All Quiet on the Western Front

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow... 

This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. 
 
Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another...if only he can come out of the war alive. 

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) was born in Germany in 1898 and drafted into the German army during World War I. His novel All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1928 and was an instant best seller. When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerland; he lost his German citizenship, his books were burned, and his films banned. He went to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1947. He later lived in Switzerland with his second wife, the actress Paulette Goddard. He died in September 1970.