And if it be objected that we belong to a time of crude force our answer is : We stood with our feet in mud and blood, yet our faces were turned to things of exalted worth. And not one of that countless number who fell in our attacks fell for nothing.
Summary
Storm of Steel is the firsthand account of the German officer Ernst’s Junger’s time in the trenches during WW1.
Thoughts
Although I wish he would have, Junger never goes into causes of the war, and therefore never justifies or condemns it. Instead, what makes the book worth reading is it is written by a rare breed, a man that got his time on the front lines in the worst of conditions and never became disenfranchised. In our era where we are inundated with explicitly antiwar books, it is easy to forget that being antiwar used to be a fringe position. This book reads more like the Iliad where the fighting is gory yet glorious. The glory of war is one of the casualties of mechanized conflict. It is hard to see the glory in huddling in mud pits waiting to be blown apart by a mixture of wood and steel that was fired by an unseen artillery’s piece. Yet even as Junger acknowledges this fact, he still finds glory in the brief flashes of bravery of men who refuse to be broken, or perhaps in a trench raid which still has the feel of ancient combat where warriors would go to make a name for themselves.
life has no depth of meaning except when it is pledged for an ideal
Of course, now we cannot read a WW1 book and forget that it was shortly followed by a bigger and even more destructive war. This tinges the above quotation with a dark foreboding. Especially when closely followed by this quotation:
To-day we cannot understand the martyrs who threw themselves into the arena in a transport that lifted them even before their deaths beyond humanity, beyond every phase of pain and fear. Their faith no longer exercises a compelling force. When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country— and the time will come — then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength. For all these great and solemn ideas bloom from a feeling that dwells in the blood and that cannot be forced. In the cold light of reason everything alike is a matter of expedience and sinks to the paltry and mean. It was our luck to live in the invisible rays of a feeling that filled the heart, and of this inestimable treasure we can never be deprived.
With words like this, you would think that his role in the Nazi party would be taken for granted, and it was. At least by the Nazis, it turns out he was offered a seat in parliament by the Nazis both before and after their rise to power, and both times he rejected the offer. He was no Bonhoeffer, but I was surprised to see how opposed to the Nazi party he turned out to be. Aside from the overall tone of the book, its contents are hardly unique anymore. Life in the trenches carried a morbid symmetry, the experiences were similar on both sides of the trench. Names and places change, but the ever-present specter of death doesn’t. For this reason, I wouldn’t put this high on your list unless the grinding, soul crushing, experience of WW1 trench warfare is what you are in the mood for.