Ernst Jünger - Interwar Articles

Ernst Jünger
Interwar Articles
Wewelsburg Archives
publication
- 2018 -
“…the only genuine follower of Nietzsche.”
- Martin Heidegger
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1
Revolution and the Idea ..................................................................................... 4
Revolution and the Frontline Soldiers ............................................................. 8
Differentiation and Connection ..................................................................... 14
The Frontline Soldier and Wilhelm’s Era...................................................... 20
Mechanized Warfare ......................................................................................... 25
War as an Inner Experience ............................................................................ 30
The Machine ...................................................................................................... 36
Forward to F. G. Jünger’s Book “March of Nationalism” ......................... 41
Blood .................................................................................................................. 45
Will ...................................................................................................................... 50
Character ............................................................................................................ 54
Nationalistic Revolution .................................................................................. 59
Unite! .................................................................................................................. 62
Unite! Final Word ............................................................................................. 67
Time of Fate ...................................................................................................... 73
New Nationalism .............................................................................................. 78
Nationalism and Modern Life ......................................................................... 84
Nationalism and National Socialism .............................................................. 89
On Spirit ............................................................................................................. 92
Our Stance ......................................................................................................... 96
Total Mobilisation........................................................................................... 101
On Danger ....................................................................................................... 117
Introduction
Ernst Jünger (b. 1895) came to prominence during the 1920s as the
foremost chronicler of the “front experience” (“Fronterlebnis”) of World
War I. His well-nigh lyrical descriptions of trench warfare and the great”
battles of materiel” (“Materialschlachten”) – that is, of those aspects which
made this war unique in human history – in works such as In the Storm of
Steel (1920) and War as Inner Experience (1922) earned him the reputation of
a type of “aesthetician of carnage.” In this way, Jünger, who was deeply
influenced by Nietzsche’s critique of “European Nihilism,” viewed the
energies unleashed by the Great War as a heroic countermovement to
European world–weariness: as a proving ground for an entire series of
masculinist warrior-virtues that seemed in danger of eclipse at the hands of
an effete, decadent, and materialistic bourgeois Zivilisation. Yet, the war of
1914–1918 had proved that in the modern age warfare was more dependent
on the amassing of technological capacities rather than acts of individual
heroism, and this realization left a deep imprint on all of Jünger’s writing in
the form of a profound amor fati. Thus, as the following passage from War
as Inner Experience demonstrates, in the last analysis the war did not so much
present opportunities for acts of individual prowess as it offered the
possibility of a metaphysical confrontation with certain primordial,
chthonic elements: forces of annihilation, death, and horror: “The enthusiasm
of manliness bursts beyond itself to such an extent that the blood roils as it surges through
the veins and glows as it foams through the heart …. [War] is an intoxication beyond
all intoxication, an unleashing that breaks all bonds. It is a frenzy without caution and
limits, comparable only to the forces of nature. There the individual is like a raging storm,
the tossing sea, and the roaring thunder. He has melted into everything. He rests at the
dark door of death like a bullet that has reached its goal. And the purple waves dash
over him. For a long time he has no awareness of transition. It is as if a wave slipped
back into the flowing sea.”
In the late twenties Jünger published over 100 essays in leading organs
of Germany’s conservative revolutionary movement (Arminius, Deutsches
Volkstum, Vormarsch, and Widerstand), thus establishing himself, along
with figures such as Moeller van den Bruck and Oswald Spengler, as one of
the movement’s most celebrated and influential figures.
1
Ernst Jünger - Interwar Articles
Need for this collection arose because people only judge Ernst Jünger
based on his autobiographies and novels but all of those came later. The
interwar articles and Storm of Steel are probably the most important of
Jünger's writings. Sadly, not all of his interwar articles are included in this
collection but that could change in time to come.
List of articles included:

1. Revolution and the Idea (Revolution und Idee; Völkischer beobachter,
September 23/24, 1923)
2. Revolution and the Frontline Soldiers (Revolution und Frontsoldatentum;
Gewissen, August 31st, 1925)
3. Differentiation and Connection (Abgrenzung und verbindung; Die Standarte,
September 13th, 1925)
4. The Frontline Soldier and Wilhelm‘s era (Der Frontsoldat und die
wilhelminische Zeit; Die Standarte, September 20th, 1925)
5. Mechanized Warfare (Die Materialschlacht; Die Standarte, October 4th,
1925)
6. War as an Inner Experience (Der Krieg als inneres Erlebnis; Die Standarte,
October 11th, 1925)
7. The Machine (Die Machine; Die Standarte, December 13th, 1925)
8. Foreword to Friedrich Georg Jünger’s book “March of Nationalism”
(Aufmarsch des Nationalismus; 1926)
9. Blood (Das Blut; Standarte, April 29th, 1926)
10. Will (Der Wille; Standarte, May 6th, 1926)
11. Character (Der Charakter; Standarte, May 13th, 1926)
12. Nationalistic Revolution (Die nationalistische Revolution; Standarte, May
20th, 1926)
13. Unite! (Schließt euch zusammen!; Standarte, June 3rd, 1926)
14. Unite! Final word (Schließt euch zusammen! Schlusswort; Standarte, July
22nd, 1926)
15. Time of Fate (Die Schicksalszeit; Arminius, Januar 2nd, 1927)
16. New Nationalism (Der neue Nationalismus; Völkischer Beobachter, January
23/24, 1927)
17. Nationalism and Modern life (Nationalismus und modernes Leben; Arminius,
February 20th, 1927)
18. Nationalism and National Socialism (Nationalismus und
Nationalsozialismus; Arminius, March 27th, 1927)
2
Introduction
19. On Spirit (Vom Geiste; Widerstand, April 1927)

20. Our Stance (Unsere Kampfstellung; Arminius, June 5th, 1927)
21. Total Mobilization (Die totale Mobilmachung; Krieg und Krieger, 1930)
22. "On Danger" (Über die Gefahr; Der gefährliche Augenblick, 1931)
3
Revolution and the Idea
Völkischer beobachter, September 23/24th 1923
We are the youth of Germany, full of spirit and enthusiasm. We were born
and brought up for free thought and that is why the word "revolution" on
the eve of war awoke in us a sacred thrill. And though we lived in the
realities of a corporate state, we knew from history that a moment comes
when the people can no longer tolerate the existing government, regime or
right. The great moments of uprisings, splashes of violence birthed by
oppression, the appearance of a new idea on the barricades accompanied
with a drumbeat and red flag - all this found a reflection within ourselves.
For we knew, that for such fleeting moments, when people, parties or
willful individuals by force broke the chains of old forms and proclaimed a
new right, sprouts of new life and youthful strength appeared in the
country. But all of this was based on one condition, one so obvious that it
should not even be mentioned - there being an idea worthy to fight for.
From the history of great revolutions it can be seen quite clearly that
at first the idea is born in the heads of but a few men, and then in the course
of long and tormenting work the setting is set for its manifestation into life.
Take the Reformation and its related movements, the first French or the
recent Russian revolution, everywhere we see the harbingers of the coming
storm - grand literature, prophets and martyrs, suffering for the idea and
shedding their blood for it, even if the idea was false.
Completely unexpectedly we were given the chance to experience a
revolution or movement in our own country, that called itself revolutionary.
It was given to us at that moment, when the people, its very best were
surrounded on all sides by mighty enemies and fought a desperate, final
battle. This fact alone was enough to give impulse for an uprising. Any
revolutionary organization chooses the time for revolt when the existing
regime is at its weakest - to realize an idea favorable conditions are required.
But in our case it was not the government that led the struggle: the people
as a unified whole were fighting for the new image of the world, and the
defeat in this struggle threatened not just the future of the country but the
basic existence of everyone in it.
4
The fact that the war was most likely lost either way changes nothing,
even if under different conditions. Serious mistakes were made, both before
and during the war, but the reckoning had to come after peace was signed.
Thus the revolution was nothing more than mutiny on a ship during a
battle. People who took the helm at the moment of danger most dire thus
also took upon themselves the greatest responsibilities. History has shown
that the burden was too great for them. The reason for this was that they
were not driven by an idea, but by a desire for profit, and they were
supported by the cowardly, starving and blinded by slogans masses.
Now even the most short-sighted person can see what was really
hidden behind those slogans. The so-called 1918 revolution was not a
revival but a real feast for flies that converged on a rotting corpse. So which
idea did this revolution manifest to life? Freedom? Democracy?
Parliamentary Government? This question can truly stomp anyone.
Nothing new took place even on a merely formal level: Russian institutions
were partially copied, mediocre parodies of 1789 to 1848 events, the old
dusty slogans of marxism were taken out of the chests. But when they
should have created something new themselves, the leaders of the
revolution helplessly threw up their hands, and realizing their own idea-
lessness, grabbed onto the very things which should have been combated.
Thus with their help capitalism had only blossomed, political pressure was
unrestrained, and promises of freedom of speech and the press looked like
a mockery.
The only circumstance that could serve as a historical justification for
this revolution of materialism, is that it was successful. This can be said
simply and directly, same as how those events took place. A bunch of sailors
took over the cities, deserters and teens tore off the symbols of the old
state. This fact, that to the future generations will look like something
inconceivable, has but one explanation: the old state lost its will to live,
which is so important in dire times. An organism incapable of neutralizing
the poison that infiltrated the blood will inevitably die, especially when there
is no strength left. The weapons were ready, the only thing missing was a
strong hand to put it to good use. The decaying state announced its own
verdict, by not allowing to shoot1 and cornering itself with negotiations and
1Even before November 9th, 1918 when the last Reich chancellor of Wilhelm’s
Germany, Prince Maximilian of Baden had given up his duties to the Chairman of
5
indecisiveness - 50 year old global power disappeared like a sandcastle. The

rulings of history cannot be contested in court. What once was cannot be
brought back.
And so for the last five years in the Reich there was no idea, except for
quarrels about worker's pay, not one new building had risen from the ruins,
not one great goal was proclaimed. But the consequences made themselves
known: constant changes of policy, internal bickering, helplessness in the
face of outside forces. Behind the theatrical facades of governments and
cabinets, looters are running the show. Only muggers and the mugged are
left. Professions which were meant to save and multiply the ideals of a
people are dying out. Representatives of the most vulgar materialism,
market speculators, dealers and moneylenders - here are those who are now
in favor! Everything revolves around goods, money and profit. All of the
state's proclamations, directives, explanations, measures, money and
appeals smell of smoldering ashes. And it could not be otherwise. For the
revolution did not become the birth of the new, the forge of new ideas, it
was but the smoldering of a dying body. This sad spectacle drags on!
A real revolution has not happened yet, but its marching step can
already be heard! This is not a reaction, but an authentic revolution with all
its tell-tale signs and slogans, her idea is the völkisch, sharpened to an
unprecedented edge, its banner - the swastika, its political expression - the
concentration of will, a dictatorship! It will replace word with deed, ink with
blood, empty phrases with sacrifices, the pen with the sword.
It will carry in itself all the signs of an authentic and righteous rage, it
will repel from itself all obscurantists, because you won't be able to warm
your hands with it. Its driving force will not be money, but blood that flows
in the veins of the nation and mysteriously ties it into a single whole. This
blood will sooner run than allow itself to be enslaved. From this blood will
be born the new values, thanks to it individual sacrifices become the
freedom of the whole, its waves will reach the borders given unto us, it will
repel the poisons that destroy our organism.
These are the values being fought for on our barricades!
SPD, Friedrich Ebert, the military commandant of Berlin had issued a ban on shooting
in the city.
6
The article was published 3 weeks after Jünger's dismissal from the Reichswehr on
August 31, 1923. As an officer in active service he had the right to publicly state his
political stance.
7
Revolution and the Frontline Soldiers
Gewissen, August 31st 1925
"Frontline soldiers represent the most valuable and prized elements of the
people" - such phrases were uttered often and in earnest, when the people
were not represented by rhetoricians, but by real, living people with
weapons in hand. Then being a representative of the people was a matter
of honor and not simply something beneficial for oneself. But those who
at that point honestly fulfilled their duty today are considered to be either
victims of a scam or complete fools - and that is very much in the spirit of
the so-called revolution.
In reality there was nothing surprising if a man who was forced for 4
years to deny himself all pleasures of life for the sake of values that surpass
the fate of any one individual, would pull at his own hair in desperation at
the sight of this rampant, shameless and selfish individualism. Those who
have seen with their own eyes hunger and cowardice that under the guise
of revolution attempted to give itself idealistic flare, who have seen the
masses of students of the lowest order, shouting grand slogans as they
scurried to occupy all vacant spots and lived in clover until they wasted the
last of their money, who had seen all this had to be convinced in the need
for the most severe, ruthless and dictatorial means. Even if this feeling were
to manifest itself as a reaction, which is not at all the case for our youth,
this reaction, correlating with the highly developed state of society, would
nevertheless be unquestioningly superior to the reaction related to the
animal pleasures of gluttony, sloth and complete irresponsibility. In
November of 1918 the government was like a crew of a ship that at the
sight of the coming tragedy took to opening barrels of rum, to eat, drink
and have fun, forgetting shame and responsibility. Literary circles did not
stray far as they tried to retroactively present this roistering as heroism. The
watery sauce of pacifism and internationalism goes well with a dish lacking
meat and fish, a dried ragout made with French revolution leftovers that
would make even the masses vomit.
Some ask themselves, why didn't this revolution attract to its side the
young national leaders, that is to say first of all the officer corps, who
could've realized their ideas by armed force as it happened in Paris of 1789
8
and in Lenin's Russia. The answer is simple. There were no ideas and
without them it is harder to gather people (at the very least valuable people)
than it is without money. There were people, of course, even of a vivid
revolutionary character. But they had gone there, where one goes to
sacrifice oneself, they had gone to the freikorps, who carried on the fight
on the eastern borders. There they fulfilled their work, but it is hard to judge
its importance at this time. Some rubbed their hands, glad that they could
get rid of them, as upon coming to power they did not want development
of a revolutionary situation, but peace and quiet. They were satisfied with
phrases like "revolution on the march," as it were just enough in order to
keep the exhausted bourgeoisie on their toes. Probably the only person who
thought about how to give the movement energy was Noske. But there was
a need for a willful man like Trotsky, while Noske avoided getting his hands
dirty and tried to sit on two chairs simultaneously: for the workers he was
a setter, for the officers - simply the party secretary. His work did not pass
the test of strength in the form of the Kapp Putsch1. The Red Army on the
other hand presented no threat due to its lack of professionals. So long as
communism only works with the proletarian masses led by a thin layer of
intellectuals, it will be forced to retreat when facing movements led by a
born leader or officer. Then it'd have a chance, relying on Russia and
declaring war on France, to attract to its camp a good deal of national
elements, because the question of property is not the most principle one
that separates us from the communists. Naturally communism as a fighting
movement is closer to us than democracy, and the balance of power will
have to be restored at some point - by peaceful or violent means. But it has
to be repeated time and time again: at that moment people did not want a
fight, did not want to pick up weapons, to spill blood, they wanted peace.
The German communist cannot compare to his Russian counterpart. The
Russian communist had an idea and he worked to fulfill it by any means
necessary. He led a struggle both inside the country and on its borders. He
made history. We had but an oratory contest. In Russia for the sake of their
1 The Kapp Putsch, also known as the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch after its
leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, was an attempted coup on 13
March 1920 which aimed to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919,
overthrow the Weimar Republic and establish a right-wing autocratic
government in its place. It was supported by parts of the Reichswehr (military) and
other conservative, nationalist and monarchist factions.
9
goals, which, of course can be accepted or rejected, entire segments of the

populace were exterminated, and the armies under the command of czarist
officers invaded Poland. We, on the other hand, in between all the coffee
shop speeches and vile, stupid acts, were facing our own inner weakness.
We lacked race, martyrs, dramatic development of events, that convincing
logic that is present in the merciless advance of a great idea, in other words,
we lacked revolution itself. It's not hard to imagine that lightning-speed
development of events that don't take into account individual life, would
have propelled us further than the constant changes of bandages over
rotting wounds by the members of parliament. Russian communism has a
national character. Internationalism simply serves as an excuse for realizing
its expansionist desires. If our own communists had the confidence to
announce the center of this Napoleonic international to be Berlin, rather
than Moscow, then supporters would have flooded to them.
Regardless, the so-called revolution failed to attract frontline soldiers
to its ranks, and this is symbolic. One should not understand a frontline
soldier to be someone who spent a particular amount of time on the front
line - there were plenty of those who were forced to be there. A frontline
soldier is someone who consciously fights and dies for the idea. But since
these very men, in as much as their health and experience allowed it, with
iron necessity wound up in the most dangerous of places, it was exactly
them who became the face of a frontline soldier. And that part of modern
youth that also fits this profile, organically joins with the brotherhood of
experienced soldiers. Unable to attract these men to its ranks, the revolution
had thus rejected the very symbols of manhood, honor, bravery - symbols
which always had and always will lead to victory. As a result it stood in
opposition to these circles, which promises nothing good for it. If it were
able to truly promote great, selfless ideas, based not in instincts, but
suffered and born in the depth of the soul, then the best of these men would
have voluntarily jumped in her embrace. At the end of the war they were
overstrained by unbearable burden and suddenly felt complete spiritual
emptiness. But one single event worthy of sacrifice would have been
enough for them to gladly offer their help. But in this marketplace, in this
clearance-sale of all and everything, there was no need in people of strong
character. In the end the force that bravely fought on the borders of the
Reich was shattered to many pieces, as was possible only in Germany. And
even if afterwards there were protests and sometimes even bloodshed, the
10
time for resolving who's right and who's wrong hadn't come yet. One day
a monument will be erected to these people, something one can't even
dream of today.
The inner-loneliness of the frontline soldier cannot be explained by
him suddenly being surrounded by enemy masses (he's used to this!), but
rather by how he had suddenly become a witness to the disappearance of
the world of forms. Without order in this world, fulfilling duty was
unimaginable, and thus it melted before their very eyes as if but a dream or
fog. It is precisely for this reason that a true frontliner will never be a
reactionary, for he wasn't just betrayed, he was abandoned. Where were all
the title and post holders, what were they doing in those hours when the
fate of the whole was being decided? Did they see overwhelming enemy
forces? Very well, but why did they not fight then? Why are they still alive?
Where was that Reichstag that in all other instances considered it to be its
duty to poke its nose into everything? This is exactly what the last and
unknown soldier, who at any moment was ready to leave his cover and
sacrifice himself, could not understand. Instead of facing the great gates
fully armed, even if one by one, the very people deserving it most slipped
away through hidden passages. Perhaps the "historic moment" demanded
this of them, but historic moment is not equal to tens of years or centuries.
Better they had stayed in their heroic hiding places, dreaming of times long
gone! But they just had to come on out once the storm had passed, to rise
like a swarm of bats who nest in old ruins! And so on par with disdain for
the so-called revolution, the frontliners souls also carried a heavy memory
of those shameful days of the inglorious death of the old form, that had
rejected itself and thus would never live again.
But in the end, form is not spirit, although they felt closely related.
Much time has passed until the frontline soldier had realized this. There are
noble symbols and signs and when they fall to ruin, everyone who feels a
connection to the soil also feel their heart bleed. But signs and symbols,
void of spirit and life, are dead like the ruins of the past. They are like
exhibits behind the glass of museums and command respect that has
nothing to do with either the present or the future. But we cannot burden
ourselves with sarcophaguses, that which lives demands our strength!
The frontline soldier is not hiding in wait in the cracks. He kept on
fighting on the borders even after the catastrophe, though inside the
country his name was trampled in the mud. He gave order to big cities that
11
allowed for the weakling upstarts, who were almost swallowed up by the
very wave that raised them up, to calmly take possession of old wealth and
spend it.
The big question is if it would have been better had the frontline
soldier stood on the sidelines and witnessed how the communists give out
to the "representatives of the people"2 what they deserve, and would have
entered the fray only when the complete uselessness of these people with
their insignificant resources became apparent. Big question, was it right to
accept the role which these messers. had delegated to the remnants of the
old army and newly created military formations. In the moment of danger
they utilized them like some magic fetish, like a pocket lightning-rod in the
face of the raging masses, while they themselves sat in comfortable houses
and made deals with capitalists of the worst sort. Who at that time did not
have a desire to grab a club, except for those with fish blood in their veins?!
We ourselves have deprived us of the pleasure to see how the workers
would have had their way with people like Scheidemann3. It was completely
different in Italy, fascists calmly waited until the cart was completely stuck
in the mud. They put an end to the shameful spectacle only at that point,
when every single one was sure that it cannot go on like this.
But we didn't have people like Mussolini. We had the strength but they
were either left unused or uselessly wasted, shattered into a multitude of
fractions. We don't even have a party of frontline soldiers; there is a
dominant opinion everywhere that you can't do politics with them, that they
must be limited exclusively to "preserving the memory" by gathering for
holidays and friendly binges. Perhaps it's not right for the army, for the
Reichswehr to conduct politics, but the old soldier, who worthily
represented his people in the hardest times, not only has the unalienable
right, but also simply must demand political control. Slogans like "peace
2 From November 10th 1918 until February 13th of 1919 the German Reich was
controlled by the Council of People's Representatives which de facto was a
cabinet of ministers.
3 Philipp Heinrich Scheidemann (26 July 1865 – 29 November 1939) was a
German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). On 9

November 1918, in the midst of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, he
proclaimed Germany a republic. Later, beginning in the early part of the
following year, he became the second head of government of the Weimar
Republic, acting in this post for 127 days.
12
and order" could have had their place after 1806 but today we have every
right to be anything but calm!
The gallows long cry for the pseudo-revolutionaries! The mudflow has
passed, the time has come for the real revolution!
Gewissen (Conscience) was considered to be the mouthpeace of "german socialism"

ideas. Was published by Eduard Stadtler, with Arthur Moeller van den Bruck as the
editor-in-chief.
13
Differentiation and Connection
Die Standarte, September 13th 1925
"Frontline soldier" should not be understood as experiencing oneself as a

frontliner, but as having a conscious attitude towards that experience, in
other words it implies having a certain character that we are yet to define in
detail. We are required to make a differentiation as we are dealing with a
movement that loudly proclaimed its existence. Its nature does not allow
for hitchhikers thus making it superior to any party. The strength of a
movement is not defined by the number of votes but by its internal might.
Hitchhikers slow down any action, they fear battle but are drawn in again
by success. The völkische1 knew this in their better days and soon as they
forgot about it, crisis immediately spread in their ranks.
The best differentiation that a movement can make based on its
makeup and its idea is in unifying all the spiritual and material forces at its
disposal. Blurred lines pose a danger of the movement turning to dust,
whereas the opposite may lead to an unwanted loss of strength. We were
always prone to exaggerated individualism and anyone who feels at home
in the nationalist camp and in particular among its youth knows: a passion
for highlighting particular aspects leads to completely unjustified divisions
based on purely superficial reasons. Generally speaking, the main question
is what divides us and not what unites us. Unification leads to immediate
disarray, waffling, lack of discipline, jealousy of the leader and the formation
of fractions. Anyone who has been to the völkische meetings knows all of
this.
Naturally, it is important to achieve differentiation, but it is no less
important to leave enough room and remove divides at their very
conception. Differentiation means choosing the foundation of the struggle
and this foundation must be broad and solid. Now that we have given a
definition of the frontline soldier it becomes apparent who must and who
1 The völkisch movement (original name: völkische Bewegung) is the German

interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and
the "organic,” i.e.: a "naturally grown community in unity" (as opposed to a
refined and sophisticated society characterised by diverging interests),
characterised by the one-body-metaphor (Volkskörper) for the entire population.
14
must not be brought into the frontliner's movement. It may be said that if
this is achieved then the movement will have at its disposal a material that
is rarely found in history. Nevertheless there are still practical questions that
must be answered.
First of all, we're talking about the opposites of young and old, which
have often given way to quarrels and drastic statements. There have been
mutual accusations of pretentiousness, lacking in understanding of the
spirit of the time and so on. Opposition of young and old in the frontliner's
movement is indeed an unfortunate way of putting that opposition, the
existence of which would be useless to deny. But we have the right to ignore
this. This opposition has its roots in wartime, in the recent distrust of the
combat troops for the HQ commanders, in other words for that which men
in the trenches dubbed "green cloth." This distrust is alive and well today:
one only has to remember that a real combatant proudly uses the word
"front,” thus it is only logical to ask if a frontline soldier's movement can
have any other source than the "front" itself.
The issue can be resolved easily, any nobility club or homeowner's
union has specific conditions for membership, thus the same can be done
for the movement of frontline soldiers. We must then understand if being
an HQ commander is mutually exclusive with our definition of frontline
soldier. Usual objections boil down to how only a man from the frontline
submitted himself to deadly danger, how only he brought the greatest
sacrifice and thus only he carries within himself the spirit of the great war.
This is all true. A movement founded on the idea of personal sacrifice
has solid footing underneath. And, of course, the figure of the lone soldier,
a man in a steel helmet, the unknown soldier, who carried an unbearable
burden on his shoulders, must become the ideal, the guiding star of the
movement.
But let us not deal with minor details. The war was waged not on the
surface but deep within, and the armies were like force fields that attracted
everyone to themselves. And even though the high level of specialization,
characteristic of battles in the epoch of machines, did not allow for
everyone to fulfill their duty on the forward edges of the front, this alone
does not mean anything. It would be most unwise to measure with a ruler
and compare the firing distance of weapons.
Another issue is that the frontline soldier's movement is indeed a
movement of the young, young not in terms of age, but in terms of their
15
connection to their epoch, in their desire to utilize the methods and set for
themselves goals that are distinctly relevant only for this epoch and no
other. Obviously such criteria is characteristic not so much of those men
who from the very first day of war, full of conviction, fulfilled their task, as
it is of those who were shaped by the alarming years of war. Stubbornly
grasping at the past in the face of a new era is understandable, but it is
contrary to the meaning of the movement. To live off the capital of the past
instead of feeding off the energies of the present age and believe in further
development means dooming oneself to futility. One only has to point to
Hindenburg2 to be convinced in how the spiritual conditions we have
described do not depend on one's lifespan. For old men who remained
young our ranks are always open.
Moving on, the inclusion of officers is of great importance to the
movement of frontline soldiers who have their origins in the "nation in
arms"3. Combat officers - this is where the movement must gather its
valuable leaders who were taught by experience. The failure of mass
movements, to which we were all witness, seems to be something weird if
one takes into account that the resources utilized for those were not small.
When it comes to the communists this can be explained by an almost
complete absence of natural leaders (more so speaking in terms of tactics
than strategy), whose task would have been forming the masses in the spirit
of the idea. However when the top management is separated from the
masses or when the rationally and dialectically educated party members
simply project onto them their programs, then there is no living connection
with real people of flesh and blood, no living leadership that would give the
idea hands and make it manifest. The movement of frontline soldiers is free
from the necessity to solve the most difficult internal task of any
movement, the task of producing a breed of leaders, for it has an abundance
of men who had undergone trial by combat and had enough time to grow
2 Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, known
universally as Paul von Hindenburg (2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a
Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the
second President of Germany (1925-34).
3 Volk im Waffen - army of a new type that appeared during the Napoleonic
wars and has to do with compulsory military service. Thus Jünger relates the
freikorps with the idea of a people's war (levee en masse), which was developed
in the Prussian miltary HQ by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. See notes for the
"Total Mobilization" article.
16
accustomed to other than military conditions. Thus we have another ace up

