1914: 19-year-old Paul Bäumer and his classmates have their A-levels in the bag and, spurred on by their class teacher, enthusiastically sign up to serve in the First World War. Paul survives four years in the constant face of death - everything seems to have a happy ending, but fate has a different plan. Paul Bäumer falls in October 1918 - on a day that was so calm and quiet on the entire front that the army report was limited to the sentence "Nothing new in the west".
His novel named after this report made Erich Maria Remarque instantly famous in 1928: young men, exposed to a hell of drumfire, trenches and poison gas attacks, report on everyday life during the war. They describe the traumatic alternation between idle boredom and deadly combat, between patriotic hero myth and loneliness, between speechlessness at home and comradeship in the field. Without transition, horror stands alongside senselessness.
Especially today, the young soldiers' questions are more topical than they have been for a long time: Why am I being declared an enemy by someone I don't know, someone who doesn't know me? How can I find a place in society again after the war? What happens when social awareness of the importance of war gradually disappears? How fragile is our peace if the war simply takes place in a different place?