Recommended: Ernst Jünger's Second World War

From: "Ernst Jünger: Our Prophet of Anarchy"
Originally Presented in Unherd of The Post
By Aris Roussubis

Ernst Jünger in Paris, 1941

It sounds like Jünger's second World War may have been as dangerous for him as his first when he was wounded 14 times. MH

With its modern themes of detachment and alienation, the recent revival of Ernst Jünger’s early work by the internet dissident Right is an understandable urge. When I was a younger man, Jünger’s Storm of Steel, his hallucinatory account of his experiences as a stormtrooper commander in the trenches, was, like Malaparte’s Kaputt and Graves’s Goodbye to All That, a major formative experience in my desire to experience war and, callow though it now sounds, prove myself in it. 

Perhaps it’s natural, then, that in later life, the sombre reflections of the middle-aged Jünger as expressed in his recently translated wartime diaries, a husband and father disenchanted with the modern world around him, now seem so compelling.

The diaries open in 1941, with the 46-year-old Jünger serving in an administrative capacity on the general staff of the German army occupying Paris. Initially feted by the Nazi party for the proto-Fascist tone of his early works, Jünger publicly rejected the regime’s advances and came under suspicion as a result, his house searched by the Gestapo and the threat of persecution always hanging over him. A central figure in Germany’s interwar conservative revolution, Jünger, who stated he “hated democracy like the plague,” had come to despise the Nazi regime at least as much. Ultimately, he was far too rightwing to accept Nazism.

Jünger’s intellectual circle had aimed to transcend liberal democracy through fusing Soviet Bolshevism with Prussian militarism, yet the illiberal regime that actually came to power was wholly repugnant to him. “The Munich version—the shallowest of them all—has now succeeded,” he wrote, “and it has done so in the shoddiest possible way,” filling him with dread that Hitler would drive Germany and Europe toward disaster and discredit radical alternatives to liberalism for generations to come.

Jünger’s two closest friends, the National Bolshevik Ernst Nieckish and the philosopher of law Carl Schmitt, each met different fates under the new Nazi order: Nieckish jailed as a dissident until his liberation by the Red Army in 1945 and Schmitt as the regime’s foremost legal theorist. Jünger remained friends with both. For Jünger, the internal exile, dissidence would come in the veiled form of his dreamlike novella On the Marble Cliffs, published on the cusp of war in 1939, in which he predicted the disaster and bloodshed the Nazis would bring in their train. Carefully monitored and shunted off to a desk job in France, Jünger spent his war as a flâneur along the quais of Paris, buying antiquarian books, conducting numerous love affairs, and recording his impressions of the city he loved.

 Ernst Jünger at 100

A feted intellectual, and a lifelong Francophile, he befriended the city’s cultural elite, socialising with Cocteau and Picasso as well as the collaborationist French leadership and literary figures such as the anti-Semitic novelist Céline, a monster who “spoke of his consternation, his astonishment, at the fact that we soldiers were not shooting, hanging, and exterminating the Jews—astonishment that anyone who had a bayonet was not making unrestrained use of it”. For Jünger, Céline represented the very worst type of radical intellectual: “People with such natures could be recognised earlier, in eras when faith could still be tested. Nowadays they hide under the cloak of ideas.” 

While listening to Céline’s ravings about Jews with polite horror, Jünger was embroiled in an affair with Sophie Ravoux, a German-Jewish doctor, and helping to conceal other Jews in hiding, as well as warning the French resistance about imminent deportations. He records the first reports of mass executions in the east, shared among the army leadership, initially with disbelief and then with horror, disgust, and shame. Generals back from the east recount meetings with figures like “a horrifying young man, formerly an art teacher, who boasted about commanding a death squad in Lithuania… where they butchered untold numbers of people,” or share third-hand rumors about “men who have single-handedly slain enough people to populate a midsize city. Such reports extinguish the colours of the day. You want to close your eyes to them, but it is important to view them like a physician examining a wound.” 

Continue reading the article HERE.

How To Get Wounded 14 Times and Win the Pour le Mérite to Survive to 102 and Become a World-Famous Author

The Great War Service of Ernst Jünger

Prewar:

It was [a preoccupation with issues of escape and autonomy] that led Jünger to abscond from school on 3 November 1913, head for Verdun and enlist in the French Foreign Legion. His plan was, apparently, to reach North Africa with the Legion, desert and make his way to what he imagined would be the primitive reaches of central Africa where he could lead some sort of grandiose life. In reality, however, he was bitterly disappointed to find North Africa thoroughly under the influence of its European colonists. Moreover, his attempts to [desert] from the Legion were foiled by the military police, and his father eventually managed to secure his discharge...as Jünger had actually been too young to sign the enlistment papers...

"Kriegsausbruch 1914", a short piece that Jünger first published in 1934, gives a highly subjective account of his own experience of August 1914, colored, of course, by the experience of 20 intervening years. Jünger describes how he and two workers were working on the roof of the family house, with the magnificent Lower Saxon countryside spread out around them, when the postman passed by and informed them that mobilization had been ordered. In Jünger's reconstruction of the passions of 1914, he decided almost immediately to volunteer...In this text, the outbreak of war, the presence of the Lower Saxon countryside symbolizing Germany, and the overcoming of social divisions when all three went on to celebrate in the local pub combine to produce an idealized memory of August 1914.

1914:

Jünger volunteers at the outbreak of the war. He takes a Notabitur [early examination to gain release for service] and matriculates at Heidelberg University before undertaking basic training from October until December, when his recruit company joins the Füsilier-Regiment 73 at the Champagne front.

