Dehumanization In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front

In Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer, a German soldier, along with his comrades, suffer through traumatic events and devastating losses as they struggle to survive the violent maelstrom of the Great War. As they fight, the grave circumstances and decimated landscapes they witness has a haunting effect on them. In order to cope with this drastic setting, they resort to dehumanization. By seeing their enemies as less than human, the war conditions them to kill, relying solely on instinct alone. They distance themselves from their comrades by dehumanizing them, making it easier to cope with their deaths. To maintain their sanity and face the horrors of the war, Paul and his company must suppress their humanity.
Soldiers, using their instinct alone, must set aside their humanity to survive during their time on the battlefield. When Paul and his friends reach the battlefront, they find that they “become on the instant human animals” (56). Because of their desire to survive, they must surrender their morals and beliefs to their primal instinct. In this instance, they become savage beasts, making it easier to kill on the field. Their former selves effectively die in the war, becoming “insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill” (116). The war takes a toll on

their psyche because they had abandoned their human nature in order to survive. In the aftermath, they gain a sense of apathy, because of the morals they cast aside for their survival.
Paul, along with many other soldiers, are able to dispatch their enemies with ease by dehumanizing them. Gerard Duval, a French printer, jumps into the same shell-hole as Paul during combat, and as he murders him, he can “feel only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp, and collapses” (216). Because the man is dying, he tries to justify his actions by referring to him as a mere body, effectively dehumanizing him. This allows him to come to terms with the fact that he has killed another man. Another instance where soldiers dehumanize their enemies is when Sergeant Oellrich, one of the snipers on the fire-step, lands a shot on one of the enemy soldiers and “turns around proudly and scores his point” (228). Here, Oellrich is shown to view murder as a sport, and even remarks about how high one of his kills leapt. By dehumanizing his enemies and reducing them to mere “game”, he is able to efficiently kill on the battlefield, with a sense of pride.
During the war, Paul, with many other soldiers, suffer grave blows to their mental and physical health.

By abandoning their humanity and relying completely on their instinct for survival, they are left with a sense of apathy. Dehumanizing their enemies enables them to murder with ease, and even with a sense of pride in their work. Without suppressing their humanity and abandoning their morals, their mental health would have sustained significant damage from their traumatic experiences. Devaluing the lives of their enemies and their emotions allows soldiers to cope with the tragic horrors they face on the battlefield every

day.