Cultural Amnesia
“After the war, his book In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel) launched him on a literary career that amounts to as big a problem for the student of twentieth-century humanism as Bertolt Brecht’s. In Jünger’s case, however, the problem came from the other direction. Jünger emerged from the trenches as a believer in national strength, which he thought threatened by liberal democracy. Though he never gave his full allegiance to the Nazis, he was glad to accept military rank in the Wehrmacht, and wrot...e approvingly about the invasion of France, in which he accompanied one of the forward units. After the plot against Hitler’s life in July 1944 he fell under suspicion, but his prestige and his Pour le Mérite made him untouchable. Never an active conspirator, he thought he was fulfilling his duty to civilized values merely by despising Hitler. The thought of killing him did not occur. In his post-war years, Jünger wrote contemptuously against the apparatchiks of the East German regime, who found it easy to condemn him for his right-wing track record, describing him in their official literary lexicon as “an especially dangerous exponent of West German militaristic and neofascist literature.”MoreLess
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