All Quiet on the Western Front characters

Paul Bäumer

This is his book, his own story, and his life journey. As we see he's the protagonist and the narrator. Paul isn't a famous war hero; he's not a high-ranking, superstar officer. Instead, he's a regular person. He likes to drink beer and think about girls—he's been to...

Albert Kropp

Albert Kropp is the resident philosopher of Paul's company. This guy is a thinker, and he asks some of the biggest questions in this novel. He's also the first to notice the unjust hierarchy: at Kemmerich's hospital intervention, he points out how the nurses and attendants quickly...

Stanislaus Katczinsky

Kat is the leader of the pack in almost every way. He's forty, mature, strong, and handsome and has a distinctive sixth sense in identifying trouble, which the other men admire greatly. In brief, he is that kind of man you want to be sent to war with and Paul knows how lucky he is that Kat has...

Tjaden

When we first meet him, he's in ecstasy over the excess food rations made available by the death of so many soldiers. This scene underlines a couple of key facets of Tjaden's character: he's a pragmatist and a hedonist, someone whose huge appetites allow him to get through the...

Kantorek

In a novel about war, you'd expect to see the evil which takes many forms. An enemy soldier, a betrayer, bomb, even death itself, or a rat inside the group of friends. But you can’t think of the one person, profession, that could take a form of evil – a schoolteacher. And Kantorek...

Corporal Himmelstoss

Himmelstoss doesn't get a lot of time, but he's memorable and thematically important. What’s the reason? He’s total crazy guy. Himmelstoss was a postman in his early ages. His job wasn't especially well-paying, prestigious, or sexual for women to get about it. All this gave...

Paul's mother

Instead of seeing her son as a glorious soldier, she still sees him as a boy. That is evident by her concerns. Rather than worry about him being shot, she worries that he doesn’t eat enough or that he should be on his guard against the women out there. The real problem out in the trenches is...