A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945

Strahlungen #I

by Ernst Jünger, Thomas Hansen (Translator)

Ernst Jünger was one of twentieth-century Germany’s most important—and most controversial—writers. Decorated for bravery in World War I and the author of the acclaimed western front memoir Storm of Steel, he frankly depicted war’s horrors even as he extolled its glories. As a Wehrmacht captain during World War II, Jünger faithfully kept a journal in occupied Paris and continued to write on the eastern front and in Germany until its defeat—writings that are of major historical and literary significance.

Jünger’s Paris journals document his Francophile excitement, romantic affairs, and fascination with botany and entomology, alongside mystical and religious ruminations and trenchant observations on the occupation and the politics of collaboration. While working as a mail censor, he led the privileged life of an officer, encountering artists such as Céline, Cocteau, Braque, and Picasso. His notes from the Caucasus depict the chaos after Stalingrad and atrocities on the eastern front. Upon returning to Paris, Jünger observed the French resistance and was close to the German military conspirators who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944. After fleeing France, he reunited with his family as Germany’s capitulation approached. Both participant and commentator, close to the horrors of history but often distancing himself from them, Jünger turned his life and experiences into a work of art. These wartime journals appear here in English for the first time, giving fresh insights into the quandaries of the twentieth century from the keen pen of a paradoxical observer.

Genres: History, Germany, Biography, World War II, War, Nonfiction, Memoir

498 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Ernst Jünger was a decorated German soldier and author who became famous for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel. The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent upbringing and sought adventure in the Wandervogel, before running away to briefly serve in the French Foreign Legion, an illegal act. Because he escaped prosecution in Germany due to his father's efforts, Junger was able to enlist on the outbreak of war. A fearless leader who admired bravery above all else, he enthusiastically participated in actions in which his units were sometimes virtually annihilated. During an ill-fated German offensive in 1918 Junger's WW1 career ended with the last and most serious of his many woundings, and he was awarded the Pour le Mérite, a rare decoration for one of his rank.

Junger served in World War II as captain in the German Army. Assigned to an administrative position in Paris, he socialized with prominent artists of the day such as Picasso and Jean Cocteau. His early time in France is described in his diary Gärten und Straßen (1942, Gardens and Streets). He was also in charge of executing younger German soldiers who had deserted. In his book Un Allemand à Paris , the writer Gerhard Heller states that he had been interested in learning how a person reacts to death under such circumstances and had a morbid fascination for the subject.

Jünger appears on the fringes of the Stauffenberg bomb plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler (July 20, 1944). He was clearly an inspiration to anti-Nazi conservatives in the German Army, and while in Paris he was close to the old, mostly Prussian, officers who carried out the assassination attempt against Hitler. He was only peripherally involved in the events however, and in the aftermath suffered only dismissal from the army in the summer of 1944, rather than execution.

In the aftermath of WW2 he was treated with some suspicion as a closet Nazi. By the latter stages of the Cold War his unorthodox writings about the impact of materialism in modern society were widely seen as conservative rather than radical nationalist, and his philosophical works came to be highly regarded in mainstream German circles. Junger ended his extremely long life as a honoured establishment figure, although critics continued to charge him with the glorification of war as a transcending experience.

Reviews

[Willy Marz Thiessam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A German Officer in Occupied Paris by Ernest Junger, is not a pleasant book to read despite all the wonderful art and philosophy.. However I highly suggest anyone who wants to understand the war and what brilliance German intellectual culture was before the war to read this book. It is a classic by one of the foremost intellectuals in Europe, but it presents a moral challenge that no one will find easy to come to terms with.

Germany between the 30 Years War (1618-1648) and the Second World War (1939-1945) had the ideal and mythos of being a land of Poets and Philosophers (das Land der Dichter und Denker). This tradition never went away but it was diminished in the shadow of the horrific and brutal Nazi regime that lasted a mere twelve years and made the world unrecognizable with brutalities that rival or exceed the worst that history has to offer. That regime and its brutal love of death conjured into existence a world very different from what came before, and has made our cultural understanding of Germany distorted.

This book will help you see how that transition and eclipse came from the depths of hell with atrocities that can never be forgotten. It does this by being the journals of one of the most erudite, philosophical and astute thinkers and cultural commentators in German that you will ever read. Ernest Junger describes his life as an officer in Occupied Paris who was transferred to the Russian front before being transferred back to Paris.

Here the devastation is laid bare, you can't deny the holocaust and war of extermination that was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Junger gives full account of what happens. However in all of this mass homicidal madness Junger somehow floats above this. He is a man of high culture, sensibilities and taste who has his days filled with thoughts of high art and philosophy and his nights full of nightmares where the moral judgment is all too clear. Junger survives with his sanity by knowing full well to stop thinking of the high ideals of life, art and the moral certainties of religious faith is fatal. To dwell too precisely on what is happening he would succumb in a moment; broken by the devastation moral and physical all around him.

As the artist Coteau said of Junger, "some hands were dirty with atrocities, some had clean hands, but Junger had no hands at all". One is reminded of Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno Canto III):

"Of Angels, who have not rebellious been,
Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.
The heavens expelled them, but hell will not take them.
Even the damn souls in hell glory over them"

[Murtaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ernst Jünger was from a stock of man that appears to have vanished from Earth. A decorated WWI hero whose time in that war was immortalized in the memoir Storm of Steel, these diaries of Jünger's from the period of WWII are glimpses of his daily life as an officer stationed in France, the Caucasus, and finally as a decommissioned civilian witnessing demise of Nazi Germany from the garden path of his hometown. It may be surprising that the diaries of a German officer serving on the losing side of the war would be published today, but as his personal notes make clear without uncertainty he was a disgusted opponent of both Hitler and his anti-Semitic campaign against European Jews. Germany's actions in the war had "enraged the cosmos against us," and his personal notes bear witness to what he saw as a collective descent into barbarism, a vortex that opened as a result of the spiritual shortcomings of modern technological society. Jünger managed to comport himself with honor at a time when it had seemingly fled from the entire Western world. He was undyingly loyal to the soil of his homeland, but saw himself as a human being first and foremost.

Jünger was deeply spiritual, physically and morally courageous, and an eloquent observer of both the greatest and smallest details of life. His diaries show him spending days walking through gardens to collect rare insects, visiting the bleeding frontlines in the war against the Soviet Union, discoursing with Carl Schmitt about politics, and reflecting on the nature of eternity. His descriptions of waves of Allied airstrikes pummelling Germany and France are unforgettable; almost like scenes from an alternate universe. This too cannot be said enough: Jünger was a beautiful writer, one of the best whom I have ever encountered in the English language. Even on days when his diaries are short on events, they are always redeemed by the fact that they happened to have been written by the most interesting man in the world. Jünger analyzed the events of his time like a doctor inspecting the growth of an illness. He was alive where he saw that others had died on the inside, transformed into automatons by the technologies of mass politics and industry. It is hard to describe the nature of his philosophy, but the beating heart of religion was somewhere inside of it.

