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

NOTES

1

Ernst Jünger, First Paris Journal, Paris, 18 August 1942.

2

Of the many reliable biographies, see most recently Thomas Amos, Ernst Jünger (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011); Allan Mitchell, The Devil’s Captain: Ernst Jünger in Nazi Paris, 1941–1944 (New York: Berghahn, 2011); Heimo Schwilk, Ernst Jünger: Ein Jarhundertleben (Munich: Piper, 2007); Helmuth Kiesel, Ernst Jünger: die Biographie (Munich: Siedler, 2007); Steffen Martus, Ernst Jünger (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001). Also important from the 1990s are Paul Noack, Ernst Jünger: eine Biographie (Berlin: Fest, 1998); Thomas R. Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany: Into the Abyss (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Martin Meyer, Ernst Jünger (Munich: Hanser, 1990). Of earlier biographies, see Gerhard Loose, Ernst Jünger, Gestalt und Werk (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1957).

3

See Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 66–73.

4

Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

5

See the latest edition: Armin Mohler and Karlheinz Weissmann, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932 (Graz: Ares Verlag, 2005). Jünger’s journalistic writings of the period have been collected and annotated by Sven Olaf Berggötz, ed. Ernst Jünger: Politische Publizistik 1919 bis 1933 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2001).

6

Ernst Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben, 1889–1945, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1980).

7

See Marcus Paul Bullock, The Violent Eye: Ernst Jünger’s Visions and Revisions on the European Right (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 180–84.

8

Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capricios, trans. Thomas Friese (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2012).

9

See Karl Heinz Bohrer, Ästhetik des Schreckens: die pessimistische Romantik und Ernst Jüngers Frühwerk (Hamburg: Ullstein, 1983).

10

Schwilk, Ernst Jünger: Ein Jarhundertleben, 320–21.

11

Ernst Jünger, “Über Nationalismus und Judenfrage,” Süddeutsche Monatshefte 12 (September 1930): 843–45.

12

On recent debates about Jünger and his brother Friedrich Georg’s complicated relationship to Jews and Judaism, see Thomas Bantle, Alexander Pschera, and Detlev Schöttker (Eds.), Jünger Debatte Band 1: Ernst Jünger and das Judetum (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2017).

13

Interview with Ernst Jünger in L’Express, 11–17 January 1971, 105.

14

Thilo von Throta, “Das endlose dialektische Gespräch,” Völkischer Beobachter, 22 October 1932.

15

Noack, Ernst Jünger, 126.

16

Elliot Yale Neaman, A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature After Nazism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 104.

17

Inge Jens, Dichter zwischen rechts und links (Munich: Pieper, 1971), 33–35.

18

Ernst Jünger, “Auf den Marmorklippen,” Sämtliche Werke, 18 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978–2003), 15:265.

19

“It was horrible to hear what [General Alfred] Jodl reported about Kniébolo’s [i.e., Hitler’s] objectives” (Jünger, First Paris Journal, 8 February 1942). See also 6 April 1942 and many other entries.

20

On Jünger’s relationship to La Rochelle, see Julien Hervier, Deux individus contre l’Histoire: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle et Ernst Jünger (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978).

21

“At the German Institute this afternoon. Among those there was Merline. Tall, raw-boned, strong, a bit ungainly, but lively during the discussion—or more accurately, during his monologue” (Jünger, First Paris Journal, 7 December 1941). The German Institute was headed by Karl Epting, an anti-Semitic and anti-French novelist. The Nazis hoped to use the Institute to undermine French culture and indoctrinate the French with German culture and language along National Socialist lines. The Institute was not collaborationist because the goal was to prepare the French for their diminution to an agrarian state and submission to the German yoke. Jünger did not share those goals in the least, but he had a soft spot for Catholic French writers.

22

David M. Halperin, What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 71.

23

Florence Gould had various pseudonyms; see Mitchell, The Devil’s Captain, 82–84.

24

See Neaman, A Dubious Past, 143–44.

25

Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany, 169.

