The Soldiers' Veil

All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque and published in 1929, is widely recognized as one of, if not the greatest, war novels ever written. It immerses the reader in the life of Paul Bäumer and his classmates as they enter the First World War, filled with patriotic idealism, youthful optimism, and eagerness to fight for the homeland and defeat the enemy. These proud and powerful emotions are soon stripped by the years of relentless war that greet him at the front line; what replaces them are numbing, empty, and animalistic characteristics suited to survival. By the end of the novel, Paul questions the purpose of the war as he no longer fights for the life of his country, but for himself. The novel demonstrates the maladies of war on the body and the psyche, but also provides a horrific insight into life in World War I as a soldier.

Beyond the exciting plot, the book argues that to survive the front, a soldier's mind often constructs a psychological veil: a distancing from reality and a humility that prioritizes personal survival. War demands that a soldier sacrifice complex emotions like empathy and guilt and become not an individual, but a body, a number, a piece suited only for survival and equipped with the most primitive instincts. This is especially true with regard to WWI, a war won by numbers, where scores of soldiers served purposes as insignificant as being a body to take an enemy bullet. The goal of eradicating these emotions from soldiers is to degrade them from individuals to jigsaw pieces in a greater picture of war. Meaning, when a soldier sees an enemy in front of them, there is no moral consciousness or dilemma on the issue of killing said enemy, because if there were, the contemplating soldier would be killed first. However, as we later learn, this psychological veil is not perfect and can break. 

This exact idea is captured in one of the book's most powerful and memorable scenes. Paul, trapped in a shell crater in no man's land during a bombing, stabs a French soldier who has just leapt in beside him. As the Frenchman slowly dies, Paul, who can’t build up the courage to finish the deed, is left with no choice but to spend the following hours confined in the crater with him as he watches him suffer. The man's gurgling breath is described as "like a cry, a thunder," while his eyes hold "such an extraordinary expression of fright" that Paul feels they have the power to carry his body away. In fact, Paul describes the sight and the sound of this man dying as an "invisible dagger with which he stabs me: my mind and thoughts." More broadly, this line encapsulates the theme that a soldier's mind often creates a psychological curtain to protect themselves at war. At this moment, Paul is filled with bitter, acidic shame and panic. It is a stark contrast to the beginning of the novel, where Paul wanted to fight and kill for his country. Now, after actually having killed an enemy, he realizes that his action wasn't one of murdering a superficial adversary, but rather a person. This is why, overwhelmed, he whispers, "I want to help you, Comrade, camerade, camerade, camerade." (Remarque, 213).

Paul tries to stop the bleeding, but it is in vain. The man dies the same day. Soon after, Paul discovers a pocketbook in the dead man's tunic. He opens it and finds a portrait of the man's wife and daughter; it is a cheap picture, and Paul notes that the man must be poor. As Paul searches further through the pocketbook, deciphering letters and reading about the man, he slowly uncovers the life behind the uniform and the person this Frenchman truly was. It is the first time in the book that Paul reassesses his understanding of what the enemy is. Before the paragraph ends, Paul learns that the man he killed was a printer. In response, Paul thinks, "I must be a printer…" (Remarque 225). This final response from Paul is empathetic because he recognizes his victim not just as a soldier but as a full human being with a job, a family, and a life. Paul learns that the Frenchman had a purpose in the world, and having killed him, Paul feels he must somehow take that purpose on himself. This crack of empathy expresses the same theme running through the passage: Paul's psychological veil has been torn.

Taking a step back from the novel, this same idea can be found in veterans suffering from PTSD. When ex-soldiers were deployed, they were exposed to highly traumatic events. However, during that period, these soldiers also had a psychological curtain of their own, attenuating the damage. But when these soldiers returned from war and were immersed in normal society, where individuals require complex and nuanced emotions, some veterans got rid of their curtains. Mentally vulnerable and naked, when reminded of their time in war, the veterans did not have the tools needed to mitigate the stress, and so they came to suffer from PTSD. Patients with PTSD can then be imagined as people who were never soldiers, being thrust into the middle of war. On the other hand, soldiers who returned from war without losing their veil would then behave as if they had never left the battlefield: aggressive, unempathetic, and uncompromising. 

To describe this same switch in taking on and off the psychological curtain, Remarque writes that "Then I crawl out of the shell-hole. I have forgotten the dead man." (Remarque, 219) At this moment, Paul has emerged from his cover with the dead Frenchmen and is back in danger of being killed at any moment in no man's land. Consequently, he has forgotten his victim and his own shame, representing that the same psychological veil has gone back up in the moment of danger. Through this, it is once again demonstrated that war demands that soldiers set aside an empathetic part of themselves to bear their actions and prioritize survival.

Remarque crafts All Quiet on the Western Front as a study of the psychological toll the war exacts on those who were part of it. Paul's killing of the French soldier and the moments that ensue serve one purpose: to show how war forces soldiers to build a veil between themselves and human values, one that cracks and reforms. In the end, Remarque argues that survival in war is a constant act of self-erasure.