All Quiet on the Western Front, originally published in German in 1928, is probably the best war book I’ve ever read, but it was still a slog to get through. It’s clear the author has been to war— the combat scenes are among the most raw emotional literature I’ve ever read. Remarque, a WWI German veteran, gives you a sense of what it’s like to be in a war, to be a solider, to consider escape, to think about why you’re fighting and who you’re fighting for, and to experience the trauma of combat.
A fraction of the below quote is found on the back cover of the book, and for good reason, I think. Towards the end of the novel, Remarque says this through his character, Paul (emphasis mine):
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invest weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing;— it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?
All Quiet on the Western Front is full of powerful literature as above. Though I admittedly found the book slow, I can still highly recommend it as incredible literature. Too often, war is fantasized and embellished into an honorable and enriching experience for its participants; it’s a good reminder, I think, to recall what war is actually like.