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of his novel A Time to Love and a Time to Die. In 1958 he married an

American actress, Paulette Goddard, whom he had met in the 1940s.

When he first came to America in 1939, Remarque had none of the

passport difficulties experienced by most German political exiles at

that time. But he felt the injustices of his fellow countrymen

deeply and described them fully in his novels. He applied for American

citizenship in 1941, becoming a citizen after the time required by

law. He loved America- especially the easygoing friendliness of the

people- but never felt fully accepted by the Germans and always

resented the loss of his German citizenship. Nor was he the only

member of his family to suffer at the hands of the Nazis. In 1943

his younger sister Elfriede Scholz was beheaded for spreading

subversive propaganda. He was deeply moved when Osnabruck named a

street for her in 1968. In 1971 the authorities also named a section

of road along the town walls the Erich-Maria-Remarque-Ring.

Wherever he was living he continued to write, and, despite his

financial success and love of fine living, never forgot the lessons of

World War I. His work eventually included 11 novels, all written in

German but immediately translated and published in English as well.

They developed themes first introduced in All Quiet. (Each is

described in the Further Reading section of this guidebook.) Early

in the 1950s Remarque returned briefly to Germany to collect

material for a book, but he never returned to his hometown, even

when attending his father's funeral near there in 1956. He felt that

the new city, rebuilt after World War II, wasn't the town he had

enshrined in All Quiet, The Road Back, and The Black Obelisk.

A series of heart attacks in the late 1960s obliged Remarque to

choose Rome instead of New York for his winter quarters, and he

lived there and in Porto Ronco until his death in a hospital in

Locarno on September 25, 1970.

Tributes from the world press were varied, and sometimes stressed

strange things. In his native Germany, the weekly journal Der

Spiegel published an obituary that managed to omit his ever having

written a great World War I novel. Remarque would not have been

surprised. The news media had always been far more interested in his

glamorous life than in his novels. But the public had bought more than

13 minion copies of his books. And All Quiet on the Western Front,

accounting for 8 million in sales, is still one of the greatest

European bestsellers of the 20th century.

PLOT

THE NOVEL

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THE PLOT (RALLPLOT)

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All Quiet on the Western Front tells what happens to a group of

German teenagers during World War I. The narrator is Paul Baumer. He

and his classmates had patriotically marched off for recruitment,

spurred on by the slogans of their teacher, Kantorek. But they find no

glory in war.

As the story opens, 80 men have just returned from two weeks at

the front. Seventy of their comrades may be dead or wounded, but their

empty bellies concern them more. They nearly riot when the cook

won't dish out the food prepared for twice their number. But the

commander steps in, and for once they eat their fill. Afterward,

Paul and his friends visit their classmate Kemmerich, dying from a leg

amputation. All Muller can talk about is who will get Kemmerich's fine

leather boots. The more sensitive Kropp laughs bitterly at

Kantorek's having called them Iron Youth.

Lounging around the next few days, Paul recalls the basic training

methods of the sadistic Corporal Himmelstoss. Cruel as he was,

Himmelstoss did a lot more than Kantorek to toughen them for battle.

Alone with Kemmerich, Paul can hardly bear it when his friend dies and

all the orderly cares about is getting the bed cleared. Outraged at

the senseless death of all such frail-looking boys, Paul

nevertheless takes Kemmerich's boots to Muller- they are of no use

to Kemmerich now.

Soon, underfed replacements arrive. Katczinsky, a scavenger who

could find a dinner roast in the Sahara, surprises everyone with

beef and beans. He listens as Paul and his friends gleefully recall

the night they trapped Himmelstoss with a bedsheet and soundly

thrashed him, and joins in as they argue heatedly that the leaders

simply ought to slug out their war with each other, while the soldiers

watch them.

Horror descends anew the night they string barbed wire at the front.

In the dark, the men instinctively avoid incoming shells, but the

screaming of horses innocently caught in the bombardment chills them

to the bone. When the shelling eases they trudge to a cemetery to wait

for transport. Many nearly suffocate in a surprise gas attack, and

after a new bombardment their stomachs turn at the sight of dead

companions mixed with corpses from blown-up graves. At dawn they

mindlessly return to camp.

Resting the next day, Paul's group reluctantly conclude that war has

ruined them. After their horrifying experiences, how can they ever

again take jobs or studies seriously? Their spirits lift when

Himmelstoss appears, sent to the front at last! Tjaden and Kropp

openly insult him and leave him sputtering. When the matter is

officially reviewed that evening, their light punishment is amply

balanced by the lecture Himmelstoss gets on the idiocy of saluting

at the front. Much later, Paul and Katczinsky slip off to a farm.

Neither squawking goose nor growling bulldog thwarts Paul, and he

and his comrade Katczinsky spend a companionable night roasting and

eating their goose.

