jchimpius's review against another edition
5.0
Written by a shock trooper and company commander who had fourteen major wounds, this war story is bloody and exciting. Junger cuts very little out of his account of ww1. Although it appears at some points he is deluded by wounds, ultranationalism, and PTSD he intended this to be a semi philosophical work. I would agree and it has fundamentally changed the way I view the effect that war as an experience has on a person. I look forward to reading his purely philosophical work on war in the future.
edit: I've decided this was deserving of 5 stars not because its a perfect book but because its the best memoirs/ war story I have ever read
edit: I've decided this was deserving of 5 stars not because its a perfect book but because its the best memoirs/ war story I have ever read
letters_to_words's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
tense
fast-paced
3.5
This is one of the most interesting WW1 books I’ve read. It is far from being an emotional read because the narrator (author himself) is a bit detached from the lives lost, but rather focuses on the glory of war. I found it very informative, he writes and explains many war terminology. It was a quick read, didn’t drag, but it’s basically a “daily-life of a German soldier”.
rileysamsa's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Most narratives about the First World War are dishonest: mostly done by people many years after the events, with a political motive to oppose the war and anything that comes of it; but also a perceived ethical obligation to present the war as something they did not enjoy at all. Jünger answers All Quiet on the Western Front 10 years before it was written, by discussing the war how he saw it: violent, brutal, exhilarating, intoxicating, and very human.
Jünger, like most people did and would, revels in the excitement and chaos of war, and is almost addicted to the rush of putting his life on the line daily. In that way, he admits what others are ashamed to: that he is a human being, and sometimes human beings are unreasonable, brutal, savage, and aggressive - yet, none of those things make him, or any of his comrades or enemies, evil.
A vivid and all too real look into why human beings go to war, and why so often they're willing to die for a country.
I genuinely think this is one of the best and most important books ever written.
Jünger, like most people did and would, revels in the excitement and chaos of war, and is almost addicted to the rush of putting his life on the line daily. In that way, he admits what others are ashamed to: that he is a human being, and sometimes human beings are unreasonable, brutal, savage, and aggressive - yet, none of those things make him, or any of his comrades or enemies, evil.
A vivid and all too real look into why human beings go to war, and why so often they're willing to die for a country.
I genuinely think this is one of the best and most important books ever written.
bookishwendy's review against another edition
3.0
This is sort of the antidote to Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, and while both books center on the horrors of trench warfare during WWI as seen through a German Soldier's eyes, the similarities stop there. To be fair, these two books should not really be compared. While Remarque created an emotionally moving novel with an anti-war theme, Storm of Steel is the author's memoir of his lieutenancy on the Western Front. The 3 year memoir covers 1916 to 1918 and much was pulled directly from Junger's diary entries. As such, it is not a novel. Eventually the battle scenes seem to merge into one indistinguishable swirling mass of mustard gas and explosions that it can be a struggle to get through. There is no story arc as such, and the secondary characters pop up only to be killed off in the space of a page. Some are introduced in passing a statistics of the carnage Junger seems to have grown numb to, a terse report of death, as in "Corporal H fell today from a bullet wound from the neck. Junger himself, however, does change rapidly over the course of his journaling, quickly adapting to his minute-to-minute life in the trench. A fresh recruit in the early pages, he soon takes an officer's commission, and by the final offensive doesn't even bother wearing a helmet anymore unless the situation "gets really dicey"( he leads ambushes with his head uncovered).
While the battle images, brutality and climbing body counts will likewise numb the reader before the end of this book, Junger's vivid, cinematic evocation of war is worth it. It's possible to see, in Junger's emotionally distant, hardened narrative voice, how this book has been considered a war-mongering work inspirational to German soldiers of the second World War, but Junger doesn't preach politics, gloss over or romanticize his experience. Stoic as he presents himself, even he admits to breaking down in tears on the field before his men and needing days to recover. That's realism.
While the battle images, brutality and climbing body counts will likewise numb the reader before the end of this book, Junger's vivid, cinematic evocation of war is worth it. It's possible to see, in Junger's emotionally distant, hardened narrative voice, how this book has been considered a war-mongering work inspirational to German soldiers of the second World War, but Junger doesn't preach politics, gloss over or romanticize his experience. Stoic as he presents himself, even he admits to breaking down in tears on the field before his men and needing days to recover. That's realism.