Storm of Steel had an amazing analogy for what being shelled is like: "Imagine you are securely tied to a post, being menaced by a man swinging a heavy hammer. Now the hammer has been taken back over his head, ready to be swung, now it's cleaving through the air towards you, on the point of touching your skull, then it's struck the post, and the splinters are flying"
Exactly, it mostly literally just describes what happens, often without much comment! Like describing a view, or what happens to someone who gets wounded etc. Only rarely does he mentions comments from himself like "Making me see this prisoner made me think 'What a pity to shoot at such people'".
He spend 3 Years like this. I know he made "vacations" from the front, but he was 50 to 75% of his Time in a trench or in his hideout waiting for a shell to hit him.
One of the most fascinating part of the books is during the Kaiserschlact, when he talks about taking a break after taking a several trenches, and then ‘By popular requests, we continued the advance.’
My favorite part is when they're walking into a bombardment, and one of the newer guys says something along the lines of, "That Lieutenant isn't afraid of anything!" and someone informs him, "That Lieutenant knows what's what. If there's one headed for us, he's the first one to take cover."
Loved this book. I don’t see how people think this is a pro-war book. It’s just a born warrior describing his time throughout one of the worlds most deadliest conflict. Doesn’t sugarcoat it or push a nations agenda. Describes death and carnage as if you were right beside him on the battlefield.
@@THEBIGGAME683Not exactly glorifies war. There are plenty of sections concerning the horror. It does kind of celebrate his personal formative experience of war. It is war as a personal experience and I found the overall outlook to be similar to that of Australian Frederic Manning's "The Middle Parts of Fortune". Cause is irrelevent, the big picture is irrelevent. The focus is simply what the individual experienced. Morality and purpose don't come into play.
@@THEBIGGAME683War is the steel mill that purifies man of his small inconveniences. It was literally a baptism in fire. It's one of the realest and most metal books...
@@kingkoi6542he even notices that himself near the end when him and some of his veteran comrades are casually discussing the day in the midst of an offensive and he notices a green recruit looking at them just utterly awe struck by the situation they’re in
It's quite telling about our current world order that a video about the slaughter of millions of people in trenches doesn't give "trigger warnings" but a little bit of German illiberal sentiment mixed with anti-British/French propaganda does.
2uyhgf5 I think it's more of a thing with the network that is, I believe, still hosting them. Their network is located in Germany and Jünger is very controversial and could be harmfull for that network.
Err... the warning at the start was about the more graphic images than usual in this episode and the blunt descriptions, not about any of Jünger's sentiment towards the War.
ᅚᅚ I would not describe his book as "anti-british" or "anti-french". He often remarks on bravery of his enemy. There are also passages mentioning his encounter with a french girl, at least in the edition I read.
Most memorable of moments were when he was in the somme offensive and he was prone with some soldiers, among others running to the enemy lines while being machine gunned and artillery exploded. There, among all chaos a rabbit passed the front and the soldiers beside them started shooting at the rabbit and warcrying, it was so absurd he had to burst a laugh or when in Cambrai, it was so cold, but he began feeling hot, under enemy fire, he shouts "NOW THE LIEUTENANT JUNGER TAKES HIS COAT OFF, BEWARE", his unit laughed so hard after the assault that portrayed that experience of war that makes a true man. Everyone should read this awesome book.
In one of the later chapters of Storm of Steel Jünger is wounded and thinks he's dying. Here's what he wrote about that experience: 'It had got me at last. At the same time as feeling I had been hit, I felt the bullet taking away my life. I had felt Death's hand once before, on the road at Mory - but this time his grip was firmer and more determined. As I came down heavily on the bottom of the trench, I was convinced it was all over. Strangely, that moment is one of very few in my life of which I am able to say they were utterly happy. I understood, as in a flash of lightning, the true inner purpose and form of my life. I felt surprise and disbelief that it was to end there and then, but this surprise had something untroubled and almost merry about it. Then I heard the firing grow less, as if I were a stone sinking under the surface of some turbulent water. Where I was going, there was neither war nor enmity.'
