History Literature / AllQuietOnTheWesternFront

* A [[Film/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront2022 2022 film]], a much looser adaptation, from the work's native Germany this time. A film project that languished in [[invoked]]DevelopmentHell since about 2008-2009 until it was picked up by Creator/{{Netflix}}, starring Creator/DanielBruhl, Albrecht Schuch, Sebastian Hülk, Devid Striesow and Edin Hasanovic.

* BookEnds: Just after the beginning of the film Professor Katnorek gives a speech to Paul and friends on the 'wonders' of joining the German army and manages to persuade them to enlist for the 'fatherland' and to do their bit for Germany. Near the end of the film Paul catches his former teacher once again giving his speech to even younger looking men. This strongly implies that Professor Katnorek has done this many times during the war and one wonders how many young men he managed to persuade to fight via propaganda.

* BrutalHonesty: When Paul's schoolmaster urges him to tell the next batch of recruits how [[WarIsGlorious glorious it is to be a soldier]], he hesitates for a bit before telling them ''[[WarIsHell exactly]]'' how brutal and dehumanizing the experience is and that they're being sent to their deaths like his class before them.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Taken to ridiculous levels when Paul casually mentions that the Russian [=POWs=] used to be so bored [[TooMuchInformation that it was common to walk into a whole cell of them getting off at once]].
* DeadMansTriggerFinger: A rather horrifying example involving a flamethrower.

* PutOnABus: Tjaden departs the story close to the end. With his being the lucky character, this is probably deliberate. In the British stage adaptation, he dies trying to save a dog that had become caught on some barbed wire.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: The French soldier Duval is just a RedShirt with no lines, but his death at Paul's hands is memorable in a disturbing way, and gives the latter a moment of HeroicBSOD.

* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Paul goes home on furlough, and finds himself unable to enjoy home comforts at all, because of his war experiences.

* ShovelStrike: The experienced soldiers sharpen their shovels into bladed weapons (a bit like a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk%27s_spade monk's spade]]), and use them against anyone who tries to rush their trench. The inexperienced soldiers use their cruddy bayonets in melee and die horribly. In the film, the majority of the German soldiers use entrenching tools.

* SuicideByCop: At the end of the novel as Paul crosses the DespairEventHorizon, he stands up from the trenches, exposing himself to enemy fire. The novel leaves it up in the air whether it was deliberate or not.

* The 1930 American film adaptation directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Creator/LewAyres as Paul. It won the Best Picture [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscar]] and is often considered to be the TropeMaker of the modern war drama. It is also one of the first really great sound films, made after Hollywood spent a couple of years struggling with the new medium of talkies. It has a place on the UsefulNotes/NationalFilmRegistry. For a (bleaker) German-made counterpart to the film [[invoked]][[DuelingWorks released the same year]], see and compare ''Film/Westfront1918''.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/all-quiet_0_8499.jpg]]

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!!Tropes particular to the 1930 film:

