Reading about the atrocities and misery of the 30 years war or Roman conquests feels very distant. It was horrible what people did to each other then, but those were strange people with strange ideas about religion and divine rule. Furthermore, in the zero-sum economy world before capitalism the army was pretty much the only way to go from rags to riches (but most likely die tryin’). World war I is more uncanny. People in early 20th century Western Europe lived in a literate globalized society with steadily growing economies. Yes, you could make a career in the military but no son of a slave could become emperor by serving in the trenches. Even WWII feels more understandable as more of an existential struggle in a bleaker time. Yet in 1914 millions of young men cheerfully went out to kill young men very much like themselves and to die. Few were spared the feverish belligerence in 1914; “All my libido is for Austria-Hungary” Freud declared at the outbreak of WWI. To better understand the psychology of this seeming mass psychosis I have read one of the foremost war diaries/memoirs, Storm of steel.
The book is written by German soldier Ernst Junger who served on the western front from December 1914 until September 1918, almost the entire war. He participated in many of the famous battles of WWI, the battle of the Somme, Cambrai and the German spring offensive of 1918 (after Russia’s defeat, Germany attempted one final offensive before the nation was crippled by the British naval blockade and the arrival of American troops). Between battles Junger spent his time collecting beetles and reading the works of Nietszhe, Schopenhauer and Italian poet Ariosto. He was frequently wounded, writing from his hospital bed after his final war wound:
Leaving out trifles such as ricochets and grazes, I was hit at least fourteen times, these being five bullets, two shell splinters, one shrapnel ball, four hand-grenade splinters and two bullet splinters, which, with entry and exit wounds, left me an even twenty scars.
Junger would work as an entomologist after the war. During the interwar years he was also a public intellectual, espousing militarist and anti-liberal views; he “hated democracy like the plague”. He would also go on to serve in WWII, as an officer in occupied Paris. Based on his WWII diaries he spent his time analyzing his dreams, reading books and hanging out with Parisian intellectuals. He drank and smoked throughout his entire life and experimented with various drugs (he took LSD with Albert Hoffman, twice, and coined the term “psychonaut”). Junger died in 1998, just shy of his 103rd birthday.
Storm of Steel has been accused of/described as glorifying war; even of helping the nazis come to power. In contrast to the more famous All Quiet on the Western front, Storm of Steel was not burned by the nazis but instead praised. Junger was also courted by the nazis and offered a seat in the reichstag. However, he rejected this offer and also forbade nazi press from using his works and left his WWI veteran’s association when its Jewish veterans were kicked out. Yet, he served in the German army during WWII until he came under suspicion after the failed assasination attempt on Hitler in 1944. Junger loathed Hitler and the nazis but did not commit any overt acts of resistance against the regime.
Storm of Steel is not an anti-war book, nor would I say that it glorifies war. The book is written in an objective, detached style and is first and foremost honest. He describes in detail the havoc of trench warfare and the death of his comrades. Here he writes about cleaning out bodies from a dug-out after a direct hit: Catching hold of the limbs that stuck out from the wreckage, we pulled out the dead bodies. One had the head struck off, and the neck on the trunk was like a great sponge of blood. From the arm stumps of another the broken bones projected, and the uniform was saturated by a large wound in the chest. The entrails of the third poured out from a wound in the belly. As we pulled out the last a splintered board caught in the ghastly wound with a hideous noise.
You seldom saw the enemy. In fact, it was not until the Spring offensive of 1918 that he saw large numbers of opposing troops facing each other. Most casualties were due to artillery fire, the eponymous storm of steel. He repeatedly writes about sitting through artillery barrages in dug-outs, cellars or even out in the trenches where there is little you can do to protect yourself. Imagine, sitting in a cellar with gas masks on, communication impossible due to the deafening noise of grenades and shells raining down. All you can do is hope that you do not suffer a direct hit and end up a bloody sponge: The brain links every separate sound of whirring metal with the idea of death, and so the nerves are exposed without protection and without a pause to a sense of the utmost menace.
Even worse, you may be ordered to walk through an artillery barrage so you can be on the frontline of an assault. Even Junger himself broke down crying when his platoon suffered a direct hit from a grenade, instantly killing the majority. He also writes about how the war destroys villages in Belgium and France, sometimes literally grinding them into dust and the suffering and death this entails for the civilians. Junger was friendly with many French/Belgian civilians that he was billeted with, he even received care packages from an elderly Belgian couple: The town was in the first stages of devastation. Things were still for sale in the shops. But the inhabitants had moved to the cellars and the bonds of bourgeois lives had been torn asunder by the constant bombardment. During the nights looters would break into the abandoned houses.
He also writes about the more prosaic discomfort of war. Sleeping in wet shell holes or flooded trenches. Dealing with lice and rats. Germany was under naval blockade by Britain so food was never plentiful and by 1917 and 1918 Germany and its army was starving. In 1918 German offensives were often slowed down because soldiers stopped in enemy trenches to eat the freshly captured food. Nor was it good for German morale to see how well supplied the enemy was.
Junger did not seem to hate his enemy. He realizes his reasons to kill them were as good as their reasons to kill him. In fact, he often praises the ‘bravery’ and ‘manliness’ of the English. He almost seems to treat the war as a game. He seldom has qualms about killing his opponents at a distance. But when he sees their faces he feels remorse. One particular passage that stands out, when Junger looked at a man he had shot: Ahead of it lay my Englishman, a very young lad, who had got the bullet straight through the head. He lay there with a relaxed face. Now it was no longer <<you or me<<. Later I have thought about him often, more and more with the passing years. The state that frees us from responsibility, cannot free us from sorrow, that we must endure. It reaches deep into the dreams.