our sleeve in order to make manifest the great idea of a leader, and a real
man will quickly find a reason for action.
Old officers have proven their capability of adapting to conditions and
sacrificing themselves. Soon after the catastrophe many of them displayed
a willingness to reject all former privileges and join the national rebuilding
efforts in a plain soldier's uniform. A truly new spirit was dominant among
the officers of the 1919 volunteer corps, while socialists all over the country
conducted their experiments, they practiced real socialism that had nothing
in common with the turmoil that ruled the streets. And if the "appointed
by the people" managed to keep hold of their new seats and were not
overwhelmed by the very wave that had brought them to the top, then it
was only so because of those men, who had put an end to bolshevism,
without waiting for any compensation.
This new spirit must be retained in the movement of frontline soldiers.
An officer gives his services to the regime not to retain old privileges but
to serve his duty. What remains of the old army is not the uniform, but the
spirit, not the limitations but the binding origins, that is to say that
realization that inside a great body all fulfill one task. But conditions have
changed, which dictates a need in changing the organization itself. Today
it's not important to be representatives of the people to the outside world,
but to first gain recognition of the people, the lack of outside support must
be compensated by internal unity of a higher order. This also refers to the
rarely witnessed today sense of equality that is rooted in duty and not in
democratic slogans.
Old officers have largely retained the important qualities of discipline,
internal and external determinism, the ability to correctly occupy a position,
in a word they retained a race, a breed. But even he who had never worn
shoulder straps was able of finding his way in life and stood fast in the face
of cruel economic battles inside the country that lost a great war. The
situation changed repeatedly, many former officers now work for their
former subordinates. The same happened not only in the economic field.
And if one was to look over this passed milestone, they'd see that in these
new conditions officers as potential leaders acted impeccably. We see
generals who participate in movements lead by former captains4, and
frontliner cells spread across the country often have regular soldiers as their
4 Referring to Franz Seldte.
17
leaders. And in the very depths of the völkische movement, where the first,
albeit tentative attempt was made to make the principles of race and blood
the foundation of the state, appears the figure of lance-corporal Hitler, who
like Mussolini undoubtedly manifests in himself the new type of leader, and
both officers and workers stand shoulder to shoulder beneath his banners.
Back then this spirit had neither form nor the means with which to express
itself, but now the spirit of fiery nationalism and the spirit of the frontline
soldier have come together as one. Individual matters not, what matters is
the task, which means that the question of a leader is resolved in the
simplest and most certain terms.
Finally, a few words should be said about the growing generation.
Seven years have passed since the war's end and quite a few (or perhaps
even the majority of) frontline soldiers have grown over 30 years of age. To
rely exclusively on the fighters of the Great War would mean limiting
ourselves to the one sole source that would with the passing of time
irrevocably come to an end. But the center of gravity for the frontline
soldier's movement is not in reminiscing on the past, but in the hope for
the future and thus we should foremost attract the youth to our ranks. A
variety of methods had been tried to attract the young teams to existing
unions but these youths are growing up and demand that they be treated
like equals. Since the "frontline soldier" doesn't just refer to a specific man
in space and time but foremost a particular character, young squads could
very organically come together with the old guard. Not every generation
gets the chance for heroic deeds but every one of them must have an
internal readiness for it. Only our descendants can finish what we didn't
have the time to.
The Great War became history, its spirit is preserved in the best
warriors who remember it, and this spirit must not die, even if none remain
alive who having stood upon the earth devastated by fire of weapons, came
to realize that technology is nothing and man's will is everything. New
energies, born from seemingly senseless events of war that pierce our time,
that undeniable victory achieved over oneself despite the lost war, that is
perhaps more important than any territorial expansion - all this will remain
with the people for many years to come.
The frontline soldier who had to bear the external trials of war must
come to inner conclusions and turn his great fate into a source of strength
and pass it on to the new generations.
18
19
The Frontline Soldier and Wilhelm’s Era
Die Standarte, September 20th 1925
Having defined the primary qualities of the new type of man who plays the
central role in the frontline soldier's movement it is necessary to also have
a quick look at the process of his becoming and his current stance. This
way we'll be able to define the primary points of his future development.
We shall take Wilhelm's era, which had ended with the war, as the starting
point of this development. All of today's frontliners were born back then.
Of course, by the start of the war the majority of them were too young to
have a defined worldview. However they couldn't not experience the
influences of this era, for upbringing and environment inevitably leave their
mark on the emotions, thoughts and actions of a man, even more so of a
young man, and when this becomes a force of habit a certain style of life
emerges. War had halted the mechanism of habit and pointed the frontline
soldier to a completely different path. He had entered a new, unknown
world, and new experiences had provoked in many an internal upheaval. It
can be, perhaps, compared only to a religion phenomenon of "grace,”
which suddenly befalls on man, radically changing him. Exactly this
explains the slow and cautious return of the frontline soldier to civilian life.
They are as if blinded and can't forget the upheaval that the war had caused,
while representatives of the older generation chide them for excessive
"sentimentality." In reality behind this behavior hides an instinctual
knowledge about new tasks the fulfillment of which does not at all depend
on them having been formulated or not. Naturally it is much easier to
continue to ride the wave towards maturity than to look for oneself in an
unfamiliar force. A period of maturity also comes for the frontline soldier
when he overcomes the period of romanticism and organizes within
himself new energies. However beyond that one must also critically look at
the old, highlighting that, which has finally lived out its age, and that which
is still valuable for the struggle.
It goes without saying that the frontline soldier must have a different
attitude towards Wilhelm's era than those who grew up and matured in it.
However the final verdict can be rendered only many years later, when all
the people living now are gone and conditions appear for an impartial
20
The Frontline soldier and Wilhelm’s era
historical overview. Nevertheless we must take a specific stance here and

now, not at all to claim some historic objective truth, but simply so that we
may be able to move forward. All in all the time has come to put an end to
the senseless ambition for objectivity which only leads to relativism and
doubt in one's own strength. It is necessary to take a conscious one sided
position, giving priority to evaluation rather than "understanding."
It is not at all hard to maintain such a one sided position, especially
since it doesn't necessarily concern the individual. Marx1, in his original but
unfortunately virtually unknown book "World War in the light of scientific
conception of history" [Der Weltkrieg im Lichte naturwissenschaftlichen
Geschichtsauffassung. Laiengedanken eines Berufsoffiziers uber das
Rasseproblem, Berlin: Barth, 1919] talks about the "dramatic conception of
history" which consists of reducing fate to a personal factor. It can be hardly
denied though, that it is in fact fate and not man that is the true motor of
history: presence or lack of a strong personality is none other than part of
fate. Utilizing Spengler's deep differentiation between fate and chance
(according to Spengler fate occurs out of necessity whereas chance is a
result of arbitrary ties) we gain the key to evaluating Wilhelm's era.
Without mentioning names it can be stated that the time after
Bismark's dismissal, which should not be "dramatized" but evaluated
symbolically, carries within itself a seal of chance and nothing in it, neither
men nor their deeds, is indicative of an iron, unyielding march of history.
No matter where and what we look at: external or internal politics, literature
after Nietzsche, the visual arts, architecture, social life - everywhere we see
a multitude of separate entities and individual achievements, but at the same
time their foundation lacks unquestionable necessity that would force
external phenomena to represent internal essence. Only technology and
army stand as exceptions to this - the two means for conquering the world
market and global dominance. They appear before us as whole and
internally complete.
This is explained by Wilhelm era's characteristic ambitions for border
expansion. It is here that this most positive moment resides, endowed with
1Wilhelm Marx (15 January 1863 – 5 August 1946) was a German lawyer,
Catholic politician and a member of the Centre Party. He was Chancellor of
Germany twice, from 1923 to 1925 and again from 1926 to 1928, and he also
served briefly as Minister President of Prussia in 1925, during the Weimar
Republic. He was the longest-serving Chancellor during the Weimar Republic.
21
value for the future; this is the legacy that we will have to master and
multiply. Army, navy, the colonies, presence at the farthest reaches of the
world, untouchable sovereignty and Reich's might - these are the questions
that despite all our losses are of great importance to us. We must expand
the spectrum of these questions, based on the idea of political unification
of all Germans in Europe, the inevitability of which became particularly
obvious after the fall of monarchies.
Thus the frontline soldier takes from the Wilhelm era precisely that,
for which Germany was reproached both from within and without -
imperialism. At the moment of our deepest humiliation this word has been
given the same treatment as "nationalism": they attempted to tarnish it in
most democratic fashion, by making any sort of serious discussion about it
impossible in the first place. But this must not confuse us. If one is to take
a careful look at the forces interested in opposing German imperialism,
then very soon it becomes obvious that they themselves have imperialistic
ambitions, reflecting the main tendencies of the modern age. Borders of all
sort are crushing our chest, and within us, people of our time, grows a desire
to break the chains. In terms of foreign politics the undesirability of
German imperialism is all too obvious, simply because it constrains the
actions of others. Everyone would like to play an active role and not be a
passive viewer. However even in internal politics we find tendencies that
display a clear desire to create vast empires with no account for existing
borders and racial differences, where all like-minded people would be
united by a single dominating idea. However since people cannot have the
same ideas then even in this intellectual imperialism will have its masters
and its oppressed - it would be dumb to believe in utopian lands of
happiness for all, even though such utopian spirit is very characteristic of
this imperialism. But we have come from the crucible of struggle and thus
we can never accept thoughts of universal happiness. Our idea is nation and
blood which is why our imperialism can only be national. And if our idea
of nation and organic unity may seem a kind of "biological relic" to various
von Unruhs2 and co. we will still continue our fight from this abandoned
post. First we will, however, arm ourselves with confidence of our struggle
being just, and seeing how convictions are always in opposition with each
other we are ready to pass even the most severe trial, biological trial by
2Fritz von Unruh (10 May 1885 – 28 November 1970) was a German
Expressionist dramatist, poet, and novelist.
22
The Frontline soldier and Wilhelm’s era
battle, which puts every thing in its place. We are ready for armed conflict.
Moreover we believe that all the questions which are of concern to serious
men, be they about the League of Nations, peaceful Europe or an 8 hour
workday, will be more correctly resolved by national imperialism rather
than by some intellectual establishments. We believe that the entire national
complex, including facts, ideas and feelings, is modern, viable, moral and
more than capable of answering the call of time. We don't have to fear
intellectual demarches which the democratic press likes to scare us with.
They are yet to shake our confidence.
We have inherited imperialism from Wilhelm's era. And despite how
it is exactly the leaders of that era that now try to blacken it, it is our duty
to ignore all reproaches and begin the offensive. We do not think like this.
We believe growth to be the natural right of all living things. The Great and
mighty Reich of all Germans will forever remain the main goal of our
struggle. However our imperialism must not be defined by superficial
expansion rooted exclusively in suppressing and exploiting the local
populace for market interests, but rather our imperialism must spring forth
from a deep confidence in the victory of justice. If we have this confidence
then we are capable of achieving the merging of a people's fate with the fate
of a whole culture, thus allowing the people to enter a fateful period of its
history. At the start of the war we had not reached such heights even though
we liked to think so.
In answer to this reproach, or rather subjective evaluation, we usually
provide the undeniable fact of a 4 year struggle of the German nation
against hordes of enemies. We had inner strength - they had technological
supremacy. To this one can answer: if this were all true then our situation
is most dire, seeing how if we truly fought with all our might then the
circumstances can only be made different by multiplying our technological
arsenal. Nowadays resources are scarce, meaning that nothing of the sort
can be considered seriously. Likewise it is useless to seek the true reason of
defeat in wrongly chosen allies or other means, creating excuses formulated
as "war of lost opportunities." However none of these factors mean
anything to us for we have given the lead role to blood! Neither do we want
to see the reason for the catastrophe in the betrayal of 1918 - for it was no
more than a disgusting and unpleasant spectacle. And yet we must agree
with one thing: at that time we lacked that very instinct, that supreme
23
confidence, in which lie the seeds for victory that easily surpass any material
obstacles. Our faith in the future lies with them as well!
Lack of certain qualities cannot forever serve as the basis for self-
deprecation, for character is something deeper than identity. In his book
"The Third Reich" Moeller van den Bruck states: "It was an accursed time."
There is an element of truth in such an admission, an understanding of fates
inevitability. Without question, commanders acted in a manner that seemed
correct to them and only the ungrateful will speak of how they could have
overpowered fate. These separate achievements are also part of the
Wilhelm era. However neither strategic, which will forever go down in
history, nor miracles or organizational techniques can improve the bitter
taste of defeat. There was none of that inner harmony which would
reconcile and organize all internal forces, which is why all was for naught,
as it happens with capital of an unprofitable business. We had lost the war
because we had to lose it. People capable of facing reality will accept defeat
and won't cry about the "lost empire." They will not hang up their arms and
sadly recite the facts, instead they will seek a solution till their last breath.
If we understand this solution as an inner will of life itself, far deeper
than personal will, understand it as a mysterious flow of energies, then why
during times of chaos and external helplessness we still hope for success
and new solutions?
We have the right to hope for them because we have lived through the
war. That experience that had changed us at our very core, made us feel the
breath of fate itself. We do not only see in war the dusk of the old world
but also the dawn of the new era. We have lost the war because we had to
lose it; to us this fact will not be the end, but the start. Victory in the war
would have brought us only expansion of external borders, defeat on the
other hand allows to concentrate all inner strength and establish a solid
foundation for the future. Defeat in the war did not make us doubt our
values, in battle they must be forged anew. Defeat taught us to confirm our
faith with blood, it restored our connection with the soil, it changed all
views and gave depth to feelings. In it, with amazing intensity, were united
external and inner experiences.
At the epicenter of the war was the average frontline soldier. He had
experienced for himself the destruction of the old and the birth of the new
world. He understands the past, but his values are now different.
24
Mechanized Warfare
Die Standarte, October 4th 1925
With the arrival of 1916, after the bloodbath at Verdun, the visage of war
had changed. By that time the striking force of the great armies was either
depleted or successfully held at bay by the opponent, forcing them to
resolve to new means in order to sway the outcome of the battle in their
favor. Mobilization became more intense, encompassing with no
exceptions all the energies and organizational resources of national states.
The Battle of the Somme had already shown that persistent combat for the
edges of some little village or a patch of scorched forest demanded the
strength of the entire nation, all the way down to the last woman factory
worker.
All energies of great industrialized countries with their factory centers,
transportation capabilities and armies of machines had erupted in fiery
currents onto the battlefields. The front was transformed into a churning
cauldron that had to be maintained in working order. Development of
weapons, with possibly the exception of large battleships, that manifested
in themselves imperialistic will in its pure form was lagging behind
technological progress. There was a lack of practical experience to realize
the hidden capabilities of technology. Lost time had to be made up, war
had to become the essence of the modern spirit of big cities. At first the
will for technological modernization was reduced to merely stockpiling
weapons, and the new period of the war became perhaps the most vivid
symbol of the man of the materialist era. This is not at all because military
material was utilizing in never before seen quantities; after all, any era uses
the resources at its disposal. Indicative was the very character in which
military technology was utilized, it was cruel and calculated. In some ways
it was similar to the marxist understanding of production.
The spirit of time passes through all phenomena of an epoch -
thinking, labor and of course, war. The cost of war was now measured in
the cost of production, drawing a logical conclusion to the pre-war
technological development. Success was guaranteed to those who in the
shortest time sent out trains with tons of explosives or supplemented
production with coal and steel. We, and the whole world for that matter,
25
were unbelievably lucky that the war's conclusion came about with a
gigantic mechanized battle. Now we see a decline in materialist thinking,
people seek to find a productive source in the soul and this tendency is
most welcome.
Supremacy of the human soul's inner strength over technology already
became noticeable in the first great battles of the modern age. The horribly
disfigured landscapes devoid of people, scorched and twisted by explosives
and steel with signs of rampage left by the technological force. No matter
where you look, everywhere you feel the work of technological machine,
everywhere were gaping craters similar to those of some distant lifeless
planet. Each time an iron curtain dropped on the soil plowed by shells, one
could get the impression of some cosmic soulless process, where there is
no place for man. Military technology reached its apex at the Battle of the
Somme and ever since only the scale changed, but never the intensity.
It was already during the Battle of the Somme when man found himself
at his limit. And then the sons of the materialist age suddenly realized that
in reality there was nothing that a man couldn't withstand, there is no such
technology that could rival spiritual strength. We were convinced of this
countless times, this fact was proven by every unknown soldier, who had
passed through all the horrors of military technology and placed his
indestructible, sturdy heart on the scales. This is when it became apparent
that what was important is man, not technology. We've grown used to
hearing from people who lack any capacity for heroism that a dumb piece
of metal is still stronger than even the strongest man. Obviously! However
if there was no metal there would be no brave men either. Of course
technology can lay down anyone, same as how once wild animals easily tore
apart martyrs in circuses. But only he is afraid of it, who recognizes nothing
but crude matter. A soldier must always remember not only the hardships
and sacrifice, but also victory.
Realizing the supremacy of the soul's inner strength over matter,
overcoming it in unequal battle, the frontline soldier did not come back to
civilian matters empty-handed. However even here he was still faced with
a new situation. The endless trench war opened his eyes to what man can
do when he must, now he also realized what man can do when he wants it.
He gained this knowledge by passing through a horrible school. Of course,
not all managed to withstand it: on those fields shrouded with gas clouds
remain both those who were crushed by the machine and those who
26
Mechanized Warfare
heroically defied it. However the great can be seen only at a distance, thus
all that was taken away from those battles plays a significant role. It will
continue to live and be of benefit. And even though there are few people
like that, they don't rely on numbers for victory.
The battle of military technology had showed us another important
lesson: one cannot with impunity equate material and spiritual forces. We've
done this, but each of us had our reasons for it.
No matter the difference in material means, moral supremacy made up
that difference. Obviously this way the best capital was spent. Instruments
are not what's important, however without them the will has no means of
expressing itself. The instruments of the modern man are the technological
arsenal.
As we are talking about the becoming of a specific man, the frontliner,
one sad observation is enough: a poorly developed production led to
constantly making up the lack of military technology with the strength of
moral resistance. War had revealed the flip side of the era that had not yet
mastered the machine, subjugated to its dictate. Here again is found that
huge divide which even before the war had cut through the economic and
social life of the country.
We see before us ill-fed and poorly dressed German soldiers, who with
incredible fortitude resisted well equipped armies of the whole world. Even
though fate subjected the strength of the German man to a cruel, almost
unbearable test, we can say that he had passed it adequately and can think
back to that time with pride, as we remember the unprecedented
enthusiasm during the early days of the war. Fortitude before the strikes of
fate - this is a German's virtue. It was also seen in the Nibelung struggle
beneath the burning ceiling of the Etzel dining hall. In this time people of
firm character were formed, declaring their existence already during the
war.
We have the right to state that we were the first who had overcome
the spirit of mechanized battle and put an end to the simple quantitative
machine production competition between empires. Even though our last
efforts during the war's end did not lead to success, we were able of giving
modern warfare a new visage. Military technology was once again brought
down to be an instrument of the spirit, and a poorly equipped army was
once again braving assaults on superior, in the materialistic sense, forces of
the enemy.
27
He who had taken part in those battles will never forget that fiery
exaltation that erupted in the first days of the war, nor that great will for
victory that settled in his heart. It marked deep changes. Not only had the
art of war entered a new level, but a new combatant type of man was
formed.
When in the spring of 1918 soldiers left the trenches for the last and
decisive battle, where was gone that former joy and intoxication of battle?
The army was made up of men used to military life, who had learned to
soberly judge things and be masters of their will. The outcome of the battle
was no longer decided by soulless machinery that trampled over man.
Spiritual and material forces had come together as one, war attained a
modern character, all the soldiers felt this new spirit. Back then, shortly
before the catastrophe, the war reached its second apex and the will had
come to completely dominate modern technological means. Thus a
hierarchy of values was formed, born in the years of war. Thus was formed
a new type of man who would now take his place in history and become
the basis for the frontline soldier's movement. He is a distant cry from the
image of a hansom youth with a fiery gaze who with song on his lips greeted
death at the Ypres in 1914. He is also far from the image of the lonely
soldier of mechanized battles who was not broken but powerless. To the
contrary, before us comes the image of man forged in the fires of battle,
who had experienced for himself the severity of the great task and mastered
the external means of power so as to bring his ideas to life. Here they are,
soldiers in steel helmets: their ascetic faces reflect a firm will for action, in
their somber eyes dances the flame of the idea.
So what if these warriors did not get to experience external success?
Heroic values are not the values of merchants1, they value principles, not
success. Although what was happening on the fields of battle doesn't have
just monumental value but also a direct relation to our time. Even if all that
we have achieved internally at the end of the war did not lead us to some
tangible success, nobody can take that experience away from us. Metal
1 Hinting at the famous pamphlet of the sociologist Werner Sombart, written in

the first months of the war addressing the "young heroes fighting the enemy."
Sombart puts in contrast to German "heroic virtue" the English values based on
utilitarianism and positivism (W. Sombart's "Merchants and heroes. Reflections
of a patriot").
28
Mechanized Warfare
forged in the hearth of battles is still strong. Soon will come the day when
it will be put to use.
29
War as an Inner Experience
Die Standarte, October 11th 1925
Frontliner's generation faced a kind of test by military technology that is

rarely seen in history. But not every external experience has to be matched
in intensity by an internal experience. Anyone who was by chance engaged
in a rapid whirlpool of events can undergo external experiences, whereas
not everyone can undergo an internal experience. Thirst, hunger, cold,
exhaustion, wounds, combat excitement, dangers and fear of death - all of
this is directly related to the body and in no way synonymous with inner
experience. And the fact that one man is broken by overwhelming enemy
attacks and another resists them while himself displaying cruelty means
nothing. The most important thing is the mental connection with external
events and anticipation of the superior, transpersonal force. It is found in
the destiny of peoples and particular individuals. In order to feel it one
doesn't at all have to have a multitude of external experiences. It is available
equally to both a hermit in his cell and a warrior in the thick of a bloody
battle.
Immediately after the war the reading public was overwhelmed with a
flow of confessions. But the most buzz was generated by Barbusse's1 "Le
Feu." Authors wanted to lay claim to having understood the war's deepest
meaning and thought they would be able to put an end to it for good. But
such a fast reaction to events could not but make people with sharp critical
senses suspicious. An argument was made in favor of "canceling war,” a
most naive collocation, that war is unethical. One would expect that this
very claim, the attempt to influence the ethos of culture will be justified
based on the ethos of the individual. But the reader didn't find anything in
these books other than descriptions of hunger and thirst, empty eyes and
exposed internal organs. In other words nothing but the most gruesome
shades of war that people were already somewhat aware of. Of course
landmines, gas attacks, tanks and drumfire are new phenomena. One
1Henri Barbusse (May 17, 1873 – August 30, 1935) was a French novelist and a
member of the French Communist Party. He was a lifelong friend of Albert
Einstein.
30
understands that it was technological advancements that determined the

attitude to war. However can one truly say that this is what all psychological
experiences of war boil down to? Can one extract moral conclusions from
the simple increase of technological armament? Then why didn't these
people protest, how come they only begun to act so clever after the last
cannon grew quiet? Were they afraid of the state? What kind of morality
grovels before the state? Every last infantryman who charged ahead and
met his death in battle had more internal fortitude than these people! We
won't be so far from the truth if we see fear in this reaction, hidden behind
talk of morality. There is yet to be such a man who'd prove to us that an
individual who sacrifices himself in the name of a higher goal acts immorally
or that a state is immoral if it demands such sacrifice from the individual.
To the contrary, all these Barbusse-like speeches are filled to the brim with
materialism. One shouldn't regard it tragically however, because it will lose
its power soon as it won't instill fear and horror. In reality, when they speak
of the soul they don't differentiate it from the nervous system.
True inner experience is a rarity in both war time and any other time.
It is "an experience only for the few." There was during the war,
undoubtedly, psychological growth, moreover it became something
important and new for a generation nurtured in a marxist-darwinist spirit.
Gradually the very few people who had undergone this important
experience are making themselves known, after all, what was conquered in
the crucible of scorching war will eventually manifest. Pain and suffering
are evident immediately and one can scream about then in all four
directions. But what was truly experienced in the very depths of one's soul
comes out gradually.
In an attempt to feel out this new and unfamiliar force of nature,
hidden in the spiritual depths of European youth, we will understand that
here, as in any other case, actual experience depends on the very material
that is being experienced. That is why we should go back to the Somme -
in that battle was first born that war that reflects the nature of our era, while
military art after a long and fruitless pause was able to catch up to the other
forms that manifested our will to live.
We see the very best representatives of our peoples in this disfigured
landscape - fields plowed with craters, seams of trenches, bombed villages.
Here they had undergone trial by war that could be best described as
industrial war (Produktionskrieg). Will to destruction manifested in its purest
31
form by means of machines, death was understood in a technical sense.

