''All Quiet on the Western Front'' in a CP Victorious World

MrHola

Banned
Would the novel by Erich-Maria Remarque have as much of an impact if the CP won the Great War? Let's say the Spring Offensive is succesfull.
 
Probably not, though it may likely be more influential in Germany. If Germany wins the war, they still do not have the clout to support a global cultural hegemony as the Anglophone world did IOTL.

Winning the war and thereby loosening up somewhat, Remarque is more accepted in Germany and doesn't have to flee. Therefore the international community doesn't welcome him with the same gusto (if it doesn't piss off Germany at the same time, who cares how good the book is?) Sure, people will read it, but since it doesn't give one a feeling of superiority to read it, the meta-narrative of the work is significantly duller.

Without the Anglophone nations flinging it around their middle schools, it just doesn't get as far.
 
Sorry, your chronology is wrong.

He published the book in 1929 while still living in Germany, Hollywood turned it into a movie in 1930 and he emigrated in 1932.

Turning a German book by a German author who lives in Germany into a major motion picture without overt anti-German elements seems to be a strange way to piss off the Germans.
 

stalkere

Banned
It's a powerful story

It's a story about a soldier in an ugly hell. Desn't matter if he won or lost or whatever. Just about any soldier anywhere in the world resonates to the story.
Of course, Remarque might not have written it, but somebody would have, win or lose.

It is somewhere alone the lines of "Red Badge of Courage"
and the observation that "War is hell."
 
There is a good enough chance that it would be a success regardless. Look at the view the victoreious allies took of the Great War. There really is no reason that the CP would look at this differently, after the horrors they went through. A victory would make a disillusioned view more rather than less likely IMO, with less being psychologically invested in the heroic quality of the fight. Remarque could well be the darling of the German left, a much more powerful and self-assured political force in a country less bitterly divided and far more happy with the democratic elements in its government structure.
 
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