Modern Classics Summarized: All Quiet On The Western Front
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- Опубліковано 17 січ 2019
- This book was requested by $100-tier Patreon pledger Hector Rodriguez! Thanks, I hate it!
Sometimes I wonder why I don't like researching history that much. Then I remember it's because a solid 90% of historical literature is either super boring or CRUSHINGLY MISERABLE.
"Modern Classics" is probably our most depressing playlist.
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Ever heard the saying "The point of war is not who's right, but who's left." Christ, this was depressing.
the adults around me always told me when I was a child, "there are no winners in war, only losers. the 'winner' is the one who lost the least"
Veterans of war are almost always
*Dead young
*Depressed
*Have really good stories
Chew on this, over 950,000 men died during The Battle of The Somme, the battle officially lasted 140 days. This would mean that roughly over 6,700 men died a day.
This was a single battle half year long battle in a four year long war.
@@Sergei_Ivanovich_Mosin Thanks for cheering me up, i needed it
@@Sergei_Ivanovich_Mosin For Verdun, it's nearly a million on both sides.
When the protagonist dying isn't even a really a low point, it's just the logical conclusion..
Wow.
Logic
The entire novel is one big low point. The main character's death is actually the high point, because then it's over.
When you're dying but it's fine 'cause you're already dead on the inside.
@@thechilzer7803 you right
@@thechilzer7803 bruuhhhhh. your right but still
When I was in high school we read this book and one of our assignments was to write a letter in character as Paul and addressing it to the family of the French soldier that Paul killed in that shell crater. That was pretty heavy.
Wow
Damn, that's deep.
*OOF*
That is some fucked up shit
What would you even be able to say in such a situation?
Interesting to see this from a German writers perspective. J.R.R. Tolkien famously went through a very similar experience in the war, weaving much of the anguish and horror into LotR, like how Frodo can never return to the Shire and be happy again cause he's seen some shit.
The horror of war also motivated Mr. Rodgers and Bob Ross to be, well, what we remember them as
@@coyraig8332 To be fair, Bob was never deployed or saw combat. However, he was basically a drill sergeant and spent all his time yelling at people and making them miserable. That's why he was so calm and quiet for the rest of his life after leaving the military.
@@coyraig8332 Mr. Rogers never served, the photos and so called proof is that of another man. Mr. Rogers was pushing near 40 when Vietnam was going on. Plus the show premiere 1968. He was before the show a priest.
@@strangerinwhite Really? Thanks for the correction
@@coyraig8332 yes really, my source was the man himself said it in the interview.
the book is made sadder by the fact that the guy writing it actually lived trough the whole thing and you're just reading his memories.
He actually did it go to World War but all the stuff which happened in the book was from the people in the hospital wondered after the war telling the stories to him for his book
It probably bears worth mentioning that Tolkien went through ww1 and that explains alot more than I was expecting.
not exactly.
The author explained how being in WWI felt like but the storyline is most probably just made up, but the way he described how it was like to be a soldier at that time is shocking. The movie also pays much detail to the sounds so I'd recommend people to watch it too after reading the book
Ironically another book written by a more “war happy” bloke (I can’t remember the name I’m sorry) portrays it as less tragic and more “I’m having a great time being on the cusp of death everyday it’s an adrenaline high” and also making new friends through shared combat experiences. I mean even with more recent documentary’s like ‘you shall not grow old’ present a more nuanced opinion then “it was all bad oh my god why am I here I don’t want this’ vibe
@@polkka7797 literally society and close family, friends or even teachers brainwashed them to thinking that it was going great when it was not. Nationalism was at its peak
They said it would be over by Christmas, but they never said which...
"By the time the leaves fall, we will see our boys home" they said but never said which leaves.
@@akaneh1989 maybe it was the leaves that had been blown away by artillery
Amen
@ALSO-RAN ! Respectfully sod off reddit man
I mean, hey, they weren't wrong.
the worst part is that him dying is probably the happiest ending he would’ve gotten. he already didn’t know what to do when the war was over, and now his friends are dead, his mom is dying, and everyone else has no idea what he went through.
The author lived. He didn't think surviving it was so bad. Remember that Paul had a sister who loved him, a good education, and obvious talent. Yeah, he had PTSD, but people could and sometimes did overcome PTSD even then to have a good life. Thinking there's nothing to live for is what leads to suicidal ideation and a lot of men experienced that in this war's aftermath. You have to be reminded, sometimes, that life can still be good.
The real luck is avoiding having to see the much worse sequel to the war he fought in
@@GippyHappyor like the author, flee the country to avoid political persecution for a book he wrote.
@@GippyHappythe sequel sucked. The plat was even more contrived than the first one. I mean seriously, no way some angry mustache model could take over most of Europe.
@@SplotPublishingWouldn't he fight in the German Revenge War?
My great grandfather served in ww2, after he saw the 1979 movie he broke down, thinking about all the young men he killed who would never see their loved ones again and who were forced into serving.
War isn’t hell
War is way, way worse
War is worse than hell, for you go to hell for being a bad person. There is no reason you would be sent to war.
@@lavaknight3682 amen to that
"War is war and hell is hell. And of the two, war is worse.
There are no innocent bystanders in hell."~Definitely not mine but idk who
@@funnyvalentinedidnothingwrong it’s from M.A.S.H
@@mr.triplethreat2743 Thankee
"War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."
"How do you figure that, Hawkeye?"
"Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?"
"Sinners, I believe."
"Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
- M*A*S*H, Season 5, Episode 21, The General's Practitioner
Choryllis M•A•S•H got a little preachy in the later seasons but it was always good...and this...if feel like if you showed this scene to veterans, 9 out of 10, or more would absolutely agree with it
...I’m so proud to see someone who’s watched m*a*s*h.
And even the soldiers, most of them are people that were forced to be there, that don't want to be there, people that were innocent on their way there, and they're not even required, bombs, knives, bullets, fire, gas, smoke, all of that is just to scare, the blood is a secondary aftermath.
AHHH I LOVE M*A*S*H
YAAAY
I've only seen like one actual episode of this show, but I know this scene, and it is incredible. I always think of this when I hear someone say War is Hell now.
I got an ad for the Marines on this video, which I find kind of ironic
Holy fuck they actually have to make ads for that? I don't get them because I'm not from America but wow.
Use adblock.
@@viktormarkovic8986 Oh yeah, I get ads for joining the Army all the time. I guess since I'm 17, they figure that's the perfect time to hit me- just young enough and irrational enough, and almost of age to do it.
@@viktormarkovic8986 our military is a completely voluntary force...and the marines have the smallest budget... they take recruits whenever they can
@@viktormarkovic8986 I never really thought about the timing before reading Pluto's comments but I got a bajillion join the army ads when I during junior and senior year in High school but they are starting to fade off now that I'm almost 20 (I get the occasional navy ad but no more army or marines ones). I really feel that if you have so much money that you can't fully equip all of your recruits and have nothing else to spend your money so you make ads just to get more bodies to throw money at, then the military is vastly overfunded.
The ending song is much sadder when you realize that the guy's saying it's the strangest thing he ever dreamed. Not space turkeys, not giant forks, but the world agreeing to end war, is the most outlandish dream he ever dreamed.
The worst part is he died exactly one month before armistice day. He died October 11, 1918. He was so close
@@wren_. He very well could have lived. The higher ups wanted the symbolism of the 11th hour, extending the war another 6 hours.
@@boneking591 finally figured out where that saying came from thanks. makes that sad as fuck now.
@@boneking591 “On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”
I wonder how many people paid the ultimate price to for the symbolism
Yeah, and thanks to Red for picking that one, it's been decades since I heard it. Old Simon & Garfunkel song.
War is old men talking and young men dying.
No idea who said that, but it is an incredibly true statement.
"War is about young men who don't know each other killing one another, for the benefit of old men who know one another, but they do not kill each other"
Michel Audiard (translated from French)
Odysseus says that in Troy (2004)
“war is never about who’s right, but about who’s left.”
-i forgot
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet or fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no reason." -Ernest Hemingway
The poem ‘Dulce et decorum est’ is based on the same latin saying, and incredibly potent. Definitely well worth a read
And Hemingway was an ambulance driver in World War I
i think it's just a mixed bag of both at the end of the day
One of my favorite authors, specifically for all the stuff he said that *didn't* make it into his published works. But in this, I disagree with him.
For the modern developed warfighter, one instead *lives* like a dog, and views hardship and inevitable death as just another thing.
Each day, wake up uncomfortable but accustomed, eat food, maybe bark a little, toil through the day, maybe see something terrifying, eat more food, bark a little, then lay down on a hard surface and sleep, uncomfortable but accustomed. One day it ends, and that'll probably be okay, as long as it doesn't hurt *too* much.
And in my opinion? Worth it.
skorn "If any question why we died, / Tell them, because our fathers lied."
Rudyard Kipling, Epitaphs of The War, 1919
Sadly, just as true a hundred years later.
WW1: When you, a Brit, have to fight people of Polish ethnicity because Germany attacked neutral Belgium to get to France because a Serb killed an Austrian in Bosnia.
sounds crazy enough for a Scot though
but really war sucks doesn't it
said austrian in bosnia evaded said serb twice by luck and kept fucking around in bosnia
I see your comment and I can one up you.
