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

Never for a moment may I forget that I am surrounded by unfortunate people who endure the greatest suffering. What kind of human being, what kind of officer, would I be otherwise? This uniform obligates me to provide protection wherever possible.

To his credit, he never attempted to justify or explain away the Holocaust, even though the brutality of the eastern front did not affect Jews alone. But he did place these “wicked crimes” in a cosmic context that deprived individual actors of agency. “Ancient chivalry is dead; wars are waged by technicians,” he wrote. Two years to the day after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, he observed with bitterness that demagogues brought Germany into a war with the Soviets that could have been avoided, leading to atrocities against the Jews, which “enrage the cosmos against us.” [29] Ernst Jünger, Second Paris Journal , Paris, 22 June 1943. At the end of 1942, he made three New Year’s resolutions, the second of which reads, “Always have a care for unfortunate people.”

Jünger’s tour on the eastern front is notable for its sharp contrast to his privileged existence in Paris. There he was able to enjoy the luxury of French comforts, good food, and socializing among refined company, despite increased rationing of almost all commodities as the war progressed. But even on the eastern front, he discovered that his reputation as an author was a tremendous help:

I had no idea that little things like a pocket mirror, knife, sewing thread, or string are precious items here. Luckily I constantly come across people who help me. Not infrequently they are some of my readers, whose help I count among my fortune. [30] Jünger, Notes from the Caucasus , Rostov, 22 November 1942.

On 11 January 1943, Jünger took the night train from Lötzen (today Giżycko in northeastern Poland), stopping in Leisnig, halfway between Leipzig and Dresden. He arrived home in Kirchorst on 9 February. He calls his wife “Perpetua” in the diaries, and she frequently appeared in his dreams while in Paris. But marital troubles dominated the visit in Kirchhorst. Many female accomplices are mentioned in the diaries, including Camillea, Charmille, Mme. d’Armenonville, Mme. Dancart, and most often the Doctoresse . [31] Schwilk tracks down all various female relationships in Ernst Jünger: Ein Jarhundertleben , 373–405. These were probably all the same person, Sophie Ravoux, with whom Jünger had an intimate affair. [32] See Mitchell, The Devil’s Captain . Jünger finally ended the relationship sometime between 1946 and 1947. The correspondence between Jünger and Sophie Ravoux is held by the German Literature Archive at Marbach. The Russian writer Umm El-Banine, who opened many doors for him in Paris, was also probably a lover.

When he departed again for Paris on 18 February, he left behind letters and diary entries that his wife Gretha read with an eagle eye and sharp intuition. Gretha had already been upset about his pleasurable lifestyle in Paris while she had to manage a household and deal with Allied bombing raids. She might have forgiven his sexual escapades were it not for an emotional coldness she felt in his presence during his stay. “Perpetua” turns out to be an apt nickname because it recalls those women who did housekeeping chores in Catholic monasteries. She wrote him on 20 February 1943, threatening a divorce. Jünger managed to patch things up with her but not without many protestations of his love and devotion, as well as some soul-searching. She demanded that he completely cut off contact with the despised Sophie Ravoux, the relationship with whom, Jünger maintained, was entirely platonic.

All of this is barely mentioned in the war journals. One has to read between the lines, as in this diary entry:

A word to men. Our position with respect to two different women can resemble that of the judge pronouncing a Solomonic verdict, yet we are also the child. We deliver ourselves into the custody of the one who does not want to cut us in half. [33] Jünger, Second Paris Journal , Paris, 6 March 1943.

Gretha was not the only observer to resent Jünger’s Nietzschean penchant for turning his life into a work of art. Although the war journals offer a unique perspective from “inside the Belly of the Leviathan” as Jünger put it, some critics have accused the writer of posing as a flâneur and dandy while others suffered. In one famous scene, Jünger climbed up to the roof of the Hotel Raphael and, holding a glass of red burgundy, observed bombers flying over Paris, as fires engulfed the city and "its red towers and domes, was a place of stupendous beauty, like a calyx that they fly over to accomplish their deadly act of pollination.” [34] Jünger, Second Paris Journal , Paris, 27 May 1944. On 27 May 1943, however, there were no air strikes over Paris. The strawberry swimming in red burgundy may have been, as Tobias Wimbauer speculates, derived from an erotic impulse rather than an actual observation of events. [35] See Tobias Wimbauer, “Kelche sind Körper: Der Hintergrund der Erdbeeren in Burgunder-Szene,” Ernst Jünger in Paris: Ernst Jünger, Sophie Ravoux, die Burgunderszene und eine Hinrichtung (Hagen-Berchum: Eisenhut Verlag, 2011), 9–75. Another possibility is that Jünger did witness a bombing raid but simply wrote down the wrong date in the journal. He often wrote diary entries at later dates than the events described and constantly reworked the texts.

Whatever moral judgment one wishes to make about the aesthetics of violence, which is evident in many places in the journals, Jünger’s account is an indispensable firsthand reflection of Paris under the German occupation and provides sharply observed portraits of contemporaries as they struggled with the destruction of Europe at the end of a second Thirty Years’ War.

In the winter of 1943–1944, Jünger’s reflections turned gloomy and often apocalyptic as he systematically studied the entire Old and New Testaments. Jünger viewed the war through the lens of God’s judgment for the evil perpetrated by mankind, as well as the promise, with the return of God through Christ, of everlasting grace and renewal. He was too sophisticated to take the gospels literally, and furthermore he had been brought up by his positivist, scientifically trained father to be skeptical. [36] See Jünger, Second Paris Journal , Paris, 28 May 1944, upon the completion of his reading of the Apocalypse . Nevertheless, he viewed the period as if the two world wars were a test for mankind. He held out hopes for a renewal of Christianity after a descent into nihilism. His “Appeal to the Youth of the World,” The Peace treatise, was written in this spirit and was suffused with his Bible studies. Throughout 1944 he tinkered with the script, and the intended audience expanded beyond youth, to include a general appeal for a postwar metahistorical transformation of all nations.

In 1944 news of Allied armies conquering Italy and the Soviets pushing into Eastern Prussia and Poland confirmed his worst fears about Germany’s fate. He noted with deep sadness the destruction of German cities, of which he learned through letters from friends and saw firsthand during his travels by train from Paris back to Kirchhorst while on furlough.

On 27 March 1944, Jünger was visited in Paris by Lieutenant Colonel Cäsar von Hofacker, a liaison between Carl Heinrich von Stülpnagel and the group of officers around Hofacker’s cousin, Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who was the central figure in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. On that afternoon, Hofacker took a walk with Jünger on the Avenue Kléber and informed him that Stülpnagel was under observation and Jünger himself was viewed with suspicion. Hofacker suggested he leave Paris and go to Marseilles for a while. The young colonel also filled him in on many of the details of the plot, called Operation Valkyrie , and listed the main conspirators. On 20 July 1944, Stauffenberg brought a bomb in an attaché case into Hitler’s “ Wolf’s Lair” in East Prussia. Stauffenberg left just before the explosion, which injured but did not kill Hitler, shielded as he was by a heavy concrete table.