After all, war is war," thinks Paul Baumer, the 20-year-old protagonist of the novel "Nothing New in the West." He had just stabbed a French soldier who fell on top of him on the muddy front of the First World War.
Baumer volunteered to fight for the Kaiser and his fatherland, but nothing could prepare him for the reality of war. As he watches the young Frenchman convulse and gurgle as he slowly succumbs to his wounds, the intimacy of the killing temporarily shatters the illusion of an abstract conflict.
Filled with desperate remorse, Baumer tells the dead soldier. "I see that you are a man like me". However, his comrades ask him, what could he do? Killing enemies is what they are there for. Baumer agrees with them: "After all, war is war".
The German writer Erich Maria Remarque wrote those lines as a veteran of the First World War. Published in 1929, his novel was a product of its time, written for a generation of Germans who felt they had been sent to hell and back for no reason.
Nevertheless, almost a century later, the novel "Nothing New in the West" is still a central part of the German literary oeuvre. It is widely read in German schools, has been translated into 50 languages and sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Although two American films were released in 1930 and 1979, in its country of origin, the novel is so revered that no German director has dared to touch it. Until now.
Netflix's adaptation of the novel, directed by Edward Berger, could become Germany's most acclaimed film, with nine Oscar nominations and 14 Bafta awards. With an anti-war character, like the novel, the film was released at a time when German tanks were being deployed on European soil for the first time since World War II, for a non-peaceful purpose.
93 years passed from Remarque's novel to Berger's adaptation. In a way they were created in different worlds. Remarkov was full of raw trauma caused by general war and defeat. Berger's is a world of relative peace and prosperity. Nevertheless, the concept of war as abstract suffering persisted in Germany. In collective memory, Baumer's words still ring true today: war is war, regardless of context, purpose, or participants. Higher powers pit people against people and don't care how it will affect them".
The senselessness of war
Although the meaninglessness of war is by no means an exclusively German concept, there are few other nations that give it a central place when marking the anniversaries of armed conflicts. Remembrance Day in Britain focuses on those who sacrificed their lives, and many people across the country use the anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War to solemnly swear: “We will remember them.
In the US, Veterans Day also goes back to the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson set the tone for the first holiday in 1919, when he said it would always be "filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the service of the country, and gratitude for the victory."
In Russia, where World War II occupies a central place in the collective memory of the conflict, Victory Day is observed on May 9 with references to sacrifice at its core. None of these nations consider the wars they waged in vain, nor the individuals who participated in them victims.
While other nations speak of duty, heroism and sacrifice, Germany's history has made such positive commemorations of war difficult. In the heart of Berlin is not the Triumphal Arch, nor the Cenotaph, nor the Monument to the Unknown Soldier, but the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which stretches over 19 square meters. On May 000, 2020, on the 75th anniversary of Liberation Day, the Brandenburg Gate, a landmark of the German capital, was lit up with a "thank you" message in Russian, English, French and German.
To this day, Germany is very aware of the suffering that the two world wars caused to millions of people in Europe and beyond. Where the victorious powers see purpose in suffering, most Germans see only senseless slaughter and guilt.
Berger decided to direct the German film adaptation of the novel "Nothing New in the West" to record this national trauma. He says that American and British war films, “never show my perspective, the perspective I have as a German. Not that of America, which saved Europe from fascism, or England, which was attacked against its will and dragged into the war... For us, it's the exact opposite. There is nothing in our national psyche but guilt, horror, terror and destruction".
Despite the fact that few Germans today have any memory of the general conflict. Braumer's words still resonate with them today as he describes war as “despair, death, fear and false superficiality across an abyss of sorrow. "I see how peoples set themselves against each other, and silently, unconsciously, mindlessly, obediently, innocently kill each other."
"Never again war"
Germany's collective belief that armed conflict is futile has been put to a serious test by the war in Ukraine. Days before Russia launched its invasion on February 24 last year, Analena Berbock, Germany's foreign minister, continued to defend her country's reluctance to help Ukraine defend itself: "Our responsibility after World War II is to never again There will be no war in Germany, there will never be genocide again". Oft-repeated German: never again.
However, since Berbokova uttered those words, Germany has not only announced a €100 billion increase in its military, but has also sent significant aid and arms to Ukraine - and more recently, albeit reluctantly, Leopard 2 tanks - which makes many Germans cringe.
