Ernst Jünger's In Stahlgewittern in historical perspective
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Authors Caswell, James Edward, 1908-
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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/318117 ERNST JUNGERfS IN STAHLGEWITTERN
IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
» James Edward Caswell
A Ihesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT■OF GERMAN
•• ' ' In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of . MASTER OF ARTS
In the Graduate College >
' THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
19 7 1 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR
This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfill ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The Uni versity of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library« '
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APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR
This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:
3 /, /?7 (3 Daviu Jordan Woloshin Associate Professor of German PREFACE
; InvNovember, 1918, the defeated German Armies
returned to a homeland in the throes of civil war. Among
them was a comparatively small group of arch-conservatives.
These young men were destined to have an enormous impact upon the future history of mankind.
These young men shared little in common except a • love for Germany, a hatred for Bolshevism, and a total re jection of the concepts of the Enlightenment. Among them
was a young officer, named Ernst lunger, who was destined
to become the enfant terrible of the conservative movement.
In 1920, he published his first book. In Stahlgewittern, at his own expense. It has since gone through eight editions,
been translated into a dozen languages and sold a half
million copies.
The purpose of this study is threefold: first,
to examine the social, environmental and literary influences
that have helped to form lunger; second, by detailed
study of In Stahlgewittern to determine lunger?s philosophy
and the personality that emerges from the pages of the
book; and, last, to attempt an overall evaluation in the light of events of the past half century in order to determine whether In Stahlgewittern carries a message to man in the year 1970® The bibliographical difficulties in the way of research on Ernst Junger are formidable® With.notable ex ception, what little is written in English is of questionable
value® Junger constantly revises his works® He sometimes
. bought up earlier editions that he no longer approved of
and destroyed them® Many perished in the fires of the
Second World War and some people destroyed their copies
before the arrival of the Allies in 19459 as they feared the consequences of having so pronounced a German nation
alist on their shelves® The only publication in print today is the ten-volume
edition of Ernst Youngers Werke, Klett, 1962® In this
edition. In Stahlgewittern has 319 pages while the 1920 original had ISO pages® The latest.edition repre
sents the mature Junger® It shows the influence of forty years reflection and the traumatic experience of the years
1933 to 1945® With the above thoughts in mind,. the basic text
for this study has been the English translation by Basil
Creighton, London, 1929® ‘ This is a translation of the first commercial edition of In Stahlgewittern, published by Mittler, Berlin, 1924® The English edition of 1929,
therefore, represents Jungerrs thoughts during this early- period of his life® Similar reasoning has led me to use the English edition of Waldchen, London, 1930» Where passages are quoted for style or where there is some other essential need for German, the Klett Edition of 1962 has been reluctantly used*
Most of the research for this paper was done in Germany and in England during the spring of 1970. In Germany, Dr. Hans Peter des Coudres, bibliographer and life long, friend of Ernst lunger, allowed me to use his magnif icent collection of Jungerana. This.famous Ernst lunger
Sammlung now also houses the former Paetel Sammlung. This latter collection was purchased by the Klett Publishing
Company some years ago and is administered by Dr. des Coudres
I talked to many veterans of the First World War in both England and.Germany. In England, an old friend,
Captain Clifford Higgins,■O.B.E., formerly of H.M. Royal
Engineers gave me several days of his time. Captain Higgins served on the Western Front, almost opposite Ernst linger, for over three years.
A rather long account of trench warfare is included as, judging from my own experience, some knowledge of the weapons used and the strategy of the war itself is essential for understanding In Stahlgewittern.
For the.section on weaponry, I am greatly indebted to. the patient staff of the Imperial War Museum in London, where weapons were demonstrated, show cases opened, diagrams drawn, and my naive questions answered without the suspicion of a smileo
The treatment is chronological and largely dictated by the subject matter. Biographical details are given sparingly and, for the most part, consist of items which, to. the best of my knowledge, have not been published elsewhere. TABLE OF CONTENTS
' ■ Page ABSTRACT ® © © ©.© © ©.© © © « © © © © © © © © © 1% .1© INTRODUCTION © © © © © © © © © .© © © © © © © © 1
Ernst Junger© A Thumbnail Sketch © © © © © 2 Background © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © © T II© THE UNIQUE EXPERIENCE OF TRENCH WARFARE © © © © 1/,.
Course of the War © © © © © © © © © © © © © 15 ' Strategy of the First World War ©©©©=© 21 Attrition ©©©©©©a©©©©©©©© 21 The Knockout Blow © © © © © © © © © © © 22 ■ Weaponry ©o©©©©©©© ©©©©©©© 2S III© .THE WAR IN RED INK ©„©»..© ©.©..©»© , 26
War Literature ©©©©©©©©©©©©©«© 30 The First Period ©©©©©©©»©©©© 31 The Second Period © © © © © © © © © © © 34 The Third Period ©©©©©.©©©©©© 34
In Stahlgewittern ©©©©©©©©©©©©© 35 Style ©©©©©©©©©o©©©©©©© 37 War, Death and the Gemeinschaft © © © © 40
What Manner of Man is This? - . 7~ ~ 7~ ~ © » © © © 47 Achtung vor dem Leben (Albert 'Schweitzer] . . «©©©©©©©«© 51 Neo-conservatism ©©©©©©©©©©©. 53 '.-IV,:.. THE FRUITS OF THE PAST AND THE SEEDS OF. THE . . FUTURE ©©©eeotioe ©©©©©©©©©© 5 5
Special Influences © . © © © © . © © © » © © 56 Nietzsche © © © © © © « © © © © © © © © 56 Other Literary Influences »«©».«» 65 Other Factors in Early Junger ..«©©© 67
V© CONCLUSIONS © © © ©• © © © © © © . ©'© © © © © © 70
vii ' ' •' vili TABLE OF CONTENTS— Continued
Page APPENDIX 'A? LITTLE MOTHER’S LETTER . . » a . e 76
APPENDIX B: REVIEW OF IN STAHLGEWITTERN 6 . . . - 78
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... » e = 82 ABSTRACT
A generation nurtured on nineteenth century security and optimism, entered the war. in 1914 as a romantic adventure
This dream was soon shattered* Trench warfare with new and constantly improved weapons took an appalling toll in human life* A war-weary world, in 1916, set itself the goal of permanent peace* This pacific trend was reflected in post war literature* In Stahlgewittern is a solitary exception* lunger sees war as not merely inevitable, but desirable and in keeping with naturers plan* This study shows lunger as a romantic conservatist and intense nationalist with a strong biological bent leading to pantheism* He is, however, still seen as essentially a man of his times whose writing has been in fluenced by a mixture of Nietzsche, Spongier, Goethe and
Hegel in the popular version current during his youth*
. . . In Stahlgewittern, in view of the ghastly history of the past fifty years, is seen by the author as a warning to reconsider our basic concepts of man*s nature * This suggestion may far outweigh the book * s considerable value as an honest, factual history of trench warfare*
- ix ; : - V '' tv v: :;. ; ' : CHAPTER. I
INTRODUCTION
To the harassed, mind, of the later half of the twen tieth century, in which man frequently doubts the long survival of the very planet on which he still continues a precarious existence, the study.of a minor German writerfs reactions to a war so far in the past that few living can recall it clearly may well seem a dubious venture« If one adds that, in spite of his current vogue in Germany,! Ernst Junger is a highly controversial writer, deeply distrusted by most young Germans and practically ignored in the Anglo-
Saxon world, the mystery deepens® . .
In spite of the seemingly unpromising nature of the writer chosen, this student is of the opinion that Junger is
-*-When Ernst Junger celebrated his 75th birthday on March 29, 1970, over one hundred guests gathered at his home in Wilflingen near Ravensburg. They included notables from the literary world of many countries« The French were in the large majority and the Anglo-Saxons conspicuous by their absence. Five of Junger?s books have been translated into English and nineteen into French, With JUngerfs great, ad miration for the British, this is difficult to understand, Junger is publishing a new book in October, 1970, His publishers insist that his last book, Subtil Jagen, 1966, was his greatest success to date, and the reviewers seem to agree. The author of this study could not find a single German newspaper which failed to mention the 75th birthday. The larger papers gave him two or more columns. His literary star is on the rise.
1 ■ ■ 2 a rewarding study as a case history of an intellectual fol-
. lowing a philosophical trend which may be of great signif
icance to mankind in the future, as it has unquestionably
been in the recent past. It is hoped that the following pages will help to substantiate this viewpoint.
Ernst Jxinger° A Thumbnail Sketch A young German officer stood at a window in the
library of his family home in Rehburg near Hanover, and stared moodily at the beeches across the street. It was a
pleasing enough scene and the spacious, old-fashioned house
with its high ceilings and enormous double doors, was the
pleasant country home which successful members of the upper
middle class would, in those far away days, provide for their large families. The well stocked library reflected both the intellectual curiosity and the economic stability
of the German haute bourgeoisie of the period. The date was November 11, 1918, and it is doubtful whether the young officer was aware of the pleasantness of his surroundings. He was brooding upon the war. The defeat
did not particularly disturb him; it was merely nature*s
warning that something was wrong and must be corrected. He
was brooding upon the fact that he still lived while so
many of the men under his command had died. Should he have
■ died with them?^
% o s t of the intimate biographical details mentioned in this study were given to me by Dr. Hans Peter des Gaudres, The young man at the window was slightly built, barely five feet seven inches tall, and weighed some one hundred forty pounds. He had brown eyes and light brown hair, a strong, wide mouth, a high forehead and a long narrow face. His birth in Heidelberg had been an accident.
His parents, his wife,-^ his later associations were all with
Hanover, and it was to Hanover that he felt an intense loyalty. He apparently recognized and approved Bismark$s action in reference to the little kingdom, as he constantly referred to himself as a “Prussian officer.” In fact, even after half a century— -and spending the past twenty years in
Bavaria-— there remains a suggestion of stiffness and a slight military abruptness in his manner. At that moment, he was wearing the uniform of a first lieutenant in the 73rd Hanoverian Fusilier Regiment^ on which 5 was displayed a galaxy of Germany?s highest awards. The
Ernest JiingerTs bibliographer and lifetime friend, in Hamburg, May, 1970® To the best of my knowledge, most of these per" sonal details are unpublished.
3junger married Greta von Jeinsen in 1925. It was a love match. She died of cancer in I960.
Vrhis regiment fought on the side of the British at Gibraltar and at Waterloo. This may account, in part, for Junger*s predilection for the British. The brassard in silver, bearing the word “Gibraltar” is inscribed on the cover of the first edition of In Stahlgewittern, published at the young author's own expense, in Berlin, 1920. This edition is now extremely rare. There is a copy in the Ernst Junger Collection in Hamburg. It is only ISO pages long. ^These decorations include the coveted Pour le Merite, perhaps the world's most exclusive order. Only service record that had earned these decorations included four years of trench warfare on the Western Front ® During these years, he took part in all the major battles« He went into engagement after engagement where losses often exceeded fifty per cent® As a junior officer, and later as a company commander, he crawled with two or three men across no manfs land at night to reconnoiter within a few feet of the enemy posts® He was wounded fourteen times and it was from his last.wound that he was convalescing when we- first met him® The young man$s name was Ernst Junger® As an officer he achieved a standard of excellence attained by few in the history of human combat® One of the great war heroes of modern times, he was, indeed, le Chevalier sans peux et sans reproche® Had Ernst Junger been only a World War hero, his - memory would have been long dimmed, and this paper would never have, been written® His military virtues were only one facet and, it may well be, the least important of this highly talented young man*s intellectual and psychological make-up ®. His urge to the pen was even greater than his urge to the sword® He earned his living for nearly twenty years as a journalist, a military historian, essayist, and writer of a sort of early science fiction, vaguely reminiscent of eleven were awarded to the German infantry during the entire First World War® : ;• ; ; . , . ' ■ ■■■ ■' 5 the late He G® Wells® In 19395 he was again called to the colors and almost immediately decorated anew for saving
wounded men under heavy fire® Strangely enough, but quite
in keeping with his philosophy, his final act as a German officer was the removal of road barriers to facilitate the advance of American tanks (Paetel, 1962, p® 113)»
Almost unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world, he has,
strangely enough, a strong following in France® In Germany, .
competent authorities have expressed diametrically opposed
views on his work® He has never been a popular writer in any
sense of the word, anywhere, and even today he is considered
highly controversial®
The controversy over Ernst Jtinger stems almost .
entirely from his philosophy of war expounded in the four books based upon his diaries® Of these, In Stahlgewittern®
is the most widely read® This book, with its cold-blooded realism, its blow-by-blow account of trench warfare and vivid details from actual experience in the front line, is, for those who can temporarily divest themselves of the
current bias in favor of the dream of universal and eternal peace, one of the best war books ever written® It is a necessary irony of history that one must be satisfied with minority reports® Obviously, those who write books sufficiently well, to get them published are a minority group and share much in common® We see the past only through the eyes of the eloquently articulate few® To some 6 extent, Ernst Junger is an exception to this generalization.