1915:

Jünger's unit remains in position around the area of Bazancourt. February and March are spent on a training course in Recouvrence. In April the regiment is deployed to Lorraine and Jünger is wounded for the first time at Les Éparges. Jünger recovers and spends the summer at an officers' training course at Döberitz, returning to the regiment as Fähnrich (ensign). There then follows an extended period [of positional war] round Douchy and Monchy in the Artois region. At the end of November he is promoted to lieutenant.

1916:

The Stellungskampf in Artois continues. In April Jünger attends another training course, returning to the front in June, where the regiment comes under increasing pressure in the buildup to the Somme offensive. In heavy fighting around Guillemont he is again wounded and evacuated, while his unit suffers almost total casualties. He returns to the front in November and is assigned to Divisional Intelligence as a reconnaissance officer and is wounded again near St. Pierre Vaast. He is awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class. He returns to the regiment and again becomes a reconnaissance officer.

1917:

Jünger spends January on a company commanders course. From now on, Jünger is frequently appointed company commander of various companies within the regiment. In March he commands a patrol covering the German retreat from the Somme. At Fresnoy he commands an observation post. In May the regiment takes up positions on the Siegfried Line. In June a forward standing patrol commanded by Jünger has a violent encounter with British/Indian fighting patrols. The regiment then moves to Cambrai for training. Jünger is involved in training a Sturmtrupp. In late July the Regiment moves to Flanders and Jünger takes part in fighting round Langemarck, playing an important role in the defence of the Steenbach. In September he leads a fighting patrol against the French trenches at Regniéville, which ends disastrously. October sees him in Flanders again in the area around Passchendaele, once more as a reconnaissance officer. In late November the regiment is involved in the successful counterattack against the British tank offensive at Cambrai. This involves intensive trench fighting in the course of which Jünger is wounded and subsequently awarded the Ritterkreuz des Hausordens von Hohenzollern.

1918:

January, February, and March are spent in preparation for Ludendorff's MICHAEL offensive. Jünger's company takes a direct hit from a shell in the last stages of the move forward. Jünger takes part in an attack on a Scottish position by Écoust [closer to Vaulx]  and is hit twice. He rejoins the regiment in June in an exposed position around Puisieux-le-Mont, fighting British advances against the odds. In August, the regiment undertakes a desperate counteroffensive near Cambrai. Jünger is badly wounded but continues fighting and, despite being surrounded, manages to evade capture, a feat for which he was awarded the Pour le Mérite. The remainder of the war is spent in a military hospital. 

The above represents a summary of Jünger's war service based on In Stahlgewittern and is essentially an account of Jünger's service with the 73rd Füsilier Regiment, mapping neatly with independent accounts given in the two available regimental histories. What is particularly striking is that he served exclusively on the Western Front and that he saw action in the most intense battles of the war-—on the Somme, at Cambrai, at 3rd Ypres and the MICHAELoffensive of March 1918. In other words, he was involved in those battles which saw the highest casualties and the highest concentrations of firepower and thus also inflicted the greatest sense of anti-modern absurdity, chaos, and ambivalence. 

From: Writing and Rewriting the First World War: Ernst Jünger and the Crisis of the Conservative Imagination, 1914–25, Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. John King, St. John's College, Trinity University, 1999.

Dr. King is the editor of the outstanding Ernst Jünger in Cyberspace website. Visit

Jünger's Response to Remarque

Ernst Jünger Wearing the Pour le Mérite

By Henry G. Gole

Remarque's powerful naturalistic prose in All Quiet has shaped our picture of life in the trenches as no other single book has. The impasse on the Western Front finally proved mass frontal assaults to be a purposeless waste of life. Attacks by hundreds of thousands of men, supported by preparatory fires of millions of artillery rounds, produced tens of thousands of casualties — but not only among the defending force. . .

Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel (1929) provides us a striking contrast to Remarque's pacifism, but he too is convinced that the front experience permanently separated the front soldier from the others. Jünger was one of the most highly decorated German soldiers of the Great War and one of the most often wounded [14 times]. His combat record was so impressive that he was handpicked to organize and lead elite troops whose mission was to infiltrate enemy front lines using techniques requiring extraordinarily brave and tough men. The infiltration teams, called Sturm (storm) — or Kampfgruppen (assault groups), relied on stealth to penetrate enemy lines, followed by shock action with individual weapons. The idea was to cause confusion and disorganization among defenders that would create openings for exploitation. Jünger led such assault teams and claimed to love it!

After the war Jünger observed the same chaos described by Remarque but came to different conclusions. Passive acceptance of the alienation of the veteran was not in Jünger's nature. He was convinced that a new man was born in the trenches, a man who would lead. Breast-beating and lamentations about unhappy circumstances simply would not do. The decisiveness of the assault team leader, his courage, and leadership, had a new objective — veterans led by such men would reshape the political world.

It is this mode of thought that is captured so well in Robert G. Waite's The Vanguard of Nazism (1952), a book about the adventurous souls whose answer to profound problems was movement and action. The collection of bold men who comprised the Freikorps (free corps) and veterans' associations organized along military lines consisted of veterans, boys who hadn't had their war, nationalists shamed by the Treaty of Versailles, royalists longing for the good old days of Wilhelmine Germany, those who had nowhere else to go, and those disenchanted with Germany's experiment with democracy. These men craved leadership, clear objectives, and a way out of Germany's many problems. Germany had not been prepared for the republic thrust upon it. Paramilitary action in the streets passed for political activity. 

