All Quiet on the Western Front

This classic novel was first published as a book in 1929, having been serialised in the Berlin newspaper Vossische Zeitung newspaper in the winter of 1928. An English translation by Arthur Wheen was published in 1929 and was immediately successful, leading to the production of a film for which Lewis Milestone won the 1930 Academy Award for best director. Set between 1917 and 1918, the novel’s central character, Paul Bäumer, has been sent, aged 18, to the Western Front along with several of his classmates. The novel describes the psychological and physical suffering of German soldiers during the turmoil of trench warfare. It reveals how poorly nourished German soldiers were compared to the enemy forces on the Western Front, there being hardly any protein in their diet towards the end of the war and with much of the processed food making them sick. (“We are emaciated and starved. Our food is bad and mixed up with so much substitute stuff that it makes us ill.”)

The author, Erich Remarque (born 22 June 1898), grew up in Osnabrück. He began writing his first novel at the age of 16 and it was published in 1920. He was conscripted into the army at the age of 18 and in June 1917 was sent with the 2nd Guards Reserve Division to Hem-Lenglet in northern France. From there he was posted to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company, Engineer Platoon Bethe, operating between Torhout and Houthulst in northwest Belgium. He was wounded by shrapnel on 31 July and invalided back to Germany for the remainder of the war. After the war he worked for 14 months as a primary school teacher prior to the launch of his literary career. He had written three novels prior to writing this war epic. It was quickly followed by a sequel, The Road Back, which chronicles the experience of soldiers on their return to Germany after the war. His writings were condemned by the Nazi authorities and he lived in exile — first in Switzerland, then in the United States — throughout the period of Nazi rule. His absence did not stop them from attacking him: they executed his sister Elfriede in December 1943, the judge stating that her brother might be out of reach but that she would not be able to  escape them. The author only heard of her killing at the end of the war. He returned to Switzerland in 1948 and remained there for the rest of his life, writing a further seven novels.


The narrator and central character, like many who described the Western Front, often recognises the beauty of nature amidst the horror of the battlefield. Before going up to the front, he gives this idyllic account of the base five miles from the action:
“We hear the muffled rumble of the front only as very distant thunder, bumblebees droning by quite drown it. Around us stretches the flowery meadow. The grasses sway their tall spears; the white butterflies flutter around and float on the soft warm wind of the late summer.”
In the summer of 1918 he tells of  “the red poppies in the meadows round our billets, the smooth beetles on the blades of grass, the warm evenings in the cool, dim rooms, the black, mysterious trees of the twilight, the stars and the flowing waters”.
In contrast to this, he describes the inevitable destruction of the young recruits:
“Their pale turnip faces, their pitiful clenched hands, the fine courage of these poor devils, the desperate charges and attacks made by the poor brave wretches, who are so terrified that they dare not cry out loudly, but with battered chest, with torn bellies, arms and legs only whimper softly for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them.”
This narrative is intensely lyrical and sharply devastating almost on every page. Each chapter is satisfyingly profound and at the same time traumatically exhausting to read.