SV: Ernst Juenger on the Freikorps and Communism (long)

["Bertil Häggman" <bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se>]

>To move the discussion back to Juenger, you might be interested in some
>comments of Juenger's in a couple of articles from the 1920s (which I
>just happened to read today). He is less hostile to Marxism than one might
>think....


There was a time when EJ went to receptions of
the Soviet Embassy in Berlin and even participated,
if I remember correctly, in a study group on the
Soviet Union. It might be of value to remember
that this was a period of EJ that lasted only during
his "nationalist" period when dislike of the West
and the bourgeois was probably greater than that 
of Soviet communism. Then followed over 50 years
of dislike of totalitarian systems. Which is more
important?

>The first extracts are from "Die Geburt des Nationalismus aus dem Kriege",
>Deutsches Volkstum, 11 (1929), Heft 8, pp.576-582:
>
>[referring to armed internal conflict]: "Vor allem in den sich an den
>Kapp-Putsch anschliessenden Kämpfen im Ruhrgebiet war bereits eine
>ausgesprochene Haltung [bei den Kommunisten] wahrzunehmen, und an den
>späteren Formationen des Kommunismus ist ein positiver und kriegerischer
>Wille zur Macht nicht zu verkennen. Alles Konkrete aber ist zu begrüßen,
>denn es macht selbst den Widerstand förderlich und treibt nicht auf
>Kompromisse und Debatten, sondern auf Entscheidungen zu.
>
>Häufig wird man ein ähnliches Urteil aus dem Munde nationaler Aktivisten
>hören können, verbunden mit dem Bedauern, solchen Kräften im Kampfe
>gegenüberstehen zu müssen. Aber was hilft das alles, - wie sehr auch in
>der Frage der Verteilung der materiellen Güter Zugeständnisse möglich
>sind, so wenig kann es Frieden geben mit irgendeiner Macht, die sich der
>Nation versagt [...] (p. 579)"
>
>In other words, Juenger admired the fighters of the Red Army and looking
>back reckoned that whilst concessions could be made on the redistribution
>of wealth, the communists' international perspective prevented an
>alliance.


"One swallow does not make a summer", as we say in Sweden.
I am quite sure that EJ, even in the 1920s did not want a
communist "dictatorship of the proletariat" in Germany. But EJ
might have expressed admiration for individual Red Army
soldiers for their courage, not the ideology they stood for. 

>The second set of extracts are from the article "Revolution und
>Frontsoldatentum" in Gewissen, Jg. 7, No. 35 (31 August 1925), pp. 2-3:
>
>Juenger expresses his contempt for the spineless nature of the 1918
>revolutionaries who, he feels, did not really attempt to impose their
>ideas ruthlessly enough. He asks why the revolution did not attempt to
>mobilise national forces: "Die Antwort ist einfach. Es waren keine Ideen
>da [...] Leute waren schon da, sogar solche von stark revolutionärem
>Schlag. Sie gingen aber dorthin, wo sich der Einsatz lohnte, nämlich zu
>den Freikorps, die an der Ostgrenze kämpfte."
>
>He suggests that Noske was the only SPD leader who moved towards
>successful realisation of a will to power, but he was compromised by his
>inability to decide what side he was on. "Aber Noske besaß nicht das
>Format eines Machtmenschen vom Schlage Trotskis". He argues that the Red
>Army failed in Germany because it lacked a hard core of fighting
>expertise, but could have mobilised the national core if the Republic had
>entered an alliance with Russia against France. Again he argues that the
>nationalists and communists could have resolved the issue of property and
>scarcely conceals his admiration of the Russian Revolution in its
>brutality and consequence:
>
>"Sicher steht uns der Kommunismus als Kampfbewegung näher als die
>Demokratie [...] Aber der deutsche Kommunist war nicht der russische. Dort
>hatte man eine Idee und führte sie rücksichtslos durch [...] Man machte
>Geschichte, während man bei uns Redenarten machte. [...] Der russische
>Kommunismus hat einen nationalen Charakter. Für ihn erweitert der
>Internationalismus nur die Expansionsmöglichkeiten. Wenn unsere
>Kommunisten auch so viel Gehalt und Ueberzeugung besessen hätten, um zu
>einem solchen napoleonischen Internationalismus mit Berlin statt Moskau
>als Zentrum fähig zu sein, dann wären ihnen sicher Kräfte zugeströmt".


EJ was of course wrong (as often during this period). We
now know that Russian communism was not a national
communism at the time of Lenin and Stalin. Russian communism
was seeking world domination with the aid of Comintern and later
Cominform and the outlook was indeed internationalist.
Lenin: "Boycott war is a stupid phrase. Communists must take 
part even in the most reactionary war" "They must prepare for
the defeat of the imperialist powers at the hands of Soviet Russia".
Of course the nationalists were fools thinking that they could
join up with the Soviets to defeat the western allies.  If the Soviets
ever would have cooperated with the German nationalists, these,
in the unlikely event of Red Army victory, would have been
liquidated like chickens by the Red Army.

>To conclude, then, Juenger was not fundamentally hostile to Communism and
>in fact admired it especially in its Soviet form. He reserved his contempt
>for the half-hearted nature of the revolution. This was not unusual in the
>German nationalist camp and reached its pinnacle in the National
>Bolschevism around Ernst Niekisch. Even the Hamburg businessman Alfred
>Toepfer was full of admiration for the Soviet model. In "Der Arbeiter" he
>attempted to develop a theoretical perspective that would also encompass
>the five year plans in the Soviet Union as indicative of what he saw as
>the nature of modernity.


I still refer to the positive lines of EJ on the Freikorps. And to try
to make proto-communists out of the Freikorps fighters
is bound to fail.

Of course certain circles of the German nationalists admired the
Soviet system but I have my doubts concerning admiration for the
Red Army as the vanguard of international communist revolution.
In the end it was, in my opinion, only as mall minority of the
German nationalist that admired the Soviet system. Were they
ideologically close to marxism-leninism. I doubt it and of
course the term "national bolshevists" would be appropriate.
But national bolshevism had little to do with marxist-leninist
ideology.

And don't forget Eduard Stadtler and his "Antibolshevist movement"
financially supported by German industry and commerce. But I
seem to remember Ernst von Salomon writing about the Freikorps
in the Baltic states that he and other soldiers fighting the bolsheviks
were fascinated by the "ungeheueren neuen Kragft, die im Osten
entsteht", "Und drueben im heimlichen Dunkel barg sich jene
unbekannte, jene gestatlose Macht, die, halb bewundert von
uns und halb gehasst, unserem Draengen wehrte." But we know
know that this power was in the end a house crumbling, and 80 years after the fighting
in the Baltic states this power fell apart because, of course, it would not
recognise private property. I think it was Schiller who wrote
something about man not having anything to call his own is
prepared to murder and plunder.  EJ and others were of course
wrong in the 1920s and I, for one, am happy that EJ changed 
and became one of the great prognosticists in the 1980s and
1990s bringing up the risks of total belief in linear progress.

But a good try, JK.

Bertil Haggman