World War I typified War Is Hell in modern consciousness due to the massive losses it caused in a seemingly pointless butchery, and Erich Maria Remarque's landmark novel All Quiet on the Western Front and its 1930, 1979 and 2022 adaptations don't pull punches on the resulting sadness and misery.
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Novel
- Franz's death.
- An equally agonizing (or perhaps even more so) scene occurs when Paul (the protagonist) is on leave and visits Franz's mother. In tears, she demands to know how Franz died and Paul lies to her, telling her he went peacefully and painlessly. In reality, Franz suffered a slow and agonizing death where he frequently voices all his regrets.
- "Here is the mad tale of Detering." To elaborate, he sees the cherry blossoms in bloom, tries to desert, and is arrested and presumably executed.
- Paul's description of the new, young recruits who know almost nothing about trench warfare, and such usually get slaughtered.Their pale turnip faces, their pitiful clenched hands, the fine courage of these poor devils, the desperate charges and attacks made by the poor brave wretches, who are so terrified that they dare not cry out loudly, but with battered chests, with torn bellies, arms and legs only whimper softly for their mothers and cease as soon as one looks at them.
Their sharp, downy, dead faces have the awful expressionlessness of dead children.
It brings a lump into the throat to see how they go over, and run and fall. A man would like to spank them, they are so stupid, and to take them by the arm and lead them away from here where they have no business to be. They wear grey coats and trousers and boots, but for most of them the uniform is far too big, it hangs on their limbs, their shoulders are too narrow, their bodies too slight; no uniform was ever made to these childish measurements.
- The relationships of the main character. All his friends either die, lose their mind, or something! He lost everything!
- "Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear."
- Considering that, the ending is the best thing that could happen to the protagonist. Which doesn't make it less of a Tear Jerker, but the rest of the book is From Bad to Worse.
- Especially the part where he comes back home and sees his books, his writings, everything he was... and realizes it doesn't move him at all, because he isn't that person anymore, and never will be. He finds he can no longer even relate to his family, whom he was very close to before. His mother is the only person who he feels still understands him and she's bedridden with illness.
- Kat's death."You are not related, are you?"
No, we are not related. No, we are not related.
Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died.
Then I know nothing more." - The ending."He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.
He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."
1930 Film
- Do you know how demoralising it is for Paul to visit his old classroom and have idealistic young students call him a coward?'' See for yourself
.Paul Baumer: [angry] I've been there! I know what it's like!- It's even more upsetting to know how solemn he first appears, before erupting into a distressing tirade of indignation when his ex-professor and the new students object to the horrors he's seen, even though they've never experienced it themselves. His friends are dead and he's seen things he never wanted to, so he's got every reason to find so much offence at what he's hearing.
- The ending scene from the 1930 film, where Paul is shot while reaching for a butterfly also qualifies.
- This is followed up by a shot of a field of crosses overlaid by a shot of the German soldiers marching off solemnly. This may be perhaps the definitive War Is Hell shot.
1979 TV Film
- When Paul is defending his trench in a nocturnal attack by the French and manages to cower away in a crater, a French soldier jumps into it. Paul stabs him with his knife, but it doesn’t kill him. During the remainder of the night and some parts of the day, the French soldier wails in pain and Paul is unable to do anything. First, he tries to kill him with a dagger, but he's not able to go in for the kill. Then Paul tries to patch him up with a roll of bandages, but the soldier eventually dies in front of his eyes. Totally stricken, Paul monologues that he didn't want to kill him, going as far as saying that he's going to write to his family at home. He doesn't do it in the end, but the sheer fact that he's bawling at the death of an enemy soldier drives home the absolute brutality of war.
- The death of Katczinsky in the '79 version. Even when you know it's coming, there's still something about how understated it is.
- Especially when you consider that the actor playing that role (Ernest Borgnine) was about 10-15 years too old for the part. It's just that he's such a good actor and plays the role so well, you come to care for him more than almost any of the others.
2022 Film
- Paul finding Ludwig's corpse after the bunker collapses. Not only is Paul horrified at the sight of his friend's disfigured corpse, but he also tries to fix up Ludwig's outfit to give his body some sense of decency as he takes his dog tags.
- The scene where Paul mourns a French soldier is made extremely moving by the excellent direction and powerful acting, fully showcasing just how disturbing it is to take someone's life.
- Tjaden, unable to come to terms with the possibility of becoming crippled due to an injury, stabs himself in the throat repeatedly with a fork in front of Paul and Kat. Despite the two's best efforts, Tjaden is gone within seconds.
- As with the novel and all prior adaptations, Kat's death in this version hits extremely hard. It's the morning of November 11th, and he and Paul are in high spirits as the war is coming to an end. Both men are excited about going back home to Germany, and Kat invites Paul to come and visit him sometime in the future. Then Kat is shot by a farm boy after they're caught stealing some eggs, and Paul is forced to carry his friend all the way back to their encampment. Unfortunately, Kat doesn't survive the journey, which Paul doesn't even realise until they're back at the field hospital. With all his friends now dead, a defeated Paul is left completely alone and forced to mourn Kat's death without anyone for companionship.
- In a case of Adaptation Deviation, Paul is not killed a month prior to the war coming to an end. Instead, he is present for, and killed in, the final utterly pointless charge that leaves even more soldiers on both sides dead for absolutely no reason other than a single man's pride. Paul is stabbed in the back mere seconds before the armistice, and he dies leaned against the walls of the trench with a dissonant look of peace on his face, just like in the original novel."[...] his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."
- Just as one final twist of the knife, another young soldier comes along to collect fallen soldiers' dogtags... and while he stops to take the scarf that Paul was gifted in memoriam of him, he forgets to take Paul's dogtags, ensuring that his name is lost to history.