So far, it may seem surprising that anyone would think that Storm of Steel glorifies war. But even with all the carnage, misery and death Junger truly seems to enjoy the war. When Junger cannot participate in battles due to injuries or other factors he is genuinely disappointed. One often reads that soldiers fight for their comrade that they know rather than their distant/abstract nation. This seems like part of it for Junger, he writes often and with great fondness for his fellow soldiers. On the other hand they are constantly dying or getting injured so very often their description by Junger is also their epitaph. However, Junger also seems to relish the aesthetic of war. He has written about the terror of an artillery barrage but he also writes this: While this hurricane was raging I went along my platoon front. The men were standing, rifle in hand, as though carved in stone, their eyes fixed on the ground in front of them. Now and then by the light of a rocket I saw the gleam of helmet after helmet, bayonet after bayonet, and I was filled with pride at commanding this handful of men that might very likely be pounded into the earth but could not be conquered.
Indeed, his platoon was almost eradicated not long after this “romantic scene”, Junger survived because he was wounded a few days before. Another example, here he writes just before he is to join the battle of the Somme (the first day was the bloodiest day in British military history, more than 19 000 young men killed, ≈0.1 % of British male population), he speaks with somebody who has just returned from the battle: He was the first German soldier I saw in a steel helmet, and he straightaway struck me as a denizen of a new and far harsher world. Sitting next to him in a roadside ditch, I questioned him avidly about the state of the position, and got from him a gray tale of days hunkered in craters, with no outside contact or communications lines, of incessant attacks, fields of corpses and crazy thirst, of the wounded left to die, and more of the same. The impassive features under the rim of the steel helmet and the monotonous voice accompanied by the noise of the battle made a ghostly impression on us. A few days had put their stamp on the runner, who was to escort us into the realm of flame, setting him inexpressibly apart from us.
“If a man falls, he is left to die. No one can help. No one knows if he’ll return alive. Every day we’re attacked, but they won’t get through. Everyone knows this is about life and death.”
Nothing was left in his voice but equanimity, apathy; fire had burned everything else out of it. It’s men like that you need for fighting.
He had me until the last sentence. A man, obviously suffering from PTSD, tells a tale of incomprehensible horror and Junger approves and is eager to himself enter the realm of flame. He believed that war strengthens men and society, even if it comes at a cost (In the 30s he wrote: What doesn't kill me makes me stronger; and what kills me makes me incredibly strong). In the chapter on the Spring Offensive (the chapter is simply called “The great battle”) is a fantastic description of the ecstasy of battle. Late WWI battles start with terrifically intense artillery barrages, the noise of which has an almost narcotic effect. The officers fearlessly stood upright in the barrage excitedly joking while growing increasingly enraged (partly because some of your comrades are inevitably wounded or killed when they stand around like that): During the advance we were gripped by a berserker-like rage. The overpowering desire to kill winged my feet. Rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes.
The terrible will to destroy at the field of battle condensed in our brains and swept them in a blood-dimmed tide. Sobbing and stammering we shouted disconnected words to each other and a non-participating observer could have thought we had been gripped by an overwhelming happiness.
The experience of battle here is literally intoxicating, complete with blackouts, dissociation and feelings of incredible connectedness with fellow soldiers. When critics write that Junger glorified war as a transcendental experience I suspect they were thinking of writings like this. This chapter ends with Junger again getting shot, one bullet in the chest, just missing the heart and one grazing his head (he had not worn a helmet).
When he returned to the front in June 1918 it was clear that Germany had lost the war. He now feels that the war has lost purpose and feels used up. Yet, he still feels that he must continue fighting: Everybody knew we could not win. But we would hold firm. In his final battle he is shot through the lung, blood impeding his breathing and his position overrun by the British, the rational action would be to surrender. He knows the war is lost and his unit has already started to surrender. Yet, he chooses to fight and run back to his own lines. Running at least made breathing easier as it drained blood from his lung. The book ends in September 1918 when Junger, recuperating from his pulmonary injury, receives Germany’s highest military honor Pour le mérite.
His attitude towards the war strikes me as fatalistic. At a few places in the book he writes that it is hard to explain why there is a war. The war almost seems like a natural disaster to Junger. He writes that it is a pity how Belgium is destroyed by the war and that he hopes that God will make sure that Belgium rises again. That Germany and by extension he would have something to do with Belgium’s destruction does not seem to register. A pro-german would perhaps blame France and Britain for the plight of Belgium, Junger, not even that, he does not note any agency in Belgium’s destruction. Furthermore, for all his love of manly chivalrous battle he does regret killing people when he can see his victims. At one point he thinks: A pity thought I, as I looked at him, to have to shoot such a fellow as that. That he does not actually have to shoot such a fellow does not enter his mind.
Storm of Steel gave some understanding for how millions of young men could go to war and stay at war for more than four horrible years. War is one of the most extreme experiences a human can have, there is an attraction in that. I have a hard time to really empathize with and feel Junger’s aesthetic appreciation of war and manliness as well as his fatalistic attitude towards why there would be a war at all. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how an obviously intelligent and open minded person could have such alien views.
N.B: Storm of Steel was published in 1920 but Junger amended the book many times. I have read the final 1961 version and though I have not read the original I suspect he toned down some of the more militaristic and nationalistic elements.