50 pages • 1 hour read
Ernst JungerStorm of Steel
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1920A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “From Bazancourt to Hattonchâtel”
Jünger and a few others from his regiment are sent to Recouvrence, another French town, for a training course. Here, in a reprieve from the war, Jünger and his fellow soldiers revert to their school-boy ways, drinking and carousing late each evening: “When the various units trickled back from their respective watering-holes in the early hours, the little chalk village houses were treated to the unfamiliar sight of student high jinks” (16-17).
In the afternoons and evenings they enjoy leisurely classes. Although Jünger makes several lasting friendships, he also fears losing his comrades to war: “In mid-February, we of the 73rd felt consternation to hear of heavy losses taken by the regiment at Perthes, and felt desperate to be so far from our comrades at the time” (18). In March, following an exam, Jünger is sent back to his unit, which is then shipped to Belgium. There the soldiers enjoy another small reprieve from the war:
Before long, all of us had struck up our various friendships and relationships, and on our afternoons off we could be seen striding through the countryside, making for this or that farmstead, to take a seat in a sparkling clean kitchen round one of the low stoves, on whose round tops a big pot of coffee was kept going (20).
In April, the regiment arrives in Prény. After 10 days in Prény, they march twenty miles to Hattonchâtel:“All indications were that we would be fighting in the morning” (22). Jünger has nightmares of a skull, to which a fellow soldier replies that he hopes it was a French skull.
Chapter 2 Analysis
The second chapter reads as a reprieve from the war. Jünger, because he was a student before volunteering, is chosen to go to a training course, where he and the other soldiers revert to pranks and heavy drinking. Jünger speaks of several friends he makes—Tebbe, the Steinforth brothers, Clement—but he also tells where each of them later dies, showing that even in the reprieve there will come a reckoning.
Jünger also mentions homesickness, yet he has not mentioned friends, family, or even where he is from. He says he hears of “heavy losses” (18) to his regiment and feels desperate to be with them. Later, Jünger says that near the French-German border, he and his fellow soldiers feel comfort simply crossing into Germany. Both of these instances show a loyalty and devotion to his regiment and to Germany. They show the type of nationality and pride that the German army carries with it.
In Belgium, his regiment receives a reprieve as well. But Jünger mentions men picking off lice, an ugliness in contrast with the countryside. Jünger is saying that the countryside of Belgium—a country under German control—is beautiful, but the Germans carry vermin with them. He also mentions that the civilian population invites them to dinner, will not allow them to pay for food, and constantly has coffee ready for them. Although Jünger says that the population is very friendly, what he is describing is that of how the conquered treat the conquerors.
