All Quiet on the Western Front : Little, Brown and Company : 9780316739924 : 0316739928 : 30 Jan 1929 : The original US edition of the masterpiece of war literature depicting the plight of German soldiers during World War I?now an Oscar-nominated Netflix film   From the perspective of Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier in World War I, comes an unsettling tale of the mundanity and misery of trench warfare on the Western Front. When Paul and his comrades volunteer for the Imperial German Army, pressured into this act of patriotism by idealistic parents and a steely schoolmaster, they quickly learn that the authorities they trusted to shape their minds and guide their growth were condemning them to unimaginable danger and squalor, in the name of duty to an old world in its death throes.          Bombarded by shells and bombs, by horror after horror, Paul absorbs the sordid lessons of combat and reflects upon the strangers on the arbitrary other side, transformed into enemies by a distan