All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front has often been called one of the most powerful war novels ever written. Set in the latter half of World War I, the novel follows Paul Bäumer, a young German recruit, as he fights for his life in the trenches of the Western Front.

Paul is a schoolboy in a picturesque German village when World War I breaks out. Patriotic speeches at his school embolden him and his friends to volunteer for the German army. But their patriotism soon withers to a bleak, tortured, dehumanized agony as they struggle to survive the crushing horrors of endless artillery fire, trench warfare, tanks, gas, and hunger.

The novel follows Paul as he and his company endure some of the most brutal physical and mental conditions ever unleashed on the face of the earth, as the new mechanized, technological style of war grinds and burns humans to physical pulp, seemingly at random, and for seemingly no benefit. Tiny slivers of land are gained at an enormous cost of human life, only to be lost again days later. Those who survive are left both mentally and physically shattered, unable to reintegrate into civilian life, almost like living ghosts returned from hell.

Remarque himself was conscripted into the German army at the age of eighteen, and served in the trenches of the Western Front before being wounded and evacuated. After recovering he was sent back to the front, but the war ended just a month afterwards.