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Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Penguin Classics (2004), Paperback, 320 pages
Description
Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, J nger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but -- more importantly -- as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, J nger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure. Published shortly after the war's end.
User reviews
LibraryThing member lmichet
This Howard Fertig edition, which is a 1929 translation of the 1920 German edition-- the first-- of Junger's most famous book, is radically different from the recent Penguin edition, which is a translation of his final edition, written some 50 years later. This version ends with an angry "Germany
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lives and Germany will never go under!" and coasts the entire way on a much angrier, much more-disbelieving attitude than the final edition. This book was written by a man in his early twenties who had suddenly found his chosen profession-- professional soldiering-- torn out form underneath him by inglorious defeat. The final edition is much more sensitive, much more regretfull-- it was written by a much older man. If you have any questions about the differences between this edition and the recent Penguin translation, please read the foreword to the Penguin. Its translator does an excellent job of explaining the differences. Not only are the translators entirely different people, but the content is vastly different-- there are enormous passages missing in each, and the whole has been rewritten in the final edition with an aim to entirely change the tone. Junger rewrote this book constantly throughout his life, and it is fair to say that his final version was materially different from the original. They express entirely different ideas about the war. Show Less
LibraryThing member lmichet
This book is the opposite of All Quiet on the Western Front. I do not say that lightly: this book is the reverse of that one, the mirror image, the answer to a call-- or, if publication dates are taken into consideration, the call for the answer. But in saying that I suggest that they influenced
The only book which I've recently read which seems to match this excess of blood was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Both in that book and in this, violence is brought out in detail time after time, an unending roster of deaths and mutilations, until reading becomes an exhausting effort. In both cases it is to make a point.
Storm of Steel is a coming-of-age story: it is the transformation of a civilian boy into a professional soldier and leader of men. Junger is insane, a kind of noble berserker, to modern eyes: he was a hero, however, regardless of perspective. The emotional climax of the book comes in the chapters where he discusses his mindless assault on retreating British positions. He barely remembers some of the action, so enveloped was he in a kind of bloodlust; other moments, however, he falls to his knees weeping at the common bravery of his bedraggled men.
This book proves that the professional soldier is a human being. It's an answer to anyone who might argue that war destroys humanity; Junger, though a consummate warrior driven by patriotism and a desire for glory, is not a relic of an outdated era and not a monster of an imaginary future. He is a modern soldier, a professional above all else, sickened at the sight of blood but yet able to bear it when his duty is required. I found it altogether more honest and realistic a portrayal than All Quiet on the Western Front. It isn't out to tell a tale or to change a mind. It is out to record, for history, an experience. It is a bald photograph to Remarque's stylized portrait. It's a diary of violence.
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one another. Storm of Steel was certainly popular enough to be known by anyone writing about World War One during the interwar years, but it is its own thing: it is culled from journals, concerned with facts and details. It is not a novel. It is a war account written by a master diarist. It is also one long and exhausting catalog of bloodshed.The only book which I've recently read which seems to match this excess of blood was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Both in that book and in this, violence is brought out in detail time after time, an unending roster of deaths and mutilations, until reading becomes an exhausting effort. In both cases it is to make a point.
Storm of Steel is a coming-of-age story: it is the transformation of a civilian boy into a professional soldier and leader of men. Junger is insane, a kind of noble berserker, to modern eyes: he was a hero, however, regardless of perspective. The emotional climax of the book comes in the chapters where he discusses his mindless assault on retreating British positions. He barely remembers some of the action, so enveloped was he in a kind of bloodlust; other moments, however, he falls to his knees weeping at the common bravery of his bedraggled men.
This book proves that the professional soldier is a human being. It's an answer to anyone who might argue that war destroys humanity; Junger, though a consummate warrior driven by patriotism and a desire for glory, is not a relic of an outdated era and not a monster of an imaginary future. He is a modern soldier, a professional above all else, sickened at the sight of blood but yet able to bear it when his duty is required. I found it altogether more honest and realistic a portrayal than All Quiet on the Western Front. It isn't out to tell a tale or to change a mind. It is out to record, for history, an experience. It is a bald photograph to Remarque's stylized portrait. It's a diary of violence.