This is an especially disheartening sight because death no longer relies on
her intricate means. It is a hunt for a most valuable game! Yet death refuses
sophisticated entertainment in favor of a mass meat grinder. Nobody takes
aim, every square meter of land is systematically worked over with grenades.
And even if not all grenade explode their work is finished by two-three
blind hits or a powerful ricochet from a destroyed weapon. All of this is
once again related to the mass. Acceleration can be somewhat compared to
a seasonal sale, production looks like manufacturing of cheap goods which
overflow in entire provinces. Somewhere deep from the rear one by one
supply carts are rolling on shiny rails, in all factories driving belts are
humming, there is feverish mining for coal and ore in all mineries, blast
furnaces are on fire day and night in industrial zones. Supply is well
maintained, hellish fire can keep going as long as it has to. In reality the
industrial age managed to create a magical landscape, one that is very close
to Dante's mighty vision: white flame of purgatory, fire of technological
battle.
Purgatory? When we were kids we laughed at this superstition, but now
we slowly came to realize that deep meaning that the Middle Ages had
invested in this symbol of purification by fire, of burning out sin from man.
But how could this symbol, already implying some kind of fault, be applied
to men under fire? Majority of them are too young to have any kind of
comprehensive understanding of their era. Some of them lived peacefully
and justly in their little enclosed world, until the force of fate ripped them
out of there and tossed them into a kind of desert that just two years ago
was unimaginable even in one's worst nightmare.
However, if a man has no higher value than the value of identity, then
he is unlikely to find an answer here, he will have to come to terms
something senseless is happening here or that a grandiose crime is being
committed, one that the leadership has to be blamed for. This is point of
departure of the revolutionary: he is connecting the dots of cause and effect
everywhere and blames the leaders of his own people for everything; the
nationalist differs from him, who blames everything on the leaders of the
other people, so does differ the pacifist who sees the cause of all ills in both.
But the path of faith is different. One of Spengler's great merits was
that he managed to clearly and convincingly show the difference between
fate and causality, between soul and reason. He who understood this
32
difference is not susceptible to false temptation of measuring in reasoning

categories the causalities of spiritual experience. Fate has its own laws and
these laws presume a sequence of the highest order.
Fate knows not individual responsibility. Its irrevocable march is
hidden behind a chain of external events but at the most unexpected
moment, when defense and security were seemingly guaranteed, suddenly
the time comes to square accounts. A good example of this is Louis XVI.
He had to pay with his blood for what he personally was the least
responsible in. From this point of view one should also regard the spiritual
experience of war. Only here accumulated debts are being paid up by the
entire generation, deep in its soul it experiences the collapse of an entire era
and its worldview. And the majority experienced it like animals who suffer
not knowing why, albeit this is unimportant, for fate does not reveal her
reasoning, and man realizes rather late its unquestionable necessity.
Yes, here matter itself holds a terrifying court over an entire era which
worshiped matter and substance like a God. First hints of this appeared in
the Wilhelm Era, in its economic and social tendencies as well as in a deep
internal dissatisfaction which pushed towards searching for new ways but
did not give true liberation. In this exaltation with which people greeted the
started war one could feel hope that finally great changes were about to take
place, that something absolutely new would appear. However, nobody
could foresee that it would happen like this. So the spirit of the age turned
towards us and showed its accursed face. He showed himself to be the most
young, healthy and strong representative of the people; he notified
everyone of his presence with terrifying strikes of a heavy hammer. Those
who had truly lived through this could no longer doubt that it wasn't just
some state or some system falling apart, but the entire worldview, moral
values of an entire culture. The most terrifying thing was not the fact of war
in and of itself, for wars had always been and will never go away, but in its
physiognomy that reflected the tiniest folds of our internal working. A
horrifying gaping emptiness ruled among the orgies of technological battles
and we have no grounds to be proud of our time's reflection that looked at
us from beyond the mirror of industrial warfare. However, only the heroic
stance of the loner who had atoned for a fault he is not aware of, shines
bright in the desert darkness. But beyond it lies only suffering and not
liberation and mighty deed.
33
Such is the spiritual experience of this war, that lights up like fire an
understanding of the inevitable collapse of an entire era. Even the
materialist noted this, but once he tried to make his own conclusions, he
was not able to rid himself of his view of rotation of various systems and
formations. One cannot cure with external means that which requires
internal transformation.
The transformation began, as was the case with external experience,
during the war. And even though the soldier can form his own reasoning
based solely in military events, we're not talking about what is being
experienced, but rather how it is being experienced. The game of spiritual
forces finds its external manifestation in everything, one only has to learn
to see it.
So we are not making a mistake when we make conclusions about
underlying ethical ignorance based on external strategic manifestations
Therefore, we are not mistaken, if on the basis of external strategic
manifestations we draw conclusions about their underlying ethically
unconscious position. During the last battles of this war, not long before
our collapse, a new attitude appeared towards technology, related not to
adaption, but to a will and desire to subjugate it to internal powers. And
even though these attempts were made as if blindly, one cannot ignore
them. All the important things that made themselves known during the
destructive rampage of military force have meaning to all fields of our
culture. Already in these first manifestations of will the technologically
weaker gains solid footing and this signifies serious changes.
Military technology is but matter from which the soul blindly creates
its own imagery. But if there is no inner strength and instinctual accuracy
of movements, then matter becomes a goal in and of itself, an independent
churning force of nature. And on the other hand, if there is only inner
strength and no external means, then a rejection occurs of any attempts to
shape the visible world, therefore a rejection of happiness which exists in
living activity. This may be an ideal for some Hindu, but not us. Our ideal
is an inner strength, a force of the soul, creating in the visible world its
symbols and monuments, like how the soul of the Gothic man erects
grandiose cathedrals and was elevated with them. He who dominates matter
dominates himself - such is the perfect man.
This is why the surprising aspiration for the limitless, that we saw in
the example of imperialism, can have success only if it is replenished with
34
spiritual depth. We lacked this depth on the eve of war; others lacked it too
which is why no super empire appeared as a result of the war. However
new strings are drawn directly from the ruins of the old era. The spiritual
experienced gained during the war isn't important just for war, for it is a
condition of the new age. That the German man lived through the most
horrifying trials must not simply become a lesson to us, but also instill a
hope for the future.
35
The Machine
Die Standarte, December 13th 1925
The world we were born into appears to us as something self-evident. From

the very moment of our birth we are surrounded by a multitude of things,
with the first inklings of consciousness we learn to more clearly define them
from the perceiving Self. We couldn't talk yet and didn't know what motion
is, but the noise of trains that rushed on the rails through forests and fields
was already something familiar to us. If we were to grow up in some cabin
among the virgin forests of South America we'd become acquainted with
motion, observing the treetops waving in the wind, flying birds and the
flight of an arrow. Village, colorful birds and arrows would be something
natural to us. But from our mother's arms we observed huge iron wagons
and complicated steel mechanisms, not understanding them in the slightest.
This truth was discovered in the history of thought a long time ago: first we
perceive objects and only later subject the variety of experience to strict
classification. We should sometimes remind ourselves of this truth, in order
to see just how much we are connected to our era and our surroundings.
We assume that we can conquer both with thought, but in reality thought
is but their function.
Today, sitting comfortably in the seat of a restaurant wagon with a
newspaper in our hands, we pay no mind to the landscapes passing us by.
Moreover we will not be surprised with the towns and villages passing us
by in the window. We are well familiar with them from our early childhood,
this is our world! Yet let us at least once try and see them with different
eyes, for instance with the eyes of a man from another era, when fortresses,
monastic buildings and cathedrals towered above.
Forests and fields sliced up with the shiny canvas of a railroad were
not always as they appear today. These are not just forests and fields as
such, these are forests and fields that belong to our time and place. Neat
rows of beeches and firs remind us of soldiers on parade. Rye and wheat
form strips on a rectangular field as if measured with a ruler. All this was
done by a machine. Individual grains, one by one in a strict line. Just some
30 years ago fields looks completely different.
36
The Machine
And so we arrive into a big city. Masts of traffic lights appear, bridges
on narrow iron piers. We rush by marshalling yards, conglomerations of
levers and wire, strict factory silhouettes in the windows of which we can
see flywheels and shiny bulbs. And the closer we approach the center the
more tightly we are surrounded by a magical garden with its peculiar
technological plants.
We leave the train at one of the gigantic stations (hints of the modern
imperialism style in their architecture) and go to the streets. Night has
already descended. We dive into a colorful sea of light, bright signs glide on
building walls, fire wheels spin around towers. Caravans of machines rush
through wide squares and narrow shafts of streets; rumbling, hissing,
honking, - they are like screams of dangerous animals. Yet we calmly and
indifferently walk through all this chaos beneath the artificial sky of arc
lamps, we are surrounded by a magical landscape that surpasses any
fantasies of "One Thousand and One Nights."
Here we feel at home. It would not be a mistake to say that we live in
a fairy world. Everything comes and goes, and it may seem that when our
world sinks into nothingness, our descendants will tell legends of us,
legends about evil and mighty wizards. Yes, we have created great and
wondrous things and have the right to be proud of them. For there are such
moments when we truly are proud of that, which is called progress. Let's
remember the intoxicating joy that overwhelms the modern man at the
sight of his own creations burning gigantic amounts of energy in the sky
above the metropolises. Let's also remember the feeling of emptiness on
weekends when this gigantic machine is made to stop. Then it appears to
us as though the masses of leisurely shuffling people in the streets have lost
their true meaning, and the praise of holidays that we have inherited from
more pious ancestors almost looks like sin. We are ready to completely
transform life into energy.
However there is still a deep fear hidden within us before this
mechanical apparatus, this witch's broom that it seems we forced to move,
yet as if the sorcerer's apprentice,1 forgot other enchantments and became
confused. Fear consciously manifests itself when technology is seen as the
result of rational thought, believing that the spiritual world had irrevocably
perished and in its place appeared the cult of material gain. It is particularly
1"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (German: Der Zauberlehrling) is a poem by

Goethe written in 1797. The poem is a ballad in fourteen stanzas.
37
vivid in the new generation that had survived the war, which instinctually
chooses common blood and seeks to avoid any rationalistic worldview.
Truly, the machine had taken much from us. It made our life more
energetic but it also took away its luster. Taking away the whole from us it
turned us into specialists. We thought we'd be able to make it work for us
as if an iron servant, but instead were grinded up by its wheels. When
Keyserling2 in his "Travel-journal of a Philosopher" stated that in the end
it was a great delusion that we achieve everything with machines, leaving
ourselves only the function of control. With every new machine the strain
on us grows - it is enough to look at statistics.
However it is important to understand that the motion of machines is
of a compulsory character. It runs over whomever stands in its way,
becoming a means of destruction. Any protests will crash against its steel
shell, like the protest of English factory workers who revolted against the
use of first steam machines. One cannot deal machines with bare hands -
this is a lesson we learned from fiery battles of military technology. And
here is something else that is important to remember: the machine is not at
fault for the world losing its deeper dimension - which is exactly the
reproach used against it by the false desire to "internalize." Only man
himself is at fault, if one can at all talk about faults when it comes to such
matters. Today the machine is an instrument of a particular, singular man,
and their massive unification becomes the instrument of the nation. And
through the machine the spirit can do anything it wants, just as with any
other instrument.
Nietzsche's renaissance landscape had no place for the machine. But
he taught us that life is not only a struggle for mere pitiful existence, that it
can seek higher and more serious goals. Our task is to apply this teaching
to the machine. We have no right to view it as a mere means of production,
satisfaction of material wants because it can satisfy needs of a higher order.
And that is why we must free it from the shadows of intellect and place it
in the service of the will and blood. That which in the language of the
intellect is called means of progress, in the language of blood is called means
of power.
2 Count Hermann Alexander von Keyserling (July 20, 1880 – April 26, 1946) was
a Baltic German philosopher from the Keyserlingk family. His grandfather
Alexander Keyserling was a notable geologist of Imperial Russia.
38
The Machine
Intellect creates the instrument, but the will of blood directs and
utilizes it. Machines are used to fill entire countries with cheap products
and to create technological trinkets. Machines are used by cultured nations
to create tanks and offensive weapons for themselves and it is clear that
this does not stop at steel plates and gun barrels.
As in war, so in peacetime modern nationalism is incapable of
operating without machines. Battles of the Teutoburg Forest, which were
wages with clubs and flails, are long behind us. Now, if a country doesn't
possess the necessary technological arsenal that allows for sending trains,
print slogans and just generally imposing any will onto our time and place,
then it is doomed to failure.
There were people who during the war, believing in the supremacy of
spirit over matter, had sent soldiers into battle without modern weapons.
Such mistakes were paid for dearly. Of course the spirit possesses
supremacy over military technology, but this does not mean that they
should be set against each other directly. The supremacy of the spirit
presents itself in the ability to control technology according to one's will. In
peace time we also must seek to equip the nation with the newest
technology. During certain times people express themselves with bombings
and gas attacks, whereas in other times the cinema, radio and press become
such a means of expression. Here we have a vast field to work with.
But one cannot conquer this space unless one first conquers the
modern factory worker. We must convince him in the necessity of finding
an out of this dead end of marxist and capitalist presets, which being
connected exclusively to issues of production, have led to the industrial war
and the Battle of the Somme.
We must find a new way to freedom. We must convince him that our
values have no monetary equivalent, we do not engage in distributing gain
but are solving a question of blood and power. To us he's not some
unskilled laborer but a comrade with equal rights. The worker has been
easily bought with promises time and again. But what marxism offered him
in a purely material sense, nationalism can provide and then some.
The factory worker is the first and strongest factor in the rise of
modern nationalism which presents in itself a new European phenomenon.
In the notes to this article it is said that Jünger read a variety of authors of antiquity
during his time as a Reichswehr officer, namely Cassius Dio, Tacitus, Martial and Horus
39
(sourced to a January 14th 1923 letter he wrote to his brother Friedrich George Jünger,
DLA, Nachlass Jünger)
40
Forward to F. G. Jünger’s Book “March of
Nationalism”
We call ourselves nationalists and do not fear incurring the hatred of the
educated and uneducated plebs, all these opportunists of spirit and matter.
For that which they hate, what goes against the rotten flow of progress,
liberalism and democracy, has one advantage - it is not universal. We do
not demand anything universal. We reject it - starting with universal truths
and human rights and ending with universal education and compulsory
military conscription, universal suffrage and universal ignobility which is a
necessary result of the previous point. Universal qualities and demands are
qualities and demands of the mass, and the greater their universality the less
is their value. To acknowledge yourself as part of the mass means to claim
credit for owning purely physical properties of gravity, and to extol the
notion of humanity means to place some essential value in simple belonging
to a particular mammalian species. The universal is weighted, measured and
calculated, what is special is evaluated and prized. To desire the universal
means to be blind to any special value in oneself, making one at best
objective, measured, rational, scientifically "fair" To desire the special
means to have standards, to feel responsibility of blood, to follow spiritual
impulse.
Modern nationalism thirsts what is special - such is the primary feeling
of the new generation which is sick to its stomach with vapid
Enlightenment talk. Modern nationalism does not wish to measure with
universal rulers, it wants to set its own standards based on spiritual strength.
It has no intentions of proving its rights using scientific methods like
marxism. It utilizes the canvas of life itself, on which any science relies in
the first place. It does not wish to measure and ration rights but demands
only the right of life to live. Nationalism is unthinkable without this right,
and it will inevitably limit all other rights. Nationalism does not wish to
make peace with the rule of the mass, but demands the dominance of
identity, whose supremacy is made up of inner content and living energy. It
wants neither equality, nor impartial justice, nor freedom that is summed
up in empty claims. It wishes to get drunk on joy and its joy is to be itself,
and not something else. Modern nationalism does not wish to float in the
41
airless space of theories, it does strive for "free thinking" but desires to gain
strong ties, order, to grow roots in society, blood and soil. It does not wish
for socialism of opportunities, it longs for socialism of duty, for that rigid
stoic world that the individual man must sacrifice himself to.
The father of that nationalism is war. What our literary figures and
intellectuals say about it has no meaning to us. War is the experience of
blood, thus it is only important what men have to say about it. The
infamous Intellectuals' Manifesto1 neither canceled war nor that which the
war gave birth to. It is like a vane - it turns with the wind. And if
insignificant people of large or small scale use war as the measure of all
things to measure themselves then it is a purely psychological issue.
The core of German youth had experienced war firsthand and not in
coffee-shops or behind a writer's table in a warmly heated office. They've
been to hell and back - yet even from hell the Faustian Man does not return
empty handed. Barbusse and his ilk can see whatever they like - we managed
to gaze at something greater! We did not just bring negation back with us.
Only having seen the power of matter did we understand the power of an
idea. Only having discovered for ourselves the fruitfulness of sacrifice did
we understand the value of man and the difference of ranks between
people. We saw the white flame of will burning brighter than the flames of
fire. Grenades, gas clouds and tanks - it may all appear as something
horrifying to cowards but what we valued more than this external shell was
the gloomy background from which silently emerges the figure of a man
hardened in storms of steel, facing his era. We anticipate that the new type
of man will soon appear in all peoples of Europe same as how the war had
touched not only Germans and how the newly birthed by war nationalism
did not appear solely in Germany. We see everywhere a great energy
powered by blood, which has already taken hold of peoples or is laying the
groundwork through struggle, ready to take on new forms. So let us rejoice
and speak to others: "Be such as you are!" For it is far more and pleasing
for us to live in a world full of meaning than to drown in liquid gruel devoid
of any character, form or uniqueness.
However, we have the unquestionable right to be proud of one thing
- that war has affected us more than anyone else. We, the defeated by this
1 Written by Henri Barbusse "Manifeste aux Intellectuels" (Elevations) in which

intellectuals of the world called for peace and a common struggle against war.
42
Forward to F. G. Jünger’s book “March of Nationalism”
horrible spectacle, will require much time to contemplate it and thus we

also have the right to hope that the new crop will reap the richest harvest.
War is our father, it conceived us, the new tribe, in the scorching womb
of trenches and we proudly acknowledge our kinship. Thus our values will
be the values of heroes, of warriors but never of merchants who are ready
to measure the whole world with their yardstick. We do not mule over
benefit and practical gain, we have no need of comfort, we only require that
which is necessary - that which fate desires.
The German frontliner marches in columns on the right, left and
center. Give him time to determine the direction of the march, but let each
do it on their own. Only then will it become apparent that we are all moving
in the same direction. So long as we haven't figured ourselves out we will
not be able to internally overcome the resistance of our world. Our flag is
neither red, nor black-red-gold, nor black-white-red; it is the flag of a new,
vast Reich that resides in our hearts, attaining in them its gestalt. The day
will come when we will be able to unfurl it. Our common tradition is war,
great sacrifice. So let us comprehend the meaning of this tradition!
Many more works will follow this book that I welcome as a brother,
comrade and friend. In them we will attempt to describe the fundamentals
of modern nationalism. The positions of doctrinaires, liberals and
reactionaries are all equally foreign to our youth, it does not wish to be
infected with the spirit of that turnip revolution. In the most horrifying
landscapes of the world our youth had conquered for itself the knowledge
that old paths have been walked to their end and new paths await it. The
first stage of preparations is complete, a new one begins.
We welcome blood that was not burned out by the flames of war but
turned into heat and fire! What managed to survive will be of use in the
new struggle. We welcome those who come2 - those in whom the old school
coincides with depth! The march begins, soon the ranks will link. We
welcome the dead - their spirit sternly calls out to our conscience. No, you
have not perished in vein! Germany, we welcome you!
Jünger Friedrich Georg, Aufmarsh des Nationalismus, Leipzig, 1926 (Der

Aufmarsch. Eine Reihe deutscher Schriften, hrsg. von Ernst Jünger, Zweiter
Band), S. VII-XIII.
2 Die Kommenden (The Coming Ones / Those who Come) - name of one of
the leading military-political union journals.
43
Ernst Jünger planned to publish his own essay "Foundations of nationalism" with
"Aufmarsch" publication. The text was meant to be the third tome in a series that was
started with Franz Schauwecker's book "The Fiery Way" (Der feurige Weg), however
these plans never came to fruition. "Foundations of Nationalism" was published next year
in the yearly Stahlhelm (edited by F. Schauwecker) and included the articles "Blood,”
"Will" and "Character."
44
Blood
Die Standarte, April 29th 1926
Our solidarity must be a solidarity of blood - that is our first demand. But
what is blood? It is both a simple yet difficult question. In it we discover
the deep contradiction between cognition and feeling.
Anyone who truly values life feels what it is - common blood. He also
knows that it is harder to talk about those moments when this fluid force
of nature churns with unrest. Blood cannot be expressed by mere words.
Language is like a fishing net that loses the lion's share of the catch through
its gaps just as it is raised from the depths. Language contains in itself
meaning like the walls of a house and only through the windows does the
magical light escape. The mysterious unspoken heat, once expressed in a
word, becomes matt pale and colorless. Even the richest languages is but
an artful frame for the mysterious paintings that are visible only to the
internal gaze.
Blood is deeper than everything that is said and written about it.
Fluctuations in its light and dark masses give birth to enchanting melodies
that can either provoke sadness or fill our chests with joy. They either draw
us to people, landscapes, objects or push us away from them. That grand
unknown that is revealed to us in the silhouettes of mountains, in the
horizon of the plains, in the game of clouds in the sky, in human laughter,
in the movement of beasts or colors of a painting whose artist may long
since be dead - in short, that unique accent that life itself gives to everything
that surrounds us is determined by the uniqueness of blood. We are given
a phenomena, but it is the strength and richness of blood that first gives it
value, makes it something significant, symbolic and deep. With eyes we see,
with ears we hear, with hands we feel, with our brain we perceive the
thoughts of others, but blood alone decides if all this remains dead matter
or be filled with living breath. We perceive objects by means of nerves and
sensory organs, by means of blood their inner meaning is revealed to us.
Thanks to senses we come to know things, thanks to blood we accept them.
Through blood we feel our kinship or foreignness.
Blood feels kinship of one man with another. We live in an
overpopulated world and can no longer understand how happy a man can
45
be who finds this kinship because desire for rationalizing has dulled his
instincts. Only loneliness, only great differences in race and forces of nature
are capable of once again awakening this mighty sleeping feeling inside man.
Even such a cold and sober author as Stanley1 said that upon his return
from his Congo adventure where he spent years among the ebony-black
people he experienced an intoxicating and incomparable feeling once he
met a white man.
However even in modern civilization, in this fairly mechanized world,
we are not able to escape the influence of blood. Men shaking hands,
meeting of eyes, tone of voice, everything dependent on the content of
speech, gait, bearing, movement and facial expressions - perceiving
thousands of subtle things, even without thinking about them, we speak the
language of blood, blood itself talks through us, calling out, attracting or
pushing away. Despite the multitude of masks, I and You achieve mutual
understanding thanks to the secret tongue that predates all languages. And
wherever there is common ground between I and You there must be
something greater, some environment that includes both sides, like how
even in vacuum ether permits for sunlight. It is fate, linking loners together
in kinship and common meaning. With individual senses we only perceive
the surface of phenomena and not the real links, the subterranean
entanglement of roots that shoot out here and there with new sprouts,
compared to which the individual is nothing for only they have power of
conception. We have an inkling of this thanks to blood, obtaining in it the
joyful feeling of solidarity and unity.
If some commonality does not have this feeling, then it is already dead
as a commonality. A people who do not feel blood ties is but mass, a
physical body incapable of rising above matter and manifest the force of
higher life. There is no place for the incredible in such commonality, its
blinding light can no longer soothe a man in moments of weakness, only
mechanical laws prevail all around. One should neither live, nor die, nor
procreate, nor waste creative energies for such commonality beyond the
1Henry Morton Stanley GCB (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 – 10 May
1904) was a Welsh-American journalist and explorer who was famous for his
exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David
Livingstone. Stanley's book about his search for the source of the Nile was one
of Jünger's all-time favorite books (sourced to one of his diaries, entry from
August 14th 1965).
46
Blood
individual sphere. It no longer has fate or blood that is ready to accept that
fate.
These two elements give life great intensity, purpose, dignity, and tragic
content. Fate and Blood. First is an unseen power, the second is a force of
nature in which we find fate. Only thanks to it can we comprehensibly
understand the essence of blood. Blood without fate is like an uncharged
battery, a magnet without attraction. Purity and breed of blood, quality of
its mixing have no meaning whatsoever without a great destiny. It is like a
touchstone that is used to test the value of blood.
That is why we refute all attempts to subsume race and blood in some
rationale.2 To prove the value of blood by means of the brain and modern
natural history is like demanding a knecht3 to answer for his master. We do
not wish to hear of chemical reactions, blood injections, skull shapes and
Aryan profile. All this sooner or later will result in ugliness and petty
squabbles that open the door for the intellect into the world of values that
it is incapable of comprehending and can only destroy. Blood needs not
proof or tests of legitimacy, especially if we're talking about man’s relation
to a baboon. Blood is that fuel that feeds the metaphysical flame of fate. It
can have any chemical composition, that does not matter to us. Let men of
science look at blood cells through their microscopes and debate about
them. It's the spirit that fills pages of books with such questions, but life
fills the spaces of fate with something else.
The magnetic power of blood does not need external material traits. It
contains a symbolic value, not a logical one. Its carriers find each other like
2 In his musings about the irrational link of race, blood and fate Jünger was very
close to O. Spengler: “Race, like Time and Destiny, is a decisive element in every question
of life, something which everyone knows clearly and definitely so long as he does not try to set
himself to comprehend it by way of rational — i.e., soulless — dissection and ordering. Race,
Time, and Destiny belong together. But the moment scientific thought approaches them, the
word "Time" acquires the significance of a dimension, the word "Destiny" that of causal
connection, while Race, for which even at that stage of scientific askesis we still retain a very
sure feeling, becomes an incomprehensible chaos of unconnected and heterogeneous characters that
(under headings of land, period, culture, stock) interpenetrate without end and without law. [...]
Race, in contrast to speech, is unsystematic through and through. In the last resort every
individual man and every individual moment of his existence have their own race. And therefore
the only mode of approach to the Totem side is, not classification, but physiognomic tact.” -
Decline of the West
3 Knecht, in German, means in general a male servant, and can refer to a servant
of a sovereignty such as a mercenary foot soldier or the classic farm servant.
47
two butterflies in a valley at night: they recognize each other miles apart.
They feel when their time has come like how the flair of migrating flocks
of birds knows more than all meteorological stations of the world. In
everything they follow the unyielding call of fate, long before historians will
write of this necessity in the history books. Blood accurately knows from
where to expect danger and where to gain support. It cannot be tricked with
a blindfold because it sees without light.
Kinship of blood is only born where blood is bound by the strings of
fate. Without those bindings family, aristocracy, a people - everything
would lose its meaning, all the deep ancient senses would become targets
of ridicule from liberated minds, from the arrogant and cynical writers.
Everything is equalized, decomposed and smeared over the surface, leveling
any creative deviations and the sense of the unique dies in the desert of
common truths, that sense of an organic link. The individual no longer
regards insults towards his commonality as having been spat in the face,
great accomplishments of the individual no longer inspire pride in the
whole, no longer can one recognize himself in his leaders, and that amazing
sense of unity that fills big cities with the greatest exultation of life is gone.
And with that assertion of a sublime, timeless life disappears the contempt
for death, as it is tied to the understanding that a singular individual has
meaning and value only in correlation with the higher, suprapersonal value.
Will to sacrifice, that divine force that reconciles one with death, is
extinguished.
To blood motion is more important than the goal. Blood does not
know progress for its will seeks and reaches the absolute in any age, in any
place in any commonality. It all comes down to the intimate link and
indestructible strength. That is why we recognize the heroic deeds of all
ages and all countries. Our love for Rome does not exclude our love for
Hannibal. In Napoleon we see a surprising manifestation of life's energy.
We value the great and bloodstained figures of the French Revolution, from
Mirabeau to Robespierre, each in their own way, and any examples of
violence cease to appear horrifying to us soon as we remember the
coldblooded Barras4. We'd pay tribute to our revolution as well if only as
much blood was spilled for it.
4Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras (30 June 1755 – 29 January
1829), commonly known as Paul Barras, was a French politician of the French
Revolution, and the main executive leader of the Directory regime of 1795–1799.
48
Blood
Evaluating us our descendants will not look at the goals that we sought.
Goals were reached, tasks accomplished, new ones had been made. What
is important is that these tasks are but an external transient shell of fate.
Fate exists forever and only fresh blood asserts itself in new forms each
time. We won't be measured by the ruler of success alone. Only one thing
matters - have we reached that potential destiny gave us or not. Leonidas'
Spartans had fallen but in their heroic deed the absolute meaning was
fulfilled. Never, nowhere and by no means will life be able to commit
greater heroism.
No, we won't be judged by our success - they will only ask how loud
was our "Yes,” how brightly the flame of will burned in us. And one day
we will be able to proudly say that it was our share of good fortune to reach
the absolute on the new strand of fate. Every battleship that sunk under the
sea with its flag raised high is our testimony. And all those who were on it,
from the admiral to the simple stoker, are heroes united by blood and filled
with contempt for death. So do attest us the soldiers of trench warfare, who
fearlessly looked onto the approaching military machinery and fell slain
dead, accepting supreme being with wild elation.
All of this is now part of the eternal, while we stand in the midst of a
changed world. Our blood strives for new goals, thirsts for new ideas to
grow drunk with, new motion to give itself to until complete exhaustion,
new sacrifices to deny its very self in. Blood wants to partake of the great
love; it longs to live and die for it.
49
Will
Die Standarte, May 6th 1926
Every new experience presents us with a challenge! First we clarify this

experience and then proceed to evaluate it so as to put it in service to the
future. This means that we go from the space of observation to the more
severe space of will. Values that have been tested and recognized by the
soul must now be made manifest and urges us to fight. Higher emotions
give birth to heroic deeds, convictions - to weapons, and faith - to sermon.
Thus our question is: "What can we affect with our will?" It has
nothing to do with the question of free will that prevails throughout the
entire history of religions and philosophic systems, starting with high
antiquity and ending with the modern day. At times it was accepted and at
times rejected but we didn't get any closer to reality. Acceptance or rejection
of free will is nothing more than an expression of the dominant sense of
life in a given era. We can witness something like this today, when the most
forefront fields of science are inclined to denying free will. Take philosophy
of history for example, which introduces some suprapersonal energies that
subjugate life of singular individuals, or neovitalism in modern biology,1
which denies the darwinian principle of chance while promoting the notion
of a creative or otherwise same suprapersonal life energy. To us this is all
nothing more than a sign. We don't ask if it is truly so, we ask ourselves
how can we assert ourselves in the real world. We agree with Karl Marx: it
is not a matter of explaining the world, but of how to change it.2 We ask
this not just as thinking people but also as acting and willing people. We do
not rely on what can be known. Rational cognition is but a part of our
position. It must be combined with other parts but not dominate them.
Foremost questioning the capacity of our will, we do not rely on
reason, we are driven by another relentless sense. This sense appears in
1 Vitalism (neovitalism) - a variation of the philosophy of life that stems from the
fundamental difference between machine and living organism. In Germany the
leading figure of neovitalism was the biologist and philosopher Hans Driesch,
whose lectures Jünger attended when he studied in Leipzig.
2 Here Jünger paraphrases Marx's famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach: "The
philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."
50
Will
response to an internal catastrophe which is a result of a grander disaster.