I wasn't sure if I had the wherewithal to read a few years of a person's journal, written extemporaneously and without clear narrative direction. What I found however is that I would've liked to have kept reading Ernst Jünger's journals for the next fifty years of his life, past what is documented here (among other things, he correctly estimated the halfway point of his life). He lived as full a life as any one man could and made sure to extract meaning from every bit of it – both the sweet and bitter aspects that he experienced in their turn. There are some books you taste, some you chew on, and some you digest. This book falls squarely in the last category and I took my time reading it. I will surely revisit it again. It is an unforgettable account of the most terrible and breathtaking events of the 20th century written from the perspective of one timeless observer.

[Radu Popovici · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 *

[Julia Simpson-Urrutia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Junger was a well-known German author and officer during World War II who "met intellectuals and artists across the political spectrum" while living in occupied Paris. As such, he can be considered part of a Franco-German dialogue, if not "alliance." I personally was interested in this book because I wanted to know the atmosphere of Paris under German domination. Apparently "Junger frequented the Thursday salon of Paris editor for Harper's Bazaar, MarieLouise Bousquet," wife of the playwright Jacques Bousquet. Pablo Picasso and Aldous Huxley also attended those meetings. Just getting into the book and realizing that nothing is black and white--but varying shades of gray. Junger, for instance, judged the brutality of fascist sympathizer Ferdinand Celine's vicious character harshly. It is amazing to see who dallied at these "salons." In visiting the George V hotel, he would have been conversing with Cocteau and the publisher Gaston Gallimard. This may help you keep reading: "When Junger saw an opportunity to help save Jews at an acceptable level of risk, he did act." His help proves he had a conscience, despite Cocteau's comment that he had no hands. #NetGalley #ColumbiaUniversityPress

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

So well written from an author so well read. I loved his nickname for Hitler (Kniebolo). And for his brothers and even his wife (Perpetua).

Lots of reading of Leon Bloy, must look him up. And of course all the books on shipwrecks.

And funny how he described the Caucasus. Must admit that most of Russia outside of Moscow and St. Pete still look the same.

[Niklas Pivic · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the foreword, by Elliot Neaman:

"As the Nazis began their final ascent to power after winning 107 seats in the Reichstag in the elections of September 1930, Jünger distanced himself from the party. He simultaneously advocated his own political vision, which in some ways was a more radical version of the nationalist revolution: authoritarian and ruthless, but not racist. Despite Goebbels’s attempt to win him over to the Brown Revolution before and even after 1933, Jünger steadfastly declined any offers to become involved in Nazi politics and forbade the propaganda minister from using any of his works without permission. Although Goebbels transmitted the Führer’s avid wish to meet him, Jünger did not reciprocate. Apart from one unfortunate essay on “Jews and the National Question,” in which he stressed the impossibility of Jews and Germans sharing the same national culture, he resisted the Nazi “Blood and Soil” ideology.

"Jünger operated on the edge of politics in Paris, rather like a butterfly fluttering among both resistors and collaborators. He didn’t trust the generals, who had taken a personal oath to Hitler, to be able to carry out a coup. Jean Cocteau later quipped: “Some people had dirty hands, some had clean hands, but Jünger had no hands.

"Cocteau’s witticism notwithstanding, the accusation was not entirely fair. When Jünger saw an opportunity to help save Jews at an acceptable level of risk, he did act. He passed on information, for example, through intermediaries to the French Resistance about upcoming transports and thus saved Jewish lives. The German playwright and novelist Joseph Breitbach, who lived in Paris from 1931 through the end of the occupation, was one of them. He publicized this fact after the war."

"To his credit, he never attempted to justify or explain away the Holocaust, even though the brutality of the eastern front did not affect Jews alone. But he did place these “wicked crimes” in a cosmic context that deprived individual actors of agency “Ancient chivalry is dead; wars are waged by technicians,” he wrote. Two years to the day after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, he observed with bitterness that demagogues brought Germany into a war with the Soviets that could have been avoided, leading to atrocities against the Jews, which “enrage the cosmos against us.” At the end of 1942, he made three New Year’s resolutions, the second of which reads, “Always have a care for unfortunate people.”

That's from the foreword. I approached this book with the same level of doubt I had before starting to read Rudolf Höss' " Commandant of Auschwitz ", which contained a foreword written by Primo Levi, who warned against lies and shirks.

What I found in this book is a highly nuanced, albeit self-made, picture of a human being in the middle of World War II, who is a devout fascist, yet who apparently seems to care for other human beings, regardless of their so-called social strata or race. Having said that, I found some of the contents repugnant as Jünger, a devout entomologist, easily writes about finding a new insect while fires are burning all around Paris in 1943.

Still, that does not take away from how singular this book is to me. It is clear that Jünger has a sober, massive mind, that stretches far from biology and more into philosophy, moralism, and books.

"Subject for study: the ways propaganda turns into terror. The beginnings in particular contained much that people are going to forget. That is when power walks on cats’ paws, subtle and cunning."

He writes as easily of the contents of his dreams, as he does of carefully constructed mass murder, becoming the Holocaust.

"[...] the firing squad has followed a signal from the first lieutenant and has taken up their positions standing behind the clergyman, who still blocks the condemned man. He now steps back after running his hand down the prisoner’s side once more. The commands follow, and with them I again awaken into consciousness. I want to look away, but I force myself to watch. I catch the moment when the salvo produces five little dark holes in the cardboard, as though drops of dew had landed upon it. Their target is still standing against the tree; his expression shows extraordinary surprise. I see his mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to form vowels and express something with great effort. This situation has something confusing about it, and again time seems attenuated. It also seems that the man is now becoming menacing. Finally, his knees give out. The ropes are loosened and now at last the pallor of death quickly comes over his face, as if a bucket of whitewash had been poured over it. The doctor rushes up and reports, “The man is dead.” One of the two guards unlocks the handcuffs and wipes the glistening metal clean of blood with a cloth. The corpse is placed in the coffin. It looks as if the little fly were playing around him in a beam of sunlight."

"At the table, I joked around with a beautiful three-year-old child I had grown fond of. Thought: that was one of your own children, unbegotten and unborn."

"In addition, a letter from Wolfgang, who—the third of us four brothers— has been called up. As a corporal, he has been put in charge of a prison camp in Züllichau. The prisoners will be in good hands there. He writes this curiosity: “Yesterday I was sent on official business to Sorau in the Lausitz [area], where I had to deliver a prisoner to the field hospital. While there, I also had to pay a visit to the asylum. There I encountered a woman whose only tic consisted of continuously murmuring ‘Heil Hitler.’ At least it’s a fitting, topical form of insanity.”

Sometimes, as with the above quote, it seems that Jünger mocks the Nazi regime, as they are quite simply anti-intellectual at their core.