When your an indian fighting germans in france because a serb got shot.
@@Lordelderberry Gavrilo Princip was serbian, archduke Ferdinand was Austrian. You've got an extra ethnicity to add to the pot.
Imagine being Indian.... Hey you know that empire that you don't actually have a choice about being part of? well time to go kill ethnicity you have never seen before and die for a reason you probably don't understand.
“I feel like most of us are… over war these days”
that aged.. well it certainly aged…
Most of us are, Putin is not
I say it is timeless.
I imagine most of us are.
That “most”, however, doesn’t seem to include some governments.
@@TrinityCore60as a russian i agree.
It breaks me how little whole brokenness of my heart in comparison to anything done or suffered right now or before.
I never hated my government more
@@FirstLast-wk3kc I think that there is a sign of hope. Prior to (roughly) WWI, war was normal. Now, war happens because somebody fucked up. It's not much, but changes in the world have to start with changes in thinking.
“Don’t do war kids”
You don’t do war,war does you.
We will all be sent to die because our government and the public want revenge on the people who started the pandemic
@@uria3679 no one started the pandemic, and where I live is not a common feeling.
@@catrielmarignaclionti4518
I’m surprised to see an extra terrestrial here
@@pandoratheclay ?
It's terrifying to know that people younger than me fought in this war and witnessed things like being torn apart by artillery or suffocating in mustard gas, when I haven't seen anybody do so much as break an arm.
Couldnt have said it better
Makes you feel useless
My school takes a trip to Belgium to visit the battlefields every year for the year 9s (13-14) and ours was delayed until year ten so all of us were 14, and we visited the grave of someone who was 13 when he died. It was an incredibly sobering trip, but that really stuck with me. It was... I mean, I don’t even know how to describe it.
@@ViaticalVash Useless? More like incredibly fortunate. Nobody should have to live through something like that. I am sure the boys who died in No Man's Land didn't feel particularly accomplished as they exploded/suffocated/bled out...
@@Shamangirl92 I'm sure they didn't, but having the courage to fight and die for something they didn't even believe in is what made them to be remembered today. To know what they suffered through while we're all sitting on our asses watching UA-cam videos should make you feel useless and fortunate. Fortunate because you never had to suffer what they did. Useless because they did it for you.
The other version of the movie has him reach into no mans land to touch a butterfly but he is shot before he can touch it. I see it as a metaphor for his loss of innocence. I also think it’s very beautiful
Pfp?
I watched it too, I think it’s the 1930s movie
Johnny, penis jokes are overrated, but why
For the end of the 79 one I see the bird as a similar symbol. More like how close they were to freedom and the end of the war but both making it to the end of the war and being free from the worries and troubles of war and being an adult were taken away prematurely.
@@johnny_my_penls_is_small_but That's a body pillow I believe
Banning a book since it affects "national morale", is just too real today that it's the most painful part of this video
how so?
@@biteme9486 china, india, and many countries around the world have forms of this. Here in India its common to find movies getting banned or sued because someone feels like some community/religion has been disparaged. Subversive content can sued upon release by "individuals". China censors all public content and subversive is blocked by the govt immediately.
All in the name of national morale
@@ninnusridhar Oh yeah, that is unfortunate.
@@ninnusridhar that’s sad dudr
I dont get what your saying could you elaborate
13:26 The Kaiser was so unpopular that he asked his advisors what he could do to save his image, and they said that all he could do was die heroically in the trenches. By 1918, all he could do to save his image was DIE IN A HOLE!
I don't know why he was unpopular? Like he was against the war from the start unlike general civilians and he even personally sent telegraph and talk with Russia Tsar to stop the war.
He's the guy at the top of the German state. Everything good or bad done by it is his doing, whether or not it actually is.
@@SafavidAfsharid3197 Was he against the war? Didn't he give Austria-Hungary the "blank check", basically saying "Germany has your back if you start a war with Serbia"?
There was once a reporter who asked an old grizzled veteran of the pacific theater of world war 2 if he was religious
The old veteran spoke only a couple words
“No..the war took care of that”
Oooo, where can I see it?
Source please
I really, really feel that. Months upon months upon months in constant combat has a way of removing your faith in a loving God.
"In these types of situations, you have to ask yourself: Is god a feminist, or a dancer?"
As funny as it may seem, this is actually the exception, not the rule. Studies find soldiery especially in war can become hyper religious as they have little they can practically do they begin to do spiritually,
Praying since they cannot act.
As the saying goes, you’re a socialist until the tax bill, a feminist until the marriage, and an atheist until the plane starts falling.
Frankly, the contents of the book itself is not the saddest part for me. The fact that the lesson was so readily forgotten that I can't even go to the movies without seeing ads glorifying service to the US military and targeted at *teens*? That's the saddest part for me.
Service to one's country is always worth admiration. There isn't much in our lives we can do that will stretch forward into the future, but defending your homeland, the ideals it stands on or its allies is always something worth doing. When I was growing up and the war in Afganistan was being kicked off I was anxious and wanted to get updates on it, and, foolishly, I even expected there to be a form of victory. It continued, on, and on, and on. A slow-burning conflict that never ends. Does that mean that that fight is pointless? No. I believed in my country back then and I believe in it today. I've always looked up to soldiers, be it my family's service in the Wars of the Roses, the Prussian Army or others returning from recent conflicts. It might not be pretty, and it might be downright evil, but war and conflict are an everlasting fact of life. The book proved to me, more than anything else, that those who feel like they can make a difference on the front should do it, before their mailman who fears small dogs is tossed into a desert and fired upon by madmen. This said I feel everyone who's considering it should really read the book to better understand what they're dealing with.
Alice Stack “fighting for your freedom” Sorry man but the last time we’ve fought a war where we were the defenders was WW2. All of the wars that have been fought by us since then have been to keep a country in our sphere of influence or to keep them out of someone else’s sphere of influence. Also, for Afghanistan not only has the war been going on for almost 2 decades but not even the might of the British empire in the 1800s (When they were at there highest) or years of Soviet occupation (that bankrupted the Soviet Union which is one of the reasons why it collapsed) could stop the great waves of resistance. The US should pull out as nothing will be accomplished otherwise.
Edit: grammar
@@alicestack1005 Soldiers are innocent bystanders exchanging murder like we exchange conversation with other innocent bystanders, for the nebulous goals of the disconnected privileged. All other reasoning for war is propaganda of the latter.
There's no glory in being the butcher and the meat.
@@alicestack1005 War for a just cause, like Stopping the Nazis and the Japanese, might not be "good" but it's at least justified by base morality.
the problem arises when you're fighting a war for Wilsonian Politics, making the world "free for Democracy" regardless of the actual will of the people you're trying to "save."
That's kinda what you gotta do when you use a completely volenteer force.... you gotta make it look enjoyable
The us: has been at war for 222
Also the us: has been a country for about 250 years
What can I say we love us some War!
@@gamingforever9121 *loved!
@Saul Statman Implying those are popular...
Well if you look at the list she showed you can see that tons of the wars overlapped and most of them are nowadays just know as "the Indian wars" also several of them were rather short so while yes we've technically fought a lot of wars it isn't actually that big a deal when you really look at it
@Backspin Studios i don't mean to be rude to the Middle East, but those wars are nothing but a little poke to the US Military. Those side projects are intended to keep Americas position as a superpower.
Fort Snelling Historical Site staff member here: PTSD, or shell shock had been acknowledged in some way shape or form in the US since at least the Civil War and possibly earlier. In the Civil War, it was called old soldiers heart, but in WW1 Shell Shock was being first diagnosed in large numbers. This is because, due to the advent of germ theory and the beginnings of modern medicine, people were surviving wounds that would previously have proven fatal in record numbers. Sure, the Great War was an industrialized meat grinder of unfathomable size, but the number of wounded who could actually survive, was dramatically higher as well. Of course, youd don't need to be wounded yourself to be traumatized.
While theories of what caused Shell Shock differed between nations and doctors, for the first time, it was actually being treated as a medical issue due to just how widespread it had become. The name shellshock itself comes from the hypothesis at the time that high-explosive shells had become so powerful that the concussion force alone could injure a person even if no signs of wounds could be found. The idea was that the brain must be getting somehow shocked by shellbursts and brain injury was the cause of PTSD.
While we know today that PTSD is a psychological injury, these doctors actually were onto something as brain injury dramatically increases rates of mental illness and emotional disorders in the average person. While some communities and countries saw Shell Shock as the result of moral failing, it would be incorrect to say all saw it this way. The US General Army Hospital 29 at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, did a lot of research into the disease from a health care perspective seeing it as an "invisible wound." The nurses at this hospital actually pioneered some of the treatments used to treat PTSD and CPTSD to this day, especially occupational therapy.
For those of you wondering what happens to cause PTSD and CPTSD from the perspective of someone with it, think of a time you've been the most scared in your life. If you're lucky, it didn't last long, maybe a few minutes or a couple hours. Imagine instead that you have experienced something so terrifying that it actually alters your neurobiology and leaves you feeling unsafe for days or weeks or months. That would be "big event" PTSD. Your feeling of safety has been shattered all at once and changed your neurobiology as a result. For CPTSD. It's more like feeling unsafe for a long, extended period that results in your body forgetting how to feel safe. Since you physically cannot remain in a state of terror for long periods without causing serious damage to the body, your body instead modifies itself to more easily jump from relaxed to full red alert. Thats true in both cases. This essentially gives your fight, flight, freeze, placate system a hair trigger jumping from 0 to 100 in an instant.
