Эрнст Юнгер - A German Officer in Occupied Paris - The War Journals, 1941-1945

With Speidel last evening at La Roche-Guyon. The journey was complicated by the destruction of the Seine bridges. We drove back around midnight. Consequently, at headquarters, we missed the first reports of the landing by an hour. By morning, Paris had heard about it and been stunned by the news—especially Rommel, who was absent from La Roche-Guyon yesterday because he had driven to Germany for his wife’s birthday. That is merely one false note in the overture to this huge battle. The first troops that parachuted in were captured after midnight. Countless fleets and eleven thousand aircraft were deployed in the operation.

There is no doubt that this is the beginning of the great offensive that will make this a historic day. I was still surprised, precisely because so much had been predicted about it. Why now and why here? People will be talking about these questions well into the distant future.

Current reading: The History of Saint Louis by Joinville. I recently visited Husser in his apartment on Rue Saint-Placide, where he gave me an excerpt from the work to take home. In some scenes, such as the one of the landing of the Crusaders at Damietta, one sees humanity in the greatest glory it can achieve. Materialistic historiography only grasps things it can see. It does not recognize the variety that gives the fabric its color and pattern. This helps define our task: to rediscover the diversity of driving forces. This demands a more powerful objectivity than the positivistic approach.

Took a walk with the president in the evening. Two heavy tanks had halted on the Boulevard de l’Amiral-Bruix on their way to the front. The young soldiers were perched on their steel behemoths in the waning sunlight of the day in that kind of elation tinged with melancholy that I remember so well. They radiated a tangible aura of the imminence of death, the glory of hearts ready to embrace immolation.

Watched the way the machines retreated, disappeared with all their technological intricacy and grew simpler and more comprehensible as they did so, like the shield and lance that the hoplite [159] Hoplite: armed Greek warrior. leans against. And the way the lads sat on top of their tanks, warily eating and drinking with each other like betrothed people just before the ceremony, as if partaking of a spiritual meal.

As we were eating, Florence left the table to take a telephone call. When she returned she said: “ La Bourse reprend. On ne joue pas la paix .” [The stock market has rebounded. You don’t bet on peace.]

It seems that money has the subtlest feelers and when bankers assess the situation, they do so more meticulously and with greater precision than generals.

In the afternoon, I received a visit from Dr. Kraus, the ballistics expert. Conversation about my Brother Physicus and his work on suspension bridges and prime numbers. Then we talked about Cellaris, who is still in prison but for whom the hour of freedom will soon toll, as it also will for many thousands of his fellow sufferers.

We then talked about the so-called new weapon and the attempts to launch it. Kraus told me that a recent launch had taken an unexpected trajectory and landed on the Danish island of Bornholm. What’s more, this rocket was not only a dud, but by evening, the English had already photographed it. They were able to study its electromagnetic guidance system and immediately set up a power station with huge defensive capability in the southern part of their country.

The rumors surrounding this weapon make it possible to study destruction as the polar opposite of eros. Both possess a certain commonality, like positive and negative electrical charges. The whispers everywhere are very like the ones you hear that surround a lewd joke: no one is supposed to talk about it. At the same time, Kniébolo hopes that rumors he has carefully nurtured will circulate. The whole matter is highly nihilistic and stinks of the charnel house.

Back again on the Route de l’Impératrice on my way from Saint-Cloud to Versailles. I sunbathed again among the chestnut bushes in the little clearing. Each time I do this I think: this could be the last.

Visit to Husser in his apartment on Rue Saint-Placide where I want to store files, perhaps even seek shelter here for a few days. This is the base to my left in the Latin Quarter. The Doctoresse holds the center spot, and the secondhand bookseller Morin has the one on my right. Better than gold are those friends we have made.

I am reducing my luggage to a bare minimum. Kniébolo and his gang are predicting a swift victory. Just like the Anabaptist prince. [160] Reference to Jan Bockelson. See entry of Second Paris Journal , Kirchhorst, 29 February 1944. What figures the rabble follow, and how universal the ochlos [mob] has become.

Yesterday and the day before I again sensed the incubus, a weird constriction of the diaphragm that I was finally able to get rid of last night. Was there a danger that threatened me personally or others? I felt I had fended it off.

The army report states that the so-called Vergeltungswaffe [Reprisal Weapon] [161] The so-called V-weapons (V-1 and V-2) were long-range artillery rockets used against cities, particularly London in 1944–1945. has been launched. At the same time, the propaganda in the French factories describes the large areas of London have been reduced to rubble. The masses are gripped by a wave of jubilation. These flying bombs are said to produce a bright flash just before detonation and are one of the last ploys in this morass of destruction. If they had any utility as weapons and not merely as propaganda, they would be deployed at the site of the beachhead. One thing about this is quite genuine: the will to transform the living world into a wasteland and there achieve the victory of death. Nowadays anyone who expresses doubt in “reprisal” and “destruction” commits a sacrilege.

In the morning, Lieutenant Trott zu Solz entered my room; he is company commander of an Indian regiment—someone I haven’t seen since that fateful night in Überlingen. [162] See First Paris Journal , Paris, 23 February 1942. Once again he comes to me under portentous circumstances. Discussed the situation, particularly about General von Seidlitz, and then about the way Prussians have been victimized by the Party.

With Florence at midday. Heller was there; he had returned from Berlin and on the way his train was strafed. He told me that just after the landing Merline had submitted an urgent request for papers to the embassy and has already fled to Germany. I still find it curious how very much people who callously demand the heads of millions are afraid for their own paltry lives. The two things must be linked.

In the evening, there were sorties overhead and shrapnel rained into the courtyard of the Majestic. In the course of the bombardment, huge reserves of fuel and oil were hit, producing a thin cloud rising up to darken the heavens like the pine tree of Pliny the Younger. [163] Reference to Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. A huge bomber crashed near the Gare de l’Est [railroad station].

For the word Kettenglied [chain link] the French language has a special one: chaînon . Our south German (probably archaic) Schäkel comes from the same root. The chain maker is le chaînetier , for which we say Kettler , which is preserved as a surname.