Germany was disarmed and the glory of the young German nation that was forged in the late 19th century cease to exist. At the end of the 20’s, Remarque saw a Germany about to slip in economic depression and the Weimar Republic close to collapse. An Austrian turn German citizen was calamoring for Germany return to its former glory and within five years, this former corporal would become the Furher. Just as the Kaiser led his nation to ruin in the first World War, Adolf Hitler will lead Germany to diaster that will cost millions of lives and forever change the world. At the end of World War II, Germany would be a divided nation. Remarque views war as futility that only can lead to diaster and from his perspective, all he could see was his nation in ruin.
Clayton’s America proved different. Vietnam was a losing war that was part of a larger conflict that would end in victory. For the men who led their nation into Vietnam was not seeking empire like Germany Kaiser but to protect the independence of South Vietnam and arrest the communist threat in Southeast Asia. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later puts Vietnam in a different perspective. America would truimph in the cold war and the cause of freedom spread as a result. Clayton’s fellow comrades who died in Vietman did not die in vain. With the Vietnam war seen as part of the larger conflict, their sacrifices proved valuable. United States did not collapse in chaos or ruin.
As for Remarque, his view may be the correct one for Germany since World War I solved nothing and left in place the seed of a larger and more ruinous conflict. Both Melcher and Baumer represent the common soldiers asked to fight conflicts that they may not fully understand. Melcher confusion is as much a result of his leaders incapacity of defending and explaining their cause. He is not sure what he is fighting for but maybe the older Melcher might see that his war was indeed just and his friends death were not wasted. As for Baumer, his leaders did tell him that their cause was just but in the end, he saw through their words. Which is why he could never adjust to a Post-war Germay for the leaders that led him to war were just as defeated as he was. The Kaiser had fled after the first World War and Germany stumbled through a embroyic democracy that would be aborted by Hitler. Both Clayton and Remarque tells us the tales of two soldiers and their struggle to adjust to a world gone mad in war. Read both books and you will view war differently, but understand that both men spoke for different generations and different cultures.
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