Explanation: Depicted are two books from German veterans of the First World War - All Quiet On The Western Front, from Erich Maria Remarque, a military engineer; and Storm of Steel, from Ernst Junger, a stormtrooper (assault troop).

Unironically, both are fascinating reads - All Quiet On The Western Front is a fiction novel, while Storm of Steel is a memoir. All Quiet On The Western Front was the voice of an entire generation, the ‘lost generation’ of the 1920s, who experienced the horrors of war and could hardly think of a way to exist after having suffered through them. It’s moving and heartbreaking, a story of ordinary boys thrust into a senseless war and ruined by it even as they successfully cling to their humanity; a classic of human emotion and a must-read for every literate person. Most striking to me is a scene about the difficulty of reconnecting with the people you knew in civilian life.

Ernst Junger was a… bizarre character. Yet his experiences related in Storm Of Steel resonated with many. To him, war was senseless, violent, and murdered the best of a generation - but also, in that chaos, he found purpose - ‘an incomparable schooling for the human heart’ he called it, if memory serves. He does not gloss over the terror and arbitrariness of the war - his descriptions of advancing under artillery and machine-gun fire are haunting, and the man was wounded multiple times during the war. Yet to his mind, war was a crucible which improved the men who survived. It would not be incorrect to see in this echoes of the postwar fascism and proto-fascism (you see a similar thinking in Futurism and Italian fascists who served in the Arditi - the WW1 Italian assault troops), though Junger himself, interestingly enough, was an anti-Nazi - on account of seeing Jewish soldiers as his brothers-in-arms. He is, however, a fantastic writer and shows a reaction to war that is often treated only in passing - that of men who genuinely grow fond of its horrors, yet are not sociopaths, but simply immensely damaged men.

All Quiet is the must read, but Storm of Steel is also very good.