Storm of Steel: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Since its publication in 1920, Storm of Steel, written by Ernst Junger, has been surrounded by controversy. Many have misunderstood Junger and accused him of attempting to glorify war. I saw no evidence of the glorification of war in his book. Junger has obviously been desensitized to violence does not show much emotion to the atrocities of war that he witnesses. However, I did see evidence of compassion and a longing for the life that he had before the war.
I finished this book in less than two days. From the second I opened the book I fell in love with the words on the pages. I fell in love with this book because of Junger's indifference towards war. I could tell that this book was written by a true warrior, someone who had borne the weight of war. Infantrymen on the front lines of war are often desensitized towards the horrors they witness. What a person witnesses in war is often difficult to understand and describe in more detail then merely recalling the events. Junger does not try to glorify or condemn war, He merely tells his story of the war that he and the average soldier experienced throughout the war. The only way a person could possibly cope with daily life in an all out war would be to become indifferent towards it. How else could someone survive the constant artillery bombardments, gas attacks, mass infantry assaults and constant death.
Junger briefly names no more than a few soldiers that he goes to war with. As participant in a war in which over 37 million people were either killed or wounded, I am not surprised that he attempted to only have a few close bonds with his fellow soldiers. On two occasions throughout the war, Junger's Company was almost decimated. I believe that Junger avoided friendships or even knowing the names of the majority of the men he served with. He did this to protect him from constant grieving over friends that were killed in the battle.
After months on the front Junger and his men return to the rear for rest. Junger writes the following passage as he sits in a leather armchair next to a warm fire. "Those few days were used by all of us to enjoy the life that we'd had to fight so had to cling on to. We still couldn't quite grasp that for the time being we'd given death the slip, and we wanted to feel the possession of this new lease on life, by enjoying it in every way possible." (P.203 Junger) As someone who has returned from the blood, sweat and filth of war, this was a powerful passage to me. There are simple things in life that many people take for granted. To a war veteran, sitting in a warm room next to a fire could be one of the most beautiful moments of their life.
On Page 233, Junger describes a scene in which he encounters a wounded british officer on the battlefield. He is about to shoot the man when the Brit pulls out a picture of his family. "It was a plea from another world. Later, I thought it was a blind chance that I let him go and plunged onward. That one man of all often appeared in my dreams. I hope that man got to see his homeland again." Junger, who had endured 4 years of horrific trench warfare was still able to feel compassion towards fellow man. I believe that his desensitization towards the cruelty of war heightened his sense of compassion and empathy towards humanity. I can relate to Junger because of my time in Eastern Afghanistan as an Infantryman in the US Army. In the volatile Hindu Kush mountains, savage death and the chaotic beauty of war have coexisted for the last 30 years. Witnessing the horrors of war and the misogynist Pashtun culture heightened my compassion not only towards the women and children that had that way of life forced upon them but towards all that suffered the consequences of war.
Storm of Steel has often been compared to All Quiet on the Western Front, an antiwar book written by Erich Maria Remarque. There are many differences between these two books which make it difficult to compare and contrast them. The former being a memoir, written by an Infantryman who spent 4 years on the front and was simply telling his story. The latter being a fictional novel, written an Sapper who only spent about a month near the front. I would say that the Stormtrooper who was wounded 14 times on six different occasions is better qualified to tell the average man's story of World War I.
In Conclusion, many readers may be astonished by the fact that Junger is not disillusioned by the horrors of war. My hypothesis, is that Junger had suffered so much physical, mental and emotional pain that he was desensitized and used indifference as a defense mechanism to the block out the war. Due to Junger's combat experience, he wrote his memoir in a different manner than Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front. I don't believe that Junger was attempting to glorify war but merely tell his story of the war.

I don't know of a more neutral and first handed account of what total war really is. This book is not the most compelling work in as much as the author's ability to paint an emotional picture of the war. This man was a soldier and a line-dog, but he is not a fiction writer, nor even a eloquent story teller. This story is enthralling but it is simultaneously boring. The story is the best first hand account of W.W. I combat, and it is a short enjoyable read. Highly recommended for all.

Any serious student of WWI will need to read this as it comes straight from Ernst Jungers diaries. It doesn't bog the reader down with the politics and the why's of the war - just a straight forward description of trench warfare and observations. Unless one can read German, this is as close as one can get to reading the original text.

This is not a war book. This is a soldier's book. This is a book that makes no great statement about war or battles but just reports or states the feelings and happenings of day to day trench life. If a great battle does occur the author only concerns himself with writing about what happens to him in his small section of war. There is no great study of tactics or strategy only the drudgery of life at the front. He does not make himself to be great heroic figure only a man out to do his job the best he can.

Ernst Junger's WWI memoir of his experiences as a young Lieutenant in the German army has the most detailed and lucid descriptions of the brutality of trench warfare that I've ever read. His ability to recreate the atmosphere down to the smells and sounds of combat are unsurpassed. I found his enthusiasm for war and his unquestioning attitude toward the carnage he described and experienced ( he was wounded numerous times) at times strangely dispassionate. This didn't reduce the value of his work as a combat memoir but I understand some of the criticism aimed at his work as a glorification of war. Junger clearly viewed war as a supreme test and validation of manhood. There is not a trace of anti-war sentiment or regret in his book.
I didn't read this book as a political or philosophical reflection but rather as a remarkably detailed account of battle in the trenches of Flanders and France. It still has the power to shock.

As with most Penguin Books, the product itself is well made and the print is easy-to-read. The pages are thick and bound well and the print is bold.

As for the content, Storm Of Steel is one of the best books I've read and is sure to be a repeat-read in the future. It is a short read, only a little over 200 pages, but I rank it right up there with Hemingway (only Junger's book is a true, first-hand account).

Interesting insight from a German infantryman about life in the trenches facing the French and English adversary.
World War One is in my opinion quite fascinating. Perhaps more so then World War II.

This book was easy to read and incredibly interesting. just could not put it down. How this guy had the luck survived as long as he did, besides being a extraordinary soldier, is beyond me. Its not like he didn't have enough near death experinces. The worst part of the book is the foreward by some tool who basically bashes the inital author, Junger's, writing style and tries to tell everyone 'what he really means'. Next edition should eliminate that entire section.
-not bob levy

Purely an in the trenches account of war. Great descriptions of artillery and the great loss of life during battles. No mention of politics, which is done on purpose and I think it works well without. The book thus stands on its own as a record of Juenger's war and is not tainted by morals or political spin. Also, he gets wounded alot and suffers great losses of his men, so if you like intense action...

It's a good read and I DO recommend it, THEN as I found out later you must read the 1929 version. Hoffman really sanitized the book for Penquin. I gave it 3 stars because even though Hoffman "gouged" out a lot of the essence of the 1929 version it still manages to be a good read BUT by all meand do your best to get your hands on the 1929 version.

I found it hard to focus much of the time because I kept getting distracted by the sound of his clanging brass balls. Written in a very straight forward and matter of fact manner this is a no nonsense book.

This is a book one should read to learn about life deeply without going through the obstacles. Stunning and packed but short sentences freeze you in midtrack every now and then while reading. The book should be read twice. It was originally a diary and not a book and gives Junger's personal experience. Thrilling and educating.

This is absolutely a great book about a truly horrible war. I could not put it down. It is especially valuable for its perspetive from the German side of the war since so little of that side is published in English.

Perhaps best described as the antithesis of Erich M. Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front", this is an excellent account of the Great War. It is a very compelling read. Junger was an exceptional man, very different from most soldiers during this war. Recommended to anyone interested in the history of the Great War.

This book is hard to put down, and yet it is hardly high literature. In most parts it is badly written and/or translated. Junger also has little time for describing other humans beyond a cursory description. Not that he spends much more time describing his own character. The impression one gets of him is a (one dimensional) caricuture of a German typically found in British or American war comics.

And yet I recommend you read this book because I doubt Junger has fabricated anything in his account. The action sequences are represented brilliantly. It is only when one of his comrades die (and that is often) that one realises how much is missing from his remembrance.

Fantastic book that is Junger's account of WW1. He really conveys the quick changes of combat from sitting in a trench bored for hours at a time to a mad scramble to find cover because enemy artillery is raining. Overall it's a interesting glimpse at WW2 from someone who was actually there.

it was a horrible war, and it took me a little while to get used to the author's accepting attitude. But you understand and love him by the middle of the book. There was no time when I could tell I was reading a translation, so this must have been well done too!

I have read many books on The Great War but this is one of the best. An entire generation was brutalized and driven mad by the butchery of the trenches and this book captures that madness. This should be required reading in all High Schools because it can happen again unless we are careful.

The new Deluxe Edition of 2016 is cheaper and bigger: Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches for the one version. Product Dimensions for this older, 2004 edition: 5 x 0.5 x 7.7 inches for the old. Page count is the same.

A great read for sure. Not the typical war story but more of a personal story of a guy one can identify with. It far surpassed "All Quite On The Western Front" and I thought that one was great as well. Well worth the time to read for any interested in war history.

I was supposed to be a professor of modern European history (Ph. D. 1972). However, I instead went to work for the government and retired several years ago. How did I miss this one? The best narrative of WW I, from a first person perspective, ie. an original soruce. Can't read everything in grad school, I suppose.

This book was surprisingly good. I am not a fan of war stories, but the way Junger wrote this book it was very easy to follow. Junger tells you a very descriptive story and gets the reader to actually visualize the horrors of war. I really enjoyed this book.

The book is great. The story is fantastic, but the translation is very clunky. There were times I couldn't even understand what the meaning of sentences were. Often I had to read a sentence two or three times and still didn't understand what was meant. Eventually I gave up and just skipped these weird sentences. Let me give you an example. Pg. 192. " I laughed on the other side of my face. . . ." Huh? Do you mean I laughed behind their back. That may be very well what the literal translation is, but it makes no sense in English.
The editor sucks! I never like penguin editions but this is honestly the only one you can find. Pg. 258. "a thick fug." You know, I have often been enveloped in a thick fug too. Pg. ". . .having picked them up unasked in the crater. Seeing that did for me." Do they have people that work for them? People that read? These mistakes are infuriating when you actually want to read a book and understand it.

This is supposed to be a classic by one of the original (First World War) German "storm troopers." (Yes, Virginia, there were storm troopers before there were Nazis!) My problem is that Junger's style is so determinedly off-hand that it's hard to parse out what parts of his narrative are "just" life in the war and which parts are unique to or primarily about storm trooping. In a tier below "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Paths of Glory," but worth reading.

An okay book about WW1 from the Imperial German side. Has a few short sections which give an insight to how troops lived on the line but they are few and far between. The writers angle seems to be more in the style of the 1900s, the brave warrior and his band of men. I guess the book has been connected to the German socialist movement of the 20's-30's. It seems to me that Junger just tries to put a happy face on a pointless war. If you have served in the military, the book I think would be more enjoyable as the author describes his problems with higher command, and operating in the front lines, along with his interaction with support commands. For living historians not a lot here, but a good starter book.

This book is well written, well translated and flows well on the memoirs of a german private at the start of WW1 and officer by the end, but for all the hype that I had heard about this book it is no where near as good as Rommel's ATTACK and his experience of WW1 that book was full on action.
Storm of Steel does give graphic details of life in and out of the front line including some major battles he took part in, still overrated

I already wrote a review of "The Storm of Steel" under its full title ("From The Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer on the Western Front"), but I felt compelled to take up a sword here not only on behalf of Ernst Juenger but also against many who deliberately misinterpret his work.

Political cenorship is a fascinating subject and it operates on many levels, both subtle and gross. In a democractic society it generally is practiced in the former manner, so that the majority of people do not even know that it is happening, much less object to its imposition. You would be hard-pressed, for example, to find someone in Western civilization who has not either read, seen a televised adaptation of, or at least heard of Klaus Maria Remarque's seminal "All Quiet on the Western Front." On the other hand, you could blast a fire hose on the Mall on the Fourth of July and not splash a person who has ever heard of Juenger's "Storm of Steel." Were you in fact to do so, you would probably find that the person in question describes it as "war-glorifying" or even "neo-Nazi"; only later would you discover that they have never read it.