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LibraryThing member CLR
An outstanding depiction of life in the trenches from the German point of view. Junger seems to have as his main theme the "espirit de corps" that his fighting men exhibited. The soldiers he describes are, for the most part, brave and loyal, but human none the less. Another theme is the brutality
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of war, which he describles in graphic detail. Despite the brutality of war, he does not indicate that he felt the war was in any way a waste a la Remarque. Although I did not see it as a glorification of war as some of the other reviews I browsed, it definitely is not an anti-war book. Show Less
LibraryThing member Widsith
An oddly jaunty memoir of the Western Front, characterised by what Jünger describes somewhere as his ‘strange mood of melancholy exultation’. I am surprised so many people have found his prose ‘clean’, ‘sparse’, ‘unemotional’ – I thought the opposite, that it was rather
The white ball of a shrapnel shell melted far off, suffusing the grey December sky. The breath of battle blew across to us, and we shuddered. Did we sense that almost all of us – some sooner, some later – were to be consumed by it, on days when the dark grumbling yonder would crash over our heads like an incessant thunder?
In the heat of battle, where Barbusse and Genevoix feel a nauseated horror, Jünger instead feels ‘an almost visionary excitement’ – even ‘a twinge of arousal’. Where Sassoon and Manning lament the loss or corruption of their entire generation, Jünger merely comments with apparent approbation that ‘over four years, the fire smelted an ever-purer, ever-bolder warriorhood’.
It's all very slightly off-putting; and the tone is quite hard to judge, despite the newness of this translation from Michael Hofmann. He (Hofmann) spends a lot of time in his introduction denigrating his predecessor Basil Creighton's version of 1929; this is not a classy move, particularly when I wouldn't call his own translation especially fluent (though I'm sure there are fewer direct errors). There are many odd word choices – like ‘grunt’ for soldier, which to my ears is very American and anyway wasn't used before the 1960s; and repeatedly using ‘splinter’ to describe a huge piece of shrapnel that can pierce a man's chest gives, I think, the wrong impression. Most of all, there is a lot of that awkward juxtaposition between high and low register that is the hallmark of ‘translationese’:
A lark ascends; its trilling gets on my wick.
Hofmann knows his subject, though, and his introductory essay has some interesting comments that contextualise Storm of Steel (what an appropriately George-RR-Martinesque title that is!). He makes the intriguing and, I think, convincing suggestion that Jünger's book has a ‘natural epic form’, as opposed to comparable accounts in English which are ‘lyrical or dramatic’. There are indeed many moments here that you might fairly call Homeric, not least in their tone of gung-ho excitement – and considering this helped me clarify what it was I disliked about the book.
Because isn't it the case that the epic form, with its tendency to revel in the ‘glory’ of war, is in some sense fundamentally dishonest – and, more to the point, isn't that precisely one of the lessons that the First World War taught us?
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over-literary in many places; not overwritten exactly, but with touches of a grand Romantic sensibility that I haven't found in English or French writers of the First World War:The white ball of a shrapnel shell melted far off, suffusing the grey December sky. The breath of battle blew across to us, and we shuddered. Did we sense that almost all of us – some sooner, some later – were to be consumed by it, on days when the dark grumbling yonder would crash over our heads like an incessant thunder?
In the heat of battle, where Barbusse and Genevoix feel a nauseated horror, Jünger instead feels ‘an almost visionary excitement’ – even ‘a twinge of arousal’. Where Sassoon and Manning lament the loss or corruption of their entire generation, Jünger merely comments with apparent approbation that ‘over four years, the fire smelted an ever-purer, ever-bolder warriorhood’.
It's all very slightly off-putting; and the tone is quite hard to judge, despite the newness of this translation from Michael Hofmann. He (Hofmann) spends a lot of time in his introduction denigrating his predecessor Basil Creighton's version of 1929; this is not a classy move, particularly when I wouldn't call his own translation especially fluent (though I'm sure there are fewer direct errors). There are many odd word choices – like ‘grunt’ for soldier, which to my ears is very American and anyway wasn't used before the 1960s; and repeatedly using ‘splinter’ to describe a huge piece of shrapnel that can pierce a man's chest gives, I think, the wrong impression. Most of all, there is a lot of that awkward juxtaposition between high and low register that is the hallmark of ‘translationese’:
A lark ascends; its trilling gets on my wick.
