Analysis of "Storm of Steel" (Kulturkampf Podcast)

 

EvolianArchiver

 

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Ernst Jünger was well-known thanks to various works which - by contrast to the defeatist and pacifist literature prevalent in the aftermath of the war - emphasized the potentially positive and spiritual aspects of modern warfare. On this account, Jünger had even been labelled the 'anti-Remarque'. Nor was Jünger a mere writer: having joined the Foreign Legion in his youth, he had later volunteered to fight in the First World War, where he was repeatedly wounded and was awarded the highest military honors.

 

Following the collapse of Imperial Germany, Jünger was held in high esteem in nationalist and combat circles, and soon emerged as one of the representatives of the ‘Conservative Revolution' - the term I already used to describe those circles which I came to appreciate and collaborate with in central Europe.

 

Julius Evola on Jünger's later life:

 

"It is as if the spiritual drive that Jünger had derived from his life in the trenches of the First World War, and applied on an intellectual level, had gradually run out.

 

Besides, not only did Jünger play no significant role during the Second World War, but it also appears that, when in service in occupied France, he got in touch with those members of the Wehrmacht who in 1944 attempted to murder Hitler.

 

Jünger, therefore, should be numbered among those individuals who first subscribed to 'Conservative Revolutionary' ideas but were later, in a way, traumatized by the National Socialist experience, to the point of being led to embrace the kind of sluggishly liberal and humanistic ideas which conformed to the dominant attempt 'to democratically reform' their country; individuals who have proven incapable of distinguishing the positive side of past ideas from the negative, and of remaining true to the former. Alas, this incapability to discern is, in a way, typical of contemporary Germany (the land of the 'economic miracle')."