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12/14/05
In the movie "All Quiet on the Western Front", civilians and infantry soldiers saw war as completely different things. The civilians saw war as glorious and simple. On the other hand, infantry soldiers saw war as distressing, horrid, and not far from hell. They had different views because one group is actually in the war while the other is watching form the sidelines. These two groups of people see war from two different perspectives.
Civilians and the infantry soldiers in this movie see from different viewpoints. When Baumer went home on his leave, he and his dad portrayed many differences on their views on warfare. His dad, a plain civilian, saw war nothing more than something to talk about. His father wanted him to wear his uniform so people will respect and praise him for doing his duty to the country because the civilians thought that if you are a soldier you deserved honor for you deeds. Paul Baumer, an infantry soldier, on the other hand wants nothing to do with war because he knows the realty of it and its effects on people participating in it so he wears a regular German outfit to forget about war as much as he can for the time being. Infantry soldiers, like Baumer, see war in a totally different way than the German civilians.
A casual person living in Germany would think of war differently from an actual soldier fighting at the front. In the movie, Baumer father, a civilian, showed how casual people think war is great. Opposing, Paul thinks war is horrible, dreadful, and nothing to brag about. The infantry soldiers saw war this way because they were actually in it. These two groups of people have different perspectives on war.