All Quiet on the Western Front is quite simply a masterpiece. Written by Erich Maria Remarkque is removes the glory and romanticism that once accompanied war. It is brutal, real, sad and eye opening.
We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
The events in All Quiet on the Western Front occur in Germany and begin when a group of boys, thinking they are simply about to embark on a great adventure, sign up to join the army. Thinking that training isn’t so bad they get there eyes opened to the horrors of war when they get sent to the frontline. Amputations and death are at every corner. A masterful blending of fiction and non-fiction it hauntingly reminds us all of the costs of war. All in all a highly recommended read.
More and more books are being digitized and found online, and this is the case here. All Quiet on the Western Front Online Book can be found on many websites. A good place for a lot of online books of course is Questia. They have the title available to read right from your PC though it requires a membership.
One item that may be of interest is an alternate ending to All Quiet on the Western Front. These alternate histories are becomming more and more popular. There is a site called bookrix that has such a novel.
If you were looking for a free version on the All Quiet on the Western Front online book then you are out of luck, well if you wanted a legal copy. This novel is not yet in the Public Domain. Only books in the Public Domain can be downloaded for free. Typically this occurs 50 years after the death of the author, depending of the laws in your country. Remarque passed away in 1970.
FYI – All Quiet on the Western Front only took him a few months to write and sold over 2.5 million copies in the first few years after its release. It was also noteworthy for being one of the books banned and burned by Nazi Germany.