Remarque, Jünger and the War in Ukraine

Recently, YouTube recommendations informed me that a new film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front has been released. The algorithm promotes the film aggressively, so the powers that be must think it something the populace ought to see (at least in the western world – my YouTube account is in English). Since I am living in Ukraine, embroiled as it is in the largest conflict on European soil since the Second World War, naturally, the subject of war crosses my mind on a regular basis. Additionally, I have had occasion to visit a military base and refugee camps, as well as to have translated the accounts of Azovstal POWs for presentation to an international audience. Sooner or later, it may come to other things, but, as yet, it’s not bad enough for them to allow foreign citizens with no prior experience to go do the more serious stuff. In other words, while I have not killed or been killed by an enemy yet, I reckon I have as much or more credentials than the average New York blogger or London film critic to muse about these topics. The YouTube notifications took me back to high school, in Toronto, Canada, where, for many years, All Quiet on the Western Front was mandatory reading in English class, as well as being a staple of university Eng Lit courses.

Copies of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel dotted the shelves of our small school library and could be found, like all other course reading staples, for dirt cheap on the shelves of the BMV and other used bookstores in the university district centered around Yonge, Dundas and College Streets. The novel’s claim to fame was essentially that it presented an account of the First World War – widely regarded as the epitome of the worst aspects of war, concentrated – which was presumably based on the author’s firsthand experiences and was thus true. Since it was the only book most of us would ever read about the First World War (indeed, the only one which most of us would ever know about), it gained additional importance from being the source of most of the perspective that students would develop on that conflict and, indeed, war in general. All Quiet gains extra persuasive power because of a quirk of the characters of those who grew up in the soft, liberal West of the postwar era, whether in North America or western Europe: i.e. the tendency to assume that, the more despairing, hopeless and dehumanizing something is, the more real and honest it is. Thus the immense popularity of Netflix and HBO shows which are nothing but a string of arbitrary violence and debauchery – zombie apocalypses, gangsters, murderous and incestuous struggles for thrones — among a viewing public, most of whom would be terrified to even hold a gun, much less use it to earn a living or protect their loved ones, and who go through life expecting a benevolent State to coddle them and to tell them what to think, what to eat, and whether or not they are permitted to bare their faces in public.

Remarque’s novel certainly contains enough gore, fear and despair to convince the typical urban western reader of its genuineness. And, there is noone who would deny that the First World War had enough of these to fill the nightmares of centuries. Yet, when I see the film or physical copies of All Quiet on the Western Front being used in still-life photos and other imagery, as if by an inherently understood symbolic power, to comment on the war in Ukraine, I see an insidious plot in the guise of peace. Insidious from the perspective of Ukraine, that is. Perhaps the individuals who look at our war and think, “Oh, it’s just like All Quiet on the Western Front from school!” are quite unconscious of what they are advocating for. Yet, it is no accident that Remarque’s book is the representation of war in fiction for most of the liberal west, nor is it an accident that it has been mandatory reading in public schools to the exclusion of alternatives. When one digs a little deeper into the history behind the author, comparing him and his work to his contemporaries, it seems even less of an accident.

For there are alternative perspectives. Of course, among the tens of millions of soldiers who fought during the First World War, there would obviously be more than one who decided to sit down and write about it afterwards. What is most interesting, when one looks into these other perspectives, is how two people, experiencing the same event, at the same time, on the same side can come to diametrically opposed viewpoints on the experience. As soon as one realizes this, the belief that one particular author’s book/film represents The Truth becomes impossible to sustain. And this is the main reason why Remarque is taught, to the exclusion of his contemporaries who, arguably, might have been better authorities on the subject.

It is no secret that the public education systems in Canada, the major countries of the EU and most of the United States are heavily influenced by left-wing values. Whether one is speaking of issues of multiculturalism, gender, ideas of fairness and justice, or politics, it is Marxist-derived perspectives on the world that dominate. One need only look at the recurring conflicts between school boards and parents who come from more traditional backgrounds or, at least, aren’t radical liberals, everywhere from Birmingham to British Columbia. Whether this is a problem or not, I would think, should be up to the parents, but I am merely mentioning it as a fact. I am concerned with what this means for the teaching of literature about war, and, ultimately, the resulting public attitude towards war.

