I first read this in the 10th grade and it hit me hard. I didn't know much about anything including WWI, I had never heard the details about the front, the gas, the conditions. So I wept my way through it and this story has never left me. I wanted to read it again as a senior citizen and see how I felt about it now. Also I read it for banned books week as this book was banned in Nazi Germany. That alone was reason to read it again.
I didn't find it anti-German at all, in fact a love of country and countrymen shone through. It is an anti-war book, it does detail the horrors of war at the Western Front in WWI but it acknowledges that the men fighting have no reason to hate each other except that they have been told that the other is their enemy. I found it more simplistic than I remembered it to be, it was a very quick book to read. It is powerful nonetheless. I hope it is still assigned to high school students and that they care.