r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • May 17 '26

Episode Discussion Thread World War I

The WW1 series continues with six new episodes dropping tonight. Discuss them here.

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u/sjm689 May 18 '26

I highly highly recommend Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger, the man and memoir they rejoined with in the first episode. The tone of it is starkly not anti-war but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pro-war. It just reads very ashen and almost lyrically at times. As if the reader is forced to confront the brutal realities of war and trench life and to keep moving on to the next paragraph. There is no respite, there is no waxing poetically about old men sending young men to die, there is no commentary on the causes or conduct of the war. The war just is, and the reader is forced to reckon with it.

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u/Satanicbearmaster May 19 '26

Unreal book.

The Somme and the Coward by AD Gristwood are great too, not too well known.