All Quiet on the Western Front

The movie “All Quiet on the Western Front” can provide us with a lot of insight about the soldiers experience in World War I. The movie and what we learned in class can help us out with this. In the movie there were a lot of kids and just by looking at their face you could tell what they were thinking. Some of them were very scared of what might happen to them, some of them were determined to come home well and alive, and some of them looked excited to be serving the Fatherland and doing their duty. Back in Germany they told the students over and over that it was their duty to fight in the war and that is what men do in Germany. They were told they were serving the Fatherland and bringing glory back to …show more content…

He watched the man die all night, and he was talking to the man the whole night. He covered his ears so that he didn’t have to hear the man groan in pain. The main character said things like, “I didn’t want to kill you,” and “I’ve never met you before like this. Face-to-face,” or “Forgive me comrade. I’ll make it right to your family.” The psychological effects of war were devastating on a soldiers mind.
When the soldiers finally got to get home they were supposed to be happy, but most of them weren’t. They felt like they didn’t deserve to be home after the horrible things they’ve done. Most people were ignorant on what war was really like, still saying the same old things like that they are serving the Fatherland or that they are doing their duty. As Coach Beller once said on the public’s thoughts of war, “It seems to me like it’d be a never ending stream of people talking out of their ass.” They had to lie to their friends and family about the conditions there so that their minds could be at ease. In the end, soldiers would eventually feel like their real home was not their home and that they needed to be out on the battlefield, that that was their new home. Throughout the whole movie people would offer the main character a cigarette and every single time he would say that he did not want one. They would reply with things like, “If you’re old enough to be in the war, you’re old enough to smoke.” In the final scene you see him smoking a cigarette while writing