Under the banner of general pacifism, many German intellectuals opposed support for Ukraine. The feminist magazine "Ema" published an open letter to Chancellor Olaf Solac, urging him not to deliver weapons because it carries "the risk of the third world war".
Although the senselessness of war is by no means an exclusively German concept, few other nations give it a central place when commemorating the anniversaries of armed conflicts
The letter cites "the level of destruction and human suffering among the Ukrainian civilian population" as a reason not to help those very people defend themselves. Like Baumer, today's German pacifists see war only as pointless suffering without a purpose. "While they were taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing," thinks Remarque's hero, "we already knew that the mortal robber is stronger."
In Remarque's time in the 1920s, many German intellectuals also responded to the conflict of World War I by rejecting all wars. Unlike the victorious powers, it is difficult for them to find meaning in huge sacrifices.
In 1914, Germany was proud and prosperous, a major European power, despite its inherited flaws as a semi-autocratic state with vast social inequality. Four years later, more than 2 million of its people were killed on the battlefields of Europe, while another 2,7 million returned home psychologically and physically scarred. The country's powerful economy is depleted; the monarchy has fallen; and her pride was hurt.
Women, like the artist Kati Kolvic, could not understand what all this was for. Reluctantly, and despite her husband's objections, she allowed her teenage son Peter to enlist. He went to the Western Front on October 12, 1914, with gifts from his mother in his bag: a pocket chess and a copy of Goethe's "Faust". The family displayed the black-white-red flag of the German Empire in the window. Eleven days later Peter was killed in a trench in Belgium. His mother never recovered. Kolovicova fell into depression and her art began to revolve around the horrors of war.
She supported pacifist campaigns with works such as a collection of War woodcuts and a pair of statues called Grieving Parents, which are on display at the Vladslo German War Cemetery in Belgium where Peter is buried. In 1924, Kolviceva designed a poster for the mass protests held on the 10th anniversary of the start of the First World War. Her message is a mantra that remains to this day in Germany: "Never again war".
Interwar vacillation
During the interwar period, the views of Kolviceva and her fellow pacifists were strongly contested. Many Germans, especially veterans, found it difficult to come to terms with the idea that all their efforts had been in vain. Fischer Verlag, one of the most prestigious German publishers, rejected the manuscript "Nothing New in the West", and Ulstein, who published it in 1929, did so only after Remarque had softened his anti-war messages following criticism from several war veterans, who had read the first draft.
In 1931, the Prussian state parliament ordered that the novel be removed from school libraries. The Nazis publicly burned it in 1933, along with other literature they considered depraved. It was partly a reaction out of fear. Remarque's book had already sold a million copies by June 1930 with a message that contradicted Adolf Hitler's plans to start a new European war.
If indiscriminate pacifism was controversial in interwar Germany, World War II turned it into state dogma. "Never again", became the basic principle of both German post-war states. The novel "Nothing New in the West" was read in both East and West German schools.
While many German intellectuals continue to abhor the idea of German tanks fighting against Russians, much of the public has come to understand that pacifism does not always mean peace
Compared to the horrors of the First World War, which mostly took place on foreign battlefields and could easily be turned into myth, Hitler's war brought bombs, troops and violence to German soil. Civilians have personally seen the reality of war. While this made most wary of rearmament, their governments quickly became pawns in a Cold War game in which they had limited room for maneuver.
Entry into military alliances
West Germany joined NATO in 1955. And East Germany into the Warsaw Pact.
Both countries introduced conscription (West Germany in 1956 and East Germany in 1962). Three years after the formation of the military alliances, in March 1958, the West German parliament signed a "nuclear exchange" agreement as a NATO partner. Pilots of the newly formed armed forces, the Bundeswehr, will be trained to deliver American nuclear bombs. This stunned many Germans, and just 13 years after the end of World War II in the spring of 1958, one and a half million people took to the streets to protest the decision. Pacifism was still alive.
But no German state had the option of becoming a conscientious objector to a Cold War in which peace was ensured by a balance of weapons, including nuclear. The US built a nuclear arsenal in West Germany that reached about 5.000. The Soviet Union in turn stationed SS-1979 missiles in East Germany in 20 that had the capacity to destroy all NATO bases in Western Europe.
