This book was practically impossible to find for many years, which is remarkable, given its high quality. It is an extraordinary account of personal combat experience from World War I, written by a truly heroic young soldier who was awarded the highest honor for outstanding valour, the Pour le Merite, or Blue Max.

The author, Ernst Juenger, was also a gifted writer who created an incredibly vivid and gripping account of his experiences. The only memoir that deserves to be considered its peer is Erwin Rommel's memoirs of his service as a young officer in World War I , published in English as Infantry Attacks. Rommel also won the Blue Max.

Unlike Rommel's book, which reads like a primer for fighting effectively as an infantry officer, "The Storm of Steel" incorporates an almost philosophical endorsement of the heroic life and its values. This sounds positive, but Juenger vividly portrays what a heroic life is really about: slaughtering other human beings, callousness, incredible courage, disregard for one's own life. In practice, a troubling collection of proficiencies and character traits.

The culture that produced such a cool and talented soldier was also the culture that tragically curdled into the Nazi nightmare. No reader will have the answer to how the two phenemona are connected; no reader should avoid posing the question.

Ernst Juenger lived a long and interesting life, dying only four or five years ago. He was active on the German right before and after World War I, although he distanced himself from the Nazis, intellectually and otherwise, writing the allegorical On the Marble Cliffs (1939), which can be read as a criticism of totalitarianism. Well into his 40s, he served in the German army during World War II. In his later life, he was increasingly difficult to pin down politically and was widely known for his interest in butterflies.

The Storm of Steel is his memoir of the Great War, first published in 1920, when Juenger was 25. It is an amazing insight into life on the Western Front, in the trenches, from a firsthand, unfictionalized perspective. I agree with the previous reader who suggested reading this in conjunction with Remarque's famous novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. As opposed to that vivid, though fictionalized, account, The Storm of Steel is a very patriotic, nationalistic work (its final words: "Germany lives and Germany shall never go under!"). Juenger describes the war in sometimes exuberant, exhilerated terms. A gas attack during the Somme left everything "covered with a beautiful green patina." An artillery barrage "turned the western horizon into a sea of flowers." The final chapter, and particularly the final several pages, is a stunning literary achievement in its description of the experiences common to his generation and their search to find meaning in the world.

Ernst Jünger, estimated as one of the most famous german wrighters of the 20th century has in fact provided a masterpiece with this book. It shows in an excellent way the spirit of this time, when soldiers went off to war very enthusiastically and were soon cast back to a reality where death ruled. Jünger describes a new kind of warfare, bearing a lot of terror, extinction and mass destruction. In an often criticised cold and unpassioned style the author shows his ideas of real heroism by overcoming ones fear amidst the most horrid circumstances. Jünger always shows his enemies as people whom he was to kill because he was a soldier - like he stated himself he regarded them with fairness and respect and not with hatred. This book is worth to be read over and over again.