Between 1928 and 1930 Germany and Great Britain especially, and France and America to a lesser extent, experienced a sudden and remarkable 'boom' in war books, plays, and films. For a decade after the end of the war, publishers, theatre directors, and film makers had treated war material gingerly, viewing it as a poor commercial proposition, on the assumption that the public wished, contrary to annual remembrance day exhortations, to forget the war…. What some felt to have been a 'conspiracy of silence' was shattered with a vengeance. (p. 345)

Interestingly, no one has … investigated the war boom. This article will do so, but from a particular vantage point; that of a novel which stood at the centre of the war boom, in popularity, in spirit, and as a source of controversy—Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues)….

While a number of war books...