As you can imagine, this means that normally harmless stuff can suddenly become a lot more threatening. Personally, I can actually see PTSD as being potentially helpful for people and animals from an evolutionary perspective. If you're a primitive human and you and your friends are attacked by a saber tooth tiger, gaining trauma around Saber tooth tigers could help you. If there was a cave nearby, you could now associate caves as dangerous, and if the tiger lived in the cave, your extra alert could help you avoid similar environments that could well be the animal's hunting grounds.
Unfortunately, in a modern context, it doesn't work and, speaking from experience, as I am not in an active war zone, I find this level of hyper-vigilance and hair-trigger fight/flight/freeze mode more trouble than it's worth in modern society.
Thanks for this text! It was very explanatory
The idea that the shockwaves from shells caused brain damage may actually have some backing in modern science.
I remember watching a documentary on how both professional football players and soldiers who were wounded by IEDs have micro scarring of the brain.
Considering just how absurdly complex the brain is it isn't unreasonable to assume that having wide spread micro scars could contribute mental health problems like PTSD. Its probably similar to how doing drugs will litterally ruin your brain making healthy thought patterns more difficult and contributes to depression.
A
How is it that it took thousands of years to even think about "hey, horrific events cause trauma" anyway?
@BJGvideos I think that's been around for a while, honestly. "Ah Steve there has never been the same since he got back from the war."
Though i honestly think i must have been common enough that almost everyone had ptsd of some kind and they just had to deal. The fact that ptsd is unusual and something treatable says something about how far we've come.
Like, for instance in the Laura Ingells Wilder book series, at one point their's this stupid long winter with blizzards that lasted three to four days and that would lay snow really deep. There's never a clear spell that lasts more than three days, so the trains can't get through and the town, being newely started and didn't have much in the way of supplies, is slowly starving to death, and running out of fuel to burn.
So they basically spent seven months couped up in their house knowing they're running out of food, no idea when its coming, and desperately hoping the hay they harvested the last fall and are burning to keep warm will last.
I would really recommend it because she does a really good job painting the blizzards, how they felt alive and oit to get them, and how it started effecting them after a while.
The way they coped with it at the time was to try their hardest to keep a routine going, steadfast optimisim, and to keep their mind off the blizzard by studying and reciting and singing. Those were their survival skills.
And yet, Laura still writes having nightmares about blizzards that never end, long after the winter had ended, becomes extremely protective of her little sister, who's frail and weak after being starved for so long, has more nightmares about losing her sister in a blizzard.
But that was trauma the entire town shared, and they all mustered through. They kind of acknowledged that it happened and tried to move on with their lives. Everyone probably could have used some therapy to recover from that, but instead they doubled down and tried to return to normal, and their brains eventually adjusted to that too.
So while the idea of ptsd has been around forever, it was probably so normal for such a long time that we never bothered to pin a medical condition on it until the last hundred fifty years or so.
*”War is sweet to them who know it not.”*
-Pindar
Abandon all reason!
Know only war!
-Space marine chaplain
"Anyone, who truly wants to go to war, has truly never been there before!"
Dulce bellum inexpertis
@@lordinquisitorpeter8221 This is a point of strategic import.
@@670HP-Package-NOW
You shall pay dearly for my brother's life!
Y’all really undersold the clown party that was the Franz Ferdinand assasination
It was a comedy of errors abd councidences so outlandish if it were fiction I would call it contrived.
Yet it matters little.
The world would have found one reason or another for conflict.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Bingo, it was a matter of time. Why do you think everyone in Europe was aligned to each other in 2 big factions? The important people knew it was coming, and were fucking excited about it. It was roughly Pan-European War O'Clock which, they thought, meant glory and heroism and riches abound. If anyone had all the blood of WWI on their hands, it was the generals and monarchs and advisors who had SUCH A DISREGARD for human life that they were giddy to jump into one of the largest scale wars in history.
Everyone was looking for an excuse. If it wasn't Ferdinand, Austria would have just tried to annex Serbia and that would have started it.
@@kabobawsome Inlikely that Austria would have started the war without a very good excuse. Hungary was very eager to stop them from doing it even as things were, and they would have been succesful in preventing an offensive war.
Germany and France however were all too eager to sort out their differences from a couple decades ago, and the tsar was looking for something to distract his people from rebellion.
As it stands most of the blame for the actual declaration of war falls on germany and Conrad von Hötzendorf.
Especially given that Franz was pretty sympathetic to their cause!
Hey someone tried to assassinate me... eh whatever go the same way I SURE it won’t happen again
“There is no glory in war- only good men dying terrible deaths.”
-Lieutenant general Harold G. Moore, _We Are Soldiers Still_
Sending the bill for someone’s execution to their sister is next level disrespect
I remember once when I was about 12 a pamphlet advertising the air force came addressed to me in the mail. My dad saw it and absolutely lost his shit, thinking they where trying to get me to inlist. It freaked me out because i'd never heard him so much as raise his voice. Now I get it.
@That sorta irish guy what about drones?
After this pandemic is over, everyone will want to declare war on the CCP
@@uria3679 Then 'everyone'are complete and utter idiots that apparently didn't learn a damn thing from the events of the past century.
Tesskr95 they don’t care about the past as long they get what they want Justice/Revenge
@ALSO-RAN ! _they were 12, dude_
“A solid 90% of historical literature is either super boring or CRUSHINGLY MISERABLE”
Those who forget history are those doomed to repeat it.
In some cases both ( Les Miserables ). But not all of them are boring, Count of Monte Cristo is pretty good
Bright? What are ypu doing here?
Hah, Dr. Bright is here. Tell me, has the Old Man read this story, it will remind him of his time at the front.
And then theres How I won the war (Patrick Ryan).
How to get anoying locals to stop complain over nothing? Explain cricket to them.
Hey Bright, since you’re immortal an all, can you get a biography from 106 or something? I’m curious
I spent June to December of 2005 in Ramadi, Iraq with the US Army. We got mortared three times a day every day for that whole time. It killed a friend of mine on on October 1st. And despite all that, yes, you can still get bored of it. It becomes just part of the background noise. It reached the point that the explosions and alarm would wake me up, and because I slept in a concrete, hardened building, I would just roll over, grab my walkie-talkie, report in that I was alive, and roll over to go back to sleep.
I really, really, really feel this book.
Being in hell on Earth probably days before I was even alive, hope you’re doing well today king
@@whg_brianferguson That was my first in what turned out to be eight combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. I got a Purple Heart courtesy of an Iranian rocket on my second tour. But still alive and well in 2022.
@@briangarvey6895 Glad it didn’t end all like quiet on the western front for you lol
There was one part Red didnt cover that really paints the tone if the novel.
Paul and his squad are crossing by a church that was recently bombed and many of the coffins and corpses are sticking out of the craters. Suddenly, they get bombed and have to take cover in the craters. Paul and the others hide underneath he coffins to take cover and try to survive. The only thing between them and death is literally the dead shielding them until the gas comes in.
That scene always stuck with me
My high school English IV teacher had a list of books that he called "Day Ruiners". This was one of them. And yeah, it's an amazing read, but it's just fucking _soul-rending._
What other books were on the list?
I'm guessing Of Mice And Men is also on that list.
@@harisakma5733 Flowers for Algernon too, if I remember correctly. It's been a while.
I'd say that Catch-22 should be on that list. The first 2/3s is one of the funniest books that I've ever read, but that's only to disarm the reader enough to set them up for the soul-crushing final third.
@@dvt1393 I can definitely agree with that. Just... Snowden, man.
_"I'm cold."_
"Oh my God those are BABIES nope I'm out."
I saw that line and started straight up bawling.
timestamp?
SecondAccountForMe 15:27
That was accurate though, little boys of maybe a bit less than 15 enlisted, expecting to be a war hero but all they saw was hell.
@@DragonguyA In sweden you can still be "war placed" (made a soldier) in the event of war or crisis at age 16.
@@DragonguyA Wasn't the youngest age 11? I heard that in one of the stories. The youngest age was 11.
One of the things that really got to me about this book was how brutally detailed everything was. The scene where he's waiting in the foxhole and can hear the wounded horses screaming still haunts me, as does the scene where a soldier takes his gas mask off in his foxhole because he sees people outside without their masks, not realizing that the gas has sunk into the hole where it can't blow away like it did above ground.
I work in the summer at a show that reenact WW1, more specifically the battle of Verdun since that's where I'm from. I'm glad the production isn't turning the show in a French-only perspective but also shows the German side of things.
Two moments never fail to make me get chills, even after MANY productions: the first is when the war is declared and all the actors are on stage, frozen, before running out of stage. The second is at the end, when the war is over and soldiers and civilians see each other again. They swarm the train station and leave with each other, until there's only a woman and her young daughter left. The little girl turns to her mom and ask "where's dad?" and then the lights fade.
It's heart wrenching.