Source:  "The Great War a Literary Perspective," Parameters, Summer 1987

Two Classics of the Soldier's Experience: Under Fire & Storm of Steel, reviewed by Jolie Velazquez

Under Fire

by Henri Barbusse

Penguin Books, 2003. Original publication, 1916

Storm of Steel

by Ernst Jünger

Penguin, 2004. Original publication, 1920

These books are the first and second books by actual soldiers of The Great War to become best sellers in Europe, and then in English-speaking countries when they were rapidly translated. They are like bookends of the warrior's experience. One is a tale of the helpless terror of combat, and the other an almost journalistic tale of men doing a dirty job no worse than any other unpleasant occupation, such as cleaning sewers. Read together, these two stories cover the soldier's experience from both ends of the spectrum.

Henri Barbusse entered the French army at the beginning of the war, serving as a stretcher-bearer in a frontline unit until invalided out by a serious injury. His narrator sees the war though the eyes of a non-combatant, as Barbusse was-never having to end a human life himself, and all that more vulnerable for not carrying a weapon. We know now what the common soldiers learned for themselves in the trenches: that for the first time in history artillery was going to create a battlefield were there were no safe places. Nonetheless, bearing a weapon must have given a man at least a shred of autonomy that an orderly did not possess.

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Under Fire is a novel, but also the author's own thinly disguised story of one squad carrying out their orders, living as best they can in filthy, dangerous conditions, eating when they can, resting where they can, and hanging on to their sense of humanity by caring about and for each other, or not, as the case may be. Barbusse lets the Poilus complain, insult one another ,and tell stories in their own vernacular. He has a gift for describing the surreal waking dreams of an individual trapped by ceaseless war, sometimes drifting into poetry. As the first uncensored story to reach a wide audience, Under Fire also set the standard tone for many memoirs to follow. The insanity of the first modern war and its capacity for destruction left many soldiers with a politically pacifist view, as they dealt with the aftermath of experiences that left them broken mentally as well as physically. Barbusse himself was a socialist who became ever more dedicated to the cause, living for a time in the Soviet Union and continuing to write in support of ending capitalism and war. Ernst Jünger's straightforward memoir illustrates an entirely different attitude about combat. Storm of Steel is the alternate narrative of the Great War, one resolute and patriotic, though not chauvinistic. The author joined the army on the day war was declared and was among the first trainees to fight in France. He tells a clear, sometimes stark story of his squad as it takes part in offensives, defends its section of occupation, or waits for combat to begin again. He was not unfeeling, but he did not allow death, injury, or primitive conditions to divert him from the goal of winning the war as soon as possible. He was a model soldier in the Junker tradition. This translation reveals the author's own facile ability with language, sometimes reporting on events as if for court evidence, but many times coloring his descriptions with vivid phrases that draw the reader in. We also get unique details, such as the time he and his squad found themselves lost in the French trenches because sappers accidentally connected to them while repairing a damaged section of their own.

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The book was highly admired by soldiers and critics,and became especially important to those who later went on to fight in World War Two for Germany, though Jünger himself disavowed any affiliation with the Nazi Party. Soured by the Weimar political era, but highly intellectual, he could express opinions conservative or liberal, depending on which topic was covered. Jünger lived into the late 1990s as a well-known author without allowing himself to be co-opted by any ideological group, often tarred by his unwelcome appeal to Fascists, but openly critical of the materialism and technology that was eroding individualism.

Personal note by editor David Beer: Taken together, these two books form an excellent introduction for a reader who wants to learn something about the Great War without delving into detailed political or historical accounts. Both books show intense military and humanistic aspects of the war and, possibly with the addition of All Quiet on the Western Front, would make an effective "beginner's course."

Then I'd be tempted to follow on by assigning The Guns of August and Testament of Youth. If time permitted, I'd add Goodbye to All That and Undertones of War. Oh! What a Lovely Class . . .

Jolie Velazquez

13 Memorable Quotes from Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel

[Editor's Note:  I have drawn on Ernst Jünger's biography and writings a number of times over the years.  Click HERE to see a selection of those articles. MH]

1. We had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war.

2. Books and bullets have their own destinies.

3.  Throughout the war, it was always my endeavour to view my opponent without animus, and to form an opinion of him as a man on the basis of the courage he showed. I would always try and seek him out in combat and kill him, and I expected nothing else from him. But never did I entertain mean thoughts of him. When prisoners fell into my hands, later on, I felt responsible for their safety, and would always do everything in my power for them.

4. This was the home of the great god Pain, and for the first time I looked through a devilish chink into the depths of his realm. And fresh shells came down all the time.

5.  Even if ten out of twelve men had fallen, the two survivors would surely meet over a glass on their first evening off, and drink a silent toast to their comrades, and jestingly talk over their shared experiences. There was in these men a quality that both emphasized the savagery of war and transfigured it at the same time: an objective relish for danger, the chevaleresque urge to prevail in battle.

6. In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.

7.  These moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. Eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass in an unutterably menacing thing. Your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. There is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. Your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. The encounter will be short and murderous. You tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsmen, and the terror of the quarry. You are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape.

8.  Trench fighting is the bloodiest, wildest, most brutal of all. … Of all the war’s exciting moments none is so powerful as the meeting of two storm troop leaders between narrow trench walls. There’s no mercy there, no going back, the blood speaks from a shrill cry of recognition that tears itself from one’s breast like a nightmare.