@@sigvardbjorkman quite remarkable how far Western man has fallen. The so called "worst students" and even what was quantified as "barely literate farmboys" produced some of the most vibrant and moving writings we have from almost every conflict of the past few hundred years
@@thegadflygang5381 I don't think Ernst Junger would qualify as either a "worst student" or "barely literate". He was German, which means he came from a highly literate nation like Germany
@@VVeltanschauung187 you misunderstand me friend, it was a generalized statement not directly focussed on Mr Junger. I was thinking beyond Germany and on most European stock in general. Some of the most beautiful well thought out letters I have ever read come from random soldiers during the American Civil War. My point was despite being "more educated" in modernity the populace Is notably dumber in everything from math to grammar and lit. For generations men who might not have made it past early schooling somehow managed to grow into provocative and thoughtful adults
@@thegadflygang5381 because we live in the world of overstimulation which prevents any deep thought or struggle. I know it myself being 19 years old guy.
Remarque: spends only two weeks at war, writes a novel about the horrors of war Junger: Fights the war from beginning to end, writes about the excitement and fascination of war.
Some troops were just unbelievably lucky. A.Hitler also survived mostly because of luck(moving from one place in trench into another just moments before it gets hit by artillery, I even heard that one artillery shell landed just before his feet and didn't explode because of malfunction).
Niall Horan The luck of one man is the demise of another. For every soldier who evaded one of those close hits, one or more that were behind him got killed. We are always fascinated by people that survived the entirety of WW1 or WW2 but what about the ones who managed to come through for years only to be hit by a shell or get a deadly infection months or weeks before the end?
Jaroslav Hašek: Joins the Austro-Hungarian army gets decorated, gets captured, changes sides, joins czechoslovak legion, changes opinion, joins communists and red army, loses interests in communism and writes a satirical dark comedy.
After reading Storm of Steel about a year ago, I'm convinced it needs to be added as an additional pairing to school curriculum who usually give "All Quiet in the Western Front" only to read about WW1. Whilst Ernst Junger definitely has a very singular nationalistic view to his experiences in the war. His matter of fact observations of of pure carnage of what he went through, can very well make Storm of Steel a far stronger anti-war novel than All Quiet. It really gets to the core about how artillery just constantly annihilates everyone more than anything else, but also the little things such as boredom, the constant threat of rats consuming everything, and how all the while technology of war keeps advancing. Highlights of his book involve him during the early war playing around with a device in a captured trench he had never seen before only realizing years later that it was a grenade, or how when digging into the trenches he and his men had to dig through corpses trapped from the dirt of arty fire covering them in Verdun, or an especially poignant moment during the Spring Offensive how after killing countless men in the assaults. Junger is about to kill a British officer but the officer pulls out a picture of his own family. Junger decides to spare him and move on and that moment stuck with him years later. It's also clear to anyone who reads Storm of Steel that while Junger may say that the war years were highlights, he's constantly struggling to reconcile his nationalistic viewpoints of the war and excitement with battle itself; with the cold distant ways his friends and homeland is being swept aside through the events of the war. It's an absolutely fascinating alternative depiction of the same events and highly recommended reading that I feel you get what you put in it. You can certainly find the super nationalistic anti-Remarque stuff if you wanted to, but I would say you can equally find a similar amount of basic observation of horrendous wartime conditions that strongly puts forward an anti-war message inadvertent to Junger's actual intent.
Does everything have to be read in the context of being anti-war? Honor, duty, and a sense of adventure are still virtues today though they are no longer much encouraged. The book and man are complex. They are much more interesting than simply being pro or anti war.
Junger is honestly hilarious. Like the way this book was described people don’t mention his super dry sense of humor. Also I think it’s interesting that he also had an enlisted perspective along with an officer’s perspective seeing how he was both
Obviously, Death got tired after trying to take him several times, just said "nah, whatever" somewhere in the middle of the war and forgot about him for another 90 years.
