Banned in Spain under Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship for its anti-military message. It wasn't released until 1986, 11 years after Franco's death.
The title is a quotation from Thomas Gray's 'Elegy written in a country churchyard': "The paths of glory lead but to the grave".
During filming Timothy Carey (Pvt. Maurice Ferol) was disruptive. He also faked his own kidnapping for personal publicity, causing Stanley Kubrick and producer James B. Harris to fire him. Because of this, they were unable to show the three condemned soldiers during the battle scene, and a double was used for the scene when the priest hears Ferol's confession.
Winston Churchill said that the film was a highly accurate depiction of trench warfare and the sometimes misguided workings of the military mind.
For box-office reasons, Stanley Kubrick intended to impose a happier ending. After several draft scripts he changed his mind and restored the novel's original ending. Producer James B. Harris then had to inform studio executive Max E. Youngstein and risk rejection of the change. Harris managed by simply having the entire final script delivered without a memo of the changes, on the assumption that nobody in the studio would actually read it. Apparently, he was right.