The liberal State, as a rule, prefers citizens who are docile, productive, good consumers and easy to control. Peace is a good thing, generally speaking. Peace facilitates prosperity and has countless other benefits which need no elaboration. What happens, however, when those who see themselves as the leaders of a society, who believe they know what is best for the world, wish to impose their vision on everyone else in that society, in their country or in others? Moreover, what happens when that vision, however utopian and perfect to its creators, is opposed by the relevant population or significant minorities within it?

Such a scenario is not hypothetical. It has happened here in Ukraine many times, most dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, when the utopian vision (still cherished by academics and intellectuals the world over) of certain intellectuals from Moscow had to be imposed – “for the Greater Good” – upon an unwilling Ukrainian nation.

If it can be ingrained in childhood and early youth that peace is the ultimate good, one can achieve a population that will cease resistance as soon as those wishing to impose a particular vision on them show an intent to use force. As avoiding violent conflict is the highest goal, as soon as one party is willing to use violence, the other is compelled to back down – what’s more, it will believe itself virtuous and noble in so backing down.

Before getting into a deeper comparison of Remarque and his most notable counterpart, I will share an anecdote from my days in elementary school. It was a typical public school, part of the Toronto District School Board. For Remembrance Day, the school was putting on a theatre presentation. The play was about the idea of war and peace. In the plot of the play, there were two tribes (seeking wisdom from ‘primitive’ peoples, even imaginary ones, was in vogue). One was the Peace People, who danced and made merry around their huts, not unlike the Eloi in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The other tribe was the War People, who devoted much of their society’s energy to training for and engaging in armed conflict. The play began with the Peace People enjoying life in blissful ignorance and the War People plotting a raid upon their gentle neighbours. Next, the War People snuck up at night and ambushed the Peace People as they slept. There was a fight. One member each – an equal number, I emphasize – of the two tribes was killed. This saddened both tribes, who forgave each other and made peace. Let the message the play was teaching, both explicit and implicit, stew in your mind as we go forward.

The same students, thus prepared, were given Remarque’s book in high school. What is the gist of the book? To be as brief as possible, it is that war is a hellish, pointless experience. Remarque’s protagonists are all eager volunteers, who think war will be a grand bit of fun. They enter combat and are horribly disillusioned. Some art killed. The main character, who, on leave, is tasked with inspiring another cohort of eager children to join the fray, is disgusted with the whole idea. Most crucial is the emphasis on the purposeless despair of it all; that it was all for nothing. Whether or not this was what the author specifically intended, the student-reader is imbued with the conviction that war is a senseless disaster, rather like a hurricane or tsunami, and that the best, smartest thing to do is to run away and avoid it. Not only is peace at all costs the smartest course of action, it is also the noblest and most virtuous: in All Quiet on the Western Front, the characters who are not overtly opposed to war are either stupid kids, or else pompous officials and brutes whose jingoism is a cloak for their actual cowardice. Nobody who is both smart and good could want anything but to avoid conflict and seek peace at all costs.

The book, like its author, first thrived in the Weimar Republic, a period seen as a fleeting heaven or a dismal hell depending on which side of the fence one stands. Hyperinflation, crushing poverty, the humiliation of defeat in the war: to many, this was a tragedy, but to a lot of the intellectuals who shape public opinion, at least in the universities and media, it was paradise. And, when one looks at what a decadent liberal society values, it is easy to see why. Poverty and a massive class divide meant that those in the bourgeoisie who retained wealth and status (like Remarque himself) instantly obtained a greater sense of superiority over their fellow men, all the more important as their typically atheistic, materialist worldview did not allow a sense of importance except via the contrast between one’s own wealth and power and the squalor and desperation of others. Prostitution, including child prostitution flourished – another delight to certain academics, filmmakers and the like (I think of certain teachers I have known, subsequently fired or sanctioned for related misconduct) who are titillated by the idea of a place that’s like Bangkok or Port-au-Prince, but with white people and more luxuries and conveniences. The humiliation of the Versailles Treaty knocked out the bourgeois liberal’s main rivals as leaders of the nation – military commanders, anointed monarchs and landed aristocrats. At least temporarily…In other words, Remarque’s book and the ideals it embodied crystallize a zeitgeist which much of the educational and cultural industries of the liberal west would wish to return to.

