How Remarque presents the Reader with the Brutality of War in his Novel "All Quiet on the Western Front"

In his novel "All Quiet On The Western Front"- first published in German as Im Westen nichts Neues in January 1929 - German Author Erich Maria Remarque purposefully destroys the nationalistic ideas readers at the time would have had about the war. He claims in his epigraph - "This book is intended neither as an accusation nor as a confession, but simply as an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed …

…ending - the death of Paul Bäumer; narrator and protagonist of the novel - Remarque presents his readers with a shocking "account of a generation that was destroyed by war" which annihilates any romantic ideals of war the reader may have had. He achieves this using graphic description of trench warfare which evokes barbaric images within the mind. He also convincingly explores the effects of war on the young soldier's minds.