All Quiet on The Western Front: Disillusionment and Betrayal Faced by Soldiers

In the 1929 historical novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque portrays the physical and mental trauma the German soldiers face during World War I and how the soldiers develop a detachment from civilian life once they enlist in the front. The novel is told through the eyes of young Paul Bäumer, who describes how the war alters the soldiers into animals and exemplifies the idea of the “lost generation,” the soldiers who have no wives or jobs to return to after the front. Throughout the novel, the young soldiers face betrayal by the older generation as well as gain a feeling of disillusionment with the older generations values and traditions. Remarque demonstrates this through the actions of pressuring the younger generation to enlist into the war, allowing for the young men to fight in a brutal war, as well the generational differences between the old and the youth that drastically alters life after war.

Prior to active duty in the front, Paul and his friends Albert Kropp, Leer, and Joseph Behm went to school together under the authority of Kantorek, their school teacher, and Kantorek would pressure patriotism into the minds of his students in order to enlist in the war. Throughout the novel, the older generation would use their words and seniority to influence the minds of the younger generation, and Paul realizes that the older generation merely, “surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness” (Remarque 11). Not only this, but Kantorek took drastic steps in order for the young men to participate in the modern war, meaning he would take his students to enlist in the military using his nationalist rhetoric. There was a high level of trust the boys felt for Kantorek, but this changed in response to his, “idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom”. In the novel, Paul describes that it was members of the educated upper classes, members similar to Kantorek, who were most in favor of the war, while the poor simply were most opposed for they were the majority who fought in the war.

During training at boot camp, Corporal Himmelstoss abuses young recruits in his wartime role. Specifically, Himmelstoss was cruel to Tjaden, who was a bedwetter, and he made Tjaden share a bed with another bedwetter, Kindervater. As Himmelstoss runs Paul Bäumer’s regiment during training, he forces the soldiers to endure long hours of training while enforcing strict and senseless punishments towards the men that Paul accredits to making the soldiers become, “suspicious, pitiless, vicious, tough”. Himmelstoss represents how the older generation manipulates the youth by pushing them beyond boundaries, but have no part in aiding in the war. During a particularly bloody battle, Himmelstoss cowers in a trench, pretending to be wounded and Paul says that, “it makes me mad that the young recruits should be out there and he here”. This shows how the older generation influences the youth to fight in the war that they are too scared to fight in themselves, leaving them helpless and scared when put in the situation that the young soldiers are placed in.

When fighting in the war, there are prominent generational differences that deem the younger soldiers the “lost generation.” Throughout the novel, Paul often reminisces about his life prior to the war, knowing that he will never be able to return to it for the war destroys an entire generation of young men, leaving them “lost.” Lost in the sense that the lives of the young soldiers are physically and psychologically affected and unable to revert back to their past lives, “We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered”. Paul experiences this when he returns to his home village on leave, and even though the village has not changed, Paul feels very out of place. He feels a sense of alienation by his father and his former teachers, who expect him to play the role of the heroic young soldier meanwhile his mother senses he wishes not to speak about the brutality he faces on the front. This trip reinforces the conviction that the war has created an unbridgeable divide between the young men who fight and the lives they left behind, “the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin”. Through the lasting effect the war has on the young soldiers, their lives are taken from them while the older generation has had a life, with a family and a job that they can return to, but the psychological toll the young soldiers are inflicted with takes their lives before their lives could even begin.

Throughout his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque explores the disillusionment and betrayal that the soldiers experienced while on the Front during World War I. Through the immense pressure to serve nationalistic ideals of Germany by the older generation, many of the young men lose their lives through the brutality and hardship seen in war. Those the young men trusted as adult mentors, such as Kantorek and Himmelstoss, trained the young soldiers to fight in the war and face the atrocities in hopes that this would save them from fighting the same battles. Not only did trusted mentors betray these young men, the generational differences between the two caused the young soldiers to face detrimental problems after time on the front, causing them to never live a normal life again. Meanwhile, the older generation got to live a life previous to enlisting into the military, which contributes to the betrayal by the older generation.