Hofmann knows his subject, though, and his introductory essay has some interesting comments that contextualise Storm of Steel (what an appropriately George-RR-Martinesque title that is!). He makes the intriguing and, I think, convincing suggestion that Jünger's book has a ‘natural epic form’, as opposed to comparable accounts in English which are ‘lyrical or dramatic’. There are indeed many moments here that you might fairly call Homeric, not least in their tone of gung-ho excitement – and considering this helped me clarify what it was I disliked about the book.
Because isn't it the case that the epic form, with its tendency to revel in the ‘glory’ of war, is in some sense fundamentally dishonest – and, more to the point, isn't that precisely one of the lessons that the First World War taught us?
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LibraryThing member featherby
Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel is an autobiographical reflection on his experience as a German infantry soldier in World War I. Written in 1920, when Junger was still just 25, the narrative is unadulterated by politics and anti-war sentiment that appears in other works written during the 1920s;
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instead, Junger's tale is simply the story of life as a solider on the Western Front. While I am a fan of All Quiet on the Western Front, one can't help but feel like that classic is but a watered-down version of Storm of Steel. Although at times a bit grusome--take this as a warning for the feint-of-heart--Storm of Steel is far superior in capturing the experiences of life in the trenches, dugouts, and craters. It includes discussions of the use of gas, the experience of living through artillery bombardments, the night-raids, medical care and life in the hospitals, and the duties and responsibilities of junior officers. Overall, it is a thoughtful and vivid portrait of the First World War on the ground. Show Less
LibraryThing member Sullywriter
Excellent memoir of the First World War by a German soldier vividly recounting in spare, detached prose the monotonies and horrors on the Western Front.
LibraryThing member Loptsson
One of the best books on WWI I have ever read. It truly spoils me when I try to read the rest of that era about the Great War.
LibraryThing member juliayoung
The most incredible thing about this war memoir is the humanity that comes across despite Junger's rather matter-of-fact delivery or the horrors of what he and his fellow soldiers went through. Highly recommended for a realistic and surprising portrayal of German troops in World War I.
LibraryThing member librarianbryan
Unbelievable. At the end though Ernst, why are you still shooting, why still shoot?
LibraryThing member William.Kirkland
One of the classic accounts of war in the trenches during WW I, by a German soldier. Not a novel so much as an edited journal with an eye to literary quality, and not so much anti-war as full war description, which will be all that is needed for many.
LibraryThing member jimmaclachlan
This was fantastic. Ernst Junger was in WWI on the German side. His deadpan, factual account of what the war was like for him is riveting & horrific. He describes what trench warfare was like, the victories, defeats & deaths. He also describes the boredom, the terror & the conditions. Often times
The version I read was Junger's 4th or 5th version of this book. According to the introduction, he wrote it within a decade after the war, then re-wrote it in various tones depending on his present point of view. The Nazi's held the second or third version in high esteem, although Junger apparently didn't want to be held up as an icon. This version could have been the 1964 version, but the translator wasn't positive that it wasn't even later than that.
There have been several translations of this & the one that did this book took another to task for an improper job, citing examples & even going so far as to say he didn't know German well, so be careful when choosing a translation, I guess. If I'd known, I would have researched it before reading. I suggest that anyone interested do so.
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horrible conditions are described more by the thin assets of the situation, such as getting a pair of good, woolen socks from a captured bunker or being lucky enough to only pick up some shrapnel.The version I read was Junger's 4th or 5th version of this book. According to the introduction, he wrote it within a decade after the war, then re-wrote it in various tones depending on his present point of view. The Nazi's held the second or third version in high esteem, although Junger apparently didn't want to be held up as an icon. This version could have been the 1964 version, but the translator wasn't positive that it wasn't even later than that.
There have been several translations of this & the one that did this book took another to task for an improper job, citing examples & even going so far as to say he didn't know German well, so be careful when choosing a translation, I guess. If I'd known, I would have researched it before reading. I suggest that anyone interested do so.
