Undeterred, in 1931, Remarque published The Road Back, a study of postwar trauma. Similar in tone and theme to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, the novel delineates the slow recovery process, which finally reawakens young survivors to nature and healing. But war was to continue haunting Remarque. Because he was a sincere patriot, Remarque was unable to shut out Germany's attempts to kindle another world war. Immersed in antique Egyptian artifacts, Venetian mirrors, music, and priceless paintings by Cezanne, Daumier, Picasso, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Pissarro, Renoir, and van Gogh, Remarque tried to ignore the hatred of Hitler's propagandist, Josef Goebbels, who plotted to punish the author for antiwar sentiments. Goebbels cranked out a stream of lies and innuendo, linking Remarque with bohemians, Jews, and communists. He also charged him with removing money illegally from the country, concealing Jewish ancestry, championing internationalism and Marxism, and besmirching the memory of heroes killed at Ypres, in Flanders, and in France. In 1933, zealots burned Remarque in effigy in the Obernplatz, the ornate plaza facing Berlin's opera house. That same year, in the company of books by Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Maxim Gorki, Bertolt Brecht, and Albert Einstein, All Quiet on the Western Front was reduced to ashes in front of the Berlin Opera House. Ironically, Soviet Russia repeated the ban later in 1949.
Despite the reaction of the book burners, Three Comrades, a sequel to All Quiet extolling the virtues of battlefield friendships, was published in 1931. This pre-World War II novel showed a glimpse of Remarque's love for Jeanne Zambona and moved beyond male bonding to a sweet, but doomed, romantic interest. In January 1938, to spare Jeanne the loss of her Swiss visa and a forced return to Germany, Remarque married her a second time and negotiated an open relationship, giving each of them the freedom they desired. In June, Remarque was stripped of his German citizenship. Throughout his life, he remained sensitive to his nationality, proclaiming, "I had to leave Germany because my life was threatened. I was neither a Jew nor orientated towards the left politically. I was the same then as I am today: a militant pacifist." Later, he moved farther south, settling in Paris and Antibes with longtime companion Marlene Dietrich, cultivating a coterie of expatriates, and drinking heavily. Publicity about Remarque's lifestyle on the French Riviera boosted sales of his books. In response to growing anti-Nazi sentiment, the 1930 film of All Quiet was reissued in the United States in 1939. Padded with voice-overs, prologue, and epilogue, this version proved less emphatic than the original. Shown the world over, it did not appear in Remarque's homeland until 1952, when it was shown in Berlin.
