On December 5, 1930, just over 12 years after the end of World War I, German moviegoers flocked to Berlin’s Mozart Hall to see one of Hollywood’s latest films. But during the movie, a cadre of 150 Nazi Brownshirts, nearly all too young to have fought in World War I, were led into the theater by propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Spewing anti-Semitic invective at the screen, they repeatedly shouted “Judenfilm!” as they tossed stink bombs from the balcony, threw sneezing powder in the air, and released white mice into the theater. A somewhat shocking turn of events, considering the movie was the highly anticipated adaptation of countryman Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the blockbuster novel that had transfixed the nation months earlier.
First serialized in 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitunghe, the book was published on January 31, 1929, and instantly became a literary juggernaut. In Germany, the initial print run sold out on release day, and some 20,000 copies moved off the shelves in the first few weeks on its way to more than a million books sold by year’s end. Abroad, All Quiet on the Western Front was a big hit as well, selling 600,000 copies in both Britain and France, and 200,000 in America. The film rights were snatched up by Universal Pictures for a record $40,000 and the motion picture went into production immediately.
