Name: Storm of Steel
Rating: 4.205882352941177 (17 reviews)
ISBN: 9780141186917

Ernst Jünger

Storm of Steel

Provides a memoir of the First World War through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier who viewed the war as a personal struggle, testing himself by leading raiding parties and enduring as his comrades were killed.

Edwin Lang

Storm of Steel is based on Ernest Junger’s experience after joining, at 18 in 1914, the German Empire’s Hanoverian Guards of the 73rd Division and his four years at the Front in France fighting the British and French forces. He had joined as a bored young man, as had been many of his contemporaries, ‘yearning for danger; enraptured by war’, and seduced by German writers such as Karl May (died 1912). It is a tremendously moving story. The title - Storm of Steel - refers to the massive and concentrated use of artillery directed at unprotected soldiers stationed – trapped, almost drowning in mud - in trenches along the various fronts. In the campaigns Junger fought in about 600,000 men died, and although Junger never mentions that astronomical number, he refers again and again to comrades and friends who died quick or sometimes gruesome deaths. He himself remembers killing a young British soldier, hardly ‘more than a boy’ and reflects that the State relieves soldiers like him of responsibility but having committed that ultimately unnecessary killing in the heat of battle leaves him nonetheless with a remorse that he struggled with all his life. Junger himself lived to be over a hundred years old but had been wounded seven times while at the Front, coincidentally twice on each of three occasions, for six, and finally almost fatally when shot through the chest on an ill-fated offensive near the end of the war. He was a tremendous soldier, brave, intelligent, innovative, liked by his troops, appreciated by his superiors and constantly took risks to forward the German cause. He was faithful to Germany through to the end of his life, and joined the fight again when Hitler – whom he opposed - waged war but was assigned a desk job in France. His first major engagement was at Les Esparges, only 22 miles from Verdun and which was a precursor to the Battle of Verdun in 1916. The French began the offensive in the spring of 1915 but the German Empire counter-attacked and successfully kept the region and advantages of the ridge until they lost it in 1918. It was a scene noted for mine warfare with the French using a new type of bombardment called ‘splinters’ using airborne high explosives. Of the various arsenals he was threatened by, Junger seemed to have found the ‘trench mortar’ to be one of the worst: ‘violent, devious, (a thing that) emanated personal vitriol’. He called the overall bombardment ‘terror in the guise of the absurd’. He received his first two wounds of the war here. Somme, in 1916, was Junger’s second major engagement which he described as a ‘battle of materiel’ in which the Allies introduced tank warfare, coupled with extensive use of mortar attacks, which later Junger called ‘an orgy of destruction – death, destruction, sadness and waste - on the part of the British with them insouciantly destroying French towns such as Combles which was simply leveled by long-range artillery. 60,000 British soldiers died in the first day of the campaign with 10,000 on the German side. By the war’s end about one million soldiers perished in this one theatre alone. Between June 24th and July 1st 1916 about 1.7 million high-explosive shells rained down on the belligerents, sitting ducks all. In this orgy of destruction Junger received wounds three and four, shot through his legs by a sniper. He recalled that the campaign ‘had given him a vivid sense of how it felt to be an inexperienced soldier, dropped into the hurricane’ of this type of military engagement. Junger’s third major engagement was the Battle of Langemarck in August 1917 where the Allied objective was to pin down the German troops at the Vimy ridge who had been originally slated to provide relief for tired soldiers on the Flanders front. He received an Iron cross for his efforts here, but as he said later ‘for the general staff officers it was a plan; for us, an intensely experienced reality’. He later joined the troops at Flanders which had been under extremely heavy shelling, with heavy rains causing ‘corpses floating everywhere’. Junger’s participated in what he calls the ‘Great Battle’, with the last major offensive the Germans were able to undertake, beginning in late March 1918 near the Somme. Although Germany entered the battle very strongly, the British unleash a ‘tempest’, involving their usual ubiquitous artillery but joined with 1,000’s of machine guns. It tore open an ‘extreme abysm of terror’ and Junger admits he took it badly with heavy shells literally raining down on him and his comrades. He recalls being possessed ‘with a berserk rage, creating an overwhelming desire to kill, that gave wings to his stride’. He found though the enemy (the British) more ‘obdurate’ than expected. He recognized too that machines – from tanks to aeroplanes – were playing a bigger part in the war effort. Junger, as a senior Lieutenant and German officers like him were still on horses. Next Junger participated in the double battle of Cambrai, the beginning of the hundred days offensive by the Allied armies (from August 8th to November 11th 1918) – with his participation running Sep 27th to October 11th – which ended with Germany losing, ultimately capitulating and signing the Armistice on November 11th, 1918. It was here that Junger had considered himself an ‘experienced warrior’. It was also around this time though that he could sense that the German Empire might lose this war. He sensed that the British forces were getting stronger, and in battles and in face-to-face skirmishes Junger had met men from different areas and countries, giant Scotsmen, New Zealanders and Australians and India, men from South Africa and Canadians. Junger later described this ‘double battle’ as the ‘first attempt to break out of the deadly statis of trench fighting by new methods’. It was here that Junger was again wounded, twice in the head, for wounds five and six. Of the French towns at the heart of these back-and-forth attacks by the belligerents, these once affluent or peaceful ‘towns (were) now a wasteland of debris, decay and corpses for those who had once only recently lived lives in tranquility’. Estimates of <a> World War 1 casualties </a> suggest that there were 20 million deaths, of which half were of civilians, with an additional 21 million soldiers and civilians wounded. What I liked about Junger’s portrayal is that all the while at the Front, he takes care nonetheless to write well, precisely and passionately (and honestly). It is all a careful and faithful recounting as a narrator and protagonist in this terrible war that resulted in 40 million casualties. What was also fascinating, for me of British descent through my father, was to witness how casually Junger noted, almost in passing, the atrocities committed by the British, in, for example, their continued and extensive use of various forms of poisonous gases, their contentment in razing French villages and towns in the use of extraordinarily lethal blanket bombardment to obliterate any form of life - soldier, civilian, it seemed to matter little. Junger later recalled that these years of the first World War that he had diarized reflected an experience and set of values that to him were sacred. He lived to over a hundred, well and happy, and died something of a hero. Edwin

