Armaan Singh’s Reviews > Paris '44: The Shame and the Glory > Status Update

“For all the seething bouillon of danger on the streets and the prospect of invasion, Ernst Jünger retained his habitual detachment. […] When [the landing] failed to materialize he noted disapprovingly that some senior staff officers were nonetheless still showing signs of anxiety”

“Such frustrations seemed less important as final preparations for the Allied invasion of France began. The imminence of action and the prospect of death had a strangely mellowing effect.”

“In a few noisy seconds everything had changed. The phoney calm of the preceding fourteen months was shattered, to be replaced by a cycle of attack and reprisal. The occupiers could no longer count on a docile, submissive Paris. And Parisians could no longer tell themselves that the well-behaved Germans […] were any different from those terrorizing Hitler’s new domains in the east.”

“The picture [Ernst] Jünger painted of occupied Paris showed that many of the upper crust had adjusted fairly easily to their new circumstances. They operated in a climate of moral laissez-faire, refraining from judging in order not to be judged themselves, and the only luxury not available was that of having a conscience.”

“The Concorde riots of February 1934 persuaded Henri [Tanguy] and many like him that [a secure future] was an illusion. He might appear rather bourgeois in his natty suits but now he kept recalling ‘memories of what I had seen in Brest… the Black Sea mutineers and the workers in the Renault factory… I felt an overwhelming need for action… from then on I threw myself into the struggle.’”