In

spite of everyones hopes, the war did not end by Christmas

The Germans had some early successes (the

French amazingly wore bright blue uniforms at the start of the war) but the French army and the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) discovered that digging into the ground could effectively stop advances Before too long, both sides dug down and the sides settled into a stalemate that would last for 4 years

Kaiser: "My poor bird, what has happened to your tail feathers?" German Eagle: "Can you bear the truth, Sire?" Kaiser: "If it's not for publication." German Eagle: "It's like this, then. You told me the British lion was contemptible. Wellhe wasn't!" - From Punch, London.

 With

the industrial advances made over the previous century, complicated weapons like breech loading artillery and machine guns had become mass producible. As such, the firepower brought to the battlefields by the respective armies was absolutely staggering.

 The

combination of machine guns and digging trenches made it virtually impossible to wage a successful offensive as ground was easy to hold and extremely difficult to take. The machine gun likely caused the most casualties in the war and was the most decisive weapon in dictating how the sides would fight each other.

Published in the US in 1915

 Novel

written by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of the First World War
Published in 1928 as a serial in a newspaper,

published as a novel in 1929, made into a film in 1930, 1979

Questions to ask about your portion: 1. What is the mood conveyed in the text? 2. How does the protagonist feel? 3. What is happening in your text? 4. What does this segment tell you about the life of

the common soldier in WWI?