My 2025 deep dive into all things WWI now comes to an end with the mother-lode, the original war memoir, published before all the others soon after the end of the war in 1920. It’s frequently listed as an essential WWI read alongside the British memoirs of Sassoon and Graves and the more well known, but later German war memoir, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. If there’s a Folio Society edition of a book, I’d much rather read that than a mass market hardback or paperback. There’s a visceral pleasure in a beautifully bound volume with heavy high-quality paper. Second-hand Folio books are widely available on eBay and are often unread. I think many people buy them just to put on their shelves. My Dad certainly did! I found a copy the Folio edition of Storm of Steel at a very reasonable price. it’s missing its slipcase, but otherwise in immaculate condition. Jünger revised the book continually, and I gather than my copy is a modern translation of a 1930s revision. There’s an interesting but badly written introduction by the translator, who spends several paragraphs disparaging a previous English translation, and doesn’t really approve of Jünger.

Ernst Jünger is an interesting character. He lived to the remarkable age of 102, only passing away in 1998 having seen pretty much all of the 20th century. An arch conservative, anti-materialist, and anti-liberal, he believed that life was given value by suffering and pain, and was very much an adherent of Nietzsche’s “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” He relished war, and served again in WWII as an army Captain, although in the decidedly cushier role as an occupier in Paris. To his credit though, he wasn’t a fan of the Nazis and was a peripheral player in the 1944 plot to murder Hitler. He survived because apparently Hilter ordered that he not be touched. He lived out the second half of the 20th century as a literally icon, most surprisingly in France of all places.

The book was written from the diary Jünger kept during his service in WWI, from 1915 through to the end of the war in 1918. He initially served as a private, but then re-enlisted as an officer and ended the war as a Leftenant. He fought in several major battles, including the Somme, Passchendaele, Cambrai, and German spring offensive of 1918. The narrative is closely observed and gives a real sense of the sights, sounds, and smells of the war. After reading several other WWI battle memoirs, it’s notable how both British and German accounts agree that real horror of WWI was the incessant heavy bombardment. Hugely destructive, but also psychologically intense because of the noise and physical impact of the explosions and the complete random nature of death. Jünger relates endless casualties, often from the most horrific wounds. He himself is seriously injured multiple times including experiencing a bullet entering and leaving his torso with comparatively minor effect! At the end of the war he counts 20 different puncture scars on his body. He must have had an the constitution of a Keith Richards to then live to 103, and that’s without including his later experiments with psychedelic drugs - and yes that’s Jünger not Richards. Maybe he was right about things not killing him making him stronger? But it’s not all simply sitting out artillery bombardments, there are also several very well written battles scenes where he comes face to face with his British enemy. I must admit that I found myself rather cross with the way he sythes through the tommies at times and I found myself hoping that he would get another bullet through the chest before he killed too many more. It’s all very exiting hand-to-hand stuff though. Towards the end of the book he realises the war is lost and becomes a little despondent. There’s a notable scene when he finds a recently abandoned british officers’ bunker full of food and equipment, the likes of which he hasn’t seen for years. He realises that the allies have an overwhelming material advantage, and no amount of heroism can prevail against fresh fit troops, tanks and aircraft in their hundreds, and unlimited artillery ammunition.

Storm of Steel is quite different from every other WWI memoir I’ve read. All the others are anti-war to a greater or lesser extent. Even when they accept that the cause is just, they still feel the price is not worth paying. Jünger in contrast sees war as a way of life, a natural phenomena, and quite a normal state of affairs. He likes being a soldier and relishes the physical and mental challenges it brings. He never questions its rights or wrongs; he is a simple nationalist, who feels it is his duty to fight for his country whatever the ultimate reasons for the war might be. There’s a also a almost total lack of any autobiographical background. He mentions his family, only because his brother serves with him at times and his father because he encourages him to reenlist as an officer. But his home leaves are not described, he simply goes away and in the next sentence he’s back with his company. We never hear about his life before or after the war, or any hopes or ambitions for what he might do once it ends. In this way he comes across as a rather one dimensional war making machine rather than a rounded character. The only glimpse we get of another side of Jünger are the loving depictions of nature away from the front lines. I suppose its value is that it shines a light on an alternative mindset from the sensitive pacifism of Remarque, and one that many of the soldiers on both sides must have had. It’s too easy to imagine that most of the participants in war are unwilling souls caught up in an unavoidable maelstrom conjured by evil generals and politicians, when there is so much evidence that a sizable proportion of the soldiery actively and enthusiastically take part.

In summary I don’t think it’s as good a book as All Quiet or the Sassoon or Graves memoirs. It all comes across as a bit “boys own”, and Jünger himself as a rather glib and unserious character. The battle scenes are terrific though, and it was certainly an easy to read page turner.