26

See Horst Mühleisen, “Im Bauch des Leviathan: Ernst Jünger, Paris und der militärische Widerstand,” in Aufstand des Gewissens, ed. Thomas Vogel (Hamburg: Mittler, 2000), 454. In the correspondence between Gershom Sholem and Jünger, the latter inquires whether Jünger had tried to help Walter Benjamin be released from a French internment camp. After so many years he couldn’t remember, but it is possible, he responds. See Ernst Jünger and Gershom Scholem, “Briefwechsel 1975–1981” Sinn und Form 61 (2009): 293–302. See also Scholem’s letter of 17 May 1982.

27

Ernst Jünger, Notes from the Caucasus, Kutais, 31 December 1942.

28

Jünger, First Paris Journal, Paris, 7 June 1942.

29

Ernst Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Paris, 22 June 1943.

30

Jünger, Notes from the Caucasus, Rostov, 22 November 1942.

31

Schwilk tracks down all various female relationships in Ernst Jünger: Ein Jarhundertleben, 373–405.

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.

33

Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Paris, 6 March 1943.

34

Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Paris, 27 May 1944.

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.

36

See Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Paris, 28 May 1944, upon the completion of his reading of the Apocalypse.

37

Neaman, A Dubious Past, 122–26.

38

See André Rousseaux, “Ernst Jünger a Paris,” Le Figaro littéraire, 13 October 1951.

39

Schwilk fills in the details Jünger leaves out in the journals in Ernst Jünger: Ein Jarhundertleben, 415–419.

40

Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Paris, 21 July 1944.

41

Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York: Penguin, 2008), 640.

42

His pseudonym in the journals is “Bogo.”

43

Schwilk, Ernst Jünger: Ein Jarhundertleben, 436.

44

See especially Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Paris, 29 January 1944 and 21 July 1944. After World War I, General Ludendorff and other officers spread the theory that communists and Jews had conspired to rob the German army of victory in the last months of the war—had “stabbed the nation in the back.”

45

Ernst Jünger, Kirchhorst Diaries, Kirchhorst, 7 September 1944.

46

Jünger, Second Paris Journal, Kirchhorst, 13 April 1944.

47

Wolf Jobst Siedler, Ein Leben wird besichtigt: in der Welt der Eltern (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2000), 334. Ernstel’s body was later exhumed and returned to Jünger’s last domicile at Wilflingen, which provided evidence of the supposition that he had been executed.

48

Jünger, Kirchhorst Diaries, Kirchhorst, 14 January 1945.

49

Jünger, Kirchhorst Diaries, Kirchhorst, 29 March 1945.

50

Jünger, Kirchhorst Diaries, Kirchhorst, 11 April 1945.

51

See Neaman, A Dubious Past, chap. 7.

52

See Gerhard Nebel, Ernst Jünger: Abenteuer des Geistes (Wuppertal: Marées Verlag, 1949). Nebel is mentioned thirteen times in the war journals and was a trusted confidante. See Jünger, First Paris Journal, Paris, 11 October 1941, in which Jünger discusses with Nebel “the matter of the safe.”

53

See Georg Simmel, Philosophische Kultur: Über das Abenteuer, die Geschlechter und die Krise der Moderne (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1983), 14.

54

See the introduction by Eliah Bures and Elliot Neaman in Jünger, The Adventurous Heart, xiii–lii.

55

Ernst Jünger, Sämtliche Werke, 9:83.

56

See, for example, his descriptions from the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a park on the northern edge of the Bois de Boulogne, which until 1931 exhibited foreign peoples, mainly Africans, in a kind of “human zoo,” but by the time Jünger visited only animals were on display (Jünger, First Paris Journal, Paris, 16 September 1942).

57

Jünger, Notes from the Caucasus, Voroshilovsk, 26 November 1942.

58

See Ernst Jünger, “Sicilian Letter to the Man in the Moon,” in Jünger, The Adventurous Heart, 121–130.

59

Jünger, “Sicilian Letter,” 130.

60

I borrow here the term “Unschuld des Werdens” (innocence of becoming) from the title given by Alfred Bäumler to a collection of some of Nietzsche’s unpublished works. See Die Unschuld des Werdens: Der Nachlass, ausgewählt und geordnet von Alfred Baeumler (Leipzig: Kröner, 1931). Although Bäumler was a prominent advocate of aligning Nietzsche’s philosophy with National Socialism, the phrase cogently captures an essential characteristic of Nietzsche’s attempt to reverse early modern pessimism, as well as Jünger’s notion of Heiterkeit (a combination of serenity and cheerfulness). Jünger of course breaks with Nietzsche by embracing multiple levels of reality below the surface of visual perception, a notion that Nietzsche scoffed at as a Platonic illusion. See Jünger, First Paris Journal, Paris, 7 January 1942 and 10 March 1942.

