The most incredible thing about this war memoir is the humanity that comes across despite Junger's rather matter-of-fact delivery or the horrors of what he and his fellow soldiers went through. Highly recommended for a realistic and surprising portrayal of German troops in World War I. ( )

One of the best books on WWI I have ever read. It truly spoils me when I try to read the rest of that era about the Great War. ( )

This Howard Fertig edition, which is a 1929 translation of the 1920 German edition-- the first-- of Junger's most famous book, is radically different from the recent Penguin edition, which is a translation of his final edition, written some 50 years later. This version ends with an angry "Germany lives and Germany will never go under!" and coasts the entire way on a much angrier, much more-disbelieving attitude than the final edition. This book was written by a man in his early twenties who had suddenly found his chosen profession-- professional soldiering-- torn out form underneath him by inglorious defeat. The final edition is much more sensitive, much more regretfull-- it was written by a much older man. If you have any questions about the differences between this edition and the recent Penguin translation, please read the foreword to the Penguin. Its translator does an excellent job of explaining the differences. Not only are the translators entirely different people, but the content is vastly different-- there are enormous passages missing in each, and the whole has been rewritten in the final edition with an aim to entirely change the tone. Junger rewrote this book constantly throughout his life, and it is fair to say that his final version was materially different from the original. They express entirely different ideas about the war. ( )

This book is the opposite of All Quiet on the Western Front. I do not say that lightly: this book is the reverse of that one, the mirror image, the answer to a call-- or, if publication dates are taken into consideration, the call for the answer. But in saying that I suggest that they influenced one another. Storm of Steel was certainly popular enough to be known by anyone writing about World War One during the interwar years, but it is its own thing: it is culled from journals, concerned with facts and details. It is not a novel. It is a war account written by a master diarist. It is also one long and exhausting catalog of bloodshed.
The only book which I've recently read which seems to match this excess of blood was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Both in that book and in this, violence is brought out in detail time after time, an unending roster of deaths and mutilations, until reading becomes an exhausting effort. In both cases it is to make a point.
Storm of Steel is a coming-of-age story: it is the transformation of a civilian boy into a professional soldier and leader of men. Junger is insane, a kind of noble berserker, to modern eyes: he was a hero, however, regardless of perspective. The emotional climax of the book comes in the chapters where he discusses his mindless assault on retreating British positions. He barely remembers some of the action, so enveloped was he in a kind of bloodlust; other moments, however, he falls to his knees weeping at the common bravery of his bedraggled men.
This book proves that the professional soldier is a human being. It's an answer to anyone who might argue that war destroys humanity; Junger, though a consummate warrior driven by patriotism and a desire for glory, is not a relic of an outdated era and not a monster of an imaginary future. He is a modern soldier, a professional above all else, sickened at the sight of blood but yet able to bear it when his duty is required. I found it altogether more honest and realistic a portrayal than All Quiet on the Western Front. It isn't out to tell a tale or to change a mind. It is out to record, for history, an experience. It is a bald photograph to Remarque's stylized portrait. It's a diary of violence. ( )

2575 The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western Front, by Ernst Junger (read 29 Jan 1994) This book was first published din English in 1929, it being a translation from a diary kept by a German officer from 1915 to 1918. The author was born in 1895, entered the German Army at 19, and was wounded twenty times--but lived. It is boring in the early part--just telling of the awfulness of the war. The account of the time in 1918 is quite exciting and well-told. His leaves are covered in a sentence--I would have liked a more balanced account of his life. But I'm sure, from the way he sounds, when Hitler came along the author was cheering him on. He really isn't a very nice guy, though maybe he is just franker than the usual soldier accounts I am used to reading. ( )