Hello there Bertil and all you Juenger-Cats and Juenger-Crats, > > Why does Juenger quote this view? He does it because that is what he does. He is one of the great chroniclers of the century and it is a crying shame that we'll never read his diaries on the 20s and 30s.
What he makes of that view is expressed in what he says about it in the following paragraph. When he says that "Bei solchen Unterhaltung... deutlich [wird], wie tief die Technik bereits in das Moralische eingedrungen ist" it is (in my view) for the Juenger of that stage (10 years before in "Der Arbeiter" the very same sentence would have meant a totally different ball game) highly critical of the sentiment. > But no doubt the Bolshevik coup in > Russia in 1917 and the attempts of the Soviet > regime to export communist totalitarianism worldwide > had an effect in Western Europe. The excesses > of the Soviet communists (60 million exterminated? > and a global total of between 100 and 150 million > dead) naturally made many feel that strong > measures against the Soviets should be used. I don't want to defend real life Communism in any way. I was born in Berlin the year the wall was built, some fifty meters from it, and I will always feel eternally grateful that I was on the "right" side of it. My mother's mother, whom I cannot call my Grandmother, because I never was to meet her, was carried off and killed by the Russian in East Prussia in 1945. I know quite a few people who were in GDR jails for political reasons. But I still think that our Western system wouldn't be what it is today without the influence of communism and socialism on a society where das Kapital ruled supreme. > National socialisn to a great extent was a counter- > reaction to bolshevism. That I (and most of German hinstorians) dispute hotly. The whole thing of comparing numbers of people killed on this and that side is to no avail. History is not a football game. And on the whole Freikorps thing it would be interesting to compare how people like Ernst Toller in "Eine Jugend in Deutschland" and Oskar Maria Graf experienced and described the fall of the Räterepublik. > > > > >What Jünger himself thinks about the whole thing is evident in a lot of > >passages in > >"Kaukasische Aufzeichnungen" which is among the best things he ever wrote. > >His eye here is > >stronger than all attempts at making sense of what he sees, somethings that > >often limits > >the results of his observations. (I hope I do express this comprehensibly).: > > >"Man teilte ihm zur Versorgung eine Kolchose zu, auf welcher der russische > >Staat bis > >dahinachthundert Geisteskranke beschäftigt und ernährt hatte. Die Kranken > >werden nun... > >durch den Sicherheitsdienst umgebracht... (Woroschilowsk, 1. Dezember 1942) > > > I think this is a quote taken out of > context. > Your quote could be > interpreted as a positive view of the communist > terror system compared to the horrors of national > socialist eastern policy. I am not so sure that this > is a key quote. Sorry, I didn't mean the quote as you have read it. I was far from saying that the Soviets were nice people who let Geisteskranke work, while the bad Germans killed them. I just wanted to point out Juenger's reaction (as his entry for the nest day that I quoted, too, describes) is far from the eye for an eye, our terror is just a reaction to their terror view that the third party in the above paragraph did express. > > > >All in all he is simply apalled by what both sides are doing. Only later, > >back in Paris, > >will he start to put the whole thing together in a "meaningful way", and > >this is where the > >whole concept of Titanismus as the final weapon against all things > >inexplicable in the > >20th century tems from. The seed for it were the weeks in the Kaukasus. > > > I am not sure here what you mean. "Titanism as a final weapon against all > things inexplicable....(??). Is Titanism the threat of technology (both in > peacetime and wartime)? Is communism, fascism and national socialism > an expression of Titanism (see futuristic influence in the former Soviet > Union, > Italian futurism etc. and admiration of technology and speed). FGJ:s _Die > Titanen_ > and _Perferktion der Technik_ has analytical influence. What about the > experience > of allied bombing and the use of the atomic bomb in 1945? Isn't this too > important? Again, as in my answer to Gary, I can only to my paper on Ernst Juenger's Titanismus: http://www.snafu.de/~os/juenger/titan.htm I know that my views on the subject are quite different from yours, but this is what this forum is for. So let's talk it over ;-) > > There is much serious research today on the > similarities of communism and national socialism, > Stalin and Hitler. Many with me believe that > both systems and both leaders represented > similar terrorism and totalitarianism. But the > lingering influence of the generation of 1968 > and "the crazy 25 years" results in attempts > to hide the crimes of communism. The similarities are galore. Yet that doesn't mean that they are the same, or that one couldn't have happened without the other. Or that one was "better" or "worse" than the other. I, as a German, still feel a big responsibility for what happened in Germany and Europe 1933-45. I have to aks myself where I would have been, what I would have done. And I can't answer that question, because I simply don't know. The "sins" of communism are not of my immediate concern. I hope I did manage to make sense. Greetings from Berlin, where the cold front from Scnainavia is slowly creeping in... Olaf =================================================================================== Olaf Schroeter +49-030-621 65 34 [email protected] Ernst Juenger in Medialand http://www.snafu.de/~os/juenger/ ===================================================================================
