SV: Juenger quote

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

>He does it because that is what he does. He is one of the great 
>chroniclers of the century and it is a crying shame that we'll never 
>read his diaries on the 20s and 30s. 


My speculation is that he writes what he writes
because he is overwhelmed by what he sees
of the German side on the Eastern front. Of course
he cannot visit the Soviet side Just putting the quote out
of context one could almost think EJ looked
upon Soviet practice as some sort of welfare
state of a socialist model. It would take some
reading of the latest diary volumes to show
that he since 1942 put some distance between
that experience. EJ lived for seven years after
the collapse of the SU, so he knew that the SU was
the same slaughter field as created by the national
socialists in the occupied territories of the SU. What
about the slaughter in Chechnya? In Georgia when
demonstrators were hacked to death with spades
by Soviet soldiers?

>What he makes of that view is expressed in what he says about it in 
>the following paragraph. When he says that "Bei solchen 
>Unterhaltung... deutlich [wird], wie tief die Technik bereits in das 
>Moralische eingedrungen ist" it is (in my view) for the Juenger of that 
>stage (10 years before in "Der Arbeiter" the very same sentence would 
>have meant a totally different ball game)  highly critical of the 
>sentiment.


I am sure the Caucasus experience contributed but I think
the two books of FGJ were more important to form his views
concerning Titanism. Events like the first atom bomb and
even Chernobyl were in my opinion more important as well
as biotechnology and other effects of the technological
development.


>I don't want to defend real life Communism in any way. I was born 
>in Berlin the year the wall was built, some fifty meters from it, and I 
>will always feel eternally grateful that I was on the "right" side of it. 
>
>My mother's mother, whom I cannot call my Grandmother, because I 
>never was to meet her,  was carried off and killed by the Russian in 
>East Prussia in 1945. 
>
>I know quite a few people who were in GDR jails for political reasons.


Of course I don't believe you would
defend the communist system.

>But I still think that our Western system wouldn't be what it is today 
>without the influence of communism and socialism on a society 
>where das Kapital ruled supreme.


Democratic socialism, yes, communism, no.
I am sure you don't want to mention democratic
socialism with marxism-leninism. And we will
see what market economy and globalization does 
for the world. There has been a few setbacks in 1998,
but market economy certainly beats state control any
day. The globalization process will take along, mistakes
will be made, but something good might emerge as an
end product. Probably new instruments for control
and advancement would be needed. The old ones
were created for the Cold War.

>That I (and most of German hinstorians) dispute hotly. The whole 
>thing of comparing numbers of people killed on this and that side is 
>to no avail. History is not a football game. 


Yes, we have heard that now for some time
and it is in my opionion not acceptable.
In the beginning of February 1999 Swedish party leaders
will discuss the possibility of a state funded
information project to inform of the crimes
of communism. This will be an addition to
the ongoing project of informing about the 
Holocaust and its effects. I mention this not to
claim that Sweden in any would be exemplary (far
from it) but as an example that at last the idea
is taking root in the Westr and the full information on
the horrors of communism cannot any longer be
barred by leftist intellectuals, that try to diminish
the guilt of the communists compared to the national
socialists.

>And on the whole Freikorps thing it would be interesting to compare 
>how people like Ernst Toller in  "Eine Jugend in Deutschland" and 
>Oskar Maria Graf experienced and described the fall of the 
>Räterepublik.


Yes, Olaf, you are right. It would be interesting. It is
much like comparing the Red and White side in Finland
during the Finnish civil war. But the fact remains:
Lenin and the CPSU planned world revolution and
tried to carry it out 1917 - 1923. The takeover of
Germany failed because Noske used the Free Corps
to put down Soviet supported revolutions in Germany.

>Sorry, I didn't mean the quote as you have read it. I was far from 
>saying that the Soviets were nice people who let Geisteskranke work, 
>while the bad Germans killed them. I just wanted to point out 
>Juenger's reaction (as his entry for the nest day that I quoted, too, 
>describes) is far from the eye for an eye, our terror is just a reaction to 
>their terror view that the third party in the above paragraph did 
>express.


No, not consciously but the impression
could be created by not analysing the
quote the way you do now. EJ did not of
course support counterterror but he
points out that such a reaction was possible.

>Again, as in my answer to Gary, I can only to my paper on Ernst 
>Juenger's Titanismus:
>
>http://www.snafu.de/~os/juenger/titan.htm
>
>I know that my views on the subject are quite different from yours, 
>but this is what this forum is for. So let's talk it over ;-)


Certainly, Olaf, I will read your paper carefully
and come back on this subject.


>I, as a German, still feel a big responsibility for what happened in 
>Germany and Europe 1933-45. I have to aks myself where I would 
>have been, what I would have done. And I can't answer that 
>question, because I simply don't know. The "sins" of communism are 
>not of my immediate concern.


Well, at this point I can only quote Richard Schwartz, a well known Swedish
journalist who had a fat act at Stasi headquarters as a Central Europe
correspondent, who writes extensively in large newspapers. He wrote 
recently in Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, one of the largest non-socialist
dailies  (28 Jan. 1998, my translation into English):

"There are things we have to forget as human beings:
otherwise life would be unbearable. That is also true
concerning societies.... Of course the past of the Germans
has been instrumentalised and used against them. It is a
fact that Auschwitz has provided Hollywood with an unending
reserve of German bandits...and generally allowed that 
a label was used concerning all Germans. They have known
their place. The bad conscience has spoken.

But for how long...." 

Yes, indeed, for how long, Olaf?

Best wishes from Swedish Siberia !

Bertil Haggman