Remarque, Renn, Zweig, Hasek, Graves, Sassoon, Barbusse,
Dos Passos, all either directly or by implication indited war as an unmitigated cursee With this view a war-weary world, appalled at the slaughter, was thoroughly in agree ment. Thus Ernst Junger has consistently swum against the current of contemporary intellectual climate. In a world dedicated to peace, with some notable interludes for f,moraln wars against "aggressors," Jiinger has doggedly maintained that war is not only necessary,, but is also a positive good.
War is naturefs method of assuring the rule of the fittest.
A nation that has lost a war must correct the weaknesses that the war exposed and, if sufficiently successful, she will regain in the next war, her lost status. Much of Junger?s long life reads like the more phan- tasmic pages of The Arabian Nights, and an adequate treat ment would require a multivolume work. This brief study is limited to one work: .. In Stahlgewittern. The other war diaries are merely specialized aspects of his most famous book. These early writings of Junger embody a philosophy of war that is partly romantic, partly Nietzschian and largely Junger. In them he blasts the French Revolution, the basic doctrines of Enlightenment writers, Cartesian
Rationalism, materialism, the bourgeoisie and democracy— every sacred cow in the liberal arsenal. The intellectual climate of 1914 and the whole pre ceding :century were much more receptive to Junger*s ideas than was the post-1945 world® This suggests that he was subjected to ideas vastly different from those to which young people are exposed today® If, therefore, we glance briefly at the world of Jiinger,s youth, we may find some clue to his thinking®
Background
In the opinion of most experts, the Congress of
Vienna did a good job (Nicolson, 1946, p® l). The map of
Europe in 1914, bore a remarkably close resemblance to that of 1015° True, there had been no dearth of conflicts, but these had been limited in both duration and in extent, catastrophic upheavals had been avoided® Prosperous countries could still afford costly blunders like the carnage described by Tennyson in the Charge of the Light Brigade® and still come out on the winning side® Even in 1070, more soldiers died from disease than from wounds® The nightmarish army surgeon still wandered around the battlefield, frock- coated and top-hatted, sawing off limbs here and there with out benefit of anaesthetic, until about 1000® (Miraculously, some survived®) But weaponry was hardly in its infancy; there was nothing to suggest the "curtain of fire" that appalled Foch in 1914° Yet, by 1916, the intensity of fire had so increased that soldiers looked back in nostalgic memory to the happier days of only two years before* As
late as 1904, Winston Churchill could write of the thrills of a cavalry charge and point out that only a handful paid
the supreme price*
In 1914, Europe looked back on a century of progress
in practically every field* Social legislation in the major countries had removed the worst evils of the Industrial Revolution, while nearly everyone enjoyed its fruits* The newly opened lands in the Americas and Australia provided ample supplies of food to be exchanged at rates that were highly advantageous to the Europeans* The population in
creases during the nineteenth century are eloquent testimony to the improvement in living standards* The world still had plenty to offer the adventurous*
There were many lands yet to explore* Young men were welcome almost everywhere with little or no formalities* Pass ports were almost unknown* Land in much of the New World was free to those willing to cultivate it* Empire and
colonialism were, like King and Country, glorious expres
sions of a national consciousness and not the terms of
reproach they have become today* To perish on the battle field was to die a glorious death* This notion persisted
until people•saw the price demanded by modern warfare and decided it was too high* , • Such was the world of Ernst Jungerfs youth* It was not a paradise and offered little in material goods compared with today$ but it was vastly superior to anything the world
had so far experienced,. Above all, it was a time of optimism
and, seemingly, justifiable hope for the future.
Why then, if the foregoing has any resemblance to an accurate picture of the times, was the dream shattered in
1914? The chief bone of contention that finally undid the work of the Congress of Vienna was the division of terri
tories as the obsolescent Turkish Empire gradually disin tegrated* Nobody wanted war* Wars were becoming
increasingly costly both in money and human life* An
electorate whose base was broadened from decade to decade, was beginning to express an opinion via the relatively new forum of elections* The political powers of those who em braced in one form or another the social doctrines formulated in the first half of the century, were increasing rapidly* The presence of men of such political stature as Bismark,
Gladstone, and Disraeli at the helm of their countries, doubtless, played some part in delaying the final, catas trophe* The unfortunate personality of Kaiser Wilhelm II which impelled him to bombastic utterances played a much greater part than it should have in inflaming the people abroad through the popular press * The Kaiser$s fatal mistake, seen with benefit of hindsight, was his insistence upon a naval race with England* German steel production was increasing year by year while British production was stationarye This meant that in a naval race, time was on the. side of Germany (Statistisches Jahrbuch, Berlin, 1914)•
Between 1871 and 1914# there were some seven or
eight crises any one of which might have led to a European
conflict® The general public seems by 1914 to have acquired an immunity to political crises® It was less disturbed by the. Conference•of Algerciras than it had been by the Congress of Berlin® Of course, the informed minority, diplomats, journalists, historians, and other cultured groups,•realized between 1900 and 1910 at least that a European upheaval was inevitable in the near future® The only question in their minds was their own countryfs possible involvement® This group not only knew the inevitability of war, but had some
idea of its destructive magnitude (Wells, 1916)®
To the vast majority, however, war came as a stunning surprise® The British upper middle class came rushing home from the continent, where mother told frightening stories about the overcrowding of the train from Biarritz or the difficulty in getting on the boat train to Victoria Station®
The fact that little Mary had lost her doll, loomed far more
important than the order for general mobilization in Russia® The Serbians were obviously a deserving people® Hadnft that nice porter in Belgrade given little Johnny those beautiful
stamps for his collection (Nicolson, 1963, p® 85)? v Europe sat on a powder keg, with a touching faith
in nineteenth century optimism® The crucial question was the number of hours needed for effective mobilization. Once it was known, or even suspected, that a neighbor had moved
towards mobilization, others were compelled to follow. A delay of even a few hours could be fatal. Once started, it was difficult to cancel mobilization within the brief period that an opponentfs ultimatum, dictated by its own security,
6 -■■■.-■ demanded. ■
Once a nation was involved in war, there was an out burst . of patriotism that is difficult to understand in these far grimmer years. It was a generation nurtured on romantic nationalism and quite unable to grasp the destructive power of modern weapons»
The illustrated journals of August, 1914, show enthu siastic crowds cheering the troops off to war, in every bel ligerent capital in Europe. These magazines with their photographs of girls handing boys in uniform flowers or cups of coffee, bear a sickening similarity to each other. In
England, where there was no conscripted army to be mobilised, civilians waited in line for two and three days, so great was the rush to get into uniform.
&Even with the improved communications of 1939, there were grave doubts expressed to Hitler that the attack upon Poland could be halted, even twenty-four hours before it was to start (Schmidt, 1951, p® 243). The destruction of Rotterdam followed after Holland had agreed to Germanyfs demands, simply because it was too late to stop the planes in flight (Irving, I960), p. 19). . • ' - . % . 12 The exhilaration . of war carried the nations into
1915 without much loss in spirit. It still seemed an ad venture. Something of the old uniforms still remained, with their gay colors and many officers still carried that 7 symbol of male pride, a sword. It was widely believed on both sides that the war would be over by Christmas, 1914$ and the boys in school gloomily counted the weeks, fearful lest they miss the "show." The London Times carried stories, never, to my knowledge, authenticated, of British troops kicking a football as they went over the top. The fraterni zation of British and German troops on Christmas Day, 1914, was never repeated. The year 1915 was not a bad one com pared with the coming years. Weapons were not as lethal as they would be in 1916. Gas and tanks had injected a new element of misery and hazard into war. When the "boys" failed to return home victorious by Christmas, 1915$ gloom spread everywhere. By 1916, the glamour of war was gone and with it much of the surface patriotism of 1914» Men and women, often hungry and cold or both, labored long hours on the production lines so that the slaughter might continue. Peace suggestions were con temptuously spurned; the bitterness was too great, the casuality lists too long.
• Swords were abolished in most countries as a weapon during the 1930*s. 13 Finally the war reached its miserable end® Seldom, if ever, had nations entered so gaily into war= Never in history, had tired people so gratefully welcomed peace®
Nevertheless, there was still some spirit of jubilation left® Winston Churchill (1962) describes the scene outside his office in London at 11s 0 0 o fclock on November 11, 1918: . It was a few minutes before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month® I stood at the window of my room looking up Northumberland Avenue towards Trafalgar Square, waiting for Big Ben to tell that the war was over® My mind strayed back across the scarring years to the scenes and emotions of the night at the Admiralty when I listened for these same chimes in order to give the signal of war :against Germany to our fleets and squadrons across . the world® And. now all was over! And then suddenly . the first stroke of the chime® Then from all sides men and women came scurrying into the street® Streams of people poured out of all the buildings® The bells of London began to clash® Northumberland Avenue was now crowded with people in hundreds, nay, thousands, rushing hither and thither in a frantic manner, shouting and screaming with joy /p® 18%7®
It was a scene that, with some variation, was re peated almost endlessly throughout the Allied World® In Germany, a lost war, the joint specters of continued hunger and revolution in the present, with a threatening question mark in the future, dispelled any inclinations for rejoicing®
The mist in the sky on November 11 seemed symbolic® Some of the above thoughts may have been running through Ernst Junger?is mind as he stared through the window of his parents? home in Rehburg on the dull November morning over half a century ago® CHAPTER.-II
• THE UNIQUE EXPERIENCE OF TRENCH WARFARE ,
The men who bore the brunt of the fighting in World
War I were those b o m between. 1880 and the end of the century® Rough sampling of casualty lists s in the few instances where photographs or ages are given, indicates that this age group 1 accounted for over ninety per cent of those killed® Those, b o m during the last decade of the century accounted for the great majority of this group®. This means that the men in
Ernst Junger?s age bracket (be.1895) were largely wiped out«
Apart-from the horrible mutilations, the gaping wounds, the groans of the dying, and the screams of those in .
:agony, the living with death and the conviction that one would not survive the war had a profound psychological effect on the combatants® Junger points out that even if he had had cancer, it would not have been, a matter of much concern (Junger, 1930, p® 12)® Neurasthenia, commonly called "shell shock,” unknown before the war outside medical circles, be came a household word® Men on leave.would jump or even scream at a car backfiring® Afterwards, the victim might
during these years confirms this estimate® . : ■ is tremble for hours» Several thousand such cases were in
valided out of the armyo Trench foot, a kind of fungus
caused by constant dampness, was another hazard that caused
many a man to wish he had never been born. But the greatest
. plagues of all were the mud and rain. Far worse than cold
or the hated rats (lice were accepted almost as a joke) was
the mud that men sank into up to their knees or even, as at Passchendaele, drowned in along with their horses.
Course of the War . The war consisted of two brief periods and one long
one. In August, 1914$ the Germans swept through Belgium and advanced almost to the outskirts of Paris. The retreat
, was as rapid as the advance and halted roughly half way to
Belgium. The Germans dug themselves in and ended the first
phase of the war of movement. Trench warfare had begun.
This lasted until the final push of -the Allies in late 1918 began a German retreat that might be considered a "war of movement" again. In between these two phases was almost
exactly forty-eight months of trench warfare.
Erast Junger enlisted as a volunteer immediately
upon declaration of war. , He was allowed to conclude his
gymnasium days by taking an emergency termination examina- ; tion (Notabitur). After a few weeks* training, he arrived
at the front in October, 1914® He never fought on any front except the Western Front and, as the foregoing indicates, he ■ ; . ■ ' , is missed the War of Movement both at the beginning and at the end of the war. He was one of the very few to survive forty- eight months of front line, infantry action»
When FoctVs counteroffensive ran out of steam in
1914s the Germans dug themselves in to halt the French x ' advance. The French and British in turn dug themselves in opposite the German lines. Thus, two enormous bodies of men faced each other across a few hundred yards or less of no manfs land seesawing back and forth over short distances for the next four years. Since these positions offered enormous advantages to the defenders, advances by either side could be made only at the cost of enormous losses. Casualties frequently ran as high as fifty per Cent and more. In 1914? the trenches were long ditches, two or three feet deep. Each piece of trench was rigidly held against attack. The firing was done from the front trench and the reserve troops held in rear trenches. These main trenches were connected by narrower, and shallower, communication trenches. By the latter part of 1915? this primitive system had been greatly modified. The trenches were now never straight for more than fifty yards or so. The sections of trench indicated by a break in direction were termed tra verses.. -Their purpose was to limit the range of effectiveness of shells or bombs exploding directly in the trenches. Long narrow trenches known as "saps" were run out from the main defense trench towards the enemy lines. These were only- narrow, shallow ditches, but allowed a man some protection
/ as he wriggled along the ground to a machine gun or observa
tion post at the end of the sap. Dugouts or holes in the
sides of the trenches were not common in the front lines.