@@eze2576 Its crazy how many times he escaped certain death. Like when he bent to tie his shoe and artillery exploded ahead of him. Or how he was taken out of action from a piece of shrapnel that went through a little hole in the wall past a group of soldiers just to hit his leg, and while he was recovering, his entire platoon was wiped out. Or mortars that landed right between his legs, but was a dud. Its insane. I think it was either luck or some kind of divine intervention.
@@cameron4562 It has to be both. I've found in many war accounts of men talking about having a premonition, a feeling that something isn't right. Louis Barthas mentions the same thing in Poilu, and he too has several occasions where a dud lands at his feet. There's also an occasion when he and another corporal agree to switch lookout times. Last minute, the other corporal changes his mind so they don't do it after all, and as you guessed it, the other corporal gets it.
I grew up on the World War I viewpoint of "Silly, pointless war. Trenches, going over the top, getting mowed down. Battle of the Somme, Battle of Verdun, Gallipoli campaign, poppies, All Quiet on the Western Front. Ernest Hemingway and the rest of the 1920's Paris literary crowd making peace with the recent past." For a military history junkie, the only relief where the struggle seemed to "matter" was the few sea battles fought in the North Sea and the war in the air above the trenches. If you read "Storm of Steel" by Ernst Junger, it's a completely different perspective. Instead of just - "We fought for a silly cause and all our friends died to achieve nothing", Junger sees war as bringing out the best and worst in human beings. It is the ultimate challenge and surviving the storm of steel leaves one cleansed of minor concerns. You see his never ending faith in ultimate victory as the Spring 1918 offensives begin. You also see the Allies of WWII over the horizon as the Germans of Spring 1918 find themselves facing ground strafing aircraft, tanks, and an overwhelming disparity in supplies. "Storm of Steel" is an amazing personal account of life in the trenches, written by a daredevil with a very keen eye for detail. His truth is much more improbable than fiction.
So many people just whinge "well, he wasn't anti-war enough". I don't think they read the book or if they have their just a bit too modern to get. These people are the embodiment of Nietzsche's slave morality. Pearls before swine...
I remember he said that every man has their own way of dealing with the stress of trench warfare and that his way of dealing with it was a mixture of red wine and cognac. What a beast i have nothing but respect for this man so what if he left some stuff out the fact that he survived the somme, arras, ypre, the kaiserschlact etc means he is nothing short of a legend. One of my heros!
I just wanna recommended the documentary ''102 Years in the Heart of Europe: A Portrait of Ernst Jünger'' (You can see it here on youtube) if you wanna hear more from the man, It was made a year before he died.
Here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0Ju5HFoD20U.html Otherwise just search for ''102 Years in the Heart of Europe: A Portrait of Ernst Jünger''' on youtube
Northland Seen it and it's great Ernst Junger's life during both World Wars and after is very interesting, I recommend his work on LSD. It's a new perspective on the drug for research, he was the first to drop acid with it's creator Albert Hoffman.
When you told about the fatal hit on his company I tought you would also talk about his breakdown. I am fascinated about Jünger, both his Kriegstagebuch and the Stahlgewitter. But especially his honesty about just sitting there crying after so many of his man ceased to exist has to be one of the defining parts of his book...next to the quote "I found myself at the most dangerous place imagineable...but also on that of utmost authority". Thank you for not going for the "Jünger glorified war" theme!
Plenty of men survived the Great War and went on to reflect on their memoirs the horror, the carnage, the desperation and the senselessness of it. And then there's this guy.
@@onlinecommentator2616 That does not make him a sociopath. There are many reason one might love war. Look up Sebastian Junger(ironically unrelated) "why veterans might miss war"
Storm Of Steel is also unintentionally hilarious in parts. When he talks about stopping to watch shrapnel fall or his lackadaisical attitude towards his close encounters with death or injury is amusing
Glorifying war is something that most Europeans are taught to avoid doing for various reasons. It is only logical for a show based in Germany with a very large European audience to qualify such content. Unfortunate but logical.
