{"id":71557,"date":"2020-02-19T01:27:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T01:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/02\/19\/classic-german-wwi-novel-is-getting-the-big-screen-treatment\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:07:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:07:54","slug":"classic-german-wwi-novel-is-getting-the-big-screen-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/off-duty\/military-culture\/2020\/02\/19\/classic-german-wwi-novel-is-getting-the-big-screen-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic German WWI novel is getting the big screen treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just one year after \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front\u201d was published, the classic World War I novel by German author and war veteran Erich Maria Remarque was made into a 1930 Oscar-winning feature film of the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ninety years later, the best-selling German novel ever is getting the big screen treatment once again \u2014 this time in its native language, according to The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front\u201d tells the story of Paul B\u00e4umer, a young German who, along with his friends, enlists in the German army with lofty dreams of heroism and national pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B\u00e4umer\u2019s naivety is exposed, however, upon arriving to the trenches of the Western Front. There, death, terror, starvation, and filth dominate a soldier\u2019s existence. For the soldiers in the mud, the mission is one mired in futility, and after returning home, the psychological damage of war leaves B\u00e4umer feeling like a foreigner in his own home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis 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,\u201d Remarque writes in the book\u2019s epigraph. \u201cIt will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remarque\u2019s honest portrayal of the realities of war would make him a target of emerging Nazi ideologies. By the end of 1933, owning a copy of \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front\u201d was considered a crime punishable by the Gestapo.<\/p>\n\n\n\t