The english title looses a bit of the subtext of the german one:
Originally, it was "Im Westen nichts neues" - "Nothing new in the west".
Adding to the feeling of monotony and futility.
in spanish its called "sin novedad en el frente" which means: without news in the front, or, no news from the front. Also so futile
This title makes everything a lot sadder. This isn't just no news on the front, the whole war isn't news anymore.
Although I do feel the English title saying all quiet is haunting because you know there was something there that is gone now and no one noticed
Thanks for the info, but it means the same and it's more dramatic the way it's worded.
@@blackhawk4ful Just another example of why Spanish sucks.
That moment when a book is so somber it doesn't even get the sarcastic "Feel good novel of the century" title, like "Of Mice and Men" or "1984"
it's that impactful
Watching the "War is hell" counter go up is like getting the Darkest Dungeon stress symbol over your head.
And at the end, he reached to the conclusion: Apathy and Sorrow.
The thing I find most interesting is the connection between how Paul and his friends don’t have a life to go back to and therefore don’t really know what they want in life is sorta like how childhood depression can leave said child not knowing who they are once they get over depression becuase it’s all they’ve ever been.
Oh. I was wondering why and how could I relate to that feeling. Welp, another thing to add in my "why am I so fucked up" list.
(Sounds snarky, but really, thanks. Every little detail helps me understanding what is going on with me)
@@misteraskman3668 become a UA-camr and be like "alright guys, today we're doing top ten reasons I'm fucked up"
The way that "War is Hell" counter keeps getting more and more gray and dark... that's chilling. Nice touch, Overly Sarcastic Productions.
Seconded! That was great editing (along with the character-text sections)
Never noticed that before, good eye
My god. I would never have noticed
I did notice that
Blitz6804 I didn't even notice that. Great touch
"The legacy of the dead isn't called vengeance. It's called: *Never again!"* -E. M. Remarque
I just finished the book last week and it completely crushed my spirit.
I especially loved the gut punches that come from trivially stating that his mother was probably suffering from her cancer again, but the doctors would see what they could do...Like, ouch, with our modern exposure to the topic of cancer we all know how that's going to end.
Also, Albert getting shrapnel to the knee was cool and all, but that madman actually swam, ran and crouched with that injury for what felt like an eternity to get to safety! Absolute hero.
In the book Paul states how the life within him will find a way to keep going, whether he likes it or not and how the war took so much from him that he can only face it with indifference by now.
The literal next sentence is him dying one month before the wars end. Eff my life and eff me for having hope.
Yup, read it in grade school along with "Man of war" which is about Brittish soldiers during the sequel.
Read "Storm of Steel" by Ernst Jünger.
The first World War is only horrible to us because we only know it by its greatest whiners.
@@nonsansdroit3800 I may get around to that one, but it's kind of gruesome and glorifying the war as "manly". At least from what I remember hearing about it. Also, Jünger seems like a proper psychopath. I'll read the other works of Remarque first, then I'll think about "In Stahlgewittern".
By the way, what exactly do you mean by "The first World War is only horrible to us because we only know it by its greatest whiners."?
@@nonsansdroit3800 Jünger was an officer who was all about making men kill or be killed when they didn't actually want to. Remarque was a common soldier. His sentiments have been echoed repeatedly across generations by combat veterans in the common ranks. Including today's U.S. military vets, who are really getting tired of hearing about politicians "supporting the troops" when that actually means "give lots of taxpayer dollars to corporations for ordnance to be launched by soldiers whose annual salary is less than the cost of one missile, against enemies whose LIFETIME salary is less than the cost of one missile."
@@MagicBiber
The language of mental health and mental unhealth is the language of secular ethics.
WW1 atrocity propaganda was an Entente project to prevent the post-Versailles order from being broken.
I know we're all crying but could we all just take a second to appreciate how amazing these actors are? I don't know if it's just because the story is amazing, but even just a mere glance from these actors break my heart more than any amount of years I've lived. The emotion as Paul returns to his home broke me. That's with the fact I'm generally a very unsympathetic person. The whole thing made me sit on my bed and stare at my ceiling. No words needed to be said. All I felt was my heart breaking in half.
I suspect that when you see Richard Thomas, the actor who plays Paul, you see Paul. When I see the actor, I see John-boy Walton, from the long running tv series the Waltons.
Not that it's bad. John-boy and Paul have a lot in common to start with, both being young aspiring writers, but John-boy is a journalist by the time WW2 rolls around, so he's deployed differently. [It's his younger brother that gets drafted, and that youngster considers applying as a conscientious objector...in the end, he decides not to and ships off with the rest.]
Anyways, trying to shift my perception of John-boy to Paul, who is a different character, was jarring at times, and to Richard Thomas' credit, he was able to overcome the comparisons, both to his long running tv persona and to the 1930s classic, which the remake had some really big shoes to fill.
Currently serving in the US Marine corps, and I have to say, one thing I appreciate about the modern military is that they cut the bullshit. They very much tell us all during training and how deeply unpleasant it will be if we ever see combat. (Though recruiters are full of it)
They do use this as a way to make us feel even more fiercely loyal to our brothers in arms and it’s pretty culty, but I do appreciate it nonetheless.
good luck bro
Oh man, I distinctly remember the Marine recruiters who would drop by my high school every semester or so. The military itself might warn you once you're in, but those recruiters tried to sell a whole crock of "Defend the greatest country on Earth, become the man you're meant to be, secure your future" bull-fucking-shit.
That aside? A genuine, un-ironic thank you for your service.
1:31
Pre-WWI: Who would be dumb enough to start a war when we have all these alliances?
WWI: * Happens *
Modern Day: Who would be dumb enough to start a war when we have all these nukes?
The Cold War: *Allow me to introduce myself*
After this pandemic is over, everyone will want to declare war on the CCP
At least if i got hit by a nuke directly i'd die immediately
@@cuanchulainn most likely not. The real horror of nuclear holocaust is how long it would take for society to crumble completely. Only a tiny minority of the casualties would be killed immediately, a larger minority would succumb to radiation sickness and contamination over the following weeks, but the far majority would die over the coming months and years of hunger, dissease or exposure due to destruction of infrastrucrure and collapse of societal structures.
@@Finkeren let's not forget the few hours after the blast which is also every natural disaster, from firestorms, hurricane force winds, and earthquake like damage.
I've been back for just under four years now. I was in the Navy instead of the Army, but a lot of the feelings translate. I was deployed right out of training in 2013, where we were sent to Syria after their government decided chemical weapons and civilian targets sounded like a good idea. I got to see pictures of the results, but due to a global Mexican standoff, we didn't fire a single weapon in defense of innocent people whose faces were melted off and whose lungs were turned to soup. I rolled from that right into leave as soon as I got home, just in time for Thanksgiving. Hearing just how checked out Paul was reminded me exactly how I felt when I got home. I just watched as people were killed in possibly the worst way known to man outside of radiation poisoning and here everyone was, scrambling to fulfill the national holiday of "thanks" before rushing out to gratify their consumerist addiction, completely unaware of the absolute horror on the other side of the world, completely disconnected from other humans in a base desire to keep up with the Joneses. And between all this, people were thanking me for my "service," something I've absolutely hated since then, asking what it was like, did I kill anyone, and the cherry on the icing on the cake, "boy, it sure must be nice getting paid to go on a pleasure cruise!"
At the time I was still pretty numb from everything, but there was definitely a feeling like I didn't belong there anymore.
I spent the years of my enlistment bottling everything up, ignoring the faces of people I could have, should have, helped. In the past few years I've been dealing with the results of that, battling depression in brutal trench warfare, the silent gas of suicidal thoughts creeping across no-man's-land and entering my trench.
We went back in 2016, back to Syria, all for the same old reason. The exact same thing happened. I spent months floating there, seeing the intel briefings, seeing that the Russians had armed the Syrian regime with a type of missile that could evade our radar and hit us before we knew it had launched. I had written my will bad in 2013, a fresh-faced 19 year old, full of national pride.
I had joined because I wanted to help people. My original plan was to commission as a surgeon so that I could work disaster relief and near combat zones to help however I could. Those pictures made me puke worse than any amount of flu ever had before or since.
I've got a buddy that was in the Army. His truck got hit with an IED over in Iraq. Tore up his leg, but his mind got it worse. I've seen him break down over something as simple as a balloon popping from across a convention hall.
There is no greater cure for nationalistic pride and hubris than seeing a grown man become little more than a month-old baby in public. And I don't mean just crying a lot. I mean full on age regression.
As a rule, I hate, HATE, people that thank me for my "service." Nine times out of ten, it's nothing but an offensive reflex. And the tenth time, they really believe it, that I and everyone else out there am fighting for their own freedom, which is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard. The last time our freedom was genuinely in jeopardy was in 1814 when the British tried reclaiming the Colonies. Ever since then it's all been in the name of imperialism and supporting allies, all propped up by shameless nationalism.
Uh. . . got a little off topic there. All Quiet on the Western Front is an accurate depiction of both war and the mental processing of a decent percentage of vets and soon to be vets.