Laura

I'm not too into war accounts, but I found this WWI diary to be a fascinating and honest portrayal of warfare refreshingly free of politics. It was a bit slow at times, but the battle scenes were interesting and Junger himself lived a fascinating life. Recommended.

Bryan Alexander

This is an excellent and unusual World War I novel.* It's unusual in that most WWI fiction and memoires are anti-war, dark and furious at the appalling human waste.** Ernst Jünger, in contrast, had a grand time. 

Well, that's a bit flip. Storm of Steel is full of savagery, physical suffering, squalor, and an ultimate sense of frustration. But the narrator also exults in war. He delights in daredevil acts, charging the enemy, organizing his troops, and appreciating details of life in the rear. Jünger is repeatedly wounded (16 times for 20 punctures, he claims (314-5)), but keeps coming back for more. He learns a great deal, grows as a person, and ultimately looks ahead to a non-hideous future. What a light, Nietzschean spirit.

The plot is that of a war diary, following Jünger from the struggle's outbreak in 1914 through the failure of the Central Powers in late 1918. We don't get details of grand strategy or the big picture; instead, the text focuses on the immediate experience of life and death on the Western Front.

The novel excels at this detail. We watch troops deal with boredom, fighting off rats, coming up with nicknames for bad food. We see minute aspects of billets, gear, and personal details. There are few persistent characters, and none realized in any serious depth, but they create an impression of the armed forces around the narrator.

The sensual details and psychological aspects are quite clear.Weak natures are prone to the atavistic impulse to destroy; and it takes hold of the trench fighter in his desolate existence when any one appears above ground. I have felt it myself only too often. (219)
I was in full array: two sandbags in front of my chest, each with four stick bombs, the left-hand one having instantaneous, the right-hand with time fuses; in the right-hand pocket of my tunic I had an 08 revolver on a long cord, in my right trouser pocket a small Mauser pistol; in my left tunic pocket five egg bombs; in the left trouser pocket a phosphorescent compass and a policeman's whistle; in my belt spring hooks for pulling out the bomb pins, a dagger, and wire-cutters. There was a pocket-book in my breast pocket and my home address, and n the pocket of the back of my tunic a flat flask of cherry-brandy. (196-7)
I believe I have found a comparison that exactly conveys what I, in common with all the rest who went through the war, experienced in situations like this. It is as if one were tied tight to a post and threatened by a fellow swinging a sledge-hammer. Now the hammer is swung back for the blow, now it whirls forward, till, just missing your skull, it sends the splinters flying from the post once more. (81)