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LibraryThing member ecw0647
I think Junger is reflecting a lot of the duality or conflict that many soldiers in combat feel; an intense feeling of camaraderie and living on the edge that brings reality into sharper focus. Yet on page 260 (Penguin edition) he says: "...I felt I had got tired, and used to the aspect of war, but
Reading this book was a little strange. It had the feel of a diary, but a disconnected one. I didn't get a really good sense of who he was. Certainly he was a brave (read lucky and/or stupid) man who did what he was told. He speaks of his men's admiration for him, but I didn't get a sense of why they would do so. I had no idea that lieutenants rated servants, and in one instance he is upset because his servant put too much salt on his eggs and ruined them.
I know this book has been denounced as fascistic and supportive of Nazi ideology. Perhaps others are seeing something I don't. Rather for me it was someone who accepted his lot, did the best he could under difficult circumstances, but, all the while reporting the horror of the war and its senseless slaughter, seemed somehow immune to it. ...less "
Sorry for the confusion - I originally mistakenly gave this 3 stars then decided to drop it to 2.
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it was from this familiarity that I observed what was in front of me in a new and subdued light. Things were less dazzlingly distinct. And I felt that the purpose with which I had gone out to fight had been used up, and no longer held. The war posed new, deeper puzzles. It was a strange time altogether." He, I think, has us follow his glory in the war, then suddenly shifts to a more reflective look at what he has been through. But in the end, he falls back on the patriotism with which he has been indoctrinated and tries to fight on despite overwhelming odds and the end of the war. I'll have to dig up a biography. Reading this book was a little strange. It had the feel of a diary, but a disconnected one. I didn't get a really good sense of who he was. Certainly he was a brave (read lucky and/or stupid) man who did what he was told. He speaks of his men's admiration for him, but I didn't get a sense of why they would do so. I had no idea that lieutenants rated servants, and in one instance he is upset because his servant put too much salt on his eggs and ruined them.
I know this book has been denounced as fascistic and supportive of Nazi ideology. Perhaps others are seeing something I don't. Rather for me it was someone who accepted his lot, did the best he could under difficult circumstances, but, all the while reporting the horror of the war and its senseless slaughter, seemed somehow immune to it. ...less "
Sorry for the confusion - I originally mistakenly gave this 3 stars then decided to drop it to 2.
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LibraryThing member nigeyb
Ernst Jünger's account of his years fighting as a German soldier on the Western Front during World War One is one of the most graphic I have ever read in terms of descriptions of injuries and violence. That said, much of a soldier's life is routine and boring, and Jünger covers this aspect too.
I
Jünger's sense of detachment meant the narrative was less involving, despite the visceral nature of much of what Jünger describes, and as such it is a far less successful memoir than, say, "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves in which I felt I got to know and understand the person as well as the soldier. That said, anyone seeking to gain an insight into the experience of a front line soldier during World War One will do well to find a better account.
I
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was surprised by Jünger's matter-of-factness. Although the book is all written in the first person it all feels at one remove. Jünger is a consummate professional, accepting everything that comes his way. Even when learning that his brother lies injured nearby he acknowledges some distress but, having done what he can, returns to the fray with barely a pause.Jünger's sense of detachment meant the narrative was less involving, despite the visceral nature of much of what Jünger describes, and as such it is a far less successful memoir than, say, "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves in which I felt I got to know and understand the person as well as the soldier. That said, anyone seeking to gain an insight into the experience of a front line soldier during World War One will do well to find a better account.
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LibraryThing member christineplouvier
Not for the faint-hearted: graphic descriptions of war fatalities. Well-written/translated memoir relating Great War experiences in detail. Author's revelations of insight and of emotional trauma are relatively rare. Translator explains how he tried to maintain idiomatic fidelity. Good resource for
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those engaged in research. Show Less
LibraryThing member bryanspellman
A must read for any fan of history. Actually a must for any political leader right now! Reading this I actually want him to win and found myself routing against the British and French. Compelling!
LibraryThing member Teufle
One of the best books I have ever read about any subject. If you are interested in WW1, read this book. If you are interested in the life of a German Soldier, read this book. If you love history, or war, or stories of human stoicism, read this book. There is a reason it made the 1001 books to read
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before you die. Show Less
LibraryThing member musecure
As I'm much more familiar with British and Canadian memoirs of the First World War, I was excited to begin Jünger's "Storm of Steel" if only to get a sense of the "other side" of the conflict that was not Remarque's more famous "All Quiet on the Western Front". After first reading, I am struck by
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the tone of Jünger's work. There is jovial, high-spirited air to what seems at times to be an excited retelling of the author's war experience. It was somewhat jarring in comparison to more prevailing sense of misery and terror normally associated with First World War. This one is worth re-reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member Dreesie
A memoir about the 4 years (!!) Jünger spent fighting for Germany in WWI. He moved up to being an officer, was wounded 6 times (so spent some time in hospital), and spent much of that 4 years fighting in the trenches in a small area of northern France and Flanders.