"Paris, 6 June 1942
During World War I, we confronted the question of whether man was more powerful than machines. In the meantime, things have gotten more complex. We are now concerned with the problem of whether humans or automatons will dominate the earth. The issue brings up further divisions beyond the imprecise ones that partition the world into nations and groups of nations. All around us men stand fully armed at their battle stations. The result is that we never completely agree intellectually with any partner; there is only greater or lesser rapprochement. Above all, we must fight against that tendency within our breast to harden, calcify, ossify. Concerning marionettes and automatons—the decline in that direction is preceded by loss. This hardening is well depicted in the folktale about the glass heart. The vice that has become commonplace leads to automatism, as it did so terribly in the case of the old prostitutes who became pure sex machines. Something similar is emanating from the stingy old men. They have sold their souls to material things and a life of metal. Sometimes a particular decision precedes the transition; man rejects his salvation. A widespread vice must be the basis for the general transition to automatism and its threat to us. It would be the task of the theologians to explain this to us, but they are silent. What an image of a superman, cowering on the tattered cushions in his carriage with a bullet in his spleen and horsehair stanching his wounds. Such news burns through the hell he has created like a lugubrious, celebratory bonfire. Anyone who would assume the role of the despot has to be invulnerable and insensitive to pain, or else he becomes a burden in the hour of his destruction."

Some well-needed and crass humanity springs out at times:

"The unfortunate pharmacist on the corner: his wife has been deported. Such benign individuals would not think of defending themselves, except with reasons. Even when they kill themselves, they are not choosing the lot of the free who have retreated into their last bastions, rather they seek the night as frightened children seek their mothers. It is appalling how blind even young people have become to the sufferings of the vulnerable; they have simply lost any feeling for it. They have become too weak for the chivalrous life. They have even lost the simple decency that prevents us from injuring the weak. The opposite is true: they take pride in it."

Then, there's muck like this:

"Sodomy is probably more prevalent in the countryside than in the city. Incidentally, that which we view as aberrant can definitely be associated with a more profound view of the world. The reason for this is precisely that this view is less subject to the pressure, the veil of our species. This is generally observable among homosexuals, who judge by intellect. They are, therefore, always useful to intellectuals, quite apart from the fact that they are entertaining to have around."

This is a diary, and truly, who are we to judge? We, working for companies that may bring about the destruction of humanity far faster than the Nazis possibly could have.

Still, together with books such as Laurence Rees' " The Holocaust " and Sergey Yarov's " Leningrad 1941-42: Morality in a City Under Siege ", we can better ourselves and at the very least try to understand these hurdles and ourselves, and modify our worlds for the better.

[Hightatras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bewundere ja an Jünger stets auch sein Höchstmaß an dekadenter Abgefucktheit, wie in einem ästhetischen Traum durch beide Weltkriege (In Strahlungen der zweite Weltkrieg) zu stolzieren und zwischen Bombenteppichen und Stahlschrapnellen den Fokus stets auf kultivierte Abendessen, gepflegte Lektüre und in Bombenkratern lebende Käfer zu richten – in einer Art literarischer Egoshooterperspektive (ohne Kopfhörer und Force Feedback).
Was Jünger eigentlich sonst so, also millitärisch, an der Ost- und Westfront gemacht hat bleibt auch nach der Lektüre unklar.
Am nachdrücklichsten in Erinnerung behalten werde ich die romantischen (also erzdeutschen) Beschreibungen der allierten Geschwader über dem abendlichen Paris, das sich als Grundmotiv durch das Buch zieht.

[Bakunin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was really into Jünger when I was studying German in Berlin and this part of his diaries has some of my favorite writing by that old war hero.
Jünger developed his own style of writing over the years and this book contains the efforts of that fruit. He writes short and pithy observations about the world, his dreams and what he is currently reading. A refreshing read!

[Besim Dugalic · Rating 3 out of 5]

The universe is change, and life is opinion..

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a few years ago, I discovered and read a rare English language translation of a German First World War memoir for contrast and comparison with the mostly British memoirs I was reading for the 100th anniversary years of the Great War. Although a Hannoverian by birth and service, Junger’s memoir struck me as the perfect description of the classic stereotypical ‘squarehead’ Prussian so often belabored in British accounts of the war (and old Hollywood movies). It was also a strong narrative account of the collapse of the German army in 1918, even as he blamed it on the home front.

With that as background, when I learned that an English translation of the wartime journals of a German officer in occupied Paris in World War 2 were now available, I jumped at the opportunity to read them. I have read a number of different accounts of life in wartime Paris from various French points of view, but had yet to find one that really represented a German perspective on the experience. I soon found out in reading this book that I had far more than that for this Ernst Junger was a very different person from the young rather arrogant German officer of 1918. Now an almost 50 year old Captain in the Wehrmacht, his journal entries make it clear that this conservative/right wing German intellectual had little liking for the Nazis – nor they for him though they more than once tried to woo him into the party’s ranks. However, his status as published author and thinker in between the wars Germany left the Party reluctant to directly confront him. Also included are his journal notes from his assignment to the Caucasus region and his visits home to Germany, where he actually spends the last months of the war after his discharge.

His accounts of life in wartime Paris are therefore not what I expected. Junger had numerous active contacts in French conservative/right wing intellectual circles. He also associated freely with French authors and artists (and even visited Picasso!) over his years in Paris, even as these contacts were reminded of the dangers they faced from the French Resistance. While they do not offer entries for every single day, the pattern of Junger’s days emerges – walks in gardens and galleries, visits to a number of book stores and the carts along the quay with notes as to various acquisitions at each, lunches, teas, and dinners with his French contacts – and lovers. And every so often some of his official duties are noted as they intrude on his rounds (presumably the days without entries include some actual office or fieldwork!). He does observe and notes here also his encounters with residents of Paris who do not welcome his uniform and his presence even as they conduct business transactions with him, though often he moves about in civilian clothes.

Junger offers further personal insights as he also uses this as a dream journal and a reading journal, discussing both his dreams and his readings and his interpretations and observations of both. He notes those happiest moments hunting beetles (he had already published on the subject before the war) everywhere he goes when he can (including a deployment to the Caucasus). The author also shares his more philosophical thoughts about women, men, beetles, war, peace, nations, etc. in numerous asides as he writes. He also does note from time to time major turning points as the war progresses and records numerous shared accounts of the activities of German forces in various theatres, bemoaning the lack of necessity for such acts. His position in the Army in Paris and in German and French intellectual circles offered him insights into a number of aspects of both the war and its consequences on nations and society.

The collective effect of the journals is to expand our insights into the attitudes and thoughts of both Germans and French, in particular, as they experience the Second World War (many of them veterans of the Great War). The complexities of human interactions with each other and with the events and the great are exposed in these pages, coming to me at least as a surprise in some instances. The translation is excellent and the text is supported by extensive end notes and a special section collecting the names of various individuals noted in the text. Recommended reading for anyone interested in more than the military operations of World War Two (even though some interesting side notes on those are included here).