9.   Leaving out trifles such as ricochets and grazes, I was hit at least fourteen times, these being five bullets, two shell splinters, one shrapnel ball, four hand-grenade splinters and two bullet splinters, which, with entry and exit wounds, left me an even twenty scars.

10.  What a beautiful country [Germany] was, and eminently worth our blood and our lives. Never before had I felt its charm so clearly. I had good and serious thoughts, and for the first time I sensed that this war was more than just a great adventure.

11.  We stand in the memory of the dead who are holy to us, and we believe ourselves entrusted with the true and spiritual welfare of our people. We stand for what will be and for what has been. Though force without and barbarity within conglomerate in sombre clouds, yet so long as the blade of a sword will strike a spark in the night may it be said: Germany lives and Germany shall never go under!

12.  A bloody scene with no witnesses was about to happen. It was a relief to me, finally, to have the foe in front of me and within reach. I set the mouth of the pistol at the man’s temple — he was too frightened to move—while my other fist grabbed hold of his tunic, feeling medals and badges of rank. An officer; he must have held some command post in these trenches. With a plaintive sound, he reached into his pocket, not to pull out a weapon, but a photograph which he held up to me. I saw him on it, surrounded by numerous family, all standing on a terrace. It was a plea from another world. Later, I thought it was blind chance that I let him go and plunged onward. That one man of all often appeared in my dreams. I hope that meant he got to see his homeland again.

13.  When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country—and the time will come–then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength.

 

Christmas at the Front, 1915–1919

One story from World War I is so dramatic and moving that it's the only holiday episode that has stayed the public's consciousness.. That tale, of course, is of the famous Christmas Truce of 1914. But how were the subsequent Christmases celebrated? The 1914 Truce had one traumatic impact—it horrified the generals and their staffs on both sides, and they worked hard subsequently at discouraging such fraternizing. However, there were more incidents in later years [albeit smaller in scale]. The tradition of gift giving, on the other hand, was encouraged, even institutionalized, by the governments of the combatants. The soldiers themselves found their own ways to celebrate: decorating the trenches, having special meals, caroling, exchanging "joke" gifts with their mates, and so forth. 

Here are some Christmas reports from troops at the front.

On Christmas Day we were in the firing line and were served one slice of pudding and seven dates. But it was so cold and we were always wet.

Joe Clement, Royal Marines

Gallipoli, 1915

Now it's Christmas for the second time in this war...And here I am alone with my tree in a small trench. Some candles are fixed on the branches and an old steel helmet.

Ernst Bergner, German Army

Flanders, 1915 

Received from Red Cross and YMCA: 3 bars of chocolate, 4 packages of gum, 5 boxes of Mallomars. . .A "Tres Bon" dinner of: Veal, Sweet Potatoes, White Potatoes, Dressing, Salad, Apple Pie and Coffee.

Pvt. Clair Pfennig

U.S. 29th Engineers, 1918 

Christmas and New Year were celebrated by the companies with great festivities at which beer and grog flowed in rivers. There were exactly four men left in the 2nd Company who spent the previous Christmas with me in the line before Monchy...."

Ernst Jünger, German Army

Somme, 1916

We had our Christmas dinner in Albert in an old sewing machine factory. We had beer for our dinner - plenty of it - and a good tuck-in to go with it! Roast pork! Beautiful after bully beef!

C.H. Williams, British Army

Somme, 1916 

Christmas time on the island was happy. The boys hung up their socks, and I had to sneak round at 3 am and fill them with toys and sweets. Two men saw me and said Father Christmas had a white cap and gown on. There was great excitement in the morning.

Sister Evelyn Davies

3rd Australian General Hospital, Lemnos, 1915 

At the spontaneous request of the officers and men, I shall be saying midnight mass in the village church very beautifully decorated by the daughter and son from the château, with whose help, too, I have been able to teach the men some carols...what more do we need to forget for a few moments the war and the trenches...this Christmas gives me the opportunity for me to appear openly as a priest. 
                                                
                                                                          Stretcher Bearer & Jesuit Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

                                                                                                                                                         French Army, 1915

[Under anti-clerical laws, French priests could not serve as chaplains but were obliged to serve in the military.] 

Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror

By W. Scott Poole

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2018
David F. Beer, Reviewer

A Classic Photograph from the Great War

I learned a lot from Wasteland and enjoyed reading it. It's easy to read since it's so well written and is filled with information on the writers, artists and filmmakers of the decades following the end of World War One. Given such a profusion of details though, it's a great shame the book lacks an index. I found myself wanting to go back to something several times and had to leaf through a lot of pages to find it. Nevertheless, if you are interested in possible ways the Great War may have given birth to the horror genre in the arts, you will find this book absorbing.

The author claims the war destroyed most of the human values and outlooks that existed before 1914 and shocked and horrified the world so much that it has never really recovered:

In every horror movie we see, every horror story we read, every horror-based video game we play, the phantoms of the Great War skittle and scratch just beyond the door of our consciousness. Numberless dead and wounded bodies appear on our screens, documents of barbarism coauthored by the Great War generation and all the forces that have fed off them in the decades since (3-4).

Although this idea might strike us as somewhat overstated, there's no question that Poole has assembled a great deal of supporting evidence. The destruction and horror that took place during this war (compared to previous wars) forced an indelible impression not only on those who fought but also on the public, and these effects were long-lasting. Literature, art, and film reflected and perhaps even prolonged the trauma.