* AscendedExtra: Behm and Kemmerich get more scenes, given how the film shows the recruitment and training of the soldiers rather than just describing it.
* AgeLift: Tjaden is only a few years older than Paul and his classmates in book, but is played by forty-two year old Slim Summerville in this film.
* BloodlessCarnage: During the charge scene, not a lot of wounds are shown, with the exception of some tears in the back of German soldiers and two bloody hands holding on to barbed wire. Also played straight during the machine gun scene in the charge, where loads and loads of French soldiers are mowed down, yet their wounds are not shown.
* ButterflyOfDeathAndRebirth: When Paul goes home he sees his sister's butterfly collection. [[spoiler:In the final scene Paul is shot and killed while reaching for a butterfly.]]
* CallBack: Fairly early in the film, as Paul and his squad are marching into a combat zone for the first time, there's a shot of Paul and several other soldiers looking back at the truck that dropped them off. At the end, after every soldier in that shot has been killed, the shot of each soldier looking back is repeated.
* TheCameo: Raymond Griffith had a very successful career as the star of a series of comedies in the 1920s. Unfortunately for him, he could not raise his voice above a whisper due to a childhood bout of diptheria, so his acting career ended with the debut of the talkies. This film has his final role, a memorable non-speaking part as a French soldier that Paul kills.
* CatapultNightmare: Kemmerich has a nightmare about Behn after Behn is killed.
* DeadHandShot:
** Paul's death is depicted [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlDPsRwZE4 like that.]]
** The most shocking scene in the whole movie shows an enemy soldier who is part of an attack on Paul's unit. As the soldier is reaching for a line of barbed wire, an artillery shell explodes. When the smoke clears, [[AnArmAndALeg his severed hands]] are still clutching the wire.
* DoesThatSoundLikeFunToYou: When on leave, Paul goes back to his old classroom to see Kantorek using the same speech he told his class on another group of young innocent students. Excited to see one of his former students drop in, Kantorek encourages Paul to tell them how grand being in the front lines are. To his credit, Paul is really uncomfortable and insists he has nothing to say, but caves to his teacher's demands... and flat out tells the students that WarIsHell and [[TakeThat accuses their teacher of sending them to their deaths like his class before them]]. Because the students there haven't experienced it for themselves, virtually all of them quickly denounce him as a defeatist.
* InsertCameo: Paul's death scene shows his hand reaching for a butterfly; then a shot is heard, and the hand goes limp in death. The hand in the scene belongs to director Lewis Milestone.
* LudicrousGibs: Very few characters die in subtle ways. Almost all the French soldiers charging and the Germans get gibbed by artillery shells.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The German characters are played by American actors, who speak with American accents. This, however, is intentional TranslationConvention, in order to show American movie-goers just how much like us the German protagonists really are.
* RuleOfSymbolism:
** The weapons of war are terrifying inventions that bring only pain. While words can grasp at the horrors of war, they can never fully express them. Reading about war can only hint at the devastation of battle: only through experience can you truly understand. Both the original novel and Milestone's adaptation attempt to grasp at war's horrors through a visual medium ... knowing full well that you can only use art to begin to touch the hellscape of war. Milestone's goal was to depict the ghastly injures and death these weapons dealt. And, while the film's imagery might not completely encompass the real experience, it's pretty damn unsettling. The major weapons featured in the movie are rifles, shells, bombs, barbed wire, machine guns, and hand-to-hand armaments such as knives, bayonets, and spades. That's a lot of weapons. Even by today's standards, the battles scenes are super gruesome, even with black-and-white blood. Machine guns mow down lines of men. Soldiers trip over barbed wire, shredding their flesh in the process. The hand-to-hand combat scene in the trenches is harrowing — watching swarms of men stab, slash, and beat each other in claustrophobic quarters is ''not'' meant to be taken lightly. Tanks and airplanes made their wartime debut during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. Kat mentions both to Paul while discussing the Germans' struggles to defend their lines... right before being killed by an air raid. Though the high war-tech invented for WWI is ''mentioned'' in the film, we don't actually see a lot of it in action. This was likely due to technical limitations.
** Wartime trauma is another huge factor in the adaptation. Beyond the physical violence, Milestone also focuses on the psychological trauma the weapons of WWI reaped. During Paul's first stint on the Front, we begin to see the mental toll they have on the soldiers. For one thing the soldiers had nearly an entire week of no sleep because of the constant noise of bombs going off near and even worse, they never knew when one of those shells would hit. Kemmerick suffers even worse than Paul, mentally eroding to the point that he tries to leave the safety of the dugout. Other cases of mental anguish include Paul's depression over killing the French soldier and Albert's suicidal longing after learning his leg has been amputated. At that's not even getting into "[[ShellShockedVeteran shell shock]]" for ''after'' the war ends. Paul suffers from depression when he returns home. Kemmerick has nightmares after witnessing Behn's death, and Paul feels guilty over surviving when his friends haven't.