Like most people, I was forced to read Remarque's touching "novel" (based of course on his own experiences as a "Frontkaempfer" in WWI) when I was in school, and like everybody else, I coughed up the expected book report denouncing war as a stupid and futile exercise in mass misery and mindless slaughter. Looking back, I can see that every "war" novel and book I was ever assigned in school at any level, even in college, was essentially of the same stripe: war is the most vile, the most disgusting, the most pointless exercise in the category of human endeavor; war solves nothing, and represents absolute evil.

Juenger's "Storm of Steel" does not glorify war; nor (despite its ferocious nationalism, best described in the book as "the ideals of 1870") does it point towards the most extreme form of Fascism -- Nazism. It merely states that war is the ultimate experience, a potentially (but not necessarily) ennobiling one; a crucible which burns away the impurities of civilian (especially burgeois) life to temper a man like iron is tempered in a furnace -- or otherwise break him. Juenger deliberately excluded inner reflections and soul-searching from his book, contenting himself to bring to the audience war as an outward (that is to say, a physical) experience. This is not because he lacked the capacity for inner feeling but because he chose to deal with it as an entirely separate book ("War as an Inward Experience" which I believe was published in English as "Copse 125").

"Storm" has been continually denounced for the last 80-odd years as rightist propaganda precisely because it does NOT come to the conclusion of Remarque, Hemingway, P.J. Caputo or any of the other combat literati who escaped their own slaughterous wartime experiences to write antiwar novels. It says -- if I may presume to paraphrase Juenger -- that war destroys civilian hypocrisy and, if it makes a man's boot come down grimly and harshly, at least makes it come down clean. Juenger's unforgivable sin was, apparently, to conclude that it "was a good and strenuous life, and that war, for all its destructiveness, was an incomparable schooling of the heart."

Those who sought to eradicate Juenger's way of thinking ensured that his works were banned following WW II and continue to make reading some of them difficult. Professor Louis B. Snyder asserted that the Third Reich produced no great works of literature, yet Juenger's (anti-Nazi!) novel "On the Marble Cliffs" was written during WWII and is considered by many to be the best novel penned in Germany between 1933 - 1945. The official line, however, insists that no true art could exist under the Nazi system, and so "On the Marble Cliffs" remains impossible to obtain in English, unless you are willing to shell out fifty bucks. Coincidence? Call me Agent Mulder, but I don't think so.

No professor ever assigned me "Storm of Steel" to read (the only one who ever mentioned it did so with a smirk) and no bookstore around me carried it. It remains one one of the great pieces of war-writing ever penned, yet at the same time it is smothered in a weird conspiracy of silence. It is only one man's opinion, yet apparently it is too frightening of an opinion to be allowed full voice. That alone is reason to read it.

I'll immediately begin by explaining why I didn't give this a perfect score: I believe the translation is somewhat faulty and of irregular quality. This struck me most in the beginning, and again when I actually read another book; there's something definitely too German about the prose, the way it'd read if translated too close to the original, with less concern for its English readability, or so was my impression. I regularly felt like English was being stretched beyond its normal shape and fitted into odd constructions that didn't quite work. I wouldn't say this detract much from the experience, but the feeling that the translation could be better never left me, despite the translator's introduction explaining how he improved on previous translations.

As to the book per se, I would compare it to Oliver Stone's Platoon, in that it is a raw narrative of war as it was (more so than in Stone's film, though) and far less political than many seem to think (quite like Platoon, this time). If you want to know what World War I was like from the viewpoint of the man who fought it in the trenches, look no further, this is the book.

Jünger somehow escaped deaths countless times and is one of the luckiest men I've ever heard of: from fiddling with some unknown object in the dark (which turned out to be a grenade), to almost being shot by his own, to almost shooting his own, to saving his life through a chat, which gave him the few seconds more required to avoid doom, to countless shellings, this is quite extraordinary in every regard. I lost count of the number of times Jünger narrowly escaped his end.

From other reviews, I gathered that this book is apparently considered political and such, I must insist I found no such thing. No, this is not a denounciation of war, but I can't say it tries to make it anything glorious either. There are glorious men in war, on both sides, as often recognised by the author, but there's no pro or antiwar sentiment to be found; rather, war is a fact that the soldier learns to live with and ceases questioning very early on, since that'd make no difference. For all his wounds, Jünger didn't suffer from shellshock, for all I know, and seemed rather proud of his combat activities, and I cannot fault him for that.

I have never quite read anything like this about war, and I don't regret it. I strongly recommend this book as a less usual sort of point of view. You won't hear platitudes about how war is evil and such, though you will see regret over major loss of lives and such, but nothing political to speak of. This narrative seemed more real than anything I'd come across previously, more honest, rawer.

An absolute must for war literature. Heavily recommended despite some questionable translation choices (I have no doubt that translating German is no easy task, but I am also convinced a more palatable way to translate it exists, as I am currently reading Eckart's work translated into English, and I have no such impressions of 14th century German as I had reading this version).

Absolutely avoid this edition at all costs! There is a translation of the 1929 edition printed in the 1980's available used that is far,far superior to this translation. It is like reading about two different people! Talk about revisionist history. Wow. Mr. Junger is now deceased and his complete unabridged diaries are available in Germany. I only wish I were fluent in German or that someone will translate them for English speaking people. I digress. Avoid this edition.

I bought this book after listening to Dan Carlin's amazing Blueprint For Armageddon Podcast.

I loved this book and read it over a period of about 10 days. The thing I love about this book is that it isn't political. There is no preachy message about war or anti-war, it is simply one soldier's experiences homogenized into roughly 285 pages. It is graphic and in your face concerning the violence that occurred during World War One. I learned quite a bit about the German army during WWI and what life was like for them on the Western Front.

Hofmann’s “brilliant new translation.” Read: censored. He claims Creighton’s knowledge of Jünger was negligible. Hofmann does not appear to fair any better. He portrays Jünger as a coldly detached soldier who is simply conveying facts, as in an After Action Report. The book is based on Jünger’s war diaries. To remove the emotion and passion is to remove Jünger himself.

Storm of Steel is great - this translation, however, is lacking. Get Creighton’s edition (1929). Sure it has some translational issues. But you’ll actually get to know Ernst Jünger. And isn’t that why you’re reading the book?

WW1 was a turning point in warfare where new technology rendered the old tactics obsolete. No longer did you line up to face your opponent as Lee and Grant did in the American Civil War. The machine guns, the grenades, newer rifles, and artillery had progressed to kill soldiers at an astronomical rate. I don't see the compassion, but you do get the feel for the slaughter these men faced from Ernst's viewpoint. How the landscape transformed into a no mans land where artillery shells chewed up the earth and kept chewing it up over and over. You can see from the beginning of the war towards the end how it turns downhill for the German soldiers in terms of their food and supplies. Ernst Junger viewpoint is particular interesting as he calls shrapnel "splinters". How one survives four years of this carnage and manages to remain sane is something I will never know. It is a worthwhile to read this book. Each side has a particular viewpoint toward their enemy and the German soldier is no different than our doughboys. How patriotism forges the mind and after 4 years of fighting, how it diminishes to where you want it to just end. Storm of Steel is worth the time to read.

“Storm of Steel” is a remarkable memoir. It is Ernst Junger’s account from the German frontlines in World War I. Junger was there for the duration and was wounded on numerous occasions. He managed to produce a very dispassionate account of the events he witnessed. It is not a novel. It is a genuine war memoir.

Most readers will compare “Storm of Steel” with Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”. The latter has been widely read, turned into a film and the title itself has become a broadly used western term. In comparison, Junger’s work is much less widely known. This is a shame. While Remarque’s work is a novel, Junger has produced a first hand account of what he saw. In this sense, it is more raw and direct.

In addition to being the work of a combatant, “Storm of Steel” is an account from the losing side. This is unusual. We are so used to reading accounts of the victors. In this sense, Junger has produced a wholly different perspective. Accordingly, some have labelled it as potentially pro Nazi. This is absurd. The book stands for exactly what it is, namely, one man’s account of a horrendous war. Recommended.

I've read many war memoirs, especially combat memoirs. On its own terms, Junger's is par for the course in most respects. Basically, the work is not a narrative, but rather an expanded diary that the author kept during the war. While he was in a hot sector around the Somme and Cambrai, his own experiences are fairly run of the mill (he spent most of the war avoiding artillery). He learns to enjoy the simple things in life while he can, like a cigar with comrades, or a sack of potatoes "found" in a Belgian's cellar. The fact that he was wounded a lot seems to have more to do with luck than any particular heroism. In fact, he infrequently sees let alone kills any combatants. Lacking in an overall narrative structure, and also lacking any critical stance on what he went through, the book falls short of what others have achieved, such as E.B. Sledge in "With the Old Breed." That book made me hate war and what it does to people; I didn't find that kind of emotional, eye-opening response here.

That said, students of this type of prose will be rewarded if they pay attention. First, the author's use of metaphor is intriguing, as it has a way of distancing the reader from what the memoirist is describing. The metaphors start in the title and flow from there. One example: "The rifle and machine-gun fire was pattering at us so thickly it was like having a sack of dried peas emptied over you." How such a quaint domestic metaphor can bridge the reality of combat to the reader is incomprehensible. To imagine what that fusillade is like, I first have to imagine what it's like having a sack of peas dumped on my head. Such convoluted metaphors can only make war even more mysterious, masking it behind language, and thus defeat the purpose of writing such a book in the first place--sharing the writer's experience.

Second, the author notices and records flowers. This is interesting because mentioning flowers was apparently unselfconsciously taken for granted in the well-rounded 19th-century male (the 19th century aesthetic having arguably died in the trenches). Even in 1918 he writes, "While I picked a bunch of half-wild roses, landing shells reminded me to be careful in this place where Death danced." While soldiers today enjoy moments of calm amidst the chaos of war today, picking flowers under artillery fire is difficult to imagine. One hundred years on, I cannot picture an elderflower, yet the writer assumes that his readers know what that is, underscoring how commonplace such knowledge must have been. The fascination with flowers--for no other stated reason than that they are flowers--says something about this writer, and by extension, the generation that went to war. It's almost a defiant gesture--like the last act of the main character in the novel "All Quiet on the Western Front," or the poppies among the tombstones in the poem "In Flanders Fields." This spirit, this love of nature, life, and the world, cannot be crushed, even in death. (Notice, too, the distancing metaphor of Death dancing, as if random slaughter somehow can be made as poetic as a waltz). The dependence of these men--who are frequently referred to elsewhere as the "flower" of a generation--on the earth for life is evident here, as the narrator and his men hide in the ground to survive. They themselves are flowers, struggling in the ground and through storms to live.

Third, it is surprising how little the narrator was in a trench, and how little he saw the enemy. Often, he was in no man's land, or taking cover in a crater between stronger positions, or resting in a cellar. His contacts with the enemies were fleeting - a few grenades thrown, rifle shots from nowhere. The fact that he's under artillery fire throughout the book reflects the depersonalization of war--enemies that he cannot fight are trying to kill him. War is anonymous, and so war itself becomes an omnipresent enemy like the weather--a metaphor reflected in the title and sprinkled throughout the book.

Fourth, the book reflects a kind of German pathos about the war that would no doubt carry over into WW2. One example is that several times the author does see an enemy combatant face to face, it is a captured British officer. At those times, he has some sort of "manly" exchange with that fellow warrior. War has some sort of transformative effect, whereby two Anglo-Saxon combatants can shake hands and see each other as equals (the French, it seems, aren't accorded this kind of egalite.) Through all this horror and suffering, the (Anglo-Saxon) soldiers can maintain their chivalry, decency, and nobility. There is, it seems, some good that can come from war. Storms are awful, but they are sometimes necessary to help flowers become strong, beautiful, and manly.