The Cripples, Otto Dix, 1920

Our primal fear of death and of the dead was undoubtedly rekindled by the war's human harvest: millions dead, many mutilated, many unburied and left to decay in the mud. Untold thousands of soldiers, wounded, shell-shocked, and horrified, returned as mostly silent mementos of what had happened. The dead and the un-dead were never far away. And according to Poole, those artists, writers, and directors who had been in the fray themselves and now had nightmares, "never stopped having the same nightmare, over and again, a nightmare they told the world" (13). The silent films Nosferatu and J'accuse are but two of the earliest manifestations of this horror, the latter specifically invoking a zombie-like return of the dead.

The book includes a Foreword, "Corpses in the Wasteland," and an Afterword, "The Age of Horror." In between are five chapters with apt headings: "Symphony of Horror," "Waxworks," "Nightmare Bodies," "Fascism and Horror," and "Universal Monsters." Useful end notes are provided also. Each chapter discusses numerous examples of literature, art, and film from the 1920s to the 1940s, which the author employs to support and illustrate his thesis. Although the last two chapters tend to look more toward fascism and its attendant horror, most of the book focuses on creative work of the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, Britain, and the United States.

Film was perhaps the strongest influence on people's memory and fears after 1918. We meet numerous directors in this book and often get interesting information about their lives and quirks as well as their work. F.W. Murnau, Albin Grau, Abel Gance, Bertolt Brecht, Max Brooks, and Fritz Lang are but a few of the earlier producers of influential films. Of the latter, the author states:

Fritz Lang, home from the war but most certainly bringing the war home with him, had long been fascinated by the macabre, the nature of evil, and the relationship of both to the social order. His work, like that of Murnau, Gance, and Leni, shows us more than how the Great War inspired a generation to embrace a death obsession. We see how such a fascination, in some sense the beginning of the horror tradition itself, both critiqued and called into being societies in the thrall of dread (101).

The same view is applied to the work (and sometimes lives) of many writers and artists. The poet T.S. Eliot, authors such as Franz Kafka, Ernst Jünger, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Arthur Machen, and the works of Freud and others, are all discussed and summoned to support the author's central idea. The notable American writer of horror fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, (only famous after his death) is frequently cited. Works of painters Otto Dix, Max Ernst, and Dali are considered, as are the schools of Dadaism and surrealism. The final chapter takes us right up to the present, to when

. . . the gorefest of the slasher films began in the 1970s and has never really stopped. Blood spurts in red fumes from empty-eyed victims who, in some cases, become collections of body part. . . The horror has remained with us because the conditions that made for the Great War and its aftermath are still in place (254).

Wasteland's author, W. Scott Poole, is a college professor who teaches courses and writes books about horror and popular culture. Although some of his connections might seem a bit strained to some of us, he obviously knows what he's talking about and he makes a good case. In some ways I can agree with him that the age of horror began during World War One and still flows onward. I recommend this book as a fascinating and original take on the Great War.

David F. Beer

A Dozen Random Quotes from the Great War

French Troops Heading for the Front

On or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.

Virginia Woolf, 1924 Essay "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown"

We left the schoolrooms, the school desks and benches, and the few short weeks of instruction had bonded us into one great body burning with enthusiasm. Having grown up in an age of security, we all had a nostalgia for the unusual great perils. The war thus seized hold of us like strong liquor. It was under a hail of flowers that we left, drunk on roses and blood. Without a doubt, the war offered us grandeur, strength and gravity. It seemed to us like a virile exploit: the joyous combats of infantrymen in the meadows where blood fell like dew on the flowers. 

Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel

The Europeans, "torch bearers of civilization," are eating at each other, trampling down civilization, ruining Europe; and who will be the better? It is like an avalanche, growing ever more ravaging, as it falls sweeping away trees, woods, homesteads, farms. The catastrophe gets greater and greater. All know the avalanche will consume the valley but no force can stop it . . . European civilization has failed—it was rotten to the core. 

Future Nobel Laureate Fridtjof Nansen of Norway, 1916

(a) Combat power, with a rapid advance, becomes weaker and, on reaching the combat-power change-about point [where the balance shifts to favor the opponent], comes to a standstill.

(b) Confusion produced by the first impact of attack calms down with the passage of time, and the terror effect decreases with the passage of time. 

(c) The fighting spirit of the attacker is heightened by the intensity of power, being highest at the time of initial impact, and gradually weakens from enemy resistance. 

From an Imperial Japanese Army Critique of the Schlieffen Plan

When we tumbled in, I fell on top of some of the enemy, and one put his teeth in my cheek and held on. I was dragged close to him, but my arms were free, and I tried to get my thumbs into his eyes and push out his eyes, but found his throat instead, and squeezed his windpipe. I felt my cheek being released, and my enemy struggled no more. Immediately I grabbed my rifle and clubbed him with the butt. 

R.M. Luther, RFA, 20th Division, Memoir, The Poppies Are Blood Red

The Price of Glory

    Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms
      Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death,
        Lest he should hear again the mad alarms.
          Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath

From "A Soldier's Grave" by Francis Ledwidge

A. E. F.
There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
And so hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.
Forefingers and thumbs will point absently and casually toward it.
It will be spoken among half-forgotten, wished-to-be-forgotten things.
They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good work. 

 Carl Sandburg, Smoke and Steel

A mixture of contradictories which never were—perhaps could never have been—harmonized. 

John Buchan on T.E. Lawrence

Our troops are more or less finished.