@Pyro Bob Perhaps you will unterstand him more, when you not only read Storm of Steel but "The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios", "Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918", "On Pain" and "Storm" too. In fact this war books are his early works and he was a militant nihilist and expressionist at that time. He's not glorifying the war but the front warrior as a new "figure", who is like an Übermensch forged in the fire of a new terrefic world, rising from the ruins of the old world. There is vision of Jünger (and others like his brother Friedrich Georg Jünger, Ernst von Salomon, Gottfried Benn and other frontsoldiers) that this warriors will crush the weak and decadent bourgeois state to establish a new hierarchy. It's not national socialism but more pure new nationalism and nietzscheanism with a spartan ideology, many former german front soldiers & freikorps soldiers shared this masculinist views...
Ah yes, the virgin anti-war novel. Nothing says virgin like “war is bad maybe and perhaps we should do less of it”… especially the guy himself was wounded in the war.
I assign my students Jünger's 1922 essay "Feuer" whenever I teach WWI. It's always a hit, and his comments about living at the edge of death, not to mention the romance of machine warfare, are deeply thought-provoking. "We have reached the most advanced line and are seeing the final preparations. We are eager and precise, for we sense a pressure to be active, to fill the time, to escape from ourselves. Time, which had racked us so in the trenches, a concept that comprehends all conceivable torment, a chain that only death can break. Perhaps in the coming minutes. I know it to be a conscious experience, the quiet flow of an ebbing life into the sea of eternity; I have already stood at times on the border. It is a slow, deep sinking with a ringing in the ear, peaceful and familiar like the sound of Easter bells at home. One should avoid such ponderings, such a readiness to pounce upon mysteries that will never be explained. Everything comes in its own time. Head high, let the thoughts scatter to the winds. Die with dignity-that we can do; we can stride into the ominous dark with a warrior’s cunning and bold vitality. Do not be shaken, smile to the last, even if the smile is only a mask to hide from yourself: that itself is something. A human is incapable of anything greater than mastering oneself in death. Even the immortal gods must envy him that."
@brandovlogs you get to see the way war affects people and the reasons why people would glorify war yes glorifying war is unusual but it does happen. My grandpa fought in ww1 and was injured and always somewhat glorified it. He fought in the beginning of the war when he was only 15 going on 16 and pretended to be older and later he fought in the end of the war when he was almost 20. He did all of this and ended up abandoning his education (he started university at 14 somehow). I want to see into the minds of those who somehow glorify war as they tend to be the exceptions to the rule.
I had read Storm of Stell ( Stahlgewittern in German) last year (english translation by Michael Hofmann). I must say it is a well written memoir. It is one of the best accounts of the Great War. After reading it I had a lot more respect about the German Army and the people of German Empire.
@@Ryuell-gz9to My point is, there’s no interesting storyline to Storm of Steel. Even as a fan of military history, I found it repetitive and tedious towards the end.
^^ ha was just going to say, don't forget Dan Carlin! I was re-listening to blueprint for Armageddon and many Junger quotes came up, then I got 'Storm of Steel' in the mail last week, and now this video notification, so getting my history dose for sure!
Storm of Steel was the first WW1 book I ever read. My Bulgarian Grandpa was the one who recommended it to me when I was 14. Years later, I'm still just as obsessed as I was then.
Thank you for that. I finished Storm of Steel this past fall and was blown away by his account of how the war was a terrible roulette game in heavy favor of the house. There was no rhyme or reason or skill in who died or who lived. Even within the closing pages where he was nearly killed for the last time. Insanity! And in the those last few pages, Junger still managed to conjure the maelstrom of dread and impending death. Despite knowing he lived to be well over 100, I still expected him to be struck down. In some terribly sorrowful moment like Winston in the finality of 1984.