In many ways, they have returned to it already. No one loathes nationalism among European peoples more than the visionaries who head the European Union and associated organizations. One is reminded of the clips of Angela Merkel (who, as a Ukrainian, I will not forget, insisted on the economic partnership with Russia, the chickens of which have come home to roost), when offered a German flag at an official event, angrily batting away that colourful token of nationalism. The denigration of the Church within almost all EU states except Poland, the tolerance – nay, indulgence – shown to terrorism and its advocates within Macron’s France, the “shut your mouths in the name of multiculturalism” with which the German police responded to the women victimized in the mass sexual assaults in Cologne, and the grovelling self-flagellation inherent in numerous EU officials’ delighted proclamations of the looming erasure of their own native cultures: these and countless examples like them are well-known and speak for themselves. Is it any surprise that those whose spirit is so akin to that of their kin of a century ago are so eager to encourage the formation of an underclass of illegal immigrants, high cost of living, and a plethora of regulations which make it extremely difficult to become an entrepreneur or small proprietor unless one is among the social elite? To such people, we will always be nothing more than a source of cheap resources, desperate and attractive women, and meat to keep the Bear at bay, hoping it will not come for them.

A couple months ago, in the course of pursuing my language studies, I came across a translation of Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel (translated in Ternopil, I believe, which would be no surprise). At one time, Junger’s book was a bestseller, as popular or more so than Remarque’s. Rather than a novel, Storm of Steel is more like a journal of Junger’s experiences in the war. In terms of the basic facts, they are no different than those described in All Quiet on the Western Front: tons of mud, oceans of blood, heaps of corpses, looming clouds of poison gas, the ceaseless explosions of the shells. There are, however, two very important differences. The first is that Junger’s work is an account of his own experiences. He was, by all measures, a fanatically brave soldier; one of the Sturmtruppen, a volunteer who was wounded at least seven times, kept returning to battle for almost the entire duration of the war, and somehow managed to live to the age of 102. He was also a devout Catholic, philosopher and entomologist. Despite it’s persuasive rhetoric of pointless despair, Erich Maria Remarque’s book was not a true story of his experiences. Presumably, he made his protagonists eager volunteers, the better to make anyone who thought the war worthwhile seem pathetic and naive. Remarque himself was an unwilling conscript, who spent all of about six weeks in a rear-line trench before shrapnel injuries from an artillery shell ended his war. In other words, he had about as much experience of war as countless ordinary civilians in Ukraine.

The second major difference between the two authors – who, again, fought in the same front, of the same war, on the same side – has already been alluded to, which is their attitude to the conflict. Junger was quite aware of the horrors of war and describes them in graphic detail. Clearly, the experience weighed heavily on his mind, as he wrestled with it in writing years after the fact. Yet, unlike Remarque, Junger did not seek an easy out, although he could have had one several times over. He did not feel the struggle he and his comrades were engaged in was pointless, and he saw value in the heroism which they and he personally embodied. It was a tragedy, but not a tragic farce. Perhaps this spirit is best encapsulated by Junger’s own words, describing his thoughts while lying wounded in a hospital train riding homeward from the battlefield after the first incident in which he was wounded. He admits that, when he signed up for the war, it had been out of the same sort of jingoistic enthusiasm mocked by Remarque. Nonetheless, having suffered what he suffered, gazing out at the rural scenery of his homeland, he had an epiphany, realizing:

“At the sight of the Neckar slopes wreathed with flowering cherry trees, I had a strong sense of having come home. What a beautiful country it was, and eminently worth our blood and our lives. Never before had I felt its charm so clearly. I had good and serious thoughts, and for the first time I sensed that this war was more than just a great adventure.” (Junger p. 33)

Contemplating these two completely different perspectives on war, it struck me as odd that, in most any setting in the liberal, urban west, if one were to quote or praise each author, one would get a very different reaction. Someone who quoted or expressed sympathy with the perspective of All Quiet on the Western Front would be seen as a wise, caring advocate of peace; someone who understands the gritty reality of the world, even if their harshest experience of that world is working as a Starbucks barista in downtown Toronto. Someone who quoted or expressed sympathy with the perspective of Storm of Steel would be laughed at as a hypocrite, naive; someone who had no idea what he was talking about, or else castigated as a fascist or some other meaningless term for politically incorrect. However, neither perspective is any more naive than the other. If anything, Junger knew what he was talking about more intimately than Remarque.