We have all desired, as much as people can desire, but in the end our will
turned to failure. We have personally experienced the natural forces of war
and revolution - like great natural disasters they had swept our world,
mercilessly depriving us of simple human joys, sorrows and hopes. We have
seen as the victory we had honestly earned, which we believed in deeply for
many years, was handed over to the enemy. And we witness day in and day
out how enthusiastically are preached the beautiful, the good and the just,
but life refuses to deviate even a little from the grandiose line of eternal and
initial principles and laws. We tried to find someone to fault, but even if
there was any benefit from these attempts then it is only in that we have
convinced in the necessity, inevitability and the inner consistency of what
had transpired. We asked the question about the meaning of our experience
and only understood that this meaning must in any case be different from
the original meaning - yes, we had wished back then, our will turned out to
have been directed in an entirely different direction. Ever since then we
have been in a state of confusion and ask ourselves what can we affect at
all. For it is beyond our capabilities to will stronger than we had back then.
Our generation has the right to point towards its great achievements,
it does not have to feel ashamed before its fathers. Yet still all our efforts
were for naught. Failure created duality in us, it had shaken our inner
foundations and sharpened our external strength. How reliable was the
world that our fathers lived in! Children of victory and Enlightenment, they
dared to place in man the source of development, saw him as the master of
the future. What was important were the thoughts and will of this man, they
produced all sorts of motion and their summation took on the proud name
of progress. This wonderful word encompassed the entire faith of the
materialist generation and we ought not to laugh at it now. Their position
had integrity, something that demands respect. However, even if we
acknowledge it, we cannot identify with it due to our tragic experience, on
our lips the word "progress" will be but an empty word.
Progress! This word has lost its former meaning to us. To use it means
to not only look down onto heroes and saints of ages past, but to also deny
our own achievements3. We don't need this though, even if all our applied
efforts did not lead to victory. We will be proud of those efforts. Can
3 One can read more about progress as "the people’s church of the 19th century"
in Jünger's "Total Mobilization" article.
51
someone betray himself just because his luck had run out? We'd sooner rely
on the faith of our fathers, the faith in the reliability and rationality of the
world. Even despite our will we must believe in the divine meaning of what
transpires, in the higher purpose of things, that we cannot judge. Otherwise
the ground will give way beneath our feet and we'll hang over the abyss of
chaos, chance and meaninglessness. What's the use in rational clinging to
things if they are devoid of any deeper dimension and do not reflect the
inner order? We must believe that the world is meaningful and orderly,
otherwise we will be among those who are internally overwhelmed and
terrified, those who hope to change the world or who live one day at a time,
dragging on their animal existence.
Having recovered from a deep inner shock we realize that we have
gained a new center of gravity, a new side to our being. Our generation still
experiences some vague premonitions, something still causes us to fret.
Prophets appear heralding truths; each word has a new sound to it and
causes unexpected reactions. The generation sated with Enlightenment is
once again starting to take religion seriously. New editions of even remotely
important books of our and other cultures are published and are given new
interpretations, different from the ones of merely ten years ago; people talk,
read and write so much about a broad variety of things, that even the most
impartial man can't help but feel serious unrest. New societies are formed,
old ones revived, and the feeling that the logical structure of the world has
fallen apart in our mind forces man to turn to the extrasensory. It leaves its
mark everywhere - from the highest matters of spirit to the primitive
nonsense of the marketplace haggler who fill newspaper columns. War is
the great turning point, it finds itself in the history of metaphysics and in
medicine, in our comprehension of the soul and government, in our attitude
towards money and civil law. Everyone is still searching, blindly trying to
feel the way, it would take just a bit more faith and a bit more seriousness
to find ourselves in a different world.
Faith in the sacred meaning fills us, the tempered generation, born in
the scorching womb of the trenches and full of pride in its past. And even
though that past is related to failure we should not conclude from this that
it was meaningless as any corner merchant claims. That for which men die
can never be meaningless. Even a singular death is full of meaning. If we
were to suddenly find ourselves in that situation today, then surely we'd do
something differently. But essentially, regardless of any experience, our
52
Will
stance would have remained the same. Let them reproaches us, as if the
past didn't teach us a thing - we know for certain that there exist things
which cannot be taught for they are innate. Let's not judge by success or
lack thereof, like how the plebs of all sorts like to do it, but rather ask
ourselves what has to be done. Will our efforts be fruitful we do not know;
we know for certain this - that they will be full of meaning.
The great source and reason for this necessity we call fate. Thanks to
fate we appear not as blind and accidental figures but as a creative force
whose goal is unknown to us. We do not even know if it has goals at all, or
if it is none other than the pure divine motion, equally great and complete
in each moment. And what else do we call this suddenly awakened in us
sense of what is necessary, which often forces us to act despite our personal
interests, sacrificing our rest, joy, peace and even life, if not the will of fate?
Let our will follow this necessity! We have all experienced moments of joy
when fate took hold of us and dragged us with its iron hand. We know that
these dramatic and not given onto every generation moments are connected
with a series of sorrows and joys. Yet we do not despair nor flatter
ourselves, we do and seek that which is necessary, that which fate desires.
This grand "Yes" to the joys of conception and pains of birth, readiness for
the inevitable struggle which seals the fate of the warrior. Do the demands
of fate coincide with our demands or do our demands coincide with fate -
this is a question for the professors, one that we have no interest in. We do
not see a division here but a higher form of unity, centaur merging of horse
and rider.
Therefore we want what is necessary. Why? Because it is necessary!
What will we achieve this way? Meaning. And that absolutely achievable
goal is what is important, even if attaining meaning means our death. But
we, old soldiers, used to the harsh days of war, have never given much value
to questions of joy or lack thereof, of salvation or ruin. How much really
depends on us?
53
Character
We, nationalists, decided to wish for what was necessary - that which was
desired by fate. Making this decision we consciously leave the cover of
safety that was provided to us by reason, so as to trust ourselves to the
reliability of a higher order, to the sureness of fate. Let them try and
convince us of this or that being right, acceptable and advisable, but if there
is no need in it we will reject it. Thus we do not rely on causal patterns, but
on higher supreme patterns, which, however, do not exclude reason, but to
the contrary include it. Where that which is necessary must happen it will
have no trouble justifying itself with logical arguments.
So then, if we can desire what is inevitable then we must somehow
understand it. The chain of logic is obvious to us, deduced by reason. The
outer appearance of the world, in other words particular qualities of objects
in the physical plane, is perceived by the senses and transmitted by the
central nervous system to the brain. There this imperfect material,
transformed by imperfect senses, is processed by reason, "the thinking
soul." Reason forms concepts, makes judgments and comes to conclusions.
According to Wundt1, this is the "ability to think in terms of objects and
their relationships,” while according to Hegel it is "the most amazing,
greatest and furthermore absolute power." But its limitations are without
question and are hinted at with this famous phrase: "Nothing is in the
intellect that was not first in the senses."2
As our spiritual experience shows, above the outer logic of reason,
conditioned by the senses, rises an internal logic of fate. And we perceive it
1 Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German
physician, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the
founding figures of modern psychology.
2 Thomas Aquinas adopted this principle from the Peripatetic school of Greek
philosophy, established by Aristotle. Aquinas argued that the existence of God

could be proved by reasoning from sense data. He used a variation on the
Aristotelian notion of the "active intellect" ("intellectus agens") which he
interpreted as the ability to abstract universal meanings from particular empirical
data.
54
Character
not by the brain, but by blood which uses the brain for its own goals or in
spite of it. The arguments of blood are not convincing, they are compulsory.
Its goals are not logical constructs but are the consequence of necessity. Its
main organ is the heart. And that which in relation to the brain we call
reason, in relation to the heart we call character. This relation, of course,
cannot be proven anatomically, however we see in this a positive, rather
than a negative. Unlike the Age of Enlightenment we believe character to
be the highest value - that is the most important sign of our inner
transformation.
Character is what is important in us; it is our true nature, honest form,
and our life is its external footprint. As the organ of fate, in its action it is
present in all of fate's great forms - combination and separation, love and
struggle, sympathy, loyalty, bravery, sense of honor, pride, fear,
indecisiveness, softness, strength, knighthood, hatred, avarice,
wastefulness. Love of nature - in this is revealed the march of fate. It is
precisely this that determines the position and ambition of a singular
person. It is this love of nature, in the form of sexual attraction, that makes
up the most significant part of man, it dictates the choice of slogans,
heraldic figures and proudly proclaims: "This is what we are and thus we
want to remain!" Exactly this gives society form, makes armies crave battle
and makes revolutions fruitful; it forces hearts to beat in rhythm and this
beating of hearts is all the louder, the less it is thought of or spoken about.
It is at the foundation of entire people's history, defining the internal logic
of their development - their rise, victories, catastrophes and decline. It
overcomes all obstacles - be they rivers, seas or mountains, it overcomes all
commonality and differences of economic interests. It's specifically the
relationship between the character of peoples that explains why they feel
predisposition, hatred or respect for one another. Let us look upon
ourselves: we quite clearly feel what is a German man or a German woman.
It may not be simple to put into words, but such is the quality of fate - it is
impenetrable to words: we feel this. And we know, that this ideal has no
rational foundation. Yes, it is from life, where fate rules through blood, that
unity and the sureness of a higher order are born, born despite all
contradictions, mistakes and delusions. Such is the unity of a work of art, a
painting, a drama - the paints and colors are the same as everywhere, and
yet they form a transparent curtain that separates us from the intangible
55
world: we are only reached by the breath of the divine and are forced to our
knees.
We must understand: the sense of fate's laws is not determined by
moral principles, which are like the still stars in the sky. Character in and of
itself is neither good nor evil. It is above these. It determines what is good
and was is bad. Character can be great or small, strong or weak, firm or
soft, tragically divided. There is no moral law in and of itself. Each law is
determined by character, by the imperative of blood. Did Hagen von
Tronje3 have the right to strike with his spear or not? In Germany and
France the answers will differ. Murder out of jealousy in the face of
Norwegian justice is one thing, in the face of Italian - another. Character is
the great workshop where invisible power gains its visible expression, where
all systems of thought and morality are minted. The latter, of course, come
from axioms and maxims, yet it is character that chooses ones over others.
Such is the order of fate.
Character is not acquired, it is given unto man at the whim of divine
unjust fate, recognized by nationalists and denied by liberals. Character is
"etched" into man once and for all. Laws of progress do not govern over
him, only laws of development. As is the oak's development is destined in
the acorn, so is in the child's character destined the character of the grown
man. We all know from personal experience that in any melody there is a
leitmotif. In the most different areas of life we make the same mistakes, but
thanks to them we reveal our better side. All that is unveiled by life, what it
sharpens and tempers, and on the contrary - everything that is softened by
society, suppressed and made blunt, does not affect character in the
slightest; however at the same time experience, upbringing, education,
examples, ideals, surroundings, morals, laws affect us and shape us.
Although, it is impossible to artificially create character, just as it is
impossible to artificially replicate a plant cell, let alone a human. Character,
unlike reason, is not distracted from life, moreover in its essence it is
something organic, living and thus tied to the creative source of life itself.
Character is the condition for any upbringing, not its result. Its result is at
best a form. To bring man, society, nation to form means to actualize their
character. Here there are likewise no absolute principles with which this
3Hagen is a Burgundian warrior in tales about the Burgundian kingdom at

Worms. Hagen is often identified as a brother or half-brother of King Gunther.
In the Nibelungenlied he is nicknamed "from Tronje."
56
Character
goal could be accomplished. A Brandenburg regiment must be given form

differently than a Gascons regiment. Constitution that makes sense in
North America loses all sense in Liberia. Slave blood can never be ennobled
and no disciplinary tricks will turn cowards into men.
Thus it is our duty to liberate the idea of forming and selecting men
from rational assessment. Life itself gives us such a right. All that is living -
and such is foremost our movement! - is subordinate to an all-
encompassing will, not to rational rules. History is not constructed, it is
lived. The nature of politics cannot be perceived with theories. There is no
recipe for winning a battle, to creating a painting. But there are rules of
global history. There is a higher school of politics. Napoleon studied the
battles of Frederick II. Apprentices study painting from the masters.
However we have already stated: the goal of education is form, and this is
quite a high goal. Thus one can talk of strategy using a specific formal
language. It doesn't matter then if we'll win the Battle of Cannae or the
Battle of Marne. However the living content of language is just as varied as
all living formations. Clausewitz, for example, does not consider the art of
war to be an empirical science even though he grasped its fundamental
knowledge from experience. "In actions the majority follow the simple tact
of reasoning, which is more or less good - depending on the amount of
genus within." Furthermore: "Even the most sophisticated military
Headquarters with the most correct views and principles is incapable of
providing an army with successful leadership if there is no soul of a great
military leader. The direction of gaze and will, inherent to the military
leader's nature, often turns out to be the best countermeasure to the
confused in its own plans learning which, however, is a necessary tool for
a leader."
We have nothing more to add. We placed our Headquarters, our
thinking soul above character, that is to say the feeling soul. Yet it is the
feeling soul that is our truest, our primary. Impervious to any external
changes, it constantly seeks to conquer the world, however not to subject
it to thought, but to actualize itself in it.
This attempt at realization is the primary right of all living things. We
wish to use that right. So in choosing fronts and leaders let the final word
be with the sense of fate's logic! We wish to bind ourselves with ties of
commonality on the basis of blood and character, to become one with such
57
organic society4, where there won't be either class or property distinctions,

but where there will be a distinct understanding of who does not belong to
this organic society. Thus we'll do what is necessary - that which is desired
by fate.
4Jünger is using the traditional to German social philosophy differentiation

between the organic society (Gemeinschaft) and society as a mechanical
association made up of individuals (Gesellschaft).
58
Nationalistic Revolution
Calling ourselves the honorable name of nationalists we turn our back not
only on those who are used to uttering that name like a curse, but on all the
peaceful bürgers. The whole essence of our movement is to stand for values
of life by military means and we don't give a damn if these means are
justified by some universal morality or not, this movement relies on
frontline soldiers, real, living people, loyal to their duty with love and joy.
These are not some merchants and owners of marzipan factories that water
down the army in the era of compulsory military service, but men who carry
danger within themselves, because they like being dangerous.
These are not the pampered babes who worry not for the state so long
as they see a general's uniform or black-white-red flags in the streets, but
once the thrones had shattered lost all hope to find any kind of meaning in
world history. Of course, had these protectors of peace, order and inertia,
whom liberalism could've very well paid pension for their eternal loyalty,
had they decisively stood for nationalism then the existence of the
November republic would've been all but guaranteed. There would've been
no need for any security laws and after the end of the conservative and
democratic liberalism standoff the movement's cravings would've been
sated (let's not forget about their blood relatives, the communists).
But one could hardly hope for such simplicity. In this day and age we
understand surprisingly clear the possibility of a national revolution, and
the threat to liberalism within it: for it can but with one gust of wind
overthrow all its laws, depraving it of its big and supposedly undisputed
gains of 1918. Nationalism itself hardly believes in this possibility,
unthinkable without war and subsequent rearrangement of forces. Its
backbone are nationalists who are so used to being tied down to a big
government apparatus, that with its disappearance they felt as if ground
gave way underfoot. Nationalism couldn't just discard it all like a shabby
dress, it took considerable time to internally overcome the forms of old
government, even though they long since ceased to coincide with reality.
59
The first spontaneous uprising in Munich1 became the first step towards
liberation. However along the way entirely new feelings were awakened.
Will to power had shed all its shackles, all responsibilities, felt itself free,
more free than German will had ever been.
Thus the role and place of nationalism are slowly revealed. Old forms
are disappearing into the past, to cultivate them is the inheritance of
philistines or journals such as Weltbühne.2 The first self-evident duty of
nationalists is to turn away from these fighters of small caliber, not
honoring them with even one drop of contempt. Their task is to arm
themselves at all costs for the struggle with the existing status quo which
differs little from the situation of 1919, for it is nothing more than a
renewed facade, to please the common eye, of a rotten building. Destroy it,
leave no stone standing!
To prepare nationalism for this task - that is the real essence of the
1918 revolution. Thanks to it not only had the German overcome his fear
of revolutions but it had also removed all obstacles in the way of nationalist
will. It is necessary to turn this path into a truly revolutionary one not only
so as to strike a death blow against liberalism, circumventing all legal traps,
but also to forge the will of nationalists themselves. A nationalist has no
right to even consider a different outcome. It is his sacred duty to give
Germany its first true revolution, that is to say a revolution based in
absolutely new ideas.
Revolution! Revolution! That is what must be preached unceasingly,
pointedly, systematically, uncompromisingly, even if this preaching takes
ten years. So far only a few had realized this requirement in its full severity
- sentimental blabbing about brotherhood and unity by means of various
possible and impossible varieties of spirit still blooms with vivid colors. Let
them go to hell or the parliament where such talk belongs! In our desired
1 The Beer Hall Putsch

2 Weekly Weltbühne (World stage) journal - Weimar Republic period radical-
democratic German journal about politics, culture, economics. Originally created
by Siegfried Jacobsohn under the name Die Schaubühne as a purely theatrical
journal (began publishing in 1905 in Berlin). During the war shifted direction
towards the political-economic theme. Renamed into Weltbühne in 1918. After
Jacobsohn's death in 1926 the publication was led by Kurt Tucholsky, a year later
the head editor position went to a German publicist of polish origins, a pacifist
Carl von Ossietzky. The journal published such famous journalists and writers as
Lion Feuchtwanger, Erich Kästner, Kurt Hiller, Erich Mühsam.
60
Nationalistic Revolution
world there is no unity of opposites, there is nothing but struggle.

Nationalistic revolution doesn't need preachers of peace and order, it needs
preachers who declare: "God will come down upon you and you will die by
the sword's edge!"3 It must once again force to sound fiercely the name of
revolution that has been a joke in Germany for a hundred years. A new,
dangerous kind of man was born from the Great War and this man must
be forced to act!
So let's get to it, comrades! Let's strengthen our influence in combat
organizations, to revolutionize them is our first unavoidable duty. Less
comforts, less members, more activity! Centralized leadership! Attract the
workers! Do away with liars who preach peaceful economy! We are not the
jailers of workers! We will broaden and rally combat nationalist trade unions
that must be controlled by workers of a nationalist breed. They will achieve
more on nationalistic barricades than marxism has in all its fifty years. And
what of the universities, the youth movement,4 all those organizations that
present an interest to us? Where else will sprouts appear? What holds the
state together? Cooperation and opposition. And how can we overthrow
it? Only by exiting it, by a war of attrition, by forming a state within a state
- self-sufficient, starting with its idea and ending with the means of struggle
for that idea. How to affirm the German nation? By recognizing it as
something can be recognized by a nationalistic spirit.
To be a nationalist in a war meant to be ready to die in a war for
Germany; today it means to pick up the banner of revolution for a more
beautiful and grander Germany! That is the goal worthy of the best and
most fiery part of this country's youth.
3Paraphrasing Luke (21:24).

4Jünger is using the general term "youth movement" (Jugendbewegung), which
implies prewar organizations such as "Wandervogel" (Migratory Birds) or
"Freideutsche Jugend" (Youth of Free Germany), as well as political youth
organizations of the Weimar Republic frontliner soldiers (so called "bundische
Jugend"). Also see notes for "Revolution and the front-line soldier."
61
Unite!
Die Standarte, June 3rd 1926
We, warriors of yesterday, today and present day, live in a time when all
ideals in which we used to believe and for which innumerable soldiers died
for had been trampled in mud. In the old days we would gather in a close
circle of friends in different corners of the country, following a sense on
internal protest.1 We simply had no right to reject that for which we had
sacrificed everything, we had to find certainty in the existence of a deep and
necessary meaning of what was happening. Our first decision was to strictly
follow tradition and preserve trampled banners in the most hidden crevices
of our hearts. That is how the best of us felt, which is why their resolve will
not disappear tomorrow. Reactionaries of the past will become
revolutionaries of the future!
We know now that a more important task stands before us. The word
"tradition" gained a new meaning for us, we no longer see in it some
complete form, but an eternal living spirit, for the deeds of which every
new generation is responsible. And with each passing day we more clearly
feel that we are a new generation, a new breed of people, tempered in the
hearth of the greatest war in history, internally changed by this fire. While
all the parties are undergoing decay, our thoughts, feelings and life are given
a completely different form; there is no doubt that with the growth of our
self-consciousness it will be made manifest. We are called upon to fight for
a new state!
As our understanding of our fate and calling deepens we begin to see
things in an entirely different light. Hundreds of bloodless brains were
convincing us that we were playing the unenviable role of unwitting
accomplices in a crime. But now we realize that those who fought for their
country had shown themselves to be the very best citizens. Thanks to this
we uncover for ourselves both the past and the future. Even the pathetic
revolution of 1918, pointless in and of itself, attains meaning in the
perspective of things to come. It teaches us that sprouts of life stretch
upwards, ignoring the weight of defeats. The uprising cleared us a path,
1 Meaning gatherings of frontline soldiers.
62
Unite!
removing everything on its way that could have prevented us from

accomplishing our task. The gravediggers dug their own graves, they
thought they were shaping destiny but turned out to be merely her
instruments. We will follow a different path, not the one that was followed
by youth in 1813. We are capable of realizing a synthesis between feeling
and power, of which German idealism was incapable. It was drunk on ideas
of a great revolution but the dramatic consequences had frightened it. We
on the other hand had learned to stare fear right in the eyes.
Which is why we have the right to hope that one day we'll be able to
pave the way for the German and with one strike realize that which has no
need for compromise, voting and budget cuts. Yes, we want that which is
German and we have the power to want thusly! The shape of the future
state has been made clear in these years. Its roots will feed from different
sources. It will be national. It will be social. It will be armed. Its structure
will be authoritarian. It will be a state completely and equally different to
both Weimar and the old Kaiserreich. It will be a modern nationalistic state.
Such is the state of the future. In spite of our scribblers' efforts, whose
thoughts can't keep up with their wishes, nationalism was not destroyed in
the last war, to the contrary, it first appeared together with and thanks to
that war, in a previously completely unfamiliar form. Nationalism has
nothing in common with the bourgeois feeling, it is radically different from
patriotism of prewar time. It is dynamic, hotheaded, full of our big city
vitality where - and this is another typical quality - it is experiencing rapid
growth unlike the fading away conservative sense of life. This nationalism
is not reactionary, but revolutionary from start to finish.
I am familiar with real non-parliamentary powers in Germany (and
only they should be taken into consideration), I am acquainted with many
leaders and know that they all stem from those four great principles of a
nationalistic state: its outlines have already began to form. From the
multitude of political movements (which is undeniably a positive factor, up
to a point) that some highlight one particular program point, whilst others
highlight another. Many of them are still undergoing their becoming,
exploiting each calm day, whilst others have completed this process and
now they, naturally, are threatened by weakness and internal crisis. For
despite the relatively big number of separate movements, independently
they are incapable of taking action. The time has come when separate
movements must flow into a single nationalistic front. This necessary step
63
will bring about not only solace and an inner strengthening of each
individual member, but it will also ignite all their energy for action. Thus
our ranks will be joined by all those who have not yet joined any movement
- did not join because they longed for a whole and not merely a part.
As for the nationalistically inclined masses, then it is obvious: each
individual not weighed down by prejudices and whose heart is with us, will
happily vote for a clear and decisive program, if it is built on those same
four pillars - nationalism, socialism, defensive capabilities and authoritarian
structure - and if this decisiveness is also joined by a number of tactical
agreements that will help realize the program.
We can state that since the time of the marxist-liberal revolution we've
made a great step forward. Consciousness grows with each day.
Nationalism could today already stand on the verge of victory, if not for
two critical program points that require very energetic elaboration. The first
is regarding the tactical regulation of the social program. Existing problems
in this field showcase the fact that the national labor leaders disassociate
themselves from the combat unions block, afraid of damaging the cleanness
and strictness of their demands. This very division must be removed! Such
is the state of affairs, more or less, so long as the nationalistic state of the
future is not the highest authority in economic questions. Independent,
nationalistically inclined workers joining under the leadership of labor
leaders, best of all in the traditional form of labor unions, lead an economic
struggle with purely economic slogans. For if we demand that socialism
disassociate itself from internationalism then we under no circumstances
can drag nationalism in quarrels over wages. Moreover, the worker will only
fully realize his equal rights (something we give great significance) once we
give him the opportunity to resolve his own affairs. If combat unions were
suited for creating labor unions then we wouldn't be able to overlook that.
National-socialism on the other hand, thanks to a different type of leaders
has that capacity and until both sides forget petty quarrels and extend hands
to each other, serious success is unlikely.2 So let’s draw a definitive
2In 1925-1926 Jünger still looked positively at the national-socialist movement.

