The movie then introduces us to the counterpart to the previous pomp: General Mireau walks through the trenches (filmed by Stanley Kubrick in those famous long tracking shots) cheering up disenchanted soldiers. Here, the real war takes place with soldiers living in the dirt, surrounded by death and misery.
Throughout the whole movie Kubrick juxtaposes images of violence with those of illusion and propaganda about patriotism.
Only the vigilant colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) stands in-between those two worlds. He is the one facing the order of taking the Ant Hill, but unlike the generals, Dax is not reckless and greedy, but has a sense of justice and humanity.

In his anti-war message Kubrick is not hitting against a particular character, he criticizes the whole system of war. One can see that when colonel Dax is trying to free the prisoners by telling Broulard about Mireau’s attempts on friendly fire, but Broulard has them executed anyway.
Instead, he confronts Mireau with these accusations at a dinner. For Broulard the execution was a done deal, he – as a part of the system – was just following a common pattern of punishment - namely execution. Mireau’s misbehavior is another case to be examined but has nothing to do with the punishment of the soldiers. Broulard seems to be acting just according to patterns and structures of a vast system. A system without any sign of humanity – and that’s what Kubrick seemingly couldn’t stand. So in Paths Of Glory he shows humanity clearly defeating over war. This is most obvious in the famous last scene, where his later wife Christiane Harlan plays a German singer, singing the song „The Faithful Hussar“.