All Quiet on the Western Front

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed. 

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) on the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. It remains one of the best dramatic depictions of the horror of war. The opening note states the film is trying “to tell of a generation of men, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.”

The film begins in Germany. It is interesting that the perspective is from the enemy of the allies. It creates understanding that war is horrible to the youth of any country. Here, there is a feeling of patriotism as soldiers march through the streets with cheers from the populace. Professor Kantorek (Arnold Lucy) exhorts his students to be patriotic and wishes that they would enlist to fight for “the fatherland.” That paternal influence carries over as a student imagines coming home in a military uniform. The mother is frightened for her child, while the father smiles with pride. Thus, there is an immediate indictment of men as supporters of warfare. The voiceover from the professor says, “Are your mothers so weak that they cannot send a son to defend the land which gave them birth?” That statement is false, since it is the mother who gave birth, not the country. The film satirically shows the feeling at the time that weakness, not love and compassion, seem to define motherhood.

Other students picture being adored by women and received as heroes. Kantorek, abusing his position to manipulate innocent youths, goes on to say that he believes the war will be quick with not that many casualties. Boy, was he wrong about WWI. As to those that do fall in battle, he translates a Latin phrase that says, “Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.” The film suggests that kind of patriotism is just a rationalization to have young men sacrifice themselves. Although acknowledging that one young man there has the talent to become a great writer, Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres), the professor says that personal ambitions must be sacrificed for the country. And using that propaganda a country seduces many youths into sacrificing themselves for what in the end was no good reason. However, one student, Behn (Walter Rogers) cries, probably realizing the horror of confronting death in war.

The others see Paul as a leader and when he succumbs to the patriotic call, the others ride the wave of peer pressure, saying they will enlist. That pressure even convinces the reluctant Behn to join them. The empty classroom after they leave feels like a graveyard for lost possibilities.

In the barracks the young men are pumped up with adrenalin as they think about participating in battles to come, like school children wanting to play make-believe games. Himmelstoss (John Wray), who used to be the town postman, is now their commander, since he was in the reserves. He bullies the group as he puts them through degrading training. The story shows how power can warp the ego and convince a person that one’s self-importance overshadows all others. He says, “I’ll make soldiers out of you, or I’ll kill you!” The crawling through the mud during their exercises symbolizes how uncivilized one becomes to engage in the savagery of war. Even though the film was released in 1930, Himmelstoss’s regimentation and breaking down individuality are what we see in many films about boot camp (for example, Full Metal Jacket and An Officer and a Gentleman).

Ideas of war being glorious turn to feelings of horror. Bombs go off killing soldiers as Behn feels paralyzed next to the body of one of their fallen comrades. There is chaos as everyone scatters. The older, cynical soldiers laugh when Paul asks about getting some food, since they know it’s in short supply. They must pay for their food with supplies to eat portions of a pig that the forager, Kat Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim), stole from a field station. The film depicts a desperate situation where they must steal from each other to get by. Kat tells the new recruits he wonders what can make them want to enlist, but he is talking from experience.

On an assignment with Kat to set up barbed wire fencing, one of the new soldiers complains about the driving of the truck. Kat says if the soldier breaks his arm in an accident, he gets to go home which is better that getting a “hole in your gut.” Whistling bombs fall and the men duck in fear. The immersion in the reality of combat quashes their religious zeal for fighting.

As bombs fall, Behn sustains injuries. One soldier risks his life to get him to the trenches, but Behn dies. Kat says don’t risk your life for a lost cause, which is basically what war is for its victims. The constant bombing keeps them up at night. When one does sleep, he has a nightmare about the loss of Behn. A couple get hysterical as bombs get closer and Kat knocks them out so they don’t rush from their bunker. Franz Kemmerick (Ben Alexander) later does run outside and is wounded in the stomach. The men are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, which was called “shell shock” back then.

If glory hasn’t already been dispensed with, the bullet holes in a bucket carrying one loaf of bread to feed many and the infestation of rats help dispel ideas of glorious heroism. (Does the one load allude to the need for a miracle to feed a multitude?). The soldiers finally get the call to fight. What they witness is horrific. Bombs and gunfire wipe out soldiers. All that’s left of one soldier are his hands grasping barbed wire. Hand-to-hand combat depicts soldiers using bayonets on each other. Camera angles are from the ground to involve the audience in the horror. For 1930, this film is particularly gruesome showing the devastation of war.

When they get back behind the battle lines a soldier wipes blood off a loaf of bread. Even basic sustenance is contaminated by death. At their camp, because the cook prepared food for twice as many soldiers, but only half survived, there is irony in the fact that they get extra rations, darkly benefitting due to the death of their comrades.

The camera focuses on individual soldiers as they suffer and when they eat, showing them as unique people, not just an indistinct mass of weaponry. As they finish their meal, the men, who have had their fill of dead bodies and now food, finally question the whole existence of war. One says that the people of one country become offended by another. Tjaden (Slim Summerville) says he shouldn’t be there since he is not offended. He says if the Kaiser is back home, why shouldn’t he be? Another says he never met Englishmen before and yet he now is supposed to shoot them. He reasons that many have never met a German. The stress here is that those fighting the war most of the time don’t have any personal reasons for being there, and they were never asked their wishes. One soldier says the orders come from those rulers who want to be “famous. Why, that’s history.” One says, “manufacturers get rich.” Amother soldier sums up the driving force behind those that initiate war, which is selfishness. Kat says that the leaders should be the ones fighting each other, which implies that then there wouldn’t be the loss of so many lives that way.