These, were mainly in the support lines and by 1915 had be
come relatively luxurious (Junger, 1930, p. 152.) . Then it
was found that these deep dugouts, while secure enough, were often overwhelmed by an enemy attack before the occupants
had time to.snatch their weapons and climb the many steps to
confront the invaders. (Around Passchendaele, where the
water table was practically on the surface for many months
of the year, trenches in the normal sense, were out of the
question.. Here men lay in water behind a foot or so of
earth work.) By 1916 the biggest tactical change in trench war- . fare was the defense in depth. Instead of obstinately holding on to every inch of ground unless it had some special
strategic advantage, the troops now retreated to successive lines, holding.only at that point previously designated by
the command. When the enemy?s advance had captured several
trenches and Tost much of its initial momentum by casualties,
lack of ammunition or physical exhaustion, the counterattack
was launched. It was somewhat like compressing a spring
which-eventually bounced out again with the force of its own tensions This was one of the means to counteract the in
creased effectiveness of the weapons«
In attacking trenches, one had three choices' one could pound the trench with high explosive shells and thus demolish the earthworks, or one could lob high trajectory
shells or bombs, generally shrapnel, directed so as to drop
into the trenches themselves and kill men* The third method
was direct attack with bayonets, bombs, knives, or whatever
weapons the individual happened to prefer* This resulted
- in: the individual combats described by so many writers»
Generally, all three methods were combined® , The final assault or "going over the top," was the
concluding and bloodiest phase® In the case of operations
sufficiently large to call a "battle," there was another phase® the attempt to silence the enemy?s heavy artillery
in the rear. Normally, the fronts were fairly quiet® Often, mutual exhaustion and a strong desire not to provoke the enemy into retaliation, kept the troops from firing at each other for days® Both sides had expert marksmen with tele
scopic sights who watched from a concealed post for somebody to expose himself. A successful sniper might kill a dozen
or more men in a single day® Local hostilities were often directed at snipers or machine gun nests which had resulted
in casualties. Men in the front line were generally fairly
safe except from shells or bombs bursting directly in their own sector of trench. Except in the case of large scale en
gagements , most of the casualties were incurred by "runners”
or messengers, medical corps men, men bringing the more or
less lukewarm food for those in the front lines. The communi
cations trenches between the front lines and the rear were likely spots for casualties at any time, especially when the front-line troops were being relieved. During daylight hours, it was almost certain death to expose oneself to enemy view. During the night hours, there was: much activity. Most of this was concerned with
repairing the wire in front of the trenches. Then there were parties of a few men gathering information about the. enemy*s position. Often these small groups were inves
tigating the enemy * s wire or cutting a hole in it in prepar
ation for a small raid. Such a raid would typically consist
of a dozen men led by an officer. The main objective was
usually to bring back a prisoner for interrogation by intel
ligence. Such a party would creep on their hands and knees, inch by inch over the pock-marked ground of no man * s land, ;in absolute silence, to the place where the wire had been cut, and provided they could find the place, and the wire had
not been repaired. Not infrequently, enemies bumped into
each other in the dark. The incident of the Frenchmen in
the shell hole in Remarquets famous book describes such a "scene and its consequences (Remarque, 1929, p® 18$). If the raid was successful— and very few were— the raiders jumped into a section of trench hurling hand grenades while 20 two of them concentrated upon capturing a prisoner alive® Getting out of the trench alive themselves and getting the prisoner back to their own line in the. same condition was a hazardous venture®. At the slightest sound Very lights would be sent up. These were rockets shot by a special pistol®
The light lasted some twenty seconds and gave out an intense, white light® Anybody who was spotted was immediately shot at: by rifle fire while the whole area was raked by machine gun fire® As the Very light rocket shot into the sky, the men had a split second to hurl themselves into a shell hole where they hoped to lie undetected until the scene appeared calm enough to risk an attempt to regain their own lines®
There was another type of raid, often carried out in daylight® This was generally prepared for in advance by artillery fire. Anything from two hundred to a thousand or more men would attack® This was a limited action, generally with the purpose of capturing a small section of exposed territory® Finally, there was the full-scale battle® While there were exceptions, this was normally carried out by one or more army corps® Minor engagements with as few as one division were not unknown® Generally, these were local actions to reduce some strong point or to prepare for a larger action. The preparation for such a battle might last many days. Guns hurled shells ten miles and more behind the enemyr s front line. This was to silence the enemy * s installations and to deny him artillery support during the coming attack® While the actual attack was under way, the artillery would shell a large area behind the enemy?s trenches® Thus, the enemy had a choice of risking almost certain death retreating through a murderous rain of shells or being killed on the spot® The enemy could also surrender, of course, but one never knew until it was too late whether prisoners were being taken on that day or not®
:
Strategy of the First World War
Attrition
The primary strategy was to wage a war of attrition#
As Sir Douglas Haig is supposed to have explained when a staff officer suggested .that such a war might, not be advisable for England: “Of course it will work# Eventually we shall have ten thousand men left and the Germans will have five thousand, and we shall win." Both England and Germany, as a secondary course, attempted to deprive each other of food and other supplies. Much of the attitude towards individual killing is explained by attrition. The battles, the raids and the daily machine gun and sniper actions all had the same purpose: killing individual Germans-— the War of Attrition.
In this war of personal murders, the British and later, the Americans, were fanatical about the use of 22 "cold steel0t{ The common opinion was that the Germans were mable to stand this weapon« Some excerpts from war literature may help to emphasize this:
At an army school in France (Sassoon, 1930), a major, assisted by a sergeant, is lecturing on the bayonet: He spoke with homicidal eloquence • « o could /the Sergeant/ divest himself of all semblence of humanity . . . he illustrated the MajorS’s ferocious aphorisms, including facial expression* When told " to "put on the killing face," . «, * he did so, com bining it with an ultra vindictive attitude* Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the 'life out of Germans. . . . His final words were: ‘Remember that every Boche you fellows kill is a point scored to our side; every Boche you kill brings victory one minute nearer and shortens the war by one minute. Kill them! Kill themI There *s only one good Boche, and thatfs a dead one"! : "If you don?t kill him, he ?11 kill you. Stick him between the eyes, in the throat, in the chest. Dondt waste good steel. Six inches are enough” ■Zp - IS7- Another illuminating example is (Private Pete, 1918):
Do your boys ever meet any of the Boches?
. Sure! Many a time. What do we do? Do? Stick fem, matey, stick ?em! You’ve learnt to use yer b ’ynet, ’aven’t yer? Well, stick ’em . . . kill ’em! Don’t use yer rifle . . . the flash would give you away, and then ye’d be a corpse /p. 68/.
The Knockout Blow - There was one exception to this general strategy.
Several times during the war, each side made an all-out effort to win the war by delivering a knockout blow at the enemy. The idea was to break through on a wide front and : 2 3 then encircle the enemyg cutting him off from his supplies
and taking enormous numbers of prisoners. Conceivably, the
losses might have been great enough to permanently cripple
the enemy and force his surrender.
Weaponry -
But ultimately it was .the constantly improving weapons that killed most men. Men can survive rats, lice,
the all-pervading stench of death and even oceans of mud. He cannot, survive a bullet, a dose of chlorine gas in the lungs or being run over by a tank. It was the weapons that
killed most of those who fell, and if we are to understand
the impact of the war upon men?s minds, we must know some thing of the nature of trench warfare and the weapons that were used. There were not many new. inventions in the field of weaponry during the war. It was more a question of improving the existing weapons and emphasizing those which seemed most p appropriate to the conditions. -Observation balloons were
used extensively at the beginning of the war, especially on
the Allied side. The airplane was first used solely for
reconnaissance and only during the latter part of the war,
.^Ease of production was often a decisive factor in choosing a weapon; not its intensive merit. The bayonet of circular cross section used in 1914 was rejected early in the war in favor of the far superior knife edge bayonet. Yet, in 1939, need for rapid production caused the British to again revert to the circular weapon. . . • . 24 for attack. ' The combat aviators soon developed their own form of chivalry in individual combat. The so-called "dog fight" was carried on with clean uniforms and either a safe return or death at the end of the day. Gas was never a very successful weapon. It was too dangerous to those using it. The same is true of the French contribution to war$s horrors, the flame thrower.^ The greatest single invention of the war was British.
It has come down in history by its original code name "tank."
The problem was to invent a machine capable of dealing with both wire and machine guns. Such a machine must not be vulnerable to machine gun fire or hand grenades. The tank was the almost perfect answer.
Gunnery was taken over from the Navy. The four and six inch guns did not vary much. The problem was more pro duction than design. There was an enormous increase in both the number and the complexity of machine guns. At the beginning of the war, the British Army had only two machine guns per battalion. An increase of twentyfold or more by the end of the war seems a safe guess. It was in the hand weapons used for individual combat that one finds the greatest variety. Each man carried a rifle, but the rifle was often lost dr thrown away. On a raid, a rifle was too cumbersome a weapon, and it was almost impossible to drag it silently across no manfs land.
^Fire in one form or another is a very ancient weapon. The German Richard Fiedler invented a primitive flame thrower about 1900. The Germans used it ineffectively in 1915 and the French brought out a practical model in 1916 (Imperial War Museum). ' - L :'-V' 25 Officers carried revolvers. The British weapon was the
Webley 45/455® It was a cumbersome weapon with a kick like a mule, but highly effective at point-blank range, and it hardly ever jammed« The Germans used 9 mm Mausers® All carried knives, generally made by the owner® These along with brass nuts, known as knuckledusters in the British
English, were intended to finish an enemy when he was on the ground or to assassinate a man after creeping behind him at night® - -
The. Imperial War Museum.(London, England) has a. couple of dozen weapons that remind one of the Stone Age, except that some of them embody parts that obviously came from an advanced culture® I refer to the homemade clubs that replaced, the officer?s loaded canes that were so popular around 1915® These could be used as walking sticks in the Strand as well as for knocking out German brains in Flanders® As a rule all ranks carried clubs,on raids® How ever, participants in raids were given the greatest latitude in weapons® Each man chose what his fancy or experience showed best suited for his reflexes®
But whatever a mants weapons, his problems remained the same® If one searched for a single word which best connotes the First World War, the choice between mud and barbed wire., would be a difficult one® The problems were: how to lay your own wire and how to get through the enemy$s ® The concertina or roll of wire that could, be rapidly pulled . ■ . : . 26 out to any length desired was a great time saver. So was
the general utility "knife rest." This consisted of two
• pieces of two by four wood about four feet long and nailed
at; the center at right angles to each other. Two such ends were joined by longitudinal sections of wood some twelve ' feet long. Around this "knife rest" acting as a frame# many strands of wire were wound. This could be constructed in the trenches and put in place during the night with a
minimum of risk and without exposing anybody. This con
stituted a defense in all directions and could be made in varying sizes. As the war proceeded# the wire tended to
get thicker and thicker. Hence# the wire cutters got
larger and larger. The cigar cutter which Junger mentions .
as being used by the Fahnrich (Junger# 1929# p. 147) was
feasible only during the very early part of the war, unless
he fortunately came upon some old-fashioned wire. In the
lattef part of the war, the wire was so thick that the cutters were very often three feet long. Perhaps some statistical idea of how much slaughter was actually accomplished with these weapons is a fitting
termination to this chapter: Percentage of . Total Dead Total Population Germany . . : 1,773#700 2.9%
Great Britain . 750,000 1 0 France 1,357,800 4.4% United States . 116,516 .01% . ■ ■ 2? When the guns, were finally silenced in November^
1910, these were the figures which appalled the world and started the greatest peace movement in history» . .Unfortunately, this peace movement was to terminate in a vastly more costly war a bare two decades later® The possible significance of In Stahlgewittern within this tragic framework is the subject of the following pages- CHAPTER III
THE WAR IN RED INK
On November 11, 1918$ the world entered upon that uneasy peace that was to terminate two decades later in a holocaust in which many of the achievements of the Middle
Ages were to be consumed while some of their less savory practices were to be revived. (Fortunately, man lacks the gift of prophesy.)
The wild jubilation throughout the Allied World was not repeated in Germany. Remarque (1931) catches the mood:
■Along the road, step upon step, in their faded, dirty uniforms march the grey columns. The unshaven faces beneath the helmets are haggard, wasted with hunger and long peril, pinched and dwindled to the lines drawn by terror and courage and death. They drudge along in silence| as they have marched over so many a road . . . without many words; so too now they march along this road back home into peace. Without many words /p* 2^7°
- These troops were returning to a land in the throes of civil war. The British blockade was continued according to the terms of the Armistice (George, 1934s P® 2049)® So to the horrors of fratricide were added the miseries of hunger. They were suffering, too, from a sense of frustra tion. It must be remembered that the German Army had not revolted. The Government had signed an armistice that was tantamount to unconditional surrender which, by its terms.
