Review of 'The Storm of Steel : From the Diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western Front' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
One of the great literary works of the first World War. It was privately published in 1920 only shortly after the armistice, but was revised many times. This version is a 2003 English translation by Michael Hoffman based on the final 1961 edition. The author, Ernst Jünger, was the youngest recipient of the Pour le Merité and was a celebrity in Germany until his death in 1998. The book is a relentless non-fiction account of mostly front-line WWI warfare based on the author's diary. It is graphic and grinding. Praised by many on the right and the left (e.g. Joseph Goebbels ["Grauenerregend in seiner realistischen Größe" - horrifying in its realistic greatness] and André Gide ["le plus beau livre de guerre que j'ai lu" - the most beautiful book of war I have read]), the work is not anti-war; the author describes it as a noble adventure, and in the …
One of the great literary works of the first World War. It was privately published in 1920 only shortly after the armistice, but was revised many times. This version is a 2003 English translation by Michael Hoffman based on the final 1961 edition. The author, Ernst Jünger, was the youngest recipient of the Pour le Merité and was a celebrity in Germany until his death in 1998. The book is a relentless non-fiction account of mostly front-line WWI warfare based on the author's diary. It is graphic and grinding. Praised by many on the right and the left (e.g. Joseph Goebbels ["Grauenerregend in seiner realistischen Größe" - horrifying in its realistic greatness] and André Gide ["le plus beau livre de guerre que j'ai lu" - the most beautiful book of war I have read]), the work is not anti-war; the author describes it as a noble adventure, and in the preface to the 1929 English edition he explicitly says as much.
