Description: The Storm of Steel From the diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western Front by Ernst Jünger Lieutenant, 73rd Hanoverian Fusilier Regiment With an introduction by R. H. Mottram Translated from the original text “In Stahlgewittern” by Basil Creighton This is the July 1929 Third Impression, issued two months after the First English Edition Front cover and spine Further images of this book are shown below Publisher and place of publication Dimensions in inches (to the nearest quarter-inch) London: Chatto & Windus 5 inches wide x 7¾ inches tall Edition Length July 1929 Third Impression [the First English Edition was published in London on 23 May 1929; the second impression followed in June] [xv] + 319 pages Condition of covers Internal condition Original red cloth blocked in gilt on the spine. The covers are rubbed and faded, particularly around the edges, with variation in colour, some light surface scratching and a faint circular stain on the front cover. The spine has faded significantly with total loss of original colour and is quite dull. The spine ends and corners are bumped and slightly frayed, most noticeably at the tail of the spine, where there are some minor splits in the cloth. Finally, there are some indentations along the edges of the boards. There is a previous owner's name (appears to be "A. F. Blackie" or "U. F. Blackie") inscribed in ink on the front free end-paper. The end-papers are browned and discoloured. The text is very clean throughout on tanned paper (more noticeably tanned in the margins), though the previous owner has added a few pencilled comments or marked some passages in pencil in the margin. There is some light scattered foxing. Pages 115 to 118 are chipped along the fore-edge and page 115/116 also has a one-inch tear in the margin (please see the image below). The edge of the text block is grubby and dust-stained, with some spots of foxing, and the bottom edge is not uniformly trimmed, leaving it quite ragged in places. Dust-jacket present? Other comments No The fading to the cloth (particularly the spine) is quite common with the Chatto & Windus Edition but, apart from this and a few minor defects as outlined above, this is a good example of a 1929 Edition. Despite subsequent translations being available, I believe that the original Basil Creighton version to be superior, as Creighton was familiar with both the military terminology employed and had an understanding of actual conditions on the Western Front. Illustrations, maps, etc Contents No illustrations are called for Please see below for details Post & shipping information Payment options The packed weight is approximately 550 grams. Full shipping/postage information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing. Payment options : UK buyers: cheque (in GBP), debit card, credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal International buyers: credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal Full payment information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing. The Storm of Steel Contents Introduction by R. H. Mottram The Author's Preface to the English Edition Orainville From Bazancourt to Hattonchatel Les Eparges Douchy and Monchy Trench Warfare Day by Day The Overture to the Somme Offensive Guillemont At St. Pierre Vaast The Somme Retreat In the Village of Fresnoy Against Indians Langemarck Regnieville Flanders Again The Battle of Cambrai At the Cojeul River The Great Offensive English Gains My Last Storm The Storm of Steel Introduction by R. H. Mottram This book does not pretend to be fiction, and if it provides entertainment it is on account of its sterling honesty. This same quality gives it an even higher value as a document, and it is as such that those will read it who desire to arrive at any conclusion at once profound and useful about the War. Its honesty, however, lends this book a further attraction. The young student of nineteen, who entered the German Army of his own free will, before the War was a year old, and ' stuck it' in spite of twenty wounds and the usual disillusionment that we all experienced, displays the truly adventurous spirit. He is a real schoolboy, childishly delighted with life, forgivably boasting of his drinking capacity. He is no more brutal or insensitive than any other explorer, Arctic or Equatorial. He snipes at English Tommies or French poilus, and naively claims to have hit them, in a spirit of sportsmanship which contains no sting for us because we know the inevitable end. The remarkable thing is that, perhaps on account of youth, perhaps because of German over-training, possibly because of some personal quality, he never seems to see that the end was inevitable. He had no conception of himself as the man of violence, so familiar in Holy Writ or classic story. He must have been astonished to find himself described as a ' Hun.' There was nothing petty or mean about his deliberate destruction of property in the German retreat of 1917. It was part of the game, and there is no word against the similar treatment of East Prussia by the Russians. That was war as he saw it. He had his regrets for friends and comrades slain all round him, aesthetic appreciation of the landscape of the Western Front, on which alone he served, bursts of philosophy which are no worse than most, and very considerable narrative power. Yet none of these qualities helped him to any understanding of what war is, and must be. Right to the end, when, helmetless, his lungs full of blood, he saw the German troops coming up from the support line, holding up their hands and throwing away their arms and equipment, he clings to his ideal of military Germany expressed in the last three pages. Even after that, when writing this book, he seems to imagine that a sort of Nietzschean-Wagnerian atmosphere of heroics translated into terms of gas and tanks can be re-created out of the wreckage of empire. One cannot but respect the