On January 9th he sent Hitler a copy of his book "Fire and Blood" with a
dedication "To the National Leader Adolf Hitler! -Ernst Jünger." Hitler thanked
Jünger for the gift in a responding letter, noting that he read "all" of Jünger's
works (sourced to a letter from Hitler to Jünger from 27.05.1926, DLA,
Nachlass Jünger).
64
Unite!
distinction: soldiers as leaders in the power struggle and workers as leaders

in the economic struggle!
However this economic struggle is different from the marxist one in
that its goals are realistic. It is actively supported by the masses those of
nationalists who were able, thanks to their war experience, to overcome the
bourgeoisie ideology and one of the mightiest pillars of the class state along
with it. The other pillar will be destroyed by the worker himself, subjugating
the economic state to the national one. It is already becoming clear that
nationalism, of course, can't offer the worker the same as what marxism
had been promising him for the past years, however it will give him
immeasurably more than the worker ever had before. But foremost it will
illuminate his life with the rays of great ideas and help him realize that,
which historical materialism had failed at, namely: lead the spirit to victory
over machine. People from both the bourgeoisie and marxist camps will
flow to us, stand shoulder to shoulder and create a new strong camp.
Workers will receive wide support for their just demands from capitalists
and come together in the struggle for political power. We have not yet
achieved unity, but it is the only path to victory. The destruction of the
internationalist labor unions will not achieve anything unless we create
circumstances that will allow us to attract into our ranks those of common
blood. This goal requires people who had accepted marxism and had grown
severely disillusioned with it.
The second important question that requires immediate resolution is
the question of the central role of the leader. We still do not know if there
is a man among us, who is so consumed by the idea of uniting all interests
in a single fist. But we do know, unfortunately, that there are none who
enjoy universal recognition that is so important for this role. And since we
cannot wait for when the great loner appears and manages to unite the
scattered movements, we are left to work with what we have. So long as we
are not ready to create a mighty organization (but one day it will inevitably
appear!) we will be forging a united front that will determine the direction
and strict structure for the already existing movements. Before the great
loner appears and personally leads the authoritarian structure, there must
exist a central committee of leaders with a chief of staff, responsible for the
cleanliness and strictness of the movement. This step, if we are capable of
making it, will allows us to preserve the originality of each movement and
considerably multiply the total combat potential. Then we'll prove that we
65
can set out on our crusade for new great goals. And if a sense of unity and
confidence in that everyone is in their right place appears in all combat
unions, then we'll enter the second phase of our great struggle that had
begun in November 1918. This struggle will continue until our generation
has fully expelled from itself the memory of that revolution!
This is what I call upon all the leaders to do and will not cease repeating
my call time and again in the close-knit circle of decisive fighters: do what
is necessary - that which is desired by fate! That is the demand of our time!
Understand: our time has come, cast aside individual interests and let the
bright sun of coming victories blind us! Forward, as long as youthful fire
burns within us! Towards great deeds - for only we are capable of them!
Leaders have shown that they are capable of creating and obeying a
common idea, despite the difference of views. And all of you who had
joined various movements and are awaiting a signal, forget disputes and
focus on what's important, that which unites you. For behind petty quarrels
you had missed how you became a laughing stock for those against whom
you ought to be arming! But that laughter will die quickly, the second they
see how our forces have grown once somewhere an agreement has been
made, and somewhere else - total unity. Cast aside a commoner's joy over
bickering that puts in question the seriousness of our goals! Better ask
ourselves: do these tiny disputes help us come closer to our great goal? The
shape of our movement will determine the form of the future state!
I am addressing you, knowing that you are military men who had gone
through the greatest war of our century, who had been raised by it, matured
by it. Thus one should not forget about the virtue of frontline soldiers,
about the indisputable superiority of the idea over the comforts of the
world, one ought to remember courage, responsibility, comradery, bravery,
order and discipline! Old ties are destroyed, you carry a responsibility to the
future. And there is no greater responsibility than that!
On June 6th 1926 Jünger sent the "Standarte" issue with his call "Unite!" to Adolf
Hitler. Hitler thanked the author and expressed an interest in attending such a meeting,
which, however, never took place (sourced to a letter from Hess to Jünger from 11.06.1926,
DLA, Nachlass Jünger).
66
Unite! Final Word
Die Standarte, July 22rd 1926
Many had answered my call for unification1, meaning that I had managed
to touch upon one of the movement's primary questions. It is also clear that
we have the right to talk about a singular movement, even if several columns
make up the march. Paths may be various but the goal must be a common
one. And we do indeed have a common goal, we may lack a clear program
but our hearts beat in sync and are determined. Do not waste words. We
long since keep hearing the same question: "When will the time finally
come?,” and we know real well what day that will be.
We have been destined by fate to carry weapons. Our unions have
military character, they exist outside bourgeoisie morality. Our position isn't
influenced by elections and compromises. We are dynamite placed under
the cracked shell of the contemporary state, to create a way for the new
one. Our goal is not to construct this new state, armed with sharpened quills
and sat in stuffy cabinets. Detached from life scribblers discuss this matter
in national pedagogic courses and during esthetic tea time, successfully
summoning the spirit of Fichte, practicing cabin-socialism and artistically
discussing the problem of "renewal." Let all these prophets conduct their
historic pioneering and when they reach 18662 we'll have hopefully already
accomplished our deed. They'll probably still try to squeeze out of good old
German words, deeds, names last drops of juice but by then an already
open struggle will have begun between those forces that today are still
arming themselves. They revile liberalism but in reality present themselves
as its logical conclusion.
We must rely on men of a different sort. We know that history is not
constructed but created, any words look pathetic compared to living blood,
1 Standarte received many letters from readers including replies from former
freikorps leader Hermann Ehrhardt, former SDPG member and oberpresident
of Eastern Prussia August Winnig, Stahlhelm leader Theodor Duesterberg,
publicist Albrecht Erich Günter.
2 The Peace of Prague was a peace treaty signed between the Kingdom of
Prussia and the Austrian Empire at Prague on 23 August 1866, ending the
Austro-Prussian War.
67
and the revolutionary path does not lead through debates and "German
evenings,” but through completely different, unpleasant places. We have
gone through an excellent school and learned to value the hierarchy in
relations between men. The hierarchy formed inside our unions (within the
scope of the old state mechanism they have the role of bastions of the
future, which must be maintained and fortified) can only be of a military
type. Our goal is the future and thus hundreds of battles we've gone
through are not as important as that one battle which we are yet to win.
Nationalism had lost its initial battles because it wasn't yet free, factually or
spiritually, from reaction; yet still these lost battles make this postwar time
at least somewhat tolerable for us. In them resonates a protest that the
liberal monarchy of 1918 was incapable of making. A protest must be
realized not in the form of reports about the meaning of the German
mission and not in the form of books dissecting the corpse of marxism, but
measured out and soberly with grenades and machine guns on street
pavement. Yes, I am referring to those people, who with laughter
anathematized the state and went on to fight in the Baltic states3, to blow
up bridges in the Ruhr region4, who participated in the events at
3 In 1918-1919 the German freikorps opposed the bolsheviks in Latvia,

Lithuania and Estonia (also see notes for article "Revolution and frontline
soldiers").
4 In September of 1923 there were acts of sabotage against the French
occupational forces in the Ruhr region.
68
Unite! Final word
Brandenburg Gate5, Upper Silesia6 and Munich7 and are still ready to in a
moment's notice appear wherever one is needed to risk their life. Absolute
will is manifested in them and a true man knows how to value that even in
his enemy. On the other hand those who while sitting in their cabinets
mumble about recklessness and adventurism (and 120 years ago they
likewise mumbled about major Schill8) better ask themselves if it is not their
own squalor that prevents us from going forward. We carry in ourselves the
force of danger, we are attracted by adventure, furthermore we have
consciousness of the supreme law, which easily outweighs public morality,
written laws and actual violence. This is precisely what must be pointed out
with increasing insistency, because the time is upon us when national
authors together with the army of empty-word philistines will have to make
way for the onslaught of combat groups.
Therein lies our primary difference: we are a combat formation.
Soldier's union gains its greatest triumph in combat, otherwise it cannot
exist. If we thought differently then all our speeches would lose their
meaning. It'd be best to then simply disperse in various directions and try
to gain seats in the parliament with campaign leaflets. Should we copycat
the red frontline soldiers9? Do we not believe that we are acting in the spirit
5 On March 13th 1920 (during the days of the Kapp Putsch) naval officer and
freikorps leader Hermann Ehrhardt with the 1st sea brigade that wasn't made
part of the Reichswehr occupied the entire Government Quarter in Berlin.
Before ending the siege the brigade started a massacre ("Hackenkreuz am
Stahlhelm, schwarzweiss-rotes Band | Die Bridage Ehrhardt werden wir
genannt"). However captain Ehrhardt wasn't put in jail until two years after the
events took place: in 1922 members of his "Consul Organization" killed the
minister of foreign affairs Walther Rathenau. Ehrhardt was pardoned during in
the 1925 amnesty and until the very end of the Weimar Republic remained one
of the far right leaders.
6 On March 20th 1921 a plebiscite took place in Upper Silesia. Majority of the
populace voted for remaining with Germany. Afterwards polish insurgents took
over a large portion of Upper Silesia but were unable to retain control over it
and were pushed out by the forces of the local "self-defense" groups supported
by the freikorps.
7 Beer Hall Putsch.
8 Ferdinand Baptista von Schill (6 January 1776 – 31 May 1809) was a Prussian
officer who revolted unsuccessfully against French domination in May 1809.

9 In 1924 the German Communist Party created "red frontline soldier" squads to
counter the national-socialist SA squads.
69
of a deeper idea and are we not ready to shed precious blood for it? Didn't
even the Russian communists sympathize with Schlageter's10 deed? And
don't supporters of national activism unwillingly not notice the sympathy
they receive specifically from representatives of the most hostile camp?
They are as proud of it as they were proud of that wreath that was placed
on Richthofen's11 grave by an English pilot.
The signs are multiplying and they are telling us that we are on the right
path. Already in particular circles, where just half a year ago they shunned
the very word "nationalism" as something compromising and utterly
impossible, they now raise up nationalism, though in reality they continue
to do that which they've been fruitlessly doing for seven years. But they and
we have different paths! By saying that word, which was once trumped in
mud, we say "Yes" to one thing and categorically decline another. It befits
only those who can fill it with new meaning, not those who merely repeat
words but those who have it in their blood. We saw how they puckered
when our generation talked about the worker. "If the representatives of
these directions in military unions were correct then it'd be right to destroy
even national-socialist unions" - this phrase was coined by the "Young
German Order's"12 newspaper and Franz Schauwecker13 managed to find
the most correct words to express our attitude towards plutocracy. In any
case it doesn't come down to utilizing them in concocting social programs
for the creation of common well-being. From the statements of all unions
it becomes clear that the frontline youth is not going to stand for someone's
10 Albert Leo Schlageter (12 August 1894 – 26 May 1923) was a member of the
German Freikorps. His activities sabotaging French occupying troops after
World War I led to his arrest and eventual execution by French forces. His way
of death fostered an aura of martyrdom around him, which was cultivated by
German nationalist groups, in particular the Nazi Party. During the Third Reich,
he was widely commemorated as a national hero.
11 Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), also
widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial
German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) during World War I. He is
considered the ace-of-aces of the war, being officially credited with 80 air
combat victories.
12 The Young German Order (in German Jungdeutscher Orden, often
abbreviated as Jungdo) was a large para-military organisation in Weimar

Germany.
13 Franz Schauwecker (March 26, 1890 - May 31, 1964) was a German writer and
publicist.
70
Unite! Final word
non-transparent interests. It saw through the trick that hides behind the
shell of a friendly advice to "leave politics to the more experienced people
and dedicate yourself to exclusively military matters."
The struggle unfolds for the state of frontline soldiers! We have
formed the four primary qualities of the new state. They are nationalism,
socialism, defensive capabilities and authoritarian structure. There were no
objections. One Prussian general wrote that these distinct qualities are none
other than those of the state of Frederick William I, as well as of the Roman
republic. They are naturally present wherever the masculine, soldier's spirit
reigns. Fruitless arguments of the intellect "for" and "against" lose their
meaning when confronted by "character." That is why we purposely stress
that for the resolution of the social question simple "tactical means" are
enough, for if someone didn't take away from war a clear understanding of
the essence of the question, then they can read sociology literature all they
want and miss what is important. If we want revolution then we need the
strength of the estate that is already today full of revolutionary energy and
capabilities. The unions are proud that among their members 80% are
workers. Make your own conclusions.
Now it should be clear what we don't mean by unification. We're not
talking about moving pieces on a chessboard. Baron Hans Henning von
Grote14 justly noted the dangers of the V.V.V.15 No unions that don't aim
for a power struggle, don't gather their will into a fist and who are incapable
of marching and military advancing! It's not a matter of mechanically adding
new members but of organically unifying. Can we hope for accomplishing
our set out task?
Yes, we can! 500 men from all movements that present in themselves
a real force have already confirmed that they are working in a nationalistic
direction. Unions have begun forming (for instance just recently in
Weimar), gatherings took place and events within the scope of various
groups and printing houses. It is not at all a matter of banners and slogans!
Everyone are striving for the concentration of force and are independently
making decisions about unification. At the same time it is important that
14 Hans Henning Alfred August Freiherr von Grote (born September 7, 1896 -
May 18, 1946) was a German officer and writer.
15 Jünger is referring to the negative evaluation Grote gave to the "United
Fatherland Unions" (Vereinigte Vaterlandische Verbande) - an artificial union of

some armed unions and similar organizations.
71
we create an independent foundation, like a central conscience that would

allow us to overcome disputes.
Proposals exist to form a nationalist core on the basis of a special
program. In reality it is difficult to imagine something less prudent. It would
mean removing leaven from their daily bread. Success guarantees
decisiveness, unity of idea; not unity of an ideological system, but a
common sense of conjugation. It will not be difficult to prepare projects of
programs and constitutions, right now hundreds and thousands of minds
are working on it. But they will remain on paper if they have no support of
the combat unions. And nationalism simply has no other support than these
unions and national-socialists. Striving to internally strengthen
organizations created with love and enthusiasm, to strengthen their
positions and lessen friction we'll provide nationalism the greatest service.
We'll breathe in power to the organs and then the idea will be capable of
utilizing them.
Friedrich Franz in an "A reader's letter" (Standarte #16) reproaches
me: supposedly I am too optimistic. I am ready to admit to that. However
if we don't want to be get stuck in meaningless quarrels, then we must try
and see not what exists at present, but the sprouts of that which will be. We
shouldn't limit ourselves to exclusively "legal means" either, which are not
of the least importance. Only mediocrity and weaklings cling to them,
meaning their defeat is assured. We live in unusual times and they demand
unusual methods. "Victorious revolutions are always legal,” - so writes one
frontline officer, and these words should be heeded.
So let it ferment! In all movements - if one forgets about the
hitchhikers who appear always and everywhere - there is a solid core of
reliable soldiers who will make it through. The day draws near when combat
unions and individuals will give their leaders a specific task to send trusted
persons to the grey council of soldier and worker deputies. They will hear
the demands of the 30 year old frontline soldiers and ignoring those
demands will already be impossible.
72
Time of Fate
Arminius, January 2nd 1927
Time of fate1 cannot be calculated or measured by the hourly mechanism;

everything that happens within it is incompatible with the reliability and
infallibility of the experiment. Time of fate is not an astronomical time. It
is possible to measure the time it takes light to reach our eye from some
star and it is likewise possible to measure how much time it takes some
roofer to reach the pavement from the fourth floor of a building. However
no brain, no matter how perfect, is capable of calculating what at the same
time goes on in the roofer's soul. One 300 pages novel is dedicated to just
that kind of event, however even 3000 pages would probably be
insufficient. Drowning people in but a second and hundredths of a second
live out their entire lives all over again, all manner of facts, events and shreds
of thought pass before their eyes. Twelve hour sleep is equal to a second
when in the intoxication of an assault, and, frankly, in any serious moment
of life we do not notice time. To someone under fire in the trenches time
drags on forever. Time flies, time stretches, one man dies, a whole people
die - time stands still. That is the time of fate. Of course while the roofer
was falling the watch in his pocket kept on ticking, but that was an
insignificant detail in the eternity of spaces and times that he had crossed.
The theory of relativity sets a special time for the observer. Scientists are
discussing this subject but we have no time for them. One thing is clear:
any measured time exists within time of fate. Time of fate includes
measured time in itself but that is by far not the only thing it includes.
The march of hours of fate is inconstant. Sometimes the arrow barely
moves and sometimes it spins wildly. In the calendar of fate there are
unremarkable decades, years can go by before one holiday is changed by
another. There are days and hours that in certain circumstances can last a
hundred years. And to the contrary, moments of combat are experienced
completely differently, when blood and moments of peace are sacrificed to
fate, when history is sealed. Thus from the depths of fateful time are quietly
1The question of time is one of the central themes in Jünger's works. Later an
entire essay will be dedicated to it - "At the wall of time" (1959)
73
born new, for now invisible, future forms. "The dew falleth on the grass
when the night is most silent"2. While astronomical time is measured by
mathematically fixed movements, passing of the planets, a trickle of sand
in an hourglass or by the movement of a steel arrow on the dial, the passing
of the time of fate cannot be measured by any means, it is as different in
any given moment as are different the strands of fate. They cannot be
measured but only assessed. Life itself is the hours of fate, and her arrows are
animated by a living force. Time of fate is the subjective opposite of
objective time. Hence why comprehending it means not being objective,
not measuring, not "just" but a subjective, evaluating and "injust" person.
It means to feel when the time has come. But no one can see and hear it,
know it.
In the tiny space of time of fate that we call history, history of mankind,
the flow of fate is inseparably tied with blood, much like how the electric
current needs metallic conductors. It is possible, analogically to the system
of chemical elements, physical qualities and animal subspecies, to highlight
a multitude of branches of this blood-flow - from great arteries of cultures
to the tiniest capillaries of individuals. Parallel to the circulatory system
forms a consciousness of new necessities, a new character, a special sense
of fate's logic. The process of forming new character is one of the most
marvelous wonders in the world of fate, one that is beyond the power of
rational darwinian methods. Special character appears suddenly and its first
magnificent appearance on fate's stage does not go unnoticed. Infusorian's
red eye already holds in itself the capabilities of all future eyes, Goethe
thought up Faust in his youth, one of Grünewald's3 paintings contains
within itself all modern naturalism and expressionism, and the style of the
first battle with which a young people declares itself in history foretells the
style of the last battle after which it leaves the stage. And it doesn't matter,
if we're talking about a troop of horsemen, a squadron of warships, tanks
or planes.
In the eternal flow of the great time of fate each organic unit has its
own particular moment of fate. While for one the sun is just rising, for
another it is at its zenith, and for another still the cold night descends. Only
2 Passage from "Thus spoke Zarathustra" (chapter "The Stillest Hour").

3 Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470 – 31 August 1528) was a German Renaissance
painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the
style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.
74
Time of Fate
gods tower above the time of fate, they are eternally young and full of
energy. The image of the Eternal jew is an amazing symbol of our life,
doomed to miserable stagnation once our life's earthly meaning is fulfilled
and its allotted time is up4. Inability to die is the greatest curse to a mortal,
hence why great heroes and saints joyfully accept their time of death.
A particular man doesn't just live in his own time. He simultaneously
lives in the time of his kin, his people, his culture and these different
experienced times are one of the primary sources for dramatic conflict. The
son is younger than the father for each of them is involved in his personal
time of fate. However he is older than his father in the sense of being
included in their common time of kin. We must experience this with
particular intensity, because our time of fate, compared to the previous
generation, has gone way ahead. We call the form of common necessity of
generations’ tradition, and its living core is the essence of tradition. The
latter doesn't indicate something that has already formed, but a constantly
developing in the great flow of time of fate, that is to say the blood-flow's
very character the essence of which is realized in time, merging of future
and past in the fiery hearth of the present. Contemporary generation will
live in the spirit of tradition if it is capable of complimenting personal
necessity with supreme necessity of the generation. It doesn't matter by
what means. Revolution will destroy tradition as form, but that is precisely
why the essence of tradition is realized5.
Peoples that share the fate of the same great culture are none-the-less
present in their own time of fate. Some people live slowly, others with great
speed. We, Germans are a slow living people. Our state, Imperium
germanicum, as the supreme and perfect form of national character, hasn't
yet found its manifestation. We are younger than others in relation to time
of fate; we may have been born at the same time as others, but our life went
on slower, deeper and ardently. From a sense of their own superiority,
proud of their polished form, other people accused us of barbarism in the
4 The figure of the Eternal jew, or Ahasuerus, appears again in Ernst Jünger's
"The Worker" in the chapter "The Fall of masses and individuals."
5 Jünger's thoughts on tradition and revolution as well as the concept of a "young
people" have traces of considerable influence of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.
The idea of "young peoples" has its origins in Dostoevsky's "A Writer's Diary,”
who counted Russians and Germans among said young peoples. Moeller and
Merezhkovsky attempted to release the Complete Collection of Dostoyevsky's
works in German, thus helping to popularize his ideas in Germany.
75
last war, something that besides the usual hatred also indicated a good
measure of respect. In that word was reflected the fear of the young, of that
which stands closer to the source, wild and dangerous flow of blood that is
still yet to reap its rewards. Naturally in the mind of another time of fate
this blood appears as a manifestation of evil.
No matter where we've headed, everywhere we came in contact with
another, foreign to us time. Dry leaves that crumple underfoot, trampled
bugs, mosquitoes in the air, flock of cranes high in the sky - everything
living follows its rules, lives according to its own laws. Everywhere a
different rhythm and different length of life - from a drop of blood that
evaporates in a few hours, to the cosmic bodies that experience thousands
of years as but a few seconds. But it is not all about the variety of
movement. Each individual is conjugated to the movement of the supreme
time of fate. He doesn't simply revolve around his own center, counting
days and nights, minutes and hours, but is alike to the satellites moving
around their planets that are not tied to the trajectory of the central stars,
which is why there are curves and intersections of fates. They are out of a
mere mortal's control.
However we have already stated: man determines his place in the time
of fate by evaluating, not measuring. Man feels if he is young or old, if he
belongs to the future or the past, if he is blossoming, in his prime or decay.
Man lives in the good old days or dreams about a better future: his own
present doesn't seem sufficiently important. Otherwise man carries his time
in himself and sets the clocks in the town and village according to it. Every
person has their own calendar of holidays and we have to fake a satisfied
face, coming to someone else's holiday. Man lives in tradition and notices
someone else's dates only in as much as they are related to his own.
Hence why we must take an active stance towards our time and fill it
with life. Let us see meaning in it, our meaning, let us feel the red strings of
blood by which we are tied to our time! Let's proudly comprehend the great
time of fate, common to us and our fathers! Yet as a generation we are
separate from them. The time we spent in combat demands from us to wish
differently, even if we are striving for the same goals. Let us dissociate
ourselves from reactionaries and romanticists, utopians and improvers of
the world - they don't live in our time. To act and wish for that which is
necessary - that which is desired by fate - we can do only in our own time.
Let it appear difficult, disgusting and ill - we say "Yes" to it, like a seeder
76
Time of Fate
says "Yes" to his plowed field. Where else are we to be if not in our own
time? Any argument with time in which you live is non-other than admitting
one's own weakness. So let us make sure that our time and no other comes
to manifest!
77
New Nationalism
Völkischer beobachter, January 23rd/24th 1927
New nationalism is the central movement of our time, one that any
organization must join if it doesn't want to lose touch with the living forces
of the epoch.
The sense of national originality we call national sense. National sense
becomes national consciousness when as a result of particular events the
distinctions between the essence and the goals of the nation are made
manifest. In 1914 we all experienced a powerful splash of national
consciousness. It was in those unforgettable years that new nationalism was born. It
then became apparent to all, what a gigantic task can be accomplished if
one fully integrates with the nation, feels its living connection that is greater
and more important than the mechanical sum of individuals.
But national sense and national consciousness alone are not enough.
They must be joined by will and readiness to fight with all of one's might
for the originality and rights of the nation. That is the will to power inherent
to each healthy organism.
The state is but the form of the nation, it must never be the nation's goal in itself.
If we ask ourselves, does the nation's form respond to the demands of
the time, what is this state that we live in now, then it will be the easiest to
answer the given question by saying that it is the bürger state. "Liberalism" is
the most favorite word of such states (and there's more than a few of those
in Europe since the start of last century), a word that after Nietzsche
acquired a rotten taste.
We already had a liberal state before the war in the guise of a
constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately it continues to exist in the Weimar
parliamentary-liberal apparatus. Its latest stage is the state of lawyers and
secretaries of petty bourgeoisie labor unions.
However the sprouts of future time are already breaking through its
calloused shell. All over Europe begins a national task of liquidating the
outdated liberal machinery that is wasting its last breath in parliamentary
babble. The word "bürger" has lost its former weight. A new estate is
making its way to the political scene and is preparing to take power into its
own hands. It is the 4th estate. The worker's estate! And all the while the
78
New Nationalism
trust for the word "bürger" diminishes, the word "worker” sounds louder
and louder. "Worker" doesn't mean the same thing as "the working class" -
a term of historical materialism, invented by the bürger and the university
professor. The worker as a class exists only in the confines of a class state,
which is none other than the liberal bürger state with all its parties that in
essence amount to nothing more than class representation. However, just
like the class state came to replace the dynastic monarchies, so will the
nationalistic state come to replace to the class state.
The worker in the new sense means a commonality of blood of all workers within
the nation and for the benefit of the nation. Only this commonality is capable of
overcoming the ugliness of capitalism.
From here is derived the most immediate goal of new nationalism - to take on the
form of the worker's movement. The task of the workers then lies in
understanding that victory in the struggle for their existence can only be
achieved in the scope of the nation.
Right now only one state exists in Europe, whose form is dictated by the nationalistic
workers. What do we care for the malicious attacks of civilization supporters,
of these literary-westerners, who have monopolized all our press? Take this
example of an absence of spirituality - the recently released issue of
Simplizissimus,1 directed against Mussolini. Truthfully, there were instances
of violence, and that vexed the gentlemen of liberal circles where, despite
all disputes, they attempt to avoid all serious confrontations. However the
primary and most honorable goal of new nationalism is precisely a strong state
power of a strictly authoritarian type. And if this power creates obstacles in the
way of any scribbler trampling his own nation into the dirt with impunity,
in other words if it abolishes the freedom of press, such a move can only
be welcomed. Naturally such power will inevitably become the sworn
enemy of parliamentarianism. Strict subordination of economy to the state,
about which it is impossible to talk today (seeing how both employers and
hired workers are only using state power for their own goals), such
subordination can guarantee economic security of not just separate
individuals, but of the entire people as a whole.
Next, the foremost duty of the nationalistic state will be the creation of a powerful
army, equipped with the most modern technical means. Thanks to the army the just
demands of the nation will have weight behind them, otherwise we are
1Popular satirical political journal Simplicissimus, published in Munich since

1896. Reference to issue #32 from November 9th, 1926.
79
doomed to a comic or tragic resentment of the humiliated and insulted.

