To be honest, I’m pretty excited about this week’s movie, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, Universal). Having studied and taught both the original novel and its film counterpart, this work means a little more to me personally—and it seems much more profound and timeless to me than many of its contemporaries. Plus, what a sweet title, yes?

Erich Maria Remarque, himself a veteran German infantryman of the First World War, originally published All Quiet on the Western Front as a serial in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitunghe in 1928, the publication of the work in novel form following in 1929. The novel was immensely successful both in Germany and internationally, and production of the film based on the novel commenced soon after the novel’s release. The film would go on to win two Oscars: Outstanding Production and Best Directing.

However, the Nazis, who rose to power in Germany in the early 1930s, saw the novel and its film as a threat both to their belief system and to German morale. All Quiet on the Western Front is overwhelmingly anti-war in its presentation of German youths who are persuaded with nationalistic propaganda from their teacher to join the fight against the Allied forces led by France and Britain. What the young soldiers discover when they arrive at the Western Front is put bluntly by Paul, the story’s protagonist, in the film: “It’s dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all. There are millions out there dying for their country, and what good is it?”

To the Nazis, this type of thinking was tantamount to blasphemy. In their minds, Germany’s defeat in World War I was unacceptable—if not false. The real blame for the end of the war and for the foul treatment Germany received from the rest of the world at the Paris Peace Conference that followed it could be placed on a group of Jews who signed the Treaty of Versailles to end the war. This “stab-in-the-back theory” is untrue; yet within a country desperately trying to cope with the devastation it experienced in the Great War, it became quite popular to promote and believe in such a scapegoat idea because the reality of Germany’s situation in the war and after it was difficult both to understand and to accept.

Most history books teach that the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the “spark” that started WWI, but the real causes of the war run deep and complicated through the various alliances and military strategies that existed among the nations of Europe and Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That being said, Germany neither started WWI nor committed the war’s only atrocities, although they would be accused of both. All the countries at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 agreed that Germany was “guilty” of causing WWI and must be required to make reparations for war damages. To that effect, the Treaty of Versailles included an article known as the War Guilt Clause, which imposed a legal liability on Germany and her allies for all the losses and damages of the war. Just as a war on the scale of WWI had never been seen before, this idea of legally burdening a defeated country with moral responsibility for a military event was also new. Germans were the bad guys. As such, they would pay financially, militarily, and psychologically.

The victorious countries of the First World War bickered over just how much money to demand Germany repay, and in May 1921 it was decided that Germany would pay all the reparations for the war at a staggering cost of $34 billion. Though the League of Nations renegotiated this amount down to a little over $26 billion in 1924, from 1920-1932, Germany only managed to scrape together $4.5 billion in repayment. In 1931, the year after the film All Quiet on the Western Front was released, Germany was granted a moratorium on its annual payments; and in 1932, all reparations were abandoned.

How Germany managed to pay even the $4.5 billion it did is incredible considering the immense poverty and population decline it experienced after the Great War. With the rise of more efficient weapons such as the machine gun, the casualties inflicted during WWI are hard to comprehend: approximately 1,700,000 killed and 4,200,000 wounded for Germany alone (overall casualty numbers for the entire war are believed to exceed 35,000,000).

We won’t usually be dealing with a ton of numbers on FlicksChick.com, but I feel that for this film in particular it is important to note the historical magnitude of the times and the war—as well as the film’s place relative to them. For the Nazis, then, many of them (including Hitler) WWI veterans themselves, there had to be more to the war than just dying and losing. Their anger and frustration were legitimate and understandable, but their subsequent beliefs and horrendous actions were appalling and inexcusable. All Quiet on the Western Front, despite its veteran German author, was caught up in this post-WWI rage and condemned in Germany. Nazis staged riots outside of theaters that dared to show the film, and Remarque’s novel was included in the bonfires of books that the Nazis declared anti-German. It became a criminal offense to own All Quiet on the Western Front.

Remarque himself, anticipating danger, fled first to Switzerland and then to the United States in the late 1930s. While he lived a swinging kind of life in America, his family in Germany suffered greatly under the Nazi regime, most notably his sister Elfriede, who was guillotined by the Nazis in 1943 for “defeatist talk.” It is rumored that the judge at her sham trial declared to her, “We have sentenced you to death because we cannot apprehend your brother. You must suffer for your brother.” Remarque was devastated when he learned of Elfriede’s death.

So this week, we of the twenty-first century have the privilege of looking into the film that came from Remarque’s novel. I feel that this is both a privilege and a responsibility. While many movies in the Best Picture list can be called feel-good films or cult classics, this one is quite different. It is a story with a message that evil and misguided men tried to deny and erase. And regardless of how we feel about what the movie says, we cannot ignore that within our own times violence and killing are allowed to run rampant in many parts of the world and, just like the character of Paul, we can neither understand it nor condone it. What do we do with all the killing then?

This is a super somber way to end this Weekday Warm-up, I know, but I think that it’s appropriate for this week’s film. For those interested in further reading about All Quiet on the Western Front and its treatment in Germany, check out the Smithsonian’s article “The Most Loved and Hated Novel About World War I.” For more detailed thoughts on All Quiet on the Western Front and its significance, check out the full post this weekend, and thank you for sticking with this film’s Weekday Warm-up!