** Due to constant bombardments and barrages of men advancing into machine-gun fire, The appropriately named No Man's Land is a nightmarescape of mud, shell holes, gnarled barbed wire, splintered trees, and, of course, corpses scattered about like seeds thrown onto a field. Consider Paul's experience during the German offensive. The church—a holy place where men are meant to gather to worship—is blasted into ruins. The graveyard next to it is hit with shells, literally raising the dead from their graves to mingle among the living. When Paul takes cover in the crater, he's forced to stab a French soldier. He then attempts to comfort the soldier by providing him a drink, but all he has to offer is muddied, bloody water lying stagnant at the bottom of the crater. Even a basic, life-sustaining necessity such as clean water is absent within No Man's Land. In comparison, when the soldiers take leave from the Front, they're often surrounded by pastoral nature. They eat their fill of beans and bread and lie beneath a tree that remains intact rather than uprooted by shell blasts. That's just how tough times are. Another time, Paul and his comrades find a river to bathe in. With more than enough water to drink, the soldiers get to clean away the dirt and grime that covers them during their time at the Front. Again, they're excited by a cold river. The differences in the landscape help show how the soldiers' states of mind change—it's all location. Away from the Front, the landscape can provide the physical needs of the soldier, allowing him to turn his attention to more social considerations. He can discuss the purpose and worth of the war, take care of his body by eating and bathing…and even get close to hot French girls. But every aspect of No Man's Land requires the soldier to focus on survival and only survival. Every broken tree, muddied crater, and bombed-out building reminds us that death is an ever-present danger—death of the soldiers, death of nature, death of everything.
** Kemmerick's boots have Italian leather, comfy insoles, the works. But the previous owner was gunned down while wearing them. The owner before him? Blown up. The owner before the owner before him? Shredded by shrapnel. We're first introduced to this jinxed pair of footwear when Kemmerick parades them about during boot camp. He places them jokingly on Mueller's shoulders. Since the army lives on its feet, a soldier needs proper boots for the long marches and days of work—especially on the Western Front. Between the mud and unhygienic conditions, soldiers require good boots to prevent blisters, frostbite, and foot fungus. Later, Kemmerick's wounded by shrapnel. As he lies dying in a field hospital, Paul and his friends visit him and Mueller notices the boots. Mueller asks Kemmerick if he can have the boots since he won't need them. As the group leaves, Mueller confesses to Paul he didn't want to get the boots over Paul. Mueller's confession shows us how the war has changed these young men. Mueller has to think about his survival at all times. Although asking for the boots upsets Kemmerick—it's basically the equivalent of saying Kemmerick would die. Kemmerick can't use the boots, but another soldier can. In fact, they could save another soldier's life. We see that survival has to always be at the forefront in a soldier's mind, sacrificing more "civilized" considerations such as decorum and thoughtfulness. In the end, Kemmerick does die, and Paul takes the boots for Mueller. Mueller's shown proudly marching with his new boots, but he's injured during an offensive in No Man's Land. Next, we see Peter marching in the boots—and then Peter's shown being killed while going over the top.
** If you take a good look at Kantorek's blackboard behind him. The phrase he's scrawled there is the first line of Creator/{{Homer}}'s ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', which roughly translates to "Tell me, oh Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide." This line supports Kantorek's worldview and provides us an insight into his militaristic fervor. Having been raised on the classics like ''Literature/TheIliad'' and ''The Odyssey'', Kantorek sees war as something glorious, an event where nations invest young men and get worldly, ingenious heroes. And his own words follow a similar ideal: "Here is a glorious beginning for your lives. The field of honor calls you." Of course, he believes that. His experience of war comes from the ancient Greeks, who didn't exactly like to write epic poems about losers or dead men. Odysseus went to war and then had an epic poem written about him.
** "Oscar" --a rat that hangs out with the soliders-- chews on a piece of the soldiers' bread, and Kat throws his shoe at the little beastie. While Kat tosses the bread aside, Tjaden retorts he'd regret that choice. Rats aren't thought of as being so brazen about snatching food from people, but in the trenches, the humans have entered the rats' world: the world of survival—kill or be killed; eat or be eaten. Later, the men are starving and Kat returns from foraging with stale bread and no butter—the same food that Oscar foraged from the soldiers earlier. Rats come pouring into their dugout and the soldiers begin killing them with their spades. Immediately afterward, the Allied offensive starts, and we see the soldiers fighting in the trenches. They use all manner of hand-to-hand weapons to kill each other, including the same spades they used to kill the rats. The contrast shows us the equalizing of man and beast as a result of the war. Both live in holes; both forage for food; both fight, kill, and bite to survive. The film suggests that we shouldn't talk about "dogs of war" so much as "rats of war."
* SexyDiscretionShot: When Paul is in bed with a French girl, the camera remains pointing at the opposite wall while they talk.
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Leer is killed near the end of the book, but survives the battle where Paul is injured in the film and isn't among those who Tjaden lists as having died or been court-martialed once Paul gets back. Lieutenant Bertnick's death scene is also cut from the film.
* TrainingFromHell: While the book also had some training described in it, the film goes to great lengths to show not just how awful the training is, but also how ineffective it really was on the front lines, such as when Kat tells Paul and his classmates that a bayonet is pretty useless in a melee fight compared to a sharpened shovel.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Himmelstoss is last seen charging along with other German soldiers. While the novel states he came out okay and became less of a JerkAss, the film seems to imply that [[KilledByTheAdaptation he died during that particular attack]].

