Storm of Steel

by Ernst Jünger

Storm of Steel is the memoir of his personal observations and feelings recorded during the WWI. Ernst Jünger volunteered as a private in German army and soon after became an officer. He was wounded during the four years of war more than a dozen times.

Personal experiences, suffering, pain and loss are extremely well described, including what opposing side was going through, that anyone who’s reading the Storm of Steel can easily visualize every scene and raw moment that Ernst Jünger went through and got noted down.

Excerpt from the book

after 4 years of the war Ernst Jünger writes:

The day before my arrival, admittedly, a bomb had gone off just outside the window, which had hurled the master of the home, who had been sleeping in my bed, clear across the room, broken off one bedpost, and riddled the walls. It was, perversely, this circumstance that gave me a feeling of security, because I did at least partly subscribe to the old warrior’s superstition that the safest to be is in a new crater.”

Translation from German to English by Michael Hofmann

P.S. 1924 version of the book was translated to English by Basil Creighton.

I would recommend that Ernst Jünger memoar becomes a must read for future generations, as a summary of combat and horrors of war, of any war fought before and after. – kB

Replica of a WWI trench in Fort George…