What's striking about this war-as-hero-making-adventure subtext, and really the entire book, is Junger's lack of critical distance. Junger never develops an inward looking stance toward the war, himself, his mates, his experiences, his country, or his very worldview that makes a memoir like Sledge's (for example) transcendent. Any moments of introspection are shallow, fleeting, and ultimately unsatisfying. This may not be true of Junger throughout his life, but it is how he presents himself here. This is a fundamental flaw with Junger's book, and yet it perhaps best sums up the German mindset moving from one world war into another: War is good because its hardships make men into Iron-Cross winning Men. Thus, Junger's WW1 memoir is noteworthy precisely for its lack of meaningful reflection in a time and place where critical thinking about war's inhumanity was needed most.

As the son of a Second World War combat veteran, there is something about November 11th that resonates deep within me. That day brings into sharp relief the sacrifices made by the veterans of the First World War. For that reason, while scanning my library a few days ago, I resolved to read an eyewitness account of the war --- from the German side.

For the author, Ernst Jünger (1895-1998), the war was a long one, spanning from 1915 to 1918. During those years, he saw a considerable amount of action, which is detailed in this book. From the Champagne, the Somme, Arras, Flanders, Cambrai, and back to Flanders for the great Ludendorff offensives of 1918, Jünger proved himself a resourceful officer and a soldier who did not shrink back from any assignment he was given. (For his service, he was awarded Imperial Germany's highest award for bravery, the Ordre Pour le Mérite - better known as the "Blue Max.")

Jünger's story is somewhat analogous to Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. But unlike Paul Baumer, Ernst Jünger's story is not anti-war. For him, the war is the defining event of his life. The bonds formed between him and his men in the squalor of the trenches are symbolic of the sacredness of the values of Duty, Honor, Country.

Jünger also expresses his admiration for the British soldier, whom he fought against on the Somme, at Cambrai, and in Flanders. Furthermore, the vignettes he provides of life in the areas behind the front in France where his unit was occasionally billeted are stark and perceptive. They show that, in some cases, the Germans were able to establish cordial relations with the civilian population, whom Jünger recognized as the ones who suffered the most from the effects of the war.

This year marks the second year since 1918 that there are no living veterans of the First World War to observe the day on which it was ended. "The Storm of Steel" is one of those war memoirs that helps the reader to connect vicariously with a generation whose sacrifices from 1914 to 1918 helped re-define the way in which we see ourselves and the world in which we live.

My first impression upon completion of this classic World War I memoir is one of amazement. I am amazed that Mr. Junger-or anyone in those trenches-survived the hellish onslaught of trench warfare. In gruesome yet elegant detail, the author recounts his experiences as a front-line German soldier in his battles against the French and English. As the book proceeds, it seems that virtually everyone around Junger is killed or critically wounded. He is wounded himself on a regular basis, and between the constant sniping and merciless artillery bombardments, it is a wonder that anyone survived. There is no discussion of politics or even the reasons behind the war. It is simply the story of a front-line soldier doing his duty. Junger writes about his experiences in war as an almost mystical event that at times transcends the physical senses and becomes almost spiritual. I personally found this fascinating. And while the details of the book are often gruesome, the author's writing is downright exquisite. So whatever you think of him, Mr. Junger certainly had a way with words, and this memoir is a masterpiece that deserves the title of "Classic."

Ernst Junger is somewhat of a controversial figure. His apparent glorification of war and his right-wing political views have led many to view him as a precursor to Naziism. And while the Nazi's certainly admired him, most accounts show that he did not return the favor. He did indeed go on to serve as an officer in the Wehrmacht under Hitler, but this was out of loyalty to his country, rather than loyalty to the Fuehrer. In fact, he seems to have indirectly opposed the Nazi's, as witnessed by such writings as `On the Marble Cliffs.' All in all, Ernst Junger was a fascinating man, and 'Storm of Steel' is a literary masterpiece that deserves its place in history.

After following Junger from one battle to another, and one close call to another, it's almost fitting that he lived another eighty years. Junger counts at least 14 wounds by his own reckoning, with a nearly unbelievable number of close calls besides those. Soldiers are killed with alarming frequency all about him. A few times his wounds probably saved Junger's life, as when his platoon was wiped out after he had gone to the rear for treatment. This is all described so matter-of-factly as to be disarming.

Junger is a very impressive young man, clearly highly intelligent, mature, well educated, brave, loyal, and with good leadership skills among fellow infantry. He knocks off literary references and English and French dialog as if they were a natural occurrence. He even hobnobs effectively with the natives.

The tremendous waste of human talent in the western front, in actions that in reality accomplish little but move lines back and forth, is the most depressing theme that runs through the journal. Junger is relatively upbeat most of the time, which is perhaps why the book has a reputation for being too militaristic. No doubt Junger had a taste for action and itched for many of the battles. I never felt he was a bloodthirsty fanatic, eager to die, although he was ready and willing to do so. He mourns the loss of individuals regularly and has no hate for his worthy foes.

The narrative's strength is the description of life on the western front among the trenches. I had little idea how much emphasis there was on artillery in the battles and in hassling the enemy between fights. One of the best chapters is "Daily Life in the Trenches", which is a break from the campaigns with a discussion of how the trenches were organized, how the soldiers lived, and the logistics. The trenches were effectively small villages with whatever amenities could be collected. Such a contrast to the western action in WW II with the early blitzkrieg and the action after D-Day where troops swept along.

What's missing is any perspective of what was going on in the big picture, either with the military strategy or the political scene. The participation of the Americans and the end of the war, for example, go unremarked. For a person of Junger's intellect, obviously he excluded those thoughts and supporting information deliberately. Perhaps he only wanted to show the low-level war through one person's life and stick to that microcosm, and he did that very well. I wanted to know more of what he thought about beyond the immediate circumstances. For me, the tight focus kept the book from being five stars.

The translation by Hofman reads superbly. The English is poetic at times, with impressive use of colorful terminology and slang. Of course, some of that is due to the literary skills and wit of Junger. Even so, the creativity required to come up with many of the words and phrases repeatedly surprised me.

STORM OF STEEL offers WWI from a German soldier's point of view, but Erich Maria Remarque it ain't. All told, author Ernst Junger was shot multiple times, yet would live not only to write this book (and many others) but to celebrate his 103rd birthday (attended by an unusually patient Grim Reaper-in-Waiting).

On the penultimate page of this book, he writes: "Leaving out trifles such as ricochets and grazes, I was hit at least fourteen times, these being five bullets, two shell splinters, one shrapnel ball, four hand-grenade splinters and two bullet splinters, which, with entry and exit wounds, left me an even twenty scars." Like George Washington (who also was shot at, over, under, and through), someone seemed to be watching over Junger.

Fans of war literature will relish this book. Junger takes the reader through the trenches of Flanders, the Somme, Cambrai, Langemarck, and many other WWI locales. His narrative is straightforward and blunt, including many details on soldiers' deaths (German AND British) with a full compliment of gory details. He seldom editorializes or pontificates, and even acts as if gas attacks are normal (well, they were -- then). The narrative has that "rubbernecker" effect going for it. The appalling body counts almost carry you forward, despite your disbelief at the complete waste of humanity. Meanwhile, Junger riffs on tests of manhood and the rush (along with the fear) that is war.

Junger writes: "In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high." Understatement. With examples of both mercy and bloody resolve, Junger's behavior will continue to astonish readers as they read his detailed account. Unencumbered by any attempts at high art or literary flair, STORM OF STEEL will put you there, giving you a real taste of how fleeting life was for these young men. The War had no winner and only one loser -- humanity itself -- only Junger chooses not to state as much. Instead, he trusts in his readers. Recommended for fans of history, WWI, and war literature. If you've read other works in the WWI canon, this is a worthy addition.

Jünger's book Storm of Steel is an exceptionally well written and almost romantic (not in the sense of romance novel but rather a piece which illicits an emotive response much like painting of the 19th century) It is one individual's reaction to life in Europe before, during and after WWI. Many of the statements of the text had several implications. Such as his assertion that "the Europe of today appeared here for the first time on the field of battle?" When read in context with the previous paragraphs the statement seemed to be remarking on the damaging will imposed on the European landscape. He spoke of machinery and how before the use of contemporary weaponry the most harm inflicted was the burning of towns and villages. Now because of new `scientific war' or a war of machines not man, nature was impacted. To burn a village was to bruise culture, but not destroy it. Culture could be rebuilt. To create craters and desert out of a once pristine landscape was to demolish it. The author seems to suggest that the damage inflicted by machine was irreparable. Furthermore, describing the war as scientific or a war of machines removed all traces of humanity. The exile of humanness can also be seen in his remarks that chivalry and basic politeness ("all fine and personal feeling") succumb to machinery. Machinery becomes the all invading. In his text, man becomes machine when he "wore the steel helmet." Steel and flesh, man and machine melt into one. The Europe of today was one of cold technology devoid of humanity and nature. Jünger suggested that man had to adapt to machine not machine to man when he discussed the change of fighting strategy. He ended this excerpt with his assessment that everything that was great about the German race or even Europe as a whole drowned during WWI "in a sea of mud and blood."

Storm of Steel is one of those rare birds of literature, the war diary that doesn`t condemn war. Ernst Junger`s diary of his officer years in the Imperial German army during that slaughter that ironically came to be known as the Great War, stands alone among `war books.` Unlike Remarque, Graves or even Hemingway, Junger refuses to beat his reader over the head with an overtly edifying message. Ironically, Junger exposes the repellent nature of war by seeming to embrace its proported `virtue-building` properties.

Those looking for a pacifist tract or probing expose into man as killer, would best look elsewhere. Storm of Steel is one man`s existential journey through the unimaginable maelstorm of 1914--1918. Junger begins his story at the very beginning of that awful conflict when his proud unit---67th Hanoverian Fusiliers---marches across the fields of Champagne to meet the French during the autumn of 1914. Here, Junger`s diary gives the impression of boys off to a rugby match. Junger`s high-spirited warrior-athletes soon learn otherwise. Junger deftly and piercingly chronicles the devolution of the assumed football match` into the Boschian reality that would last for the next four years: trench warfare.

In deceptively simple descriptive sentences, Junger manages to paint a vibrant canvas of the world about him. Each chapter jockeys back and forth between brazen dawn attacks across no-man`s land, midnight reconnaissance forays into enemy trenches and the daily and nightly lot of the soldier`s worst nightmare: the artillery barrage. Most of SOS`s richest passages center around such barrages. Rightly so, as Junger`s diary records what was heard, seen, and felt by the Great War grunt. And constant shelling was the mainstay of trench life.

Shrapnel shells burst overhead spitting out their steely balls of destruction, high-explosive shells churn up the Artois farmland into sometimes geysers, sometimes volcanos. The world around Junger is in a constant state of upheaveal and change. Mother Earth violated by the hour, contorts herself around the bloodied figures who dive from crater to crater in search of momentary respite from fate. Junger seems to view the shells and whizzing bullets as messages from another world. Everybody is sentenced to one, it`s all a matter of when it will hit and what it`ll contain, instant death or a few more minutes, hours, days of life.

SOS covers the range of major Western front offensives, the Somme, Cambrai, the final German offensive of 1918, and ends with the Allied breakthrough of the summer of 1918. And through it all, Lieutenant Junger comes across as a man of daring, courage and noblesse oblige, a leader beloved by his underlings and one alternately ruthless and merciful towards his French and British opponents. Junger rarely reflects for long on his actions. As the sole voice of the book, Junger carries you from page to page as a man of action. Here leading a grenade attack across and through an enemy trench, there regrouping his dazed and decimated platoon after an especially virile bombardment. Moments of emotional or even mental interaction with the chaos that surrounds is minimal. SOS captures the moments in which one either lives or dies, kills or is killed. And Junger is supremely faithful to that experience. Post-experience editorializing is all but absent from SOS.