I am not a huge fan of war books,
I am not a huge fan of war books,
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but a memoir is OK. This does get repetitive--weeks in trenches, 5 days out, week back in, fight, watch men die, run, throw bombs, 5 days out billeted in French homes or scrounging in abandoned homes. His frustration with the rear commanders is repeated, his unit is often shelled by rear units, and trenches are muddy wet places (ie, trench foot, though he doesn't mention it). Published in 1920, the last paragraph about "our people" ending with "Germany shall never go under" reads ominously. Show Less
LibraryThing member setnahkt
Not a recent book, but appropriate for Memorial Day. The author was an officer in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front in WWI, and the book is a fairly straightforward diary of his experiences.
I can’t imagine how anybody could fight in the trenches without going nuts. What’s it like to
It’s a little reassuring to find young men are pretty much the same in every culture and time; Junger and his mates would crawl into no-man’s-land, find dud shells, haul them back to a hundred yards or so in front of their position, then return to the trench and take rifle shots at the fuses until they blew up. You’d think they’d had enough explosions.
Goes well with All Quiet on the Western Front, Goodbye to All That, Eye Deep in Hell, and the poetry of Wilfred Owen.
I can’t imagine how anybody could fight in the trenches without going nuts. What’s it like to
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be up to your ankles in mud, with friends dying randomly around you, with the ground vibrating from shelling, waking up from a rare pleasant dream because your lungs have just filled with phosgene? Vietnam veterans complained of the disconnect of being in a war zone one day, spending eight hours on a plane, then finding yourself in suburban middle America where no one had the slightest idea of what you just went through. Junger describes much the same thing - in the trenches one day, a short march to the rear, a train to Hamburg, then walking out of the station to see young girls strolling by in white dresses, carrying tennis rackets. And finding himself ill on seeing a civilian truck driver split a finger trying to crank-start an engine, when he’d witnessed horrendous mutilations on the front without a second thought.It’s a little reassuring to find young men are pretty much the same in every culture and time; Junger and his mates would crawl into no-man’s-land, find dud shells, haul them back to a hundred yards or so in front of their position, then return to the trench and take rifle shots at the fuses until they blew up. You’d think they’d had enough explosions.
Goes well with All Quiet on the Western Front, Goodbye to All That, Eye Deep in Hell, and the poetry of Wilfred Owen.
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LibraryThing member vguy
Strange book, which I'd been meaning to read for some time and now finally found the audio version in German. Rather cool, detached, even emotionally flat, where I was expecting some kind of storm (as the English title suggests). Somewhat "one damn thing after another "where the things are deaths,
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mortal wounds, pointless attacks. Focus is tight on his own personal, indeed subjective experience; very little of the strategy or overall progress of the war. Elegant phrasing here and there decorates a clean style ( der Tanzplatz des Todes, the New Zealenders' counter attack is like looking into the mirror). An oddity: no mention of barbed wire; tackeed onto the audio is a recording of Jünger addressing some gathering in which he sounds a bit of a stuffed shirt: Stacheldraht gets its first mention. Another oddity: he seems to be a competent and leader, popular with his men and his superiors, gets wounded 14 times, decorated up to Eiserne Kreuz but doesn't get promoted, despite officeers dying all around him. Show Less
LibraryThing member ThomasPluck
A litany on the horror of war.
LibraryThing member SGTCat
I'd have given this five stars, but the translation left a lot to be desired. How many times do we need to be told that a traverse is the walled end of a trench?
The content itself is amazing though. It's a great memoir and a must read for anyone interested in military history or World War I.
The content itself is amazing though. It's a great memoir and a must read for anyone interested in military history or World War I.
