Im Westen Nichts Neues

by
Erich Remarque

By: Travis Roberts

 Remarque’s Life
• Erich “Paul” Remarque was born on
June 22nd , 1898 in Osnabrück
Germany (Lower Saxony). He would
later change his middle name to
“Maria” to honor his late mother.
• In 1912 he entered the Katholische
Präparande for preparation to become
an elementary school teacher.
Remarque as a boy with
his two sisters • He was drafted into the German army
on November 21st, 1916, two years
after the First World War began.
 Off to War
• Remarque was shipped to the
Western front on June 12, 1917. His
time there was brief however as he
was soon wounded in Several places
by shell fragments from English
artillery on July 31, 1917.

• He was not cleared for active duty

again until October 1918, and he
would never return to the front due
to the war’s ending one month later.
Aftermath
• Remarque would be disturbed by
his war experience, and the
experience of all the worlds youth
who fought in the war, for the rest
of this life.

• He finally records his thoughts on the

Great War in “Im Westen Nichts Neues”
(All Quiet on the Western Front)
published in 1929. While the book is
fiction, it is based on some events in his
life and the lives of others.
 Betrayed Youth
• A constant theme in Remarque’s book is that the youth of
Germany (and the world) had been betrayed by teachers,
parents, and other leaders who told them war was a great
patriotic adventure.

“Das erste Trommelfeuer zeigte uns

unseren Irrtum, und unter ihm sturtze
die Weltanschauung zusammen, die
sie uns gelehrt hatten.”
(The first bombardment showed us
our mistake, and under it the world as
they had taught it to us broke in
pieces.)
-Im Westen Nichts Neues
 Causes of WWI
• The causes of WWI go all the
way back to the unification of
Germany under Bismarck in 1871.

• Europe experienced an arms race

and several complex alliance
systems from the late 1800’s until
the wars outbreak in 1914.

• Intense nationalistic feelings also played a role,

many peoples now wanted independent countries
for their respective ethnic groups.
 The Spark
• The spark that finally ignited Europe
into war was the assassination of Arch
Duke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the
Austro-Hungarian throne, by a Serbian
nationalist

• After Austria-Hungary declares

war on Serbia in 1914, the alliance
systems of the past few decades
would slowly bring the entire
continent of Europe into conflict.
 The First Months
• WWI was supposed to be a quick war, everyone thought it
would be over by Christmas. Initially the war moved quickly with
both sides making gains, but by November a stalemate had set in.

• The first trenches on the Western Front are begun at Ypres in

November 1914, this was the beginning of what would become
a new breed of horrific warfare.
 Life in the Trenches
• The trenches were dark, damp
and cold. The men had no way to
clean themselves so they were
often lice infested. Rats were also
a problem, eating food stores and
bothering the soldiers.

“Sie scheinen recht hungrig zu sein. Bei fast allen haben sie das
Brot angefressen. Kropp hat es unter seinem Kopf fest in die
Zeltbahn gewickelt, doch er kann nicht schlafen weil sie ihm
über das Gesicht laufen, um heranzugelangen.”
- Im Westen Nichts Neues
 Trench Warfare
• Along with Trench warfare came
new inventions with incredible
destructive capability. Machine
guns and barb wire emplacements
were used en masse. Extremely long
range artillery, tanks, poison gas
and aero planes were also employed
for the first time in WWI.

• These new weapons however,

did not make the war end quicker,
they simply made the death toll
rise higher.
 Poison Gas
• Chemical weapons, in the form of Poison gases, were first
used in 1915 by the Germans at Second Ypres.

“Ich kenne die furchtbaren Bilder aus dem Lazarett: Gasranke, die
in tagelangem Würgen die verbrannten Lungen stückweise
auskotzen.”
(I remember the awful sites in the hospital: the gas patients who
in day long suffocation cough up their burnt lungs in clots)
-Im Westen Nichts Neues
Major Battles and Losses

• First Battle of Ypres – 238, 155 Killed

• Second Battle of Ypres - 104,000 Killed
• Battle of Verdun – 750,000 Killed
• Battle of the Somme – 1,070,000 Killed
• Arras – Casualty rate per day 4,070
• Third Battle of Ypres – 550,000 Killed
A Soldiers View
• We see men living with their
skulls blown open; we see
soldiers run with their two feet
cut off, they stagger on their
splintered stumps into the next
shell hole…..we see men
without mouths, without jaws,
without faces; we find one man
who has held the artery of his
arm in his teeth for two hours in
order not to bleed to death. The
sun goes down, night comes, the
shells whine, life is at an end.
-Im Westen Nichts Neues
 Detachment
Vergehen Wochen – Monate – Jahre?
Es sind nur Tage. Wir sehen die Zeit
neben uns schwinden in den farblosen
Gesichtern der Sterbenden, wir löffeln
Nahrung in uns hinein, wir laufen, wir
werfen, wir schießen, wir töten, wir
liegen herum, wir sind schwach und
stumpf…
(How long has it been? Weeks-months-
years? Only days. We see time pass in
the colorless faces of the dying, we
cram food into us, we run, we throw,
we shoot, we kill, we lie about, we are
feeble and spent…)
The thousand yard stare
-Im Westen Nichts Neues
 Nature and War

Einen ganzen Vormittag spielen zwei Schmetterlinge vor unserm Graben. Es sind
Zitronenfalter, ihre gelben Flügel haben rote Punkte. Was mag sie nur hierher
verschlagen haben; weit und breit ist keine Pflanze und keine Blume. Sie ruhen sich
auf den Zähnen eines Schädels aus.
(One morning two butterflies play in front of our trench. They are brimstone
butterflies, with red spots on their yellow wings. What can they be looking for here?
There is not a plant nor a flower for miles. They settle on the teeth of a skull)
-Im Westen Nichts Neues
 War Ends
After a large German advance was halted and pushed back,
Germany was forced to broker piece on November 11th, 1918.
The war had finally ended at the cost of 9 million soldiers.

“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of

all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face
to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who,
even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by war.”
-Im Westen Nichts Neues
 Lost Generation
• Remarque kills his main character at the end of Im Westen
Nichts Neues. On a day in October 1918 that was so Quiet the
army confined itself to one sentence “Im Westen sei nichts
Neues zu Melden” or “All Quiet on the Western Front”.

• Paul’s death is symbolic of the destruction of an entire

generation both physically and mentally.

• When Paul’s body is found Remarque writes, “sein

Gesicht hatte einen so gefaßten Ausdruck, als wäre er
beinahe zufrieden damit, daß es so gekommen war.”
(his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad
the end had come)
 Bibliography
Duffy, Michael. First World War
http://www.firstworldwar.com/index.htm (2003)

Glibert, Julie. Opposite Attraction

New York, 1995
Groves, Paul. W.O.M.D.A
http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/ (2003)

Remarque, Erich. All Quiet on the Western Front

Ballantine Books, 1996

Wagener, Hans. Understanding Erich Remarque

University of South Carolina, 1991

Westwall, Ian. World War I Day by Day

Brown Partworks Limited, 2000
Special Thanks to:
Frau P
&
Natassia!