Only with this considerable argument will it be possible to review the Treaty
of Versailles - the true spawn of liberalism that outrageously violates the
national principle.
The cornerstones in the building of a nationalistic state - nationalism in its pure
form, socialism, defensive capabilities and authoritarian structure. These words are
not new yet we imbue them with completely new meaning, meaning that
same as everything significant can only be felt, for it cannot be understood
rationally. As it was already said, Italy is currently the only country where
they seriously attempted to realize this idea. It can be said that the "March
on Rome"2 has the same meaning for the new will awakening in the depths
of a people, as the taking of the Bastille had for the bourgeoisie.
As for ourselves, despite the great casualties our situation is much
better than it may at first appear. Please understand me right: these favorable
conditions for the work of modern nationalism can be largely attributed to the 1918
revolt. However, revolutionaries were least of all expecting this exact effect,
since their revolt was the last dirty triumph of liberalism's destructive toil.
Thankfully history works in such ways that the decisive role in it is not given
to plans but to the results of actions.
Speaking purely objectively, disregarding any sentimental thoughts,
then in our present situation the revolution can be considered a great
blessing, seeing how it happened at all. Any organism finds it easier to
repeat already familiar motions rather than completely new and unfamiliar
ones. The German is originally not a revolutionary man, he is made distinct
by his inherent respect for authority. However such a powerful shift as the
transition from a liberal bourgeoisie state to a state of nationalistic workers can only
happen on the revolutionary path. Constitution leaves no room for
maneuverability. The fact that the 1918 revolution - despite the betrayal of
the nation that will never be forgiven - at the most dangerous point betrayed
the Wilhelm state casts a shadow on the very state that it produced. It is
exactly for this reason that nationalism has the right to question loyalty to the current
state. It is highly probable that nationalism, as it exists today, would have
been in violent opposition to the Wilhelm regime, but this new opposition
2The March on Rome was a march by which Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's
National Fascist Party came to power in the Kingdom of Italy. The march took
place from 22 to 29 October 1922.
80
New Nationalism
appears all the more clear and active to us. Thanks to it, we for the first
time, began seriously discussing the idea of a nationalistic revolution.
One other positive outcome of the November revolution for
nationalism consists in that it had cleared the way for nationalism, fulfilling
for it the task that it was back then incapable of achieving itself. Let’s
remember the youth of 1813: their greater-Germany will could not
withstand the confrontation with the dynastic regime! Let us think, for
instance, how would have the House of Hapsburg reacted to nationalistic demands! That
is why we can only welcome the tendency towards centralization of power,
since a nationalistic state requires hierarchy firmly tied to a single
personality.
Likewise one shouldn't underestimate the army of the disgruntled,
born out of the November uprising. It was no longer a matter of liberty,
equality, brotherhood and the idealistic potential of liberalism had already
been considerably worn out. The mob was satisfying itself with the
promises of material goods - "peace, liberty, bread!" Does one really have
to be reminded of how well these promises were realized?! We can calmly
claim that we live in a state that nobody is satisfied with the possible exception of a
handful of people who profited from the revolution. Its entire shaky structure is held
together exclusively by the party struggle, none of which are capable of
putting an end to this state of affairs.
So then, the foundation for a real German revolution is ready. There
is no more need for acquiring royal concessions or improving the liberal
constitution by means of debate. Now is the right time to take a risk and
take the whole.
But where are we to get the forces ready to take on such a task?
Obviously parties will not help us! Even if one of the major parties could commit
a coup, the power wouldn't be in German hands but in the hands of a
certain stratum's interests.
No, parties are not among the chosen. Yet just as the new type of
soldier-worker comes to replace the dying bourgeoisie, so will behind the
facade of party struggle form entirely new forces. I am talking about retinues
called upon to serve in the organs of nationalistic struggle3. Parties as the organs of
3Jünger is using the word "Gefolgschaft" which was firmly cemented in the
dictionary of the "conservative revolution" and later on was adopted in the Nazi
dictionary. Ancient Germans used this word to designate loyalty of a free man to
81
the bourgeoisie are based on universal suffrage. Retinues on the other hand are
founded on their duty of loyalty to the führer. The strength of parties is in the electoral
ballots, the strength of retinues is in the level of their military discipline. Parties as a
liberal formation present foremost the interests of owners or those who are
deprived of ownership. Retinues as blood unions present foremost the goals inherent
to the blood. Parties have no authoritarian leader, whereas the striking force of a
retinue is concentrated in a singular personality.
We Germans cannot complain on the lack of retinues. To the contrary
it seems like there are too many of them. Albeit we should keep in mind:
today the internal structure of particular retinues is still too varied. The spirit
of the modern worker is already prevalent in some of them, lending them
the typical national-revolutionary and social-revolutionary character,
whereas in others the ideas of a class state are not yet fully overcome.
Dependent on the views of the past epoch they flirt around with parties,
with patriarchal forms of economy, factory unions and collaboration within
the scope of the liberal state - the arch enemy of national powers. Yet it
seems that precisely now serious changes began to occur everywhere. Even
among the most reactionary retinues appears a young nationalistic opposition
that sooner or later will achieve victory because it is in the youth that the
comprehension of new tasks is born.
However - and this may be far more important - lately even inside the
marxist working class new labor leaders began to appear, who are not foreign to the
nationalistic question and their speeches already differ little from the speeches
of nationalists in combat unions. This path leads us into the thick of the
workers. For if nationalism in its struggle for power requires military leaders, then it
needs labor leaders to realize its economic demands.
There is no doubt that the entire blooming variety of ideas and
movements at some point will inevitably feel a necessity in aligning together
and seeking mutual support. One can suspect that as soon as a unified
movement center is formed, either in the face of a führer4 or in the form of
his king. In his "Worker" Jünger uses the word as a technical term to designate
new forms of organizing masses of people who fit the "worker's gestalt."
4 Despite popular opinion the so-called "Fuhrerproblem" was one of the key
themes of German political discussions of the 1920s. Its solutions were offered
by social-democrats, young conservatives, national-bolsheviks and national-
socialists.
82
New Nationalism
some union of labor leaders, then both isolated individuals and closed
groups will not be able to withstand the mighty centripetal movement.
A new worldview is being born before our very eyes, and it is already
seeping into the hearts of the new generation. Let us hope that this
generation will be capable of realizing in other ways that, which fate did not
allow to happen on the fields of great battles!
83
Nationalism and Modern Life
Arminius, February 20th 1927
Our epoch is devoid of forms: all of life is ready to transform into active
force hence why it doesn't care for symbols. However, in some weird
manner we had adopted one ritual that has a deeply symbolic meaning. The
pace of life in our time grows faster with each passing minute and if one
were to talk about any kind of freedom then it is no more than the freedom
of the wizard's apprentices - our daily experience simply leaves no space left
for faith in freedom of will. Little space is left for contemplation either -
holidays on the calendar of fate fly by one after another and few notice the
events the far lasting consequences of which will determine the life of future
generations.
Nevertheless the need in contemplating, in the meaning of existence
makes itself known. What other than this need can explain the fact that at
their moments of triumph people suddenly stop rapid movement of life as
if wishing to ask the silence that is unnoticed behind the powerful gusts of
wind. And this is understandable, after all we even only recognize the
movement of the clock once its pendulum stops. So do we for a one minute
stop the trains in a clear field, halt the movement of the factory flywheels
and turn off the car motors on a busy traffic road, in order to pay tribute
to the dead, remember a war or to meet with jubilation the announcement
of peace. To stop the pivotal points of existence, to grasp from this peculiar
activity even but a minute and dedicate it to a much deeper meaning - that
is real contemplation for our generation, which wastes all its energy
outwardly and doesn't know sacrifices more valuable than energy.
Yet still human existence, which gives so much emphasis to motion
and barely dedicates time to contemplation, is not necessarily devoid of
meaning. Life among machines and flammable materials is usually called
sober and soulless, it is considered to be "games on asphalt,” and to further
accentuate its cold mechanics, people speak of life separated by city
pavement from natural soil and its life sustaining sources. Observing the
superficial flow of our working days, and even holidays, one is readily
inclined to agree with such a conclusion. Do we truly still have real
weekends, and isn't the way we spend our free time indicate a constant
84
Nationalism and Modern life
caution of motion suddenly stopping? Seeing the monotonous mass of

people leaving the city in slender, almost military-like columns, observing
sport fields where people are taking care of their bodies not unlike how a
worker looks after a machine, and finally, marveling at the almost automatic
behavior of the crowd at entertainment venues, that practically seems to be
celebrating some mysterious cult to the sound of constantly flowing music
- observing all this one can't help but notice that even leisure has become a
variation of work, became the mechanism's playful makeweight, its
necessary accompaniment.1
However this life is still not defined by mechanisms alone, on the
surface one can also see meaning, though one cannot grasp it while being
on the surface. We think ourselves firmly secure, and the more geometric
forms persist in our world, the more we are inclined to search for some goal
in life, in other words something rational. Yet dreams also sometimes
discover a strict logical order, which doesn't at all diminish their appearance
of islands in a mysterious ocean. Therefor nature finds its way even through
the pavement of big cities and breathes real life into the work of machines
and marionettes, life that is superior to any expediency and does not bow
obey the rules of mathematics.
Though perhaps one shouldn't bother pondering the meaning of this
life, for it can only be experienced firsthand and one can at best believe that
he is fulfilling its meaning. In its external form it is reminiscent of mosquito
flocks that rise from the surface of ponds in like regular columns. Then why
do these columns, without dispersing, stand on water, as if made of stone,
when the particles they are made out of are constantly in chaotic,
meaningless motion? There can be but only the following answer: they hold
form not thanks to the sum of mosquitoes but because of a realized internal
superior order. In mathematics the organic whole is not equal to the sum
of its parts but is greater than it.
Likewise in our life things that at first seem senseless are not at all
without a supreme meaning. And that feeling of emptiness that sometimes
takes hold of use, in essence is not at all fear before the sobriety and
coldness of life, but fear before that insuperable might with which life it
takes hold of and consumes the individual, washing away all obstacles
erected by the individual in its path. This life is not at all sober, to the
1 Jünger further develops this thought in "The Worker" ("On labor as a way of
life").
85
contrary, it bodes intoxication. Only when intoxicated do people consider

themselves to be more sober than ever, and when they sleep a deep sleep
they think they are awake like never before.
Yet let us try and imagine ourselves as outside observers standing in
one of the big squares at the height of traffic flow. A fantastic image would
unfold before us: thousands of randomly moving people, deafening
automobile horns, a powerful waterfall of flickering lights of all manner of
colors - does this image not remind one of that mosquito swarm? Of course
everything within this stream is pursuing its own fleeting interests and they,
summing up, birth the rational phenomena of economics and transport.
And yet still this stream as a whole is greater than the sum of individuals, it
is a manifestation of powerful life that bursts like a flame from underground
and burns in each unconscious atom2. That is the eternal meaning in a
special space, a special time. In our space and our time!
The mighty drive toward conquest is the very best that is inherent in
our race and it had opened before us the way to many mysterious worlds.
Our desire to uncover a mystery, go there where cold passion has made
union with fiery will to life is most vividly displayed in the struggle for
reaching the poles3, the furthest points on Earth that lie in the eternal cold
and have a purely magical meaning. Only this can one understand the tender
emotion, the sacrifice and the readiness to accomplish a task. But the most
wonder comes, of course, from the spirit itself, that expresses that
readiness. It urges us to dig up ruins of unknown cities, to cast nets into the
depths of the ocean in the search of new creatures and populate epochs
long gone with fantastic animals. Everywhere our gaze reaches life promises
adventures and those are, in essence, none other than a mirror reflection of
our own life.
However it is precisely this, our life, from which symbolic circles
radiate in all directions, that remains the most closed off to us territory. Yet
none of the ancient East's magical cities can compare with the big city of
our days. Yes, in the depths of the ocean exist peculiar creatures, fish that
light their way with multicolored torches, cuttlefish shooting inky clouds
but can they compare with the organs that are at our life's disposal? Of
2 Later Jünger will provide the definition of gestalt as "a whole that is greater
than the sum of its parts."
3 Referring to the rivalry between Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott for
becoming the first to reach the South Pole.
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Nationalism and Modern life
course we are surprised, but not deeply enough, missing the essential. It is
not progress that is surprising, which like a skilled magician demonstrates
for us amazing feats - everything new and unheard of is already familiar and
old the next day; it is not the rate of movement that is surprising but the
force behind it which always existed and always will exist. It's not the organs
that are marvelous, but the eternal meaning that creates them.
"Everything transitory is but an image"4 - but that is exactly why it
deserves veneration. We have to internally isolate ourselves from the purely
mechanical processes of modern life, completely dissolve on its surface.
Every moment of this life contains in itself the depth and surface, what is
becoming and what has become. Only from judging external phenomena
can we comprehend the gestalt of the animating force, only in what is
becoming, what scholastics called natura naturans,5 can be discovered the
living substance of what has become. Only by living through a great war do
we again obtain the ability of double vision. This vision is reflected in the
paintings of magical realism, where each line of the external world is
subjugated to the strict mathematical formulas, and through their icy
surface incomprehensibly comes through a warm mysterious glow6. We are
not materialists, we are making a claim to call ourselves realists, because war
has taught us this vision. Take the modern battleship for example. A
manifest of iron will - coal and steel, oil, explosives and electricity, a
specially trained team of people - from admiral to coal stoker - in other
words, a manually serviced miracle of precise mechanics, practical in every
aspect, worth millions. And in but a few seconds it is sinking, sacrificed in
the name of things that cannot be known with certainty, which can only be
believed in. The burning battleship is sinking but does not lower the flag.
To the screams of "hurrah" it is joining eternity and it would seem like fate
itself intoxicates the blood. In faraway seas it was sacrificed to the
4 Quote from Goethe's "Faust,” part 1.

5 Nature that creates (lat).
6 "Magico-realistic" perspective offers a view of the cosmos in which "our
everyday phenomena act as symbols of a more significant life." Symbols not as

merely signs or directions but in accordance to Greek meaning, parts of an
undivided whole. Symbols are the visible reality through which man receives a
part in eternity, divine depth, discovering his rank in the hierarchy of the world.
Jünger calls the vision that sees the invisible behind the visible and discovers the
transparency of the world stereoscopic. Jünger's essay "The Adventurous Heart"
can serve as an example of the magic realism style.
87
fatherland that could possibly already tomorrow belong to history. The

scream of a dying crew that pierces the heart and reaches the very depths
of the soul, like lightning sheds light on the chasm between the two worlds
- a chasm that is felt by each of us, from the factory worker to the secretary
behind a typewriter. Naturally we're not talking about of the hero's glory
that always drags young men to great deeds, we are talking about the dignity
of man in himself. And so long as the struggle for it goes on - and it does
indeed go on - we are not just part of what has become, we participate in
becoming. So long as we are not satisfied with rational goals we won't stop
wishing to gain meaning. To not accept all this at face value but like a
symbol to be ready of any sacrifice, great or small - that is the dignity of
man.
Therefore anyone can make a considerable contribution, adopt that
custom that we had mentioned at the very start. But one single minute is
enough for contemplation. Among the automobiles and illuminated signs
of the big city, in the thick of massive gatherings, in the motorized pace of
work and leisure, into the bustle of modern Babylon anyone can make their
own feasible contribution by stopping for one minute, like a man from
another world who with childish wonder says: "Yes, there is meaning in all
this, deep meaning, and I too fulfill it."
88
Nationalism and National Socialism
Arminius, March 27th 1927
A nationalist's ideal is his own internal position. And everyone who strives
for that ideal, even if their views don't align, are kindred spirits, seeing how
the distance between the surface of a ball and its center is the same
everywhere. An organization that strives for power would act completely
differently in this situation, seeing how it’s most clear threat are other
organizations like itself. However since nationalism never attempted to
create a strict structure, many organizations have used the word without
considering the negative consequences to themselves.
Nationalism had foremost manifested itself in the literary field, though
that is exactly what it has been reproached for. One should object to this,
that the spiritual flow uses other means and thus the reproach of low
efficiency would be more logical to direct at practical field. It is no
coincidence that on the forefront of nationalist ranks are foremost people
with oratory talents and Hitler himself can be called the greatest German
orator.1 But it was Adolphe Thiers2 who in his "History of the French
Revolution" had first said that one's influence over the listeners is limited
by the present moment, whereas the influence on the reader has a more
stable character. Therefore such reproaches have little point in them until
nationalists have turned to action. One shouldn't think that old soldiers will
sit it out in their corners when the time comes. Seeing how the language of
violence has a point only at decisive moments, during times of reprieve it
is important to ponder on the victory of what values will the decision lead
to. Naturally such contemplation must be realized thoroughly and, in my
1 By the end of the 1920s Jünger changed his positive attitude towards Hitler as a
politician and towards national-socialism in general, however he had always held
the Fuhrer's oratory skills in high regard. Hitler's speech at the Munich circus
where Jünger was present at the start of the 1920s left a lasting impression on
him.
2 Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers (15 April 1797 – 3 September 1877) was a
French statesman and historian. He was the second elected President of France,
and the first President of the French Third Republic. He was ex officio Co-
Prince of Andorra during his term as president.
89
opinion, by impractical means. The phrase "Here I stand; I can do no

otherwise,"3 spoken seriously and responsibly, must come only after a time
of pondering and internal preparations. Are we really already so certain in
the truth of our words that we're ready at any moment to go into battle with
them? Let us remember the war, which we had lost not because of poor
organization but because of insufficient internal readiness. Naturally
battalions decide the outcome of battles, and the more people stand under
gun fire the closer lies victory. However they don't shoot for nothing, but
for a clear and transparent idea. Therefore one cannot join the ranks unless
internally convinced in the truth of their position. The story of national-
socialism serves as proof of that. Why did the Munich uprising have such
an amazing outcome? Is betrayal at fault for all of it? Wonderful! However
betrayal has as little to do with present reality as a strike of the dagger at the
end of the war4. What truly matters is that national-socialism had only a
vague idea about the specifics of its own goal and therefor was mistaken in
choosing its comrades. And it couldn't have a clear understanding, although
by then it was the most modern and the most developed of all movements.
The fact that it had managed to recover from that strike says a lot about its
might. Since then there were plenty of opportunities for sharpening one's
position in confrontation with antagonistic and kindred in spirit
movements. This struggle is only beneficial. Take marxism for example. It’s
far from enough to criticize Marx's fundamental work "The Capital,”
providing a counterargument to each of his arguments. Such works, as
Spengler correctly notes, are no longer read not because they were proven
wrong but because they become boring. Only the movement is fated to
become the German labor movement of the future, which will find in itself
the strength to build a likewise authoritative and convincing work. A
movement that claims to manifest German will in its pure form absolutely
must have people, comparable to the best German minds of the past. Of
course the bar is raised high, moreover such a demand is not met by the
opposition, where there are plenty of organizational talents, but no trace of
new will. However it is not the opposition that sets the scale of the task.
3Famous Martin Luther Phrase.

4Jünger here again distances himself from one of the central ideological points
of the NSDAP, "the legend of the stab in the back" about how revolutionaries
had essentially back stabbed the undefeatable German army thus ruining the
successful outcome of the war.
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Nationalism and National Socialism
The absolute scale is determined by the spiritual effort which was at the
beginning of every revolution in history. Is such magnitude possible or
impossible today remains an open question, but any national-socialist will
agree that it is something to strive for.
Here is where national-socialism and nationalism intersect. However
the difference between them does exist. The former, being a political
organization, is aimed at achieving real power, whereas the goal of
nationalism is something else. On the one hand there is a desire to realize
the idea, on the other - to gain understanding of it in its purest sense. Hence
why the masses are so important to national-socialism, whereas to
nationalism quantity has no meaning, while Spengler's phenomenon, kept
so stubbornly quiet about by democrats, has more weight to it than a
hundred seats in parliament.
Nevertheless such a distinction is possible within the very same body,
since man is capable of both thinking and acting. Without a doubt national-
socialism will be transforming so far as it is in its becoming. And in the
course of those changes it will require support that is deeper than any
economic and political forces.
And what if someone disagrees with calling this support, this anvil
where the strongest swords are forged, "nationalism"? Then let national-
socialism, the faster it actively achieves power, work on contemplating the
meaning of its own idea? However in the end what will come out is that the
idea of national-socialism still does not fit into the narrow confines of the
national-socialist organization which will again allow to increase the
organization with new members. I am convinced: Hitler meant the same
thing when he said that the goal of national-socialism will be realized with
creation of new Germany. These words cannot be understood exclusively
in the sense that it will win the power struggle. The very national-socialist
idea must achieve such depth and such meaning, that would make it the
sole idea worthy of being recognized as the German idea.
If this comes to fruition - and what nationalism does not with his
whole heart wish for it to be so? - then the terms of national-socialism and
nationalism will slowly merge together. In ideological terms this will look
like the majority of decisions will depend on national-socialism, whereas on
the personal level more and more talented people will be joining the
movement that grows stronger.
91
On Spirit
Widerstand, April 1927
All living things have meaning simply from the fact of their existence. That
meaning is not located somewhere externally, but within life itself. A valley
where plants grow and animals live does not require someone's eyes to
observe the rich variety of movements, does not need spirit that would be
speculating about it. Everything that blooms in the sunlight, all that glistens
and buzzes, procreates and eats one another, is born and dies - all of it has
its own unique spirit and its own unique mind. It is eternally close and
eternally far away from us. We can conceive a general idea about what was
going on in ancient Babylon, or what magnificent creatures with giant
tentacles and phosphorescent lights inhabit the deep crevices of the Atlantic
Ocean. Yes, we uncover the ruins of ancient cities and cast nets into the
ocean, but the essential meaning of these eternally far off places is not
revealed to us even by an inch, despite our methods and devices. However
when intoxicated by life's might, we march down the streets of big cities,
then we partially feel that force that animated ancient Babylon. When hot
blood rushes through our veins, we get an inkling of what great forces all
living things possess. Only having restored a connection with the Earth will
we be able to feel communion with all things that it carries upon itself.
We feel our connection with the spirit not when we try to immerse
ourselves in it like a vast, free force of nature, but when we ourselves are
possessed by the spirit. Spirit is connected to life like a clot, an idea or a
meaningful incarnation of that very life, hence why its direction lies from
the unique, limited, connected to the common. But the common does not
include in itself the unique like in some zoological system. The spirit is of a
masculine nature, it attacks, unwilling to be dispersed in the world, it wants
to conquer it. It wants for the world to become its world, for it to become
the same as the spirit.
The spirit is like a tree, its crown takes up all the more space the deeper
its roots thrust into the soil. From deep, mysterious regions the spirit
ascends to the light. The transparent spheres of consciousness are not its
source, but its mouth. The spirit needs blood, for it is life itself, it doesn't
need consciousness. In dramatic and creative moments, in moments when
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On Spirit
life's energy is amplified consciousness turns off. Divine inspiration,

ecstasy, when according to mystics the soul unites with God, when the
individual enters the unconscious unity with the foundation of the world
(Weltgrund), all of man's existence is constricted to a singular point,
concentrated in a singular feeling. That's when the limits of life's capabilities
are reached, life becomes spirit, spirit - life, differences are lost. Saint's
delight, painless detachment of a martyr, love's passion, heat of battle, an
artist's vision - all this speaks of the awakening of the deep will of life. It is
said in Zarathustra "Write in blood and you will know that blood is spirit,”
and it would sometimes seem as if Hebbel1 writes not with ink, but with
blood and mind.
Seeing how the spirit is alive and not dead, it does not grasp life by
means of abstraction and generalizations, but by means of the idea.
Goethe's germination was not in the concept but in the idea2. The spirit
does not despise science with its methods, but understands its secondary
nature compared to the sources of life, to which any phenomenon must be
connected. The spirit thinks its necessity but doesn't contemplate it. The
spirit is meaningful, hence why in phenomena and in relations between
them it sees meaning, not expediency. Beneath the surface mechanism it
seeks to feel the deep correlation. It doesn't want to theorize, but to create,
not to dissolve but to bear fruit. It doesn't strive to decompose the world
into atoms so as to later artificially synthesize something, but to create
magnificent paintings. To see its own reflection in all things, rather than be
an eternal reflection of those things. It doesn't value the logical, but the
symbolic substance of life. The spirit is above evidence, same as the logic
of fate is above of the cause and effect links.
The spirit is fulfillment of the meaning of life, something whole, like
how life itself is something whole and not a sum of anatomical parts. The
spirit is not essence, it can't be distilled. Not some foreign principle, nor
fire lit in lighthouses. It is alive, hence it’s not subject to the laws of
progress, but the laws of development. The spirit is not something that can
1Christian Friedrich Hebbel (18 March 1813 – 13 December 1863) was a German poet
and dramatist.
2 In his essays written after WW2 (At the wall of time, Maxima - Minima. Notes
to "The Worker") Jünger repeatedly comes back to the term "Urpflanze," in
which he saw a more precise correlation to his notion on the "gestalt of the
worker."
93
be acquired, it is inherent, an essential property of life; just like character it

is inherited from unfair fate. Therefore possessing spirit gives the right to
aristocratic pride, the right to utilize the most magnificent gifts of life which
can be neither bought nor earned. The spirit is proud, but not arrogant - it
is not arrogant for the mere fact that it does not require consciousness. It
is those motions in which life manifests its meaning that are full of pride:
one only has to look to the butterfly that slowly unfurls its wings. And since
the spirit is something whole and indivisible it is necessarily present in all
meaningful manifestations of life: in the flight of a bird beneath the clouds,
in the beast running across a plain and in the movements of an athlete's
muscles preparing for the mark to start. The spirit is present in the complete
creation and in every brush's stroke, in a statue in each strike of the cutter,
in the long novel and in the short sentence. The spirit is absolutely present
in the unknown soldier dying for his Fatherland, in the leader that declares
war, in the peasant plowing the field. They all belong to the same
commonality of life and therefor have common spirit, common idea that
varies in the diversity of its manifestations, like how the idea of kin varies
in types, or the ideas of the sexes in its individual representatives.
The spirit treats gratefully the foundation of life that sustains it, thus
expressing the essence of this foundation. Only then, when life falls apart,
grows bleak and weakens, does the spirit turn away from it. It stops feeling
the immense connection, betrays life and rebels against necessity, against
that which is desired by fate. This runaway spirit, the intellect, no longer
recognizes what is unique, striving to reduce everything to a common
denominator, to turn everything into cold merchandise and convertible
values. It laughs at great symbols, dissolves them by means of abstraction.
It aims to achieve eternity by destroying limitations. It is easy for this spirit
to be just, since it doesn't have to stand up for any unique values. The thinner
and more unreal is the layer of being in which it exists, the greater is the
drive to achieve dominance over life, but life is preparing a terrible
vengeance against it. The light of the liberated from all connections spirit
turns the organic vision of the world into a mechanic one. Culture becomes
civilization. Commonalities, created by fate, become random gatherings of
people, masses, in best cases pragmatic unions. The Fatherland becomes a
nuisance to freedom of movement. The so-called spiritual aristocracy or
intelligentsia - an entire army of extremely flexible and shameless laborers
of the mind - systematically destroys faith, makes irony of heroism and
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On Spirit
attempts to bury human dignity. By denying what is unique, that which

