Remarque’s novel saw censorship outside of Germany as well. In addition to 25,000 volumes written by Jewish authors, All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the first books to be publicly burned. Then, on the first large-scale demonstration of book burnings occurred in front of the University of Berlin. Any and all copies of Remarque’s writing were removed from libraries and prohibited from being sold or published anywhere in the country.

When the Nazis rose to power in 1933 - just five years after the publication of the novel - Remarque’s writing was declared “unpatriotic” by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Surprisingly, Remarque’s harshest critics were his own countrymen, particularly those voices which came from the emerging Nationalist Socialist Party. As such, Remarque became spokesman for a generation that had been “destroyed by war, even though it might have escaped its shells.” With its realistic depictions of trench warfare and the emphasis placed on the young soldiers’ experience, All Quiet on the Western Front provoked many of the war’s survivors. Remarque’s novel detailed the physical and mental stress of German soldiers during the war as well as the detachment from civilian life felt upon returning home. For something so popular, it may come as a surprise that Remarque’s novel was ever banned.Īlthough the book was published more than a decade after the armistice, the lingering weight of World War I was still heavy on the minds of readers. Within the first eighteen months in print, the novel had been copied in twenty-two different languages and sold 2.5 million copies. In the United States, the English translation titled, All Quiet on the Western Front, became a best-selling work of fiction. In January of the following year, it was released as a book and saw immediate success. ― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western FrontĮrich Maria Remarque’s novel Im Westen nichts Neues was first published in serial form in the Vossische Zeitung magazine from November to December, 1928. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony - Forgive me, comrade how could you be my enemy?” I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. “But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me.

All quiet on the western front book