Paul Baumer
joined the German army at age eighteen along with his entire class because of
the persuasion of their school master, Kantorek, a man who never fought
himself. Any that refused to join faced criticism from family and friends; even
their parents would call them cowards, in the end all of his classmates joined.
The stories of the great German soldier and the propaganda promoting the war
failed to meet the reality of the battlefield. Paul
reflects that, “we were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; we
had to shoot it to pieces.”
Paul is separated
from most of his classmates as they are divided up among the platoons. He,
along with several others enter a platoon known to be the toughest. This
platoon is run by Corporal Himmelstoss who never fought on the battlefield. The
Corporal immediately took a dislike of Paul and his friends and spent his time
making their lives as difficult as he could, continually seeking to give them
punishment.
The young men’s
trials of survival begin almost at the very beginning of their army experience
when dealing with their platoon leader. Himmelstoss’ lack of war experience
becomes more reason for difficulties between himself and these young soldiers
as they become more experienced at battlefield. Paul becomes aware of the great
differences between those that fight and those that have not.
One night the
soldiers wait along a darkened path which Corporal Himmelstoss frequents when
traveling home after leaving a pub. They ambushed him, cover him in a sheet and
take turns beating him. Later in the story, Himmelstoss is eventually seen,
cowering in a trench pretending to be injured. Following this first time on the
battlefield, the next day he gets himself reassigned to as the cook. Himmelstoss
now has a new view of the young soldiers
who have survived day after day of battle. He gives them gifts of officer’s
food out of what seems like respect.
Throughout this
tragic tale, the young men share in everything. The war has transformed their
lives in every facet, changing boys to men under the shadow of a world at war.
They changed from the very first bombardment that they experienced. They have
become scavengers, constantly searching for food, cigarettes and equipment.
Where they were once embarrassed to use open latrines in basic training they
now convene outside in a circle, squatting over holes.
Each group of
experienced solders has one man among them that seems to have a sixth sense
which for Paul’s group is Stanislaus Katczinsky. Katczinsky, at 40 years old is
the leader of this small group. Whether it is finding supplies or knowing how
to cook a found meal such as a live goose or horse flesh, it is believed that
they wouldn’t have survived as long as they did without him.
The reader enters the novel during a meal
at an army soup kitchen, following several days of fighting on the frontline.
Immediately the reader gains an understanding of the great loss of lives that
the soldiers have seen as few are alive to attend the meal.
Paul and several
of his friends go to a field hospital to meet another soldier that they knew
from home. Doctors have already amputated this young man’s leg, but the men
know from experience that he will soon be dead from infection anyway. Much like
the lies told at home, they assure their friend that he will be sent home,
because of his injury the war is over for him. During their visit, one of
Paul’s friends asks to keep the amputated soldier’s boots, knowing that once he
dies, all of his possessions will be picked through by the hospital staff. The
boots, like the food and all supplies, including medicines are hard to find.
They end up offering a hospital orderly several cigarettes in order to secure
him a shot of morphine to stop his suffering for a short while. The pain killer
was normally reserved only for officers because of the lack of supply.
Paul waits with
the dying man as trains arrive to take the injured to hospitals away from the
front, but they leave him behind. The reader gains an understanding that they
are just avoiding him until he finally dies. Paul watches as he wakes in a
crying fit before death takes him. In
addition to the mass deaths of the battlefield, many injures end in death from
the unsanitary conditions of the field hospitals and lack of medical supplies.
Paul describes having to breath an “atmosphere of carbolic and gangrene” inside
of the hospital. Following his death the staff is quick to remove him because
they have been waiting for his bed.
Most striking in
this novel is what happens at the frontline. The groups of young soldiers move
closer and closer to the front, they extinguish their cigarettes so they can’t
be seen in the night. They walk through the smoky and tainted air left from
their own artillery guns. Out ahead they can hear the roar and boom of explosions from the
guns firing behind them. In front, the horizon glows red with returning fire
from the enemy. Fear seizes the new recruits, but those that are more
experienced focus on survival. Paul describes the front as Paul describes the
front as a “mysterious whirlpool with a vortex sucking me into itself”.