Quartermaster General Erich von Ludendorff, After the Amiens Offensive of 8 August 1918

Paris Victory Parade, 14 July 1919

At the Paris Victory Parade: 14 July 1919

Bitterness! Disgust! I have recognized the crowd. . . It is the brutish elemental crowd which does not change, which slavishly acclaims Caesar or Boulanger, which yells at the vanquished, which chooses indifferently its heroes among boxers, gladiators and captains. 

Marcel Cachin, Editor, L'Humanité

The War Summarized

It is enough, if not too much, to say that there was a great and dreadful war in Europe, and that nightmare and chaos and the abomination of desolation held sway for four horrid years. . . Men and Women acted blindly, according to their kind. . . They went to the war, they stayed home. . . they got rich, they got poor, they died, were maimed, medaled, frost-bitten, tortured, imprisoned, bored, embittered, enthusiastic, cheerful, hopeless, patient, or matter-of-fact, according to circumstances and temperament. 

Rose Macaulay, Told by an Idiot, 1923

Looking Back

We have discovered that the scheme of 'outlawing war' has made war more like an outlaw without making it less frequent and that to banish the knight does not alleviate the suffering of the peasant.

C. S. Lewis, 3rd Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry

The Kaiser's Badge for the Wounded

By 1918 there were so many wounded men still  in the ranks and disabled back in Germany—by the end of the war there were an estimated 4.2 million—that the army decided that a decoration was needed for the troops' uniforms to recognize and honor their sacrifice.  Approved by the Kaiser on 3 March 1918, the metal alloy Imperial Wound Badge displayed a German helmet with crossed swords surrounded by a wreath. They were each 1.5 x 1.75 inches and  came in three versions: (Note: I cannot find a source for the actual number of awards during WWI.)

• Black (3rd class, representing Iron), for those wounded once or twice by hostile action (including air raids).

• Silver (2nd class) for being wounded three or four times.

• Gold (1st class, which could be awarded posthumously) for being wounded five or more times.

Ernst Jünger, Wounded
14 Times During WWI,
Displaying the Wound Badge
(Presumably 1st Class)

The "progression" could be waived in the event of loss of a limb or eyesight; when such a severe wound occurred, the silver badge was awarded. Badges were made of pressed steel, brass and zinc. All versions of the Wound Badge were worn on the lower left breast of the uniform or tunic.

The badges, of course, made a comeback for the Second World War, with a swastika added to the helmet. An estimated 5 million were awarded. Civilians wounded in Allied bomb raids were also eligible for the badge. There was even a special version  awarded to survivors of the 20 July 1944 unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler. The Führer, himself, did not accept one since he had received a Wound Badge for his First World War wounds.

Sources: For Führer and Fatherland: Military Awards of the Third Reich; Wikipedia; the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Artists and Authors Tell Us About War — A Roads Classic

Otto Dix, Self Portrait, 1915

We gingerly crossed the valley of Paddebeek through a hail of bullets, hiding behind the foliage of black poplar trees felled in the bombardment, and using their trunks as bridges. From time to time one of us disappeared up to their waist in the mud, and if our comrades had not come to their rescue, holding out their rifle butt, they would certainly have gone under. We ran along the rims of the shell-holes as if we were on the thin edge of a honeycomb. Traces of blood on the surface of some heavy shell-holes told us that several men had already been swallowed up. 

Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel

I climbed up to the top of the gully I am in. Behind me was Fleury, and in front of me Vaux and Douaumont. I could see out over an area of ten square kilometres that had been turned into a uniform desert of brown earth. The men were all so tiny and lost in it that I could hardly see them. A shell fell in the midst of these little things, which moved for a moment, carrying off the wounded - the dead, as unimportant as so many ants, were left behind. They were no bigger than ants down there. The artillery dominates everything. A formidable, intelligent weapon, striking everywhere with such desperate consistency.

Fernand Léger, Verdun, 7 November 1916

The rumbling of the artillery became more and more frequent and ended up forming a single rumbling of the whole earth. From all sides, outgoing bursts and explosions threw forth their flashing beams which lit up the dark sky over our heads with strips of light in all directions. Then the bombing grew so heavy that the flashes became continuous. In the midst of the uninterrupted chain of thunder claps we could see each other directly, helmets streaming like the bodies of fish, gleaming black iron shovels, and the whitish drops of the endless rain, truly it was like moonlight created by cannon fire.
Henri Barbusse, Artois front in 1915

The plain, which stretched as far as the eye could see, seemed to have been churned up by a mad plough. The entanglement of trenches formed in the grass a huge white net with much of the mesh gnawed away. In the middle, there was a pile of stones and beams from which emerged, here and there, a house and a tree with all its leaves: La Targette. Further on, some charred tree trunks and a few white stones: Neuville-Saint-Vaast (...) There were thousands of men on this plain and I could only see one of them. He was lying face down with his nose in the grass; he was dead. 

Jean Hugo, Le regard de la mémoire 1914–1945 (The Look of Memory)

A great movement of earth and sky through our burning eyelids, wet and cold; things you find in the pale dawn, one after another and all of them; nobody killed in the darkness, nobody even buried despite the relentless shell attack, the same earth and the same corpses, all this flesh that trembles as if from internal spasms, which dances, deep and hot, and hurts; no more pictures even, just this burning fatigue frozen skin-deep by the rain; another day dawning over the ridge while the Boche's batteries carry on firing on it and on what remains of us up there, mixed with the mud, the bodies, with the once fertile field, now polluted with poison, dead flesh, incurably affected by our hellish torture. 

Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14 (The Men of 1914)

Otto Dix, Flanders, 1934–36

Why Was the Passchendaele Battlefield Such a Nightmare?