61

Jünger, First Paris Journal, Paris, 8 October 1942.

62

Günter Figal and Heimo Schwilk, Die Magie der Heiterket: Ernst Jünger zum Hundertsten (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1995).

63

Figal and Schwilk, Die Magie der Heiterket, 7.

64

I am indebted to Eliah Bures for this observation.

65

Richard Herzinger in this context coined the phrase “Übermoderne,” a deeper version of postmodernity. See “Werden wir alle Jünger?” Kursbuch 122 (December 1995): 93–117.

1

E. J. applies to Wagner categories from Nietzsche, which include a caricature of the composer as sorcerer.

2

Nietzsche contra Wagner (published 1895) refers to a critical essay written by Nietzsche that collects earlier passages from his writings focused particularly on Wagner’s religion. It promoted a major aesthetic debate about music and the role of the composer.

3

Quai: public path along a waterway; a wharf or bank where ships’ cargo is unloaded.

4

Member of the female Wehrmacht auxiliary.

5

The Arc de Triomphe stands at the center of this junction of twelve avenues that form a star (étoile) pattern, hence the “Square of the Star.” In 1970 the square was officially renamed Place Charles de Gaulle. E. J. usually refers to this spot simply as the Étoile.

6

Perpetua: E. J.’s pseudonym for his wife, Grethe. See Glossary of Proper Names for pseudonyms and nicknames.

7

Knacker’s yard: a slaughterhouse for old or injured horses.

8

Subtiles: Cryptopleurum subtile, the brown mushroom beetle, a collecting passion of E. J. who was an accomplished amateur entomologist. In 1967, he published a book on his beetle collecting forays with the punning title, Subtile Jagden [Subtile Hunts].

9

Mme. Richardet’s aunt.

10

Reference to a work by the Roman satirist Decimus Junius Juvenal that mentions a satirical book (possibly two, now lost) by Caesar answering eulogies on Cato—the so-called Anticato or Anticatones. The implication is to a gesture indicating a man’s penis as big or as long as these works, which would have been written on papyrus rolls.

11

Reference to the explosion of the hydrogen-filled passenger airship Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937.

12

Kniébolo: E. J.’s pseudonym for Hitler, an invented name that echoes diavolo (devil).

13

A reference to Thomas Mann’s novel Lotte in Weimar [The Beloved Returns, 1939].

14

Quotation from Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, fifth-century Roman writer.

15

This luxury hotel on Avenue Kléber served as headquarters of the German military command in occupied France.

16

Sea Lion (Ger. Seelöwe), code name for the plan to invade Great Britain.

17

Des Esseintes: character in Huysmans’s Against the Grain.

18

In May 1941, Rudolf Hess astonished the world with his flight to Scotland, where he hoped to be granted an audience with King George VI and sue for peace with Germany. He was imprisoned and later tried in Nuremberg.

19

Duk-Duk dancers: males of the Tolai people of Papua New Guinea invoke the male spirit duk duk in their ritual dances with elaborate masks and costumes.

20

Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (1888).

21

Chypre (French for Cyprus): a perfume developed in 1917 by François Coty from Mediterranean ingredients.

22

Recte: Fumeurs d’Opium, 1896 [Smokers of Opium].

23

Jünger was quartered in the luxury hotel Raphael on Avenue Portugais, quite close to the Hotel Majestic.

24

Rastignac: character in the novels of Honoré de Balzac.

25

Lemures: vengeful spirits in Roman mythology. E. J. uses the term to refer euphemistically to the executioners and butchers of the NS regime. His source is Goethe’s Faust where the Lemuren serve Mephistopheles as gravediggers. This translation retains the Latin form.

26

On 21 August, a German naval cadet was assassinated in Paris, which ignited a string of assassinations of German military officers in France. French hostages were taken in reprisal and many were executed. Despite Hitler’s directive to execute 100 hostages for every German killed, General Otto von Stülpnagel resisted the order, which he thought would only fuel French resistance.