They sleep in
holes, sometimes while bombs fall around them. The must wake to fight off rats
who seek their food. The rats are fat from the meat of the dead. They have even
attacked and ate other, larger animals found in the trenches.
The soldiers know the
sound of each incoming bomb. They know in advance whether it will fall short,
pass by them or if they should take cover. They know from experience when the
munitions carry a gas canister and they have to hold their breath and don a gas
mask. The young men have become soldiers. They developed an ability to survive.
The new recruits lack this instinct; many die in their first bombardment. Those
that have lived through this over and
over feel somewhat jealous of a recruit dying quickly, because they don’t have
to become accustomed to war.
As their own
lines are constantly sent to the front and repeatedly beaten back, the enemy’s
artillery becomes stronger. They can feel the strengthening of their forces.
The army of the enemy comes close enough to see the features of their face.
Body parts can be seen being ripped apart. Paul explains, “We do not fight, we
defend ourselves against annihilation.” The enemy retreats and they pursue. The
battle is back and forth through the trenches and craters.
They watch as new recruits, with zero
knowledge of how to survive the battlefield, fill vacancies among the ranks.
Throughout the fighting, new recruits snap. The experienced soldiers keep an
eye on them, but at intervals they go mad. As one’s nerves shatter, his screams
and attempt to escape sets off others to follow. The fear seizes the new
recruits, but those that are more experienced focus on survival.
During one
bombardment a horse farm is hit. The horses run in all directions. Those that
are injured cry out, hidden in the thick clouds of the battle. The dead men all
around them, body parts scattered about, the constant threat of bombs and gun
fire, all of this is endured by the soldiers. But the groans of injured horses
are unbearable. The soldiers hide in craters and cover their ears, but it is
still too much for them to endure. The men take aim and kill
them to stop the screams of pain.
Paul is given
seventeen days of leave, after which he is to report to a training camp. He has
trouble coping with home. He hates what he sees as fake kindness shown to a
soldier by civilians, knowing that they aren’t helping those on the
battlefield, but are just being kind to make themselves feel good. At home he
is asked by his sickly mother how it’s been, but he can’t answer her. Paul
doesn’t know how to answer, she would never understand. He could
never tell her about the things he’s seen. He’s infuriated with those that
haven’t been through what he has. None of them understand. Being around the civilians,
he realizes how much his live has changed.
Paul Baumer left
his home with a desire to serve his county honorably. After returning during a
break, he is troubled by the idea that those at home are misinformed and
mistaken about the war. Paul believes that the war will end in a loss for
Germany. In fact, he can see from each battle that they have already lost. His
family and neighbors far removed from the frontlines only know what the German
government tells them, none of which seems accurate.
Further, they don’t seem to understand the realities of war and the real losses
being inflicted on Germany’s young soldiers. They can’t imagine that the German
army may actually lose. Paul allows the lies to remain in his family’s minds.
His own mind remains on the safety of his friends that he left behind on the
battlefield.
While at home he
feels impelled to see the mother of the young man that he watched die at the
hospital. She wants to know how if her son is dead, why Paul survived. He lies
and swears that her son died instantly and didn’t feel any pain.
At the training
base he runs into trouble because he doesn’t salute a passing officer. Near the
training base is a Russian prison camp. The prisoners spend their days digging
through the soldiers’ trash looking for anything to eat. Most of the soldiers
ignore the prisoners; Paul can’t help but stare at them while on duty as a
guard. They are the enemy he fought in the field, but look nothing like it
here. Before going back to the frontlines, Paul
finds out that is mother has cancer and they are worried about the cost for her
treatment.
