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Chris Boisvert-Cotulio

Professor Amanda Brieger

German 1140W

26 April 2011

All Quiet: Humanity and Propaganda in War

Propaganda is a common tool preceding and during war to

manipulate people to accept the views of war leaders and ultimately

the war they are proposing. For example, before President Bush Jr.

waged war on Iraq, he told the people of the United States that

Saddam Hussein was hiding mass weapons of destruction. He did this

to rile citizens up and encourage them to support the war. It was

obvious once the troops arrived and found no weapons of mass

destruction that President Bush used this as a ploy to get Americans to

support the war. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front ,

propaganda is also used to lure young men to join the military and

fight for their country. In this paper, I will analyze how propaganda

used in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front blurred the vision of

young men and convinced them to fight blindly without knowing the

true horrors of war. I will also show how this propaganda dehumanized

the image of the enemy to the German troops, and made them want to

fight. I will also analyze how the image of the enemy changed to the

troops as the novel progressed, and also how the image of their

leaders changed as well.



Early in the novel the main character, Paul, explains how his

schoolteacher had persuaded him and his classmates to join the

military and fight in the war. The teacher used patriotism to convince

the young men to join, glorifying war and fighting for their country.

Kantorek, the schoolteacher, says, “Won’t you join up Comrades?” ( All

Quiet on the Western Front 11) to a room full of gullible boys.

Kantorek spoke about and glorified war without knowing the horrors of

it first hand. He mislead these young men by not telling them all of the

terrible things they would see and experience. It was this propaganda

that persuaded these students to leave school and go to war. Paul

speaks about opposing the war, “At that time even one’s parents were

ready with the word ‘coward’; no one had the vaguest idea what we

were in for.” ( All Quiet on the Western Front 11) These young men

were slapped in the face with the brutality of war very quickly and had

no idea it was coming.

Even when Kantorek’s former students were at war he sends

them a letter calling them the “Iron Youth” and glorifying their

heroism. One of the students, Joseph Behm, was reluctant to follow

the advice of the schoolteacher, but ultimately followed suite with his

classmates and joined the military. Ironically, he was one of the first of



the classmates to die. When Joseph died, Paul and his classmates lost

their innocent trust in authority figures like Kantorek. They began to

despise him and figures like him. “There were thousands of Kantoreks,

all of whom thought they were acting for the best – in a way that cost

them nothing. That is why they let us down so badly… We often made

fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted

them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated

in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But

the first death we saw shattered this belief.” ( All Quiet on the Western

Front 12) Initially, Paul and his classmates looked up to these leaders

and trusted them. However, once they saw death first-hand, especially

the death of friends, they resented these leaders for sending them to

war and felt tricked by them.

An article about propaganda from Wikipedia states, “In

World War II propaganda, American propagandists endeavored to

rouse support for the war and commitment to its victory. Using a wide

variety of media, the propaganda fomented hatred for the enemy and

support for allies, urged great efforts for production and victory

gardens, enjoined people to make do so that more material could go to

the war effort, and sold war bonds.” (American Propaganda During

WW2) This quote shows that propaganda was also used on the other

side of the war. It was necessary to rally support. It also spawned

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II



hatred for the “enemy.” This hatred created by propaganda usually

blinds people to the fact that the enemies on the other side of the war

are human beings similar to themselves.

The men in the novel are also blinded by propaganda and the

enemy becomes dehumanized. To them, the enemy is faceless; just a

number with a uniform trying to kill them. This makes it very easy

initially to kill without remorse or second thought. However, this

attitude changes throughout the course of the novel. When Paul

returns from home where he was on leave, he returns to his camp,

which is now alongside a Russian prison camp. “It is strange to see

these enemies of ours so close up. They have faces that make one

think – honest peasant faces… They look just as kindly as our own

peasants in Friesland. It is distressing to watch their movements, to

see them begging for something to eat.” ( All Quiet on the Western

Front 190) It can be seen from this quote that when Paul sees his

“enemies” so close up, he feels some sympathy for them. He feels bad

watching them beg for something to eat, and he even gives them

some food that his mom made from home. He also sees that these

men are not so fundamentally different from him. He sees them

suffering and has compassion because they are humans just like him.