28 ,■ . ' : ; . . v • ' 29 precluded the possibility of further resistance® Could
Germany have effectively resisted and, thereby, obtained better .terms at Versailles? The point is at least debatable,
as the following letter from Earl Haig, Commander-in-Ohief
of the British Army, to the Prime Minister (George, 1934),
indicates:
In my opinion, the German Army is capable of retir ing to its own frontiers and holding that line against equal or superior forces® ® „ ® The length of that line is about 23 5 miles compared to the present 400 miles® The French Army seems greatly worn out® « . ® American Army « ® ® disorganized, ill-equipped, and ill-trained . . . no experienced officers and IL-CoO® ._® • British Army short of reserves . . ® ZP. 19627. On top of this, the Weimar Republic,which nobody
' wanted, was announced'to prevent the declaration of a
,Soviet (Carsten, 1966, p® 12)® The times were hardly pro- .
pitious. for an experiment in democracy, and it is further
doubted that Germany was either historically or tempera
mentally attuned to the sort of government implicit in the
Weimar Constitution®. The result was a struggle between
left and right extremists within the framework of a still
born republic. It was in this atmosphere of hunger, doubt,
perplexity and violence (Salomon, 195.1,'p. 201), that books
o f ,the.immediate postwar period were written. The frustra
tion was deeply felt by men such as Ernst Hunger who were
concerned with the crisis of man in modern civilization
(Robertson, 1968, p. 560)= The War Guilt Clause in the Peace Treaty of Versailles probably upset Junger more than
the threat of Bolshevism, To an aristocrat like the former
company commander, it was probably the vulgarity of
Bolshevism more than the political theory that repelled him.
War Literature
The early postwar books of Ernst von Salomon^
Schauwecker9 Junger and others of the left and right re
flected much of the violence of the times; if the ink was
red, so was. the blood that was spilt in the streets. They reflected a very different scene from the calmer and more
^reflective mood of a decade later and it is with this in mind, that In Stahlgewittern should be read. The literary
:heritage of the First World War covers a brief span of
only some sixteen years, from 1915 to around 1930, From
the beginning of the 1930*s, the Great Depression and the
coming menace of fascism drove the First World War and its
problems into those recesses in men,s memories reserved for
the fading past.
These sixteen years fall naturally into three dis
tinct periods: (1) The War Period; (2) The Immediate Postwar
Period; and (3) The Period around 1928-30= The literature
of these three periods has little in common, beyond the fact
that they are concerned with the war. : ■: ' ■ ' . ■■■ ; 31 The First Period
This period consisted mainly of pure propaganda® The authors beat the drums and waved their national emblems in an orgy of patriotic fever® Each country had a hard core of pacifists* generally men of very high intellectual attainments * who were* however* only a tiny handicapped , minority in.a boiling sea of patriotism.^ They were also largely ineffective (Wells* 1916)» In the intellectual climate of today* much of the writing of this period makes 2 strange reading® At the beginning of the war these propaganda books were likely to be light in tone* befitting the spirit of the times: Marschi Marschi Hurra!
Erlebnisse zweier Kriegsfreiwilliger Im Weltkrieg (Willig,
1914) was the name of one of them®
1 In Germany* the death penalty could be imposed for suggesting that Germany might lose the war (Junger* 1930 * p. 172)® In England the famous Defence of the Realm Act* . commonly known as Dora* effectively shelved constitutional rights for the duration® In the U®Se various acts were passed* especially the Fuel-and-Food-Control Law* which ef fectively crippled criticism /Sllen* 1931* p® 5j7®
^The difference between the thought processes of the people of today and those of fifty years ago* is essential to the understanding of Ernst Junger® Consider the recent (spring* 1970) public burnings of the American flag on campuses in the United States and compare the public reaction with following quotation n® ® ® a jury in Indiana took two minutes to acquit a man for shooting and killing an alien because he had shouted* "To hell with the United States" /Tiileri, 1931, p= 4j>7® 32 The British, normally a people with a high regard for truth, specialized in the "atrocity story." A typical ex cerpt (Fallon, 1918) is given below:
I have said that it was the reports of Belgian - atrocities which mainly made the motive for the great outpouring of Australian manhood into the fray. We had heard these stories and believed them. On March 16th, when•we entered the village of St. Elois, I saw with my own eyes that these stories . which had come to Australia were not lies. But the ancient archway of the entrance still stood, and on the heavy, iron-bound door was the "exhibit" in the case. It was the nude body of the Mother Superior. The villagers so identified her. She had been • nailed to the door. She had been crucified. In the ruins we brought out the bodies of four nuns, un speakably mutilated. Their bodies had been stabbed and slashed each more than one hundred times. They had gone to martydom resisting incredible brutes. They had fought hard, the blond hair of their as sassins clutched in their dead hands. In this same village we found a white-haired blacksmith— he must have been all of seventy years— tied to his anvil. His hands had been beaten to a . pulp. They were held together by a bayonet thrust , through his wrists. And on his anvil, weighted with a horseshoe, was a note in German which read: y "You will never shoe another horse belonging to our enemies" /p. 1127. The following is of psychological interest perhaps (Graves,
1929): Two voung miners, in another company, dis- ■ liked their sergeant,, who...... gave them all the most dirty and dangerous jobs. . . . So they de cided to kill him. Later, they reported at Bat- . talion Orderly Room and asked to see the Adjutant. . . « "Wetve come to report, Sir, that w e $re very sorry, but we?ve shot our company sergeant-major." The Adjutant said: "Good heavens, how did that happen?" "It was an accident. Sir." ; "What do you mean, you damn fools? Did you mis™ ' take him for a spy?” "No, Sir, we mistook him for our platoon sergeant." 33 So they.were both court-marttailed and shot by ; v . a firing squad of their own company against the wall of a convent at Bethune. Their last words were the Battalion rallying-cry: "Stick it, the Welsh!" (They say that a certain Captain Haggard first used , it in the Battle of Ypres when he was mortally wounded.) The French military governor was present at the execution, and made a little speech saying how gloriously British soldiers can die /p. 10^7« The "Little Mother1s Letter" often quoted today as a
joke,, was taken very seriously, indeed. This nauseating
document is reproduced in its entirety in Appendix A. War.
Letter of a Public School Bov is typical of the more
dignified work of this period. Briefly, it is the collected
letters of an excellent student who volunteered in early 19151 Defective vision kept him in a safe job in the Service Corp. In spite of being, practically helpless without glasses, he
finally managed to get into an infantry regiment and was
killed two months later (Jones, 1918). The father*5 pride is as obvious as the sincerity of his grief.• The boyfs reason '
for insisting on combat duty was that he could not.stand the men saluting him when he was not a front line soldier. It
recalls Siegfried Sassoonfs (1930) desire for medals:
Six years, before I had been ambitious of winning races because that had seemed a significant way of demonstrating my equality with my contemporaries. . And now I wanted to make the World War serve a similar purpose, for if only I could get a Military Cross I should feel comparatively safe and confident. (At that time the Doctor was the only man in the Battalion who?d got one.) Trench warfare was mostly monotonous drudgery, and I preferred the exciting idea of crossing the mine-craters and getting into the German front line. In my simple-minded way I ; .... ' 34 had identified myself with that strip of no-man?s- land opposite Bois Francais; and the mine-craters had always fascinated me, though I ?d often feared that theyfd be the death of me /p« 1&7*
: Sassoon, of course, has gone down in history as an opponent of war.3 Perhaps Jlinger was right twenty-five years later, when asked about his attitude during the First World
War: "When one .is twenty years old, one is a fighterj and . at that time, I was exactly twenty years old;" (Paetel, 1962, p» 135«)
The Second Period
The literature of the immediate postwar period was small in volume and generally poor in quality. An exception
is the French author Henri Barbusse. His most famous books appeared in German translation as Das Feuer, 1918, and Die .
Holie, 19191 Both were much-admired. In Stahlgewittern
1920, belongs to this period® It is discussed in the next section.
The Third Period . This period saw the publication of most of the books which are still believed to have literary value. A decade
• ■■ ^ - ■■ ' ■ ^Sassoon was a typical, disoriented intellectual of this period. He did not become a consistent opponent of war, like Graves,' or a thorough patriot like the poets Owen and Brooks| he vacillated between the two. He won the D.3.0= for extreme bravery and then decided, to become a martyr to peace. He refused to obey a direct order to report to his depot in England. The Army informed him had passed and a.new generation, unharmed by the war, sought vicarious adventure, while the older generation could now contemplate the war with some degree of detachment® The great year was 1929« It was in this year that several German books were translated, including In Stahlgewittem®
The first film version of All Quiet on the Western Front, and the most popular play of the First World War, Journey?s
End (Sherriff, 1929% opened in London® The books of this period show a maturity and balance lacking in the hysterical quality of the second period and treat skeptically the atrocity stories of the first period®
A sense of humor and proportion had returned (Sassoon, 1930) t
My stretcher was popped into an ambulance which . took me to a big hospital at Denmark Hill® At Charing Cross a woman handed me a bunch of flowers : and a leaflet by the Bishop of London who earnestly advised me to lead a clean life and attend Holy Communion /p. 71/%
In Stahlgewittem •
During the entire four years of the war, Junger religiously kept careful diaries® These were to serve later as the raw material for his four books dealing with the war®
. In Stahlgewittem® originally appearing in 1920, was the first and by far the most important of these four books, that they refused to send him to prison, but if he persisted in his attitude, they would confine him in a lunatic asylum for the balance of the war® He returned to France and was again decorated for extreme bravery® both from the standpoint of literature and of historical value. The second of this series, WSldchen 125 is prac- . tically a payt of In Stahlgewittem in that it throws a spotlight on a tiny section of the front and relates its history in intimate detail. This insignificant patch of a few hundred acres of no strategic value, and destined to be graveyard of thousands, is a symbol for Jlinger, indicating that men die and nature is destroyed.but recovers (Junger,
1929$ p. 70) To others, this patch of land may well be a symbol of the futility of war. In 1970, this former grave yard is once more a smiling landscape bearing no scars of its former suffering and seems to lend support to Junger*s view.
Feuer und Blut is an attempt at an epic description of a major battle with some thirty divisions on each side locked in mortal combat. There is certainly epic material here and some critics seem to believe that he has succeeded remarkably well (Loose, 1957$ P« 11)« Kampf als inneres Erlebnis is a philosophical consideration of the effect of war on the individual and its reflection on the race. Junger presents many problems to the student. Paetel thinks Nietzsche*s high regard for flux (Paetel,
1962, p. 103) is appropriate to Junger. Certainly a student is constantly plagued with the question of: which Junger and at what time? It may bear repeating here, that this stucly is essentially concerned with the Junger of around 1920o
Style As has been suggested above9 any verdict on any
phase of Junger is largely meaningless$■ unless the date is specified. Of no aspect of lunger's life is this more true
than of his literary style. Gerhard Loose (1957), perhaps the most objective of the half dozen outstanding Junger scholars, writes:
In den ersten Auflagen ist In Stahlgewittern weder ein einheitliches noch stilistisch erhebliches Buch. Widersprechende Absichten durchkreuzen und verfilzen sich zu einem unansehlichen Gewirr, und von der Sprache lungers, deren Lob so bestandig besprochen wird, ist noch kaum etwas zu spuren. Der Stil ist platt oder ungeschickt, abgegriffen oder uberladen, und es gibt in der Tat Stellen, die unter das Niveau des guten Primaneraufsatzes sihken /p. 287•
Noting the improvement, from the fifth edition. Loose
..(1957) " quotes this., passage: Das Rohmaterial fur die Stahlgewitter bildeten die unter dem unmitt elbaren Bind ruck des Geschehens ..hingeworfenen Tagebuchnotizen. Line Probe davon gibt das (spater gestrichene) Vorwort zur 5° Auflage. Es handelt sich urn die Kampfhandlungen des ersten Tages der Marzoffensive von 1918:. "Ran! Kein Pardon. Wut« .Aus Stollen Schusse, Handgranaten rein. Geheul. Uber den Damm. Packe einen am Hals. Hande hoch! Sprungweise hinter Feuerwalze vor. Melder Kopfs-chu^. Sturm auf M.G'«~- Nest. Mann hinter mir fallt. Schiese Richtschutzen ins Auge. Handgranaten. Drin! Allein, Streifschuss. Wasser. Schokolade. Welter. .Einige fallen. Zwei ..Mann laufen zuruck, Kopfschi^, Bauchschuss. Bin grimmig. Englander fliehen aus Baracken, einer fallt. Stockung, befehle Sturm gegen Dorfrand Vrau~ court. Volltreffer, Verluste, Vor!" (St, XIII) .. ■■ ■; V ; 3d Paetel (1962) considers worthy of quoting: Da pfiff es wieder hoch in der 'Luft; jeder hatte das zusammen-schnurende^ Gefiihl: die kommt hierher! Dann . schmetterte ein betaubenders ungeheurer Krach: Die Granate war mitten zwischen- uns geschlage«.^ , Halb betaubt richtete ich mich auf* " Aus dem grossaie Trichter strahlten in Brand geschossene Maschinengewehrgurte ein grelles rosa Lichte Es beleuchtete den schwelenden Qualm des Einschlags,. in dem sich ein dichter Haufen schwarzer Korper . walzte, und die Schatten der nach alien Seiten auseinanderstiebenden Uberlebenden. Gleich- ■ zeitig ertonte ein vielfaches grauenhaftes Gebrull und Hilfeges chrei. Besonders aber die walzende Bewegung^der dunklen Masse in der Tiefe des rauchenden und gliihenden. Kessels riss wie ein hollisch.es Traumbild fur eine Sekunde den ^.ussersten Abgrund des Schmerzes auf Jjp* 20/a
The critics all agree that his greatest single quality is his ability to transmit to the reader his own deepest feel
ings at the height of combat» This is not the propaganda .of
the super-patriot and it is not the plaintive whine of the pacifist. Jiinger in these passages has no bill of goods to
sell; he solely and effectively relates. The language is
the brief commands shouted in men $.s ears above the din of bursting shells. The short sentences, replete with mono
syllables follow each other in a staccato rhythm like the
rattle of'a machine gun. The only emotions are those atavistic urges in the rage of combat, the final choice: to kill or be killed.