Thank you for sharing. Many adult/mentor figures in my life have told me I shouldn't say "thank you for your service" to veterans but they never told me why. You helped me gain a better understanding
Fr, the last war that had a true justification was WWII, but the reality is that we didn’t join to save those the Nazis were slaughtering, we joined because Japan attacked first. Fuck imperialism, the whole ideology is being selfish for the people who are above you, and identifying yourself with them when in reality you will always be considered lesser than them. I try not to think about it, but it’s impossible to just ignore the horrific things that happen in the world that we do nothing about, and in many cases are the cause of. I can’t imagine what you went through, dude.
Thank you... for this post.
I am sorry for what has happened to you. Wish I could to more than wish you good future.
I don't really know what I should say to that, but I do know I want to say something.
Let me start with this: Hi. I am a young adult born and raised in Iowa, and I have been raised to always respect the military and the veterans. When I was a little kid, you were always taught to treat them like heros with the upmost respect, because they fought for our freedoms. It wasn't until I really got into history that I personally realized that was little more than propaganda the government feeds us to keep supporting their bloodbath efforts in middle-eastern countries.
I don't look down on people like you, though. I mean how could I? It's not your fault you were lied to; indoctrinated all your life to believe the military is a completely nobel and heroic profession that everyone would love you for, if only you served 4,8,12,16 years in. If anything, I'm just angry at the people who lied to you. I'm angry that our government is 100% willing to just scoop up our strongest, our brightest, our youth, and obliterate them. To tear their minds, bodies, lives, to shreds and tear hearts at home limb-from-limb all for what? Damn near nothing. I'm sorry. Truly, I am.
I don't thank you for your service, but I do apologize for it. I'm sorry you'll have to bear the scars of homelessness and trauma for the rest of your days, I'm sorry few can understand, I'm sorry it even happened to begin with.
I hope you'll find peace someday, sir. You've been through so much and a soul like yours needs true, unwavering stability. I hope you'll find it.
Thanks for reading my long, probably incomprehensible message. Goodnight.
I'm sorry you had to go through that, i hope you are doing better and/or will continue to get better
Note: It's often forgotten that WW 1 did horrible damage to Africa as well.
The British empire chased the mobile army of general Von Letto-Vorbeck all over south and east Africa.
The loss of life and destruction was staggering.
The part where Paul goes home and is dealing with friends, family and associates wanting to hear the glories of war. That actually kinda hits now.
I was deployed in 2011 to Afghanistan ( I didn't get the worst of it I was support) in 2012 when my service ended I went to school in the fall. I had a philosophy class, cause dare I say it, reflecting on humanity seemed interesting. The professor was a monk I thought he was OK. Then we get to this book and he's really interested on what I have to say about it. All I can say is" well war sucks and Paul would rather be anywhere but there"
But oh boy that's not a good enough response we need more. Looking back on it now I'm wondering was he trying to goad me, or was it his fasination with wanting to get the same reaction. Like was it a clinical detachment needing to see the same reaction. Either way pissed me off. I was happy to a D grade in that class.
Some people react differently, some are born, some are molded to take the hits. But to me, you hit it right. I can't speak for every Solider going to war or in war. But if you're not protecting something or the mission is bullshit and unnecessary. Then yeah some of us are gonna be a bit bitter about it.
That's something that people who don't go to war but think there's glory in war don't get. You can't explain the monotony, the waiting, the bordem. The immediate excitement of danger and training taking over.
Now saying all this I do like action movies and games, and I like firing guns. But I despise the need for violence as an immediate solution and not a last resort.
But after this incoherent mess of a message I'm just really trying to agree, yeah war sucks (spoken like a true thespian)
It is only natural that we seek the perspective of those with first hand experience. It just so happens, that that experience is 'it fucking sucks, dont do it, if you dont have to', almost universally.
"War seems grossly unbalanced"
*Germany would like to download the 1914 patch*
1914 Patch Notes:
All USA spawn rates slightly increased.
Germany: I'm sure it'll be fine.
@@Shatterverse 1916 optional objective
Defend the river Somme
Worth
Defense 0 point
Loss - 1 point
Would not recommend taking this mission risk too high
Remember how Italy had to invade Ethiopia... twice?
@@Wildtigger68 "had to"
@@Wildtigger68 to be fair italy at the time didnt have time for a tutorial
There is something that caught my eye at the beggining of this book "this book is not meant as a charge nor conffesion. It tries to give a testimony about a generation that was broken by the war... even though they escaped it's shells" (I tried my best to translate it correctly so, sorry for any mistakes)
Bro. Like stop. Talking about how someone has trauma and saying oh that's so hypocritical honhonhon like fuck off. Having trauma isn't a race.
@ALSO-RAN ! Dude. Not cool.
@ALSO-RAN ! Yes and no.
I have spent my whole life around the military, the saddest thing I have ever seen was watching someone I knew walk back into the bar after being out in Afghanistan and realising that they were not them anymore. There was no one behind his eyes, everything about who he was had gone.
I have worked with Vets with PTSD from the Falklands war, grown men reduced to scared children by hallways and crowds, thankful they're doing okay now and can handle the instability that they were handed, but it still doesn't take away from the fact that the governments of the world do not care if you live or die, military or not, we are all just pawns in a game of power.
I get nauseous when I see 'soldiers coming home video's.' People clap and cheer and you see kids with red faces breaking down and scream-crying; 'DaAAAAaaDdYYYyy!' because they haven't seen him in months or even years. And the 'fresh from the war' soldiers are stumbling around (sometimes unharmed, sometimes harmed, sometimes just witnessed nasty shit) and everyone claps and says; 'Thank you for your service!' and smiles happily, while the soldier just stands there and probably had no idea what he signed up for when he first went (like those 'just turned 18' guys.)
I mean sure, some "just" left for a year to help build things in Iran or something, but even that is insanely painful. Missing your kids for a year (not seeing them grow up and actively causing permanent bonding-issues) because the government wants a waterwell in Iran and somehow there's no way of doing that without taking people away for a year.
Same with people in prison, while we're at it. Redfaced kids, choking on their words, having a bittersweet moment with their moms and dads in prison during visiting-hours and that's then being posted as 'Happy video of daughter reuniting!" and I just think it's mental torture. I avoid those videos. "Reuniting' without a promise to make it permanent this time, is nothing but 'prolonged-suffering' to me.
I've never read the book or watched the movie. But the fact this story ends with "All queit on the Western Front." Is so haunting and telling of how war is hell
he died one month before armistice day. just one month. he was so close to freedom but knew he was dead from the beginning
Fun Fact: The last living German WW1 Veteran was Erich Kästner. He fought in the final months of the war at 18 years old. When WW2 began, he was a Major for the Luftwaffe ground support. He died in 2008 at 107 years old.
The last known living veteran was Florence Green, who died in 2012.
No soldier who fought in the Great War lived to see its 100th Anniversary.
Don't know if that's a "fun" fact... interesting though
The same Erich Kästner who wrote childrens books? Or a different one?
@@JackOfen No the author Erich Kästner died in 74
It is true, that he fought at the end of WWI. But because of the things that he experienced during that time, he became a pacifist. He didn't fight during WWII and in fact, the Nazis burned a lot of his work. Most noteworthy, his novel Fabian.
This is why we desperately need shit like this book to continue being preserved for posterity.
So we never forget how fucking pointlessly stupid and awful that war was.
You know, After hearing Red's version "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream" I think i prefer it over the original. It seems more... impactful . As if the singer is glad the war is over, that it can never happen again, that no one must die anymore, but that she had lost something or someone so dear that nothing could ever replace it.
I just like it.
I'd love it if she did the whole song
Given how ubiquitous the Swedish translation of the song is over here and the video reminded me of seeing the All Quiet On The Western Front in school, I could not help to tear up a little.
Surprising as it may seem, I actually heard Red's cover before the original, and the first version of any song I hear usually ends up as my favorite version:)
@@MortMe0430 same
11:40 I know that there are a lot of really horrible things that happened in this book, and this could never be considered as one of the worst, but it still brings tears to my eyes. I’m an amateur writer myself, and I love it almost as much as life itself. To think, that you could go through something so horrible that the things you used to love most mean nothing to you anymore is awful. Losing my stories, my ideas, my creativity, would be losing a fundamental part of myself. It’s even worse when you realize this is basically the authors autobiography and he’s writing this all from experience. This is always the part that hits me hardest.
First some background information: My Dad emigrated from Germany to study and work in the United States. This information was passed down orally so some details may be incorrect.
As Red mentioned a lot of All Quiet on the Western Front is based on real life, and my grandmother's father is mentioned in the first chapter by his last name, Bulke (not sure about the spelling as I only listened to the German and English audiobooks). He was a normal soldier for a while but got into too many shenanigans and ended up as a cook. At one point he took his goulash canons (these huge pots for making stew) all the way up to the trenches during a heavy bombardment to feed the soldiers. To do this he had to put heavy blankets over the horses' chains to prevent noise and light coming off of them which would alert the artillery to his position.
I love how Kantorek, the teacher that motivated the squad to enlist for war, called them the "iron youth". That one actually became true, just not in the way Kantorek originally meant.
Well after seeing the graveyards of literal Iron Crosses over the youth of Germany....it’s even more literal to me
More like lead youth
@@T-tb8ho Especially when the Kaiser just strolls around, giving the crosses to children for having survived thus far. Remember that big clean up for the Kaiser? They all got brand new gear to look more presentable...but have to give it all back later to suffer in the trenches again. Nothing better to raise morale!
