General Friedrich invents nothing new at Netflix in the west: 5 differences to the book template

With great effort, Netflix implemented the war film Nothing New in the West. The remake of the novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque takes you to the Trenches of the First World War and tells of German soldiers fighting on the western front. The adaptation takes some creative liberties.

In this article we break them down five biggest differences between the Netflix version of Nothing New in the West and Remarque’s original text. Compared to the two previous film adaptations, Nothing New on the West from 1930 and Nothing New on the West from 1979, director Edward Berger changes many details.

This includes:

Difference #1: Nothing New in the West chooses a different entry into the story

The remake of Nothing New in the West throws us into the middle of the war right from the start. We follow a German soldier who dies in battle. His body is buried in a mass grave. His uniform and his boots are sent back home and handed over to a new soldier: Paul Bäumer.

You can watch the trailer for Nothing New in the West here:

Berger uses somber images to illustrate the cycle of war and anticipates an important motif in the story: the insignificance of the individual. Whether the protagonist Paul Bäumer and his comrades survive or not is of no interest to anyone, as is the indifference of the title of the novel.

Berger chooses a very cinematic opening for Nothing New in the West. He works with images, music and the resulting atmosphere. The biggest difference: he looks at the warmongering from the outside. With Remarque, we get all events from the start from der Perspective by Paul Bäumer told.

Difference #2: Nothing new in the West skips basic soldier training

The first words that Paul Bäumer addresses to us readers come directly from the front. Nevertheless, the template comes up with many formative passages that give us a picture of the situation at home. This includes encounters with injured soldiers and the strict basic training under Sergeant Himmelstoss.

The film only takes up the teacher figure Kantorek, who proves to be an extension of the German propaganda machine and inspires Paul Bäumer and his friends for the war. Of heroism, pride and honor is the speech before the reality on the western front paints a completely different picture of the war.

Difference No. 3: Nothing new in the West cancels Paul Bäumer’s leave from the front

The film doesn’t just do without basic training. Paul Bäumer also has to say goodbye to his later leave from the front in the new version of Nothing new in the West. Albrecht Schuch, one of Paul’s comrades Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky plays, Moviepilot revealed in an interview that he used the book sequence as an inspiration for his character.

Nothing new in the West is constantly about the question of how to deal with home, the emotions and the connections to your loved ones when you are on the front lines. Kat always says don’t think about it because it softens you up. If you don’t stay tough, you’ll get easier to target. This is contrasted with the moment in the novel where Paul comes home and is sitting on the stairs and I think only his sister is there. She calls for her mother: ‘Mama, Mama, Paul is here!’ Remarque describes how the voice gets to Paul’s bones. I was completely blown away. I could understand that immediately. If you are in such a dissolved situation yourself, then it doesn’t even need a whole word. A warm tone from someone close to whom you can open up is enough to trigger a complete rupture of the dam. I adopted this observation as the core emotional experience for Kat in the film. Difference No. 4: Nothing new in the West invents the storyline around Matthias Erzberger

Although the story is based on real events, Remarque uses only fictional characters for his narrative. The new film breaks this approach and goes into more detail about the historical circumstances. This becomes most clear through the integration of the German politician Matthias Erzbergerplayed by Daniel Brühl.

Erzberger gets his own plot line, which addresses the peace negotiations with France. This also changes the time period in which the story takes place. While Paul Bäumer dies in October 1918 in the book, director Edward Berger shifts the action to the End of the war in November 1918.

This creates a new curve of suspense: where Remarque is hopeless, the film suggests that Paul Bäumer could see the end of the war. At the same time, the futility of his eventual death emphasizes: He dies on the battlefield because the peace treaty has been signed but has not yet come into force.

In the interview, Berger explains the motives for the additional storyline about Matthias Erzberger in Nothing new in the West as follows.

Our perspective is now completely different, because there was another world war that overshadowed everything before it. This is just the beginning of a much worse horror. On the one hand, I wanted to keep the essence of Remarque’s novel: young people sent to war by demagogues lose their innocence and slowly die an internal, if not an actual, death. On the other hand, I wanted to add an element that foreshadows the future. Daniel Brühl says one sentence in the film: ‘Be fair to your opponent, otherwise he will hate this peace.’ This is exactly what the nationalist Germans later accused Erzberger of doing. If politicians hadn’t betrayed the military and given up the war, the military would have won – that was the myth, the lie […].Difference No. 5: General Friedrich does not invent anything new in the West

While Brühl’s Erzberger has a concrete role model in the history books, it is the one embodied by Devid Striesow General Frederick about a character that was invented for the film and does not come from the template. It forms a further contrast to the events of Nothing New in the West.

While the soldiers are starving and dying on the battlefield, General Friedrich is portrayed as a wasteful and irresponsible military man who loses all connection to reality and warfare transfigured. It is he who keeps the soldiers fighting until the last second, even though there is nothing left to win.

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How did you like the new version of Nothing New on the West?