he soldiers is revealed and many didnt want to accept this. In many ways, such people were like Paul's schoolmaster, Kantorek. People want to believe the classical, romantic, glorified notions of war. Remarque opened the whole worlds minds the absolute horror and reality of war. More importantly, the novel started to show a theme of the disillusioned. Propaganda was disillusioning the public while talk of glory and feeling of strong nationalism is fed to the actual soldiers. Everyone is told that war is good and the images of success and pride are planted in the publics minds. No matter what country you were from the propaganda existed. Everyone was suppose to support the war and believe it was just, right, and the absolute best situation. Remarque wrote his novel specifically to shatter those idealistic illusions. The children that enlisted in the war thinking they would fight for their country and be home by Christmas often never recovered from their horrific experiences. The German soldiers in particular came home with both emotional and physical destruction to a poverty stricken and humiliated civilian population that often regarded them as constant reminders of a war everyone longed to forget. Once again disillusionment sets in. Civilians wanted to believe that the soldiers experience wasnt any worse than there own, and most veterans were so destroyed by there experience they couldnt speak of it to any civilians. The soldiers had gone to war for disillusioned reasons of glory and pride and returned to the people who were so disillusioned by what actually happened in the war they simply had no pity. The book illustrates the horror and tragedy of war because all humans are alike. The German soldiers experience was horrible when they returned home, but it was like this for all soldiers, in all countries. The only people that really seemed to be allies in understanding now, were all the soldiers that weeks earlier had murdered each ot...