@@mjcaboose3479 Yeah, lead to their deaths.
MagicBiber and pumped full of it
Reading this in high school, Paul's visit home was the worst part, particularly when he opened his books. "Words. Words. Words. They do not reach me." That, more than anything, brought home how completely he'd been crushed by his experiences.
Blue: "When has stupidity ever been a limiting factor in world history?"
Me: *groans in Mutually Assured Destruction, hoping that stupidity never prevails in that hot mess*
Seriously, we need to get over our collective hate boners or the Law of Large Numbers is going to make this reality, assuming something else doesn't first.
Welp,MAD is more of an unstable survival/rage trigger that unfortunately enough,every human like us have,the same reason why wars are fought quite often in the past.
To be fair MAD is pretty much the only reason we've gotten past the cold war without most the world being a smoking crater, so it honestly did kinda work.
@@Sergei_Ivanovich_Mosin That's the thing with the law of large numbers though, given enough time it might not work eventually. And with MAD you can have a million victories, but 1 failure undoes all of that.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
― Albert Einstein
@@Sergei_Ivanovich_Mosin that’s mostly because instead of your neighbors getting destroyed the entire world would get destroyed
I read this book for English Class and I seriously forgot while reading that these are the people we’ve been told were the bad guys our entire lives.
We read this at school in Germany. I admit I didn't grasp every psychological horror back then. But it made me appreciate that my generation gets to meet the French youth in exchange programs and on holidays. Not in the hell of war.
We read it in German class my senior year in school before I went as part of an exchange program from the U.S. Slightly different war, but as an American staying in the Rhineland region, there's a lot of merit that passes along when you realize those arbitrary lines really don't matter when good people are on both sides.
Read this book in my Junior year of high school. Unfortunately not a lot of people ended up getting the point.
I think the day I realized war isn't glorious was the day my Uncle Adam told me about his first encounter with the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war. He said "I was trapped in a small hut when he ran in. He had a gun in his hand, and my rifle was already aimed at him. I looked in his eyes as I fired my gun, and I knew at that moment I had a life in my hands. A man stood before me who had a family, probably kids of his own even, and I had already made my choice... I'm not sure I made the right one. I didn't kill an enemy. I killed a man"
He was in his 50s at the time. The fact that such a thing can haunt someone for so long is dark on its own.
100% sure this story is made up
Theodoric fake or not it doesn’t mean nobody has thought something similar
@@link_fd1729 i find it pretty lame to say a blatant lie regardless of reason
@@theodoric7335 It's kind of dumb to call out a story as fake without any evidence to the contrary. All youre doing is risking looking like a callous idiot if youre wrong.
Easier to just mind your damn business instead of being a complete tool.
Isaac Sorrels your right and just because the story may be fake doesn’t mean the lesson it’s trying to say isn’t true
"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - George Santayana.
Through some sad coincidence, I was watching this video the other day unaware to the fact that later the same week a war would be declared.
It's all so surreal and terrifying.
0:40 shows Italy as in the central powers side
*laughs in loyal*
Yeah we're kind of infamous in that way...
Aaand there comes the billionth time i have to explain this: The Triple Alliance was a DEFENSIVE one, Austria-Hungary was the aggressor against Serbia in the same way Germany was the aggressor against France and Russia. Italy was never supposed to fight with the central powers in a war of aggression
@@unopercaso8829 Well, jumping ship in time got you Southern Tirol, so that worked out.
@@lorisuprifranz I found an italian
"I play on both sides, so either way I benefit"
-Italy
To show how terrifying WW1 was, here's some chilling trivia:
In the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the fight for a small fort named Vaux was fought in absolutely nightmarish conditions. The Germans tried to blow holes in the roof with Dynamite and cut off any means of the fort to supply itself even with water. When the germans tried to storm Fort Vaux, the battle inside turned into something worse than hell. In very narrow hallways (about 1,8 meters high and 1,4 meters wide) French and Germans brutalized each other to point that there was no ground that wasn't covered in corpses, body parts or intestines. After weeks of siege, the defenders didn't even have fresh water anymore (since an artillery shell destroyed its well) that the soldiers drank their own urine and licked the condensed water from the walls. The battle of Fort Vaux claimed over 30.000 lives for a piece of land, that wasn't bigger than a large church. The Battle of Verdun also stands as the longest single battle in history, lasting some 9 months between Feburary and November 1916.
In Flanders, the region around the Belgian city of Ypres, most of the Ground was really wet. The trenches on both sides were usually filled with water. Many soliders drowned in their bunkers when it started raining. It also had the consequence of soliders foots becoming so bloated from standing in water for WEEKS that the flesh literaly fell off their bones.
There were twelve battles for the region around the river Isonzo in north Italy. TWELVE. Each having little to no effect on the greater Picture whatsoever.
The parts of France where the battles on the western front rages is still, after 100 years, mostly unusable due to the insane amounts of artillery shells, corpses and metals in it. The parts where the battles raged the most, stell bear the scars of the fights, with craters and crippled trees to this day. I visited Verdun once and it's really haunting.
@Daria Cobb and that's putting it mildly!
That's... so utterly TERRIFYING and completely depressing.
>There were twelve battles for the region around the river Isonzo in north Italy. TWELVE. Each having little to no effect on the greater Picture whatsoever.
Well, After the Italian Army under the murderously incompetent leadership of General Luigi Cadorna battered at the Austro-Hungarian defenses for the first eleven battles to little effect; the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo was a major success!
...for the Austrians, who, with German assistance, drove the Italians all the way back to the Piave river.
holy frick that’s actually traumatizing
@@colindunnigan8621 And then the Italians counterattacked and pushed the Austrians all the way back to their starting positions and then some.
When I was relatively young - 8, 10 years or so - my mother took me on a trip around europe by car. perhaps the best trip we ever did - all the way from portugal to germany, then back. it was long, we camped instead of hotel hopping, and visited just about everything there was to visit in our route.
which happened to include northern France and Normandy.
To this day, I still remember the sheer *solemnity* of the places we visited. silent. idyllic. green grass, calm countryside with a hint of salt and sea in the air dragged by the wind. You'd never associate it with the absolute carnage that befell the area close to a century ago. I was obviously too young at the time to properly grasp what war truly meant or was like. all I saw were strange, brutish concrete structures on a beach, my mind thinking of adventure (and pirates, of course) seeing some 4 or 5 of the original boats used to land troops in Omaha that were left there to this day (unless they were removed in the last 20 years). I saw trenches that were rebuilt as a recreation and thought they looked sooooo cooool, like a film prop straight out of hollywood. I saw endless graveyards, some white, but also one with dark crosses for the germans (who evidently were buried seperately, but thankfully not without due respect) and simply thought... nothing of it. I had never witnessed or been confronted with the idea of death. We visited one of several WW2 museums and I'd find the uniforms of every side to just look fascinating. the guns were cool. I wanted to try them. how heavy were they? did people -really- run around with these things, like in the movies? the planes were marvelous and immense from the perspective of the kid I was, and I looked at their sleek metal outsides with awe and sheer fascination.
then I grew up.
Those memories, those images, they never left me, but my interpretation, oh it sure as hell changed. my father ended up dying not exactly long after this voyage, and after taking a good chunk of my childhood and early teen years coming to grips with it, I slowly began to understand the sheer *scale* of what WW2 was. geography classes. history lessons. and more frighteningly, the cold implications of basic *math.* so many lives wasted and cut short on every side, to say nothing of bystanders that never had any stake in the conflict and would have much rather just kept living their best lives. social scars that are still there to this day in so many regions, conflicts only coming into being to right a perceived-or-otherwise-true wrongdoing of a previous generation's decisions or aspirations. the strange juxtaposition of what I remember as being a pleasant and almost fantastical, dream-like place contrasting with context and what I now know war to be - it's simply heartbreaking, and to some degree, overwhelming.
We truly are our worst enemies.
And if the situation going on in Ukraine is any indication, we seem unable to learn from it.
"The idea was that nobody would be short-sighted enough to declare war on half of Europe."
Sounds suspiciously similar to the concept of the nuclear deterrent.
“World War I was just Europe being such a flustercuck of grudges and alliances that when Serbia turned the little crank of Austria-Hungary, it set off the whole mouse trap machine of alliances and by the time the little plastic man jumped into
the pool, everyone was fighting everyone else." Ben Yahtzee Croshaw
Hey someone else here watches yahtzee
For anyone who doesn't know yahtzee makes sweary internet game reviews titled zero punctuation (because he talks very fast)
When/ what video did he say that?
@@alexandertoucan4956 i believe it was the enemy front/valiant hearts episode
@@MrDecat thanks
"Apparently when you have literally no say in whether you survive or not, you start checking out of the situation."
You right. Allow me to introduce you to the 21st century equivalent of trench warfare: naval warfare in the age of guided missiles! For about 0.5% of the crew, it's engaging and will keep you hyped up. For the rest, you're assigned to repair lockers, waiting for that sweet, sweet missile hit/release of death. I have spent hours of my life that I will never get back pondering the fact that, best case (arguably), I would have to run into a pitch dark simulacrum of hell and fix it. It's dark, it's on fire, it's hot, and it's scattered with bits of people I used to care about. Worst case (again, arguably), you suffer some horrifying injury or are insta-killed. When they pass the call "Missile inbound, starboard side. All hands brace for shock. Time to impact: ten seconds," you do your brace position and hope for the best, but if that missile has your name on it, you're done and nothing you could have done would improve your odds of survival.