What is the relevance of all of this to the current war in Ukraine? Put simply, whether a nation as a whole has the mindset of All Quiet on the Western Front or Storm of Steel will determine its actions in this conflict and its fate as a result of it. We can see the influence of successive generations being indoctrinated with Remarque’s vision in the attitudes of many in the west. We see it in the headlines, like one from DW today, speculating about a Marshall Plan for Ukraine: people who cannot even provide light and heat to their own citizens, in one of the richest countries in the world, imagining victory in a war in which they have not spilled a single drop of blood. We see it in the advocates of peace who think the middle course is always the sign of the wise man. People, that is, who believe, in their heart of hearts, that it is better to submit to the occupation of one’s land, the theft of one’s property, and the erasure of one’s people from history than to fight, or even to simply endure in the face of hardship. If slavery to a foreign tyrant means more iPhones, Teslas, McDonalds and Prada bags, then slavery to a foreign tyrant is the rational choice. This, of course, was the view of the Remarques of the world, for whom no cause could be as valuable as pursuing a life of safe, degenerate pleasure; the hyper-intellectual goal of becoming a wad of meat completely enslaved to the basest of impulses.

And this is what we were taught, growing up. If things get bad; if there is evil attacking one’s country, then the smartest, noblest thing to do is to abandon everything and run to wherever one can pursue consumerist indulgence. The trouble is, everything that’s of the highest value in life – friends, family, love, land, culture, spirituality – is bound together. Only if we implicitly admit (only the most radical Marxist materialist will say so explicitly) that none of these things truly matter and it is only the hedonistic pursuit of consumption and pleasure that counts; only then can we accept Remarque’s viewpoint as true. Of course, most citizens of the modern west already accept this view, though they have never consciously reflected on the fact. It is because they accept that friends, family, love, culture etc. are not worth as much as an apartment in a Big City of the west and the chicness associated with such things, that they can sincerely tell us to submit. Or to run. In 1918, for a lone wealthy intellectual, there were many places to run to, where one could forget one’s friends, one’s love, abandon one’s identity and be alright (possibly with the help of a bottle). In this era of intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and aircraft which travel faster than the speed of sound, and where the economies and resources of all nations are tied in a knotted web, this is no longer so feasible. This is especially the case as international travel is relatively fast and cheap. When several hundred wealthy White Russian emigres would flood into Paris or Shanghai, this meant little to the economy and job markets, except at the local jewelers and fashion boutiques. When there are a several million refugees flooding into cities already burdened with the voluntarily acquired millions from Africa and the Middle East, in countries which have collapsed their own economies via years of lockdowns and the pursuit of delusional ‘green’ policies, it is a different matter. When a war far away means there is no fuel for one’s car, heat for one’s house, and food is unaffordable, then there is nowhere left to run to.

If Ukraine were to follow Remarque, we are doomed, and so is the rest of Europe, for, were all of our civilians to decide to simply run, in what for 90% will be the vain pursuit of a vision of the West which ceased to exist, even for those born in it, two or three decades ago, then what will our soldiers fight for? If anyone thinks Ukrainians are enduring, fighting and dying for “the European Perspective,” to quote Ursula von der Leyen, or for a certain percentage increase in GDP, or the stock market, they are grossly deceiving themselves. At least, from any I have spoken to (including, from an earlier iteration of this war, my grandfather who took a bullet in the arm fighting against the Red Army), it is for very much the things Junger wrote of in his journal after he was wounded that they fight. Right now, it is laughable to think of the Russian army marching to Paris or Berlin. But that is only because we have given them such a bloody brutal time of it on our soil. Were we to do the ‘sensible’ thing, and submit and flee, does any sane person think that Putin’s hordes would stop at Kyiv, or Lviv? Russian armies have marched into Paris and Berlin before. If the west has forgotten history, the Russians have not. If we follow Ernst Junger, we will save ourselves and them. Because we have something to fight and die for, Ukraine will live, whatever temporary setbacks or even disasters may occur on the battlefield. As for the Russians, one cannot enjoy one’s plundered televisions and washing machines if one is a corpse. In conclusion, the rest of Europe is lucky that, whatever some might have tried to teach us, we did not learn the same lessons in school. They must learn that peace can never be the highest goal, because the easiest way to peace is slavery.