When you’ve clicked on every Great War Vid you’ve ever seen, videos that detail horrific events, BUT this video starts with “Viewer Discretion is Advised” Oh boy
George Orwell once said something along the the lines of ‘No true nationalist has ever made it to the front line and stayed that way’ Clearly he never met Ernst.
I've read this fantastic book a month ago but I still can't stop thinking about it as it is a masterpiece. He describes every situation in a very gruesome way with the most fitting adjectives one can think of.
Storm of Steel gives me a strange solace. I work an awful factory job, and I keep a copy on my phone to read on those really crappy, suicidal days when I just feel like running away. It imbues a stoic perseverance, to stay and fulfill my duty.
For real. In addition to being an outstanding work of military history, the book really changes your perspectives on war, hardship, masculinity, leadership and just life in general tbh lol
The Great War I knew you'd get to it when it was time. His account shook me far more than almost any other. Thanks guys you seriously do incredible work
Such a strange condition we humans possess, how we can acknowledge the barbarity of war and wish for its speedy end in one respect - while in another wish it could go on forever. I made a similar comment, an old flame bought me a copy of "Storm of Steel" around the same time I discovered this channel so naturally I couldn't wait to see if they included his experiences somewhere down the line. I was born 100 years after him, almost to the year - one year before, technically, 94. I think about the life he lived and how in 1918 he occupied his place in the world while in 2018 I occupy my own and hope to have as enriching a life as him.
I loved his book. How he learned to adapt to his situation and how he led his men honorably into combat was truly a great thing in such a horrible war.
Finally the episode on Ernst Jünger. I read the book in my late teens... it is of course important to remain critical with Mr. Jünger but it's still one of the most important books about WW1 IMHO
@@lekal6247 yeah i know was just adding that on, maybe that's what he meant too actually or perhaps he said that cause he doesn't fully agree with junger or maybe both idk
Reading this makes you realise just how much survival was about sheer luck. He was wounded 14 times (shot 7 times, hit by shrapnel the rest and that doesn't include the ricochets and grazing wounds) and made a full recovery while hundreds of men all around him were blown to pieces by shells or killed instantly by headshots. His survivor's guilt must have been unbearable.
I was re-listening to blueprint for Armageddon podcast by Dan Carlin and many Junger quotes came up, then I got 'Storm of Steel' in the mail last week, and now this video notification, so getting my history dose for sure! Thanks Mr. Neidell!!
Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel ranks right up there with Leon Degrelle's WWII memoir Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front. Both are great books written from first person perspective on the front lines during war, and not many writers can do both.
Hello Indy and team. I have been watching since your cross over with alternate history hub and I would like to say that I love your work and efforts to spread knowledge Also could you do a What did Mongolia do during WW1 I can help with what I learned in school and the library if you want some Mongolian sources
Turmunhk Ganba you are more likely to get heard if you support them on Patrion. I won't begrudge if you can't afford it or don't want to it's just a suggestion.
I finished a course on German War literature this Semester, and my prof (I believe he holds a PHD from Berlin) had a heavy emphasis on "A Storm of Steel". I'm happy to see that this episode touched on the validity of Juenger's memoirs, in the sense that it is important to recognize that Juenger published 8 total editions of his memoir, meaning that Juenger certainly had a particular and evolving way he wanted to tell his experiences of the war. The English translator, Michael Hoffmann notes these differences in the translator's foreword of the English version, particularly how Juenger tempered the memoir's blood lust in later versions. Purely in my opinion after reading A Storm of Steel three times, I think it's apparent that Juenger was conflicted with trying to describe the war as it occurred, but also simultaneously injects what could now seen today as 'anti-Remarque' themes of masculinity, honour and the 'positive merits of war' (I hesitate to call these proto-fascist themes outright). All in all, A Storm of Steel is one of THE WWI works that anyone interested in the war should read, but I think you get the most out of it if you read it critically, and maybe while reading or having read Louis Barthas' "Poilu" for a sense of contrast. Also, this was a great biographical episode of Juenger's early life; Juenger's entire life, and the evolution of his literature and beliefs goes through such roller-coaster, that he later ended up being a fan of Arno Schmidt's work!
