Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas

“Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas” by the German artist Otto Dix in 1924 portrays Dix’s ghastly experience of trench warfare during World War I. In this painting, Dix depicts warfare in a strikingly unorthodox fashion. Rather than portraying war in its traditional glory and spiritual triumph, Dix focuses on the physical cruelty of war. The painting focuses entirely on the soldiers and their action, implying that their entire purpose of life was devoted to killing and staying alive. The gas masks render the soldiers hidden behind them inhuman, as if they were already dead. This displays the savagery of the battlefield – that although the soldiers were physically alive, they were simply dead men walking. The absence of color further emphasizes the hellish nature of war.

World War I heavily influenced Dix’s art. The devastating reality of trench warfare disillusioned the contemporary society from their glorification of war and belief in the continual progress of the human society. Indeed, the war led many to believe in a possible human apocalypse. This disillusionment directly contributed to the stylistic implications of war in Stormtroops Advancing Under gas. In the painting, Dix condemned war and portrayed it as a road to destruction.

This painting relates to the theme of “Dark Dreams: Painful Memories” because while it portrayed Dix’s experience as a machine gunner during the war, it actually represented the war from Dix’s memory, years after it ended. This scene may likely be from a nightmare; Dix himself described wars influence on him with the words, “for …at least ten years afterwards, I kept getting these [frightening] dreams…” (“War Art”). Indeed, for many soldiers, war does not end. Maurice Decaul, ex-marine who deployed in Iraq, describes the long lasting affects of war saying, "We carry these wars inside of us. They tag along in our lives as sea stories and memories, dreams and nightmares, living just below the surface, raging back at times, most times living in quiescence." Thus, one could interpret this painting as a reproduction of one of Dix’s nightmares or hallucinations filled with painful memories of his sufferings during World War I. Similar to The Scream, this painting also depicts a hallucination created by a mental disorder – while The Scream may be a portrayal of Munch’s phobia of open spaces, Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas may be an expression of Dix’s PTSD from the war.