Question

What did Erich Maria Remarque think about the nationalism that caused the war? Why do you think he decided to write a book that showed the war experience to be so harsh and cruel?

Answer 1

The overriding theme of All Quiet on the Western Front is the terrible brutality of war, which informs every scene in the novel. Whereas war novels before All Quiet on the Western Front tended to romanticize what war was like, emphasizing ideas such as glory, honor, patriotic duty, and adventure, All Quiet on the Western Front sets out to portray war as it was actually experienced, replacing the romantic picture of glory and heroism with a decidedly unromantic vision of fear, meaninglessness, and butchery. In many ways, World War I demanded this depiction more than any war before it—it completely altered mankind’s conception of military conflict with its catastrophic levels of carnage and violence, its battles that lasted for months, and its gruesome new technological advancements (e.g., machine guns, poison gas, trenches) that made killing easier and more impersonal than ever before. Remarque’s novel dramatizes these aspects of World War I and portrays the mind-numbing terror and savagery of war with a relentless focus on the physical and psychological damage that it occasions. At the end of the novel, almost every major character is dead, epitomizing the war’s devastating effect on the generation of young men who were forced to fight it.

Answer 2

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German author and World War I veteran. In this book, Remarque exposes what he believes is the true face of war.

In the book, Remarque highlights the damaging aspect of nationalism. He believes that this ideology pushed many soldiers to fight, and many leaders and commanders to engage in a war that brought very little benefit and advantages to most people, and instead, caused enormous pain and suffering.

It is likely that Remarque wanted to show such a harsh and cruel perspective on war in order to show that wars are rarely worth the destruction and suffering they bring. He most likely also wanted to show how war was like to people who were involved in it, and who were affected by it the most.