[Michelle Mock · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. That being said I will emphasize that my opinions and my review are always honest and always my own.*

I've always had an interest in World War II mostly because you have to wonder what kind of state did the world have to be in to go into a World War not once but twice in the period of 50 years. Also, I wonder, what kind of state of mind did cultures have that permitted such atrocities to occur....and then...how do they survive it? I mean really. Imagine your home decimated, your neighbors blown to pieces before your eyes and you have to pick up and bury their severed parts, and your children shot to death. How do you continue to survive it?
Ernst Jünger's life is especially fascinating because he fought in both World Wars and wrote extensively about it. The known and most popular works of the writing he did is, yes, a bit controversial due to the fact that he was on the "losing" side of things but also because he, to some, seemed to glamourize it. But here in the words of his journal you are able to get to know the man behind some of the most iconic writing. His writing is almost casual at some times, and heart-wrenching at others, you see him write about how he wrestles with some men in his attempt to do the right thing and avoid pointless brutality, and you see him come to terms with the death of his father, the death of his colleagues, and the death of his son. He writes vividly about his days and the dreams he has and also writes blandly about others. It is his journal and it is expected that it should be a bit of both. But, personally, the thing I found most interesting was about some of the horrors he writes about and also the death of his son. It was almost therapeutic for me because I have experienced both and it was very, dare I say, refreshing (?) to get inside of the head of someone else who saw and was coping with continuing living with these experiences.
I would not expect any reader to go into this book thinking that it will be riveting from front to back. Instead, this journal reads and mirrors much like the journey of life: it can be slow paced at times, have bits of joy contained, move quickly through other parts, it can be shocking at others, grief-strickening and devastating through most of it, and sometimes peaceful at others.
The journal itself is its own kind of journey. And if you're interested in the content and know a bit about Ernst, it is a journey I would recommend you take.

[Amber Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

What in the fever dream did I just read?

[Nat]

It's hard to keep both parts of Jünger's wartime life in your mind at the same time: On one hand, the civilized life in Paris as an occupying German officer, eating at the George V or at Maxim's with Cocteau, meeting Picasso and Braques, exchanging letters with Karl Schmitt, hanging out with various French conservative intellectuals who seem pretty ok with the Germans, and the nightmare brutality he observes in the Caucuses (corpses run over by tanks so many times they are totally flat, frozen horses stripped of their meat leaving only the skeleton and intestines, soldiers whose frozen feet come off when their boots are removed), what he hears about the concentration camps, the death of his son, or the deaths of thousands of German civilians in allied bombing raids.

This goes in the genre of reflections about how it's possible to live while one's whole way of life is being destroyed (see also, e.g., Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope, Walter Kempowski's All for Nothing, and Ernst Bloch's Strange Defeat).

[Shanna Luciani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se si vuole conoscere l'uomo oltre lo scrittore, oltre il mito, penso che questo sia il libro adatto. Di solito i diari, di chiunque, a lungo andare annoiano perché in fondo sono annotazioni spesso di vita quotidiana, ma così non è con Irradiazioni. Anche la minima annotazione spinge a riflettere o se non lo fa si lascia leggere per il modo in cui è scritta.
Il ritratto che ne emerge è quello di un uomo che non solo ha vissuto due guerre uscendone (più o meno) indenne ma che ha vissuto immerso nell'oscurità della morale e dell'umanità e non se ne è lasciato intaccare nemmeno per mezzo secondo. Uno spessore morale che certamente si intuisce dai suoi libri ma che qui permea ogni pagina. Anche di fronte alla tragedia della morte del figlio, caduto in guerra in Italia, appena diciottenne.
Che dire, leggete Jünger. Leggete questo titolo, se riuscite a trovarlo. (Purtroppo non è stato ristampato!)

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading these journal you are first struck by the absence of any sense that a war is happening, Junger spends his time wandering the streets of Paris in search of books, art, beetles, artists, philosophers. He reads the bible, documents his bizarrely vivid dreams, reads poetry and parses the intricacies of language. This is an almost surreal look at WWII as he begins to slowly reveal what is happening to those who dare to reveal what truths there may be.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

As odd a book as I have ever read.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just don’t like this guy.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very impressive! His Christianity and love for Germany a nation is startling. The anti-Facism is striking.

[Alice von Tannenberg]

Definire questo libro "diario" è riduttivo: è un documento biografico e insieme storico, che svela nuove sfaccettature di una personalità complessa come quella di Jünger, già difficile da inquadrare.

Chi ha letto le sue opere giovanili è sicuramente avvezzo all'esaltazione del guerriero, all'inquietudine esistenziale che sfocia nel culto dell'azione, alla fiducia in un nuovo avvenire temprato dalle armi. Lo Jünger che considera la battaglia un'esperienza interiore e una necessità del tempo. A distanza di trent'anni, con sulle spalle il peso della disfatta, di Versailles, della fallimentare Repubblica di Weimar e del distacco dal nazionalsocialismo, l'esperienza interiore c'è stata e l'ha mutato nel profondo.

Può sembrare un cambio di direzione, ma è l'evoluzione naturale di un uomo testimone dei cambiamenti che hanno investito quei decenni ed è stato capace di penetrare nel profondo l'essenza del suo tempo. Con uno sguardo distaccato ma coinvolto, documenta gli eventi che in parte è riuscito a prevedere, trova conforto nella spiritualità per resistere all'onda della distruzione che avanza. La guerra e il mondo si sono evoluti, raggiungendo livelli di crudeltà inaudite: il nichilismo avanza lasciando dietro di sé il deserto.

Nel 1941 Jünger viene mandato nella Francia occupata, dove - mentre svolge le sue funzioni di ufficiale, che in questo diario non vengono raccontate: l'unico intermezzo bellico è riservato a una momentanea trasferta nel Caucaso - instaura amicizie con intellettuali e artisti francesi, compra libri antichi, va a caccia d'insetti (le sue "cacce minime") in mezzo alla natura. Da sempre sostenitore dell'amicizia tra le due nazioni, riserva agli occupati una condotta cavalleresca. In Germania ci sono la sua famiglia e il suo giardino, a cui dedica spesso delle pagine, prima idilliache, poi sempre più cupe quando i bombardamenti angloamericani si abbattono sulla sua città.

Sullo sfondo, i generali stessi - con cui Jünger era in contatto, anche se pare che non partecipò effettivamente alla congiura di Stauffenberg - vorrebbero interrompere una guerra ormai persa, per salvare la patria mentre i sostenitori di Kniébolo (soprannome affibbiato da Jünger a Adolf Hitler) la conducono verso la distruzione. Questa guerra sotterranea evidenzia reti e connessioni vaste, dove le idee hanno sfumature diverse (e non ci si limita alla semplice dicotomia  "noi contro loro", "partigiani contro oppressori") ma risultano ugualmente pericolose. La paranoia e il clima di sospensione alimentano il terrore, a cui Jünger accenna ma in maniera mai troppo esplicita.

E mentre osserva impotente questi eventi (tra cui uno, particolarmente significativo, che lo segnerà per tutta la vita), le sue pagine si arricchiscono di riflessioni, a volte disilluse, a volte profonde. Stralci di quotidianità, riflessioni sulla lingua e sulla natura, sogni, barlumi d'intuizione. Un'opera fondamentale se si vuole conoscere il suo lato umano, al di là di ogni strumentalizzazione ideologica.

[Evan]

[Placeholder until I actually acquire and read this:]

I wanted to comment on Hadrian's review of this, but he seems to have his messages set on block mode, and I can't comment on his review since I only follow him. Anyway, what I wanted to tell him is that: while reading his review, Jünger reminded me of the character of the cultured occupying soldier who is given the cold shoulder in a French household in the 1949 French movie, Le Silence de la Mer, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Surely enough, looking that up in Wikipedia, I find that that movie was based on a book by Jean Bruller, and the author based his character partly on Jünger. Thus again demonstrating the rewards of having an ample cross-cultural knowledge base.