27

Ernstel, affectionate diminutive of Ernst, E. J.’s elder son. See Glossary of Proper Names.

28

Reference to E. J.’s novel, Auf den Marmorklippen [On the Marble Cliffs]. As soon as the work was published in 1939, it was considered a roman à clef in both Nazi and anti-Nazi circles and made enemies for E. J. within the regime.

29

Stavrogin: character in Dostoevsky’s novel Demons (1872).

30

Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky: character in Dostoevsky’s Demons.

31

Friedrich Georg Jünger, E. J.’s younger brother.

32

Prose piece by E. J., which appeared in the collection Das Abenteuerliche Herz (1938).

33

Sancho Panza: character in Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605).

34

Reference to Burckhardt’s influential work, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (German original, 1860).

35

Imagism: reference to literary movement of the early twentieth century that emphasized the precision of concrete pictorial symbols.

36

Gerhardt Nebel’s two-page essay, “Auf dem Fliegerhorst” [“On the Military Airbase”], appeared in the Neue Rundschau (October 1941) and compared fighter airplanes to insects. This was interpreted as a criticism of the Luftwaffe and led to his demotion.

37

Reference to flamboyant Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who loved to hunt and often appeared in elaborate hunting garb. E. J.’s fictional character of the Head Forester appears in Auf den Marmorklippen [On the Marble Cliffs, 1939].

38

Manfred, Graf [Count] von Keyserling.

39

Cauldron: refers to the German Kesselschlacht or cauldron-battle, a military maneuver involving encirclement, in which an enemy is surrounded, as if in a soup kettle.

40

Conditions in the bone mills of the Industrial Revolution were particularly noxious. Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) describes the plight of workers in Manchester, England.

41

E. J. refers to Joseph Conrad’s An Outcast of the Islands (1896) in English.

42

Cheka: Russian secret police.

43

For E. J., the Greek demos (common people) connotes mob, rabble.

44

Line from Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem “An Zimmern” (1812).

45

Creed: refers to the phrase in the Nicene Creed, “and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.”

46

Köppelsbleek: The old Germanic name E. J. gives to the equivalent of a concentration camp in On the Marble Cliffs. That place has all the attributes of a gothic horror tale, including a torture chamber where a dwarf flays and dismembers corpses.

47

E. J. coins the euphemism Schinderhütte for concentration camp to evoke a shack where victims are tortured. Meanings of schinden include “to flay,” “to skin,” “to overwork,” “to mistreat.” This translation uses “charnel house” for the concept.

48

Ad patres, “to my fathers,” that is, die.

49

Reference to Francisco Goya’s Desastros de la Guerra (Disasters of War), a series of prints depicting gruesome scenes from the Peninsular War (1808–1814).

50

Cousin of Otto, the former commander-in-chief.

51

Reference to apocalyptic visions of violent social disruption In Grillparzer’s tragedy Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg (1848) [Family Strife in Habsburg].

52

E. J. refers to the folk superstition that one should always have money in one’s pocket upon hearing the first cry of the cuckoo, for then one’s pockets will always have money.

53

Affectionate nickname for Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (1740–1786).

54

Reference to Goethe’s last words.

55

E. J.’s own Gärten und Strassen [Gardens and Streets] had recently appeared in French.

56

Parc de Bagatelle is an arboretum on the grounds of Chateau Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne in the western suburbs of Paris. E. J. often refers to this favorite spot simply as Bagatelle.

57

Chouans: refers to members of the Royalist uprising against the French Revolution.

58

Lines from the poem “Patmos” by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843).

59

From Fleurs du Mal: Amis de la science et de la volupté / Ils cherchent le silence et l’horreur des ténèbres; / L’Erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres, /S’ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté. “Friends of learning and sensual pleasure / They seek the silence and the horror of darkness; / Erebus would have used them as his gloomy steeds / If their pride had let them stoop to bondage” (William Aggeler, trans., The Flowers of Evil [Fresno, California, 1954]).

60

Presumably for astrological implications.

61

See First Paris Journal, Kirchhorst, 18 May 1942.

62

Sédan: French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870). After his superiors had surrendered, General Wimpffen negotiated the French capitulation of eighty-two thousand troops.