Click on Image to Expand

Storm Clouds Gather Over Flanders

How the Participants Described Passchendaele

Had I a descriptive pen I could picture to you the squalor and wretchedness of it all and through it the wonder of the men who carry on. . .A desolate wilderness of water filled with shell craters, and crater after crater whose lips form narrow peninsulas along which one can at best pick a slow and precarious way. Here a shattered tree trunk, there a wrecked 'pill-box', sole remaining evidence that this was once a human and inhabited land. 

Maj. C.E.L. Lyne, Royal Field Artillery

The vast field of shell-holes had been turned into a sea of mud by the heavy rain…Its depths were particularly dangerous in the low-lying ground of the Paddebeek. On my zigzag course I passed many a lonely and forgotten corpse. Often only a head or a hand projected from the shell-hole whose circle of dirty water reflected them. Thousands sleep like that, without one token of love to mark the unknown grave.

Lt. Ernst Jünger, 73th Hanoverian Füsiliers

The shapeless Ridge had lost every tree; . . .flayed and clawed up, (it) was traversed by no (known) likeness. . . Waiting there in the gashed hillside we looked over the befouled fragments of Ypres, the solitary sheet of water, Zillebeke Lake, the completed hopelessness.

Lt. Edmund Blunden, 11th R. Sussex Regiment

Click on Image to Expand

The Source of the Nightmare

The most important factor in turning the campaign into a paradigm of the horrors of war was the unusual weather. That 1917 was unusual is beyond doubt, but it was not so outlandishly strange as to be impossible to contemplate in advance. It was coupled with the particular geology of the region, which was certainly known long before the war, but that again had to be coupled with the new brutality of the artillery barrage. Both in terms of quality and quantity, artillery had been revolutionized since the outbreak of the war, and the combination of these factors produced the fearful conditions on the ground that caused so much hardship and loss.

Martin Marix Evans, Passchendaele: The Hollow Victory

Key Sites in the Later Battle of the Somme

The battle of the Somme kept rolling on — at times apparently mindlessly — after the huge losses of 1 July 1916.  Here are some of the key sites during the middle and late stages of the 141-day battle.

Once again our contributing editor, Kimball Worcester, is going to help with the pronunciations. Her system is a non-academic approach to phonetic transcription aimed at giving reasonably accurate, clear, and simple direction for English speakers who want to have some insight into pronouncing these words and names. The bolded and blue syllable is the one to stress, as in bolded.

Bazentin [Bah-zon-ta] Wood was captured on 14 July in one of the best executed operations of the Somme campaign. In the subsequent fighting, Lt. Robert Graves, future author, was wounded near this site, the communal cemetery and CWGC extension, and reported killed.

Longueval [Long-val] was at the center of the battle of the woods fought for over three months.  Here is one of the most famous views of the Somme battlefield, High Wood, from the 12th Gloucester (Bristol's Own) Cross 

Guillemont [ Geel-mon] was an important point in the German defenses at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. It was taken and lost by British forces several times until it was finally secured on 3 September. One of the villages streets in named after German soldier/author Ernst Jünger, who later wrote of the fighting in the area. 

Gueudecourt [Ger-de-coor] marks the furthest point of advance from the 1 July starting line of all British units during the Battle of the Somme. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment played a decisive role in capturing the site and is honored with a Caribou Memorial similar to that at Beaumont Hamel.

Mouquet [Moo-keh] Farm: Australian, British, and Canadian forces suffered over 20,000 casualties in a two-month effort to capture this farm that was highly fortified (and in a slightly different location) on the edge of Thiepval Ridge.

Sailly-Saillisel

, [Say-ee–Say-ee-sel]standing at the north end of a ridge, was the objective of French attacks in September and October 1916 and was captured on 18 October.  There is little to see today in the rebuilt village.

Now a single row of houses along the Ancre [On-cr] River, St. Pierre Divion [Sa Pyair Dee-vee-on] was a machine gun outpost that extracted a great toll from the Ulster Division on 1 July. Shown in the "then" photos are troops walking through the former village in the mud sometimes after its capture on 13 November.

Why Was the Passchendaele Battlefield Such a Nightmare ?— A Roads Classic

Click on Image to Expand

Storm Clouds Gather Over Flanders

How the Participants Described Passchendaele

Had I a descriptive pen I could picture to you the squalor and wretchedness of it all and through it the wonder of the men who carry on. . .A desolate wilderness of water filled with shell craters, and crater after crater whose lips form narrow peninsulas along which one can at best pick a slow and precarious way. Here a shattered tree trunk, there a wrecked 'pill-box', sole remaining evidence that this was once a human and inhabited land. 

Maj. C.E.L. Lyne, Royal Field Artillery

The vast field of shell-holes had been turned into a sea of mud by the heavy rain…Its depths were particularly dangerous in the low-lying ground of the Paddebeek. On my zigzag course I passed many a lonely and forgotten corpse. Often only a head or a hand projected from the shell-hole whose circle of dirty water reflected them. Thousands sleep like that, without one token of love to mark the unknown grave.

Lt. Ernst Jünger, 73th Hanoverian Füsiliers

The shapeless Ridge had lost every tree; . . .flayed and clawed up, (it) was traversed by no (known) likeness. . . Waiting there in the gashed hillside we looked over the befouled fragments of Ypres, the solitary sheet of water, Zillebeke Lake, the completed hopelessness.

