Editing All Quiet on the Western Front (section)

==Themes==
{{quote box
| quote = "One of the great legacies of World War I is that as soon as the Armistice is signed, the enemy is war itself, not the Germans, Russians, or French. The book captures it and becomes the definitive anti-war statement of the Great War"
| source = Dr. Thomas Doharty<ref name=Smithsonian/>
| width = 25%
}}

At the beginning of the book, Remarque writes, "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war."<ref name="DestroyedByWar">{{cite book |last1=Bloom |first1=Harold |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5UVJYPUw18AC&q=%22It+will+try+simply+to+tell+of+a+generation+of+men+who,+even+though+they+may+have+escaped+its+shells,+were+destroyed+by+the+war.%22&pg=PA48 |title=Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front |year=2009 |isbn=978-1604134025 |page=48|publisher=Infobase }}</ref> The book does not focus on heroic stories of bravery, but rather gives a view of the conditions in which the soldiers find themselves. The monotony between battles, the constant threat of [[artillery]] fire and bombardments, the struggle to find food, the lack of training of young recruits (meaning lower chances of survival), and the overarching role of random chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers are described in detail.

Another major theme is the concept of blind [[nationalism]]. Remarque often emphasizes that the boys were not forced to join the war effort against their will, but rather by a sense of patriotism and pride. Kantorek called Paul's platoon the "Iron Youth", teaching his students a [[Romantic nationalism|romanticized]] version of warfare with glory and duty to the Fatherland. It is only when the boys go to war and have to live and fight in dirty, cramped trenches with little protection from enemy bullets and shells while contending with hunger and sickness that they realize just how dispiriting it is to actually serve in the army.<ref name=Fulfillment>Karak, Pintu. “The Voices of a Lost Generation: The Gap between Promise and Fulfilment in Remarque's Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front).” Language in India, vol. 18, no. 8, Aug. 2018, pp. 173–78. EBSCOhost, [[WP:Wikipedia Library|Wikipedia Library]].</ref>