The trench warfare on the Western Front of the First World War is regarded as the ultimate symbol of the absurdity of war. Four years of frenzied violence and millions of victims, each time for the gain or loss of several hundred meters of blasted earth. Could it be more pointless? Yet it remains strange that precisely this trench battle has become so iconic, because it was the exception rather than the rule. During the First World War, the Eastern Front also looked a lot more dynamic, with large troop movements over long distances and decisive battles. The same goes for World War II. Nor is the war in Ukraine fought only in trenches.
The fact that when we think of war we immediately think of trenches, of surrealistic shelling, of mud, cold and rain, of hollow-eyed soldiers and pierced steel helmets, is due to the power of the image, which perfectly corresponds to the current Western aversion to war violence. And by the fact that it was then that the “industrialization” of war first showed its terrifying face. From then on, not human courage, but the quality and quantity of ammunition and artillery were decisive. That is still the case in Ukraine.
Adventure in no man’s land
That is not to say that all courage was lacking or lacking, on the contrary. Read Ernst Jungers In Stahlgewitter (1920), in translation War intoxication, the best war book I know. In the summer of 1914, nineteen-year-old Jünger had volunteered, looking for ‘adventure’. It soon became apparent that he had ended up in the wrong war. During the impersonal ‘material battles’ in West Flanders and Northern France, the ordinary soldier had little say. Jünger: ‘Imagine being tied to a post and constantly being threatened by a guy swinging a heavy hammer. Now the hammer is withdrawn, but ready to strike, now it whizzes down until it almost hits your head, or it hits the post sending the splinters of wood flying.”
Also read about a biographical study of Ernst Jünger from 1997: An aesthete lost in politics
Just by enduring this condition one proves one’s courage, I should say. Jünger thought so too, but it wasn’t enough for him. He enrolled in officer training and as Stosstruppenführer he went several times with a small troop into no man’s land. There is no doubt that he enjoyed these perilous escapades: ‘Eye and ear are tense to the limit, the approaching murmur of strange feet in the tall grass takes on an ominous intensity. Your breath becomes jerky and jerky, you have to force yourself to control your gasping for air. With a short, metallic click, the gun’s latch snaps back—a sound that cuts through your nerves like a knife. Grind your teeth on the hand grenade’s firing rope. The collision will be short and cutthroat. Two overwhelming feelings make you shudder: the rapturous excitement of the hunter and the terror of the game. You are a world unto itself, completely filled with the dark, terrible mood that hangs over this barren terrain.’
The war thus became a personal adventure, which regularly brought him into a violent daze, described in another book as ‘a daze that exceeds all dazes, an unleashing that bursts all bonds’ and ‘an unceremonious frenzy and limit , comparable only to the forces of nature’. On the other hand, he always tried to exercise an old-fashioned chivalry towards the enemy (whom he said he did not ‘hate’, but only judged by courage).
Nationalist intent
All in all, it has not become a flawless adventure story. The horrors of battle are also fully discussed. Coolly but graphically, Jünger describes the countless mutilated corpses he encounters. He sometimes has a nervous fit or bursts into sobs. And in the original diary that on In Stahlgewitter underpinned, we see him rant against the Scheisskriegwho just won’t stop.
Also read Ernst Jünger’s obituary: Ernst Junger (1895-1998); Friend and foe
Jünger (who would live to be 102) left the war in 1918 as an officially recognized hero, wounded many times and decorated with the highest order Pour le Mérite. Afterwards he would give his book an extremely nationalistic tone, not least to give meaning to the loss of the war and all those human lives afterwards. In the original diary and in the first drafts of In Stahlgewitter there is no sign of it yet. With no ideological justification, we get a raw, unadorned picture of the reality of war, including the pleasure that battle can bring to one.
The latter may be shocking to contemporary readers, who only know a positive appreciation of violence from the film, but would there be so much war if no one enjoyed it? It is precisely the uneasy combination of bloodthirstiness, courage, occasional weakness and unimaginable horrors that makes Jünger’s account of his war experiences so special and so convincing.
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