Yet, it is the lack of such emotional contact with the action that separates SOS from that other grand tome of war, the Iliad. When Achilles weeps over Patroclus` mangled body, we also weep, when Achilles stops his rage-driven chariot with Hector`s body tied to it, we, like Achilles, reflect on the bestial power of our anger. Storms of Steel has few such moments. When a dear friend is gunned down moments after sharing words with each other, Junger`s response appears prosaic. `That news floored me. A friend of mine with noble qualities, with whom I had shared joy, sorrow and danger for years now, who only a few moments ago had called out some pleasantry to me, taken from life by a tiny piece of lead!` Yet, here like everywhere in SOS, Junger painstakingly documents. This isn`t war as Achilles and Hector knew it, face to face with one`s opponent. Here, death came from an invisible shell splinter or the yellow muzzle flash, a mile away. You rarely saw he you killed or who killed you. This conflict was altogether different. A war where the human took a back seat to steel. An eerie premonition hovers over SOS. Killing has now become more efficient and quicker, euphemisms soon to be used in the battlefields and death camps to come. Junger kills with similar detachment. Throwing a grenade into a British dugout, he describes the results as, `rough, but satisfactory.` Occasionally though, Junger also records the human element that can`t help but burst through the storm. His unit the recipient of a direct shell hit, Junger drops an innocuous sentence that rings with understatement. `One baby-faced fellow, who was mocked a few days ago by his comrades, and on exercises had wept under the weight of the big munitions boxes, was now loyally carrying them on our heavy way, having picked them up unasked in the crater. Seeing that did it for me. I threw myself to the ground, and sobbed hysterically...`

After killing a young British soldier, Junger makes an enlightening confession. `He lay there, looking quite relaxed...I often thought back on him; and more with the passing of the years. The state, which relieves us of the responsibility, cannot take away our remorse; and we must exercise it.` Profound words as timely today as then.

Junger sweeps his reader across experiences that most readers will never taste. And in a langauge stripped of all moral posturing, preaching or correcting, Storm at times glances the heavy topics with a beauty approaching the poetic. Junger`s matter of fact and stolid Lower Saxon can surprise us with its unexpected layers. Junger describes his final wounding with such words. `As I fell, I saw the smooth, white pebbles in the muddy road; their arrangement made sense, it was as necessary as that of the stars, and certainly great wisdom was hidden in it.` And then the telling next sentence. `That concerned me, and mattered more than the slaughter that was going on all round me.` Such philosophical detachment from the human and moral swamp that surrounds him, separates Junger from other writers of war.

Reaching the final page, I felt as if I had been privy to something quite special. A peep show into another`s man`s harrowing experience. An experience I hope never to have. While Junger`s cavalier and sportsmanlike attitude to war left a bitter taste in my mouth, his struggle to portray war, warts and all, only strengthened my resolve to avoid and condemn it. Therein lays the grand irony of Storm of Steel; the least overtly moralizing of war texts makes the strongest plea for peace, that imaginary place about which the horribly wounded Junger muses,`Where I was going, there was neither war nor enmity.`

This being the centenary of World War One, I read this and a few other books. I truly enjoyed Mr. Junger's. There were a few humorus (sp) sections where I did LOL. I found his descriptions of battle, the guns, the bullets, the trenches, the fields, gritty and realistic. His downtime seems to capture the "hurry up and wait" mentality you hear about ANY military.

His depiction of "the enemy" was good. There is one scene where the character is reading newspapers filled with anti-German propaganda. I liked how he dropped that into the narritive.

It's a much different read from "All Quiet on the Western Front", that's for sure. All in all, I would recommend this book for its depictions of battle & German military life during World War One.

Other personal memoirs by WW I soldiers pale by comparison. This book is graphic and packed with detail. Junger enlisted in a German regiment early in the war and advanced to the rank of 1st lieutenant. Along the way were years of close combat. The author was the sole survivor of his company on at least two occasions, and went on to earn his nation's highest decoration for bravery. A humble, factual description of hell..

"Storm of Steel" is a memoir of German World War I veteran Ernst Jünger's experiences from 1915 through 1918 on the Western Front. First entering combat in April 1915 as a private, Mr Jünger fought in many of the best-known actions on the Western Front, advancing in rank to Lieutenant and being wounded 14 times. Mr. Jünger was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class, and at 23, was the youngest-ever recipient of the Pour le Mérite, at the time Germany's highest award for valor.

The book describes, in fairly graphic detail, the horrors of combat in World War I, as well as the quieter interludes he experienced while in reserve behind the front lines. From reading the book, it is apparent that Mr. Jünger was fortunate to have lived through the war. Many, if not the majority of his closest comrades, were killed or severely maimed. However, while not glorifying war, per se, he does not come across as anti-war in his writing either.

Although I was very interested in the book and in the detail it provided, it took me a long time to finish the book. I'm not sure if this was because of the way the writer wrote or if the translator's style wasn't working for me, but the book wasn't as engaging as I had hoped. Still, it's a true classic (one of a comparitive handful of memoirs from World War I still in print), and stands as one of the best works in English from the German perspective.

The Storm of Steel provides the reader with the view of the Western Front in World War I from the trenches, from the perspective of a young infantry officer and is a classic memoir, at times vividly conveying the experience of trench warfare and close-quarters combat, and should be read or at least referenced by serious students of that era.
The book's only serious limitation is that the author does not perform any analysis and does not give any serious or deep reflection or introspection on his experience with the war. His focus is strictly at the tactical level, and the story is very much his own tale. Although it is clear that he respects his fellow soldiers, he does not provide reflections of the contact or comradery that he must have had with his men or his fellow officers that might have added depth of character to his narrative. As a result, this book gives little insight into the war itself and the men who fought it. For readers who prefer more introspection and commentary in memoirs, they should look elsewhere than The Storm of Steel.
However, the author should not be faulted for a lack of perspective in his memoirs; he thought of himself as a soldier, and he wrote as one after the war. While his writing style is at times detached, sparsely detailing the life of the German soldier in the trenches, at others he writes heart-pounding passages describing intense fights in no-man's land or blind dashes in the dark of night into the enemy's trenches in the effort to take a prisoner.
These parts are where the author excels, as these passages easily make the reader feel like he or she is careening through trenches or stumbling through shellholes.
The Storm of Steel is a memorable book, simple and direct in its language, replete with the mix of candor, nostalgia, compassion, and jingoism common to young men sent to war.

Storm of Steel is a war memoir in the most literal sense--it begins on the author's first day under fire, and ends as soon as he is out of combat. Ernst Junger served briefly as an enlisted man in 1915, then through the remainder of World War I as an officer in the German army. He participated in several key battles of bitter trench warfare on the Western Front. His narrative, except at the very end, never varies from the viewpoint of the individual soldier. It is a day-to-day account, compiled from his diaries, of life in the trenches, horrific combat, and the occasional moments of relaxation.

Junger relates his experiences in a straightforward manner. As the newcomer's initial terror is replaced with fatalism, the soldier's main enemies are boredom and confusion. With most battles occurring at night or in the smoke of constant shelling, troops on the attack were almost immediately disoriented in the maze of trenches and craters. Rare was the action that didn't involve deaths from friendly fire or from blundering into the enemies lines by mistake. Junger tells the story with a novelist's sense of pace and balance, offsetting the violence with humor and humanity.

What is perhaps most frightening about Storm of Steel is the sense that this most horrific of wars could have gone on forever if Germany hadn't run out of men an material before the Allies. Despite numerous wounds, setbacks, and narrow escapes, Junger's enthusiasm and energy and that of most of his comrades never seem to flag. There is no sense whatsoever of the expected war weariness or disillusionment. It seems that we as a species take to war as easily as we do to any other vocation, and that is a very sobering thought.

This is a book that will sear images of death and destruction into your memory and transport you back in time to the trenches with the German Army, living in filth with the lice and rats. Junger's accounts of the fighting are gut wrenching, full of graphic details of bloody war wounds, missing limbs, and the shouts of pain accompanying them. That he was not killed in his four years on the front is amazing, but I guess chance and good fortune were on his side. Day and night for almost the entire war, Junger and his troops were under constant artillery barrage from the British and the French.

It is a sad book, full of images like the little French girl Junger saw lying dead in a doorway, or the British soldier lying legless in a bomb crater, calmly resigned to his impending death, too ashamed to let the approaching Germans look at him that he covered his head with a jacket, suggesting a need for privacy in death. There are dozens of other sights almost too graphic to forget, like the man whose brain was visible after a gunshot wound, but who was still able to talk, that will stay with me for a while.

I found it interesting that Junger voluntarily sought out danger, especially towards the end of the war. Rather than just sitting back and minimizing risk to himself, he took initiative to drum up little raiding teams to crawl into the British trenches after dark to kill sentries and collect intelligence. Wouldn't it have been easier for him to just stay home on leave for a little longer or mysteriously end up in a safer German unit? Or just sit tight in the trenches until the war was over? His bravery almost got him killed several times, and led to the deaths of many of his comrades. But this was total war, and he had a job to do. His war was fought not at the political or national level but at the ground level, and that was the only level he needed to understand.

"Storm of Steel" is the definitive eye-witness account of trench warfare in WWI from a German soldier's perspective. Without swagger, bluster or biais Junger recounts in his own simple style what it was like to join up and fight, the morale of his friends over the years, the simple day to day experiences, the images ... what it was like to fight the French compared with the English ... but never with a word towards the strategy or politics of the war. Junger was a born warrior and lied about his age to ship off with the Foreign Legion in North Africa before WWI. His father went to get him. When the war began in Europe Junger couldn't be held back. By 1918 Junger had been wounded several times and had become a junior officer. He earned all the top combat awards including the "Pour le Mérite" (aka "Blue Max"). Storm of Steel was to be the first of many books for Junger, who became a writer and lived almost to the end of the century. There is a moving picture of him standing with Kohl and Mitterand during the ceremonies at Verdun commemorating the war and renewed Franco-German amity. Although Hitler was, liked many of his generation, quite moved by Junger's heroic approach to his wartime experiences, Junger didn't join the Nazi party and was side-lined in WWII. He spent the war in large part in Paris, where he led a curious existence serving his country behind a desk but also in the company of the many artists and intellectuals who were his friends. Junger's son died on the Eastern Front. Junger kept journals his entire life and they are a fascinating read, especially the volumes concerning the phony war, the march on Paris, and the occupation. Viewing the events from the pov of an eloquent humanitarian like Junger is priceless. A friend knew him well and recounted the following anecdote ... my friend was driving Junger through Paris in the 90's and the streets were blocked with traffic. Junger commented that it was much easier to get around during the war (tongue in cheek since there were practically no cars in Paris during the Occupation other than those of the Occupiers; the rest of Paris was riding a bicycle!) I have read "In Stahlgewittern" several times in the French translation, I own a 1940s German edition autographed by Junger, and now I've reread the book in English. It's slightly different of course but still as powerful and fresh as the first time I read it over 20 years ago. The preface is very interesting, contains essential information and should not be skipped.

Generally armies are slow to combat military innovation and those who develop a new form of warfare have a significant advantage. The British struggled against the Boers who used the new technology of repeater rifles and smokeless powder. The French and British struggled against the German development of combined arms.

The First World War saw the development of a huge number of military innovations. These included the development of the first widespread use in Europe of the machine gun, the use of barbed wire, the invention of recoil springs in artillery which allowed for accurate and rapid fire at an unprecedented rate, the development of the howitzer which increased the effective range and efficiency of artillery.

During the course of the war both sides developed their knowledge of how to use the new technological innovations. However for most of the war the Western Front was a bloody stalemate in which each attack gained little at a huge cost in human life. Between the wars the literature that was produced was critical of the various commanders and suggested for example in the case of the British army that they were lions led by donkeys.

A large number of the books written at the time reflected the experience of the soldiers on the Western front who were caught up in the endless pointless battles. Robert Graves, Siegfried Sasson and others detailed the pointlessness and stupidity of it all.