Much has been written in later years of lunger’s
style, especially his symbolism, but this belongs to a later period and will be largely ignored in this study. Suffice , : .:\ :' : ;- . -. < ■ ‘ ' : ' 39 it to mention that there are early references to time,
motion, weather, the community of nature and the significance, one could equally well say insignificance, of death (Hilligan,
1953, p.‘ 443)» . Junger has often been accused of lack of feeling®
(Somewhat paradoxical, perhaps, in a writer who claims to be moved by little else I) The review of In Stahlgewittern in,the Times Literary Supplement, June 20, 1929»^ is interesting in that it shows clearly the calmer and.more objective atmosphere a decade after the war, and before the hatred bred by the Hitler Regime and the Second World War had done its work® The reviewer writes: “He /Jrniger/ re cords his impressions with that extreme simplicity which is one of the highest forms of literary art®"
Along somewhat similar lines, R® Ho Mottram in the introduction to the English edition writes: <4 . on account of its sterling honesty® . » • This same quality gives it « e a higher value as a document . • « use for any body who wishes to know about the war»" (Junger, 1929,
P° Mo). One might summarize much of the foregoing as Jungerfs ability to express what all men feel (Vinnai, 1964, p« 9)*
L .This review has been included in its entirety in Appendix B® . - " . War, Death and the Gemeinschaft
Basically, the problem, between JUnger and his critics
is one of epistomology® What is man*s most reliable source
of information? Miller (1943) quotes the following rather
significant conversation'between himself and Schauwecker: . ■ . . ■ - ■ . . - "You always talk of the ? idea1 and of 1faith«$ Now, what is the ’ idear ? - What is your * faith™? ■ He answered proudly, “Germany!n “But what do you mean— what do you conceive by f Germany™? " “The ideal The faith I“ And he added with a shade of contempt in his voice, “The ?Eaustv quota tion: If you don't feel it— you will never under-, stand it." ^/p® Slj>7 This article was written during the heat of the
Second World War. Its apparent purpose was to brand the Germans as wicked nationalists. But nationalism, as Junger understands the term, is part and parcel of his whole doc trine. Nationalism to Junger is loyalty to a group to which one is biologically committed. The survival of this group, or Gemeinschaft, depends upon the efforts of the individual.
All this is known by the "heart” which is a.superior source of knowledge to the intellect. This is basic to lunger's theory of war and, in fact, of existence. It is Romanticism versus Cartesian Rationalism, but it must be borne in mind that Junger wanted no truck with the post-lSl5 Romanticism
(Junger, 1930, p. 34)» • Junger has a deep attachment to nature and views all life‘as an organic whole (Junger, 1930, p. ?6). I suggest that much of Junger can be explained by this urge towards biology. His mind is constantly classifying. Those who have seen his-collection of beetles— he is recognized as an expert in this field--and the endless boxes of carefully
notated details of each specimen recorded in his impeccable
script (he still uses the script of his generation when making notes or writing to old friends) are amazed at the detailed classifications® A highly developed sense of location and power of observation are a necessary part of the zoologist's mental equipment. Probably, these two ad- .ditional faculties helped save him during the war on many occasions. Jdnger has often been called an atheist, seemingly as a term of abuse (Vinnai, 1964, p» 52). The passage cited
.below-seems to indicate a pantheism of the Goethe stamp. This would be consistent,with his concept of the relation
ship between the individual and the Gemelnschaft.
The individual is all important because he is the unit of creation. The quality of the whole depends upon these units. Nevertheless, the whole, or the Gemelnschaft,
is of decisive importance and where the interests of the
Gemelnschaft are at stake, the individual life is of no
importance. Life is a struggle between different com munities or groups and war is nature rs method of deciding the most fit® As Junger (1930) expresses it: . We pass wonderful hours ® . ® lying at length among grasses and undergrowth, where life in a thousand forms creeps about us and dances above ' 42 us on glazed wings<> We feel that we ourselves ■ are some of those minute beings® = • ® Life and _ death rush more swiftly to encounter us. Everywhere there is antagonism pressed home with sting and tendril, poisoned tooth and claw; ■' and yet above all is a higher unity, a cosmic power presiding over all the ceaseless motion, and of this every atom in these hours when the - earth exhales its intoxicating -breath seems to be aware® Thus it seems a pagan joy to press _ the body to the earth,.a pantheistic intoxica tion which perhaps Walt Whitman alone has put into words /p. 1627» ; This does not mean the destruction of one community by
anothero It merely means that for some time, the winner
will make his own terms of peace (Junger, 1930, p® 180), and
the loser appraises his weaknesses and in the next war, may
win. Thus war is seen performing the same tasks.that edu
cation and environment would perform according to Rousseau
(Junger, 1930, p« l8l)» Therefore, Junger did not refuse to accept the de
feat of 191$, Instead, he accepted it and proceeded to
attempt to find out what was wrong with the country. Why
did Germany lose? In his opinion, it was the fault of the
entire people, • • '
' War is the final decision, the judgment of God
, (Jtmger, 1930, p", 181), Consequently, one fights to the
death (Jtinger, 1930, p. 144) and never, never surrenders
(Junger, 1929, p, 311), To do otherwise would be to avoid
the entire issue and defeat nature?s design (Junger, 1930, p. 181). 43 . .. Jtinger (1930) argues for the inevitability of war in a manner that suggests casuistry, yet has a certain plau sibility:
Man has no choice but to become a bit of nature, subjected to its inscrutable decrees and used as a thing of blood and sinew, tooth and claw® To- . ■ morrow, perhaps, men of two - civilized countries will meet in battle on this strip of land; and the proof that it must happen is that it does® .For otherwise we should have stopped it long ago, . as we have stopped sacrificing to Wotan, tortur ing on the rack, burning witches, or grasping red- hot iron to invoke the decision of God® But we have never stopped it and never shall, because . war is not the law of one age or civilization, but of eternal nature itself, out of which every civilization proceeds, and into which it must sink again if"it is not hard enough to withstand the iron ordeal® For this reason those who seek to abolish war by civilized means are just as ridiculous as those ascetics who preach against propagation in order .. to usher in the millennium® They form the be- lated rearguard of an enlightenment that sought . to dispose by the intellect of matters that draw .. their life from a depth beyond its reach® But they are the real pests of civilisation though they have it always on their lips ,/p® 56,7« Therefore, every barbarity is justified (Junger, 1930, p® 190)® (In practice, Junger is an extremely humane man®) Strike the first blow if necessary (Junger, 1930, p. 258). This includes destruction of everything when re treating (Junger, 1929, p. 126)®. Even the necessity of clubbing men with a rifle butt to steady them may be nec essary (Junger, 1929, p® 177)® The soldiers* welfare is paramount since everything depends upon them® Hence, if no beds are available in an occupied city, civilians must 44 be compelled to give up their beds to the military® Sim
ilarly, with. fishing and game rights (Jilnger, 1929, p. 221}®
(Junger.had no understanding of the political problems of . the war. The Belgian civilian population was far less
friendly than the French.and the German authorities made a
great effort to propitiate them /Renn, 1929, chaps® 1™JZ) «■ While the individual is all important, the indi vidual fs death is of no importance, according to Junger®
Not merely is the individual willingly sacrificed for the
community, but Junger feels there is something impious
about the attempt to prolong the individuality after death.
He once looked at RuysdaelTs famous painting The Jewish Cemetery® In this representation of a graveyard in chaos,
with overturned tombstones, Junger sees natureTs sullen re
sentment at manfs attempt to perpetuate himself after
death. The thought occurs to him, while viewing this
picture: "There,is no eternal rest. There is only eternal
movement that presses every smallest particle into its
service'.”: ( Junger,. 1930,, pp. 73-74.) • This seems .to be
an example of extreme pantheism. One might equally well
term Junger a deeply religious man or a scientist viewing
life and the universe in terms of the molecular theory.
Yet,, in spite of all, Junger never loses his deep
human sympathy. He stops to comfort a frightened child
(Junger, 1929, p. 20£)j he sympathizes with civilians 45 (Junger, 1929, p. 126)| regrets the need for killing such
fine men (Jungers 1929, p® 149)® He is not only, humane, he is also human® He complains about the food, the paper work,
the visits from "Top Brass,"the civilians back home. He,
himself, knows that most human of all feelings— fear
(Hunger, 1930$ p® 258). In fact, he points out that a man
without fear would be useless in the army as he would im mediately be killed.
Apart from what he considers to be the inevitability
of war, he sees certain advantages in the life of a warrior. It should be noted that Jftnger makes a distinction between "soldier" and "warrior"— Soldat. und Krieger. The former
means a man who is required to put on a uniform and engage
in war; the "warrior" is the soldier who accepts and
follows Hunger$s code. He does not surrender, but fights
to the deathv His own life has no meaning except in the
defense of his own-blbod community®
While the strategy may be worked out by the mind,
at bases in the rear, the vital fighting is done at the front with the heart (Hunger, 1930, p. 151). He will agree with
Ariosto that a death should be a glorious one and with
Hermann Lons and Holderlin that to die for one ?s country
is the highest good that man can achieve (Hunger, 1930, pp. 147, 162). . Most critics consider that Hunger rushed to war for adventure and to. escape the monotony and security of the A-"':. ' _' ^ /:/ - : • V ; ' ;■.. . 46 bourgeois life that he detested (Junger,'193Q-, p® 6l)» But he has more basic reasons'which are in keeping with his general philosophye Only through war can improvement come by the elimination of the unfit. Military life with its insistence on absolute obedience on the part of the sub ordinate and the deep-rooted sense of responsibility on the part of the officer, made an effective team which works for the maximum good of the organic.whole (Junger, 1930)s '
. . . . only one thing remains for the officer in command. He must go the whole length of this chain of men whose hearts are beating with suspense and establish personal contact as the last essential . . . the officer takes his place . . ® under all circumstances, nearest the enemy /p. 24^7•
His generation had been tested by fire and come out of the experience hardened like refined steel and should, there fore, be grateful to a kind Fate which had given them this advantage, over other generations.
The technical war and the war of material, which at times he grumbles at as a "war of arithmetic," intrigues his active, mind. He sees weapons as extensions of the arms, but however complicated the weapon may be, the brain of a man is still directing it, and the heart of the man is directing both brain and machine (Junger, 1930, p. 140).
He speculates upon future weapons and sees a sort of flying tank-overcoming the barbed wire (1930, p. 32). Strangely enough, he saw the war of the future as another trench war,
a mistake journalists continued to make up to 1939®
What Manner of Man is This? .
Mohler tells his readers that: "Die ausseren Da ten von Ernst Jlinger sind bekannt" (Mohler, 1955? p® l) ®
He then proceeds to inform us of Jungerfs place and date
of birth, but the researcher will look in vain for the
details of his family life. Even in a scholarly work like
Stern^s (1953$ P® l), there appears a question mark against the date of his marriage to his first wife in 1925® She died of cancer in I960. Even this fact, so far as this
student can determine, is not recorded elsewhere® The
information came from close friends of Junger. There is no
mystery about his marriage or his wife fs death® He is a
man who resents the vulgarity implied by personal questions,
while to intrude upon his private life is to risk grave
: offense® . . Perhaps the first thing_that strikes .the reader is
the dual character of Junger, the curious combination of
the man of action and the man of contemplation® There is
no gainsaying his superb role as a fighter and leader of
men, but was it entirely in character? His later life indicates it was not® There is a negative accent upon his
whole subsequent life which suggests that futility of action is his guiding thought® He resigned from the Reichswehr in 1923} thus giving up a career for which he seemed destinede He joined the Freikorp and resigned after two 5 months. He quarreled with the Stahlhelm^s policy and they refused to publish his articles«
He was never a Naz.i$ but he never*, prior to 1933, entirely repudiated them® He stayed in Germany after 1933, and was perhaps the most important writer to remain {Stem,
1953, p® IS)« His house was searched, his friends arrested and imprisoned and finally some of his books were forbidden by the Nazis. Paetel states that he knew of the plot against Hitler in 1944, but thought actions of this sort meaningless (Paetel, 1962, p. 100). All the evidence tends to support Paetel. Here we have a man who reads Tristram Shandy while the battle rages (lunger, 1929, P= 304), and who argues about the Maid of Orleans with another officer under similar conditions (lunger, 1929, p» 309). He mentions the following writers among others: Balzac, Stendahl, Sterne,
SchillerGoethe, Lons, Xenophon, Eichendorf, Heraclitus,
Holderlin, Machiavelli, Nietzsche; a number of historical characters such as Napoleon, Bismark and Clausewitz could be included among his listed heroes.
