Mankind had to learn that in the midst of the catastrophe none of the subtle systems and none of his teachings and writings could give him counsel — or at least only for ill. They all lead to murder and the cult of power. On the other hand in the whirlwinds of destruction, the truth of the great images of Holy Scripture became ever clearer — of its commandments, promises and revelations. In the symbols of the divine origin of the world, the creation, of mans fall, in the images of Cain and Abel, of the flood, of Sodom and Gomorrah and of the tower of Babel, in the psalms and in the prophets, and in the truth of the New Testament which transcends the base laws of the realm of terror — in all these is manifested to us the eternal framework which is the foundation of human history and human geography. Hence it is on this book that all oaths of alliance must be sworn as the men of Pitcairn island swore, survivors of shipwreck on a Pacific isle. They hunted each other there like wolves, until their higher nature finally brought them to peace.
On that island it was recognized that a return to the fundamentals was a moral necessity and on them they founded their social order. That is indicated in our case also. The people must be brought back to Christian morals, without which they are rendered as defenseless prey to destruction.1
The Peace is perhaps Jünger’s most straightforward presentation of his ideal vision for European society. While one can certainly get a glimpse of his political and theological views in various other works such as The Worker and The Forest Passage, it would be difficult to find an example of Jünger writing more clearly and directly about his political and theological views than in The Peace.
In The Peace, Jünger lays out his view of the war and how he believes Europe ought to move forward when it comes to an end.
When it comes to Jünger’s views on the war contained in The Peace, it is especially important that we remember the context of its writing. We can uncover a lot through the Author’s Foreword. Jünger began writing it in the winter of 1941 and the essay was completed in its final form in the summer of 1943. He says the manuscript was a “secret” and that it never got out despite his compatriots being imprisoned. He mentions by name a certain General von Stülpnagel, a “knightly man, under whose protection the essay came about.” Stülpnagel, for those who do not know, was one of the generals who participated in the 20 July plot against Hitler in 1944. He was in charge of the plot’s unfolding in France and ordered Hans Otfried von Linstow to imprison all the SS and Gestapo officers in Paris. However, as we know, the plot failed, and Stülpnagel would be tried for high treason and hanged. How does this relate to Jünger?
Jünger appears on the fringes of the Stauffenberg bomb plot. He was clearly an inspiration to anti-Nazi conservatives in the German Army, and while in Paris he was close to the old, mostly Prussian, officers who carried out the assassination attempt against Hitler. On 6 June 1944 Jünger went to Rommel's headquarters at La Roche-Guyon, arriving late at about 9 PM as the bridge at Mantes was down. Present were Rommel's chief-of-staff Hans Speidel, General Wagener, Colonel List, Consul Pfieffer, reporter Major Wilhelm von Schramm and Speidel's brother-in-law Max Horst (Rommel was in Germany). At 9.30 PM they went to Speidel's quarters to discuss "Der Friede" (The Peace), Jünger's 30-page peace proposal (written in 1943), to be given to the Allies after Hitler's demise or removal from power; also proposed is a united Europe. He returned about midnight. The next day at the Paris HQ Jünger was stunned by the news of the Normandy landings.2
Jünger was dismissed from the Army in August of 1944 but never punished further. His eldest son, Ernst Jr., was imprisoned on sham charges and sent to Penal Unit 999 where he was killed in Carrara, Italy.3 There was suspicion that the SS had killed him, but this has never been confirmed.
With this context in mind, let us delve into the content of The Peace, beginning with Part I, The Seed.
The quote he attaches to Part I foreshadows his conclusion:
The hatred, which is completely conquered by love, becomes love; and such love is then stronger than if hatred had not preceded it.
Spinoza, Ethics, 44th Theorem
Jünger begins by acknowledging the suffering which occurred (and would continue to occur) throughout the war. He says that “a great treasure of sacrifice has been gathered as a basis for the re-building of the world.” This sacrifice was gathered from all those that suffered during the war: soldiers, workers, the weak, and the innocent. He speaks of their sacrifice with great reverence but points out that their sacrifice must be the basis for a new peace. Their struggle, their suffering, their loss of life must be the seed which bears good fruit once the war was over. This is strongly opposed to the nihilistic outlook of suffering which sees it as essentially meaningless, a view that would dominate after the war.
One important point Jünger makes is that we must conceive of the war “not as a trial of arms between peoples and states, between nations and races, but rather as a universal civil war which split the world into mysterious, all the more terrible fronts.” This may appear to be an odd thing to say, since the mythos that we have received today about the war is that it was a war between races and nations. However, as Jünger notes, the war was more ideologically charged and was not merely a war in the realm of land and material; it was a war of ideas. And according to Jünger, “the man who believes he fights for ideas and ideals is possessed by greater ruthlessness than he who merely defends his country’s frontiers.” Civil wars are typically characterized by different factions fighting one another over opposed ideals. The strife arises from an inability to reconcile differences that ultimately stem from competing ideas of how to live and govern. In this way, the Second World War was clearly a war of ideology that transcended national boundaries and historical conventions, and which resulted in horrors that surpass any other war; horrors that are more common in civil wars.
He continues:
Even more somber [than the deaths which occurred on the battlefield] becomes the picture of suffering in those places where the world was turned into a mere slaughterhouse, to a flayinghouse whose stench poisoned the air far and wide.
In the forcing-house of war and civil war the great theories of the past century bore fruit as they were applied in practice.'…
Soon the last free voices had to keep silence, and even the sounds of terror died away in the terrible stillness which surrounded prison and cemetery. Only dark rumors hinted at the gruesome revels where police and torturers feasted on the humiliation, on the blood of their victims. For distant ages these will remain our century’s blot of shame; no one will be respected whose heart and eyes were insensible to what happened there.
