To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

The recent suppression is Germany of the film version of Erich Remarque's book "All Quiet on the Western Front" has caused much comment in the press both here and abroad. A few of the American editorials have been reprinted over here and for the most part they show such a flagrant misunderstanding of the mental attitude of those here who banned the Hollywood production that I feel that even at this last date a few words in explanation from one who is on the spot would not be amiss.

Those of you who saw the film in America (I personally saw it eight times) will find it difficult to see in it anything that might be called definitely "Anti-German". Most of us I believe felt it rather to be a step in the other direction. For us it seemed more "Anti-War" than anything else. Perhaps also the obvious Americanism of the cast and the international handling of the plot made us forget that the story dealt with German soldiers, in German uniforms, singing occasionally German songs, with what passed as a German setting. For us then it was just "The Horrors of War" without any conscious accent on the nationality of the participators.

This however could not be and was not the German point of view. The film they saw as an already censored version of the one shown in America. So before they even saw it they knew that there were those that had seen fit to change the American version in order to make it more palatable to its new, but really "home" audience. Added to that it must be remembered that one can not say that the original book "Im Westen nichts Neues" had met with the whole-hearted approval of the generation for which it spoke. Still they tolerated it as sincere personal anecdote. In the book it was Erich Remarque who experienced this life and not the German soldier. But with the film the situation was different. Here an actor lived out the part symbolized by the "I" in the book. Thus in the film it was much more the German soldier than the war as related by any participator. With this in mind, then, it is not hard to understand the annoyance of anybody who experienced the War from the German side, at seeing a representation of a perhaps distortedly realistic and gruesome version of the war, stripped of any spark of heroism or glamor, pass as the version typical to all German soldiers. With the film they felt Remarque ceased to be the author of the plot and instead it was a rather caricatured Germany that held the responsibility. With that feeling guiding their thoughts, it is easily conceivable that the brutalities, the panics and fears of the characters as well as the war time pillaging etc. seemed to them an attack at their, and their country's, honor: while to us it all seemed simply part of the necessarily unpleasant attributes of War. It is only reasonable that with these feelings this could not authorize for Germany any film which showed only the horrors of war without the other side which they knew to be part of the true picture.

The charges, then, of the American papers that the real cause for this suppression was a return of the German pre-war Militarism, seem not only unfounded but unfortunate. The German of our generation is as a type a most sane individual in the midst of a set of circumstances that might well be cause for more than depression. Through most of the problems but little light can be seen as yet. Perhaps in his fight against the almost insurmountable he will not be begrudged his faith in himself and his country. With that faith is bound to come also a pride in what he considers the good in the past. So then, while hating War, he still clings with reverence to a few memories of the spirit, the courage, and the bravery that in his mind are the only things that can make those years thinkable. Yours sincerely,   Edward M. M. Warburg '30   Hamburg, December 27, 1930.