An example: I was stationed on USS Rentz (FFG-46) in 2004. It is exactly the same ship type as the USS Stark (FFG-31) which was struck by an Iraqi Exocet anti-ship missile in the Northern Arabian Gulf in 1987 (I was 3). I was assigned as the nozzleman on hose team 1 for Repair Locker 1. If you google "USS Stark Exocet battle damage," you'll see that that cheap-ass missile really fucked up the Stark's day. As the nozzleman on the #1 hose team, my ready position is clearly visible through the hole in the hull that missile made. To wit, I would be dead. Very dead. This is not lost on me. If you youtube search for "US frigate torpedo damage," you'll see a decommissioned frigate take a torpedo strike _also_ directly under my feet. I don't know why naval weapons tend to land exactly where I stand, but it's not a pattern that has escaped my attention and the only thing I can do is thank God that I never saw (naval) combat.
So yes, there's nothing in the world more simultaneously boring and terrifying as being shelled.
I'm just a stranger on the internet with no clue of what you're going through, but that sounds absolutely terrible. I'm so sorry you, and anyone else, had to go through that. That's terrifying and it's really really good that you never saw naval combat.
@@SubscribingMilotic OP didn't go through anything but imagine dark fantasies of his/her death by cheap-ass missile.
@@HoratioAccel still somethin!
@@thesssradio5008 I was 12, I think, when that whole nastiness wrapped up, but I remember it.
As for aircraft carriers, no, it's not really that much better. They're more well-defended than the surface combatants, but the risks are still the same.
Dang. With a grandpa that had served in the navy, this kinda hits close to home. I’m glad that nothing bad happened to you, and yank you for your service, sir/ma’am.
One of the best "read it, absorb it, process it, then probably never read it again because it stays with you forever" books out there. It's beautifully written, viscerally emotional, and I'm actually glad it was assigned to me in high school. I have revisited it a few times since then, and if anything, it hits harder on each re-read.
My dad recently shared with me one of the few stories my great grandfather ever told about his time in the trenches.
So, my great grandfather fought in the Canadian army during WWI, and one day a young new captain was posted to his unit on the front. Grandad sized him up in the fist couple of seconds, and realized two things: 1. This gung-ho dumbass was going to get himself killed, and 2. They wore the same size boots.
Grandad stuck to him like glue, everywhere he went for two solid weeks waiting for those boots. In the end that captain ended up getting hit in the legs by a shell, vaporizing the boots.
Damn lol
when going over ww1 in world history class i remember my history teacher, someone who enjoys teaching wars just being depressed the whole time. he described ww1 as a depressing fault of a web of alliances. he also hammered the point that so many people died for grudges they never would even know the (full) why or who behind
unrelated but he called ww2 a sexy war and i've never recovered from that
WWII isn't sexy in the literal sense; it's sexy in the *literary* sense: it's great fodder for simple stories about good guys proving how good they are by murdering the fuck out of some murderous fucks, because the Nazis went so beyond acceptable levels of evil that the only people who even try to be apologists for them are pretty close to being unambiguously evil in their own right.
(For acceptable levels of evil, look up Napoleon's bullshit and all the Napoleon apologists trying to say that it was acceptable at the time. (No it wasn't; there's a reason the rest of Europe declared war on Napoleon specifically, in one of very few cases where a war was declared against an individual rather than a nation, group or idea.))
(All that said, it's also worth noting that when the sole defining virtue of the good guy is that they murder bad guys, they're just one deluded world view away from being the bad guys.)
@@rashkavar The reason Europe declared war on Napoleon specifically was because he was the one who had become the figurehead menace, as well as being the one that repeatedly had humiliated the old powers in battle, and they intended to (try to) install the old regime in France again, thus pointing at Napoleon specifically instead of "France" was politically expedient.
And you don't get to talk about Napoleon's "evil" while FEUDALIST Russia was its opponent. Russian serf consitions were LITERALLY WORSE than medieval.
@@Hjernespreng It's possible for evil to fight evil, dude. Hitler and Stalin weren't exactly friends either, and they're the world's two most successful mass murderers in history.
WW2?
*Eww Noises*
yknow. its been 4 months since i posted this comment and i just looked at the replies and i accidentally got a few ppl who love talking abt wars to ppl who dont want to listen. fun
And when he gets to Heaven
To Saint Peter he will tell
"One more soldier reporting sir
I've served my time in Hell"
That gives me all the feels!!
Harmony Alexandria honestly soldiers in general would be subjected to hell for murder. Sucks how the people trying to convert me fail to realize the flaw in their “perfect” religion. (Not that religion in itself is bad)
Harmony Alexandria ( just the blatant hypocrisy some people have towards some people)
@@johnmcswag5980
Every religion says death is bad, unless sanctioned. Which makes sense, after all religious are the moral guidelines and social movements of the early civilizations.
And when I get the hell old satan's gonna say saying how'd you earn ya liven boy. How'd you earn ya pay, and I'll reply with a boot to his chest I earn my living putting souls to rest
"It was not a fun war, and it was not a popular war."
Still pretty great I guess.
For all of the memeing about books and movies that end with their own name, this book is one of the few examples I can think of that actually does it.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
By Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
The old Lie: "Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori."
Hey, that's the guy indiana jones met in flanders!
"World War II, Electric Boogaloo" I am CACKLING
Jonny Setzler we need that on a tshirt
Yeah, this channel's unique sense of humor is the main draw for me.
Not that unique?
Not that original people have made that joke for years
12:04 Only partially true. There was significant recognition of "shell shock" as a medical issue, rather than a lack of moral fibre, as you say. The British Army, for instance, even instituted a (wholly inadequate, but better than nothing) program to help effected soldiers. Extensive research was also conducted by the US Army medical branch into it, coming to the (already existing) conclusion that it was a result of brain injury due to shell impacts, hence the name.
"war isn't hell,war is war and hell is hell and of the two war is worse. There are no innocents in hell. War is full of them, men women children old people rich poor...there are no innocent bystanders in hell."-
M.A.S.H.
Red: points at screen*
Me: IS THAT A NEW POSE!
All I think of is that one "You are already dead" joke
Me:"look mama the only happy comment!"
Mom:...
Me: **quietly** "mama?"
Me: hates crying
Also me: watches a summary of all quiet on the western front knowing that I'll cry
Crying is, biologically speaking, good for you. Stress relief and catharsis and all that.
Yeah, I think not feeling bad about your bodily functions is worth bringing up 5 months later. Let yourself have a good bawl every once in a while, it does ya good
That ending gave me chills. Especially with the whole "All quiet on the western front." thing.
The cruelest part of his death, was that it was only one month before the end of the war
In the new remake he's killed minutes before the armistice.
@@erikmundhenk7528 I really disliked that in the Netflix adaptation, because instead of it truly being a day where Paul's death was simply seen as unremarkable on an unremarkable day, it becomes overshadowed by an understandably remarkable day. Just throws the last line in the garbage can, along with so much else.
The original German title was "Nothing new on the western front." But the English marketers changed it to all's quiet to make it stand out.
Yeah? The Spanish translation is more similar to the German it's "sin novedad en el frente" or "nothing new in the front"
Personally? I much prefer the English. Maybe I’m biased. As an Englishman, but I feel it ties into another piece of WW1 literature, Exposure, by Wilfred Owen. All Quiet On the Western Front just feels...eerie. Nothing.
@@tommyscott8511 As a fellow English-speaker, I think I like the "sound" of the English more phonetically, but the message and meaning of the German more. "All Quiet" sounds like a foreboding quiet before a storm. But, the war is practically over by that point.
"Nothing new" means the storm is already happening, and people have come to accept it as reality. It's a much more nihilistic outlook, and I think fits the message better.
0ctopusComp1etely
You are right; “All quiet” sounds cooler and has a more interesting implication but the original fits the actual tone better.
All Quiet is a better title but not for the same book.
that's interesting thanks for sharing! To be honest I think the all quiet one is better in that it makes me more sad haha. Like it didn't even happen.
then again "nothing new" is almost like "yeah it happened but it wasn't a big deal, same old same old"
and that also makes me sad so I don't know.
Well either way I'm sad.
I will admit the ending and Red's beautiful singing brought tears to my eyes.
For the life of me this is the only place I can find that song with singing
I really want to get red's cover as it's own video.
In the beginning she says “we’re over war these days” ahh welcome 2022
Have you ever been so addicted to a UA-cam channel that you watch a most of the channel's videos in a day? Yeah... that's me and this channel.
What gets me is that pretty much everything one needs to know about military strategy was written two millenia ago by Sun Tzu. And he talks about the costs of war AT THE VERY START OF THE BOOK. He emphasizes how expensive it is, how nasty and horrible even by antiquated "spears and chariots" standards. And, at the VERY START OF THE BOOK, he emphasizes that wars should be fought quickly or not at all.
