His landmark novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War I, was an international bestseller which created a new literary genre of veterans writing about conflict.

Remarque's anti-war themes led to his condemnation by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as "unpatriotic".

[5] The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he published All Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and in order to disassociate himself from his earlier novel The Dream Room (Die Traumbude).

[8] This is contrary to the falsehood – perpetuated by Nazi propaganda – that his real last name was Kramer ("Remark" spelled backwards) and that he was Jewish.

On 26 June 1917 he was posted to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company, Engineer Platoon Bethe, and fought in the trenches between Torhout and Houthulst.

His first paid writing job was as a technical writer for the Continental Rubber Company, a German tire manufacturer.

[5] When he published All Quiet on the Western Front, he had his surname reverted to an earlier spelling – from Remark to Remarque – to disassociate himself from his novel Die Traumbude.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) (1929), his career-defining work, was also written in 1927.

It inspired a new genre of veterans writing about conflict, and the commercial publication of a wide variety of war memoirs.

In 1931, after finishing The Road Back (Der Weg zurück), he bought a villa (Casa Monte Tabor) in Ronco, Switzerland with the substantial financial wealth that his published works had brought him.

[citation needed] On 10 May 1933, at the initiative of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Remarque's writing was publicly declared as "unpatriotic" and was banned in Germany.

Germany was rapidly descending into a totalitarian society, leading to mass arrests of elements of the population of which the new governing order disapproved.

Just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, they left Porto Ronco, Switzerland, for the United States.

His fourth novel, Flotsam (in German titled Liebe deinen Nächsten, or Love Thy Neighbour), first appeared in a serial version in English translation in Collier's magazine in 1939.

His next work, the novel Arch of Triumph, was first published in 1945 in English, and the next year in German as Arc de Triomphe.

After a trial at the notorious Volksgerichtshof (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court"), she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for stating that she considered the war lost.

There was a gap of seven years – a long silence for Remarque – between Arch of Triumph and his next work, Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben), which appeared both in German and in English in 1952.

In 1956, Remarque wrote a drama Full Circle (Die letzte Station) for the stage, which played in both Germany and on Broadway.

Heaven Has No Favorites was serialised (as Borrowed Life) in 1959 before appearing as a book in 1961 and was made into the 1977 film Bobby Deerfield.

[25] The affair with Dietrich began in September 1937, when they met on the Lido while in Venice for the film festival, and continued until at least 1940, maintained mostly by way of letters, telegrams and telephone calls.

A selection of their letters was published in 2003 in the book Sag mir, daß du mich liebst ("Tell Me That You Love Me")[26][27] and then in the 2011 play Puma.