-eg,kr '19

[Fabi]

interessant worüber man alles nicht schreiben kann

[Ahte S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jünger’s day by day recounting of the Second World War, beginning after the fall of France but before the invasion of the Soviet Union. He takes you to a world of conversations with the intellectual titans of the era, from every corner of the world, all seeming to have converged in the heart of occupied Paris. From forbidden trysts to philosophising; inspecting bugs in Parisian parks to shootouts with the Reds on the Eastern Front, every aspect of the war in Europe, the tragedies and the humanity, played out from page to page.

Jünger’s inaction weighs down on him as he sees the might of industrial war machinery and frenzied mass politics reduce men into butchers, on both sides. Seeing himself incapable of doing anything but going along with the flow, although when the risk wasn’t too great, helping those he could. We see every major event of the war, feel the tension on the Eve of Barbarossa, the reaction to the assassination of Heydrich, the attritional warfare in the Caucuses as the Germans desperately attempt to break the encirclement of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, all through journal entries written as the events unfolded. The secret meetings of the conspirators of operation Valkyrie, for whom Jünger was asked to write their request for peace, plays a small but historically important part of the journals.

The interactions with the side characters is my personal favourite part of the book. Celine’s homicidal rage against Jews, as shown in this paragraph:

“He spoke of his consternation, his astonishment, at the fact that we soldiers were not shooting, hanging, and exterminating the Jews--astonishment that anyone who had a bayonet was not making unrestrained use of it. "If the Bolsheviks were in Paris they would demonstrate it, show how it's done-how to comb through a population, quarter by quarter, house by house. If I had a bayonet, I would know what to do."”

Or his meetings with Banine, an Azerbaijani author who fled her country as a child refugee when it was invaded by the Soviets. They show the complexity of the war that is often ignored, in Jünger’s own words the Germans had looked on in horror at the massacres in the East and had placed the knife in the hands of the one they hoped could protect them. Cruelty begets cruelty, the fear of the Bolshevik red terror far outweighed any consideration of humanity in the minds of most Germans, through fear men were controlled, through fear of monsters, other monsters were made. We see the moral collapse as the panic grows, hear rumours of gassings and electrocutions, yet none of it is ever seen directly.

All in all this book gives one of the most nuanced, complex and thoughtful looks at humanity’s greatest conflict, through the eyes of a man in the heart of it all. If I could give it six stars I would.

[Tobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this English translation is perhaps not that well chosen. Jünger was hardly a typical German officer. Many World War I soldiers could recognize their own experiences of the Great War in his first book, Storm of Steel. In the 1920's, he was already a recolonized political writer. By 1933, he was already done with politics. In 1939, he published the novel On the Marble Cliffs, a dreamlike metaphorical criticism of totalitarianism. When the war broke out, he was highly mistrusted by the Nazis, but trusted by traditional officers who shared his distaste for the regime.

These diaries from World War II are a mixture his thoughts and observations during the war, most of which he spent as a staff officer in Paris. It includes thoughts on books, politics, arts and the significance of names, the nature of war, technology and modernity, insects and natural symbolism, observations on life, nature, art, and societal breakdown, long descriptions of dreams, etc etc. Jünger was a master of describing places and people. Since he was living under surveillance in a totalitarian regime, code names are used for all the people who appear in the book. Usually, these code names are highly significant, summarizing Jünger's understanding of them. His own wife is Perpetua. Hitler is Kniebolo. People he met during these years include, Picasso, Goebbels, Celine, Berthold Brecht, Carl Schmidt, von Stülpnagel, and pretty much any intellectual or artist who was still in Paris.

This is beautifully written and somewhat surreal collection of all the things that caught his attention during six very intense years, during which he served as an officer in the German army, had dinner with numerous French and German intellectuals and officers, went on a mission to Caucasus, agonized about the horrors of the war, inspired the German resistance, lost his son, executed deserters, and contributed to saving French Jews from the Holocaust, yet most of it still takes place within his own head.

[Screen Native · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte scrisa de un umanist de calibru in care parca incearca sa acopere din toate unghiurile posibile grozavia care intampla in jurul lui: sa o ignore, sa si-o asume, sa o explice si sa o accepte ca parte a unei izbaviri pe care o simte cosmica si fundamentala.

O echilibristica pe alocuri tensionata, prin alte parti naiva, intre oroare, cea mai animalica forma a umanului si cea mai inalta forma a ei: artistii, ganditorii, oamenii de inalta statura si anvergura.

O pledoarie pentru natura si esential, pentru armonia si precizia limbii, pentru capacitatea de a-ti mentine busola si a fi capabil sa te orientezi chiar si in cele mai oribile circumstante, pentru a continua permanent sa te raportezi la viu si iradiant.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think those familiar with the conflict zones of the second world war will, unfortunately, find this book boring. Compared to the brutality of the European eastern front and the Pacific theatre, Junger is basically having a vacation. His status as a war hero of the first world war and as an artist in Europe gives him a certain level of privilege. He lives and works out of a luxury hotel, keeps a mistress, has free reign over Paris' museums and collections, and hangs out with the famous artists and writers of the time. It's truly a far cry from many other, more violent, memoirs from this period of history. Thankfully, as someone aware of Junger's literary reputation, I was able to slog through it. However, a casual reader will most likely give up after reading the fiftieth passage describing a dream Junger had or what kind of insects he collected on a morning hike.

In one way, this puts to mind the question of what the value of keeping a journal is. Junger obviously had a fascination with the "mystique". He catalogued his dreams and interpreted them, had an interest in hallucinogens, and seemed that in some way believed in a universal metaphysical spirit, in magic. All of this would be very important to the person creating a diary, yet Junger himself mentions he expected other people to read this work, and so, in the middle of the war, you wonder why he would spend so much time writing about something so mundane to the casual reader. There might have been a practical reason, as the ideological noose of Hitler fanaticism tightened, he expected his private memoirs to be searched, and so controversial themes would need to be expunged. One proof of this would be his use of pseudonyms for names. However, Junger himself said there's nothing wrong with editing journal entries, and so you're left wishing that he went back and added more thrilling entries to his work after the conclusion of the war.

Another issue with the journal format Junger uses is his use of referencing people he's met, artistic works he's seen or read, or his own personal ideas he might have expounded upon elsewhere. When reading his journal I felt like I was missing half of the necessary component required to fully understand it, the author's mind, which automatically assigns meaning to all the people and terms Junger pulls from his head. If you are writing a book for yourself a lot of the connective tissue you'd put in for a layman reader just isn't there, because as the author you already carry that information in your head. This meant that the wonderful feeling a reader gets of having a conversation with an author was, at least to me, missing from this work, you are simply reading another person's, sometimes impenetrable, thoughts.

