All Quiet on the Western Front

[RobertBMarks]

So, I just watched the new All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix, and it was a good movie. What it wasn't was good history. So, I'm going to put on my WW1 specialist cap, and give everybody a quick rundown of where it is getting its history unfortunately quite wrong:

• Russia had been knocked out of the war in 1917. In November 1918 there was no Eastern Front - Germany was only fighting on the Western Front.

• All of the trenches are wrong. WW1 trenches used what was called a "traverse" system, where what you would see is short segments with approx. 90 degree turns into the next one. The reason for this was simple - a direct artillery hit could at worst only take out two small segments, if it hit one of the corners. If a shell scored a direct hit on straight trenches like you see here, the shock wave would take out everybody in a pretty wide radius from the impact. Also, the Germans were playing defence and trying to keep what they had taken in 1914, and their trenches were very well built. Their trenches were quite deep (which is depicted properly), and were often reinforced with concrete (which is apparently not appearing in this film). The same goes for the bunkers, which were dug deeply enough to not be very vulnerable to shell fire, and often made from concrete (so the wooden roof is not quite right).

• They're even more wrong because in November 1918, most of the Western Front hadn't been using trenches at all for months. The trench deadlock was broken in March 1918 by a German offensive. When it was contained, the French and British pushed the Germans back using a sort of "one-two punch" strategy - an attack would take place on one part of the line, and then when that was spent, another would be made on a different part, and this prevented the Germans from regaining their footing. This ended in what is called the Hundred Days, in which Belgium and much of France was liberated (so that end title card about the front lines barely moving since 1914 is utter nonsense).

• French civilians in occupied France did not shoot at German soldiers, even if said soldiers are trying to steal geese and eggs from them. The Germans were paranoid about partisans, and shooting at a German soldier was a very good way to get summarily executed. This doesn't mean that there was widespread looting - in fact, for much of the war, looting in France was discouraged, and the German army was far more likely to just pay for something they took than to steal it. That further said, all bets were off in Belgium, and plenty of Belgian and French civilians were carted off to Germany as forced labour (so make of the situation what you will).

• While it was delightful to have an accurate description of a creeping barrage and how it is used, armies in WW1 did not start attacks by being shelled - they started them by shelling the other side. I really wish the trope of soldiers climbing out of their trenches in the middle of a barrage on their lines would be retired, as that just wasn't how it was done.

• At the beginning of the movie, in spring 1917, Germany was not doing this well. The whole "we'll be in Paris by Christmas" was not a thing that anybody seriously thought anymore - the realities of the war had sunk in (it couldn't survive veterans from the front coming home on leave for the last three years and telling people what had happened). The country had also been under a British blockade since the war started, so everybody was suffering food shortages. Certainly there were still volunteers, but most of the recruits at that point were conscripts who had been called up.

That all said, it IS a good movie, and worth watching. Just don't get your history from it.

[UrMom]

Oh hey! That's funny, I recently watched the original 1930's film (Btw, you can watch it on Archive.org.), which I learned about via a video essay. Can't say how different it is from the remake, I haven't had an interest in it since I imagine it would be much more heavily censored/regulated or altered in comparison.

I know the guy who made the original used real soldiers who fought in WWI as actors, and got input from them on a lot of small details relating to being on the front lines. Another reason why I wasn't particularly interested in the remake, all the WWI who could have contributed are dead. I won't give my input on accuracy since I don't know dick about that stuff, just wanted to say this was an interesting read! You learn something new everyday, and awesome to see this come up just after I learned about All Quiet on the Western Front!

[system]

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