When Bonn decided to respond by allowing NATO to increase its arsenal in West Germany, Germans in both East and West were frightened. An escalation of tensions involving tactical nuclear weapons would turn their countries into a wasteland. The peace movement that continued to grow throughout the 1960s and 1970s turned into the largest demonstrations ever recorded in the country. In just one day, October 2, 1983, more than a million people protested across West Germany. Human chains were formed between and around the cities. The whole country seemed to be on its feet. "Never again war!" workers, intellectuals and even soldiers chanted.
Scholz among Pacific activists
Among the pacifist activists was a young, fiery, ambitious leader in his mid-twenties with curly brown hair and a gift for rhetoric. In 1982, Olaf Soltz became the deputy leader of the Young Socialists, the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party, which he represents today as the German chancellor. As a Young Socialist, he traveled to East Germany to meet with like-minded youth delegations and wrote angry articles about "NATO's aggressive-imperialist strategy."
Scholz's current coalition partner, the Green Party, to which Berbokova belongs, also has its roots in the radical pacifism of this period. It was SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt who supported NATO's decision to deploy more missiles in the country. Since there was no major political party to the left of the SPD, there was no real way for people to express their protest by voting. Thus, a combination of environmental concerns and political pacifism led to the formation of the Green Party in 1980.
When Germany reunified a decade later in 1990, and the Soviet Union collapsed soon after, it seemed as if Germany's dream of an end to all wars had come true. She endured four decades on the front lines of the Cold War. Now is the time to lay down our arms and live in peace. Successive German governments under Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel spent the next three decades cutting the defense budget, which for much of this time hovered just above one percent of GDP.
When Germany entered one of its first armed conflicts since World War II in 1999, it was governed, as it is now, by the SPD with Foreign Minister Joško Fischer from the ranks of the Greens. Justifying his support for Germany's contribution to the NATO intervention in Kosovo, which he considered a humanitarian move, given the signs of ethnic cleansing, he pointed to the conflict inherent in unquestioned pacifism and German dogma: "I didn't just learn the phrase: never more war. I also learned: never again Auschwitz. As with Berbokova today, Fischer emerged as a vocal advocate of principle in relation to pre-war pacifism in Europe, despite their party's anti-war roots.
However, the German trauma is deeply rooted. Despite Bundeswehr missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Mali, the illusion that Germany would never again be involved in a large-scale war persisted. Both Schröder and Merkel believed that conflicts could always be resolved through monetary and diplomatic means, a belief that tied the German economy closely to autocratic states such as Russia and China.
Russian invasion - waking up from a reverie
It was the Russian invasion of Ukraine that woke Germany from its pacifist reverie. While many German intellectuals continue to abhor the idea of German tanks fighting against Russians, much of the public has come to understand that pacifism does not always mean peace.
Recent polls have shown that a majority of Germans support the government's decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, including nearly two-thirds of SPD voters and three-quarters of those who support the once-pacifist Greens.
However, Germany still needs to go some way towards normalizing discussions about concepts such as intervention and deterrence, and to feel comfortable in the role of power and responsibility. Some have called for this change, including Solac himself with his announcement zeitenvendea, or milestones for his country. But the "never again" dogma persists as some studies point to growing war fatigue. A survey last month showed that 43 percent of Germans now think the war in Ukraine is not Germany's problem, compared to 32 percent last April.
Anti-war ideals remained sacred for many Germans who were deeply disturbed by Scholz's decision to approve the export of tanks to Ukraine. Wolfgang Merkel, a political scientist who has previously criticized arms deliveries to Kiev, considers the move "strategically and morally wrong", fearing that it will lead to an escalation of the war for civilians in Ukraine. Philosopher Svenja Flaspoher is worried about the "nuclear ace" up Putin's sleeve.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine may have encouraged many Germans to think differently about war, to recognize that sometimes it is necessary to defend territory, values and principles. But the German fear of war runs deep and, as the literary heart of this pacifism, the novel "Nothing New in the West" continues to be read and respected.
As Germans begin to grapple with the changing world around them and try to find a new role for their country in it, Remarque's words, a century after he wrote them, still haunt many. "After all, war is war."
The article is taken from "Financial Times"
Prepared by: N. Bogetić
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