Upon his return
to the front, Paul searches for his friends. When he does find them he shares
the food brought from home. He has returned in time for an inspection. For days
they drill and polish their uniforms as if there is not war at all. They
question what they are fighting for and for further, what their enemies are
fighting for. They wonder who could be benefitting from the war as it was certainly
not those that had to fight it, on either side.
The battles flow
back and forth between attack and retreat as the dead fill the same craters
that they hide in. The men that don’t die right away but waste away slowly far
from any medical help, scream day and night until they fall unconscious or die.
One such sole who screams for help for days is searched for several times but
his voice seems to travel and he can’t be found. The screams are accompanied by
the sound of the decomposing of bloated bodies. The days pass alternating from
attack and retreat. The down time is filled by repairing trenches and the
constant replacement of recruits to fill the ranks.
Feeling that he
owes his the platoon because of his leave, Paul volunteers to scout the
strength of enemy positions. He is taken by surprise by a falling bomb and is
disoriented. He has lost something needed form survival during his visit at
home but is renewed when hearing the voices of his friends behind him. Paul
pushes further on, crawling from hole to hole. He eventually gets lost and
can’t determine which direction he is heading in. As he realizes this, an
attack begins. Enemy troops pass over him as he lies in a water filled crater.
While lying and
waiting for the bombs to stop another body falls on him. Paul stabs the man in
the dark. Machine gun fire is spraying just above ground level, he’s stuck. As
light begins to fill the crater, he tends to the dying man. They wait together
for hours as the man slowly bleeds to death. Paul thinks about the man he
killed with his own hands. He thinks about what he would have been doing
tomorrow, and about his family and the future that he took away from him. After
the man finally dies, Paul apologizes.
Days go by
without being able to leave the crater that he now shares with the man he
killed. Paul didn’t bring any food or water with him. He is finally able to
leave the hole but now fears that his own men may shoot at him as he tries to
return. Instead his friends find him with a stretcher in hand.
Following this
latest trip to the front, they are all reassigned to protect a supply dump.
They find makeshift furnishings and food.
The smoke from their cooking is seen by the enemy and bombing on the town
begins. They remain for days relaxing as bombs tear the small town apart around
them. Before long they receive more orders sending them to evacuate another
village. Paul and one of his friends are injured during this mission and sent
to a field hospital. They are told that they will be going home because of
their injuries.
The two soldiers
are sent to a hospital away from the front for recovery. Here they are again
surrounding by dying soldiers. The hospital place patients that they know are
going to die in one particular room that becomes known as the dying room. The
dying soldiers come in so rapidly that this reserved room isn’t large enough to
contain them all.
Paul is operated
on and is sick for several days afterward. While recovering from surgery he
sees more deaths and new patients arrive. The doctor seems to be finding things
to operate on beyond the injuries that the soldiers are there for. He is
experimenting on the wounded soldiers. Paul recovers enough to move on his own
and sneak around the hospital. He finds that on other floors the injuries are
even worse. He begins to realize the extent of the pain and death that the war
is having on the world. Paul is finally given leave to return home where he
finds his mother is much sicker than when he last left.
He once again
returns to the frontline. The battle is still fought by attack and counter
attack, back and forth. The trenches have been ripped apart and are almost non-existent.
Pockets of fighting continue as the front crumbles. Paul’s group is surrounded
in a number of attacks and has to bury another of their friends. They are
tired, starving and running out of supplies. They are supported by new recruits
that don’t know how to fight, only how to die. They have given up all hope.
Armored tanks now join the fighting effectively for the first time in history.
Paul’s friends
die or are injured one by one as the fighting continues. The German soldiers
all know that they are losing. They hear rumors of a possible peace. They are
overrun by allied aircraft all around them, yet the fighting continues. Paul
carries a dying Katczinsky to safety but is too late, he is dead. Still the
talk of peace is spread but the fighting continues. Paul knows that the war
will soon end and he’ll be going home. He never makes it; he is killed before
peace is agreed.
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