LibraryThing member Coutre
Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel tells the story of the author’s experiences as a special forces soldier, then as an officer leading the special Shock Troops, in the German army during WWI (1914–1918). The book is famous for its detached point of view and for its extreme care with details. The
Junger begins as a naïve young recruit both scared and excited about the prospect of fighting for his country. He decides early to keep a daily diary, which he miraculously maintained and never lost throughout the war. It was miraculous due to the many times he was shot, injured in explosions, and endured numerous other trials when the diary might easily have been lost. The diary became the raw material for the present book.
An example of a typical entry for one day:
“Standing at dawn on the fire-step opposite our dugout next to the sentry when a rifle bullet ripped through his forage cap without harming a hair of his head. At the same time, two pioneers were wounded on the wires. One had a ricochet through both legs, the other a ball through his ear.
In the morning, the sentry on our left flank was shot through both cheekbones. The blood spurted out of him in thick gouts. And, to cap it all, when Lieutenant von Ewald, visiting our sector to take pictures of sap N barely fifty yards away, turned to climb down from the outlook, a bullet shattered the back of his skull and he died ln the spot. Large fragments of skull were left littering the sentry platform. Also, a man was hit in the shoulder, but not badly.”
Thus ends one day’s entry from the trenches. There are other nerve-wracking descriptions of daring acts on the front lines. For example, often a handful of men would go on 3 a.m. excursions crawling towards the enemy trenches to get a closer look. These excursions often ended in someone getting killed (on either side or both sides), and a lot people barely surviving.
There were hundreds of days spent under heavy bombardment, when it was impossible to hear anyone’s orders, or to give any. During one maneuver where Junger was leading fifty men towards an objective, after many waves of bombardments, Junger completed the objective with five men remaining. With so many such examples, it is a miracle the diary survived, as well as that the man survived to tell about it.
Some of the worst “nights of terror” involved the combinations of bombardments, hails of bullets flying all around his head, lost in the fog of a heavy chlorine gas attack. The gas masks allowed limited oxygen flow. In order to keep it on and survive the chlorine, he couldn’t move around much, because that would require breathing harder, more than the allotment of oxygen, and thus suffocate. Meanwhile, he and all the other men, were still expected to fight back, locate the enemy, and fire their weapons constantly.
The old saying “War is Hell” clearly applies to WWI as much or more so than any other, not just for the intensity of multiple types of deadly horrors overwhelming them simultaneously, but that it continued incessantly and relentlessly, happening to men who were held down in one place, barely budging forward or backwards, almost every day for four years.
Junger records many life-and-death encounters, analyzing himself as well as noting the behaviors of those around him. He makes observations about men’s character, such as “…brave puny men are always to be preferred to strong cowards, as was shown over and over….” He often notes minute facts about people, mannerisms and personality traits, and impressions of everyone around him.
Junger notes the camaraderie in many different ways and occasions. For example, “This same man, with whom I shared pieces of metal from the same bullet, came to visit me after the war; he worked in a cigarette factory, and, ever since his wound, had been sickly and a little eccentric.” He relates several anecdotes about tender moments amid the daily fury and firestorms.
The stark descriptions persisting with such consistent detached objectivity every day for four years reflect the remarkable strength of character of the author. The book, however, is much more than diary entries. In addition to being a rare record of WWI life, the author has created a literary masterpiece. Junger proved to be a true literary artist as he spent many years after the war transforming his diary into a compelling, novelesque epic story. Regarded as a major literary figure, and having written about forty books after the present work, Storm of Steel remains the one he is most famous for.
Junger lived to age 102. He won dozens of awards and honors, from the Iron Cross in 1916 to the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca French literary award in 1981 to an honorary doctorate from Complutense University of Madrid in 1995.
While recording events with cold detachment, amid the daily fighting across trenches, he emerges as a passionate student of life, psychology, behavior, and philosophy. He proves to be a compassionate admirer of the men on both sides of the fighting, and a peacemaker who spent his life healing wounds, and being welcomed and embraced by his erstwhile enemies throughout his life after the war.
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narrative is first person, though the tone is often mechanical and objective. The story is free of any judgments about war, neither glorifying nor condemning it, but merely describing it.Junger begins as a naïve young recruit both scared and excited about the prospect of fighting for his country. He decides early to keep a daily diary, which he miraculously maintained and never lost throughout the war. It was miraculous due to the many times he was shot, injured in explosions, and endured numerous other trials when the diary might easily have been lost. The diary became the raw material for the present book.