sincere, courageous fighter. What, then, does this book prove ? There are in it mistakes of fact due, I think, to the physical effects on his memory of repeated blows from great pieces of metal. There is the necessary limitation of one who was never other than a company officer, and who apparently did not know the very names of the battles into the forefront of which he was thrust. There are statements of things seen or done on battlefields, at moments when neither he nor any one else could be sure of accuracy ; they may be put down as images evoked by the delirium of battle fever. Yet the whole is stamped with truth, and has remained untranslated since its first publication in Germany in 1921. It comes most opportunely now, when there are signs of an attempt to resurrect the God of War, to re-gild his jus-bleached armour, and to clothe in some sort of martial panoply the machinery on which he depends. To discredit such an attempt, nothing could be better than the diary of this high-minded devotee of personal combat. He was no middle-aged civilian, unwillingly taking up arms and finding all his worst preconceptions abundantly fulfilled. He was nearly as good a specimen as ever worshipped Mars, and to what did he come ?—to that unescapable doom that brings to meet violence precisely such resistance as shall cancel and annul it. On this point the strength and finality of the testimony cannot be missed. It is to be hoped that the book will be widely read. R. H. MOTTRAM. The Storm of Steel The Author’s Preface to the English Edition IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history. At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades. I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the war has left with me. At that time, before the battle of the Somme, which opened a new chapter in the history of the war, the struggle had not taken on that grim and mathematical aspect which cast over its landscapes a deeper and deeper gloom. There was more rest for the soldier than in the later years when he was thrown into one murderous battle after another ; and so it is that many of those days come back to my memory now with a light on them that is almost peaceful. In our talks in the trenches, in the dugout, or on the fire-step, we often talked of the ' Tommy'; and, as any genuine soldier will easily understand, we spoke of him very much more respectfully than was commonly the case with the newspapers of those days. There is no one less likely to disparage the lion than the lion-hunter. Indeed, the landscape in which we lived at that time had something about it of primeval Africa, with two mighty forces of nature locked in conflict there. It was only now and again that one caught sight of a brownish-yellow fleeting shadow against the desolate countryside that stretched on and on before one's eyes; or heard, after creeping through the wire at night, a whisper or a cough from a post. The distant sound of transport, a cloud of smoke from a fire hidden from view, fresh chalk spoil thrown out on the tortured ground, the monotonous duel of the guns stretching on from week to month —those were signs that we puzzled over as though they were the runes of a secret book or the spoor of some mighty and unknown beast that came nightly to drink. As time went on, it grew more and more dangerous to lift a corner of the veil that fell like a magic hood over the spectre that was at once so near and so fatally far off. Raids undertaken to get a glimpse of the enemy's lines and some information about what was going on there became less frequent and more exacting as the volume and mass of war material increased. A more and more terrific barrage had to be put down before ten or twenty picked men, armed to the teeth, could make their occasional and exceedingly brief appearances in the opposing trenches. What the survivors brought back with them was the memory of a rapid and frantic glance into Vulcan's white-hot cauldron. Still, there were moments of another kind when the deep discord and the even deeper unity of this landscape came more clearly to one's mind. It was strange, for example, to hear at night the cry of the partridges from the waste fields, or at dawn the careless song of the lark as it rose high above the trenches. Did it not seem then that life itself was speaking out of the confidence of its savage and visionary heart, knowing very well that in its more secret and essential depths it had nothing to fear from even the deadliest of wars, and going its way quite unaffected by the superficial interchange of peace and war ? But then, too, did not this life, ruthless towards its creatures, superior to the pain and pleasure of the individual, looking on with indifference while its passive forces were melted down in the crucible of war, enter very clearly even into the soldier's simple mind ? Many a time, in that quiet interlude after sunset before the first Verey light went up, this message was brought very near to the soul by the song of an outlying post waiting for the night relief. There was a deeper homesickness there than any peace in this world can set at rest. Then the fire-step was manned once more, the relief moved off along the communication trenches, and the brisker rifle-fire of the night-time broke out; the ear was again on stretch to catch the pulse-beat of that other life under arms over there in the darkness. And often the Verey lights went up in dozens and the trench got lively when a patrol had crept up to our wire. To-day there is no secret about what those trenches concealed, and a book such as this may, like a trench-map years after the event, be read with sympathy and interest by the other side. But here not only the blue and red lines of the trenches are shown, but the blood that beat and the life that lay hid in them. Time only strengthens my conviction that it was a good and strenuous life, and that the war, for all its destructiveness, was an incomparable