Word: verdun
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Eight years ago U. S. readers were mostly unaware that the late great German Army had been made up of human beings. To the few that read it, a little book called Way of Sacrifice, by a Prussian officer who had fought before Verdun, came with the shock of revelation. Few months later a much wider U. S. audience was discovering The Case of Sergeant Grischa. Though it never became such an enormous seller as All Quiet on the Western Front, it soon ranked as a modern classic, has sold nearly 250,000 copies in English translation alone. Those...
Even without that endorsement, there was no danger that Education Before Verdun would lack readers, but whether it. too, would take its place among modern classics was more dubious. The third of Author Zweig's tetralogy-in-progress (Young Woman of 1914, Education Before Verdun, The Case of Sergeant Grischa, The Crowning of a King-the last yet to appear), but the second in his time scheme, Education Before Verdun seeks to repeat Sergeant Grischa's case in terms of the Western Front. Perhaps because its inhumanly terrible story is not so concentrated, the sympathy it arouses...
Theme of Education Before Verdun is stated on p. 323: "In the middle of a war, when civilization had long since collapsed . . , mankind, tenacious and defiant in the face of gross injustice, fought desperately against outrages that would indeed have cried aloud to heaven in peace, but might now rank as trifling irregularities." As in so many contemporary German novels, Injustice is the theme. The story opens with a minor but significant example. Bertin, who in peacetime had been a well-known German novelist, is now simply a near-sighted private in the Army Service Corps, gets into serious...
Cowardly Captain Niggl, ripped from his comfortable post behind the lines and plumped down in the most awful spot on the Verdun front, soon understands the reason behind the company's transfer; when he realizes how ruthless Lieutenant Kroysing is, he is terrified. Just as he is about ready to sign the damning confession, the French attack. After a terrific bombardment the order is given to evacuate Douaumont, and in the chaos of the battle Captain Niggl gets back to safety. Lieutenant Kroysing is reported missing. Meantime Berlin, whose company is in charge of an ammunition dump...
Background rather than theme, incidents rather than story, are the memorable notes in Education Before Verdun. As in Sergeant Grischa, the War is not the subject but the setting-with the difference that here the setting overlooms the human figures struggling in brief silhouet before its curtain. Fortress-girt Verdun, innermost circle of the Western Front's hell; where in 1916 the French and Germans each lost 350,000 men; where, between February and July, 23 million shells punctuated the deadlocked argument; Douaumont, captured and recaptured but each time by an accident, the death trap where an explosion wiped...