We can see certain famous historical details of the war through the narrator's eyes. Gas is frequently used and very frightening. Machine guns sweep fields. Air power is unremarkable, and not idolized, as we hear in some accounts. Artillery is the very worst, the god of war, utterly terrifying, and worse when experienced in the form of too-frequent friendly fire. Tanks rarely appear, and the one confrontation with some we see is pathetic:There was a cluster of shell-shot tanks quite close to the embankment, and I often went to look at them. They bore names that were sometimes humorous, sometimes defiant, and sometimes affectionate, and they were camouflaged with paint; but they were all in a pitiable plight. The little cabin of armored plate, now shot to pieces, with its maze of pipes, rods, and wires, must have been an extremely uncomfortable crib during an attack, when the monsters, hoping to baffle the aim of our guns, took a tortuous course over the battlefield like gigantic helpless cockchafers. I thought more than once of the men in these fiery furnaces. (286-7)
This reads like science fiction, when humans encounter artifacts of powerful aliens from another world or time. 

When not describing the combat zone Jünger reminds us of his excellent taste. He reads Tristram Shandy during leave, criticizes or celebrates taste in furniture, analyzes paintings, and reflects on the human condition. The war never degrades his sensibility.

Again and again Jünger celebrates the fighting prowess of his men. We don't get a sense of decay and social breakdown as we find in some French, Russian, and British accounts. No, Storm's German soldiers are infused with patriotism, well drilled, and fierce in battle right through the end.What is more sublime than to face death at the head of a hundred men? Such a one will never find obedience fail him, for courage runs through the ranks like wine. (27)
Prussian military traditions are singled out for praise. Again, this is so different from other WWI accounts, which emphasize military futility and decay.

Horror and gore are present throughout, as befits the subject.[O]ur gunner, the volunteer Motullo, was killed by a shot through the head. Though his brain fell over his face to his chin, his mind was still clear when we took him to the nearest dugout. (231)

Ultimately Storm of Steel lauds the generation of German fighters as having successfully passed through the ultimate test. The final chapter describes not the fall of the German empire in revolution, humiliation, and economic ruin, but points to new careers for veterans, who seem likely to triumph in whatever they do. This is an uplifting ending - again, how strange for a WWI novel!

I recommend this for anyone interested in the history, or in memoires/autobiographical fiction about experiences of enormous stress. Its non-tragic perspective is rare.

Again the carnival of carnage beckoned. (308)

*I'm reading the 1929 English language translation. I don't know how different subsequent versions are.

**with the exception of American Willa Cather's strange One of Ours (1923), where our hero finds purpose and satisfaction in the trenches. The only bad part about the war is that the Treaty of Versailles isn't as good as it could have been. Yes, an odd book.

Jeff Dlouhy

Ernst Junger

'As though walking through a deep dream, I saw steel helmets approaching through the craters. They seemed to sprout from the fire-harrowed soil like some iron harvest ...' Storm of Steel is one of the greatest works to emerge from the catastrophe of the First World War. A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism, it illuminates like no other book the horrors but also the fascination of total war, presenting the conflict through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. As an account of the terrors of the Western Front and of the sickening allure that made men keep fighting on for four long years, Storm of Steel has no equal.

Adriana Coppola

Joshua Line

Anas A

Floris Verloop

One of the great war memoirs, published here in a stunning Deluxe Edition for the centenary of World War I and the Battle of the Somme—and featuring a foreword by the New York Times bestselling author of Matterhorn A worldwide bestseller published shortly after the end of World War I, Storm of Steel is a memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism. It illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, as seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Ernst Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but also—more importantly—as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger keeps testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure. His account is ripe for rediscovery upon the centennial of the Battle of the Somme—a major set piece in Storm of Steel—and a bracing read for fans of Redeployment and American Sniper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Storm of Steel

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