Does “All Quiet on the Western Front” Predict Germany’s Grim Future in World War III?

Imagine if you will, a man goes to war and writes a book about his experience. Chiefly, that war is bad. The book is popular and is quickly adapted into a movie. Then another movie. Then another movie based on that movie, and so on. Eventually, the movies no longer have any resemblance to the book, or the war and people it’s supposed to be about.

All Quiet on the Western Front is supposed to be a great anti-war book, which I admittedly have not read. The 1930 movie is also supposed to be great, though I, again, have not seen that. But I have seen the 1979 version, which was admittedly good. The 2022 version, not so much. It’s a jarring, badly paced, and over-produced mess. It also has no resemblance to any of the previous versions. The title, All Quiet on the Western front, is just a marketing ploy for some unrelated WWI story a guy wanted to make, but didn’t have the courage to market as his own idea.

Now all that said, the book and all the movies, both good and bad, have the reputation of being an effective anti-war story, but I wholeheartedly disagree. The reason why I disagree should be self-demonstrating. Imagine you are in 1930 Germany watching a new anti-war movie at the cinema. Film critics, newspaper columnists, and every other person of importance in the mainstream media is telling you that this movie is very good and teaches an important lesson about war being bad. Meanwhile, there is a guy in the back of the theater heckling the audience, telling them that this movie is stupid jewish propaganda, literally a jew movie, and you shouldn’t take it seriously.

So who was proven right, the movie, or the noisy guy talking about jews? Maybe “right” or “wrong” is the wrong question. Who, ultimately, did Germans listen to? Apparently, they listened to the heckler, who turned out to be a guy named Hitler. Germans didn’t have to listen to Hitler. After all, he wasn’t anyone important. At this point he was just a noisy guy who wanted to make Germany great again. So, whether we like it or not, we have to accept the fact that, despite being a fringe figure with no power or authority, Hitler made a more compelling argument than all of those anti-war books and movies, including All Quiet on the Western Front.

That observation has to lead us to the obvious question; why is All Quiet on the Western Front parroted as a great anti-war message when it didn’t even work on its original audience? It didn’t work on the second, third, or fourth audiences either. What do you call a person who tries the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?

My guess is that All Quiet on the Western Front isn’t really about the futility of war, regardless of how the author tried for that to be the message. Unfortunately, in the real world, an artist’s intended message doesn’t matter. All that matters is what the audience interprets the message to be. The interpreted lesson, the real lesson, of All Quiet on the Western Front is not that war is bad. It is losing a war that is bad.

Consider another 1930s anti-war novel, Jonny Got His Gun, by the American communist Dalton Trumbo. In this story, an American soldier in WWI gets torn apart by artillery, leaving him with all four limbs amputated, blind, deaf, and mute. He is a mind trapped in his own body, not even able to commit suicide. He bangs his head on the pillow in morse code to request to be a traveling museum piece against war, but military authorities deny his request. Jonny will simply rot in a bed for the rest of his natural life. It’s a much more brutal and compelling message than All Quiet on the Western Front, so of course it only got one movie adaption and never anywhere close to the same level of praise and fame. Incidentally, Jonny Got His Gun was published just two days after Germany invaded Poland, and Trumbo advocated for the USA to not join the war. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Trumbo withdrew his book from publication and advocated for the USA to join on the side of the USSR. Trumbo was later disgraced and blacklisted during the McCarthyist period.

But anyway, there are compelling anti-war elements in the original All Quiet on the Western Front story and early film adaptions. Mainly, the scenes that emphasize the humanity of the French enemies, which prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there wasn’t a rational reason for Germans and French to be fighting each other and the war should have been ended much sooner, rather than being drawn out until one side was too exhausted to continue. So it should come as no surprise that these effective anti-war elements were the first ones to be cut in newer adaptation.

I’m sure other people can cite more examples, particularly folks who read the original book, but I will cite two. The first scene that came to my mind is when the German soldiers give food to some French girls and have sex with them. In the 2022 movie, a French girl gives the main character a scarf, but everything else from that exchange was cut entirely. I wonder why. Are such scenes simply impossible now in a post #metoo world?

The second cut scene is even more important. The main character goes on leave and returns to his home town. There, he discovers that everyone is oblivious to the true nature of the war and how badly it’s going. Everybody, including his father and old professor, are convinced that the war is good and Germany is winning. I don’t know why this scene was cut, but I think it’s possible to make some educated guesses. I think, simply, it’s unwise to remind western audiences that it is possible for the government and media to lie to them about how a war is going.

