This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

In 1958 Douglas Sirk directed the film A Time to Love and a Time to Die in Germany based on Remarque's novel. Goddard died in 1990 and was interred next to her husband. In 1927 Remarque made a second literary start with the novel Station at the Horizon (Station am Horizont) which was serialised in the sports journal "Sport im Bild" for which Remarque was working.