An example of a typical entry for one day:
“Standing at dawn on the fire-step opposite our dugout next to the sentry when a rifle bullet ripped through his forage cap without harming a hair of his head. At the same time, two pioneers were wounded on the wires. One had a ricochet through both legs, the other a ball through his ear.
In the morning, the sentry on our left flank was shot through both cheekbones. The blood spurted out of him in thick gouts. And, to cap it all, when Lieutenant von Ewald, visiting our sector to take pictures of sap N barely fifty yards away, turned to climb down from the outlook, a bullet shattered the back of his skull and he died ln the spot. Large fragments of skull were left littering the sentry platform. Also, a man was hit in the shoulder, but not badly.”
Thus ends one day’s entry from the trenches. There are other nerve-wracking descriptions of daring acts on the front lines. For example, often a handful of men would go on 3 a.m. excursions crawling towards the enemy trenches to get a closer look. These excursions often ended in someone getting killed (on either side or both sides), and a lot people barely surviving.
There were hundreds of days spent under heavy bombardment, when it was impossible to hear anyone’s orders, or to give any. During one maneuver where Junger was leading fifty men towards an objective, after many waves of bombardments, Junger completed the objective with five men remaining. With so many such examples, it is a miracle the diary survived, as well as that the man survived to tell about it.
Some of the worst “nights of terror” involved the combinations of bombardments, hails of bullets flying all around his head, lost in the fog of a heavy chlorine gas attack. The gas masks allowed limited oxygen flow. In order to keep it on and survive the chlorine, he couldn’t move around much, because that would require breathing harder, more than the allotment of oxygen, and thus suffocate. Meanwhile, he and all the other men, were still expected to fight back, locate the enemy, and fire their weapons constantly.
The old saying “War is Hell” clearly applies to WWI as much or more so than any other, not just for the intensity of multiple types of deadly horrors overwhelming them simultaneously, but that it continued incessantly and relentlessly, happening to men who were held down in one place, barely budging forward or backwards, almost every day for four years.
Junger records many life-and-death encounters, analyzing himself as well as noting the behaviors of those around him. He makes observations about men’s character, such as “…brave puny men are always to be preferred to strong cowards, as was shown over and over….” He often notes minute facts about people, mannerisms and personality traits, and impressions of everyone around him.
Junger notes the camaraderie in many different ways and occasions. For example, “This same man, with whom I shared pieces of metal from the same bullet, came to visit me after the war; he worked in a cigarette factory, and, ever since his wound, had been sickly and a little eccentric.” He relates several anecdotes about tender moments amid the daily fury and firestorms.
The stark descriptions persisting with such consistent detached objectivity every day for four years reflect the remarkable strength of character of the author. The book, however, is much more than diary entries. In addition to being a rare record of WWI life, the author has created a literary masterpiece. Junger proved to be a true literary artist as he spent many years after the war transforming his diary into a compelling, novelesque epic story. Regarded as a major literary figure, and having written about forty books after the present work, Storm of Steel remains the one he is most famous for.
Junger lived to age 102. He won dozens of awards and honors, from the Iron Cross in 1916 to the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca French literary award in 1981 to an honorary doctorate from Complutense University of Madrid in 1995.
While recording events with cold detachment, amid the daily fighting across trenches, he emerges as a passionate student of life, psychology, behavior, and philosophy. He proves to be a compassionate admirer of the men on both sides of the fighting, and a peacemaker who spent his life healing wounds, and being welcomed and embraced by his erstwhile enemies throughout his life after the war.
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LibraryThing member iffland
Most poetic title for the worst topic ever. Still somehow magic.
LibraryThing member MJWebb
Another holiday book. I found it a very interesting read which was well written with vivid descriptions and historical facts. Unfortunately I had just read 'Harry's War' and that kind of soared in comparison. It meant this book had to receive a three, though a four may have resulted in different
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circumstances. Shame there are no half points on here. Regardless, it makes one feel so very lucky to have been born in a generation which reaped the benefits of the sacrifices made by others. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original language
German
Original publication date
1920 (author's edition)
Physical description
320 p.; 7.7 inches
ISBN
0142437905 / 9780142437902
Local notes
In Stahlgewittern. aka In Storms of Steel, In Steel Weather