War as an Inner Experience

After the war, he published his account in the work that brought him national attention titled In Stahlgewittern-in English, Storm of Steel (1920).2 The book, his most remembered today, received both critical and commercial success at the time and prompted a series of other war memoirs, including the more introspective, philosophical work from which this article borrows a title, War as an Inner Experience (1922).3 These works established Jünger as a writer and thinker amidst the turmoil of the Weimar era leading into Hitler's rule. After the Second World War and through the difficulties of post-war Germany, Jiinger's writing shifted from a previous focus on the experience of war and the influence of technology toward more central themes of understanding and developing personal agency in times of immense external pressures. The question arises-why? A Different Approach Many readers of the Gazette may already have a familiarity with Jünger, but most young people will likely not have had any exposure to his life history or writing through their formal years of education. Thee lassie All Quiet forms a major point in a constellation of works both in literature and popular media presented to students about the nature of war-as chaotic, largely senseless, motivated by misguided principles or values, and ultimately irreversibly damaging to the combatants on both a societal and individual level.