I won’t list them all, but there are other important cut scenes, particularly the “boot camp” sequence that got fairly extensive screen time in previous film adaptions. The boot camp scene was useful from a storytelling perspective, as it gave the audience time to get familiar with the characters before tossing them into the trenches. But it was also useful for illustrating the huge disconnect between military training and real combat conditions, particularly at the beginning of a war, when people can only make educated guesses about how modern weapons and tactics will play out. Sometimes, usually, those guesses are spectacularly wrong.

The transitioning scene from boot camp to the frontline I remember from the 1979 film was also useful, though for a somewhat related reason. A sergeant inspects the new arrivals and chastises a recruit for serrating his knife. The recruit is surprised, explaining that he was taught to serrate his knife at boot camp. The sergeant explains to him that, essentially, serrated blades are considered a war crime, and French soldiers will kill him on the spot if they catch him with such a weapon. I find that moment interesting and important because it succinctly illustrates how soldiers on opposing sides of a conflict will frequently reach some sort of rules about what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable, even when there’s no formal declaration of it. Or in this particular cases, commanders in the rear echelon are oblivious to such a rule even existing. There is also of course a contradiction here. Soldiers can make agreements about what kind of knife is permissible to fight with, while generals are using extremely barbaric weapons of mass destruction, like poison gas. If it was up to the common soldier to make strategic decision, it is likely that they all would have agreed that poison gas should be banned. But that decision wasn’t up to them, was it?

In the 2022 version, there are no rules or good conduct on either side. German and French soldiers slaughter each other throughout the movie, never leaving any survivors. People who attempt to surrender are explicitly cut down, often in the most extremely violent ways possible. The Germans attack a French trench, executing the survivors who try to surrender. A few minutes later, more French soldiers counterattack, and in turn, execute the Germans who try to surrender. Obviously, this is Hollywood nonsense. In the real World War I, the number of prisoners taken was higher than 0, so of course executing everyone who tried to surrender wasn’t standard practice. Also, I think such a debate requires some common sense. It’s not a good idea for a soldier to be mercilessly cruel to enemies he captures because, obviously, he himself might be captured at some point, perhaps on the same day.

Casually gunning down captured enemy soldiers has grown so commonplace in modern western movies it’s become something of a meme. I struggle to think of even one example of a recent western war movie which doesn’t show this. I find the practice to be particularly egregious in All Quiet on the Western Front. According to Hollywood logic, nazis are inherently evil so can be tortured and executed for no reason, but what’s the excuse in this movie when neither side are nazis?

Today, we have the “largest war in Europe since 1945.” That war might simply end with an armistice, or it might expand in scale and scope, consuming other countries. It could lead to nuclear holocaust. However, I think before nukes start flying, there will be an attempt by both sides to at least try to overpower eachother with conventional arms. I think it is very likely that western countries, to include Germany will start conscripting people to fight. For anyone who thinks I’m being ridiculous, may I remind you that just 18 months ago, the idea of a massive war in Ukraine also seemed ridiculous, and yet here we are.

Also remember that wars are primarily motivated by economics. The USA intervened in WWI because, simply, if the UK and France owed huge amounts of money to American bankers, and wouldn’t be able to repay those debts if they were defeated. Hitler’s Germany was under sanctions that threatened to collapse his wartime economy unless he did something about it (like invading France). Imperial Japan had the same problem under American sanctions. Today, there are sanctions against Russia, but they seem to be hurting western Europe much more than Russia itself. Germany is now in a recession. Also, interestingly, energy prices are low due to the gas reserves being high and summer temperatures warm. That might seem like good news but perhaps it’s not. Where are the factories who should be buying more gas, driving the prices back up? Prices of a commodity crashing and staying crashed can indicate demand destruction. The industry that keeps energy prices high has already closed down and won’t reopen.

So like in the 1930s, Germans are increasingly desperate, angry, and have someone to hate. In WWIII, maybe they won’t accept conscription, or maybe they’ll be glad to take up arms and do something about supposed source of their misery. And also like in the 1930s, they’ve been subjected to years of racial propaganda. Furthermore, they’ve been subjected to unhinged Hollywood nihilism that makes even nazi rhetoric seem mild.

It’s only a theory, but I suspect if Ukraine is foolish enough to open Pandora’s box and allow European troops to occupy part of their country, they might not be happy with the result. Very bluntly, I think when armed and given power over an “inferior” race of people, like the Ukrainians, this will be a very new situation for young Germans, and the only thing they’ll have to go off of is the media they grew up with. So if every western movie over the past 20 years shows western troops, regardless of time period, brutally murdering everyone in their path, how are we supposed to expect those real life young men to behave? We can only guess until such a thing happens, but I think the Kiev SBU men who tape people to lamp posts will look extremely tame in comparison to how western European troops behave.

Ian Kummer

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