All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight for survive the horrors of the First World War. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men, making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to the older generations, but only to their fellow soldiers. the older generation "...should be mediators and guides to the world...to the future. / The idea of ​​authority, which they represented, was associated in [their] minds with greater intuition and more human wisdom ." Paul, his classmates, and the majority of their vulnerable generation completely trusted their role models, and through that trust they were influenced and pushed to join the war. They believed that the older generation understood the truth behind the war and would never send them into a dangerous or inhumane situation, "...but the first death [they] saw shattered this belief." The death made the soldiers realize that their generation's experiences were more in line with reality than those of the previous generation and this created a gap between the two. "While [the older generation] continued to write and speak, [Paul's generation] saw the wounded and the dying. / While [the older generation] taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, [that of Paul] already knew that the pangs of death are stronger." The older generation had an artificial illusion about what war was and although Paul's generation, the soldiers, loved their country, they were forced to distinguish reality from illusion. This is why you say... middle of paper... when you recruit young people, just out of school and put them into battle, you force them to grow up too quickly and the results are "... a generation of men who, even if they escaped the bombings , were destroyed by the war." The student may find it useful to begin the essay with the following quote from the novel: "I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing about life except desperation, death, fear and fatuous superficiality thrown into an abyss of pain. I see how people turn against each other and silently, unknowingly, stupidly, obediently, innocently kill each other that the sharpest brains in the world invent weapons and words to make it even more refined and lasting. And all men my age, here and there, all over the world see these things. My whole generation is experiencing these things with me..."