Netflix recently remade the movie “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the latest and most gruesome film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I masterpiece novel. It’s the story of the German schoolboys who enlist in the Kaiser’s Imperial Army and go off to the front-line trenches.
I first read Remarque’s 1929 book in high school history. My teacher was Mr. Goodrow, a plain-speaking Yankee who challenged his students to question the world before us.
He, like my father, grew up in rural New England during the Great Depression. They were both veterans of the Second World War. He, like my father, also a schoolteacher, had come down to Southington, Connecticut, to teach in a booming Pratt and Whitney factory town, which, during the war years and the ensuing Korean and Vietnam wars and for the entirety of the Cold War, did quite well economically.
Teaching the book, I imagine, was Mr. Goodrow’s way to confront teenagers whose parents were part of the military-industrial complex about what it all means — the reality of war, that is — and to underline its horrors and its futility.
There will always be those who profit from war, I remember Mr. Goodrow telling us, but it’s you, our nation’s youth, who will pay the ultimate sacrifice. Pay attention, was his point.
Mr. Goodrow was a serious man with a serious message, and he was well-liked, but I’m not sure he clicked with high school kids during the disco 70s who were thinking more about what they were going to do that weekend at the local drive-in than about an old book with old lessons about the senselessness and depravity of war.
My fear is that we have not only forgot those lessons, but that society is also failing to give our youth some affirmative ideal of peace by which to love and to embrace one another. There is little light these days to lead them.
Instead, they face ever increasing tears in the fabric of our nation’s great experiment in democracy. They live in a time of election deniers, conspiracy theorists, liars, and violent extremists. Examples of tyranny both here and abroad abound. Experts say we are on the road to authoritarianism.
Just a mere 12 or so years after the end of the First World War, Germany’s youth faced the same path. In 1930, when Remarque’s book was made into a talking picture — what they called movies back then — it was widely accepted as the most realistic depiction of war’s doom and despair. Never again, said world audiences. Yet, the reaction was quite different when it was first shown before public audiences in Germany.
At a film screening in Berlin, the reaction was contempt for the “cowardice” displayed by German soldiers in the film, which the Nazis called a “Jewish lie.” Brown shirted thugs set off stink bombs and released mice into the theatre, driving the audience away.
On this Veterans Day, I remember my old history teacher, Mr. Goodrow, and in his honor, I grabbed Remarque’s book off my shelf and gave it another good read. “All Quiet on the Western Front” is timeless with a message of great relevancy for our war weary world.
Mr. Goodrow died in 1985. My father, now approaching 95 years, is one of the last of his generation of Americans to remember speaking with World War I veterans and to have also served during the Second World War. As the two world wars steadily recede into the backdrop of history and as new generations know little to nothing about them, I hope today’s youth will discover Remarque’s book and watch its latest cinematic adaptation.
Perhaps the most important result of the First World War is the reminder of what modern warfare can do to both the winners and the losers, to both the soldier and the civilian. Nearly 105 years later, however, we’re back at it, again. This time it’s Ukraine with trench warfare, hand-to-hand combat, indiscriminate bombardment of population centers, and threats of gas attacks.
Veterans Day was once Armistice Day. For many years, in schools and churches across our region, people marked with prayer and thanksgiving the anniversary of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. It was a day of intercession for world peace in remembering “the war to end all wars.”
In many ways, World War I, “the Great War” never ended. Add to the mix, a recipe of “smart bombs,” drones, cyberwarfare, information manipulation, and the nuclear threat, and the stakes are even grimmer today.
Today, I remember Mr. Goodrow’s message: that the greatest threat to peace is when youth fail to learn and heed the lessons from history. It’s time to go back to remembering November 11th the way it was originally commemorated — to call for peace as a universal principle. That’s the most profound way to honor the lives of our veterans.
John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence and writes a monthly column for the Gazette. He volunteers with the Building Bridges Veterans Initiative, which brings veterans together with complimentary meals to share friendship and support in 10 New England communities. Paradis can be reached at columnists@gazettenet.com.