This book however is by a German who revelled in the fighting and no doubt the experience was the high point of his life. The German experience of the First World War was perhaps somewhat different from that of the Western Powers. With the exception of Verdun and the Ludendorff offensive most of the German battles were defensive. They knew that they were in for the long hall and tried to develop defence systems which would minmize disease and provide some comfort for their soldiers. After the heavy losses on the Somme they moved to using machine guns to hold the front of the line to preserve their manpower and to use it for counter attacks.

The book starts early in the war and the writer is a witness to some of the most significant battles. We get a strange ant like view what were affairs that involved hundreds of thousands of men. Compared to the British experience the thing which strikes one is how much the German war effort was run on a knife edge. The book conveys the feeling of the Germans always being outnumbered out gunned and hanging on because of their spirit and elan. It is in fact not hard to understand the development of facism as a response to the disappointment over the defeat. This edition is a new edition that removes the last four pages of the original edition. The last four pages were a rambling inarticulate cry of anguish. The writer was apparently not a Nazi more of a conservative nationalist.

An interesting book which explains the mindset of the Germans who did not accept the result of the first round and supported the end of democracy in the country.

Ernst Juenger lived a long and interesting life, dying only four or five years ago. He was active on the German right before and after World War I, although he distanced himself from the Nazis, intellectually and otherwise, writing the allegorical On the Marble Cliffs (1939), which can be read as a criticism of totalitarianism. Well into his 40s, he served in the German army during World War II. In his later life, he was increasingly difficult to pin down politically and was widely known for his interest in butterflies.
The Storm of Steel is his memoir of the Great War, first published in 1920, when Juenger was 25. It is an amazing insight into life on the Western Front, in the trenches, from a firsthand, unfictionalized perspective. I agree with the previous reader who suggested reading this in conjunction with Remarque's famous novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. As opposed to that vivid, though fictionalized, account, The Storm of Steel is a very patriotic, nationalistic work (its final words: "Germany lives and Germany shall never go under!"). Juenger describes the war in sometimes exuberant, exhilerated terms. A gas attack during the Somme left everything "covered with a beautiful green patina." An artillery barrage "turned the western horizon into a sea of flowers." The final chapter, and particularly the final several pages, is a stunning literary achievement in its description of the experiences common to his generation and their search to find meaning in the world.

Storm of Steel is an unusual contradiction of a war novel. As a description of trench combat on the Western Front of WWI, this book has the immediacy and authenticity of direct reportage, or at least battlefield notes. It was written soon after the author's own service in the German army, and has the unconstructed feel of a series of direct experiences.

It is not political, and very little of it is self-reflexive as in pondering questions of strategy, or even the outcome of the war. But it is in Junger's attitude toward the conflict that his work is so unique. Although he writes movingly about the horrors of the conflict, detailing the violence and incredible suffering endured on the front, he is equally enthusiastic about the excitement of combat, of the exhilarating feeling of surviving something that you'd thought you wouldn't.

Junger's protagonist is not simply about macho heroics - he describes his actions tripping and losing his helmet during a charge like a keystone cop, for example. But what comes through in a unique way is that for all its horrors there were clearly moments in the war, whether simple camaraderie or the unexpected great meal, or just surviving a reconnaissance to the enemy trenches, that made soldiering for the author an experience with a tremendous range of emotions. It is this ambivalence to combat that makes this work so distinct from better known WWI novels with a strictly anti-war approach, such as All Quiet on the Western Front.

Ernst Jünger's memoirs of his service as a junior officer with the 73rd Hannoverian Fusilier Regiment on the Western Front are different than any other war memoirs I've read. Jünger provides a cold, insightful, yet evenhanded view of the war in the trenches. He respects the English soldiers he's up against, hears funny stories about pre-war Cambrai from the elderly French couple in whose house he's been quartered, and is invited along with his comrades to share bountiful suppers with Flemish farmers. While passionate about the honor he must uphold as a soldier and his support of the "idea", he refuses to demonize his enemy.
His descriptions of the fighting are horrific. At Guillemont, during the battle of the Somme as they are digging out their foxholes, he notices that the "earth" is composed of layers, representing each company that had been fed into the furnace, annihilated, ground to bits only to be replaced by the next company and the next. . . Whole units disappear without a trace. For Jünger the battlefield has its metaphysical element: Gas mask-clad pickets become demons that he converses with, fields of dead and dying exude a sweet smell that drives the living giddy, men disappear for no apparant reason and are never seen again.
Yet for Jünger even though 10 out of 12 soldiers fall, the desolation of war emphasizes and even spiritualizes the joy produced by the noble drive to endure and overcome battle. The fire of war produced over the four years of his service an ever purer and nobler warrior ethos. For this description alone is perhaps the book worth reading, since it provides us with a link to an aristrocratic/military ideal which put service to that ideal above everything else, even one's own survival. Not that such men were prepared to waste their lives, that is the view of today, but that they were prepared to sacrifice themselves in defense of an ideal, or even a sense of honor without which life would have been unbearable.
After reading the above comment on the ethos, on page 159 of the German edition, I noted "but at what cost?" in the margine. As in so many human endeavors, we are confronted with the unintended consequences of a chosen course of action. Jünger's generation offered themselves, their best and brightest in a cause that they believed in, resulting in two million war dead along with hundreds of thousands of maimed and broken bodies and spirits. Putting the economic argument aside for a moment, we can say that when the true crisis came, in 1933, there were too few men of honor left alive or conscious to withstand the onslaught of the refuse, of those without any sense of honor, of the haters, all to the great misfortune of not only the country they served, but of all of Europe.

With an austere economy of words that contributes greatly to the book's profundity, Ernst Jünger's "Storm of Steel" is a powerful and stark first-hand accounting of a German infantry officer's "intensely experienced reality" during the Great War in Western Europe from 1914-1918. Jünger's writing breathes life into his many comrades under arms, who together with him experience the "blood, filth, and work" of war. Brought into sharp relief are the pungent smells of chlorine gas and rotting corpses, the epic sounds of British artillery competing with nighttime thunderstorms, the "strenuous monotony" and the cold of day-to-day existence in the maze of trenches, and the slow ebb of young men's lives through holes in their gray uniforms delivered by the iron and steel of total war. Throughout "Storm of Steel," Jünger, the youngest recipient of the German "Blue Max" medal (pour le Mérite), embeds clear and almost poetic insights and aphorisms about death and dying, leadership, politics, and the human heart. And there is deep respect for the men of the British Empire who are called his enemy. By virtue of his 4-year involvement in combat, this highly decorated and oft-wounded lieutenant has the vantage of seeing the transformation of war from human-to-human conflict to a struggle dominated by tanks, airplanes, and long-range artillery--in effect, the materiel of war. "Storm of Steel" stands as a compelling and unflinching excursion into the valley and the exhilarating mountaintops of war.

I enjoyed this book very much. In some reviews people comment that the book was hard to get for many years because it glorifies war. I didn't find that it glorified war. What I got was an incredible respect for any of the WW1 soldiers fighting in the trenches & Ernst Junger in particular. He wasn't just a regular trench soldier - many, many times he risked his life in daring raids on the enemy lines.

Also in reading this it makes you realize that a WW1 soldier in the trenches had a very short life expectancy, daily you would expect to lose comrades & if you lasted out the year on the front lines that would be something of a miracle. When you read this book you realize how close Ernst Junger came to death over & over again and still managed to survive the duration of the war.

I also learned that enemy gunners were very dangerous but it was artillery (friend & foe) that put an end to most of the soldiers lives. Good book.

One of the books where even the introduction is worth reading. I agree with Gide's words (as mentioned in Michael Hoffman's introduction of his translation):

'Storm of Steel', is without question the finsest book on war that I know: utterly honest, truthful, in good faith.'

I have to quote also a few more lines that I completely agree with, and explain better than any review what this book is about:

"Its contrast with most of the others is stark. It has no pacifist design. It makes no personal appeal. It is a notably unconstructed book. It does not set its author and his experience in any sort of context. It offers nothing in the way of hows and whys, it is pure where and when and of course, above all, WHAT. There is nothing in it about the politics of the war -nothing even on its outcome- and very little on the wider strategy of its conduct."

That sums it pretty well for me. This is pure literature. The best memoirs I have read to date of any conflict (aside from Sledge's 'Of the Old Breed"). I couldn't help thinking of all the 'liquor-loving intellectuals' of the left bank of the Seine, who might have been drinking their narcissistic lives away in the caf?s of Paris, while Ernst Junger was creating this masterpiece of literature out of a real experience, and just next door.

I can?t wait to read more by and about Ernst Junger.

The similarity with Homer?s Iliad is not that far fetching as you might think.

Oh, and if you just want to fill your prejudices by simply knowing if this is a pacifist or a bellicist book, you might as well look elsewhere, because asking that question reveals you ain't ready for a 'real thing' like 'Storm of Steel'.

Storm of Steel is an outstanding personal account of the infantryman in World War I. The callous waste of life in a very small area of France for four years was incredible. How Junger survived his 20 wounds is amazing. This book should be read in comparison with the British accounts of Sasson and Graves and the French account of Barbusse. If these four short books are compared and contrasted, the accounts give an infantryman's perspective of a real tragedy as they are continually shelled by opposing artillery. Junger's Storm of Steel is the most graphic of the four and concentrates on what happened more than the emotions and feelings of the soldiers involved. In any case, reading these books after obtaining an overview of the Western Front from Keegan's First World War will give the reader an informed perspective of why the 20th Century was the Century of War. Of these, Junger's Storm of Steel is, to me, the most outstanding and provides insight into why World War II occured twenty years later. Junger's writing style as translated by Michael Hofmann is concise, perceptive and accurately detailed. This is a fine work for those interested in military history.

While I could have done without the over indugent introduction, the book, itself is amazing in its detail and descritpion.

What I found most interesting aside from his personal account, is the writting style.

Originally taken from his personal journal, when Jounger first begins the book, the literary style is very much prose-like in it's telling. Then as he soldiers on and hardened to the realities of war, the writting style subtly changes to reflect such.

Gone is the prose and it's replaced with brutal discriptions of battles and their aftermath. Innocence lost.

I found a maturing of him come across in his writting as well. Idealistic in the beginning and more reflective at the end.

Junger enlisted in the German army at the outbreak of the First World War. Miraculously, he survived the war and published this book in 1920 based upon the diary he kept through the conflict. Junger's depiction of trench warfare is superb and will be of interest to anyone who enjoys military history and adventure. Three things stood out to me while reading this book. First, Junger offers no personal views about the general causes or conduct of the war. The narrative begins with Junger deploying for combat and ends when he is too injured to continue four years later. We know nothing of his upbringing, education, or character. We know nothing of his politics or religion. Junger is simply a soldier who goes to fight his country's enemies, no questions asked. Second, most autobiographical accounts of combat are laced with angst and tragedy, but not Junger's. To be sure, he conveys the terror of trench warfare and the sorrow of losing comrades, but up until the very end of the book, when it is clear the German side is lost, Junger describes the experience of war in mostly positive terms. Combat is almost good for the soul. Third, while reading this book I watched a new documentary called "Restrepo," which follows a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The American soldiers come under fire sporadically and experience two casualties (one fatality) during fifteen months in the field. Most of the soldiers are terrified during, and devastated from, the experience. But then I read Junger, and he describes losing not two, but hundreds of men in a single day, and never flinches emotionally during four years of combat. How do we account for the vastly different reaction to combat and death? It seems odd (actually, inappropriate) to describe the American soldiers as "softer" than their forebears, but what explains the difference? Minor complaints: my edition of the book (Penguiun, 2004) suffers from a pompous and unhelpful introduction by Michael Hofmann, and the reader would benefit greatly from maps and a basic chronology of the war.

I first came to read Jünger's "Storm of Steel" as an alternative to Erich Maria Remarque's persisting "classic" of World War I, the praise of which I had always been subjected to. "'All Quiet on the Western Front' is amazing, it's the best account of the war," is an interpretation which I've heard rather often, "It's disjointed and broken up, utterly devoid of meaning, just like a man's soul" also seems to be one of the more common refrains, and lastly, "It gives you such a vivid sense of being there" is a position which I've dealt with for quite some time. However, upon my reading Ernst Jünger's "Storm of Steel," all such observations about Remarque's work and the other accounts of the war crumbled away instantly.

