All Quiet on the Western Front | Characters

As narrator of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer records the grim realities of war in the daily routines and terrible deaths that involve his classmates and comrades. Filled with patriotic zest and romantic notions about war, they hasten to enlist, but once in basic training they lose some of their illusions as they are tyrannized by Corporal Himmelstoss, a former postman, who constantly insults them and badgers them with a "thousand pettifogging details." Still, they are eager for battle until inevitably, inexorably they are either maimed or killed — Behm is the first to...

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