The imagery here is deeply reminiscent of that in On the Marble Cliffs, which was written in 1939. In that novella, Jünger describes a horrific human slaughterhouse in the middle of a dark forest. Jünger goes even further on this point and laments the great injustices which were committed during the war. I found this to be an especially striking passage:
The number of Golgothas where the disenfranchised were slaughtered is enormous. The crime of which the unfortunates were accused was merely that of existing, the stigma of their birth. They fell because they were sons of their people, of their fathers, of their race, as hostages, as adherents of a disinherited creed, as disseminators of their faith, which laws invented overnight has decreed to be a mortal taint.
From out of this waste of suffering there rise somberly the names of the great seats of murder where in a last and final frenzy they attempted to root out whole peoples, whole races, whole classes, and where leaden tyranny in league with technical efficiency celebrated endless bloody nuptials.
He is undeniably referring to the Holocaust, and we can get a clear picture of exactly what Jünger thought about this event as well as the other mass murders that occurred throughout the war. He even seems to suggest support of a public war crime process, saying, “These scenes of horror…will be brought to light only when the lost souls who played the hangman there, together with their superiors, are forced to break silence before the courts.” In the end he attributes all this to “the evil spirit of the rabble which there is darkness practiced its grisly arts.” Yet again, we can see the similarities between his imagery here and that of On the Marble Cliffs, as he frequently describes the Head Forester’s supporters and army as rabble.
Overall, Jünger viewed the war as a continuation of a world struggle which was already underway—as a time of great suffering for both soldiers and civilians, both of whom were caught up the bloodshed of a great ideological struggle. Nevertheless, he considered the war to be a turning point and an opportunity for growth and future prosperity, so long as the world handled the coming peace correctly. The suffering of millions does not have to be in vain and, in fact, could be the seed that gives rise to good fruit. The hatred of the civil war has the potential to lead to love and human fraternity which would be far stronger than a love not built upon great suffering. It is at this point that he lays out his vision for post-war Europe in Part II, The Fruit.
The quote attached to Part II, like that of Part I, gives us an idea of the conclusions Jünger comes to:
Not in the even course of the bourgeois world, but in the thunder of Apocalypse are religions reborn.
Walter Schubart, Europa und die Seele des Ostens
If there are two words which could characterize Jünger’s post-war vision, they would be “Christian Imperium.”
Jünger believes that the time of the nation state must give way to imperial powers. He notes that “the dominant spirit of the age aims at consolidation” and that it is time for coalitions and empires, not national democracies. He rejects the folly of Versailles, that is, the notion that peace could be achieved by taking land from one nation and giving it to another, or by imposing harsh penalties and pursuing victor’s justice. Instead, the peace must be guided by reason and aim towards greater unity:
The nations must not, therefore, acquire new territories at the cost of others: their aggrandizement must rather take place with the assent and aid of all concerned. That is, the old frontiers must be broken down by new alliances, and new, greater empires must unite the nations. This is the only way in which the fratricidal struggle can be concluded justly and to the advantage of all.
The idea that everyone must win and gain something in the peace is key to Jünger’s vision. “That this war must be won by all signifies, then, that none must lose it.” This is an incredibly radical vision to modern ears and may seem odd considering the first part. Today people look at the Second World War and conclude that we ended it in the only way possible: complete and total victory by the Allied powers to the point of utterly destroying Germany and Japan for decades to come. Jünger of course realizes that there will be a “victor” who comes out as the winner of the war, but he asserts that the winner will bear a great responsibility for ensuring that everyone benefits in the peace, even the loser. “War is won in opposition; the peace will be won in collaboration.” Any peace, then, must be one that is built on all involved and not just a select few. It must include even the vanquished.
Further, Jünger sees that the world is increasingly global and that spheres are expanding:
The pattern of the war itself foreshadows unification…all nations of the earth are involved in it and suffer from it. That is no mere chance; it is a sign that the world is striving towards a new pattern and a new character as man’s common fatherland. For the first time, the earth as a globe, as a planet, has become the battlefield, and human history presses on towards the planetary order. That is being prepared by the division of the earth into great territories.
Additionally, changes in technology are what facilitates this globalization:
What the steam-engine, coal, railways, and telegraphy were for the development and unification of the national state, electrical science, the combustion engine, flight, radio, and the forces streaming out of the atom are, in their turn and at new levels, in other spheres.
This is only truer today with the existence of the internet, which allows for instant communication between anyone, anywhere, and the participation in a truly global economy. Jünger simply points out the obvious: the world is becoming more global and that is a trend which is being facilitated by technology and war. To think that the peace and the order which emerges after the war ought to follow older, antiquated forms is simply foolish. The peace must be global in nature.
After making this point, Jünger arrives at the question of justice. This is a very delicate question given the nature of the war and the suffering it entailed. Following the logic of what he said about the need for collaboration and mutual victory, Jünger states that “the determination to create justice must have order and healing as its aim” rather than “revenge” and “passion.” Nevertheless, he acknowledges that justice must be thorough:
There is too much stupid, senseless tyranny and oppression of the defenseless, too many executioners and their assistants, too many torturers great and small, for the gulf to close before justice has been measured out in full. But it is important that the crimes should stand revealed for all time; and that will be possible only by justice, never through revenge. Justice is by nature like a light which intensifies the shadows. The less justice draws its inspiration from the passions, the more clearly the crime stands out in its ugliness.
With that, I conclude Part I of my review. Part II can be found below:
This quote and all others from The Peace come from the Rogue Scholar Press edition which can be purchased here.
Ibid.