Five Talking Points on All Quiet On the Western Front

1. Senselessness of war
2. Rest of the country thinks their life is worse
3. Death and injury
4. "Luck"
5. Going back to a normal life

1. The senselessness of this war is seen in the slaughter of so many young men.  Men that are barely old enough to know anything of a happy life.  Men that aren't men at all but merely boys.  They don't know why they're fighting these other countries.  They have no quarrel with any of them and have barely even met anyone from these other countries.  They discover that it dying for your country is completely overrated.  Dying for the fatherland means nothing to them because they have nothing to gain for it.  Even if they live through and win the war, what do they personally gain from it? A lifetime of post traumatic stress syndrome? Not worth it.
2. When Paul goes back to visit his hometown, everyone there thinks that the hard times they are struggling are much worse than the war.  They have no idea that their lives are so many times better.  On the front they have constantly worry about if they are about to get shot, blown up, lose a leg, or go insane.  There is barely enough food to be fed to the troops and that is one of the misconceptions the townspeople have.  They don't understand that the troops have to portion out a loaf of bread that is barely enough to feed them let alone the rats that are trying to eat it as well.  The townspeople say that it's just the way of war.  Most of which have never been at war and have certainly never been in this traumatic of a war.
3. Throughout the book they discuss so frequently about death.  Around every corner there is death and injury.  There was so much death and injury in this war that there was no way to keep up with medical supplies or even doctors.  Noone was given a close look, an amputation was their first resort because it was the easiest.  There was so much of it that even after being treated and fixed up that because of the vast amounts, nobody had a good job done on them and often died afterwards.  Character after character died off until, literally, there was noone left.
4. Paul talks about playing cards in one bunker, going to the next for a bit and returning to the first bunker completely gone and then going back to the second bunker and finding that bunker burried from a near fatal shell as well.  The sheer luck of one person not dying in a battle was so immense.  There was no super soldier, or actively avoiding injury and death, it was pure and simple luck that kept soldiers alive.
5. After everything that had happened, after everything they had seen, there was no way any of them could go back and live out a happy life.  They were too young to have experienced love, or made a career for themselves, or even had a chance to think about such things.  What were they supposed to do.  After being in this kind of war, after seeing the things that they have seen, going back to a normal life would not be possible.  At the end of the war, this "lost generation" is exactly that, lost, never to find happiness again.  And how could they? How could they look into the eyes of another person and feel any kind of connection?  There is no possible way to describe the things that they have gone through and it is too much to even ask of.