on Paris. He is also indifferent to the significance of any of the battles. Battles have no names. Rather, one after another they offer a chance for him to be killed. Battle seems to be waged only to gain pitifully small pieces of land.

There are many central themes in the book. The first is that war is total nonsense. After all, none of the characters have ever seen a Frenchman before the war, much less have reason to kill them. Some of the soldiers ponder how the war was started, what is it for, and who it benefits. Nobody has any answers.

The second theme is that war is horrible. Paul describes the horrors of war throughout the book. The trenches and fortifications are shelled continuously, poison gas blankets the battlefield, snipers shoot at anyone with their head above ground. Finally, the French troops come and the German lines disintegrate. Vivid descriptions are presented throughout the book. Nothing short of being there could show the sheer numbers of dead and wounded every day in the war. The day Paul eventually dies was otherwise militarily uneventful, the army report just noting "all quiet on the western front".

Film

The film version, adapted by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews, C. Gardner Sullivan, Walter Anthony (uncredited) and Lewis Milestone (uncredited), won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for its producer Carl Laemmle Jr., and an Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone. The movie starred Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander.

It also received two further nominations:

• Best Cinematography - Arthur Edeson
• Best Writing, Achievement - George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson and Del Andrews

The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Sequel

The Road Back, another book written by Erich Maria Remarque, is about a different group of soldiers trying to cope with postwar Germany: dealing with the defeated German society after the war, trying to go to school, and trying to live a normal life.

The book and film were both banned during Nazi rule.

de:Im Westen nichts Neues he:במערב אין כל חדש no:Intet nytt fra vestfronten