"Only the unhappy man appreciates happiness. The happy man … displays it merely." These are words spoken in "Three Comrades," the novel by Erich Maria Remarque which would seem farthest from his latest because it is set in peace and relates young men's revels. Yet they are words that would make an accurate epigraph to "A Time to Love and a Time to Die," as well as to every other major work Remarque has written. As he returns, for the first time since "All Quiet on the Western Front," to the stench and terror of bomb shelter and infantry trench, it becomes apparent that he has never really left them. All his stories are moral, if not physical, war novels; all his heroes soldiers that dream of peace….

With "A Time to Love and a Time to Die,"… Remarque brings up to date a raw documentary of our century...