While the comrades visit Franz, he experiences phantom pain in his foot, and realizes that doctors have amputated it. Mueller (Russell Gleason) asks if he can have Franz’s boots until he realizes how selfish (the force behind war) he is being. After the others leave, Paul tries to comfort the nineteen-year-old after the desensitized doctor says there is nothing to be done. Paul returns to the camp and says that he watched Franz die. His understandable defense mechanism was to run away and seek mental comfort thinking about being in open fields and wanting to be with girls.

Paul has Franz’s boots and Mueller puts them on. He says he doesn’t mind the war with such comfortable footwear. The camera focuses on the boots as Mueller marches with a smile on his face. That look is gone as he sustains wounds. There is no escape from the pain that war brings.

The soldiers have learned the hard way about what they have lost and now yearn for the lives they gave up, such as work, families, and the company of women. Himmelstoss shows up and his former recruits mock him now as self-importance has no place in the trenches. He is in the same boat as the rest of them now and he suffers the same fate on the front lines, getting killed by enemy fire, appropriately in a cemetery.

Paul gets attacked in a foxhole by a French soldier whom he stabs. They are in the ditch together all night, and that closeness to another human casualty makes the war intimate for Paul. He now tries to help the victim he was forced to harm. He says that if they didn’t have to wear the opposing uniforms they could be brothers. After the man dies, Paul seeks forgiveness for what he now considers not justified violence but a crime he was forced to commit.

There is some comic relief for these men (and for the audience) as they bring food and drink for local young women so they can spend time with them. Kat gets drunk, as he distracts an inebriated Tjaden so that Paul and his two fellow soldiers can have the three women to themselves. The film is pretty raunchy for its time as the men earlier bathed in the canal and their naked behinds can be seen. Later, there is a conversation offstage between Paul and the girl Suzanne who are obviously in bed together. Even though he will never see her again, she has helped him shed the horrors of war for the moment, a moment he says he will never forget, which unhappily will not be for long.

Back to harsh reality, Paul is wounded and the cruel facts of the hospital become evident. They move those who are dying or dead quickly to a room next to the morgue for convenience purposes. By doing so they open up a bed for the next victim. They must amputate the leg of Paul’s friend, Alfred Kropp (William Bakewell), and his phantom pain is an echo of what happened to Franz, which points to the awful repetition of war. Paul is discharged but as Alfred remains, he blots out the heads of himself and Paul in a picture, showing how the war has ended his life as he knew it.

As Paul walks in his hometown on furlough, there are images of heartbreak as we see one soldier using crutches to deal with an amputation and there is a boy with what might be his dead father’s uniform and weapons. Paul’s mother is ill which adds to the sadness of the homecoming. A butterfly collection in his home is just a memory that shows how peaceful life used to be. The movie is an early depiction (as we later see in many films, such as Coming Home, and The Hurt Locker) of how a returning soldier is alienated by the average lives of others who do not understand the impact of combat on soldiers. One man at the pub acts like the sacrifice of soldiers is needed and that the food is worse back home, saying there is only the best for the soldiers. He tells this misinformation to Paul who has suffered hunger on the front lines. Men at the pub pull out a map and tell Paul what must be done to claim victory. It is easy for them to plot strategy in the absence of what it is really like in the trenches.

Paul returns to Kantorek’s classroom where the professor still is exhorting youths to believe in the heroic mythology about how grand and patriotic it is to sign up to be soldiers. A reluctant Paul tells them the simple truth: “We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That’s all.” When the professor tells him not to dwell on the negative, Paul angrily says, “When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all.” He says there are millions who die in war “and what good is it?” The point being made is that the cost of war renders nobody a winner. The students don’t want to listen to someone upsetting what they have heard and want to believe. They yell out “coward!” in their naïve ignorance. Paul says he wants to cut his leave short because the pain of seeing how warped are the views of the civilians is more disturbing than being at the front. At least there he knows where he stands, as do the other soldiers.

When Paul returns, he sees more youth there to replace those dying as the circle of death continues. He sees Kat and they speak the truth about how hopeless the war is. When a bomb goes off near them Kat says he broke his shin, but his wounds are worse than he lets on. Paul carries him back to the camp and finds out that Kat died. Kat said he would be the last to go, so his passing is an omen as to the state of the conflict. Paul said Kat was all he had left, so he is now empty of connection to anything.

In a trench, Paul sees a beautiful butterfly. He reaches for it, as if trying to capture some innocence and beauty that was in his childhood. However, death is on the battlefield and an enemy soldier shoots and kills Paul. His outstretched hand, which was seeking an escape. is stopped in the act. The last shot of the film is devastating as young soldiers march off to war with a cemetery and a sea of crosses appearing in the background as if to say that they are heading to their deaths. The thrust here is that it is only quiet on the western front for those in the graveyard.