* WarIsHell: Paul and his friends were thrilled and excited to go and fight after listening to Professor Katorik's speech. But they soon realise it was not what they expected as they end up living in terrible conditions on the western front and live in constant terror implying the speech was propaganda.

* WarIsHell: The Book. The nightmarish horrors of trench warfare are described in clinical detail: soldiers dying in agony in no-man's-land with their friends unable to help them, horses staggering around the battlefield with their guts blown out, young soldiers weeping in bunkers during bombardments. In one passage Paul goes into detail about how the corpses piled in no-man's-land bloat as they rot, how they "hiss, belch, and make movements" due to the gases of decay trapped inside.

* LastNameBasis

* LoweredRecruitingStandards: It's the tail end of World War I, so it's a given.

* UsefulNotes/PrussiansInPickelhauben: Obviously.

* A [[Film/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront2022 2022 film]] adaptation, from the work's native Germany this time. A film project that languished in [[invoked]]DevelopmentHell since about 2008-2009 until it was picked up by Creator/{{Netflix}}, starring Creator/DanielBruhl, Albrecht Schuch, Sebastian Hülk, Devid Striesow and Edin Hasanovic.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* KillEmAll: [[AnAesop Just to drive the point home]] that [[FinaglesLaw war is absurd, unpredictable]]... and with NO real [[WarIsGlorious glory]] in store for anyone...

** Kat comes from Polish stock, although it is not clear where he comes from. The facts that his first name is in the Germanized or Latinized form (Stanislaus, not Stanislaw), his family name is spelled Katczinsky (the more standard Polish spelling would be Kaczynski) and his German is not coloured by Polish may indicate that his family was assimilated, maybe even centuries before. Polish and other Slavic names are and have been fairly common in Germany, particularly in the Eastern Provinces of Prussia like Silesia, East and West Prussia (in the German dub of the 1930 film Kat speaks with an East Prussian accent), and the Ruhr Valley.
** There is also minor character Lewandowski, a fellow patient in military hospital. The novel mentions that his wife lives in "Poland", which presumably indicates the Prussian province of Posen (Poznan), the least assimilated Polish-speaking part of the kingdom. Also note that Paul Bäumer's teacher is called Kantorek, which would indicate a Polish or Czech ancestry.

* SpiritualSuccessor: ''Film/{{Gallipoli}}'', another film about the pointless deaths of young men in World War I.

* A [[Film/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront2022 2022 film]] adaptation, from the work's native Germany this time. A new film project languished in [[invoked]]DevelopmentHell since about 2008-2009 until this one was picked up by Creator/{{Netflix}}, starring Creator/DanielBruhl, Albrecht Schuch, Sebastian Hülk, Devid Striesow and Edin Hasanovic.

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!!Tropes particular to the 2022 film:

* AdaptedOut: Several characters that were featured in the original 1929 novel and the 1930 and 1979 films, such as Himmelstoss and Kemmerich, have been left out of the 2022 film.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: As suffered by many soldiers killed in the First World War, but Paul's friend Albert Kropps gets it worst when he caught at gunpoint by French soldiers while retreating and is executed by flamethrower. Albert is left screaming in pain and agony until he is finished off with a CoupDeGrace while Paul could only watch helplessly in horror.
* DeathByAdaptation: Several characters who survive in the original novel and previous film adaptations are killed off in the 2022 film, most notably Albert and Tjaden.
* DemotedToExtra: Paul's schoolteacher Kantorek who encouraged Paul and his friends to join the war effort in the original novel and previous film adaptations is relegated to a single scene in the film's introduction.
* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: Several characters die differently in the 2022 film than in the original novel and previous film adaptations, most notably Kat and Paul.
* DrivenToSuicide: Unwilling to live as a cripple, Paul and Kat's maimed comrade Tjaden repeatedly stabs himself in the neck with a fork and bleeds out much to their horror.
* ManOnFire: Many German soldiers end up getting burned to death by French flamethrowers in the counterattack, including Albert.
* OhCrap: Paul and his fellow comrades' reaction upon seeing a wave of French Saint-Chamond tanks advancing on their positions.
* TanksButNoTanks: Some sharp-eyed viewers noted that the Saint-Chamond tanks featured in the climatic French counterattack are actually modified from BMP chassis. This is justified in that there is only one surviving Saint-Chamond restored to running condition that is preserved at the Musée des Blindés at Samur.
* TankGoodness: Paul and his comrades are confronted by a wave of French Saint-Chamond tanks which proceed to overrun their positions.
* WhamShot: While eating food found in a recently captured French dugout, Paul and his comrades are alarmed by the sight of rats escaping the dugout and the sound of mechanical rumbling outside. Realizing that they are about to face a French counterattack, they rush outside to the trench and man their positions. They are shocked to see not one but an entire wave of French Saint-Chamond tanks slowly advancing out of the fog.

* A 2022 film adaptation, from the work's native Germany this time. A new film project languished in [[invoked]]DevelopmentHell since about 2008-2009 until this one was picked up by Creator/{{Netflix}}, starring Creator/DanielBruhl, Albrecht Schuch, Sebastian Hülk, Devid Striesow and Edin Hasanovic.

* TanksButNoTanks: Some sharp-eyed viewers that the Saint-Chamond tanks featured in the climatic French counterattack are actually modified from BMP chassis. Justified in that there is only one surviving Saint-Chamond restored to running condition that is preserved at the Musée des Blindés at Samur.

* WhamShot: While eating food found in a recently captured French dugout, Paul and his comrades are alarmed by the sight of rats escaping the dugout and the sound of rumbling outside. Realizing that they are about to face a French counterattack, they rush outside to the trench and man their positions. They are shocked to see not one but an entire wave of French Saint-Chamond tanks slowly advancing out of the fog.