connects and divides separate people, the individual, this pointless physical
fleck of the mass, busying itself with constant self-affirmation, declares
about its rights on every corner. Greedy individualism spreads and prepares
the soil for nihilism. Reason is everything, character is nothing. Art is turned
into a literary and intellectual plaything in the service of the mass currents,
without soil, without blood and character, feeble. Labor is turned into
production, human relations are reduced to naked juristic relations. Science
attempts to find mechanical formulas to the inexplicable mysteries and
wonders of life, and morality of cowards and worthless souls brands all
immediate manifestations of life's force and danger as "immoral." In the
place of what is necessary comes the excessive, which life doesn't tolerate.
Therefor the day draws near when all this heirless fuss will come to an end,
the sword will stop all discussions and its sharp blade will not be softened
by any theory. So long as endless conferences go on in the cabinets of the
intellect, so long as something is measured and calculated, an iron fist loudly
pounds on the door, ready to solve even the most complex problems. Life
values the natural strength of the last barbaric people more than all the labor
of the free spirit. And thus it is correct.
This is the first of the 18 Jünger articles that were published in the national-bolshevist
weekly journal Widerstand (Resistance), organized by Ernst Niekish. Since then begins
the slow transformation in Jünger's publicist career. The author steadily moves away from
narrow political topics and dedicates more time to the style and explanation of modern life
phenomena.
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Our Stance
Arminius, June 5th 1927
Herr Becher,1 a communist in his political convictions, but one with

militaristic tendencies that I find favorable, in one of his recently published
articles specifically dedicated to our circles is proving that the bourgeoisie
at the late stage of its evolution can take one two, supposedly opposite
forms - the form of refined spiritual decadence and that of merciless bloody
cruelty. In his opinion "new nationalism" is a manifestation of the latter,
hiding beneath the mask of military determination and believes that it
regards struggle as something of a "value in itself." The author regards it as
more dangerous than the wide patriotic masses, because it freed itself from
the ballast of the Wilhelm era for the sake of increasing the speed of its
motion. Nevertheless even "new nationalism" is portrayed as the last,
desperate gesture of bourgeoisie ideology resistance against the march of
the proletariat which has both the idealistic and material supremacy.
We gladly accept the attribute of "cruelty,” that is to say the will to
fight with any available means with exception for liberal phraseology, seeing
how it does indeed accurately grasp the essence of our stance. herr Becher
is known as the author of Levisite,2 a book that was removed from the
shelves immediately after its publishing. With great love and knowledge of
the subject it portrays the victory of some red army in a gas war. Having
read it we became certain that the difference in views and value systems
between us isn't all that great, we certainly both prefer the necessity of the
idea to the complexes of modern humanism and the ethos of comfort.
However the criticism of our stance regarding class warfare is less
successful. We, of course, understand that herr Becher can't regard us as
anything other than representatives of the bourgeoisie worldview. Within
the framework of the ideology where class warfare has the central role the
1 Johannes Robert Becher (22 May 1891, in Munich – 11 October 1958, in East
Berlin) was a German politician, novelist, and poet. He was affiliated with the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) before World War II. At one time, he was
part of the literary avant-garde, writing in an expressionist style.
2 "Levisite or the Only Just War" was published in January 1926. It described
how the German and American workers oppose the threat of gas warfare.
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Our Stance
categories of "bourgeois" and "proletarian" are present a priori in any

possible evaluation, determining what is good and what is bad, dividing the
world into two halves - marxist and capitalist. The nationalistic movement
is not proletarian, therefore it has a bourgeoisie nature.
However we are free from such frameworks, to us the class state of
the 19th century means no more than the dynasty state. Time presents
before us other goals that differ from the problems of historic materialism,
the meaning of which for life wasn't in realizing social programs, but in
determining a new vector for a variety of energies and in stressing the will
to power. If a movement has run its course, utilizing the same idea and
presenting as revelation something that is long since known, than any great
words will no longer be as bullets, but merely already shot shell casings,
terms from the historical-philosophical dictionary. New values come to
replace them and faith in them presumes people of a new generation and
new forms of organization. That is why any man with a sense of dignity,
who just 20 years ago would have joined the marxists, today becomes
internally foreign to it.
That is why the suddenly awakened belief in blood ties, soil and fate,
to us, people who had gone through war and experienced a radical
reappraisal of values, appears more convincing, meaningful and necessary
than any other kind of commonality and in particular that, which is built on
logical linearity and the persuasiveness of economic theories. Hence it
doesn't matter to us in the slightest, that the majority of our leaders - in the
terminology of class warfare - come from the bourgeoisie camp. Yes, we
recognize this "aggravating" fact: our ranks truly do have many
representatives of the officer corps. However, in our defense we'll say that
even before the war respectable citizens deflected attacks by calling
themselves "honest bürgers" ("gut bürgerlich") and thereby demonstrated
a known level of class mentality; whereas the liberal minded intelligentsia
started ironically talking about philistinism up to a hundred years ago,
juxtapositioning it with achievements of progress, free spirit and free press.
Although there are many labor leaders and even former marxists in the
nationalist ranks - those very "regents of class warfare,” as they were called
by the marxist press.
There is nothing surprising about how in our circles specific views on
labor and workers had formed that are fairly distant from the ideology of
class warfare. It would be most strange if a fundamentally different sense
97
of life didn't open up to us a completely new vision of social relations. The

fundamental difference between marxism and nationalism lies in how the
former beliefs the deciding factor to be the commonality of spirit, whereas
the latter in the commonality of blood. Which is why the nation, the very
existence of which marxism denies, has the highest metaphysical meaning
to nationalism, one that determines all other values, including values of
labor. We're not at all interested in wages and profits - two pillars of the
moral world of class struggle - but only in labors meaning to the nation as
the overcoming whole, that is more important than the sum of its parts.
Economy is not a mechanical result, but an organic element of national life.
Labor too is a manifest of the nation and the worker is one of its members.
Any attempt to pull the worker from these ties of life, placing him in empty
categories of "humanity" or international interests is a kind of state treason
of the intellect against blood. The meaning of labor is not in making profit
and formation of wages, but in creation of values in the name of the nation
without which it wouldn't be able to blossom with the full richness of its
manifestations. That is why labor is always directed outwards, why it
possesses a kind of military value, each touch of the machine is equal to a
shot taken at the enemy, and each working day is like an army march.
I declare this: only this understanding of labor can liberate us from that
extremely complicated situation that we find ourselves in now. To believe
in what is necessary - that is our moral postulate. Only thus can the situation
of every single individual be improved. For the teaching of the
Internationale was not yet capable of saving even a single pfennig or
alleviate even by a gram that tribute that we as a nation are forced to pay
other nations. Only this view of labor as a moral action, and not that of it
being a mechanical result evaluated by principles of the Taylor system3 with
an exact monetary equivalent, will give the worker that which is more
important of any raise in wages, will give him the sense of dignity of a
creative man, something that the marxist-capitalist world has none of. No
amount of wage raising can change the situation of hired slavery: ignominy
remains ignominy, no matter how much one is paid for it. Not wages but
3 Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American
mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of
the first management consultants. Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of
the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly
influential in the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s).
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Our Stance
only a deep spiritual understanding of the meaning of labor can overcome

the mechanical spirit of our age that oppresses any creative person. That's
why it is illogical to wait for the hired worker to sacrifice himself in the
name of great ideas which are only created for the free and the sons of free
men. When the worker is relegated to the role of a kind of machine vested
with universal human rights, and his labor is regarded as nothing more than
an item of expenditure, moreover one that is constantly sought to be
trimmed down, then very soon a mirror reflection of that situation will
appear in the soul of the masses. From here inevitably stem the general
fierce struggle for profit and the destruction of all real values. Then the
Fatherland becomes nothing more than a figment of the exploiter's
imagination, and all state institutions turn into means of compulsion since
in the world where money is the dominant idea all values inevitably become
up for sale and any power can be bribed, meaning that a rich soil is prepared
for decay.
This process can't be stopped by marxism or capitalism, because both
of them are related to it by a thousand threads. It can be stopped only by a
new, deep evaluation of life and by the obedience of the calculating reason
to deep feeling. This struggle is the goal of nationalism - only it can try to
rip the economy out of the hands of private interests and subjugate it to the
nation. If this attempt is successful then material oppression will lessen.
However talking about this as a goal by means of propaganda methods
means to lower ourselves to the level of demagogy and party quarrels, that
is to say to be not as free people but as the oppressed, the slaves, to be
incapable of fight for the idea with enthusiasm and commitment. The
power of ideas is in that they demand one to sacrifice himself for it without
promise of raised wages.
Which is why, herr Becher, I do not believe that communism can save
us. For communism is none other than the heritage of late liberalism, the
final and primitive consequence of a purely rationalistic worldview. Even if
the proletariat were to win in our country (and liberalism, true to its dual
nature, won't be so much standing in its way as it is going to be
wholeheartedly helping it along), then it will be that portion of the masses
that will come to power, which possesses the most vividly pronounced
proprietary instincts. We'll commit an injustice to the best part of the
workers who have a strong will and a thirst for education, if we open before
them the doors of dusty cabinets, these panopticons of materialism where
99
no trace of living spirit is left! No, instead of entertaining the academic

vanity of its spiritual fathers, pushing to the last limit violence against life,
we would rather ponder on how to fortify our blood kin ties. Many
fortuitous moments present themselves, for it is not only the economic
program that discovers the infertility of German communism.
So then, neither the number of troops nor the popularity of the
communist idea will shake our faith in that we have fought at an abandoned
post. The nationalist vanguard has separated from the main forces, however
we know that a day is coming when our stance will be the singularly correct
one.
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Total Mobilisation
Krieg und Krieger, 1930
It goes against the grain of the heroic spirit to seek out the image of war in
a source that can be determined by human action. Still, the multitudinous
transformations and disguises which the pure form [Gestalt] of war endures
amid the vicissitudes of human time and space offers this spirit a gripping
spectacle to behold.
This spectacle reminds us of volcanoes which, although they are at
work in very different regions, constantly spew forth the same earthly fire.
To have participated in a war means something similar: to have been in the
vicinity of such a fire-spitting mountain; but there is a great difference
between Hekla in Iceland and Vesuvius in the Gulf of Naples. One might
say that the difference in the landscapes vanishes the closer one approaches
the crater’s glowing jaws; also at the point where authentic passion breaks
through-above all, in the naked and immediate struggle for life and death-
it becomes a matter of secondary importance in which century, for what
ideas, and with what weapons the battle is being fought. But that is not the
subject of our essay.
Instead, we will try to assemble a number of facts that distinguish the
last war-our war, the greatest and most influential event of our age from
other wars whose history has been handed down to us.
Perhaps we can best identify the special nature of this great catastrophe
by the assertion that in it, the genius of war was penetrated by the spirit of
progress. This was not only the case for the fighting among the different
countries; it was also true for the civil war that gathered a rich second
harvest in many of them. These two phenomena, world war and world
revolution, are much more closely interrelated than a first glance would
indicate. They are two sides of an event of cosmic significance, whose
outbreak and origins are interdependent in numerous respects.
It is likely that many unusual discoveries await our thinking regarding
the reality hidden behind the concept “progress” -an ambiguous concept
glittering in many colors. Undoubtedly the way we are inclined these days
to make fun of it comes too cheap. To be sure, we could cite every truly
101
significant nineteenth-century thinker in support of our aversion; still, by

all our disgust at the dullness and uniformity of the life forms at issue, the
suspicion arises that their source is of much greater significance. Ultimately,
even the process of digestion depends on the powers of a wondrous and
inexplicable Life. Certainly, it can today be demonstrated convincingly that
progress is, in fact, not really progress. But more important than this
conviction, perhaps, is the question of whether the concept’s real
significance is not of a more mysterious and different sort: one which uses
the apparently undisguised mask of reason as a superb place of hiding.
It is precisely the certainty with which progressive movements produce
results contradicting their own innermost tendencies which suggests that
here, as everywhere in life, what prevails are not so much these tendencies
but other, more hidden impulsions. “Spirit” [“Geist”] has often justifiably
reveled in contempt for the wooden marionettes of progress; but the fine
threads that produce their movements are invisible.
If we wish to learn something about the structure of marionettes, there
is no more pleasant guide than Flaubert’s novel Bouvard and pecuchet. But if
we wish to consider the possibilities of this more secret movement-a
movement always easier to sense than prove-both Pascal and Hamann offer
a wealth of revealing passages.
“Meanwhile, our phantasies, illusions, fallaciae opticae, and fallacies stand
under God’s realm.” We find statements of this sort frequently in Hamann;
they reflect a sensibility that strives to incorporate the labors of chemistry
into the realm of alchemy. Let us leave aside the question of which spirit’s
realm rules over the optical illusion of progress: this study is no
demonology, but is intended for twentieth-century readers. Nevertheless,
one thing is certain: only a power of cultic origin, only a belief, could
conceive of something as audacious as extending the perspective of utility
[Zweckmdssigkeit] into the infinite.
And who, then, would doubt that progress is the nineteenth century’s
great popular church-the only one enjoying real authority and uncritical
faith?
With a war breaking out in such an atmosphere, the relation of each

individual contestant to progress was bound to play a decisive role. And
precisely therein lies the authentic, moral factor of our age: even the
strongest armies, equipped with the industrial era’s latest weapons of
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Total Mobilisation
annihilation, are no match for its fine, imponderable emanations; for this
era can even recruit its troops from the enemy’s camp.
In order to clarify this situation, let us here introduce the concept of
total mobilization: the times are long gone when it sufficed to send a hundred
thousand enlisted subjects under reliable leadership into battle -as we find,
say, in Voltaire’s Candide; and when, if His Majesty lost a battle, the citizen’s
first duty was to stay quiet. Nonetheless, even in the second half of the
nineteenth century, conservative cabinets could still prepare, wage, and win
wars which the people’s representatives were indifferent towards or even
against. To be sure, this presupposed a close relation between crown and
army; a relation that had only undergone a superficial change through the
new system of universal conscription and which still essentially belonged to
the patriarchal world. It was also based on a fixed calculation of armaments
and costs, which made war seem like an exceptional, but in no sense
limitless, expenditure of available forces and supplies. In this respect, even
general mobilization had the character of a partial measure.
These restrictions not only reflect the limited degree of means, but also
a specific raison d’état. The monarch possesses a natural instinct warning
him not to trespass the bounds of dynastic power. The melting down of his
treasure seems less objectionable than credits approved by an assembly; and
for the decisive moment of battle, he would rather reserve his guards than
a quota of volunteers. We find this instinct remaining healthy in Prussia
deep into the nineteenth century. One example among many is the bitter
fight for a three years’ conscription: whereas a brief period of service is
characteristic for a volunteer army, when dynastic power is at stake, tried
and tested troops are more reliable. Frequently, we even come upon-what
by today’s standards is almost unthinkable-a renunciation of progress and
any consummate equipping of the army; but such scruples also have their
reasons. Hence hidden in every improvement of firearms-especially the
increase in range-is an indirect assault on the conditions of absolute
monarchy. Each such improvement promotes firing at individual targets,
while the salvo incarnates the force of fixed command. Enthusiasm was still
unpleasant to Wilhelm I. It springs from a source that, like Aeolus’ wind-
sack, hides not only storms of applause. Authority’s true touchstone is not
the extent of jubilation it receives, but the wars that have been lost.
Partial mobilization thus corresponds to the essence of monarchy. The
latter oversteps its bounds to the extent that it is forced to make the abstract
103
forms of spirit, money, “folk” -in short, the forces of growing national
democracy-a part of the preparation for war. Looking back we can now say
that complete renunciation of such participation was quite impossible. The
manner in which it was incorporated [into political life] represents the real
essence of nineteenth-century statecraft. These particular circumstances
explain Bismarck’s maxim that politics is the “art of the possible.”
We can now pursue the process by which the growing conversion of
life into energy, the increasingly fleeting content of all binding ties in
deference to mobility, gives an ever-more radical character to the act of
mobilization-which in many states was the exclusive right of the crown,
needing no counter-signature. The events causing this are numerous: with
the dissolution of the estates and the curtailing of the nobility’s privileges,
the concept of a warrior caste also vanishes; the armed defense of the state
is no longer exclusively the duty and prerogative of the professional soldier,
but the responsibility of everyone who can bear arms. Likewise, because of
the huge increase in expenses, it is impossible to cover the costs of waging
war on the basis of a fixed war budget; instead, a stretching of all possible
credit, even a taxation of the last pfennig saved, is necessary to keep the
machinery in motion. In the same way, the image of war as armed combat
merges into the more extended image of a gigantic labor process
(Arbeitsprozesses]. In addition to the armies that meet on the battlefields,
originate the modern armies of commerce and transport, foodstuffs, the
manufacture of armaments the army of labor in general. In the final phase,
which was already hinted at toward the end of the last war, there is no longer
any movement whatsoever-be it that of the homeworker at her sewing
machine without at least indirect use for the battlefield. In this unlimited
marshaling of potential energies, which transforms the warring industrial
countries into volcanic forges, we perhaps find the most striking sign of the
dawn of the age of labor lArbeitszeitalter]. It makes the World War a
historical event superior in significance to the French Revolution. In order
to deploy energies of such proportion, fitting one’s sword-arm no longer
suffices; for this is a mobilization [Rustung] that requires extension to the
deepest marrow, life’s finest nerve. Its realization is the task of total
mobilization: an act which, as if through a single grasp of the control panel,
conveys the extensively branched and densely veined power supply of
modern life towards the great current of martial energy.
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Total Mobilisation
At the beginning of the World War, the human intellect had not yet
anticipated a mobilization of such proportions. Still, its signs were manifest
in isolated instances-for example, the large employment of volunteers and
reservists at the war’s start, the ban on exports, the censor’s regulations, the
changes of currency rates. In the course of the war this process intensified:
as examples, we can cite the planned management of raw materials and
foodstuffs, the transposition of industrial conditions [Arbeitsverhiiltnisses] to
military circumstances, civil-guard duty, the arming of trade vessels, the
unexpected extension of the general staff’s authority, the “Hindenburg
program,” Ludendorff’s struggle for the fusion of military and political
command.
Nevertheless, despite the spectacle, both grandiose and frightful, of the
later “battles of materiel” [“Materialschlachten”], in which the human talent
for organization celebrates its bloody triumph, its fullest possibilities have
not yet been reached. Even limiting our scope to the technical side of the
process, this can only occur when the image of martial operations is
prescribed for conditions of peace. We thus see that in the postwar period,
many countries tailor new methods of armament to the pattern of total
mobilization.
In this regard, we can introduce examples such as the increasing
curtailment of “individual liberty,” a privilege that, to be sure, has always
been questionable. Such an assault takes place in Russia and Italy and then
here in Germany; its aim is to deny the existence of anything that is not a
function of the state. We can predict a time when all countries with global
aspirations must take up the process, in order to sustain the release of new
forms of power. France’s evaluation of the balance of power from the
perspective of énergie potentielle belongs in this context, as does the model
America has offered-already in peacetime- for cooperation between
industry and the army. German war literature raised issues touching on the
very essence of armament, forcing the general public to make judgments
about matters of war (if somewhat belatedly and in reality anticipating the
future). For the first time, the Russian “five-year plan” presented the world
with an attempt to channel the collective energies of a great empire into a
single current. Seeing how economic theory turns volte-face is here
instructive. The “planned economy,” as one of the final results of
democracy, grows beyond itself into a general unfolding of power. We can
105
observe this shift in many events of our age. The great surging forth of the
masses thereby reaches a point of crystallization.
Still, not only attack but also defense demands extraordinary efforts,
and here the world’s compulsions perhaps become even clearer. Just as
every life already bears the seeds of its own death, so the emergence of the
great masses contains within itself a democracy of death. The era of the
well-aimed shot is already behind us. Giving out the night-flight bombing
order, the squadron leader no longer sees a difference between combatants
and civilians, and the deadly gas cloud hovers like an elementary power over
everything that lives. But the possibility of such menace is based neither on
a partial nor general, but rather a total mobilization. It extends to the child
in the cradle, who is threatened like everyone else-even more so.
We could cite many such examples. It suffices simply to consider our
daily life, with its inexorability and merciless discipline, its smoking, glowing
districts, the physics and metaphysics of its commerce, its motors, airplanes,
and burgeoning cities. With a pleasure-tinged horror, we sense that here,
not a single atom is not in motion-that we are profoundly inscribed in this
raging process. Total Mobilization is far less consummated than it
consummates itself; in war and peace, it expresses the secret and inexorable
claim to which our life in the age of masses and machines subjects us. It
thus turns out that each individual life becomes, ever more unambiguously,
the life of a worker; and that, following the wars of knights, kings, and
citizens, we now have wars of workers. The first great twentieth-century
conflict has offered us a presentiment of both their rational structure and
their mercilessness.
We have touched on the technical aspects of Total Mobilization; their

perfection can be traced from the first conscriptions of the Convention
government during the French Revolution and Scharnhorst’s army
reorganization1 to the dynamic armament program of the World War’s last
years-when states transformed themselves into gigantic factories, producing
armies on the assembly line that they sent to the battlefield both day and
1Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst (1755-1813), Prussian general and

creator of the modern Prussian military system. Following Prussia's losses in the
Napoleonic wars, he reformed the Prussian military by abolishing its
predominantly mercenary character and opting instead for a national force based
on universal conscription.
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Total Mobilisation
night, where an equally mechanical bloody maw took over the role of
consumer. The monotony of such a spectacle-evoking the precise labor of
a turbine fueled with blood-is indeed painful to the heroic temperament;
still, there can be no doubt regarding its symbolic meaning. Here a severe
necessity reveals itself: the hard stamp of an age in a martial medium.
In any event, Total Mobilization’s technical side is not decisive. Its
basis-like that of all technology-lies deeper. We shall address it here as the
readiness for mobilization. Such readiness was present everywhere: the
World War was one of the most popular wars known to history. This was
because it took place in an age that excluded a priori all but popular wars.
Also, aside from minor wars of colonialism and plunder, the involved
nations had enjoyed a relatively long period of peace. At the beginning of
our investigation, however, we promised emphatically not to focus on the
elementary stratum of human nature that mix of wild and noble passions
resting within it, rendering it always open to the battle cry. Rather, we will
now try to disentangle the multiple signals announcing and accompanying
this particular conflict.
Whenever we confront efforts of such proportions, possessing the
special quality of “uselessness” [“Zwecklosigkeit”]-say the erection of mighty
constructions like pyramids and cathedrals, or wars that call into play the
ultimate mainsprings of life-economic explanations, no matter how
illuminating, are not sufficient. This is the reason that the school of
historical materialism can only touch the surface of the process. To explain
efforts of this sort, we ought to rather focus our first suspicions on
phenomena of a cultic variety.
In defining progress as the nineteenth century’s popular church, we
have already suggested the source of the last war’s effective appeal to the
great masses, whose participation was so indispensable. This appeal alone
accounts for the decisive aspect of their Total Mobilization: that aspect with
the force of faith. Shirking the war was all the less possible in proportion
to the degree of their conviction-hence to proportion to the purity with
which the resounding words moving them to action had a progressive
content. Granted, these words often had a harsh and lurid color; their
effectiveness cannot be doubted. They resemble the bright rags steering the
battue prey towards the rifle’s scope.
Even a superficial glance, geographically separating the warring parties
into victors and vanquished, must acknowledge the advantage of the
107
“progressive” nations. This advantage seems to evoke a deterministic

process such as Darwin’s theory of survival of the “fittest.” Its deterministic
quality is particularly apparent in the inability of victorious countries like
Russia and Italy to avoid a complete destruction of their political systems.
In this light, the war seems to be a sure-fire touchstone, basing its value
judgments on rigorous, intrinsic laws: like an earthquake testing the
foundations of every building.
On the other hand, the progressive system’s unexpected powers of
resistance, even in a situation of great physical weakness, are striking.
Hence, in the midst of the French army’s suppression of that highly
dangerous 1917 mutiny, a second, moral “miracle of the Marne” unfolds,
more symptomatic for this war than purely military factors. Likewise, in the
United States with its democratic constitution, mobilization could be
executed with a rigor that was impossible in Prussia, where the right to vote
was based on class. And who can doubt that America, the country lacking
“dilapidated castles, basalt columns, and tales of knights, ghosts and
brigands,” emerged the obvious victor of this war? Its course was already
decided not by the degree to which a state was a “military state,” but by the
degree to which it was capable of Total Mobilization.
Germany, however, was destined to lose the war, even if it had won
the battle of the Marne and submarine warfare. For despite all the care with
which it undertook partial mobilization, large areas of its strength escaped
Total Mobilization; for the same reason, corresponding to the inner nature
of its armament, it was certainly capable of obtaining, sustaining, and above
all exploiting partial success-but never a total success. To affix such success
to our weapons would have required preparing for another Cannae,2 one
no less significant than that to which Schlieffen3 devoted his life’s work.
But before carrying this argument forward, let us consider some
disparate points, in the hope of further showing the link between progress
and Total Mobilization.
2 It was at the battle of Cannae in 216 B.C. that Hannibal defeated the Romans.
In the history of warfare, the battle stands as the most perfect example of the
double envelopment of an opposing army. It took Rome nearly a decade to
recover from the loss.
3 General Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913) was head of the German general
staff from1891 to 1906. He was responsible for the "Schlieffen plan" employed
in World War I, which concerned the problem of waging war on two fronts.
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Total Mobilisation
One fact is clearly illuminating for those seeking to understand the

word progress in its gaudy timbre: in an age that publicly executed, under
horrific torture, a Ravaillac4 or even a Damienst5 as progeny of hell, the
assassination of royalty would damage a more powerful social stratum -one
more deeply etched in belief-than in the century following Louis XVI’s
execution. It turns out that in the hierarchy of progress, the prince belongs
to a not especially favored species.
Let us imagine, for a moment, the grotesque situation in which a major
advertising executive had to prepare the propaganda for a modern war.
With two possibilities available for sparking the first wave of excitement-
namely, the Sarajevo assassination or the violation of Belgian neutrality-
there can be no doubt which would promise the greater impact. The
superficial cause of the World War-no matter how adventitious it might
seem-is inhabited by a symbolic meaning: in the case of the Sarajevo culprits
and their victim, the heir to the Habsburg crown, national and dynastic
principles collided-the modern “right of national self-determination” with
the principle of legitimacy painstakingly restored at the Congress of Vienna
[1815] through statecraft of the old style.
Now certainly, being untimely in the right sense-setting in motion a
powerful effect in a spirit that desires to preserve a legacy-is praiseworthy.
But this requires faith. It is clear, however, that the Central Powers’ ideology
was neither timely, nor untimely, nor beyond time. Rather, the mood was
simultaneously timely and untimely, resulting in nothing but a mixture of
false romanticism and inadequate liberalism. Hence the observer could not
help but notice a predilection for outmoded trappings, for a late romantic
style, for Wagner’s operas in particular. Words evoking the fidelity of the
Nibelungs, hopes pinned on the success of Islam’s call to holy war, are
examples. Obviously, technical questions and questions of government
were involved here-the mobilization of substance but not the substance
itself. But the ruling classes’ inadequate relationship both to the masses and
to profounder forces revealed itself precisely in blunders of this sort.
Hence even the famous, unintentionally brilliant reference to a “scrap
of paper” suffers from having been uttered 150 years too late-and then
from principles that might have suited Prussian Romanticism, but at heart
4 Francois Ravaillac (1578-1610), regicide who assassinated King Henry IV.

