All Quiet on the Western Front is a WWI movie based upon the novel Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) written by Erich, Maria, Remarque, a German WWI veteran. While the characters remain fictional, the experiences are Erich’s own.

The movie shows the German late-war perspective and is entirely in German. All Quiet on the Western Front easily became my favorite WWI film, the historically accurate depiction of the war, especially from the German side, a perspective I believe isn’t shown nearly enough. 

The film does an amazing job of showing the emotional degradation of the young German soldiers from the moment they enlist to their final moments of life. In the beginning, the main character, Paul Baumer, an average German boy going into the armed forces as a very nationalistic person who loves his country and is willing to die for it.

By the end, Paul is tired, defeated, and questions why he is fighting this war. That depiction is a big part of what I love about this movie. It shows that the Germans were not only human with emotions but that WWI had such emotional power that it could change the minds of even the people most dedicated to their nation.

All Quiet on the Western Front does very well in building sympathy for the Germans. Nobody has sympathy for what we consider to be the “enemy” because most assume that this enemy must be evil from the view that we are fighting them and we must be in the right therefore anybody who we oppose must be in the wrong. In reality, the Germans in WWI were just like the French in that they were fighting a war to preserve the nation and by the end, none of them wanted to continue the fighting.

The movie depicts trench warfare like no other, for comparison, the popular WWI movie 1917 shows trenches in perfect condition, clean, happy-ish soldiers. All Quiet on the Western Front shows the horrible conditions of the trenches at the end of the war, with sides caved in, underground living quarters collapsing.

Also depicted just as accurately is the artillery. Even the most patriotic of people, which at the time most of the German soldiers upon enlisting, were very patriotic would have their spirits smashed by the constant and horrifying scream of artillery shells soaring down onto their heads. It shows shell shock, a very common thing that soldiers get where they essentially are so scared that they can’t even bring themselves to move.

All of this contributes to the huge emotional strain soldiers were under throughout the duration of the war and I think is just a perfect show of how WW1 was more detrimental to a soldier’s mental health than any other war.

The effects of gas attacks are also shown in a way most movies wouldn’t dare show. An entire company (60-120 men) of very young men around 18-20 in age, is shown dead because they didn’t get their gas masks on in time. A very impactful scene and the only one I can find that shows how bad gas attacks could be in terms of death.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a fantastic WWI movie, it does everything right. If you like learning and or reading about modern wars or any 20th-21st century history in general, this movie is for you.  All Quiet on the Western Front is available to stream now on Netflix.