Then it's back to rat-infested trenches at the front. At night

they scramble for masks when the enemy sends gas; by day, they cower

in stiffness to deceive observers in balloons. Terror is their

companion through deafening barrages; Paul's dugout survives a

direct hit. One night the French infantry attack. All through the next

day Paul's company fights in a frenzy, the men armed only with

grenades and sharpened shovels. For days, attacks and counterattacks

alternate. Once Himmelstoss panics until Paul shouts sense into him

and he plunges back into battle. Paul's only relief is to dream of

quiet cloisters. By the time the siege ends, only 32 men are left in

the company.

Back at a field depot for reorganization, the men loaf and joke as

if they hadn't a care in the world. Thinking about their lost comrades

would only drive them mad. Even Himmelstoss has changed. Not only

did he rescue Westhus, who had been wounded, but, as substitute

cook, he is slipping Paul's group badly needed extra rations. Twice,

Paul, Kropp, and another classmate, Leer, swim a closely guarded

canal, not for the brief pleasures of a soldiers' brothel but for

the luxury of hours with three French girls. When Westhus dies after

all, Paul- due for leave and temporary reassignment- wonders in

agony who will be there when he returns.

On leave in his hometown, Paul relishes the way his classmate

Mittelstaedt torments their old schoolmaster Kantorek, now a pitiful

specimen of a soldier in the reserve unit Mittelstaedt commands.

Nowhere is Paul comfortable. Duty drags him to visit Kemmerich's

mother, but his own sensitivity has been dulled by the carnage and

he can't begin to comprehend her hysterical grief over a single

soldier. His own books and papers no longer comfort him, his

civilian clothes don't fit, old men lecture him on how they think

the war is really going, and his mother, whom he adores, is

seriously ill. So out of place does he feel that he is glad to

report for duty at a nearby camp. There he often guards Russian

prisoners of war, whom he begins to identify as men like himself and

his comrades. The more he sees their suffering, the less he can

grasp why he must call them enemy.

When Paul rejoins his company, he is relieved to find that all his

closest friends have survived. Polishing is the order of the day;

the troops are preparing for an inspection by the Kaiser. The whole

ridiculous display leaves them burning with resentment at the

blindness of their leaders. Up at the front again, Paul volunteers for

a scouting mission with his friends. He is briefly separated from them

in the dark trenches and panics until their distant voices steady him.

Only comradeship sustains him now. Later, trapped by shelling, he

blindly, repeatedly, stabs a French soldier who falls into his foxhole

and must listen and watch for hours as the man's life slowly ebbs.

He is guilt stricken at having personally killed a plain soldier

like himself. It takes the cool way the sniper Oellrich tallies up his

kills to snap him back to front-line reality.

By sheer luck Paul's entire group next find themselves guarding an

abandoned village and supply dump. For two glorious weeks they lose

themselves in feasting sleeping, and joking. Then, again by chance,

both Paul and Kropp receive leg wounds while helping to evacuate a

village. During their stay in a Catholic hospital, the wonder of clean

sheets soon evaporates, and Paul discovers just how many ways a man

can be killed- or maimed for life. The wards seem worse than the

battlefield. Kropp's leg is amputated, but Paul recovers.

After a short while Paul is back to animal existence at the front,

except that conditions have grown even worse. Starved and short of

supplies, the men are emaciated and their nerves so frayed that they

are prone to snap at the slightest provocation. It takes only the

wonder of cherry blossoms at the edge of a field to madden one man

with thoughts of his farm: he deserts and is court martialed. Another,

who stoically bore the screaming of the horses in the earlier

battle, dies in an insane attempt to rescue a messenger dog.

As the summer of 1918 wears on, existence is reduced to a paralyzing

round of filth, mud, disintegrating gear, dysentery, typhus,

influenza- and battle. Muller, shot point blank in the stomach,

gives Kemmerich's boots to Paul- the boots are sturdy and may

survive them all. When pleasure-loving Leer collapses of a hip

wound, all Paul has left is his friend Katczinsky. Then even

Katczinsky is wounded: his shin is shattered. Paul doggedly cames

him far behind the lines to an aid station. But the medics can only

shake their heads. Katczinsky has died on Paul's back from a tiny

splinter of shrapnel that freakishly pierced his head.

The months wear on to October, and Paul is alone. Back at the

front after two weeks of rest for a trace of gas poisoning, he has

nothing to hope for. He is killed on a day so quiet that the army

report consists of a single line: "All quiet on the Western Front."

CHARACTERS

THE CHARACTERS (RALLCHAR)

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MAJOR CHARACTERS

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PAUL BAUMER

Paul Baumer is the 19-year-old narrator of the story.

At the front, Paul's special friends in Second Company include his

classmates Behm, Kemmerich, Muller, Leer, and Kropp. The six of them

were among 20 who enlisted together, prodded on by Schoolmaster

Kantorek. Although he doesn't say so, Paul is obviously a natural

leader: Franz Kemmerich's mother implored him to look after her son

when they left home. Paul is also courageous. He may momentarily

panic, but he doesn't break under the most terrible battle conditions.