All quiet on the Western front, film still, USA 1930

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All Quiet on the Western Front was released in 1930. It was the film of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name about the experiences of a soldier during the First World War. Remarque’s book and the film adaptation are classic anti-war statements. Alongside the patriotic, glorified heroic epics and “authentic” documentation of service for the fatherland, this was just one way in which the First World War was portrayed in literature and films – a medium that had come into being only twenty years before the outbreak of war.

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Broken heroes and hero worship

By the end of the war at the latest, the consequences of the years of fighting had become evident to everyone. The war invalids had to be integrated into post-war society. Films also began to show the war-wounded victims, but there was still no end to the hero worship. Almost no family had come out of the war unscathed, and they wanted at least to ensure that their lost relatives were seen as heroes. One-sided war films in the interwar years were very popular as a result, and anti-war films were not well received at all.