More A-Political War

 "All Quiet on the Western Front” film directed by Edward Berger, 2022

This is a recent German version of the classic book by Erich Remarque about the bloody crime of World War 1. If follows a new and excited recruit, Paul, who is drafted with his 3 young buddies into the German Army in Spring 1917. They are thrilled to be in the Army until they reach the front lines, where the mud, mayhem, violence and constant death upend all their naive ideas.  

I guess that is better than the war prettification we usually see in war films.

Unlike the worse film by Sam Mendes on WWI, “1917” (see review below) this film doesn't hide the mass bloodletting, terror, stupidity and the kicker, a final taste of insane war-mongering. A general Friedrichs with the German High Command looks down on the surrender-monkey civilian Social Democrats who have come to negotiate an armistice with the unforgiving French on the 11^th day of the 11^th hour of the 11^th month of 1918. He orders an attack on unsuspecting French positions who are celebrating peace 15 minutes before 11 AM … giving us a foretaste of Corporal Hitler and the subsequent devilment of the Versailles Treaty.

At this point, Paul is the only one left alive of his companions. Anyone want to be the last person to die in WWI? Anyone want to be Johnny Got His Gun? The last person to die was actually an American soldier charging German soldiers 60 seconds before 11:00 AM. Freidrichs is not a real person, but added by the director. He reflects commanders on both sides who still engaged in fighting up to the last minute. U.S. General Pershing was another who disapproved of the armistice. Pershing refused to tell U.S. troops the war was over until it was. 10,934 were injured and 2,738 men died on that last day.  (Pershing is celebrated on the Mall in Washington D.C.)

The film relies on pacifism and horror to dissuade people from engaging in war. It's like Sherman's 1879 claim that "war is hell" is news. War certainly does overshadow the stupid 'horror' genre in the U.S.  But that didn't seem to stop WWII by the very same German nation a bit more than 20 years later. Pacifism and horror are not enough to stop war. This film is nearly all apolitical, as was 1917. It shows almost no dissent among German soldiers until the last few minutes, something you might even miss. This film mentions the abdication of the Kaiser, who was a promoter of the war and Hindenburg's agreement to end it. Yet this event is not explained.  Why would the German ruling class do this except as a response to rising antiwar sentiment? A German revolution was already starting in 1918, partly because of the war!  The very next year, 1919, saw an attempted proletarian revolution in Germany against the Junkers and capitalists, which included many soldiers' and sailors' councils. How did that happen? Two years earlier, Russian workers and peasants threw out their war-making Czar and capitalists over the very same war. The Eastern Front was already quiet. Rebellion was in the air … but not a whiff in these movies.  The war is just another 'tragic' event.  

German soldiers and sailors overthrow Kaiser and try to overthrow Capital.  

Given the film-makers took liberties with the original text, this resistance might have been hinted at too. But showing soldiers opposing war points to an end to capitalist war, a direction which even pacifistic directors might shy away from. There is a moment when Paul stabs a French soldier, then has remorse and tries to staunch his bleeding. He fishes out pictures of the man's wife and child and identity in his pocket and promises to visit them. This is the only hint that perhaps ordinary men have been dragged into killing other ordinary men for no reason.

In 1930, Brownshirts disrupted the first screenings of the original film based on Remarque's book. In 1933 the Nazi regime censored that film. Now we can read and watch anti-war Vietnam books and films in the U.S. - even a few about Iraq - yet the U.S. carries on with it's militarist tradition. Pacifism and anti-militarism safely 'co-exist' with imperialism and militarism because they do not directly challenge the roots of militarism, which are embedded in the capitalist financial system. Going to that root is a 'bridge too far.' Without an anti-war movement that is explicitly anti-capitalist and proletarian, we cannot stop these wars, or the financial system that demands them. 

Crude capitalist territorial control through military force is a throw-back to WWI / WWII methods, as in Ukraine.  Trenches, artillery barrages, widespread devastation of cities and towns, throwing untrained troops into the maw - all similar to parts of this film, which might make it hit a nerve.  “Imperialism” by a Marxist definition is not primarily military - it is economic control and enrichment. Those two are the real horrors at present, battling it out as two forms of the same thing.  When will there be 'all quiet on all fronts?'  Only with the overthrow of the insatiable competitions of capital.

P.S. - German Critics take the film apart as a terrible adaptation of Remarque's book:  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/27/oscar-all-quiet-on-the-western-front-germany-critics

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms: “Sam Mendes,” “War is a Racket” (Butler); “Russian Revolution,” “Radek,” “Workers' Councils,” “All Power to the Councils!”

The Kultur Kommissar

November 17, 2022