War-targets the audience of the times

Reevaluating the Work of Ernst Junger

Some weeks in December last were spent reading Arktos Media’s recent reprint of Dominique Venner’s biography of Ernst Junger (1895 – 1998). This article is not a review of Venner’s work, but a re-evaluation, on my own part, of Junger’s legacy, based upon an impression derived from A Different European Destiny.

I undertake this analysis with a marked sense of duty, because of previous statements made in which I situate Junger’s work within the greater school of Traditionalism. As a result, I must begin by emphatically-retracting Junger’s name from that statement, which reads: “I’ve decided that my social-media tagline will read as follows: Politically Traditional, Aesthetically Modern. This should turn away anyone who doesn’t follow the line of thought delineated by the collective efforts of 20^th century figures such as Julius Evola, Frithjof Schuon, Rene Guenon, and Ernst Junger. One does not need to read all of these authors, but listing them alongside one another tends to attract like-minded individuals who form an exclusive and philosophically ‘elitist’ faction on the political Right.”

The only correction needed was the removal of Junger’s name, and the claim retains its validity. I must thank

Arktos Journal

, for facilitating this tremendous task!

Venner’s book made me realize my interest in Junger was pursued under erroneous assumptions; my estimation of his value as a Traditionalist philosopher misguided by seeing his name repeatedly listed alongside Julius Evola, Rene Guenon, Mircea Eliade, and others.

There is a literary dilettantism in Junger comparable to Mishima or Proust; as a matter of fact, I would say that Junger is Germany’s Hemingway with an added lyrical quality borrowed from the aforementioned authors.

While Junger ought to be rightfully praised for his war narratives (including titles such as Storm of Steel, Copse 125, and Fire and Blood) I don’t see his value as a philosopher, political or social, nor as a “traditionalist”. There is virtually no esotericism or myth in his work. Junger places heavy emphasis on current politics, particularly Prussian nationalism, and topical fixation with Bolshevism and Marxist dialectic. Unlike Evola, who always reaches far, far back to assess the present (and always diminishing the latter’s importance, as it should be), Junger seems myopic by comparison. What is Prussianism? Isn’t it the very bourgeois conservatism that Evola considers culturally contingent? In my mind, ‘Prussian’ evokes the type of late-19^th century socialite who likes to be seen attending the best plays, operas, and ballets but doesn’t care about aesthetics. I imagine Junger taking part in a drawing-room discussion on literature with high-society ladies who pretend they’ve read his books. Unfortunately, Junger is not the sort of thinker advertised by my contemporaries; he is not a philosopher we should be spending too much time studying (unless it is to appreciate a stoic disposition proper to wartime).

If you are interested in war memoirs, then I would definitely recommend his early works. If you are looking for scholarly examinations of esoteric tradition, mythology, and metapolitics, then I’d suggest you stick to Evola or Guenon.

Now for the truly disappointing details: Junger was never racialist, persistently opposing National Socialism and its leader, Adolf Hitler. “Jünger had therefore every reason to believe that Hitler and his party had falsified this very idea by replacing the spiritualised notion of the Prussian State with that of race.” (Venner, Ernst Junger, 2024)

Unlike Evola, who formulated a Traditionalism more authoritarian, more exacting than any fascist regime, Junger retreats into neutrality, becoming a comfortable, unassuming household name in 20^th century German literature. His culture is one of schlager and kaffee klatsch rather than Lebensraum and Weltanschauung. Evola inspires a fierce futurist ethos by his imperative to “ride the tiger”; Junger advocates for a cozy conservatism and champions the “Worker”, a sort of rugged everyman who despises high art and refined taste.

In fact, Junger changes his political and philosophical affiliation so often—all of his war journals have, unfortunately, been revised several times over with all ‘nationalist’ sentiments expunged—that he seems to hover indecisively between Prussian bourgeoisie and rugged laborer.

“Very present in The Worker as part of the author’s response to the challenges of technological domination, the attitude of ‘heroic realism’ would subsequently disappear from Jünger’s mental universe, once his mind had undergone the great ‘humanist’ reversal heralded by the publication of On the Marble Cliffs in 1939.” (ibid)

Finally, we leave the reader with Junger’s behavior during the Second World War.

“On 3 April 1945, realising that any and all opposition had been rendered useless, he orders his men not to resist the American troops…”

“Under the diarist’s pen, this bombing scene is limited to a mere clinical description…There is neither indignation nor complaints about the suffering of civilian populations subjected to these undertakings of death and terror. Not a word of protest either regarding the destruction of the works of art and beauty that the German cities had been prior to being reduced to rubble. Here, the enemy of Hitler’s Reich seems to prevail over the German that one would expect to display solidarity in the face of his compatriots’ misfortune.”