Infused by the patriotic rhetoric of their teacher Paul Bäumer and his classmates volunteered for the army in the First World War. Driven to complete exhaustion by the arbitrary and unfair pratices of their instructor Sergeant Himmelstoß they begin to doubt their romantic ideals of the life as a soldier. When they are sent to the front and witness the misery in the trenches the disillusionment is complete. A group of older soldiers among the experienced Katczinski ("Kat") takes care of the young men teaching the freshman how to survive the deadly chaos at the front. But with every attack the group becomes smaller. During a French attack, Paul hides in a bomb crater in no-man’s-land. When a French soldier falls into the crater he stabs him. While the Frenchman slowly dies Paul begs him for forgiveness, realizing that they are all brothers, driven to kill each other by the brutal mechanism of war. Back safe behind the lines Paul and two comrades meet three French girls. Starving the girls are willing to „exchange“ food for „love“. During one of the next attacks Paul is wounded and sent to a hospital. He receives a few weeks leave and returns home to visit his family. Disappointed he realizes that he is unable to convey his experience of the front to anyone at home. He is releaved as he returns to his comrades the front line. But most of them are dead. When Kat is hit by a splinter Paul looses his last and his best friend. On a quite day shortly before the armistice Paul tries to catch a butterfly sitting on the rim of his trench. When he reaches out he is hit by the bullet of a French sniper.