Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)

Published shortly after the war s end, Storm of Steel was a worldwide bestseller and can now be rediscovered through Michael Hofmann s brilliant new translation.

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.


The best memoir of WWI   July 11, 2004
isala (Fairbanks, Alaska,, US)
43 out of 46 found this review helpful

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.


World War I from the eyes of a German Officer and Hero   December 17, 1999
Daniel G. Cole (Boise, Idaho, USA)
25 out of 27 found this review helpful

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.


During War A Soldier Should Never Mention the Word yPeacey   July 22, 2000
seydlitz89 (Portugal)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

Ernst Juenger'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. Juenger 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 Juenger 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 Juenger 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. Juenger'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.