63

Reference to a 1926 German film, Die Strasse des Vergessens [The Street of Forgetting].

63

Reference to Hamlet’s thought that he “could be bounded in a nutshell” and still count himself a king of infinite space.

65

Biedenhorn: character in E. J.’s novel, On the Marble Cliffs.

66

OC: “Organization Consul,” an ultra-nationalist paramilitary group during the Weimar Republic.

67

Landsknecht: fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German mercenary soldiers connoting toughness and raw strength.

68

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: 9 CE, in which Germanic tribes under Arminius [Hermann] defeated three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus.

69

Figure of the worker: refers to an essay by E. J. entitled Der Arbeiter [The Worker] (1932).

70

Septembriseurs carried out widespread murders of prisoners during the French Revolution (September 1792), as called for by Marat.

71

E. J. refers to Robert Dodsley, The Oeconomy of Human Life (1750), which was a collection of moral observations attributed to ancient Indian authors and an anonymous translator.

72

Peter Schlemihl: refers to the novella by Adelbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1814) [Peter Schlemihl’s Wondrous Story] in which the protagonist sells his shadow to the devil and leads a life of fear and concealment ever after.

73

Thebais: also Thebaid, a Latin epic poem by Publius Statius (45–95 CE) that includes a vision of the underworld.

74

See entry for Paris, 28 June 1942, in which E. J. refers to a book with the same description, which suggests an occasionally erratic chronology of personal material.

75

Reference to a publication by E. J., Myrdun. Briefe aus Norwegen [Myrdun. Letters from Norway] (Oslo, 1943), a special soldiers’ edition produced by the German Military Command in Norway to be distributed to the troops.

76

Veil of Maya: in Indian philosophy this concept signifies the world as illusion and appearance.

77

Reference to Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts [The Myth of the Twentieth Century], an ideologically biased history of the human race based on fallacious theories of biological determinism.

78

Reference to the murder-suicide of the writer Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) and his friend Henriette Vogel. He suffered from depression, and she was terminally ill.

79

Alcor and Mizar are double stars in the handle of Ursa Major and together are called the “horse and rider.”

80

Reference to the asylum granted Martin Luther in Wartburg Castle in 1521 by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. Here he translated the New Testament from Greek into German.

1

E. J. reproduces the local dialect of Lower Saxony.

2

Reference to Johannes von Popitz.

3

Reference to Hans Otto Jünger, E. J.’s brother, a physicist.

4

Region in northern Poland, formerly East Prussia.

5

Boyen Fortress: nineteenth-century military fortification in the Masurian Lake district of northeastern Poland.

6

Stalino: city in eastern Ukraine, known as Donetsk since 1961.

7

Kuban steppe: region in southern Russia around the Kuban River.

8

GPU: State Political Directorate, the Russian state security organization.

9

Kleist’s rank as Generaloberst, literally, general colonel, corresponds roughly to the rank of four-star or brigadier general in the U.S. military.

10

Taurus Mountain range in Turkey near the Taurus River.

11

Cauldron: for this concept, see note to entry in First Paris Journal, Paris, 2 March 1942.

12

Polyphemus: Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey, whom Odysseus slays to save himself and his men.

13

The term Siamese for conjoined twins derives from Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), Thai-American brothers who gained fame in P. T. Barnum’s Circus.

14

See First Paris Journal, Kirchhorst, 18 May 1942, for the source of this plot.

15

Reference to Alfred Kubin’s surrealist novel, Die andere Seite [The Other Side, 1909].

16

Small, hardy horses originating in Poland, used by indigenous troops allied with the Germans.

17

Goethe’s West-östlicher Diwan (1819) is a collection of poetry (Persian diwan) inspired by the poet Hafez.

18

Acts of the Apostles, chap. 10.

19

Wandsbecker Bote [The Wandsbeck Messenger] is the title of the main body of work by Matthias Claudius (1740–1815).

20

Meister Anton: character in drama by Christian Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863), Maria Magdalena (premier 1846).

21

Pshish, a tributary of the Kuban River in the Stavropol region, North Caucasus.

22

Swabian emigrants: German emigration to Russian territories dates back to the sixteenth century; by the nineteenth century, there were five separate colonies of German speakers in the Caucasus.

