Ernst Jünger’s memoir is, on the surface, a straightforward narrative of the author’s personal involvement in four years of brutal combat in the First World War. As a German field officer, Jünger is wounded multiple times on the front and witnesses a level of carnage inconceivable by the standards of previous wars.

The level of detail with which he describes the war is extraordinary. One of the most striking elements of the book is the matter-of-fact tone with which the action of war is recorded. In contrast to what is probably the most famous memoir of World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, Storm of Steel is not an antiwar narrative. Though Jünger repeatedly states that the mayhem of war is nightmarish and unimaginably horrific, he does so without passing judgment and seemingly without questioning the German cause or the justification for war in general. On the surface at least, his attitude is that of the good soldier who sees warfare as a legitimate human activity or at least a necessary evil.

At times he even seems to revel in the violence. Jünger comes across in his memoir as an effective and remarkably enduring soldier. He is wounded again and again but survives to tell his story. Jünger succeeds in escaping death over and over, against all odds. Many combat veterans, in any war, are disinclined to talk about their experiences in battle. The recollections are too painful, and probably most men who have been through combat have experienced some degree of what is now known as PTSD—Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. 

Jünger is exceptional in his willingness to share every detail of his war story. Moreover, he does so in a way that suggests, perhaps paradoxically, that he has somehow come away from it with a positive impression. This is true in spite of his unsparing descriptions of the terrors of the battlefield and the effects, both physical and psychological, which such a level of organized violence has upon the participants—as well as on the innocent bystanders, the civilians whose homes and livelihoods are destroyed simply because they are in the way of the enormous armies ranged against each other in the uninvited conflict.

Though Jünger was evidently a brilliant man with a phenomenal memory of events (supported by the diary he describes himself keeping), he does not show any awareness of or interest in either the issues that have caused the war or the overall strategy his own side is carrying out in order to facilitate victory. This is emblematic of the fact that the ordinary soldier, and even the lower-ranking officers in the field, are not concerned with these higher-level facts. The overwhelming majority of participants in war never see the big picture. This inescapable truth is faithfully portrayed in Jünger’s account. The larger movements of the armies on the front are not talked about; Jünger only seems cognizant of what is happening in his own immediate sphere, disconnected as it may be from equally significant events elsewhere.

There is, understandably, even less awareness on his part of events in other theaters of the war, such as the Eastern Front. It is as if nothing is taking place beyond the immediate clash of battle Jünger personally witnesses in France and Belgium. Nor is there any mention of the fact that in 1917, the Americans entered the war on the side of the British and French. Nor is there mention that in the same year Russia withdrew from the fighting as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution. It is almost as if Jünger regards the fighting in...