The very day this thought struck me, I put pen to paper, without much in the way of prior thought. Modern medicine knows more about post-traumatic stress disorder, but in Remarque's day it was unchartered water. His point of view — similar to the common soldier of any nation — provides the reader with insights concerning the shocking events that led to the alienation and displacement of his entire age-group.
Remarque's words brought swift reactions in postwar Germany and positive responses from critics. Although the German government — especially the Third Reich — banned and often burned Remarque's book because it dared to criticize the government and militarism, western critics were largely positive about his novel.
Their words predating World War II — a time when military leaders were optimistically predicting the end to international aggression — addressed the poignance of the World War I German soldier's naivete and vulnerability, particularly during the aftermath, when the massive destruction of innocence produced a generation of drifting, traumatized men. Whether the survivors were German or American, British, Russian, or French, their post-traumatic stress could be seen across cultures and languages.
The book was initially serialised through November and December in the Vossische Zeitung. On publication in Germany , the book sold more than two million copies within 18 months, at a time when the Weimar Republic was beginning to experience the first shock waves of the Great Depression. Money became scarce again as unemployment rose. Even so, this haunting, thoughtful novel continued to sell. The son of a book binder, Remarque was born Erich Paul Remark in ; he took Maria in honour of his mother.
All Quiet on the West Front , his second novel, was written in six weeks and hailed as the consummate anti-war novel; a view that even now, 86 years since its publication, remains widely accepted. Put simply, All Quiet on the Western Front is brave, beautiful, at times philosophical, and desperately sad. Its legacy is a subtle emotional force that conveys bewilderment, not outrage.
It describes the violence of war as observed first-hand, and the subsequent psychological displacement it imposes upon veterans incapable of returning to civilian life. There is no hysteria, no rage, no macho posturing, not even implicit polemic; just a devastating disbelief and, with it, an awareness of the death of all hope. English reviewers were impressed, if grudgingly so; after all, it was written by a former enemy. This is an astonishing sales figure, especially for a book from the viewpoint of the losing side.
They all had their reasons, none of them to do with literary criticism or empathy. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation.
It is not against men that we fling our bombs. Death is hunting us down. The disillusioned young narrator is critical of the German army and the unsympathetic army surgeons who amputate limbs without a second thought. The novel reads as a diary, intense, introspective and candid. He has seen men, including his friends, die. He has watched human bodies blown to pieces and witnessed obese rats feasting on corpses.
He waits by the bedside of a dying schoolmate, Kemmerich, whose leg has been amputated:. In his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well. Baumer himself dies on a tranquil day shortly before the Armistice is signed.
Ironically it was this very humanity, and relentless political agnosticism, that made Goebbels see the All Quiet on the Western Front film as a threat to the Nazi ideology. It was a stunning victory for Adolf Hitler that gave his party seats in the Reichstag and made the Nazis the second-largest political party in Germany. His leading campaign message, to unite Germany and make it strong again, resonated with voters in the midst of the Great Depression. All Quiet on the Western Front may have been the first runaway international bestseller, but its utter lack of pro-German propaganda and honest, downbeat look at war made the book a Nazi target.
Hitler refused to believe Teutonic soldiers could be anything but a magnificent fighting force, a nationalistic historical rewrite that took hold amongst the battered German citizenry. He dies in the famous scene reaching for the butterfly. Unfortunately, the premiere was an animating moment in the history of Nazism, reclaiming the World War I memory not as meaningless slaughter, as Remarque says, but as a glorious noble German enterprise.
According to a Variety reporter, when then lights came up, the audience was too rattled or moved to disapprove or applaud. However, Goebbels correctly guessed that the theater would let its guard down during the December 5 showing. His surprise mob attack went far beyond the realm of boyhood fraternity pranks like mice and sneezing powder. He died at Locarno in with his wife, the actress Paulette Goddard, at his side.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian playwright and environmental activist, is hanged in Nigeria along with eight other activists from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People Mosop.
The Terrapins, who had been losing at the half, ended up winning He also pledged In a decision that would eventually make them one of the wealthiest surviving Native American nations, the Osage tribe agrees to abandon their lands in Missouri and Arkansas in exchange for a reservation in Oklahoma. The Osage were the largest tribe of the Southern Sioux people On November 10, , newspapers report the burning of 36 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
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