Essay: All Quiet on the Western Front

Notices went up all over Europe: there would be a war. Citizens of all involved countries greeted the war with excitement. In Paris, people began to enlist the day after the announcement. They had a "duty" to fight for their country, even those men who owned nothing (Doregelès 310-11). The people in Vienna had opposed the war. However, on the day it was announced, they celebrated with the rest of Austria-Hungary with parades and music, and otherwise unknown young men enlisted as soldiers, eagerly awaiting the romance and heroism of war (Zweig 312).

Extreme nationalism was one of the main causes of World War I. Young men, whom had only known war through their textbooks, enlisted eagerly. It would be glorious - they would "fight for their country," they would "do something with their lives," and they would "be home before Christmas" (Zweig 312). But these soldiers would not find the glory they expected in war. The ideas on the home front were of a glorious war fought by heroic soldiers; however, the actual experience of the soldiers in World War I was more horrific than glorious. The soldiers suffered through both terrible living conditions and trench warfare, and then returned home four years later to find that they had fought and died for nothing.

In the movie, All Quiet on the Western Front, the young soldiers were convinced by their schoolteacher to enlist in the army. He encouraged them to "do something with [their] lives" and "protect the land that gave [them] life." The war was not expected to last more than a few months. They would return home before Christmas as heroes.

So they left home full of patriotism and heroic ideals. Their first dose of reality came when their drill sergeant, Himmelstoss, who was the mail carrier from their hometown, forced them to train constantly. They had expected to be treated as heroes, but Himmelstoss treated them as laborers. Though they worked hard in training, they were still fed, and they still slept at night. It wouldn't be that way in the trenches.

Their glorious ideals of war quickly dissolved in the trenches. There they would go for days and weeks without eating. They couldn't sleep at night because of the endless noise of attacks. The trenches were constantly being attacked, causing them to grow more and more shallow; once their trench even caved in on them, and they were forced to dig themselves out. In addition to the constant noise, they were forced to live with rats and dead bodies. One of the boys, Franz Kemmerich, went crazy one night and tried to run away. Outside of the trenches, he was shot and had to be taken to the hospital (Remarque 316).

When they finally left the trenches, they were able to go to a military base and eat a full meal. They had lost over half of their company. After eating, the boys decided to go and visit Kemmerich in the hospital. The doctors had done everything they could for Kemmerich and refused to help him as he died. Paul Bäumer, who watched him die, left the hospital and ran back to camp to tell the others. They had become so used to death that they were not upset that their friend had died, they were simply glad that they were alive.

World War I lasted for four years. The majority of battles ended as stalemates with no one country ever able to advance on another. Over 100,000 soldiers lost their lives fighting in the trenches. Those who returned were not considered heroes. Their fighting had changed nothing. Fifty years later, the countries that they had fought would no longer be enemies. They would not be heroes of war; they would be victims of nationalism.

Those who had not fought in the war didn't understand the horrific conditions of war. When Paul returned home, the people in his town wanted to hear all of his glorious stories. They were still deluded by their ideals of nationalism.

Though it may have been wrong to convince these young, impressionable boys to enlist as soldiers, the blame cannot be placed on any one person or group of persons. The ideas of war as glorious were shared by both the elites and the masses (Treitschke 305). Very few people who were alive at the time had lived through a war. Everyone believed that it was noble to fight for the greatness of their country (Doregelès 310). Therefore, the difference between the ideals on the home front and the actual conditions of the war were caused by a combination of ignorance and nationalism that were shared by all.