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.”
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.
Firsts & Innovations
First major novel to present WWI from a German enlisted man's perspective without nationalism or jingoism
One of the first works to use the flat, documentary prose style to render atrocity — a technique later adopted across war literature
The first major novel to be burned and banned by the Nazi regime — an honor the Nazis also bestowed on Freud, Marx, and Hemingway
Cultural Impact
The title entered multiple languages as a phrase meaning that the official account ignores what actually happened
The 1930 American film adaptation won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and was immediately banned in Germany
The 2022 Netflix German adaptation won four Academy Awards, introducing the novel to a new global audience
Widely used in education as a primary text for WWI units alongside primary sources from soldiers of all nations
Cited by veterans of every subsequent war as the closest literary approximation of front-line experience
Banned & Challenged
Burned publicly by the Nazis on May 10, 1933, in Berlin's Opernplatz, along with works by Einstein, Freud, and Brecht. Joseph Goebbels attended the burning and declared the book an offense against the German soldier's honor. The German edition was banned. Remarque was stripped of his citizenship in 1938. The Nazis later executed his sister Elfriede Scholz, reportedly saying her brother had escaped them, so she would pay. A plaque in her memory was unveiled in Osnabrück in 1997.