My favorite part of the book is during the 1918 Spring Offensive when he sees the assault troops. He talks of the young boys with shocks of hair fighting because one called the other a rabbit
YOOOOOOOO I've waited the entire series for this. I think the very first comment I ever made on this channel was "will you guys do a profile on Ernst Junger?" EDIT: Oh, also - the morbid fascination with the dead and maimed as well as the sense of isolation and smallness as a toothless cog in the machine of modern war are two important themes of James Jones' work a generation later, particularly "The Thin Red Line"
The thought amazes me that a man who was 19-23 years old could've been killed so many times, but managed to somehow survive and live on for more than 80 years. It could've all just ended in those 4 years and he'd likely be forgotten right there and then and become a statistic like so many others, but his life had just begun and he only experienced 1/5th of it. Imagine how many people he was going to meet in the next 80 years and how many memories he was going to make, only a slight twist of faith was needed to instantly erase those to be memories and relations from our timeline. Dying young in unfair
I came across this title on a random video of the battle of the Somme. I looked into it and of course found Indy and his crew already having it covered. This is a must have book for not only my collection but for my own personal consumption. Looking forward to reading it this winter by the fire with a Brandy. Or two.
I didn't find Jünger all that warmongering. I expected him to be, but honestly, for each passage that describes the "thrill of the hunt" and so forth, there is a passage that describes his courage failing or some friend being senselessly mutilated or killed out of nowhere with a cold and detailed realistic prose, that does not come away as glorifying war at all. We are not comfortable with the thought, that we as humans could enjoy something as horrible as war. But the truth is that we can and do, back in WWI, back in antiquity, in WWII, in Vietnam... Watch a documentary on the war in Afghanistan like 'Armadillo'. I thought Jünger was simply being brutally honest about all aspects of being at war as a soldier.
I read Storm of Steel last year and looked to see if The Great War had done a episode about Ernst Junger and thanks for doing this! I hope this makes people go and read this book.
Yes Yes all of my yes. Finally a special about Jünger. Thank you very much. I read Storm of Steel in more or less one sitting and the diaries as soon as they came out. Great stuff!
I am a bit puzzled why the German title is not properly translated. in Stahlgewittern is: in thunderstorms of steel where thunderstorms is plural, to me more dramatic than storm of steel.
I seem to recall that Junger states that the greatest level of human experience ever is a couple of stormtroop units- one German and one British in action against one another. I will have to dig the book out and find it. Epic craziness from the last living holder of the Blue Max.
I've read both Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Jünger's Storm of Steel, and both are amazing books. Of course, they are polar opposites as far as their take on war is, but i see that as two sides of the same coin. Although, i have to admit that Jünger's war exploits are way more impressive
Honestly, as someone training and about to finish selection to join the British army, it definitely makes me think and appreciate that type of warfare is behind us. Anyway I love the vids Indie and crew! Keep it up!
I've waited so long and patiently for this episode after requesting it via the comments three years ago. THANK YOU GREAT WAR FOR NOT FORGETTING! Also, the storm is steel is an incredible book to read if you find the great war interesting.
Found a copy of "the storm of steel" in a local secondhand book store. Bought it and really looking forward to reading it when I have time. Thanks for the suggestion.
I found it strange to read the of the jubilance and success of the Spring offensive before it became a road to nowhere. Very powerful description of momentum then stagnation.
I really liked that video. My father gave me that book when I was twelve and really marked me about the horrors of war. But I can also recommend some books written by french soldiers. For example, Maurice Genevoix with "Ceux de 14" (Those of 1914) or Louis Ferdinand Céline "Voyage au bout de la nuit" (Journey to the end of the night). Both depicts really interesting sides of the war. And the story of those writers can be interesting to cover in one of your episodes ! Keep doing these !
Storm of Steel was required reading for a "Soldiering through time" class I took as a grad student. I's a great read. I find "Poilu", written by Louis Barthas as the French answer to Junger.
