I used to see him in El Morocco, the most famous nightclub of its era during the late Fifties and early Sixties. He was a very handsome man, beautifully tailored and with impeccable old-fashioned manners, and a heavy drinker. Wine, champagne and cognac were his drinks, and vodka later in the night. Although invited to sit at the owner’s table, where only unaccompanied men were permitted, he was never without female company, and what beauties they were. I had made the cut early on, but was never lucky enough to be at that particular table when he was there, and I was too shy back then to go up to him and introduce myself.
He was the author of Im Westen nichts Neues, known to the rest of the world as All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque was a prolific novelist, a very rich man who collected Impressionists and good art as obsessively as he collected women, a man snubbed by anti-Nazi writers such as Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann, but one whose sister was beheaded by the Nazis because of her loyalty to him. Unlike the snubbers, Remarque had spent three years close to the front, had been wounded three times, and had heroically carried a comrade who was severely wounded to safety, only to discover his buddy was dead on arrival. His fictional hero, Paul Baumer, does the same thing in All Quiet just before his own death.
I would bet my bottom dollar that George W. Bush, and certainly the war criminal and liar Tony Blair, and that mini-buffoon Napoleon-wannabe François Hollande, haven’t read many war books written by those who saw combat up close. Maybe Obama has and that’s why he’s holding back, but I doubt it very much.
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