On a final note, in regards to a work about the second world war from a German perspective, one must mention the Holocaust. According to the introduction and Junger's own entries, he was against Hitler, however considering his friends and even his own son were persecuted or executed for voicing dissent against the regime, it's understandable why he would feel powerless to do anything. Junger even jokes that as the war started to go badly for the Nazi regime, propaganda and ideological purity must necessarily become even more important for the state. The introduction makes a point to say that Junger did his best to pass along info to the French resistance, via his friends in the artistic community, to stop deportations when he felt it was safe to do so and it's important that he included the tidbits he had heard about the mechanism of the genocide in this work, since it provides a German confirmation to information provided by Jewish and American authors in other works about the Holocaust. Junger obviously had a more "chivalric" idea of warfare and many aspects of modern combat and Hitler's leadership disgusted him.

One take away from this work is my own renewed interest in keeping a journal. Having a well known writer say it's perfectly okay to edit your own entries past the date, or to wait a few days before putting down an experience to the page is very relieving. The fact that Junger wrote a whole work during a war that consists mainly of his dreams, entomological findings and artistic impressions, solidifies to me that there's nothing wrong with writing something only you will be interested in. Overall, even though I felt this work had quite a few interesting tidbits, I don't think I'd recommend it to other readers unless they were big time Junger fans.

Some interesting passages:

The sentence is read aloud. The condemned man follows the procedure with the highest degree of attention, and yet I have the impression that he doesn't understand the text. His eyes are open wide, as though drinking it all in, large, as if his body were suspended from them; he moves his full lips as if he were spelling. HIs gaze falls on me and stays there for a second on my face with a penetrating questioning tension. I can tell that the agitation lends him an air of something confused, florid, even childlike.
A tiny fly plays about his left cheek and alights several times close to his ear. He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. The reading takes barely a minute, but the time seems extraordinarily long to me. The pendulum becomes long and heavy. Then the guards lead the condemned man to the ash tree; the clergyman accompanies him. Heaviness increases in this moment. There is something staggering about it, as if heavy weights had been lowered. I remember that I am supposed to ask whether he wants a blindfold. The clergyman answers yes for him while the guards tie him to the tree with white ropes. The clergyman softly asks him a few questions; I hear him answer them with jawohl [yes sir]. Then he kisses a small silver cross while the doctor pins a piece of red cardboard the size of a playing card onto his shirt over his heart.
In the meantime, the firing squad has followed a signal from the first lieutenant and has taken up their positions standing behind the clergyman, who still blocks the condemned man. He now steps back after running his hand down the prisoner's side once more. The commands follow, and with them I again awaken into consciousness. I want to look away, but I force myself to watch. I catch the moment when the salvo produces five little dark holes in the cardboard, as though drops of dew had landed upon it. Their target is still standing against the tree; his expression shows extraordinary surprise. I see his mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to form vowels and express something with great effort. This situation has something confusing about it, and again time seems attenuated. It also seems that the man is now becoming menacing. Finally, his knees give out. The ropes are loosened and now at last the pallor of death quickly comes over his face, as if a bucket of whitewash had been poured over it. The doctor rushes up and reports, "The man is dead."[Page 14]

The love of a particular women is twofold , because on the one hand, she shares what she has in common with millions of other women, and at the same time, she alone possesses what differentiates her from all others. How strange it is that both aspects meet so perfectly in the individual-the chalice and the wine.[Page 50]

The unfortunate pharmacist on the corner; his wife has been deported. Such benign individuals would not think of defending themselves, except with reasons. Even when they kill themselves, they are not choosing the lot of the free who have retreated into their last bastions, rather they seek the night as frightened children seek their mothers. It is appalling how blind even young people have become to the sufferings of the vulnerable; they have simply lost any feeling for it. They have become too weak for the chivalrous life. They have even lost the simple decency that prevents us from injuring the weak. The opposite is true: they take pride in it.[Page 82]

Then le Moult returned and showed me his magnificent butterflies from the Solomon Islands and other archipelagoes of the world. Here I was again reminded of the strange enterprise of accumulating hundreds of thousands of tiny colorful mummies-there is something Egyptian about the activity. These arts, he says, seem so tenuous in our world of destruction. A single such case often represents the result of many years of the most painstaking work.[Page 91]

Each life holds a certain number of things that, out of consideration, a human being does not confide in his dearest friend. They are like the stones you find in the chickens' stomachs that are not digested along with everything else. Man preserves the basest and the best so anxiously. Even when confession has relieved him of the burden of evil, he still wears his best for God alone. The part of us that is noble, good, and holy resides far from the social sphere; it cannot be communicated.
Incidentally, women are significantly more secretive in this respect. They are often the true graves of past love affairs, and does there exist even one of them about whom a husband, a lover, knows everything-even when she is lying in his arms? Anyone who has encountered an old lover after many years has been frightened by this mastery of silence. Daughters of the earth indeed! Some knowledge that finds sanctuary in our breast is terrifying and lonely; fatherhood is one such. The horrors of Medea rear up in a thoroughly middle-class world. Thus the dilemma of the woman who watches her husband cherish a child through the years-a child that is not his.
"Two people love each other should tell each other everything." But are they strong enough to do so?
"I would like to confess something to you, but I'm afraid you'll hear me as a priest in your own right and not someone who listens with wisdom, as a representative of God. I fear you might become my judge."
That is the prodigious-but also healing-significance of prayer; namely that for a moment it opens the recesses of the heart and lets light shine in. For human beings, especially in our northern latitudes, it opens the only portal to truth, to the ultimate, radical honesty. Without it, people could not live with their nearest and dearest without suspicion and dark thoughts. And at times, when caution would not silence our tongues, then consideration would do so.[Page 103]

The eye has to grow accustomed to the most unpleasant sights imaginable-there is no oasis, no respite. Technology is the only thing that functions in good order: the railroad, the cars, the airplanes, loudspeakers, and naturally everything belonging to the world of weaponry. Otherwise, there is a complete absence of everything organic, of nourishment, clothing, warmth, light. This is even more pronounced for the higher aspects of life-for joy, happiness, and cheer, and for any benevolent power of art. And all this on some of the richest soil on the globe.[Page 122]

Hints of the executioners' presence are often so palpable that all desire to work, to create images and thoughts, dies. Evil deeds have a negating, upsetting consequence: Human growth becomes stunted as if polluted by invisible decay. In its proximity, things lose their magic, their aroma, and taste. The mind is exhausted by the tasks it has set itself, tasks that used to refresh and engage. Yet, it is precisely against such things that it must now struggle. The palette of the flowers along the deadly mountain ridge must never fade from our sight, even though they are but a hand's breadth away from the abyss.{Page 129]

On that note General Muller told about the monstrous atrocities perpetrated by the Security Service after entering Kiev. Trains were again mentioned that carried Jews into poison gas tunnels. Those are rumors, and I note them as such, but extermination is certainly occurring on a huge scale. This put me in mind of the wife of good old Potard back in Paris, who was so worried about his wife. When you have been party to such individual fates and begun to comprehend the statistics that apply to the wicked crimes carried out in the charnel houses, an enormity is exposed that makes you throw up your hand in despair. I am overcome by a loathing for the uniforms, the epaulettes, the medals, the weapons, all the glamour I have loved so much. Ancient chivalry is dead; wars are waged by technicians.[Page 152]