What's important to remember is that "All Quiet on the Western Front" and many other WWI works like it, such as Henri Barbusse's "Le Feu," are novels, nothing more and nothing less, sometimes written by men with less combat experience than Jünger. I've come to realize that it's wrong to compare and contrast "Storm of Steel" with these other works (a viewpoint which I've perhaps damaged with my introduction), because they are more exercises in indirect perception and opinion rather than real, historically valid trench fighting chronicles. The succinct account that is "Storm of Steel" is about one man, an officer in the Kaiserreichsheer (Imperial German Army), relating his personal experiences. There are no real observations on "futility" or "the pointlessness of war" here; the memoir simply doesn't require any.

Jünger was without a doubt "in the thick of it," and his emotions certainly ran high, but that is not the province of this particular work. "Storm of Steel" has true worth in that it focuses, in Jünger's later revisions especially, almost entirely on the what, where, how, and when of the war, without almost any consideration to the "why" or "because." In "Storm of Steel," the reader can view the brutal nature of trench combat with opinion and personal torments stripped away, something which does not in any way make the memoir "impersonal" or "cold" as many are wont to contend, but rather provides an account of the most personal nature possible. Jünger saw the war in his own way, and on his own terms, and related that experience in an exceedingly distinct manner. Jünger's powers of description and language are not something to be taken lightly, and anyone who feels that Remarque's seminal work gives unparalleled and vivid descriptions of trench fighting has evidently not experienced the full rush of "Storm of Steel."

Those expecting the plot of a novel should be forewarned. "Storm of Steel" is in actuality a refined journal, presented in its barest and boldest form for the consumption of the reading public. However, taking the time to read it is a rewarding experience, one which is necessary to understanding the position of trench fighters in the First World War. Jünger does not abstain from discussing any of his battle experiences, however horrible or incomprehensible they may be; rather, he gives you the full picture of his personal fight for survival and lets you understand it for yourself.

Another shining point of "Storm of Steel" lies in its sheer scope. Parts of the memoir are quite epic in their extent, no doubt thanks to the way Jünger utilizes his language. Jünger is tough and unremitting, and in the course of his memoir he comes to see himself from "outside himself," injecting a little bit of the philosophy that is such a focus of his other works. However, a closer look reveals that the entire book is itself an exhibition of philosophical thinking. Jünger's lifelong beliefs and tenants were formed during the experiences of the war, and "Storm of Steel" really gives you a sense of how those experiences can take a toll on the human being, for better or for worse. Additionally, "Storm of Steel" does a superlative job of giving an explanation, through its descriptiveness, of how the experience of trench fighting collectively altered the mindset of a whole generation of young men: it is the only work I know of which displays the intensity and desperation of the war in its full magnitude.

While Ernst Jünger's nonfiction masterwork is often neglected, Remarque's novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" is given to virtually every high school and college student in the Western world today. Why? The answer lies in the systematic nature of our public education, and what it aims to accomplish. There is no "conspiracy theory" of "suppression" as some crackpots say, obviously, but one must recognize that there are problems. Our educational system is so set piece that it often destroys the independent thinking it claims to instill, a fact which becomes apparent to anyone who spends a long period of time immersed in it. "Storm of Steel" is not being put-down today, even though its author was restricted after World War II, but there is an interesting phenomenon of quiet surrounding it. Not silence, but quiet. The book is published as a Penguin Classic, so no one can say that it's being "actively campaigned against," but it is curious to note which works are oft talked about, and which are quietly passed over.

One of Jünger's key points in writing and revising "Storm of Steel" was to show how war was not in fact the ultimate evil, but just another state of being, one which for him, thankfully, stripped away the weakening trappings of a bourgeois existence and tempered the soul into something more acutely aware of its own existence. Some may see this as a problem, but in later editions, such as Jünger's 1961 final edition of "Storm of Steel" (the same edition that Michael Hofmann translated for Penguin Classics), the message was simplified and toned down even more, in the end simply endeavoring to describe war as a generally tolerable occurrence which is to be observed and described. This was Jünger's great commentary, his statement to the world. For Remarque however, war destroyed everything and made life pointless by removing its "sweetness"; it was an all consuming inhuman monster to be avoided at all costs and stopped at no matter the price, because anything had to be better than the terrible, dreadful, hideous monster of war. Incidentally, this same "avoid war at any cost" mindset is what led to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the latter part of the 1930's and caused all of the farces that that position entailed, such as the Munich Agreement, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the re-occupation of the Rhineland.

Because they concurred with Remarque's position in "All Quiet on the Western Front" and felt that war was "too terrible to risk for anything," the Western powers threw away a perfect opportunity to stop Hitler before he reached the tipping point and destroyed millions of lives. Taken into consideration, out of the positions expressed in Jünger's memoir and in Remarque's novel, which has done more harm to the human race over the past ninety years? This question and concepts like it are easily answerable and discernible, but of course, it's a sacrilege to many of the "analysts" (such as Jean-Paul Sartre, who displayed his position on Jünger with the simple statement, "I hate him") who have subsequently examined the man's work; God knows why. Such perceptions are likewise what made Jünger the black mark on German literature for many, when he should have been held up as a beacon of achievement, genius, and yes, independent conclusions, regardless of his perceived political leanings. I wonder sometimes.

Well, with respect to the book itself, it often becomes a question of availability. If students and the like are not informed about "Storm of Steel," they will not come to read it themselves. Jünger is recognized in Europe; he is the recipient of awards in Germany and has been depicted in a series of stamps there as well (he also drew a once considerable following in France), but he is often passed over in the United States. Whatever anyone thinks of his life and views, one must admit that he is a legitimate author and a worthy penner of broadly relevant classics. Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," while it does have its good points, as well as a right place and right time to be taught, is often advertised to everyone as the end-all, be-all of writing that pertains to World War I, to the detriment of many other contemporary authors' work on the subject. Some of the aforementioned work is excellent, some of it mediocre, but because in its later versions it focused on the war and the war alone, "Storm of Steel" is undoubtedly its crown jewel. It should be treated as such so that people can make up their own minds, as was its author's final intention.

In short, "Storm of Steel" must be fully read to be appreciated, and fully respected to be made worthwhile. It is without question the greatest personal work of the First World War, and is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of the situation of the trench soldier. It should be recommended to anyone with an interest in history, and should be read by anyone who has already read or must read "All Quiet on the Western Front" and the like, so that they may attain a complete understanding of what really happened, by someone who actually was "in the thick of it" for a long period of time. "All Quiet on the Western Front" is a fine novel, but if one wishes to comprehend World War I with a good amount of historicity, "Storm of Steel" is the true choice. As Jünger writes in "Storm of Steel" during the "Guillemont" chapter, "Habent sua fata libelli et balli"; "Books and bullets have their own destinies."

Storm of Steel is abeautifully written - even lyrical - memoir of the Great War. Ernst Junger was a young German soldier who, like many men his age, was anxious to test himself through the crucible of combat. While many soldiers enlisted out of patriotism, soldiers often had internal motivations, those that Shakespeare expresses so well in Henry V. Junger's account depicts the savage intensity of trench warfare: artillery bombardments, raids through the opne hell of "no man's land," murderous machine-gun fire and the mud and stench of life in the trenches. Incredibly, unlike millions of others, Junger survived the war, became a writer, then was estranged from Hitler's Germany, his works only becoming popular again in the postwar era. He died in 1998, at the age of 103. This book is a new translation of a classic memoir of infantry combat.

This was one of the first books written to depict combat in the First World War, and the author was much hailed at the time. He lived on throught WW2 and later, and only died in 1998 at the age of 102. This is apparently his most famous book (though he was quite prolific) and it apparently had a lasting effect on German society and political thinking.

The strange thing about all of this, of course, is that the book is only about fighting, and has *no* overt or over-arching politics in it at all. There's absolutely no context for the book whatsoever: the author doesn't even bother to mention the entrance of the United States into the war, for instance, and only briefly refers to the Eastern Front. There's nothing about his life prior to the war, and the story abruptly ends with the author receiving the Pour le Merite two months before Germany's surrender.

What the book is, then, is a harrowing account of combat in the First World War from the point of view of a common soldier who was promoted from the ranks to the rank of an officer, but never rose past company command. He fights continuously throughout the book, except for the passages where he's either wounded and in the hospital, or on furlough or in reserve. He was wounded an astounding 14 times, leaving out what the author calls "trifles" such as grazes and spent bullets, and wound up with 20 scars. It's an extraordinary tale, to say the least.

I do have a few problems with the translation, however, and that's the sole reason that this book didn't get five stars. Translator Hoffman is apparently British, though one wonders if that's his native tongue, to be frank. At one point he refers to "specialism" when he clearly (from context) means "specialty," in another passage he calls some soldiers "cookers." He uses words not commonly seen in books ("tilth") and occasionally his grammar is clumsy. Also, while the book as written provides no context, the author refers to things that he clearly expects the reader to understand. In a couple of instances that I caught, one involving Junger and his soldiers urinating into the jacket of a water-cooled machinegun, the other a reference to the Langemarck volunteers, the average reader of today wouldn't understand what the author was referring to. I understood the references, but the next reader might not.

Given that this is not the most scintillating translation in the world, it's still an amazing story, and well worth the time of almost anyone. I highly recommend it.

This book is a classic memoir of a First World War German platoon leader in the 111th Division, written in 1920. The only real criticism is lack of any maps, which makes it difficult to identify many of the small villages mentioned in the text. Junger survived on the Western Front from early 1915 to late 1918; he was wounded seven times. Junger was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Pour le Merit. The descriptions of trench warfare are first-rate. There is good human-level detail: drunken behavior, fear, courage, stupidity. The mighty German war machine does not always look so invincible through Junger's eyes. Junger thought highly of the British, but not the French. He doesn't question the reasons for the war, but accepts the result. Throughout the book, Junger's fanatical tone is evident and readers should be aware of Junger's later involvement with the Nazi movement.

"Storm of Steel" is a hard read, but a very important book. I read it in the 1929 translation which was a little archaic in places especially when compared to the very forthright way in which war memoirs have been written in more recent times. It is also tough going because Ernst Junger does not spare his readers in any way. You get the full horror of WWI as experienced in the trenches, day after day and month after month. Junger is blunt and honest. He is a soldier with a job to do and he tells you how he does it. He respects the enemy, has honest observations on the quality of higher command decisions and generally doesn't pull any punches. He was an extremely lucky man to have survived the entire war, with narrow escapes and frequent injury. He was extremely brave and was awarded Germany's highest military medal the Pour le Merite (The Blue Max). And at times he reflects tellingly about the horror of industrial scale warfare and the suffering wrought on the young men of all nations. He does not pretend that war is some kind of boy's own adventure and conveys it in all its dimensions - the courage and the camaraderie, the slaughter and the waste. Read this book if you want to understand how it really was.

This book really comes from a different perspective than mostwar novels. It is written by a man who actually felt his experiencesmade him stronger, rather than destroyed him. Alot of people today go on about how pointless war, citing WW1 as the best example, is. I always find this slightly patronising towards those who actually fought, and it makes me cringe. I have got the impression that many of the few surviving veterans do not share this perspective. Although their experiences were terrible, if they had thought it was pointless, they would have dropped their guns and deserted en masse. They actually stayed because, for all they endured, they felt a sense of duty and nationhood, and a feeling of pride at what they came through. This feeling is, rightly or wrongly, largely portrayed as a bad thing today. I think, out of respect, rather than patronising their memories and suggesting that we know better, people today should pay more heed to the reasons our grandfathers and great grandfathers endured what they did. This book provides a brilliant individual perspective on the feelings of patriotism and duty that all the belligerent societies were instilled with as part of their upbringing. Ernst Juenger was obviously an incredibly strong character. He counted 20 puncture wounds in his body at the war's end, was awarded the Pour Le Merite and Iron Cross, and died only 2 years ago aged 103. Whether you would jump into a trench and fight people yourself if called to is irrelevant, and whether you would share his obvious feelings of duty and pride is too. Respect should be paid to these sentiments, which are often rubbished by people today, but were commonly expressed by the men on all sides. Their ideals, whether you agree with them or not, helped them endure what they did, and serve as an inspiration to us all. READ THE BOOK!

