Reversal of power between Kantorek and Mittelstaedt

The reversal of power between Kantorek and Mittelstaedt is one of the most bitterly ironic episodes in the novel, dramatizing the complete collapse of the pre-war authority that had once sent a generation to its death. Kantorek, the stern little schoolmaster in a grey tailcoat who had lectured his class into volunteering for the war, is himself called up as a territorial and placed under the command of Mittelstaedt, a former student he had once failed. The scene transforms the classroom into a parade ground and the teacher into a figure of ridicule, making visible the hollow ideology that had cost Joseph Behm his life.

The Teacher as Recruit

Kantorek had been the embodiment of the authority that Paul Bäumer and his classmates had trusted in their youth. During drill-time he gave long lectures until the whole class went to the District Commandant and volunteered, speaking in a moving voice: "Won't you join up, Comrades?" He was one of the thousands of teachers who, as Paul reflects, "surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness" and under whose shepherding the first death shattered the belief that authority possessed greater insight or more humane wisdom. Now, two years later, Mittelstaedt encounters Kantorek in the barracks and immediately asserts the new hierarchy. When Kantorek stretches out his hand and bleats a greeting, Mittelstaedt responds: "Territorial Kantorek, business is business and schnapps is schnapps, you ought to know that well enough. Stand to attention when you speak to a superior officer." The former schoolmaster's face becomes "a cross between a dud and a pickled cucumber."

The Humiliation of the Former Authority

Mittelstaedt, having been put in charge of Kantorek's company, outfits him with a grotesque uniform: a faded blue tunic that must have belonged to a giant, black worn breeches reaching barely halfway down his calf, tough old boots much too big for him, and a terribly dirty, mean little pill-box cap. The whole rig-out is pitiful. Mittelstaedt stops in front of him and repeats the very phrase Kantorek had once used to chastise him: "Territorial Kantorek, do you call those buttons polished? You seem as though you can never learn. Inadequate, Kantorek, quite inadequate." The school porter Boettcher is held up as a model for Kantorek to learn from. Paul, watching, can hardly believe his eyes: "This is the object before whom we used to stand in anguish as he sat up there enthroned at his desk, spearing at us with his pencil for our mistakes in those irregular French verbs with which afterwards we made so little headway in France."

The Drill of Revenge

Mittelstaedt makes the territorials practise skirmishing and appoints Kantorek squad leader, subjecting him to the same exhausting drill that Himmelstoss had once used on the recruits. The squad leader must keep twenty paces in front of his squad; when the order "On the march, about turn" comes, he has to rush forty paces to regain his position, then repeat the sprint when the order comes again. Kantorek dashes backwards and forwards "like a fart on a curtain-pole." Then comes creeping exercise: on hands and knees, carrying his gun in regulation fashion, Kantorek shoves his absurd figure over the sand, breathing hard, while Mittelstaedt encourages him with quotations from Kantorek the schoolmaster: "Territorial Kantorek, we have the good fortune to live in a great age, we must brace ourselves and triumph over hardship." When Kantorek sweats and spits out a dirty piece of wood, Mittelstaedt stoops down and says reproachfully: "And in the trifles never lose sight of the great adventure, Territorial Kantorek!"

The Limits of Revenge

Kantorek and the porter Boettcher are detailed off together for bread fatigue, pushing a handcart through the whole length of the town, and people have begun to watch for them coming. When Paul asks whether Kantorek has reported Mittelstaedt, Mittelstaedt replies that the Company Commander laughed when he heard the story—he has no time for schoolmasters—and adds that he is "sweet with his daughter." The complaint came to nothing because Mittelstaedt could show that Kantorek had had hardly anything but light duty. When Paul asks whether Mittelstaedt could polish Kantorek up a bit, Mittelstaedt answers contemptuously: "He's too stupid, I couldn't be bothered." The episode ends not with a moral resolution but with the simple fact that the authority of the schoolmaster, which had once seemed absolute, has been broken by the very system he helped to glorify. The reversal is complete: the man who preached the war now suffers its most degrading rituals, and the student who was failed now holds the power.