ABSTRACT
For Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, the intervention of the United States in World War I had been an intensely moving experience. The enthusiasm of 1917 quickly turned to revulsion against a war of attrition that deeply impressed the young people who had been called upon to sacrifice in order to make the world “safe for democracy.” Not only had veterans been shocked by the realities of trench warfare, but by 1919, many Americans had also concluded that the world system that grew out of the war was neither democratic nor very safe. Influenced by the political struggle that ended in American failure to ratify the Versailles Treaty, the public became deeply suspicious of idealistic pronouncements and hostile to foreign ties. Determined to preserve independence in foreign policy, both policy makers and the person on the street rejected hollow praise of patriotic war as well as the internationalist ideas that many saw as the key cause of a mistaken American effort to redeem the old world with the blood of the new. This disillusionment was captured in 1930 by All Quiet on the Western Front, a sensitive screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s successful novel of the same name. Analysis of this film provides keen insight into American attitudes on foreign involvements in the interwar era.