This is a good translation. But something that the scholarly community needs to create is a variorum edition of Storm of Steel. Junger revised Storm of Steel throughout his life, tinkering with it in revisions both major and minor. His first versions were more political, with more focus on the bloodthirsty aspects of German nationalism and how battle "enoble the soul," etc. In time Junger eliminated many of these jingoistic aspects until he created the version we know today. To create and publish a variorum edition of all the versions of Storm of Steel would be a major undertaking but a worthy one: although Junger wrote novels and essays, Storm of Steel is the book that most people will associate with his name. But if you don't have Storm of Steel, buy and read it.

This is the english version of Jünger's "In Stahlgewittern" masterpiece, and the translation doesn't make the impact of this sublime description of World War I any less profound... This will always to me be the definite first hand depiction of both the horrors and heroics of war, i.e. war in the "old fashioned way"... Jünger, being one of the most decorated German soldiers, lived to be 102 years old, and wrote several undying masterpieces, but "The Storm of Steel" remain the benchmark in his truly awesome body of work. This man deserves much more credit and exposure than has been the case for the last 50 years!

This is a classic in my opinion. It is a very thoughtful and informative view of World War 1 through a German soldiers eyes. As far as I am concerned there needs to be more known through the eyes of our opponents.

From a little research I learned there were several different editions of this book that were different. The early editions were more raw and visceral. This was tamped down in my opinion. I would like to get my hands on an early edition and read the raw vision of the war to end all wars.

Although this is a translation the author comes across as a very good writer. I enjoyed the metaphors and word usage a lot. I have not read a lot about the first war but learned much from this book. It has peaked my interest to read more. And listen to the Dan Carling Hardcore History extravaganza on the great war.

"The Storm of Steel" in the WW1 memoires of lieutenant Ernst
Junger, holder of the order "Pour Le Merite". He discusses
his campaigns in the war, and daily life in the trenches. It
is sort of a strange book, in which he constantly alternates
between extremely chauvinistic and liberal internationalist
opinions. The nazi party tried recruiting him because of the
book, but later gave him a dishonorable discharge for being
a hippie. Politics aside, there is some lurid commentary on
artillery barrages directed at the outhouse.

The closest you can get to virtual reality in WWI. Prepare to spend nearly 280 pages wading through oceans of blood, columns of severed limbs, and piles of corpses. One of the best accounts of the First World War from the perspective of a German infantry soldier (quickly turned into an officer) who served in the midst of the unrelenting chaos of the Western Front during nearly four years of the conflict. Excellent detail of this existence is given such as the necessity of cleaning rifles after a gas attack, the diet, and the feelings during actual battle, the words convey better visualizations than any documentary on television can. Juenger (not Junger) earned the Pour le Merite (Blue Max) as only a lieutenant and by reading this accurate account you will know why.

Ernst Junger was there for the duration. He was wounded sixteen times, he lost his brother. He experienced the trench war in all its hellish glory. That's the difference between Storm of Steel and other WWI memoires like Farewll to All That, Memoires of an Infantry Officer, No News from the Western Front, etc: Junger is not anti-war; he loved it! Do not expect some dreaming idealist though. Junger was a harsh realist. Nothing is to horrifying for him to tell (and believe me - there are a lot of horrifying detail!). He took part in the major combats on the western front, so we get a rare first hand glimpse of the war, The style is vivd, yet sober. He comes across as a Prussian gentleman, not cruel, but he does what he has to do to survive.
Junger later became one of the finest authors of the twentieth century. He is sadly unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world, in much due to his refusal to distance himself from Hitler (he did not embrace nazism though either). He lived an interesting life; he stopped doing LSD when he turned seventy, and he wrote a major treaty on the role of bugs in heraldry. More of his work deserves to be recognized.

At first I thought this book was going to turn out to be one of those books that were written at a different time that just couldnt have a style to keep readers this day and age interested. I was wrong. Junger has a style all his own and you will feel has if you are the one standing in his boots through all the epic battles and hardships. You can almost see the mortor shells landing around him with all the carnage that goes with them. You will feel happy when he triumphs, and sad when men are there one minute and gone forever the next. This book will only get better the further you get into and the ending I will admit put a tear to my eye, this man deserved everything he earned and more. His final battle is one you will not be able to put down. I found my self reading paragraphs two and even three times over again convincing my self that my eyes were not playing tricks on me. This book is a must have for anyone who is even mildly interested in combat novels.

This book was practically impossible to find for many years, which is remarkable, given its high quality. It is an extraordinary account of personal combat experience from World War I, written by a truly heroic young soldier who was awarded the highest honor for outstanding valour, the Pour le Merite, or Blue Max.
The author, Ernst Juenger, was also a gifted writer who created an incredibly vivid and gripping account of his experiences. The only memoir that deserves to be considered its peer is Erwin Rommel's memoirs of his service as a young officer in World War I , published in English as Infantry Attacks. Rommel also won the Blue Max.
Unlike Rommel's book, which reads like a primer for fighting effectively as an infantry officer, "The Storm of Steel" incorporates an almost philosophical endorsement of the heroic life and its values. This sounds positive, but Juenger vividly portrays what a heroic life is really about: slaughtering other human beings, callousness, incredible courage, disregard for one's own life. In practice, a troubling collection of proficiencies and character traits.
The culture that produced such a cool and talented soldier was also the culture that tragically curdled into the Nazi nightmare. No reader will have the answer to how the two phenemona are connected; no reader should avoid posing the question.

Ernst Junger has given us one of the finest WWI documents known to man. His words written with such an eloquence as to make them seem as if they were wrapped in moistened silk. The manner in which he tells of the 4 years that shaped his century long life is something to marvel at in and of itself. Some of the feelings that he puts forth to us are an utter vision of a harrowed soul in a war tattered body wounded 11 times throughout the Great War. To see the war through the steely eyes of the young stormtrooper Ernst Junger is to look out past the rim of your coal scuttle helmet, through the barbed wire, past the endless shell holes and mud, past the crosses which bury the dead,through the mud and fleas and rats and bullets and gas and shells and steel into the heart and spirit of an indomitable and unconquerable soul which embodies and encompasses every fiber of the being that is Ernst Junger. Written in an 19th century style which makes the heart bleed from hunger of memory, Junger reveals all, and places his own cross into the mud of Flanders forever as a testimony to the war to end all wars. He shows us from out of the abyss, what it is like to be crucified. And he is forever proud with limitless respect for his enemies of the war that broke his pride.

Ernst Jünger describes the carnage of World War I in a cold, frightened language and introduced himself with a big bang to German Literature.He died in 1998 103 years old. Everything he writes is real, has happened to him. Compare the remakable, controversial Jünger with "All Quiet On The Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque, another "true book" about war. You'll find differences, but most of all you find similarities between these different authors.

This is an excellent document of the experiences that molded young Germans into the non-Nazi right wing. The descriptions of the experience of battle are not as abstract as those of "Battle as Inner Experience", published by EJ in the mid-20's, but they give an excellent concrete insight into the types of situations that created the beliefs of the individual as insignificant in face of the "Idea" (Junger's word for what he fought for). The beliefs in the necessity of self sacrifice and discipline, essential to that side of the German right that did not descend into psychopathy, clearly develop out of the experiences detailed within, and also are seen in germ within the work itself. Reading the book will not only change your ideas of the nature and necessity of war, but will also introduce you to basic concepts that would eventually develop over Junger's long career (since his death, almost all of Junger's books have gone out of print, at least in the English-speaking world. This makes it extremely difficult to locate anything by one of the twentieth century's foremost authors).

Ernst Jünger describes the carnage of World War I in a cold, frightened language and introduced himself with a big bang to German Literature.He died in 1998 103 years old. Everything he writes is real, has happened to him. Compare the remakable, controversial Jünger with "All Quiet On The Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque, another "true book" about war. You'll find differences, but most of all you find similarities between these different authors.

I have recommended this book as the First World War's "Forgotten Soldier". It is a bit more chivalrous and not as personal as Sajer's work but I feel that being originally published immediatley after the war that is expected. Many compare it to "All Quiet on the Western Front", but if that is looking at the war thru a scope this book is viewing it in 3D color. 90% is battle account and the other 10% is a bit of personal insight on the war. I loved how Junger portrayed his Fusiliers as the transition generation from horse riding warriors to the inevitable trench rat looking up at the occasional French biplane dropping grenades. Great read and may explain more about a war that seems to really be forgotten in US history.

Discover Ernst Juenger! Before you read Remarque's more famous "All Quiet on the Western Front" begin with Juenger's "Storm of Steel". The difference in perspective and the first hand account from a genuine German hero is a must read for the student or scholar of WWI. "Storm of Steel is based upon the personal diaries and experiences of Juenger as an officer in the 73rd Hannover Fussiliers. He was awarded Imperial Germany's highest decorations for valour in the face of the enemy and was the last living holder of the famous "Pour le Merite". His style and prose is classic literature at its best. Once finished, the reader will actively seek out other works of Juenger who is relatively unknown in the English speaking world. Read both "Storm of Steel" and Remarque's more famous work. Finish them off with chapters 1914-1918 in Guenther Grass's newest work "My Century". You'll get a great feel for who Ernst Juenger was. You won't be disappointed in anyway.
Juenger was 103 when he died in 1998. He almost lived in three centurys, and two millenia. A noble feat for a remarkable man. The the twentieth century was his.

I found this book to be repetitive. The introduction mentions this. However, war is repetitive and monotonous, especially the trench warfare of World War I. In that respect, the book is spot on.
This book reads like a war diary, but that does not make it any less horrific and spectacular. Because it is repetitive I would recommend spending a lot of time with this book. Put it down and take a break if you must. But give it your full attention. It deserves it.

I picked up the book thinking it was about WWII, but I was not disappointed. I too, as another reviewer stated, liked the book "The Forgotten Soldier" better which is a WWII book. However I was totally impressed with Ernst Junger. What I liked best about this book was his 'never surrender - never say die' spirit. How a man could go through the living hell which he did and keep such a positive outlook is the most amazing aspect of the whole book. The ONLY drawback about the book is the lack of maps and dates. It's hard to follow where the action is and what year he is talking about. Also, I wish he had spoken a little bit about where he was when Germany surrended. If anyone knows of a website to learn more about Ernst Junger please let me know.

Ernst Jünger, estimated as one of the most famous german wrighters of the 20th century has in fact provided a masterpiece with this book. It shows in an excellent way the spirit of this time, when soldiers went off to war very enthusiastically and were soon cast back to a reality where death ruled. Jünger describes a new kind of warfare, bearing a lot of terror, extinction and mass destruction. In an often criticised cold and unpassioned style the author shows his ideas of real heroism by overcoming ones fear amidst the most horrid circumstances. Jünger always shows his enemies as people whom he was to kill because he was a soldier - like he stated himself he regarded them with fairness and respect and not with hatred. This book is worth to be read over and over again.

Do not expect any emotion from Junger in 'Storm Of Steel' because there is none. It is a bluntly honest description of the First World War. This book does not condone the War, nor does it approve of it. Rather, it seeks to establish an unbiased account of what war was like from one man's point of view. It is not an anti-war novel.

Of course Junger's amazing description may cause emotion in the modern reader, but I felt no particular attachment to Junger. I was just overwhelmed by it all.

Buy this book, it is an mind-blowing read.