I immediately started to cling to prayer like someone hanging from a terrifying precipice clutching at the end of the only protruding root. I recited the Lord's Prayer fervently, with true ferocity, and repeated it as soon as it was ended. There was neither comfort nor benefit nor a single thought in any of this, but only a wild, final instinct, a primal awareness like that of the drowning man struggling for air, or the man parched with thirst craving water, or the child crying for its mother. In those moments, when a wave of relief brought respite, I thought, "Oh you magnificent prayer, you incalculable treasure, no invention on earth can equal you."[Page 242]

When I woke up, I thought about those years of my journals that I had burned along with early works and poems. To be sure, my thoughts were flawed and often naïve, but over the course of the years one tempers self-criticism. We must gain distance from our early work and change in order to see it more fairly and impartially. This bond resembles that of fathers who disapprove of their sons, and for no other reason than that they are so similar, while at the same time they have good relationships with their grandchildren. At the time back in the spring of 1933 even Perpetua regretted my auto-de-fe after our house had been searched. I believe they were looking for letters in my possession from the old anarchist Muhsam. He had a childlike attraction for me before he was so brutally murdered. He was one of the best and most good-natured people I have ever met.[Page 250]

Then, concerning Bogo's travels. Many a secret here. I was especially appalled by the details he reported from the ghetto of Lodz, or as they are now calling it, Litzmannstadt. He contrived to gain entrance there under a pretext allowed him to consult with the overseer of the Jewish community, a former Austrian first lieutenant. A hundred and twenty thousand Jews live there crammed together in a small space where they work for the arms industry. They have constructed one of the largest plants in the East. In this way, they are just able to scrape by, because they are essential labor. At the same time, new deported Jews pour in from the occupied countries. To dispose of these people, crematoria have been built not far from the ghettoes. They take the victims there in vehicles that are supposed to be an invention of Chief Nihilist Heydrich. The exhaust fumes are piped into the interior so that they become death chambers.
Apparently, there is also a second butchering method that consists of leading naked victims to a large steel plate through which an electric charge is passed. Then the bodies are burned. They moved to this method when it turned out that the SS soldiers who were ordered to deliver the pistol shots to the back of the head were developing psychological ailments and finally refused to carry out their orders. These crematoria need only a small staff; it's a sort of fiendish gang of masters and their lackeys who carry out this work. Here, then, is where those masses of Jews are being sent who are being "resettled" from Europe. This is the landscape that reveals Kniebolo's [Hitler] nature most clearly, and which not even Dostoevsky could have predicted.
The ones destined for the crematoria must be picked by the ghetto overseer. After conferring extensively with the rabbis, he chooses the old people and the sick children. Many of the old and infirm are said to volunteer, and thus such horrific negotiations always reveal the honor of the persecuted.[Page 267]

In the evening, a Special Forces officer lectured us about the methods for interrogating and hoodwinking English and American flyers in order to get intelligence out of them. The technical side of these procedures is repugnant; our grandfathers would have considered it beneath their dignity ever to ask prisoners even a simple question of this kind. Today humans have become peculiar raw material for other humans-material to be used as a resource for work, information, et cetera. This is a condition that can only be called higher-level cannibalism. People don't exactly fall into the hands of cannibals, although that can happen, but they are prey to the methods of the psychologists, chemists, racial thinkers, so-called doctors, and others who would exploit them. They work in the same way as those weird demons on the large panels by Bosch. With their instruments, they dismember the naked human victims they have abducted. I note this remark from the details: "that smokers are much more talkative than non-smokers."[Page 297]

[Henrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ernst Jünger is a man who lived. Famous author and intellectual, fought in both World Wars, entymologist, did LSD with Albert Hoffmann, to mention some. Here are his journals from the second world war, as a German officer tasked mostly with administrative tasks, this work is in many ways a stark contrast to his debut work Storm of Steel. Jünger enjoyed an initially very comfortable lifestyle, reading books and going to dinners with Paris intelligensia. Jean Cocteau, Louis F. Celine etc. frequently show up. Musings on literature and art make up much of the journals.

Then I read the memoirs of Alexander Dumas. Connoisseurs prefer these to his novels, which-although I don't like to put aside books I have just begun to read-I have grasped only minimally. The annoying thing about such texts is that their author avoids describing nuanced and gentle impressions while recording and exaggerating lurid ones. Reading them is like walking through meadows thronged with larger-than-life blossoms, while grasses and moss are absent.

Gradually, though, we get reminded that this is in fact a war journal, and Jünger's tone is that of a matured man, a European in touch with his culture and roots, a conservative in many ways, but not a Nazi. He speaks negatively about Hitler (under a pseudonym), and expresses embarassment over the treatment of Jews.

On Rue Royale, I encountered the yellow star for the first time in my young girls who were walking past arm in arm were wearing it. This badge was distributed yesterday, and those who received it had to part with a point from their clothing ration card in return. I then saw the star more frequently that afternoon. I consider things like this, even in my own personal history, a significant date. Such a sight is not without consequence-I was immediately embarrassed to be in uniform.

Part of Jüngers work was also to read mail. As a postal censor he was tasked with gauging morale amongst troops and gather intelligence. While he does not go into detail about his job, he does as times muse on observations he made.

As I translate the letters of the executed hostages as a document for future ages, I notice that the most frequent words are "courage" and "love." Perhaps "farewell" is even more frequent. It seems that in such situations man senses a compassionate power and abundance of generosity, and he can comprehend his actual role as that of victim, as that of benefactor.

As the war progresses and Germany's victory becomes impossible, the tone gradually gets bleaker. More depictions of bombed out cities, stories about phosphorous bombing of German towns, censorship becoming stricter, "traitors" punished harder, the desperate last acts of a totalitarian regime whose grasp is slipping. A legacy that would shape Europe.

Seamlessly, slowly, yet irresistibly, the flood of men and steel surges past. The quantities of explosives transported by such an army column endow it with a terrifying mystique. And, as in 1940 on the roads approaching Soissons, I sense the incursion of a mighty superpower into a completely crushed region. And the feel-ing of sadness that gripped me then returns as well. A good thing that Ernstel cannot see this; it would have hurt him too much. Recovery from such a defeat will not be the same as after Jena or Sedan. 57 This portends a change in the lives of populations; not only must countless human beings die, but much of everything that used to motivate our deepest being perishes in this transition.

We are capable of recognizing necessity, even of understanding and desiring and loving it as well-and yet at the same of being overcome with intense anguish. One must know this in order to comprehend our age and its people. What are birth pangs or the pain of death in light of this drama? Perhaps they are identical, just as sunset is simultaneously sunrise for new worlds.

A very interesting insight into a part of the war one seldom hears of. Here is no action, no excitement and glorious battles, just a tale of occupation and liberation from the side of the occupier, from one of the more interesting characters in recent history.

[George Siehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the list of shelves appropriate for this book indicates, it touches upon many topics. The read is rewarding, although in turn challenging, frustratingly brief at times, and insightful.
The author, Ernst Junger, earned Germany's highest military decoration as a troop leader in WW I, but also became an internationally acclaimed writer. This book publishes the journals he wrote while serving in Paris as a military censor during the occupation, and on the Eastern Front in WW II.