' '.^This is denied by Mohler. My information is from an interview with Dr. des Coudres.in Hamburg in May, 1970. Dr. des Coudres is a noted bibliographer. Head of the Planek Institute and intimate friend of lunger whom he has known since 1924.. ; ■ • ■ v '■ . 49 Junger is not without humor6 The wretched man who pretended he was insane in order to get out of an attack, sends him into fits of laughter, although this offense carried the death penalty and Jlinger must have regarded it in that light (1929, p. 222)6 He would have been within his rights to have shot the man on the spot, as he advocated under.similar circumstances elsewhere (1930, p. ISO). He, avoids all use of obscenity which was still a novelty in the 19208s and may account, in part at least, for some of the popularity of All Quiet on the Western Fronte
.Junger, it has often been pointed out, is an aristocrat. One should add, perhaps % "of.nature," He came of upper middle class stock and married into the lower aristocracy,as was very frequent in his circles. Like most conservatives, he detests and fears the mob, He refers to the masses as "Pobel." This is the basis of his hatred for democracy® He believes, devoutly in the equality of opportunity, but not of men® He wanted the promotion to officers open to all ranks, a very revolutionary idea, indeed, in his day® He criticized George Washington for insisting that all officers be gentlemen (1930, p® &2)® He is of the opinion that men are born anything but equal and that the gifted few have a duty to lead those less endowed®
It often comes as a surprise to readers of Junger that he is intensely concerned with freedom. His men are given every latitude consistent with the performance of
their duty. Loyal Prussian though he is, he criticizes the
insistence on military formalities at the front and quotes Bismark's well-known rebuke about "Prussians needing half a
bottle of champagne."■"(Junger, 1930, p. 157.) lunger would agree with the Ancient Britain in Shakespearefs play Julius
■ Caesar who,■ .when offered his freedom, answered: "I have only found freedom in'Caesar,s service." Something of his human quality has already been written. But what of his humanity in more tender relation
ships? In Stahlgewittem. women are mentioned exactly three times; twice in a more or less complimentary, fleeting mention and once to complain of female nurses in military
hospitals. If one compares this with the many amourous
episodes in Renn and Remarque and the intimate details of
the military brothels, one gets some concept of the - fastidiousness, almost austerity of Jungerfs nature. This
has often been interpreted as showing a lack of feeling.
All the evidence is to the contrary. His deep love for his
children and his wife of thirty years, as well as for his brother Friedrich, are too x|ell-known and documented to need - - ' - 1 any further confirmation, but his obligations to the Gemeinschaft will come first. Significantly, the sole
occasion on which'he did not follow his own strict code was
when he sent men he could not spare to carry his badly wounded brother to the rear (1929, p. 171)• ' ' v - 51 In contrast to most war books 5 Jlinger does not say a word about his leave.. He ends a sentence telling that he has been granted leave and the next paragraph starts with his return (1929, p. 130). This again, leaves many a reader with the impression that he is dealing with a heart less monster. Actually, he is a man of extreme sensitivity who regards any. intrusion into his private affairs as an unpardonable offense. Similarly, any expression of personal feelings is sternly frowned upon.
Achtung vor dem Leben (Albert Schweitzer) As.might be expected from the foregoing pages, Junger is a passionate lover of nature. How could he be otherwise? He does not share the Christian view of man *s special place in the world. He sees all life as one organic whole fulfilling a purpose we do not understand. He might say with Goethet "Ihr Anblick gibt den EngeIn Starke, wenn keiner sie ergrunden mag.” Nature is the keynote to Ernst
Junger. His concern with the problems of man created by modern technology is, in its essence, a concern with nature.
He agrees with Nietzsche’s prophecy of catastrophe and that the humanistic values of the nineteenth century have ceased to exist. v. , Following the writing of In Stahlgewittern. he was to spend the next fifty years trying to fit man into a world in which machines have replaced nature (Robertson, 1968, : : ■■ / - ■ • 52 p. 561). The following excerpt, chosen at random, from
dozens <, may give some impression of his deep feelings
(Jdnger, 1925)S Once a grasshopper began to chirp «, s e was still again . « 0 small blue butterflies played above the thistle heads» I almost believed I ■ could hear the beat of their wings .<= « „ was a . dead calm . • e a light wave passed over the variegated earth» __It » . » the heat passing over the ground /p® 120%« Such were his thoughts as he crouched a few feet
from the enemy trench, in the face of almost certain death.
He sees how the women in Belgium, in fear of the bombardment “embrace the very soil that might at any moment be their grave.n (Hunger, 1929, p« 208.) .
Shells remind him that he must be careful as he gathers roses under fire (Junger, 1929, p. 288)* He misses the companionship of a mouse he had shot in a moment of irritation (1930, p. 44)® Years later he was to write nostalgically: ® . only at rare moments did I hear a
sound from the past--*the sound of bugles at sunrise and the neighing of horses . . . all that was gone.n (1960c, p. 22.) Yet, he still had time to think philosophically and to draw the conclusion that “man is the most dangerous animal of all" (1930, p. 121). This is a characteristic of Junger.
He does not keep his philosophy, his emotions, his duty as an officer or his love for. his family in different com partments of the mind.. All fit into a pantheistic whole
(1930s P® 68)® Neo-conservatism
Perhaps it would be a fitting termination of this chapter to add a few words concerning the political posi tion of Junger during the crucial years 1919-24. It was at the end of this period that Mittler published the edition of In Stahlgewittem upon which this study has been largely based, and it may be assumed that this edition reflects some of the political thinking resulting from his ex periences with the Weimar Republic, the inflation, the
French occupation of the Ruhr and other vital topics of the day.
One must avoid the temptation to think too closely in labels. : Klemperer points out: ‘The New Conservatism . . . a broad current among . . . such diverse men as Max Weber, Troelsch, Heineeke and Thomas Mann." (1957$ p« 227.) Junger embraced the New Conservatism, but disagreed with most of the conservatives. He was, as always in his life, essentially
Junger, unique and alone. This is not to say that he was of no importance. Again quoting the above authority: “Un doubtedly the early troublesome Ernst Junger was as much a figure of European significance as is the mature Ernst
Junger of our days. He belonged in the line of thinkers we now call existentialists. “ (1957, p. 227.) : Junger did not oppose the Weimar Republic as such.
He condemned its failure to solve Germanyfs problems. When 54 the NSDAP became a serious contender for power in Germany, it may be assumed that he considered their platform, '• Junger would have been a great asset to the Nazis, and they
, made him some handsome offers. These were curtly refused
(Paetel, 1962, p. 45)* His house was searched at the time
of Ernst Niekisch?s arrest, but Junger was not molested
(Paetel, 1962, p e 21), for he was too great a German
national hero. Some of his books were forbidden during the Second World War in Germany, He,.himself, was dismissed
from the German.Army: in 1944 for his close association with
members of the conspiracy against Hitler in 1944° In spite
of his admiration for German blood, he was never tainted
with antisemitism (Paetel, 1962, pp» 65, 94)• . . / Ironically enough, he was forbidden to publish for
a few years following the end of the War in 1945° He is,
perhaps, the only author whose books were considered too
dangerous for publication by both the Germans and the
Allied Powers° CHAPTER IV
THE FRUITS OF THE PAST AND THE SEEDS OF THE FUTURE
Whether., as Junger writes (Vinnai, 1964, p» 99), ■- every action is important however trivial it may seem, is
true or not, it. is difficult to escape the conclusion that - man is a composite of all the influences to which he has ever been.exposed.
Something has been said of the enormous gulf be
tween the intellectual climate of today and that of fifty '..A years ago* An attempt has been made to show that Junger was,
as all men are, to a large extent a product of his times.
V He, with millions of others, was subjected to the traumatic experiences of the First World War. While in Junger?s
case the war probably left less of a psychic scar than in
: men unfortified by his stern philosophy, his book clearly
shows not only physical suffering ""but a mental anguish so
great that upon one occasion he flung himself upon the
• ground and in front of his men sobbed aloud (JUnger, 1929, : p. 214)» There were, however, other influences upon Jungerfs
life of a profound nature which are more particularly part
: of Junger than the general influences that all Germans
shared who participated in the First World War. These in
fluences, in the opinion of this student, were: his
: : 55 ■ ■ ■. 4 : literary background^ the accident that he was a North '
German and that he was Ernst lunger. He was an individual
with a marked personality and an original mind that would have imposed itself upon any age.
Special Influences
Nietzsche .
lunger probably presents to the researcher more dif
ficulties than that unfortunate individual anticipated,
lunger is reluctant to commit himself definitely to any
cause. This makes it difficult, at times, to know exactly
what his position on key questions, at any particular
moment, may be. His work is constantly being revised.
Paetel quotes Niet^ehe as appropriate to lunger: nNur weir
sich wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt.” (Paetel, 1962,. p. 103.)
This is reflected in his works which undergo an almost con
tinuous revision. His symbolism many find difficult. It
becomes more esoteric with the years. In his basic war books, lunger mentions some fifteen
or twenty authors he appears to admire. These are of such
astounding variety that one can deduce little beyond the bald fact that he was a 'young man with a cultivated and
highly catholic taste and an inclination towards adventure,
Critics seem to have the same difficulty in tracing lit
erary ■influences in his writings. Stern (1953$ p° 3&) con
siders he: "belongs to the tradition of German nature and 57 travel writers from Brockes to Haller and through Stifter to the later novels of Thomas .Mann.” Robertson (196S$ p. 560) sees something of Brecht, and Kafka in his concern with the crisis of modern man. Bithell (1959, p. 461) finds something of Wiechert and Kreuder in Hunger and considers him inferior to Hesse in subtlety. He has even been con nected with people as far apart as Benn and Dos Passos. No doubt these well-known critics could successfully defend their viewpoints. This merely shows what this paper has already attempted to demonstrate: the many facets of
Ernst Hunger® But are there any overwhelmingly important literary influences on Hunger which can be determined from his style or his ideas? Nietzsche is, of course, an obvious answer.
. Hunger quoted Nietzsche enthusiastically on several occasions, it is true, but had Hunger studied
Nietzsche in any real sense, or was he merely repeating the cant phrases of the day? Nietzsche was little known during his own lifetime, but the years 1900 to 1914 saw a tre mendous increase in his popularity. The difficulty at the time, as now, was which Nietzsche the speaker had in mind. Did he mean the “gentle” or the “tough” Nietzschians, as
Crane Brinton was to call them half a century later (1941, p. 201)? But in the popular mind, a third Nietzsche appears.
As Pinson so ably expresses it: “Democratic mass culture brought with it a vulgarization and banalization . . .
C 58 abounding in distortions, oversimplifications . . , forced interpretations of Nietzsche, Goethe, Kant (1966, p. 465)«
To complicate matters more, Elizabeth Forster, Nietzsche?s sister devoted the rest of her life to bringing out edited copies of her brotherYs works«, These have interpretations with.which scholars, as a rule, are not in.agreement.
v . . ' : One may say with a certain assurance, that in'1914, the young student working on his university entrance exam ination requirements had certainly been exposed to the popular version of Nietzsche.. It was a version that during the war became more and more a vehicle of propaganda. The
British used it extensively to "prove" the Germans were savages (Brinton, 1941, p» 232)„ In Germany, there was a special edition of Also Sprach Zarathustra delivered free to the troops with official blessing (Brett-Evans, 1968, p® 138). Junger was not a good student» The researcher soon deduces this from the reluctance of his loyal friends to mention this subject. We also have Junger^s own word for it® "Schon am Kopf meines ersten Zeugnisses stand die
Bemerkung fAufmerksamkeit mangelhaft,! die mich dann als eisener Bestand die garizen Jahre hindurch begleitete."
(Paetel, 1962, p® 9.) He further tells us that he read Winnetou, Schinderhannes and Don Qul.iote® The last is more -indicative, of his youthful, mind, I suggest, than Nietzsche® Of course, the great, philosopher was probably read, in a simplified and, no doubt, highly patriotic inter
pretation, in his high school. This leads us again to the.
vulgar interpretationo But the vulgar interpretation,
meaning roughly the intellectual climate of the times, was
not Nietzsche alone« This is the core of the difficulty in trying to gauge the extent of Nietzsche, or any other
writer, on those who came later» Even at the age of twenty with nothing to mature him except his war years, Junger was
already an existentialist and a person profoundly concerned with the problems of man in an increasingly complex society
(Vinnai, 1964, p= 23)» This shows the influences of -
Kierkegaard as well as Nietzsche (Pinson, 1966, p= 255)» Junger is fond of using Nietzschefs saw: "Krieg ist der Vater aller Dinge," but he is quoting Heraclitus whose in fluence upon Nietzsche was enormous (Paetel, 1962, p® 72)®
As a young man, Junger seems to have had the common habit
of freely quoting important writers who seem to support his
own views o This, of course., is not the same as being in fluenced by them®
. The revolt against Hegelian collectivism was wide spread by the time of the Franco-Prussian War, and Nietzsche was its most eloquent spokesman® Ibsen, Kierkegaard,
Moeller, Spengler and a host of others had, in various forms, contributed to this revolt® By the time of the First World War, the revolt was an accomplished fact and was part of
Hungerfs intellectual heritage® - 60 The purpose of the foregoing paragraph is to show
exactly what is meant by “the influence of Nietzsche on
Junger." It seems essential to know that this “influence” .
is a composite in time and in thinkers, all of whom do not
necessarily always agree with each other. This accounts
for some of the. apparent contradictions in lunger*s thinking.