Ernst Junger wrote this book telling what he lived in the Great War. He describes it with full passion and impressing style, making you feel like you are being barraged in the the trenches or you are in the middle of an assault. It is interesting to know that, apart from being one of the most important German writers in this century, Junger was awarded with the last "Pour le merite", the Germany's highest medal for valour in action, given in that war. I was strongly suggested by a friend to read this book. I have not been disappointed.

"Storm of Steel" is a memoir written by a young man who was very proud of his accomplishments as a warrior. He wrote beautifully and told his story very well. However, "Storm of Steel" ultimately fails as a memoir because it is dishonest and self-serving. Like many writers of war memoirs, Junger distorted his experiences to fit into his reader's expectations of what a war story should be. Like many of the Victorian "Boys Own Adventure Stories" which undoubtedly Junger was raised on, "Storm of Steel" mythologizes the war experience. Modern warfare is distorted into a glorious but dangerous game where manliness and martial virtue are rewarded. These were lies when writers like G.A. Henty extolled them and even greater distortions when combat veterans like Junger repeated them. However, there will always be vicarious thrill seekers who will eagerly buy into these lies.

Fortunately, there are many well written Great War memoirs that are honest and valuable. From the French perspective alone, they are wonderful books like Maurice Genevoix's "'Neath Verdun", Paul Lintier's "My .75" and Gabriel Chevaullier's "Fear". Finally, if you are interested in the subject of Great War memoirs, check out Jean Norton Cru's masterpiece "War Books".

As other reviews say it is a classic . Two things set it apart in my mind from other war memoirs: firstly the level of detail of action is unsurpassed. Secondly , Jungers implicit cult of the warrior. He was an honourable soldier but he appears to have reveled in the adventure of war, in fact idealized it. Such attitudes had implications for the next generation of young Germans.

Ernst Junger is far too easy to pigeon hole, especially as Hitler preferred him to All Quiet on the Western Front, even after Junger risked his life publicly refusing to support National Socialism. Maybe we must cheat, and recall Junger's near collapse, decades later, near the Duaomont ossuary at Verdun next to Mitterand, and admission that much of his upbringing had been fatally distorted, making war seem too friendly?

Karl Marlantes' elegant introduction, in my case courtesy of The NY Review of Books article, admirably reaches out for Junger as a person not unlike Marlantes' fellow Marines in I Corps. He uses "war lover" rather differently from S. L. A. Marshall's seminal study of US infantry (incidentally inventing the fire team) - even in our post everything culture, some few otherwise admirable people adapt well to modern war, thriving without capture by the horror and despair so nearly universal in recent war memoirs, and perhaps resembling Marlantes' comrade Vancouver or Canada. Very tall, strong, rugged and casually brave, even leaving Canada to join the Marines in Vietnam - even if you hate the war you can admire a deeply human, even humane person who chooses to be a warrior and thrives without resembling a stereotype. Who freely gave his life for his buddies and also for a cause. Lest we forget, Communist Vietnam is a deeply corrupt police state which largely betrayed the PAVN soldiers. The Sorrow of War, perhaps the best Communist side war memoir ever, escaped the memory hole of censors only because corrupt Comminist officials were bribed by hawkers selling pirated copies to tourists near Saigon.

I confess - too many years ago, I did not appreciate (perhaps even register) the vivid descriptions of landscapes, small unit attacks in hellish bombardments bedecked with unburied corpses, let alone his loving character sketches, dialog and even jokes. The lander we might call the Joes. Meeting a youngster drafted out of a seminary and dumped into the Siegfried line, Junger suddenly imagines how his friends' wry, stoic but still passionately striving conversation might sound callous or even sociopathic (my word, not Junger's).

So long ago, a German side memoir without funereal music was mostly seeing events from the other side of No Man's Land. Perhaps prompted by this new edition and the introduction, A third or fourth reading let me see a vivid person who recalled Tristram Shandy in the trenches.

Found myself imagining a Siegfried Sassoon, before disillusion and perhaps illness sent him to Dr Rivers' clinic for shell shocked poets - the youngster who won the Military Medal at the Somme, the last man standing in a captured German trench, reading a pocket book in the sun - meeting Junger in one of those dreamlike ceasefires between the trenches.

Junger's conclusion, circa 1920, is passionate, romantic German nationalist, a heartfelt paean (original sense, genre) to his comrades, explains why they neither fought nor died nor survived in vain.

It fits perfectly with his memoir, but may also prefigure the infinitely sad speech by the mountains of human bones commingled at Verdun, as the EU revisited the hell that helped motivate what seemed a deeply successful, ever closer union that might make another European war unimaginable.

So millennials, yet another treaty might draw America where last time we sat and watched Britain and France go to war over Poland. This time, Poland is a mostly vibrant democracy and a cynical Russian yearly radios in the clear an invasion plan including first use of h-bombs against Warsaw.

Our brilliant young idealists in uniform probably are not as unconflicted or pre-programmed for war as Junger's or even Sassoon's. But we are already sending an armored brigade to the Baltics.

God help us, and perhaps help us see more clearly via Marlantes and Junger.

ERNST JUNGER. "STORM OF STEEL (IN STAHLGEWITTERN)". LONDON:PENGUIN BOOKS. 2004. xxiv +289 pp. translated by Michael Hoffmann
ERNST JUNGER who died at age 102 wrote this book of his soldier's experiences in the German army from 1914 to 1918 based upon his wartime diaries. During his lifetime he revised and rewrote it numerous times to take advantage of the tastes of changes in his audiences. He writes as a warrior thrilled by the excitement of battle. He began as an underage soldier of fortune by joining the French Foreign Legion and then after deserting, was able to return to Germany to enlist immediately after Germany's mobilization in August 1914. He served through the war rising to officer ranks to command a storm trooper squad in many of the major battles on the Western Front. Wounded more than fourteen times and hospitalized but never reluctant about returning to battle, he writes in graphic terms of trench warfare in World War I. He takes great pride in writing of soldiering especially German.
JUNGER wrote his first edition of `Storm of Steel' in the early 1920's for a German audience of dispirited former German soldiers and militarists who were depressed by Germany's defeat in 1918 and by the humiliating (to them) terms of the Peace Treaty which forced Germany to bear full responsibility for the start of the War. While the rest of the world was mourning the ` lost generation' of young men killed in the war Junger spoke of the valour, honour and pride Germans should have in having fought valiantly against overwhelming odds. This was a book to make his audience and himself feel proud of their record as soldiers. Like Adolf Hitler who admired Junger, the writer felt the German defeat was as a result of the mistakes of politicians not the military. Junger openly spoke of his dislike of the democratic Wiemar government that followed Germany's defeat and agreed with Hitler that Germany needed a strong fascist type government to make Germany strong again. The main aim of the book is to create a hero figure of the author himself
While other post World War I writers with war experience such as Robert Graves wrote about the `pointless wastefulness of battle' Junger wrote in praise of the honour and manliness of war and of the German soldier including himself. It is no surprise that Junger became an icon for the Nazis Party and wrote articles for its propaganda machinery.
This is not to say that the book is not an enjoyable read given its vivid descriptions of life in the trenches and despite its lack of criticism of the war. Junger is clearly pro warrior,if not pro war, expressing the height of exhilaration when shooting an unsuspecting group of enemy as `game'. The visual images used by Junger give the reader the sense of being there with him on the battlefield as he shows us the trenches, the dugouts, the bombardments and the never ending results. His repeated theme is that soldiers are just doing their duty and doing their best of an unpleasant job. Junger never apologizes for his service, his courage, his sense of duty or his forthright action under fire.
This book stands in marked contrast to "All Quiet on the Western Front" written by his fellow German, Eric Maria Remarque and which deplored the futile nature of war. Of course most Germans criticized that writer because of his lack of a substantial war record and of course because he was a Jew.
For Junger the war was an exciting and exhilarating challenge to his manliness where his `eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum' Each foray into enemy lines raised the level of excitement for the author. Even death can not dull the excitement and it is described in clinical terms throughout the book-`his skull was smashed by a mortar bomb' . Junger's soldiers are like `Tigers' launching themselves against the enemy . War to Junger is a way of men testing their mettle and "interrupting the monotony of trench life. There's nothing worse for a soldier than boredom" . Junger's descriptions glamorize war and death when he describes the " smell of corpses oozed" from a building. War is a test of man's strength and resolve as Junger "threatens his men to use their last energy" . War and soldiering is placed on a pedestal and becomes sacred. "By the light of a flare, I saw steel helmet by steel helmet, blade by glinting blade; and I was overcome by a feeling of invulnerability. We might be crushed but surely we could not be conquered" . War could not involve emotions at least for the enemy. A ration party of British were shot point blank because it was " hardly possible to take prisoners in this inferno and how could we have brought them back through the barrage?"
Junger is a warrior writing about warriors and during a war " no soldier should be permitted to say the word `peace" . According to Junger even Nature accepted War for it was "pleasantly intact and yet the war had given it a suggestion of heroism and melancholy; its almost excessive blooming was even more radiant and narcotic than usual" . The author seems oblivious to thoughts of dying and suffering for the voices of those crying for help " were like the noise that frogs make in the grass after a rainstorm" .
But man, the soldier must prove himself through battle and when battle comes for Junger ` it was precisely an engagement like this that I'd been dreaming of during the longeurs of positional warfare" . "It took pluck to hold your head up when the bullets were pinging around" .The invincibility of the German soldier was "unstoppable" and "it was as though nothing could hurt them anymore" . The blood lust was up and the soldier who saw " a bloody mist in front of his eyes as he attacks doesn't want prisoners; he wants to kill" . The soldier in Junger's mind has absolution for whatever he does as "the state relieves us of our responsibility" . Above all the German soldier is never defeated for " everyone knew we would no longer win but we would stand firm" . This is a book of war experience downplaying the suffering of war in favour of exalting comradeship and praising the fallen for their help in regenerating the nation .
The detached and unemotional way in which Junger comments on the death around him fits the character of a man who in later years roamed the globe amassing a 40,000 Beatle and Insect collection. Above all the author is confident in his superiority over others and his status as a member of the master race. During the Second World War he was back in the army he loved so much and assigned to Paris which he had never seen during the previous war. There he lived in a grand hotel and when dining on lobster, while others starved, he wrote in his diary " In such times to eat and to eat well, gives one a sensation of power" .Is there any dispute to the opinion that this book is an ego-document, "a testimony to the author's search for his identity as a writer and as a man"?
Throughout his life and the revisions of his book Junger remained unapologetic for his views especially those of a strident nationalist. In the edition translated by Hoffmann we are spared the jingoistic final line of previous editions "Germany lives and shall never go under!".

I have the soft cover Penguin Classics edition of Storm of Steel. When I opened the package the cover separated from the spine of the book. I have read to page 12 and pages are already coming apart due to the cheep glue that was used to glue the spine of the book. It is a brand new book. I am not abusing it, it is just falling apart! The story seems fine, but I doubt that I will be able to finish it before the book completely falls apart.

This is not a knock on the story, it is a coment on how the book was made.

The translator of this edition, Michael Hofmann, goes to great lengths to distance himself from Basil Creighton's 1929 translation, quoting verbatim passages from Creighton's version which Hofmann feels are inaccurate. Since I don't read German, I can't comment on the accuracy of either translation. I can tell you that Hofmann appears to have rendered a verbatim translation laced with run-on sentences, multiple independent clauses, mixed-up word sequences, and obscure British-English words. Here's an example: "In total darkness, if the French flares happened not to be lighting us up, we had to stick to the heels of the man in front with somnambulistic confidence if we weren't to lose ourselves altogether, and spent [sic] hours traipsing around the labyrinthine network of trenches." Suffice to say this is not an artful translation. I found no evidence of "war-glorifying" or "neo-Nazi" ideology in the book. Rather, it was difficult to read and boring. Jünger appears to have reprinted his war diary (boredom punctuated by terror), while Hofmann has given us a verbatim rendering. Placing this book in the same category as Graves, Sassoon, Remarque, et al. is preposterous. This book might be of interest to the researcher or devotee of WWI German infantry, but I found little to recommend it to the general reader of military history.