Nationalism can be defined as having a sense of belonging and loyalty to ones country. Nationalism is a powerful force that has been the driving cause of countless revolutions and war. It was also one of the underlying causes of WW1. In Germany at the time, war was glorified to where it seemed you were not a "true German- if you did not enlist. Even in schools the teachers were teaching kids the glory of war all the while leaving out the true horror of life at the front. The movie All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of a young German named Paul Baumer. In the beginning of the movie Paul is an naive student who has been taught all his life that war is the only way to achieve honor for himself and his family. Over the course of the movie Paul changes from a nave, idealistic nationalist to a pragmatic, disillusioned humanist through three main events in the plot line: Franz's death, the death of a Frenchman, and Kat's death.
Franz Kemmerick was a forester out of the same class as Paul. Franz gets shot in the beginning of the movie and has his leg amputated at a hospital. When the boys go and visit him they find him in a sad state. Later on, when Paul alone goes to visit, Franz dies. As we find out later in the movie, Franz looked up to Paul like an older brother, and when the two were leaving on the train to go to war, Franz's mother asked Paul to watch over Franz and make sure he doesn't get hurt. When Paul returns home after he is injured, he is forced to confront Franz's mother and tell her the sad news of her son's demise.
During one of the German attacks back at the front, Paul gets separated from his group and is left stranded behind enemy lines. When a French soldier jumps into the trench he is hiding in Paul instinctively stabs him in the stomach with his bayonet. As the man is dying Paul begins to think how he and the French soldier would have gotten along had they met somewhere other than the battlefield.
