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Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Jünger (Translator: Michael Hofmann)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Penguin Classics (2004-05-04)
ISBN: 0142437905
EAN: 9780142437902
Dewy Decimal #: 940.4144092
Paperback: 320 pages
Release Date: 2004-05-04
SKU: 08100133
Condition: Like New As issued n
Comments: Paperback. Like new condition with no markings and no creases to spine or cover. Very slight wear to cover. Near fine copy.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but—more importantly—as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure. 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.
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Customer Reviews
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On Battle as an Outer Experience
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-01-05
Storm of Steel is a superlative book, and well deserving of the praise that it's received. Despite past censorship, I think ignorance of Ernst Jünger's memoir is no longer attributable to a political or ideological agenda, but to a widespread American neglect of World War One itself. I was easily able to find three copies of Storm of Steel at my local independent bookstore, but they were placed on the single shelf dedicated to the Great War--directly next to two entire sections of World War Two books. I find a similar or even more lopsided ratio at every new and used bookstore I visit. If Jünger isn't a household name, illiteracy and cultural amnesia are likelier culprits than a vast, institutionalized conspiracy.
Memory is an elusive thing. Reading Storm of Steel, I was reminded of an ironic line from Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." The truth of the moment is not always the truth of recollection. What makes Storm of Steel unique is that it's ostensibly the truth of the moment; it was written from Jünger's diaries and first published in 1920, and thus possesses a vividness and immediacy that surpass later accounts of the war. And yet, though an ungainly and temporally unmediated work, Storm of Steel is no less constructed than the WWI novels and memoirs that followed it years later; there have been eight different published versions, after all. (We shouldn't forget, as translator Michael Hofmann does in his introduction, that Henri Barbusse was not the only major WWI author to publish prior to or at the same time as Jünger. The American author John Dos Passos had published not just one, but two WWI novels by 1921.)
Jünger excised experiences from before, after, and during the war (he published On Battle as an Inner Experience two years later). This single-minded focus on the physical realities of war rather than its prolonged psychological effects has undergirded the accusations that Storm of Steel glorifies conflict. Bloodlust, nobility, courage, camaraderie, boredom, elation, terror: all are present within Storm of Steel's pages, but they are at the service of a carefully crafted persona. It's no coincidence that the book ends with the news that Jünger has been awarded the Pour le Mérite. Even Hofmann in his introduction refers to Jünger as "aloof and solipsistic."
Simply taken at face value, Storm of Steel is enthralling and viscerally profound. It's the best account I've read of what it was like to be a soldier on the Western Front during WWI. On that basis alone, I highly recommend it.
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Welcome to Total War
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-12-30
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.
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World War I -- From The Trenches As It Was
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-09-15
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
For most people who only know World War I from their high school days when they did a book review on "All Quiet On The Western Front" this book is required reading. Against the spate of anti-war books by those who saw limited service and little combat, Ernst Juenger's book is truly authentic. He fought for his nation to win, and it was not until the Ludendorf offensive that he participated in during the Spring of 1918 was stopped (in his opinion, due to German artillery blocking the infantry's advance), that the author came to feel that Germany might lose the war. After all, at that time Romania, Serbia and Russia had been defeated, Italy was in disarray, the French relatively inactive, and the Americans had not yet arrived in strength. And it must be remembered that Germany always possessed inferior numbers compared to the allies on the Western front.
The author has been condemned and marginalized in the US for his unabashed nationalism by the American leftist academic and political elite to the point that he is almost unknown in the English-speaking world. Juenger did his duty willingly and with enthusiam for four long years in combat on the Western front during World War I, and his refusal to condemn war has made him anathema to the Western literary world. Even though Juenger was not a Nazi and resisted Hitler's siren songs, his love for his country was enough to have his work censored through silence.
The reader should carefully read the review by the Washington Post writer given above. Tellingly he states his personal viewpoint, "Like many people, I have absolutely no love for the martial spirit, detest all forms of nationalism, and feel queasy at the sight of blood." Hopefully the ER personnel attending to him following an accident will be able to function while seeing blood, but I guess "God Bless America" is out, and the Post reviewer will avoid service in the American Army with whatever excuse. This is the contemporary attitude of the liberal elite and media, formed over the last sixty years of leftist propaganda in our schools, universities, and on television. Juenger would be appalled.
This translation by Hofmann is better than the ones I have read previously, but German speakers are advised to read his works in their original German. Hofmann effectively translates the German idioms that have stumped other translators and the Introduction should be read carefully to understand why a faithful translation is important. This volume is based on Juenger's revised edition (Juenger revised his book at least eight times), most probably the latest one from 1961.
This book was written from Juenger's diary originally in 1920, is not fiction, and is the only extensive work from World War I from a long-serving combat soldier in the war. That alone makes it important, but that it is well-written and describes four major battles from the viewpoint of the soldier in the trenches makes it uniquely invaluable. That it remains almost unknown in the US is a tragedy and due exclusively to the powers that abhor the military and nationalism at any level -- even that for the United States.
The details I leave to the many other reviewers who have more than adequately covered the tragedy and frightfulness of war. Juenger retains a sense of humor throughout, and even suggests that war is the most pronounced experience that a man can undergo. For the doubters, please read Glenn Gray's "The Warriors." In many respects, World War I was probably the most terrifying war in history for the individual infantryman. He lived a terrible existence in mud and squalor, subject to death at any moment from the ever-present artillery fire, and his survival depended more on chance than on his own skills. To some degree that changed in World War II and in subsequent wars where individual skills played an increasingly larger part in determining a soldier's survival.
In short, BUY & READ this book. Don't accept passively what you are told to believe by the media, your teachers and professors. Juenger is well worth the read and you may actually learn something about lives of soldiers in World War I. Juenger is certainly an Alpha-male type, but his true story is as important as those written by anti-war fiction writers and those with political agendas.
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Graphic Memoir of WWI
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-07-23
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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All Noisy on the Western Front
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-06-11
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
a straight-forward soldier's book written by a man who went through the whole war in the front lines - and survived! pleasingly free of the political whining and hand-wringing the saturates so many of the accounts written by 'our side' about this bloody and pointless conflict. the narrative touches on all aspects of the military experience of a member of the p.b.i. (poor bloody infantry) and can serve for those on any side or army in this meat grinder of a war. i've been reading a couple of books a week on military history for about 50 years and rate this book in the top three personal accounts - a truly excellent work.
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