Lt. Edmund Blunden, 11th R. Sussex Regiment

Click on Image to Expand

The Source of the Nightmare

The most important factor in turning the campaign into a paradigm of the horrors of war was the unusual weather. That 1917 was unusual is beyond doubt, but it was not so outlandishly strange as to be impossible to contemplate in advance. It was coupled with the particular geology of the region, which was certainly known long before the war, but that again had to be coupled with the new brutality of the artillery barrage. Both in terms of quality and quantity, artillery had been revolutionized since the outbreak of the war, and the combination of these factors produced the fearful conditions on the ground that caused so much hardship and loss.

Martin Marix Evans, Passchendaele: The Hollow Victory

Artists and Authors Tell Us About War

Otto Dix, Self Portrait, 1915

We gingerly crossed the valley of Paddebeek through a hail of bullets, hiding behind the foliage of black poplar trees felled in the bombardment, and using their trunks as bridges. From time to time one of us disappeared up to their waist in the mud, and if our comrades had not come to their rescue, holding out their rifle butt, they would certainly have gone under. We ran along the rims of the shell-holes as if we were on the thin edge of a honeycomb. Traces of blood on the surface of some heavy shell-holes told us that several men had already been swallowed up. 

Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel

I climbed up to the top of the gully I am in. Behind me was Fleury, and in front of me Vaux and Douaumont. I could see out over an area of ten square kilometres that had been turned into a uniform desert of brown earth. The men were all so tiny and lost in it that I could hardly see them. A shell fell in the midst of these little things, which moved for a moment, carrying off the wounded - the dead, as unimportant as so many ants, were left behind. They were no bigger than ants down there. The artillery dominates everything. A formidable, intelligent weapon, striking everywhere with such desperate consistency.

Fernand Léger, Verdun, 7 November 1916

The rumbling of the artillery became more and more frequent and ended up forming a single rumbling of the whole earth. From all sides, outgoing bursts and explosions threw forth their flashing beams which lit up the dark sky over our heads with strips of light in all directions. Then the bombing grew so heavy that the flashes became continuous. In the midst of the uninterrupted chain of thunder claps we could see each other directly, helmets streaming like the bodies of fish, gleaming black iron shovels, and the whitish drops of the endless rain, truly it was like moonlight created by cannon fire.
Henri Barbusse, Artois front in 1915

The plain, which stretched as far as the eye could see, seemed to have been churned up by a mad plough. The entanglement of trenches formed in the grass a huge white net with much of the mesh gnawed away. In the middle, there was a pile of stones and beams from which emerged, here and there, a house and a tree with all its leaves: La Targette. Further on, some charred tree trunks and a few white stones: Neuville-Saint-Vaast (...) There were thousands of men on this plain and I could only see one of them. He was lying face down with his nose in the grass; he was dead. 

Jean Hugo, Le regard de la mémoire 1914–1945 (The Look of Memory)

A great movement of earth and sky through our burning eyelids, wet and cold; things you find in the pale dawn, one after another and all of them; nobody killed in the darkness, nobody even buried despite the relentless shell attack, the same earth and the same corpses, all this flesh that trembles as if from internal spasms, which dances, deep and hot, and hurts; no more pictures even, just this burning fatigue frozen skin-deep by the rain; another day dawning over the ridge while the Boche's batteries carry on firing on it and on what remains of us up there, mixed with the mud, the bodies, with the once fertile field, now polluted with poison, dead flesh, incurably affected by our hellish torture. 

Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14 (The Men of 1914)

Otto Dix, Flanders, 1934–36

Deeds Still Remembered for Good or Ill: Ten WWI Recipients of the Pour le Mérite

The Pour le Mérite, known informally during World War I as the Blue Max, was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military order until the end of World War I. The original regulations called for the capture or successful defense of a fortification, or victory in a battle. By World War I, the oak leaves often indicated a second or higher award of the Pour le Mérite. Although it could be awarded to any military officer, many of its most famous recipients were the pilots of the German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte), whose exploits were celebrated in wartime propaganda. It was awarded 1,687 times in the First World War. This included 122 awards with the additional oak leaves.

• Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, German U-boat commander for sinking 194 ships, totaling 453,716 tons of Allied shipping, the most by any submarine commander in history. 

• Oswald Boelcke is important as a pioneering figure in the history of aerial warfare, particularly for his contributions to the development of fighter tactics during World War.  "Dicta Boelcke" is the foundational set of rules for aerial combat. (Photo: Bottom Right)

• Hermann Göring, was decorated as an ace pilot in June 1918, later Reichsmarschall, head of the Luftwaffe, and second in command of Germany's Third Reich. War criminal. (Photo: Bottom Left)

• Ernst Jünger, novelist and the last living holder of the Pour le Mérite at the time of his death in 1998.  Wounded 14 times during the war.

• Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who led German forces in the guerrilla campaign in German East Africa. One of Germany's greatest postwar heroes.  (Photo: Top Left)

• Erich Ludendorff, German general of World War I; awarded the Pour le Mérite in August 1914, one of the earliest World War I awards, for the siege of Liège.  (Photo: Top Right)

• Manfred von Richthofen,  the top-scoring ace of World War I.   As the "Red Baron" has posthumously received mythic status throughout the world.

• Erwin Rommel, the future "Desert Fox" distinguished himself on multiple fronts of the war, especially at Caporetto in 1917.

• Hans von Seeckt, brilliant staff officer in World War I; awarded the Pour le Mérite in May 1915 and the oak leaves in November 1915 for contributions on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was instrumental in surreptitiously rebuilding the postwar German army.