The film “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is based on a novel written by Erich Maria Remarque in 1929 about a decade after The Great War [World War I]. the title of the novel in German was Im Westen nichts Neues, and should properly be translated as Nothing New in the West. I wish they used the proper translation. The film shows the war from the German perspective. It is interesting to see that perspective, though it is not that different from the Allied side. It is important for us to understand that.
That war famously was fought for absolutely no good reason. Not that wars usually have a reason that makes sense of the carnage. Yet that was a war in which 17 million people died. After years of fighting and killing each other the front lines of east and west had hardly moved significantly. What was the point of the awful slaughter? This film explores that question.
The film is set in the closing days of the war in 1917 following the life of a young German soldier Paul Bäumer who had enlisted after a patriotic address from a school master who told them now lucky they had been born when they were because now they had the glorious opportunity of going to war for the Fatherland. The boys are giddy with excitement over the opportunity. They are told to keep their rifles as clean as the Holy virgin. Soon their faces will be completely covered by mud, but they must keep their rifles clean. The boys were not forced to go to war. They were eager to go to war!
This reminded me of the autobiography of Bertrand Russell who was also a young lad at the same time and when it was announced at Trafalgar Square that England was going to war against the so-called “Huns”, the same people who were cheering in Germany, the young men also cheered wildly. All over Europe young men were ecstatic at the prospect of war. All of them expected the war to be short. One of the lines they expressed was “Home or Homo by Christmas.” All of them were sadly mistaken.
The illusion is actually broken in the opening scene of this film of a fox quietly feeding her kits at the breast. This scene was quiet, as was the next. That was a scene of corpses lying on the ground. Silent forever. That scene of death shortly emerges in a horrendous battle. It appears that all soldiers are dead. And really all were dead even those who were alive. They were dead in spirit.
The German boys who enlisted are given uniforms that were previously worn by young Germans now dead. They are also quiet.
The grunts on the front line of course obey the order given to them to “charge.” That is about the most absurd thing they could do. Run into gun fire because officers ordered them to do that all for no purpose whatsoever. That is what war is all about. Soon another soldier dumps a load of corpses. That is what life and death are all about on the Western front. They are indeed quiet. But nothing else is quiet.
The scenes of soldiers slogging through trenches filled with rivers of water are heart-breaking. The soldiers futilely try to bail out the water. It can’t be done. The young men who cheered the war, now soldiers, cower in the trenches shaking in terror. The protagonist Paul finds his friend from school lying face down in the mud with his glasses beside his quiet corpse.
Allied soldiers in tanks drive over the trenches filled with German soldiers, crushing many to death. Another squad of Allied soldiers carrying flame throwers burn the German soldiers alive. Where are the heroes?
Trapped in a crater in no man’s land with a lone French soldier, Paul and the soldier stare at each other for a while and then realize their duty is to fight. Paul stabs the young enemy solider with a knife and then watches him die slowl, before him. Blood gurgles out of his throat and Paul is unable to stem the flow. As he dies, Paul becomes remorseless and begs the solider for forgiveness from the dead and quiet corpse. He rummages through the corpse’s papers and finds a photograph of his wife and children. Paul promises to tell his widow what he did.
The soldiers rarely get edible food, but the top German brass dine in style with obsequious soldier servants who must watch the general toss the dregs of his wine glass to the floor as he asks for more.
Paul’s friend Franz spends the night with a French woman, Eloise, and brings back her scarf as a souvenir. He sniffs it, as do the other soldiers. Franz tells the others that Eloise had milk white skin, and breasts. Will wonders never cease? But the men spend their time fighting. They have no time for young women, even if they have white skin and breasts!
On the morning of November 10, the Supreme Allied Commander gives the Germans 72 hours to surrender, leaving no room for negotiations and reminding them that for each minute of delay more German soldiers will die. The senseless slaughter will continue until the Germans surrender. The Germans, unlike the Allies, [our side] do the only thing that makes sense. They surrender. Later, Paul returns to his unit and sees them celebrating the imminent end of the war. He finds his wounded friend Tjaden, who gives him Franz’s scarf. Paul and Kat bring him food but Tjaden, distraught at being crippled, fatally stabs himself in the throat using a fork Paul and Kat brought with the food. Then Tjaden is quiet too.
The Germans agree to surrender at 11 a.m. on November 11 but a German General wants to end the war with a victory, even though the armistice has been announced. So he orders an attack at 10:45 a.m. and with 15 minutes left in the war the young German soldiers attack and kill large numbers of Allied soldiers and in turn suffer huge losses at the hands of the young Allied soldiers. Senseless slaughter again. This epitomizes the war. Young men eagerly launch themselves into the carnage for no reason. They just do it because they are ordered to do it and soldiers obey orders.
A despondent, battle-hardened Paul kills many French soldiers in a brutal killing spree in the last 15 minutes of the war before 11:00 AM when the fighting stops, and the western front falls silent. After 11 a.m. a newly arrived German recruit that Paul had saved in the combat finds Franz’s scarf. This is what the boys ought to have been doing. Spending time with girls, rather than brutally fighting each other in bloody and muddy trenches. And all for no discernible reason.
This is a magnificent film. It shows us what war is all about: meaningless slaughter. And it shows us what life could be about—a young girl’s scarf that smells just fine. We don’t see her but we know she has “white skin and breasts”. Because we don’t see her, she is quiet too. After the carnage all is quiet on the western front.