If you haven’t seen “All Quiet on the Western Front,” you’re missing out. The German film, an adaptation of the French novel, is directed by Edward Berger and was released late last year on Netflix. Warning: it’s rated R because of extreme war violence.
I’ve been watching it in parts this week, a half-hour here, an hour there, not just because it’s a long movie — which, at two and a half hours, it certainly is. But the movie depicts World War I in such shocking and barbaric terms that it’s hard not to look away. The film seems intent on showing the full horror of war and not letting you forget it.
Over 9 million soldiers and more than 5 million civilians died during World War I, which lasted from 1914 until 1918. More than 116,000 Americans perished. And it wasn’t just the scale of death that marked the conflict; it was the horrors of poison gas, tanks and flamethrowers, and the insane carnage of trench warfare, where millions of soldiers ran straight into the fire of automatic weapons. The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City provides a powerful and informative understanding of the war’s tragedy.
“All Quiet on the Western Front’’ does, too. It opens with a field of corpses cast across a field marred from battle, then cuts to the idyllic hometown of our protagonist, a young German named Paul, who forges his parents’ signatures to enlist and join the war with his buddies. The contrast is jarring.
The movie has served as an interesting backdrop to a major development in the war in Ukraine: this week, both the US and Germany announced they will soon send tanks to Ukraine. Germany has also lifted export restrictions on its Leopard tanks, freeing other countries to send their own to Ukraine.
This was a line neither Germany nor the US wanted to cross when the war began last February. But as both sides prepare spring offensives, it seems necessary to give Ukraine the tools they need to hold their ground and withstand Russia’s assault.
Hard to cheer on the news that a war will escalate. I think of a scene in “All Quiet on the Western Front” where the German delegation is debating whether to surrender over a breakfast of pastries, fresh fruit and hot coffee, while their sons bleed in a field.
We forget that war is made with human lives, and that the fighting and dying is done mostly with terribly young ones, too.
But tanks, finally — one hopes it brings this war to an end. The sooner, the better. As Germany and the US mulled over their decision, a senior Ukrainian commander remarked, “Every day of delay is the death of Ukrainians. Think faster.”
War is death. We discuss terms like “stalemate” and forget what that means. It means young people dying for nothing.
Here, so far away, winter is quiet. The snow falls, and we nestle in warm beds. But if our country can do something to help end the war, let us make haste. I find so little justification in doing otherwise.
