Humans are storytellers. We invented novels and poetry and plays to satisfy our need for stories. The tales we experience stir our emotions, sometimes allowing us to relax and often teaching us what we need to know.

As I have been with my grandkids this week while their parents organize the family’s move, I needed a story, despite the number of books the younger child and I read together. When the kids fell asleep, I combed through one of the services and chose the 2022 film, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Obviously, not a source of relaxation, but, a lesson in history, both world and personal history.

The film is a masterpiece that is beautifully photographed and well-acted, particularly by the lead, Felix Kammerer as Paul Baumer, the central character around whom the story revolves.

While the film is not 100% faithful to the novel — adding the signing of the Armistice and eliminating both Paul’s visit home and a scene in which Paul’s group is caught in a graveyard — at least one addition helped to develop Remarque’s protest against fighting for nationalism: the proud Prussian General Friedrichs, who wears custom made uniforms and dines on gourmet food, who allows the troops to starve and who deeply regrets that there has been no war for 50 years.

The general is never seen on active duty.

Although I have not read Erich Maria Remarque’s entire novel, I have a vague memory of reading an excerpt of it from our ninth grade anthology, then discussing it in class. Vague indeed, because it would have been assigned during academic 1961-62.

Remarque was scarcely older than we readers when drafted into the war as an 18-year-old student at the University of Munster. He would be wounded five times. His novel was published 10 years after the Armistice. Surely, the sights, the deaths, the mud, the hunger, the pain demanded a decade of recall, examination and, of course, healing.

But, Remarque’s struggles with the material did not end with the publication of his early novel. Hitler became chancellor in 1933 and banned and burned both the novel and the first film adaptation because they contradicted his political theories and his interpretation of the history of Word War I. Austrian soldiers could not read the book. Czech military libraries removed it, while Italy banned it completely. Freed from the ban by Hitler’s death, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is considered the greatest anti-war novel.

As high school freshmen, we had little idea of what would happen on the world stage before we received our diplomas: the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and the assignation of JFK the following year, the Gulf of Tonkin incident a month before our senior year began.

Despite its fame, I doubt that All Quiet had any influence on the anti-Vietnam War movement which began as early as 1964 and flowered the following year. I remember my introduction to the movement during my sophomore year when one of the clubs at my college sponsored an early anti-war recruiter. I remember him as calm and soft-spoken, not screeching, not using double speak.

I also remember walking away from the lecture, down the hall, weighing the cost of war and my beliefs against events that even then expressed a need for violence and threat by certain politicians.

I still wonder why an anti-war novel was considered a threat by the nations surrounding Germany. I tried to discover whether All Quiet was part of the American bans, but, found no mention of it. Indeed, the headline-making bans are more aimed at books about gender and sexuality, about slavery in America and about the struggle of Black citizens to vote.

We see footage of the attacks upon Ukraine. We hear of nuclear war threats. At the same time, voting rights at home are being diminished. We see little being done to stop global warming. Just yesterday, YouTubers announced how the governmental agencies that are supposed to protect the citizenry and the Constitution did nothing for 12 months following the madness of January 6.

When was General Friedrichs elected to Congress? Why is General Friedrichs sitting on our courts and running agencies?

Susan Wozniak has been a case worker, a college professor and journalist. She is a mother and grandmother.]]>