Storm of Steel

Storm of Steel, written by Ernst Jünger, is a memoir of World War I first published in German as In Stahlgewittern in 1920. The final revised edition came in 1961 and was translated into English in 1978. The book documents Jünger’s account as a German officer on the Western Front and begins the moment Jünger detrains in France, on December 27, 1914, at the age of 19. As the Introduction says: “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” (vii).

What Jünger’s memoir does offer is firsthand experience of life in wartime Europe as a solider: the battles, the barns used as barracks, the search for food, and—above all—the looming fear of death, whether from a bomb or a bullet. Jünger also recounts the brief rest and recovery periods between the fighting and details the French and Flemish civilians who were forced to house German soldiers.