It was not he who decided these men were his enemy. It was people in

positions of power and influence, people he had never met who



ordered him to shoot, maim, and imprison these men not so different

from him. One of Paul’s Comrades says, “’But what I would like to

know is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said

No.’ ‘I’m sure there would,’ Paul interjects… ‘Well, if not him alone,

than perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No.’” ( All

Quiet on the Western Front 203) This is a powerful quote because it is

the decision of twenty or thirty people to send millions to war. The

men are once again questioning their leaders and questioning the war.

They are not fighting these men for any reason of their own, but for

reasons of those in power. This is quite a different attitude from when

they left the classroom eager to enlist in the military. The more

experience they have with war, the more they hate it and those who

decided to wage it.

“They realize that the crushing irony of the war is that soldiers

on both sides have been sent to fight based on exactly the same

ideals. After this crucial realization, they find it impossible to determine

who is right and who is wrong. In the end, nationalistic ideals are

simply tools used by power- and status-hungry leaders to seduce

citizens into supporting a war that does nothing but harm them. The

war is useful only to very few men who never actually see combat. The

worst senselessness of the matter, as Paul and his friends realize, is

that millions of lives have been sacrificed by a decision made by fewer



than thirty men.” (Sparknotes Ch. 9 Analysis) This quote once again

shows that the propaganda of a few men can make millions blindly

hate each other. These leaders take away the “face” of the enemy so

that the soldiers cannot see who they are truly fighting. They do not

see that the men they are fighting are so similar to themselves

because the leaders hide these similarities with lies and propaganda.

They do not feel the humanity of the enemy until they are up close and

personal, like Paul’s experience with the Russian prison camp.

Another example of Paul feeling the humanity of the enemy is his

experience with a Frenchman in a shell hole. He was caught in no

man’s land and taking fire, so he jumped into a shell hole and

pretended to be dead. A Frenchman jumped into the hole with him

and out of reaction and self-defense Paul stabbed him. This was Paul’s

first experience killing a man in hand-to-hand combat. It was too light

outside for Paul to try and escape, so he had to stay in the hole with

the dead body out of fear of being seen. However, as he waits he

notices that the French soldier is not dead. Paul bandages the man’s

wounds and gives him water. It takes several hours for him to die.

Paul felt terrible about what he had done and began talking to the

dead soldier explaining that he did not want to kill him. Paul found

pictures of a woman and little girl inside the man’s wallet along with

letters from home. When he read the letters he feels an immense



amount of guilt. “Now, for the first time, Paul kills a man in hand-to-

hand combat. He sees the enemy face to face and is forced to

understand the true cost of taking another human being’s life. Gérard

Duval is not a vague figure killed from a distance but an actual man,

an individual just as the Russian soldiers were individuals… He sees

the life that he has destroyed and realizes that Gérard’s wife and child

are victims of his actions as well.” (Sparknotes Ch. 9 Analysis) Seeing

pictures of the man’s wife and child makes Paul feel more terrible

about killing this man, and forces him to realize the gravity of taking a

man’s life and ruining his family’s life. Being that close to his victim

brought back the humanity of that victim, which propaganda and the

desperate will to survive during war can take away. This example

shows how greatly dehumanized the enemy soldiers were to each

other. This was not the first time that Paul had taken away another

man’s life, but it was the first time he was so close to the death. The

other times that Paul killed enemy soldiers, they were so dehumanized

from a distance that he did not think twice about it. When his victim

had a face, an identity, a family he felt deep regret. War and the

propaganda that fuels it takes away this identity and individualism of

the enemy that Paul finally sees in the shell hole with his victim.

War can corrupt a man and take away his civility. That is exactly

what happened to Paul in this novel. When he went home for a short



period of time on leave, he did not know how to live as a civilian. All

he knew was the violence of war. It is sad what war does to people.

The differences that divide us and cause wars are usually much less

significant than what unites us all: humanity. Paul learned that first

hand. He realized the significance of another man’s life in the shell

hole with the Frenchman, and realized the reasons for taking that life

were petty and far less important than the life he took. He realized

through the progression of the novel, that the propagandist reasons for

joining and fighting the war were foolish and not his own. This made

him resent those in power who made the decision to go to war. Finally,

he realized that the men he was fighting were human beings with

families and identities; a fact that war can blur.



Works Cited

"American Propaganda during World War II." Wikipedia, the Free

Encyclopedia. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_during_World_

War_II>.

"SparkNotes: All Quiet on the Western Front: Chapter Nine."

SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. Web. 26 Apr.

2011. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/allquiet/section9.rhtml>.

Remarque, Erich. All Quiet on the Western Front . New York: Ballantine

Books, 1956. Print.

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