All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
“The most devastating anti-war novel ever written — by a man who was there at 18, and who the Nazis tried to silence by burning every copy they could find.”
At a Glance
Paul Bäumer, a nineteen-year-old German soldier on the Western Front, narrates his own slow destruction — not by a single bullet but by the grinding dehumanization of industrial warfare. He watches his classmates die one by one. He kills a French soldier in a shell crater and spends a night with the body. He goes home on leave and finds he can no longer speak to civilians. By the final page, all his friends are dead. Then Paul is dead. Then the war itself reports it was a quiet day.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The best-selling novel of 1929, worldwide. The first major literary work to depict WWI from the German soldier's perspective, which was itself a political act — it made the enemy human. Immediately suppressed by the Nazis. Widely read in translation before, during, and after WWII as an antiwar document. Still required reading in German secondary schools. Has never gone out of print.
Diction Profile
Deliberately plain — declarative sentences, minimal ornament, technical vocabulary of the front deployed without explanation or apology
Low