All Quiet on the Western Front
...t fighting to keep or gain land? The reason many people did not is because one simple word, nationalism. Nationalism was the key ingredient to the war. It is what fueled many people to join the war. Many people in the war could have gone on to live great lives. We lost great authors, poets, political leaders, doctors, and just great people in general. Instead the leaders of the countries involved in WWI manipulated their people with nationalism and propaganda, into enlisting for war. One use of propaganda was when the British showed a picture of a German looking character taking away a young girl. Often the use of propaganda was used to boost the morale of the troops. People like Paul Baumer in, All Quiet on the Western Front, is one of the few men that recognized the pettiness of the war. He wasn’t blinded by nationalism. He even went back and told a teacher of his off, for forcing his beliefs on the students, and pressing the need to be enlisted in war. The major theme of All Quiet on the Western Front is the fact that war is a waste of good lives. Especially when all you are fighting for is so you can say that you are better than someone else. The fact that at the beginning of the movie, you meet a group of boys that have just graduated and are now going to enlist in the war shows us that, they weren’t even able to make it to college, because they then had to enlist. They never even had a shot at a future besides war. The chances that every single one of those would have made it through the whole war and come back home in one piece was almost impossible. They feel compelled to go to war because of the nationalism that was preached at their school. Teachers made them feel as if it was their “duty” to be a part of such a horrific thing as war. Going to war camp and training, is simply just s waste of a persons potential. Maybe if a persons potential is war, then that is the path they choose, but they should not have to be manipulated into this situation. In All Quiet on the Western Front, you are able to see how human many of the soldiers were. In a history lesson, you cannot necessarily understand that many people could not take the pressures of the war. It drove them mad. There is an example of this in the movie. The men are hiding out in the cabin structures during heavy fire, they are waiting for their call to attack, and some of the men just can’t hack it. And it isn’t something to be ashamed of because war should be seen as a scary and horrific thing and it is rarely seen in that light. Due to things like nationalism, sometimes war is looked at in a more positive light. When it comes to WWI, neither side, the Allies, or the Central Powers, should be looking at it as something that was good for their country. The poem The Dead, by Rupert Brooke is an excellent source to show the disaster this war was. Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away; ...