For example, his buoyancy and enthusiastic joie de vivre
is Nietzschian, while the satisfaction he appears to take
from the dismal progress of the war is reminiscent of
Spengler, as is also his biological concept of the Gemein-
schaft (Heiden, 1944, p. 719). This latter bears a re
markable resemblance to Spengler?s theory that cultures are living organisms passing from youth to maturity and old age. Thomas Mann called Spengler: “Nietzsche*s clever -
. ape” (Klemperer, 1957, p® 171), emphasizing the sharp dis agreements that existed among the greatest thinkers of their
day. The above is intended to show what has already been
mentioned and it is hoped, demonstrated, elsewhere: that
lunger was largely a product of his times. It has often
been said that lunger was attempting the “Umwertung- aller
Werte” as was Nietzsche. This is undoubtedly true, but is
it not also true, that most thinking young men were trying
to upset the nineteenth century scale of values in 1914 and
much taore so after the experience of fighting and losing the
war? - Stern points out that Nietzsche is not responsible. for the language of Jlinger (Stern, 1953, p. 28) e The reference is, apparently, not to the vocabulary, but rather to the prose stylee Perhaps, this is an appropriate place to. make an important distinction clear: while some dis-. tinctly Nietzschian concepts will be pinpointed and others speculated upon, no comparison between the two men is in tended., Nietzsche is a sui generis, one of the greatest thinkers of all times and one of the greatest stylists in the German language. By comparison, Juhger pales into insignificance.
But with all the qualifications that have been made, this researcher is still of the opinion that there is much of Nietzsche fs thought in the philosophy of In Stahlgewittern and Waldchen 125.
When Junger states that he is not only a fighter, but a soldier (Juhger, 1929, p. 275) or that you must not have enemies that you despise,:but.enemies that you hate
(Junger, 1929, p. 154), he is practically quoting Nietzsche word for word (Nietzsche, 1930, p. 47)° Section 10 of
Zarathustra, though only two pages long, has much of Junger?s philosophy. If you can be proud of your enemies, then their success can be your success (Nietzsche, 1930, p. 48). This seems to agree with Junger that the outcome of the war is not so important, since after war, peace comes ; 62 and as Zarathustra points out in the same passages "Ye
shall love- peace as a means to new wars „ «, ." (Nietzsche,
1930, p e 48)» "What is good?" inquires Zarathustra. The answer comes: "To be brave is good*" Jlinger insists
battles are won by the heart and not by regulations* Even when he quotes Ariosto, it has a distinct Nietzschian rings "Care nothing for death as long as it is glorious®" (lunger,
1929, p® 179®) Zarathustra says: "So live your life of obediance and war! What matter about a long life? What
warrior wisheth to be spared?" lunger, of course, is con
stantly harping on obedience® • - His insistence that it does not matter which side you fight on, as long as you fight, is one of lungerfs more ■ extreme statements about war and has been frequently quoted
against him® He seems to mean more or less what Nietzsche means, that war is a natural law and cannot be avoided®
This is lunger's argument for its inevitability: War is
so unpleasant that it would have been abolished long ago had
it not been a law of nature® One of Nietzsche's most hotly disputed concepts is
his idea of the "Will to Power" and here we have a .clear tie-
up between lunger and the famous philosopher® According to
Morgan (194 3, p® 60), Nietzsche means: "The strongest of
all. urges which has directed all organic evolution, so far®"
lunger's passage from Waidchen® 125, is, perhaps, worth quoting at length: • 6 3 Wars are'’'won— whatever one may pay— by the heart, not by the brain; by the enthusiasm that launches a host like one man why, they scarcely know, except that the deep consciousness of utterly and incon testably right possesses them. . • . The pre tensions of the other side may be even better - grounded than ours. That is a matter of indif- ■ / ference » • » not justification » . . but the stronger and more deeply realized will to power « . . /otherwise/ the blood-test of war would have no meaning (p. 34)» Eugene Guerster writing in the South Atlantic
Quarterly (1949, p. 36l) , expresses a semi-Nietzschian in terpretation of lunger. Quoting lunger, Guerster writes % ■ "In the Great War of 1914," says lunger, "the animal, the great monster arose in our soul." . . . man is fastened to the jungle, the warmth of which first bred his germ."« What Nietzsche felt in his study, lunger experienced in the barrage of Verdun. This passage also reminds one of the constant . struggle that appears to be going on in lunger?s breast between the claims of the sword and the pen. lunger can experiencev in a barrage of death-dealing steel something that Nietzsche can only feel in the security of his study, but once the heat of early youth-had passed, the pen is to be Ixlngerfs lifelong concern. The early lunger, how ever, shows the strong influence of Spengler who thought that history had already condemned to death those who thought more about morality than about facts (Burckhardt,
1965, . p. H ) . In one passage, lunger seems to have retreated back to Hegelian pessimism: . . bitterly contested — . ■ 6Z, engagements » » » herioc battles = « e no parallel In
history „ dust dranlc the blood of our youth „
qualities which had raised the German race to greatness leapt up in a dazzling flame and then slowly went out in a
see of mud and blood," (Jungers 1929, p» 1106)
Junger would share Nietzschefs fear of the rabble
(Heiden, 1944? P® 3-30} , He frequently used the word
"Fobel," His absolute rejection of all bourgeois values is also in keeping with Nietzschian thought.
There is one last aspect that may, to some at least, seem too fanciful for serious criticism: JungerTs love of music and.NietzscheTs theory of expressing truth in music.
When crawling in front of the enemy lines, with only a small chance of surviving the next fifteen minutes, JUnger
pauses to admire the tune of a song that his intended
victim is whistling (JUnger, 1929, p. 194), In all the war books, much is made of sound. A man$s life depended upon
his ability to recognize the different whines, hisses,
roars in the din of battle or the sudden sounds during a
lull, but in In Stahlgewittern, one senses a rhythm or
even symphonic effects amid the noise of battle,
A possible explanation of Junger?s strong reaction
to the sounds of battle is that he experiences a sense of
well-being while taking part in a scene that he feels re
flects the infinite design of an unknown creator, and that,
whatever may happen to him personally, life will proceed ■ ' 65 along its ordained pattern® If this reminds the reader
more of Goethe than of Nietzsche, then it can only be
pointed out, that there is much of Goethe too in that com
plex entity that is Ernst Jtinger® ■
Other Literary Influences
In spite of his emphatic rejection of romanticism
(lunger, 1930, p® 191), in its post-1615 variety at least, whatever else lunger may be, he is above all a romantic®
Much of his thought is pure Sturm und Drang® ". » . with blood, not with brain®n Again, “battles are won by brave hearts, not by r e g u l a t i o n s F e e l i n g is stressed again and again® ' The simple man will fight in a battle which he does not understand or whose causes he does not know and will fight by instinct, moved by heart and not by mind®
Jungerfs romanticism has its roots deep in the
Middle Ages® Significantly, Junger (1930) writes» ® ® ® the artist who realizes that the reality of feelings is far above the reality of fact ® ® ® it would mean emasculation to analyze the feel ings of a man in battle instead of seeing him as an indivisable unity® ® . ® His.mention of Parzival is significant. There is much of this hero in Jlinger himself. The reaction to the killing of the bird and Hunger?s killing of the mouse are remarkably similar /pp® 195-1967°
The emphasis on the value, or for Hunger^ the ideal of individual combat is out of the Middle Ages® This is seen in his envy of aviators who go off in nice, well pressed uniforms to glory or to death® He bemoans the fact that the.Age of Chivalry has gone forever. Loose, in
fact, describes In Stahlgewittern as a Bildungsroman (1957, p. 32). Closely associated with this concept is the
idea of the adventurer. Loose, Ingeborg Besser among others, have stressed this aspect of Junger?s motivation. ' ' V Loose devotes pages to the Ichbezogenheit or an almost pathological egocentricism. Much is explained, if one is to believe these writers, by considering this factor as the main motivation of Junger*s life. Adventure more than a desire to escape the monotony of his very comfortable home, was the reason for joining the French Foreign Legion.
: . Death is another obvious connection with the
Romantics. Bearing in mind that the Romantics all differed
in their own brands of romanticism, let us concentrate upon Kleist whom he mentions. I maintain there is no connection between the pessimistic failure and suicide, Kleist and.the buoyant, optimistic Junger, who seems to come up smiling in
spite of all the blows that fate may deal him. But in character, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg and Ernst Junger
certainly have much in common. When lunger falls down in
front of his men and sobs like a child (lunger, 1929, p. 246)., he has reached the breaking point as the Prince
did when he heard the death sentence. When the Elector makes the suicidal gesture of riding into battle on his white" horse, isnlt he behaving exactly like lunger who is ■ 6? constantly forgetting his gas. mask and who admires the dead
British officer who has gone into battle without his steel 'helmet? ■
Death for Junger is an insignificant detail, in separable from life® He does not attach the importance to death that many romantics feel® Though Junger may be a romantic in.only a limited sense, this aspect of his character cannot be overlooked®
Other Factors in Early Junger
When Goethe wrote: nZwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust,n he probably had in mind the enormous capacity for good and for evil that is inherent in all human beings®
The quotation has often been used to show that even the tolerant, internationally-minded Goethe, regarded the
Germans with the same vague suspicion®
This student^s researches do not indicate any essential difference between Germans and any other people®
Historically, it would seem, if there has been a problem child in Europe, France until recent years, would have as good a claim as anybody® Nevertheless, there are historical and geographical factors in the development of Germany that cannot be ignored®
When people speak of Germans being moody and inclined to mysticism, is this not a fact that can be traced back to their homelandfs climate? Consider the area roughly having •the valleys of the Lower Elbe and .Lower Weser as its center.
It is not merely damp and dreary, it is awe inspiring and mystical. The Moor Poets, especially, Annette von Droste-
' Hulshoff, have caught this mood. Anybody who has walked along the., banks of the Elbe on a winter evening and watched the scenery becoming ever ghostlier as the mist covers the trees in a spectral white, feels the influence of a world beyond pragmatic reality. It is an unfruitful soil, this
German Heartland, housing a fruitful people who have ex panded and contracted over the centuries, like a concertina, in the search for the means of sustenance. ■ Naturally, such a people laid great stress on war and paid great homage to the warrior as upon him, more than most people, they depended for their very lives. Later, in the framework of Modern Europe, the German people were a plaything in the politics of Central Europe, until they developed the most formidable army the world had ever seen.
They very soon achieved a leading place in the comity of nations. The German Army was honored as much in the German mind as the British Navy was in Britain.
■When Jiinger writes« UI am a North German, from a hard and misty country” (1930., p. 29) , his poetic mind was fully conscious of the impact of the land of his birth on his feeling and personality. This is reflected in his many comments upon the reliability, imagined or otherwise, of 69 the Lower Saxon-type= When new troops appears he may mention that somebody or other was a Bavarian with no com ment «, .
Junger was, except for the unimportant accident of his birth in Heidelberg, from Lower Saxony, the heartland of the. German race. This area is distinct, perhaps, from those German lands where people have lived for centuries under the surviving influence of the Roman Empire» This is a factor which must be taken into account in an overall . assessment of Jimger, What many critics regard as the best history of the German people written in English, devotes an entire chapter to this topic (Pinson, 1966, chap, l). . The final influence in Ernst Jungerfs complex make up is Ernst Junger himself. Anthropologists seem agreed that man differs from his fellow man to an extraordinary - degree, Junger is an extreme example of this deviation from the norm, -He is an individualist, a man who has always swum against the current of his times or, at least, been in the vanguard of advanced thought® This individual dif ference is, perhaps, the biggest single factor in explaining
Junger® . ' - . CHAPTER V
■ CONCLUSIONS
Little or nothing has been said in the previous pages that could be interpreted as adverse or laudatory criticism of .J'iingerfs philosophyc The omission has been deliberate® For greater clarity, such a discussion has been reserved ' for.this concluding section® . Let it be said immediately that nothing could be simpler than to ridicule lunger or to prove him the fiend incarnate by carefully selected quotations from his war diaries® lunger is a.highly complex, paradoxical character and can only make sense when viewed in his entirety within the framework of his times and intellectual climate® One must also consider that he is, in essence, a poet. It is natural for him to hear a Wagnerian crescendo in the rising pitch of battle® This does not mean that he enjoys death or mutilation any more than Benn—enjoyed a cancer ward.