5 Robert-Francois Damiens (1714-1757), who was tortured and executed for his
attempt on the life of Louis XV.
109
were not Prussian. Frederick the Great might have spoken thus, poking fun
at yellowed, musty parchment in the manner of an enlightened despotism.
But Bethmann-Hollweg must have known that in our time a piece of paper,
say one with a constitution written on it, has a meaning similar to that of a
consecrated wafer for the Catholic Church -and that tearing up treaties
certainly suits absolutism, but liberalism’s strength lies in their exegesis.
Study the exchange of notes preceding America’s entry into the war and
you will come upon a principle of “freedom of the seas”; this offers a good
example of the extent to which, in such an age, one’s own interests are given
the rank of a humanitarian postulate-of an issue with universal implications
for humanity. German social democracy, one of the bulwarks of German
progress, grasped the dialectical aspect of its mission when it equated the
war’s meaning with the destruction of the czar’s anti-progressive regime.
But what does that signify as compared to the possibilities for
mobilizing the masses at the West’s disposal? Who would deny that
“civilisation” is more profoundly attached to progress than is “Kultur”; that
its language is spoken in the large cities, and that it has means and concepts
at its command to which Kultur is either hostile or indifferent? Kultur cannot
be used for propaganda. An approach that tries exploiting it in this way is
itself estranged from it-just as we find the serving up of great German
spirits’ heads on millions of paper stamps and bills to be pointless, or even
sad.
We have, however, no desire to complain about the inevitable. We
wish only to establish that Germany was incapable of convincingly taking
on the spirit of the age, whatever its nature. Germany was also incapable of
proposing, to itself or to the world, a valid principle superior to that spirit.
Rather, we find it searching-sometimes in romantic-idealistic, sometimes in
rational-materialistic spheres-for those signs and images that the fighting
individual strives to affix to his standards. But the validity lying within these
spheres belongs partly to the past and partly to a milieu alien to German
genius; it is not sufficient to assure utmost devotion to the advance of men
and machines-something that a fearful battle against a world demands.
In this light we must struggle all the more to recognize how our
elemental substance, the deep, primordial strength of the Volk, remains
untouched by such a search. With admiration, we watch how German
youth, at the beginning of this crusade of reason to which the world’s
nations are called under the spell of such an obvious, transparent dogma,
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Total Mobilisation
raise the battle cry: glowing, enraptured, hungering after death in a way
virtually unique in our history.
If one of these youths had been asked his motive for taking the field,
the answer, certainly, would have been less clear. He would hardly have
spoken of the struggle against barbarism and reaction or for civilization, the
freeing of Belgium or freedom of the seas; but perhaps he would have
offered the response, “for Germany” -that phrase, with which the volunteer
regiments went on the attack.
And yet, this smoldering fire, burning for an enigmatic and invisible
Germany, was sufficient for an effort that left nations trembling to the
marrow. What if it had possessed direction, awareness, and form [Gestalt]?
As a mode of organizational thinking, Total Mobilization is merely an

intimation of that higher mobilization that the age is discharging upon us.
Characteristic of this latter type of mobilization is an inner lawfulness, to
which human laws must correspond in order to be effective.
Nothing illustrates this claim better than the fact that during war forces
can emerge that are directed against war itself. Nonetheless, these forces
are more closely related to the powers at work in the war than it might
seem. Total Mobilization shifts its sphere of operations, but not its
meaning, when it begins to set in motion, instead of the armies of war, the
masses in a civil war. The conflict now invades spheres that are off limits
to the commands of military mobilization. It is as if the forces that could
not be marshaled for the war now demanded their role in the bloody
engagement. Hence the more unified and profound the war’s capacity to
summon, from the outset, all possible forces for its cause, the surer and
more imperturbable will be its course.
We have seen that in Germany, the spirit of progress could only be
mobilized incompletely. To take just one among thousands of examples,
the case of Barbusse shows us that in France, for instance, the situation was
far more propitious.6 In reality an outspoken opponent of war, Barbusse
could only stay true to his ideas by readily affirming this one: to his mind, it
reflected a struggle of progress, civilisation, humanity, and even peace, against
6 Henri Barbusse (1873-1935), French writer whose experiences in World War I

led him to pacifism. In 1916 he wrote the powerful anti-war novel, Le feu
(Under Fire).
111
a principle opposed to all these factors. “War must be killed off in

Germany’s belly.”
No matter how complicated this dialectic appears, its outcome is
inexorable. A person with the least apparent inclination for military conflict
still finds himself incapable of refusing the rifle offered by the state, since
the possibility of an alternative is not present to his consciousness. Let us
observe him as he racks his brains, standing guard in the wasteland of
endless trenches, abandoning the trenches as well as anyone when the time
comes, in order to advance through the horrific curtain of fire of the war
of materiel. But what, in fact, is amazing about this? Barbusse is a warrior
like any other: a warrior for humanity, able to forgo machine-gun fire and
gas attacks, and even the guillotine, as little as the Christian church can
forgo its worldly sword. To be sure, in order to achieve such a degree of
mobilization, a Barbusse would need to live in France.
The German Barbusses found themselves in a more difficult position.
Only isolated intellects moved early to neutral territory, deciding to wage
open sabotage against the war effort. The great majority tried cooperating
with the deployment. We have already touched on the case of German
social democracy. Let us disregard the fact that, despite its internationalist
dogma, the movement’s ranks were filled with German workers, hence
could be moved to heroism. No-in its very ideology, it shifted towards a
revision that later led to the charge of “the betrayal of Marxism.” We can
get a rough idea of the procedure’s details in the speeches delivered during
this critical period by Ludwig Frank, the Social Democratic leader and
Reichstag deputy, who, as a forty-year-old volunteer, fell from a shot to the
head at Noissoncourt in September 1914. “We comrades without a
fatherland still know that, even as stepchildren, we are children of Germany,
and that we must fight for our fatherland against reaction. If a war breaks
out, the Social Democratic soldiers will also conscientiously fulfill their
duty” (August 29, 1914). This extremely informative passage contains in a
nutshell the forms of war and revolution that fate holds in readiness.
For those who wish to study this dialectic in detail, the practices of the
newspapers and journals during the war years offer a wealth of examples.
Hence Maximilian Harden-the editor of Die Zukunft and perhaps the best-
known journalist of the Wilhelminian period-began adjusting his public
activity to the goals of the central command. We note, only insofar as it is
symptomatic, that he knew how to play upon the war’s radicalism as well
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Total Mobilisation
as he would later play upon that of the Revolution. And thus, Simplicissimus,”
an organ that had directed its weapons of nihilistic wit against all social ties,
and thus also against the army, now took on a chauvinistic tone. It is clear,
moreover, that the journal’s quality diminishes as its patriotic tenor rises-
that is, as it abandons the field of its strength.
Perhaps the inner conflict at issue here is most apparent in the case of
Rathenau;7 it endows this figure-for anyone struggling to do him justice-
with the force of tragedy. To a considerable extent, Rathenau had mobilized
for the war, playing a role in organizing the great armament and focusing-
even close to the German collapse-on the possibility of a “mass
insurrection.” How is it possible that soon after, he could offer the well-
known observation that world history would have lost its meaning had the
Reich’s representatives entered the capital as victors through the
Brandenburg Gate? Here we see very clearly how the spirit of mobilization
can dominate an individual’s technical capacities, yet fail to penetrate his
essence.
With our last fighters still lying before the enemy, the secret army and
secret general staff commanding German progress greeted the collapse with
exultation. It resembled the exultation at a victorious battle. It was the
closest ally of the Western armies soon to cross the Rhine, their Trojan
horse. The reigning authorities acknowledged the new spirit by the low level
of protest with which they hastily vacated their posts. Between player and
opponent, there was no essential difference.
This is also the reason that in Germany, the political transformation
[following the military collapse] took on relatively harmless form. Thus,
even during the crucial days of decision, the Empire’s Social Democratic
minister could play with the idea of leaving the crown intact. And what
would that have signified, other than maintaining a facade? For a long time,
the building had been so encumbered with “progressive” mortgages, that
no more doubt was possible as to the true owner’s nature.
7 Walter Rathenau (1867-1922), leading German industrialist who played a key

role in organizing the supply of raw materials for Germany's war effort during
World War I. Served as minister of reconstruction and foreign minister during
the Weimar Republic and negotiated the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet
Union. Rathenau, who was jewish, was assassinated by right-wing extremists on
June 24, 1922.
113
But there is another reason why the change could take place less
violently in Germany than, say, Russia-besides the fact that the authorities
themselves prepared the way for it. We have seen that a large portion of the
“progressive forces” had already been occupied with directing the war. The
energy squandered during the war was then no longer available for the
internal conflict. To express it in more personal terms: it makes a difference
if former ministers take the helm or a revolutionary aristocracy, educated in
Siberian exile.
Germany lost the war by winning a stronger place in the Western
sphere-civilization, peace, and freedom in Barbusse’s sense. But how could
we expect anything different, since we ourselves had sworn allegiance to
such values; at no price would we have dared extend the war beyond that
“wall wrapped around Europe.” This would have required different ideas
and different allies, a deeper disclosure of one’s own values. An incitement
of substance could have even taken place with and through progressivist
optimism-as Russia’s case suggests.
When we contemplate the world that has emerged from the

catastrophe -what unity of effect, what incredibly rigorous historical
consistency! Really, if all the spiritual and physical structures of a non-
civilizational variety extending from the nineteenth century’s end to our
own age had been assembled in a small space and fired on with all the
world’s weapons-the success could not have been more resounding.
The Kremlin’s old chimes now play the Internationale. In
Constantinople, schoolchildren use the Latin script instead of the Koran’s
old arabesques. In Naples and Palermo, Fascist police regulate the pace of
southern life as if directing modern traffic. In the world’s remotest, even
legendary lands, houses of parliament are being ceremoniously dedicated.
The abstractness, hence the horror, of all human circumstances is
increasing inexorably. Patriotism is being diluted through a new
nationalism, strongly fused with elements of conscious awareness. In
Fascism, Bolshevism, Americanism, Zionism, in the movements of colored
peoples, progress has made advances that until recently would have seemed
unthinkable; it proceeds, as it were, head over heels, following the circular
course of an artificial dialectic in order to continue its movement on a very
simple plane. Disregarding its much diminished allowances for freedom
and sociability, it is starting to rule nations in ways not very different from
those of an absolute regime. In many cases the humanitarian mask has
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Total Mobilisation
almost been stripped away, replaced by a half-grotesque, half-barbaric

fetishism of the machine, a naive cult of technique; this occurs particularly
where there is no direct, productive relation to those dynamic energies for
whose destructive, triumphal course long-range artillery and bomb-loaded
fighter squadrons represent only the martial expression. Simultaneously,
esteem for quantity [Massen] is increasing: quantity of assent, quantity of
public opinion has become the decisive factor in politics. Socialism and
nationalism in particular are the two great millstones between which
progress pulverizes what is left of the old world, and eventually itself. For
a period of more than a hundred years, the masses, blinded by the optical
illusion of the franchise, were tossed around like a ball by the “right” and
“left.” It always seemed that one side offered refuge from the other’s claims.
Today everywhere the reality of each side’s identity is becoming more and
more apparent; even the dream of freedom is disappearing as if under a
pincers’ iron grasp. The movements of the uniformly molded masses,
trapped in the snare set by the world-spirit, comprise a great and fearful
spectacle. Each of these movements leads to a sharper, more merciless
grasp: forms of compulsion stronger than torture are at work here; they are
so strong, that human beings welcome them joyfully. Behind every exit,
marked with the symbols of happiness, lurk pain and death. Happy is he
alone who steps armed into these spaces.
Today, through the cracks and seams of Babel’s tower, we can already
see a glacier-world; this sight makes the bravest spirits tremble. Before long,
the age of progress will seem as puzzling as the mysteries of an Egyptian
dynasty. In that era, however, the world celebrated one of those triumphs
that endow victory, for a moment, with the aura of eternity. More menacing
than Hannibal, with all too mighty fists, somber armies had knocked on the
gates of its great cities and fortified channels.
In the crater’s depths, the last war possessed a meaning no arithmetic
can master. The volunteer sensed it in his exultation, the German demon’s
voice bursting forth mightily, the exhaustion of the old values being united
with an unconscious longing for a new life. Who would have imagined that
these sons of a materialistic generation could have greeted death with such
ardor? In this way a life rich in excess and ignorant of the beggar’s thrift
declares itself. And just as the actual result of an upright life is nothing but
the gain of one’s own deeper character, for us the results of this war can be
nothing but the gain of a deeper Germany. This is confirmed by the
115
agitation around us which is the mark of the new race: one that cannot be
satisfied by any of this world’s ideas nor any image of the past. A fruitful
anarchy reigns here, which is born from the elements of earth and fire, and
which hides within itself the seeds of a new form of domination. Here a
new form of armament stands revealed, one which strives to forge its
weapons from purer and harder metals that prove impervious to all
resistance.
The German conducted the war with a, for him, an all too reasonable
ambition of being a good European. Since Europe thus made war on
Europe-who else but Europe could be the victor? Nevertheless, this
Europe, whose area extends in planetary proportions, has become
extremely thin, extremely varnished: its spatial gains correspond to a loss in
the force of conviction. New powers will emerge from it.
Deep beneath the regions in which the dialectic of war aims is still
meaningful, the German encounters a stronger force: he encounters
himself. In this way, the war was at the same time about him: above all, the
means of his own self-realization. And for this reason, the new form of
armament, in which we have already for some time been implicated, must
be a mobilization of the German-nothing else.
116
On Danger
Der gefährliche Augenblick, 1931
Among the signs of the epoch we have now entered belongs the increased
intrusion of danger into daily life. There is no accident concealing itself
behind this tact but a comprehensive change of the inner and outer world.
We see this clearly when we remember what an important role was
assigned to the concept of security in the bourgeois epoch just past. The
bourgeois person is perhaps best characterized as one who places security
among the highest of values and conducts his life accordingly. His
arrangements and systems are dedicated to securing his space against the
danger that at times, when scarcely a cloud appears to darken the sky, has
landed into the distance. However, it is always there: it seeks with elemental
constancy to break through the dams with which order has surrounded
itself.
The peculiarity of the bourgeois’ relation to danger lies in his
perception of it as an irresolvable contradiction to order, that is, as
senseless. In this he marks himself off from other figures of, for example,
the warrior, the artist, and the criminal, who are given a lofty or base relation
to the elemental. Thus battle, in the eyes of the warrior, is a process that
completes itself in a high order; the tragic conflict, for the writer, is a
condition in which the deeper sense of life is to be comprehended very
clearly; and a burning city or one beset by insurrection is a field of
intensified activity for the criminal. In turn bourgeois values possess just as
little validity for the believing person, for the gods appear in the elements,
as in the burning bush unconsumed by the flames. Through misfortune and
danger late draws the mortal into the superior sphere of a higher order.
The supreme power through which the bourgeois sees security
guaranteed is reason. The closer he finds himself to the center of reason,
the more the dark shadows in which danger conceals itself disperse, and the
ideal condition which it is the task of progress to achieve consists of the
world domination of reason through which the wellsprings of the
dangerous are not merely to be minimized but ultimately to be dried up
altogether. The dangerous reveals itself in the light of reason to be senseless
and relinquishes its claim on reality. In this world all depends on the
117
perception of the dangerous as the senseless, then in the same moment it

is overcome, it appears in the mirror of reason as an error.
This can be demonstrated everywhere and in detail within the
intellectual and actual arrangements of the bourgeois world. It reveals itself
at large in the endeavor to see the state, which rests on hierarchy, as society,
with equality as its fundamental principle and which is founded through an
act of reason. It reveals itself in the comprehensive establishment of an
insurance system, through which not only the risk of foreign and domestic
politics but also that of private life is to be uniformly distributed and thus
subordinated to reason. It reveals itself further in the many and much
entangled efforts to understand the life of the soul as a series of causes and
effects and thus to remove it from an unpredictable into a predictable
condition, therefore to include it within the sphere in which consciousness
holds sway.
In this sense the securing of life against late, that great mother of
danger, appears as the truly bourgeois problem, which is then made subject
to the most diverse economic or humanitarian solutions. All formulations
of questions at present, whether aesthetic, scientific, or political in nature,
move in the direction of the claim that conflict is avoidable. Should conflict
nevertheless arise, as cannot, for example, be overlooked in regard to the
permanent tact of war or criminality, then all depends upon proving it to
be an error whose repetition is to be avoided through education or
enlightenment. These errors appear for the sole reason that the factors of
that great equation — the result of which has the population of the globe
becoming a unified, fundamentally good as well as fundamentally rational,
and therefore also fundamentally secure humanity — have not yet achieved
general recognition. Faith in the persuasive force of these views is one of
the reasons that enlightenment tends to overestimate the powers given to
it.
One of the best objections that has been raised against this valuation
is that under such circumstances life would be intolerably boring. This
objection has never been of a purely theoretical nature but was applied
practically by those young persons who, in the foggy dark of night, left their
parental home to pursue danger in America, on the sea, or in the French
Foreign Legion. It is a sign of the domination of bourgeois values that
danger slips into the distance, “far away in Turkey,” in those lands where
pepper grows, or wherever the bourgeois likes to deplore everyone not
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On Danger
conforming to his standards. For these values to disappear entirely,

however, will never be possible, not just because they are always present
but above all because the human heart is in need not only of security but of
danger too. Yet this desire is capable of revealing itself in bourgeois society
only as protest, and it indeed does appear, in the form of romantic protest.
The bourgeois has nearly succeeded in persuading the adventurous heart
that the dangerous is not present at all. Thus do figures become possible
who scarcely dare to speak their own superior language, whether that of the
poet, who compares himself to the albatross, whose powerful wings are
nothing more than the object of a tedious curiosity in a foreign and windless
environment, or that of the born warrior, who appears to be a ne’er-do-
well because the life of a shopkeeper tills him with disgust. Countless
examples could show how in an era of great security any profitable life will
depart for the distances symbolized by strange lands, intoxication, or death.
In this sense the world war appears as the great, red balance line under
the bourgeois era, the spirit of which explained — that is, believed itself
capable of invalidating — the jubilation of the volunteer who welcomed
the war by attributing to him either a patriotic error or a suspect lust for
adventure. Fundamentally, however, this jubilation was a revolutionary
protest against the values of the bourgeois world; it was a recognition of
fate as the expression of the supreme power. In this jubilation a revaluation
of all values, which had been prophesied by exalted spirits, was completed:
alter an era that sought to subordinate fate to reason, another followed
which saw reason as the servant of fate. From that moment on, danger was
no longer the goal of a romantic opposition; it was rather reality, and the
task of the bourgeois was once again to withdraw from this reality and
escape into the utopia of security. From this moment on, the words peace
and order became a slogan to which a weaker morale resorted.
This was a war that not only nations but two epochs conducted against
each other. As a consequence, both victors and vanquished exist here in
Germany. Victors are those who, like salamanders, have gone through the
school of danger. Only these will hold their own in a time when not security
but danger will determine the order of life.
Precisely for this reason, however, the tasks that order must
accomplish have become much more comprehensive than before; these
tasks have to be performed where danger is not the exception, but is
constantly present. As an example of this the police force might be
119
mentioned. It has transformed itself from a group of civil servants into a

formation that already greatly resembles a military unit. Likewise the various
large parties acknowledge the need to adopt means of power that express
the fact that the battle of opinions will not be decided solely through votes
and programs but also by the stalwarts committed to march in support of
those programs. Such facts are in no way to be isolated and regarded as a
temporary or transient change in the political landscape. Nor can the
inclination to danger be overlooked in intellectual endeavors, and it is
unmistakable that new forms of the volcanic spirit are at work. Phenomena
like modern atomic theory, glacial cosmogony, the introduction of the
concept of mutation into zoology all point clearly, completely apart from
their truth content, to how strongly the spirit is beginning to partake of
explosive events. The history of inventions also raises ever more clearly the
question of whether a space of absolute comfort or a space of absolute
danger is the final aim concealed in technology. Completely apart from the
circumstance that scarcely a machine, scarcely a science has ever existed
which did not fulfill, directly or indirectly, dangerous functions in the war,
inventions like the automobile engine have already resulted in greater losses
than any war, be it ever so bloody.
What especially characterizes the era in which we find ourselves, into
which we enter more deeply with every passing day, is the close relationship
that exists between danger and order. It may be expressed in this way:
danger appears merely as the other side of our order. The whole is more or
less equivalent to our image of the atom, which is utterly mobile and utterly
constant. The secret concealed within is a new and different return to
nature; it is the fact that we are simultaneously civilized and barbaric, that
we have approached the elemental without having sacrificed the acuity of
our consciousness. Thus does the path through which danger has
penetrated our life present itself as twofold. It has intruded upon us first of
all out or an arena in which nature is still more vital. Things, “the likes of
which were only possible in South America,” are now familiar to us. The
distinction is that danger, from a romantic dimension, has in this way
become real. Secondly, however, we are sending danger back out over the
globe in a new form.
This new form of danger appears in the closest connection having
been made between elemental events and consciousness. The elemental is
eternal: as people have always found themselves in passionate struggle with
120
On Danger
things, animals, or other people, as is the case today. The particular

characteristic of our era, however, is precisely that all this transpires in the
presence of the most acute consciousness. This finds expression above all
in the circumstance that in all of these conflicts the most powerful servant
of consciousness, the machine, is always present. Thus does humanity’s
eternal struggle with the elemental nature of the sea present itself in the
temporal form of a supremely complicated mechanical contrivance. Thus
does the battle appear as a process during which the armored engine moves
fighting men through the sea, over land, or into the air. Thus does the daily
accident itself, with which our newspapers are tilled, appear nearly
exclusively as a catastrophe of a technological type.
Beyond all this the wonder of our world, at once sober and dangerous,
is the registration of the moment in which the danger transpires — a
registration that is moreover accomplished whenever it does not capture
human consciousness immediately, by means of machines. One needs no
prophetic talent to predict that soon any given event will be there to see or
to hear in any given place. Already today there is hardly an event of human
significance toward which the artificial eye of civilization, the photographic
lens, is not directed. The result is often pictures of demoniacal precision
through which humanity’s new relation to danger becomes visible in an
exceptional fashion. One has to recognize that it is a question here much
less of the peculiarity of new tools than of a new style that makes use of
technological tools. The change becomes illuminating in the investigation
of the change in tools that have long been at our disposal, such as language.
Although our time produces little in the way of literature in the old sense,
much of significance is accomplished through objective reports of
experience. Our time is prompted by human need — which explains,
among other things, the success of war literature. We already possess a new
style of language, one which gradually becomes visible from underneath the
language of the bourgeois epoch. The same, however, is true of our style
altogether; it is reminiscent of the tact that the automobile was for a long
time constructed in the form of a horse-drawn coach, or that a wholly
different society has already long since established itself beneath the surface
of bourgeois society. As during the inflation, we continue for a time to
spend the usual coins, without sensing that the rate of exchange is no longer
the same.
121
In this sense, it may be said that we have already plunged deeply into
new, more dangerous realms, without our being conscious of them.
122

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Ernst Jünger

List of articles included:

19. On Spirit (Vom Geiste; Widerstand, April 1927)

indecisiveness - 50 year old global power disappeared like a sandcastle. The

goals, which, of course can be accepted or rejected, entire segments of the

German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). On 9

Gewissen (Conscience) was considered to be the mouthpeace of "german socialism"

"Frontline soldier" should not be understood as experiencing oneself as a

1 The völkisch movement (original name: völkische Bewegung) is the German

accustomed to other than military conditions. Thus we have another ace up

4 Referring to Franz Seldte.

historical overview. Nevertheless we must take a specific stance here and

1 Hinting at the famous pamphlet of the sociologist Werner Sombart, written in

Frontliner's generation faced a kind of test by military technology that is

understands that it was technological advancements that determined the

form by means of machines, death was understood in a technical sense.

difference is not susceptible to false temptation of measuring in reasoning

The world we were born into appears to us as something self-evident. From

1"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (German: Der Zauberlehrling) is a poem by

1 Written by Henri Barbusse "Manifeste aux Intellectuels" (Elevations) in which

horrible spectacle, will require much time to contemplate it and thus we

Jünger Friedrich Georg, Aufmarsh des Nationalismus, Leipzig, 1926 (Der

of a sovereignty such as a mercenary foot soldier or the classic farm servant.

Every new experience presents us with a challenge! First we clarify this

response to an internal catastrophe which is a result of a grander disaster.

philosophy, established by Aristotle. Aquinas argued that the existence of God

3Hagen is a Burgundian warrior in tales about the Burgundian kingdom at

goal could be accomplished. A Brandenburg regiment must be given form

organic society4, where there won't be either class or property distinctions,

4Jünger is using the traditional to German social philosophy differentiation

1 The Beer Hall Putsch

world there is no unity of opposites, there is nothing but struggle.

3Paraphrasing Luke (21:24).

1 Meaning gatherings of frontline soldiers.

removing everything on its way that could have prevented us from

2In 1925-1926 Jünger still looked positively at the national-socialist movement.

distinction: soldiers as leaders in the power struggle and workers as leaders

3 In 1918-1919 the German freikorps opposed the bolsheviks in Latvia,

occupational forces in the Ruhr region.

officer who revolted unsuccessfully against French domination in May 1809.

counter the national-socialist SA squads.

abbreviated as Jungdo) was a large para-military organisation in Weimar

Fatherland Unions" (Vereinigte Vaterlandische Verbande) - an artificial union of

we create an independent foundation, like a central conscience that would

Time of fate1 cannot be calculated or measured by the hourly mechanism;

2 Passage from "Thus spoke Zarathustra" (chapter "The Stillest Hour").

1Popular satirical political journal Simplicissimus, published in Munich since

doomed to a comic or tragic resentment of the humiliated and insulted.

caution of motion suddenly stopping? Seeing the monotonous mass of

contrary, it bodes intoxication. Only when intoxicated do people consider

becoming the first to reach the South Pole.

4 Quote from Goethe's "Faust,” part 1.

everyday phenomena act as symbols of a more significant life." Symbols not as

fatherland that could possibly already tomorrow belong to history. The

opinion, by impractical means. The phrase "Here I stand; I can do no

3Famous Martin Luther Phrase.

life's energy is amplified consciousness turns off. Divine inspiration,

be acquired, it is inherent, an essential property of life; just like character it

attempts to bury human dignity. By denying what is unique, that which