All Quiet on the Western Front is the highly-anticipated anti-war epic streaming on Netflix that you do not want to miss.
German director Edward Berger has adapted the famous 1929 novel of the same name by German solider and journalist Erich Maria Remarque, bringing to the screen the harrowing experiences of the German army fighting on the frontlines in World War I.
Berger is the third director to adapt Remarque's novel and the first German director to do so. Moldovan-American director Lewis Milestone was behind the first adaption in 1930 and American director Delbert Mann was behind the 1979 adaption.
However, in Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix, German politician Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl) plays a key role throughout the movie, a storyline missing from the original 1929 novel and the previous two adaptions.
As 17-year-old German solider Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) and his comrades fight against the French on the Western Front, with catastrophic losses on both sides, behind trench lines, some powerful men were trying to put an end to the war.
One of those men was Matthias Erzberger, a German writer and politician. In 1917, he became the authorized representative of the Reich government and signed the armistice between Germany and the Allied Powers, bringing an end to World War I on November 11, 1918.
Berger told Newsweek he felt it was "important" to include the Erzberger storyline from the very beginning of the movie to "foreshadow what was going to come next," referring to the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939.
He shared: "First of all, the film is very much about contrasts to loud, quiet, peace, destruction, nature, luxury, mud, so [Erzberger] put a contrast to those endless battle scenes but more importantly, in terms of story, or in terms of what it means is that Remarque wrote this book in the 1920s, 100 years ago, and he didn't have the perspective of the Second World War yet.
"He wrote it under the impression of the First and this was very present because it literally just happened, and he was in it and people remembered it and it was like current affairs and now we've forgotten a lot about it."
In All Quiet on the Western Front, audiences watch as Erzberger fights to strike a peace deal with the Allied powers and is met with resistance. Chief Allied negotiator, Frenchman Marshal Ferdinand Foch, was unwilling to make any concessions to Germany.
Ultimately, on November 11, 1918, the armistice was signed.
Berger continued: "This moment in the train is a very important event in German history in terms of the Second World War because that character, Erzberger, he was basically picked on or sort of picked as a patsy by the military to sign this armistice because they didn't want to admit that they were going to lose this. They basically, a week later, they started saying, 'well, we would have won, politics betrayed us' to save face.
"Four years later, Matthias Erzberger, Daniel Brühl's character, was actually assassinated by nationalists. We included this storyline, to not really tell that story, but to hint at what was going to come next and that this was just the beginning of it and that's a perspective that we now have, 70 years after or 80 years after World War II, but that Remarque didn't have so I felt I had some license to include the outlook on the future, on the history."
Who Was Matthias Erzberger?
Matthias Erzberger was a German writer and politician of the Centre Party.
Before the outbreak of war in 1914, Erzberger held leading positions in colonial and financial policy and supported the military build-up of the German army and navy in 1912 and 1913.
By September 1914, he served as secretary to the Reichstag's (German government) Military Affairs Committee and the "right-hand man" of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg.
However, by early 1917, Erzberger had become disillusioned with the war and spoke out against it, meeting with a Russian envoy in Stockholm to discuss peace terms.
On July 6, 1917, in a speech in the Reichstag, he called on the government to explore a negotiated end to the war with the Allied Powers.
On November 6, 1918, Erzberger was sent to negotiate peace with the Allies in the Forest of Compiègne, France. After 72 hours of deliberation and fighting continuing on the Western Front, on November 10, Paul von Hindenburg, leader of the Imperial German Army, instructed Erzberger to sign, with or without concessions.
Then finally, on November 11, 1918, Erzberger signed the armistice, ending World War I.
In 1919, Erzberger served as Reich's minister of finance and as the vice-chancellor of Germany. He supported the Treaty of Versailles, where Germany and its allies were to accept full responsibility for the war and accept tough territorial, military and financial concessions.
As a result of his support for peace and the Treaty of Versailles, Erzberger was viewed as a traitor by those on the right.
On August 26, 1921, Erzberger was assassinated in Bad Griesbach, a spa in the Black Forest whilst out for a walk.
He was killed by Heinrich Tillessen and Heinrich Schulz, members of the ultra-nationalist death squad Organisation Consul. His killing was ordered by Manfred von Killinger, a German naval officer, and Nazi politician.
All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming on Netflix now.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Molli Mitchell is a Senior SEO TV and Film Newsweek Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on ... Read more