The foreword by scholar Elliot Neaman provides a useful introduction to Junger's intellectual roles in the German political scene and in Europe's cultural establishment. Politically, Junger was a conservative aristocrat who was anti-democratic, but anti-Nazi, as well. His early writings were used by the Nazi party, although Junger was not a member and, in fact, did not permit the party to reuse some of his material. As a result, he was viewed with suspicion by some in Hitler's inner circle. One notes the recurrent mention of concern in his Journals about being swept up by the Gestapo.

Junger addresses a wide range of topics with considerable authority. His was a keen and complex mind that drew upon his training in natural history, his military experience, and his interest in the governing of Germany. He was a deeply religious Christian who frequently mentioned his faith.

The frustration noted above stems from the nature of the source; a journal allows only the introduction of a topic, while a reader may wish for fuller development. While many of his books have been published in English, much more of his writing has not.

The journal entries show that his time in Paris was generally pleasant. His military leaders gave him a measure of protection from the German political authorities in the SS. He circulated freely with the intellectual and artistic figures of Paris. He seemed to have unlimited free time to attend lunches with these people and with various women on the scene. He also spent much time walking about town, visiting parks, used bookshops, and the book kiosks along the Seine. He mentions the books he is currently reading and the new treasures he purchases. Serious readers will relate to his wide ranging interests in history, literature, and geography.

Other of his interests may hold less appeal. He frequently becomes quite immersed in metaphysics as well a religion. His science background would seem at odds with his belief in horoscopes. His disdain for quantitative types might, again, evoke support from some readers.

These writings cover the period 1941 to 1945. Not surprisingly he is quite circumspect about fully
disclosing his views and anti-Hitler sentiments, especially early in this period. Some his more political material he kept locked in a safe in his office. It is interesting to track the changing tone of his entries over time. His references to the metaphysical and religious appear more frequently as the war progresses. Accounts of his visits home and his eventual return there late in 1944 reveal the deteriorating conditions and the growing stress of the locals as the result of continuing Allied bombings raids, day and night. He writes of the growing tension between the German military and the local citizens who are pressed into civilian defense tasks as American and British forces near their town.

Junger emerges as an intelligent and generally sympathetic figure among the German military. He was on the fringes of the plotters who attempted to kill Hitler, but was not implicated when the attempt failed. His own view was that capturing Hitler, not killing him, would have been the better course to follow in seeking a peaceful end to the war.

I would recommend this book to a broad range of readers: those interested in WW II, the history of the period, and those with interest in the literary and cultural figures in Paris during the occupation.

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ernst Jünger, vielfach ausgezeichneter Offizier im ersten Weltkrieg, verfasste mit "In Stahlgewittern" einen der erfolgreichsten Romane über den ersten Weltkrieg. Anders als Remarque verherrlichte er den Krieg als Feuertaufe der Männlichkeit. In den 20ern setzte er diese Einstellung fort, bekämpfte die Weimarer Republik und wurde einer der intellektuellen und literarischen Wegbereiter des Nazismus.

Strahlungen I enthält das Pariser Tagebuch der Zeit von 1941 bis 1942 und das Tagebuch einer Reise in den Kaukasus die Jünger von Ende 1942 bis Frühling 1943 unternahm. Ich bin durch Jonathan Littells herausragenden Roman über den Holocaust, "Die Wohlgesinnten", auf die Tagebücher Jüngers aufmerksam geworden. Dort spielt Jünger eine Nebenrolle als Besucher der kaukasischen Front.

Der Jünger dieser Bände ist nicht mehr der junge antidemokrat. Er ärgert sich über die Extremform des Nazismus, macht sich über Hitler (den er in seinen Tagebüchern als Kniébolo verklausuliert bezeichnet) lustig und erkennt die Tyrrannei des Systems. Aus lässt er sich positiv über Juden und Homosexuelle aus. Die Verherrlichung des Endkampfes ist ihm allerdings weiterhin inherent. Die Tagebücher tragen in sich die Anlage zum großen Kino. Seltene zeithistorische Dokumente. Jünger verkehrt mit der Elite des kollaborierenden Frankreichs und den stars der Kunst (Picasso, Morand, Giradoux, Cocteau). Zu seinem Freundeskreis gehören zahlreiche Figuren, die sich federführend am 20. Juli 1944 beteiligen werden. Auch Naziprominenz (Carl Schmitt) und Menschen, die erst nach dem Krieg berühmt werden (Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Carlo Schmid). Jünger kauft am laufenden Bande antike und aktuelle Bücher und liest wie ein Wilder.

Stattdessen bleiben die Tagebücher über lange Passagen langweilig. Im Mittelpunkt steht das dandyhafte Liebesleben von Jünger. Lange Passagen werden seinen jeweiligen Träumen gewidmet. Sein literarischer Geschmack ist im 19. Jahrhundert stehengeblieben (Ernst Renan und Leon Bloy). Einzig interessant sind seine Beobachtungen von der Ostfront. Völlig anders im Stil, vermitteln sie seltene und authentische Einblicke.

[Richard Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the finest minds of Europe. Sensitive and cold, at fifty, the coldness dissipates, many times in the journals he exhorts us to be kind. From parlors to moors, flowers and insects, books and Christ, his family, the war, so far away at first, then closer, from Paris to Germany, Russia,Caucasian villages, the war, and its conjuror, Hitler are everywhere. Simpletons and leftists sneer and look down their hooked noses. But, Jüngers soul and mind will have the last laugh.

Erudite, he is able to convey what a German intellectual experiences and thinks of the war, the coming revenge, and , in order to staynsane he reads,mountains of books, his mainstays are The Bible, Bloy and his brothers poetry.

An aesthete, a man of great heart and immense metaphysical insight, ruminating on death, beetles, the meaning of death, his dreams, all the while , the walls of this book are the war, bound in Hitlers skin, Hitler is everywhere, even when not mentioned. He is the antihero, the author of all the deaths, the horrors visited upon Europe, Russia and of course the jews.

Wed like to think we are brave and would have killed Hitler, wed talk truth to power, or some such bs. Wed buckle and seig heil, wed get shot or starve our women raped,Germany raped. Jünger never gave in, he was the anti-Hitler. The voice of a sane national conservative revolutionary. One part poet,one part forestworker, one part soldier, one part scientist. More human than 99% of us.
If you dont like this book, good. Read your trash. If you dont like Jünger, good, stay away.

[Dirk Baranek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merkwürdige Lektüre, ehrlich gesagt, mit gemischten Gefühlen. Interessant sind die persönlichen Begegnungen in Paris: Jean Cocteau, Picasso et.al.. Unheimlich die Einsprengsel der historischen Geschehnisse 1941 ff: "Sah heute zum ersten Mal Menschen mit dem gelben Stern auf den Straßen." Eins wird klar: Jünger war kein Nazi. Das Morden ist im zuwider, ekelt ihn an. Seine Position ist aber eher elitär. Meint: Nazis = Pöbel. Klar wird auch: er wusste von den Massenmorden in den "östlichen Randstaaten" aus den Erzählungen m Offizierskorps. Die Gedankenwelt bleibt mir fremd, die Sprache ist mir teilweise zu barock. Ich werde mit diesem Autor nicht grün. Sollte man aber mal reingelesen haben. Mein Ausgabe ist eine von 1949. Neulich in einem Antiquariat erstanden.