Perhaps, one might say of lunger what Stefan George said of Nietzsche: "He should have sung." In a way, lunger did sing. There is plenty of sound rhythm in Waldchen 125. the abstractness of which makes him difficult to understand for most mortals who are used to Cartesian Rationalism in their thinking. It also makes him an easy victim of the hostile critic. These are especially
70 71 plentiful in the -English speaking world® Of six articles
written in English, quoted in des Goudres * bibliography,
four are highly critical of lunger® Most of them take the
approach adopted by Vinnai— they go to a good deal of .trouble to prove that he is not, in any sense, a believer
in democracy. This is'equated with moral condemnation.
Since" lunger most emphatically states that he is not a
democrat, these articles seem of questionable value.
There is no denying that there is plenty of room
for valid Criticism in In Stahlgewittern. lunger is often
extremely naive. He completely fails to understand that the problem of the German Army was lack of supplies, rather than some mystical failure of the Gemeinschaft which could only be brought about by a lost war. How he thought that the
death of those whom he considered, with some justice perhaps, the nationsf finest manhood, would improve the
race, he does not explain. Again the statements that these victims were being hardened like steel and should be grate ful to a kindly fate which had favored them, is, I submit,
sheer nonsense. He saw whole regiments reduced to the size of a single company. He knew that most of these were mere
boys who had left no offspring and that the people at home,
whom he considered less suited to survive, must inevitably
carry on the race. Yet, he seemed so blinded by romantic
‘dreams of knightly daring that he was oblivious to simple ..
logic. Today, Hunger shrugs off criticism of this period ■ - . 72 by remarking, that.he was very young at.the time and that
youth is always warlike (Pastel5 19625 p. 65).
There is a certain reasonableness in this explana tion* Jiinger often emerges as a very normal young man of his period* The stern soldier-poet covering himself in immortal glory while storming an enemy trench suddenly
pauses in his military exploits long enough to consume a
whole tin of jam; he emphasizes that it was gooseberry and
.devotes three lines to the incident (Jiinger, 1929, p« 271) *
One could point out that his concepts of geography
were poor* He also sometimes erred in matters of fact.
For example, he states that he noticed by the cap badge of
a fallen British officer bearing the "Otago," that the man was South'African. ■ Actually, this was a New Zealand regiment, as a glance at Webster^s Unabridged Dictionary would have informed him. The surprising fact is that this error has never been corrected® .: It could also be charged that what has been termed "Jiinger?s philosophy" in this paper is merely a collection of
conservatism, romanticism and class prejudices added to a
hodge-podge of highly dubious biological interpretations
of human conduct. Is there any substance in this criticism? Certainly Jiinger has many tendencies in his style
and his thinking that at times result in a sort of sparkling
obscurity. His friend, Ernst von.Salomon- (1951)., wrote of him: ' ' ' . ' ': ' 7 - ■ - ; , ; ' • 73 Without _doubt it v/as ' Juhger, who gained for the . paper /Vorwarts/ a name and respect through articles, which were so ingenuous and so clear in their diction, that our readers put them down with considerable respect, with admiration and t)he feeling, that it would suffice fully, if Junger was sure himself to understand them ZF. 2417. It is, perhaps worth mentioning in passing, that Winston
Churchill has been faulted on the same grounds« Bevin once said of him bitterly: "The grandeur of the honorable gentlemanfs language hides the paucity of his thought«n I submit that Junger resembles Churchill more closely than many of the literary characters whose influence has been found in him. ■
When we have stripped In Stahlgewittern of Wagnerian drama, boyish exuberance and nostalgic longing for the chivalry of the Middle Ages, there remains a complete re- . jection of the ideas of both the Enlightenment and the
French Revolution. In its ultimate analysis, Junger is at odds with the world over the question of the basic nature of man. Writers in the Middle Ages had not always been in agreement on this question, but the philosophy of the seventeenth, and more emphatically, the eighteenth century left no room for further doubt. Man stood apart from other forms of life as a special creation of the Divine Will. Man was basically good, unless perverted by his environment.
Newton had shown that the universe could be explained • : 74 rationally and the biological world was considered to re flect the mechanical, universe«
.These are the concepts that Jiinger rejects in toto ®
He. sees man as merely another factor in the cosmic pattern, struggling for survival, against a more or less hostile en vironment « There is nothing particularly original about
Jiingerfs thinking except, perhaps, in his use of the word
"blood*" Blood for Jiinger is a metaphysical rather than a biological concept (Vinnai, 196.4, P» 125) ® These ideas were held by many of the new conservatives in Germany.' They were also held to some extent by men like G. B. Shaw and T. E. Lawrence in England. In fact, Klemperer calls Jiinger a
German T. E. Lawrence (1957? p» l8l). Unfortunately, the problem is far more than a. semantic confusion or ah academic squabble. The Enlightment theories which Jiinger rejects are the philosophical basic - upon which the whole political structure of the Western
Democracies is precariously built. .During the previous century this would have entailed no particular problem. During the nineteenth century, po litical. doctrines sprouted freely in an atmosphere "of com parative : intellectual- tolerance, up to a certain point, at any rate. The religious fervor, the fanatical zeal and crusading spirit that swept through the Western World, following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was lacking. The world had dynastic* economic and religious wars. Now
it was to learn that men will also slaughter each other for ideologies.
In what has been,, perhaps, the most catastrophic fifty years in man?s history, the doctrines that Jlinger
opposes in In Stahlgewittern have guided.The League of
Nations and the United Nations. The criminal actions taken
against those indicted for "crimes against humanity" in
Japan and Germany, in 1945» assumed the rationality, the equality and the essential goodness of man. On these
assumptions, African Republics, consisting largely of a few million semi-naked tribesmen, have been.created and supplied with sophisticated constitutional governments. With what .results, the world is painfully familiar.
In view of the ghastly failures of the past half century and.the urgency thrust upon mankind by the prolifer
ation of atomic weapons, does it not behoove us to discard the religious sanctity with which we have endowed our po
litical theories and to examine afresh, without prejudice,
the vital question of the nature of man himself.
That In Stahlgewittern raises this.vital question
at this critical stage of history may well give the book an
importance transcending by far its undoubted value as a
historical document. APPENDIX A
■ LITTLE MOTHER'S LETTER
. As the casualties mounteds the patriotic fever rose to a white heat. Opposition to the war brought public disapproval and possible legal prosecution in its wake. To the Editor of The Morning Post "Sir,— As a mother of an only child— a son who was early and eager to do his duty— may I be permitted to reply to Tommy Atkins, whose letter appeared in your issue of the 9th inst.? Perhaps he will kindly convey to his friends in the trenches, not what the Government thinks, not what the Pacifists think, but what the mothers of the British race think of our fighting men. It is a voice which demands to be heard, seeing that we play the most, important part in the history of the world, for it is we ■ who 'mother the men' who have to uphold the honour and traditions not only of our Empire but of the whole civilized world. . "To the man who pathetically calls himself a 'common soldier,' may I say that we women, who demand to be heard, will tolerate no such cry as 'PeaceI Peace!' where there is no peace. The corn that will wave over land watered by the blood of our brave lads shall testify to the future that their blood was not spilt in vain. We need no marble
: 76 ■ ■ 77 monuments to remind us. We only need that force of char
acter behind all motives to. see this monstrous world
tragedy brought to a victorious ending. The blood of the
dead and the dyings the blood of the fcommon soldier 9 from
his 'slight wounds ' will not cry to us in vain. They have all done their share} and we, as women, will do ours without murmuring and without complaint. Send the Pacifists to us and we shall very soon show them, and show the world, that
in our homes at least there shall be no 'sitting at home warm and cosy in the winter, cool and comfy in the summer. ' There is only one temperature for the women of the British race, and that is white heat. With those who disgrace their
sacred trust of motherhood we have nothing in common. Our
ears are not deaf to the cry that is ever ascending from the battlefield from men of flesh and blood whose in domitable courage is borne to us, so to speak, on every blast of the wind. We women pass on the human ammunition of 'only sons' to fill up the gaps, so that when the 'common soldier' looks back before going 'over the top' he may see the women of the British race at his heels, re liable, dependent, uncomplaining.
-] Quoted by Robert Graves in Good Bye to All That (New York, 1929), p. 178. ... APPENDIX B
.. REVIEW OF IN STAHLGEWITTERN
The following review is indicative of the objective criticism of 1929$ lacking in the earlier postwar years*
“British publishers appear to have decided that
German.books of War-time reminiscences are,superior to our
own® If that is really the case it is a pity, but we are
bound to say that these two books, with rAll Quiet on the
Western Front,? make, a trio hard to beat„ It is interest ing to contrast them, for they are all very different® Herr Remarque*s work was in the modern realistic style, not uninfluenced by Russian literature® It was brutal and sometimes clumsy, but it had a touch of genius« It was stamped from first to last by its author's loathing of war® Herr Renn probably hates war as much as most people did, but he does not go out of his way to say sol He. records his impressions with that extreme simplicity which is one
of the highest forms of literary art® Obviously a good and
steady soldier, he does not seem.to have been subject to
fits of acute depression, or on the other hand to have
'seen red®' At the last, as he staggered home across the German frontier, and others rejoiced,his strongest com ment was: . 'But I felt sad® The damned old Fatherland was still- dear to me!* That is, probably, more strongly put than we should have had it from Herr Remarque, but it is a . very different attitude from that of Herr Junger® He was the only officer of the three— -Herr Renn was a sergeant in command of a platoon in the later stages— and we have been
■ informed that he continued to serve as an officer after the
War® He won every honour possible % Pour le Merite, the highest his country had to bestow, the Knight*s Cross of the
House of Hohenzollem, the Iron Cross of the First Class®
He is, in the words of Mr® R. H. Mottram*s rather chilly - introduction, a *high-minded devotee of personal combat®*
But, with all respect to Mr® Mottram*s criticisms, we find that aspect of his character less remarkable than his devotion to duty, his determination to get done what he had to do® As a writer he has not Herr Renn * s charm, but when he has a big moment to describe he has not many superiors in his own line® "Of these two men, the non-commissioned officer saw the War through from start to finish, for he was with the
Colours when it broke out and he took part in the passage of the Meuse® The officer, the junior of the two by some seven years, arrived a little later, but he had about four years of warfare® The first was engaged almost always against the French, the second against the British® The first-was twice wounded, the second ten times, though nearly always slightly® One point they had in common, for both . . .. ' 80 found in drink an anodynes and are not ashamed to confess
the fact® Exactly what kept Herr Renn going it is not easy
to define; but it is clear .that, to aid his sense of duty,
Herr Jlinger had extraordinary buoyancy® ' He thus describes
his sensations under a very heavy bombardments—
The brain links every separate sound of whirring metal with the idea of death, and. so the nerves are exposed without protection and without a pause to a sense of the utmost menace® Thus I crouched in my little hole with my hand in front of my eyes, while . - all the possibilities of being hit passed through my . imagination® ® ® ® It is as if one were tied tight to a post and threatened by a fellow swinging a sledge-hammer® Now the hammer is swung back for the blow, now it whirls forward, till, just missing your skull, it sends the splinters flying from the post once more® That is exactly what it feels like to be exposed to heavy shelling without cover® Fortunately ■ for me personally,. I always have the confidence at the back of my head that things will soon be better® One has the same feeling, too, at games; and though it may have no justification, it has at least the merit of relieving the nerves« If we had all had that resource, it would have been easier
to endure the War; probably most of us felt that the hammer
would hit us next time. He broke down completely on one
occasion, however, when, just before the offensive of
March, 1918, a shell dropped in the midst of his company, exploded some ammunition, and killed or wounded about sixty
men; but it was only for a moment, and a little later he was
leading the survivors into the British lines in a sort of
fury._ /•' "We discover that, after declaring tWarf. to be the
better written of the two books, we have here devoted most attention to fThe Storm of Steele? That is perhaps because Herr Junger is the more personal and subjective writer, and his reflections constantly bring back episodes and attitudes of mind, whereas the other brings back rather the War as a whole. 9 The first day of rest was like being born anew, when after a bath one puts on clean clothes and well-brushed uniform.f One had almost forgotten the sensation. But there are others more subtle, less intelligible to the civilian, though equally true. /
I often sat at the table of my little dugout, whose roughly planked walls, hung with weapons, had a look of the Wild West, and enjoyed a pleasant feeling of being comfortably tucked away, as I drank a cup of tea, read and smoked while my . batman was busy at the tiny stove, and a smell of ■ toast rose in the air. "Both writers have to tell only of the Western Front. British readers who served in Palestine will, however, find one point of interest in Lieutenant JungerTs book. His regimental commander for the greater part'of the War was
Colonel von Oppen, the gallant and skilful soldier who, almost alone, extricated his troops from Lord Allenby*s net, and who died of typhus just after the Turkish
Y 1 ' - Armistice.n
2 . " ■ Times. Literary Supplement (London), "Two German War Books," June 20, 1920.. SELECTED: BIBLIOGRAPHY
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