Later he talks about sieges, and how a siege is the worst thing anyone can ever do ever. And that no military commander should ever, ever, ever, under any circumstances, lay siege to a fortified position, and any commander who does so is calling it "courage" when it's actually "horrible stupidity and murdering your troops." Because wars should be fought quickly or not at all.
And then you look at WWI. And the trench warfare. A trench is a fortified position. World War 1 was literally NONSTOP AND CONTINUOUS SIEGE WARFARE. It was literally the worst thing possible, the stupidest thing a commander can do, only maximized to be at least 90% of the fighting.
While I do agree that sieges were horrible, (especially for the besieged) Sun Tzu kinda was wrong about that. If a besieging army is well supplied and understands sanitations (like the romans for example), they were pretty safe bets for generals, because they could just starve the enemy out. A pitched battle on the other hand, was waaaaay more risky and deadly for the armies, because it was basically all or nothing.
On the other I completly agree that a short war is way more favorable, because the more they drag on, the nastier they get (especially in the end, just ask the Carthaginians).
Or you know, you can be the romans and not care about fortified positions and just steamroll them.
@@SwampGreen14 If the besieging army is well supplied and understands sanitation... then you're wasting a LOOOT of supplies just sitting around doing nothing except keeping the enemy from moving around.
Sun Tzu felt the same way about pitched battles - his description of the ideal time to attack was "when you have them heavily outgunned and outnumbered." In other words, he wasn't a big believer in fair fights. Or... killing, for that matter (since every dead person on EITHER side, as well as every expended arrow, blunted blade, worn out shoe, etc, was WASTE. Especially when today's enemy is tomorrow's economic ally).
And the Romans steamrolled fortifications because they weren't well fortified by comparison to what the Romans had. The Romans had vastly superior technology, discipline, and tactics. They once made a bunch of "barbarians" piss themselves by setting camp on one side of a large river (that the barbarians thought of as a natural defensive border), then building a bridge, crossing it, patrolling around, then going back home. Leaving the bridge behind as a permanent structure for the barbarians to stare and mutter, "...how the hell...!?"
People often do the stupidest thing they can do when they haven't adjusted their understanding of the world to fit it. Entire martial cultures had blossomed in the soil of a world long passed, and when they tried to figure out how to handle the present...well, they figured it out eventually.
Because the ability for commanders to be disconnected from the consequences of their orders and from seeing the fear on their subordinate's faces allows them to incorporate strategies that give little chance of losing much ground but a huge chance of constantly losing lives. It's only after the war ended and those sad souls returned home to tell their stories that people realized what they were doing was wrong.
Not war, mind you, nobody ever seems to come to the conclusion that war is wrong, just that they were fighting it the wrong way. Which is why, for all the great many horrors of World War 2, at least it didn't have trenches or mustard gas. Yay?
"Where is this greatness Ive been told
This is the lies that weve been sold
Is this a worthy sacrifice"
GREAT WAR, AND I CANNOT TAKE MORE! GREAT TOUR, I KEEP ON MARCHING ON! I PLAY THE GREAT SCORE, THERE WILL BE NO ENCORE! GREAT WAR, THE WAR TO END ALL WARS!
Great songs personally I was a fan of ghost of the tenches
@@Poffean AND FEET BY FEET, PAY THE PRICE OF A MILE HERE
“My Bonny lay afar upon a lowly eiderdown
While I dream of rats and tar within my burrow in the ground
Infernal gaping scar of boiling mud and thundering sound
Will they sing of this forsaken pawn of war?”
Now people want war on China not for resources but revenge
Had to read this book in middle school English, Freshman year high school English, and a WWI class in college. Also watched both movie versions. After reading through it a fourth time and rewatching both movies in preparation for the Netflix adaptation, I can safely say: yes, it is a soul-crushing read, but it is a brilliant and powerful lesson in the absolute insanity of sending a generation of young men to die for the actions and ambitions of a few. Easily one of my favorite books.
A bit weird, but I like that the scene with Paul and his comrades meeting the new recruits show the recruits wearing the newer Stahlhelm, while the current soldiers are wearing the older simplified version of the Pickelhaube
They spoke of honor, faith, and pride
Defending for our home
For honor all my friends have died
Their faith left me alone
Matrim42 where is this from?
@@NothingButGiggles"Courage Knows no Bounds" from heather alexander, last part of a trilogy [first is "Tomorrow I leave for Battle" and the middle part is "March of Cambreadth"]
That was beautifully sad
Back when I was a wee kid, remember gleefully playing with action figures, watching war films and playing first person shooters.
As I grew up into adulthood, ended up studying propaganda and political cinema.
I remember watching and reading All Quiet in the Western Front and reminisce my horror at the scene when the camera pans from left to right as soldiers are mowed down. When Paul's company gets shelled with no clue of where those shells come from, only able to watch their fellows scream to their death throes.
Despite watching hundreds of war movies, I can say that All Quiet In the Western Front is one of the few films I can genuinely say is anti-war. Yet it doesn't do it by gore, but existential terror and the utter hopelessness of the average trooper in the face of the industrial war machine. When my fellow film scholars were talking about the idea that no war film could be truly anti-war due to the aesthetics of violence, I referenced this film excessively.
But all of that is behind me now, as I am getting my sorry ass enlisted in a month. Oh well...
I'd like to say "I hope you turn out fine, man" but, uh.. just, survive
If you have any way to leave, to not get enlisted...
Leave.
Don’t get enlisted.
...
I know you’re probably going because you have no choice and I don’t know what’s going on in your life and I have no context for this and you probably don’t get medical care or security or anything that the rich take for granted unless you put your life on the line for a corrupt government’s pointless short-term gain murder campaign but I just couldn’t scroll by without saying _something,_ I thought maybe there is a way and he’s just too demoralized to ask one more time but if this comment is the tipping point and he decides to stay home or pretends to be sick or insane and lives then I should comment no matter how unlikely it is.
@@nkbujvytcygvujno6006 It's conscription and can't leave the country until my service is done.
On the flip side, I should be nice and safe. Think the fact that my life is set in a dead end job that earns me only around 1200 dollars a year whilst halting my education and path to a proper job has gotten me inordinately down.
Oh.
Well, I don’t blame you.
(Who could?)
At least there’s less of a chance you’ll be killed, but, God, I’m sorry about the stupid society you have to live in.
Thanks for telling me, anyway, though.
...good luck, anyway...
@@leesh193 if if were you id at least hope for a pencil pushing position, or even try to train to be a medic
Watching this on 2/24/22 is a surreal experience
5:18 Even the COVER physically hurts to look at. It’s beautiful in a deeply painful way, like a painting that stabs you in the chest when you look at it.
This story totally ruined me when I first read it. As someone who has C-PTSD, albeit from abuse as a child not war, the feelings and emotions hit way too close to home. I genuinely relate to all of the characters’ fears and horror, which impacted me more than most stories because it felt like someone actually understood what I go through daily.
yeah, i had to stop watching halfway through in fact, i used to dismiss my cptsd and ptsd BECAUSE it wasnt war.
@@briannagravely9349 Why would you dismiss it over that?
@@BJGvideos that isn't how c-PTSD works
@@ilychan3580 Huh? What isn't?
My ex-best-friend has the same condition because of the same reason. We bonded over having ADHD and Autism (and other happier non-clinical stuff). I made a mistake, and now she doesn't want to talk to me ever again. And I understad and respect that, and I know I was in the wrong; I just miss her so much (she is alive).
So, I understand how you feel every day. At least, as someone with PTSD (no C involved) that had some of the best time of his life around some with CPTSD.
I hope you have a nice day. You are understood by many people. Just in case you needed this today.
I’ve visited the war cemeteries on both sides of the war in France and Belgium. Nothing has changed me more see rows upon rows of nameless soldiers known only to god. What really rocked me to my core was see the grave of one soldier, Rifleman V. J. Strudwick died 14th of January age 15. Seeing a soldier that young really hit me. In war there is no winners only the death of soldiers and the gain of politicians. “War does not determine who wins, only who is left.”
@@dimapez Truly chilling
The youngest soldier ever fought in WW1 was for the Serbian Army, and he was only 8 years old
many british boys signed up for glory and adventure, only to be met by the utter brutality of war.
The wimmer is the politicians
9:25
Haie Westhus (the guy who gets his ribcage blown out) is pretty much the only one who can think of a long-term answer: if he makes corporal, he'll probably 'stay with the Prussians' and re-enlist, seeing as being a soldier in peacetime is a lot more comfortable; living at the garrison, sleeping in a soft bed, having proper and ready clothes and food, going out to the pub on leave, etc.
Haie goes on about becoming a forester after his twelve years of service, where he can just 'stroll about all day and be offered drinks by everyone; everyone wants to befriend the forester.'
While more long-term than his friend's thoughts about getting drunk or sleeping or... getting reacquainted, with the ladies, it still proves your point; even Haie, who has an actual plan for the future, can only think of continuing with soldiering, because it's all he's experienced as an 'adult'. And even his plan upon getting out of the army seems motivated, at least partly, by the promise of ready and easily gained booze.
I know I'm probably well late to this- but the book "Poilus" is an autobiographical account of a French soldier in the war. It hits harder for me because it's his day by day diary. Everything is written quite matter of factly and it just touches the day by day suffering in addition to the moments of horror.