schooling of the heart. The front-line soldier whose foot came down on the earth so grimly and harshly may claim this at least, that it came down cleanly. Warlike achievements are enhanced by the inherent worth of the enemy. Of all the troops who were opposed to the Germans on the great battlefields the English were not only the most formidable but the manliest and the most chivalrous. I rejoice, therefore, to have an opportunity of expressing in time of peace the sincere admiration which I never failed to make clear during the war whenever I came across a wounded man or a prisoner belonging to the British forces. Please note: to avoid opening the book out, with the risk of damaging the spine, some of the pages were slightly raised on the inner edge when being scanned, which has resulted in some blurring to the text and a shadow on the inside edge of the final images. Colour reproduction is shown as accurately as possible but please be aware that some colours are difficult to scan and may result in a slight variation from the colour shown below to the actual colour. In line with eBay guidelines on picture sizes, some of the illustrations may be shown enlarged for greater detail and clarity. There is a previous owner's name (appears to be "A. F. Blackie" or "U. F. Blackie") inscribed in ink on the front free end-paper. The end-papers are browned and discoloured. U.K. buyers: To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the postage figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from postage and packaging. Postage can be combined for multiple purchases. Packed weight of this item : approximately 550 grams Postage and payment options to U.K. addresses: Details of the various postage options can be obtained by selecting the “Postage and payments” option at the head of this listing (above). Payment can be made by: debit card, credit card (Visa or MasterCard, but not Amex), cheque (payable to "G Miller", please), or PayPal. Please contact me with name, address and payment details within seven days of the end of the listing; otherwise I reserve the right to cancel the sale and re-list the item. Finally, this should be an enjoyable experience for both the buyer and seller and I hope you will find me very easy to deal with. If you have a question or query about any aspect (postage, payment, delivery options and so on), please do not hesitate to contact me. International buyers: To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the shipping figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from shipping and handling. Shipping can usually be combined for multiple purchases (to a maximum of 5 kilograms in any one parcel with the exception of Canada, where the limit is 2 kilograms). Packed weight of this item : approximately 550 grams International Shipping options: Details of the postage options to various countries (via Air Mail) can be obtained by selecting the “Postage and payments” option at the head of this listing (above) and then selecting your country of residence from the drop-down list. For destinations not shown or other requirements, please contact me before buying. Due to the extreme length of time now taken for deliveries, surface mail is no longer a viable option and I am unable to offer it even in the case of heavy items. I am afraid that I cannot make any exceptions to this rule. Payment options for international buyers: Payment can be made by: credit card (Visa or MasterCard, but not Amex) or PayPal. 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Prospective international buyers should ensure that they are able to provide credit card details or pay by PayPal within 7 days from the end of the listing (or inform me that they will be sending a cheque in GBP drawn on a major British bank). Thank you. (please note that the book shown is for illustrative purposes only and forms no part of this listing) Book dimensions are given in inches, to the nearest quarter-inch, in the format width x height. Please note that, to differentiate them from soft-covers and paperbacks, modern hardbacks are still invariably described as being ‘cloth’ when they are, in fact, predominantly bound in paper-covered boards pressed to resemble cloth. Fine Books for Fine Minds I value your custom (and my feedback rating) but I am also a bibliophile : I want books to arrive in the same condition in which they were dispatched. For this reason, all books are securely wrapped in tissue and a protective covering and are then posted in a cardboard container. If any book is significantly not as described, I will offer a full refund. Unless the size of the book precludes this, hardback books with a dust-jacket are usually provided with a clear film protective cover, while hardback books without a dust-jacket are usually provided with a rigid clear cover. The Royal Mail, in my experience, offers an excellent service, but things can occasionally go wrong. However, I believe it is my responsibility to guarantee delivery. If any book is lost or damaged in transit, I will offer a full refund. Thank you for looking. Please also view my other listings for a range of interesting books and feel free to contact me if you require any additional information Design and content © Geoffrey Miller
Price: 195 GBP
Location: Flamborough, Bridlington
End Time: 2024-03-14T16:15:05.000Z
Shipping Cost: 26.4 GBP
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Item Specifics
Returns Accepted: Returns Accepted
After receiving the item, your buyer should cancel the purchase within: 30 days
Return policy details: If any book is significantly not as described, I will offer a full refund, including return postage. All books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard container.
Return postage will be paid by: Buyer
Non-Fiction Subject: History & Military
Year Printed: 1929
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Place of Publication: London
Author: Ernst Jünger
Language: English