23

Kulaks were a class of peasant successful enough to own property and hire labor. They were exterminated by Stalin in the 1930s.

24

S-mine: shrapnel mine, a class of bounding mines known as the Bouncing Betty.

25

German, Stalinorgel [Stalin Organs], military slang for the Katyusha [multiple rocket launchers].

26

Reference to the siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855) in the Crimean War. The city was again besieged in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1901), which ended in defeat for Russia.

27

Verdun, the Somme, and Flanders: places of intense fighting and heavy casualties in World War I.

28

Persian Wars: the Graeco-Persian Wars of the fifth century BC; Greece was victorious.

29

Rostov-on-Don was occupied by the Germans from November 1941 to February 1943.

30

The title of this war novel, Der Wehrwolf (1910), contains a pun that evokes the words for “defense” and “wolf.” It is usually translated into English as War Wolf.

31

Nomos: Greek for “law” or “custom,” relating to problems of political authority and the rights of citizens.

32

Ecstasis (Greek), to be or to stand outside oneself; a condition of rapture.

33

Jünger adds a humorous tone by recording the driver’s local Swabian (south German) dialect.

34

Limes (Latin), reference to the fortified borders of the Roman Empire.

35

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 28 July 1942.

36

On E. J.’s euphemism for concentration camp (Schinderhütte), see First Paris Journal, Paris, 6 March 1942.

37

Raskolnikov: the fictional protagonist in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

38

Fieseler Storch [stork], a small, maneuverable airplane for personnel transport.

39

Eichhof meeting: In 1929, E. J. participated in a meeting of nationalist leaders and journalists at the Eichhof near Mönchen-Gladbach. He recalled his contacts with conservative political circles and nationalist writers with frustration, considering this period a missed opportunity to fuel a conservative revolution in Germany. See Helmuth Kiesel, Ernst Jünger: Die Biographie (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2007).

40

Der deutsche Gruss, a salute that appropriated the outstretched arm of the Italian Fascists accompanied by the words “Heil Hitler.” At first its use was a declaration of one’s personal ideology, but after the plot against Hitler in July 1944, this salute was imposed on the military as a show of loyalty.

41

Electrophorus: an electrostatic generator.

42

Residential section of Berlin.

43

Reference to Friedrich Georg Jünger’s work, Perfektion der Technik (1946) [The Perfection of Technology], which was originally to have been entitled Illusionen der Technik [The Illusions of Technology]. It is a pessimistic critique of contemporary notions of progress.

44

Axel is the hero of Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s novel of the same name.

45

Reference to E. J.’s Sizilischer Brief an den Mann im Mond (1930) [Sicilian Letter to the Man in the Moon].

46

Original: “Wem Gott ein Amt gibt, dem gibt er auch den Verstand dazu.” A popular saying.

1

In ancient Rome, (nonmilitary) tribunes swore their allegiance to the plebs, from whom they derived power.

2

From a poem by Goethe in his cycle “Wilhelm Tischbeins Idyllen” [“Wilhelm Tischbein’s Idylls”], philosophical meditations on art.

3

The year 1918 marked the German surrender and the end of World War I; the imminent German defeat at Stalingrad was now widely evident.

4

In 1763, the Peace of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War; Prussia retained Silesia.

5

Frederick II (“the Great”), King of Prussia.

6

Schwärmen: the root meaning of the verb includes “to swarm, or flock together”; in common usage, it means to dream about, fancy, or be enthusiastic about, and even more strongly, to have a passion for something.

7

Martin Luther apparently coined this word to designate fanatics, zealots.

8

Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (1808) is a historical drama; “Über das Marionettentheater” [“On the Puppet Theater” (1810)] explores the aesthetic problem of natural grace and self-reflection.

9

“Butter rations will rise when the portraits of the Führer are unframed,” or when the cream is skimmed off the Führer portraits.” The joke lies in the pun on the word entrahmen, meaning both to remove a picture from its frame [Rahmen] and “to skim off the cream [Rahm].”

10

The image refers to the poisonous fish berry, or Indian berry (Kokkelskörner [Anamirta cocculus]).

11

Reference to carved masks worn by vintners’ guilds during pre-Lenten Carnival processions.

12

Reference to E. J.’s own book Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt (1932) [The Worker. Dominance and Form].

13

Reference to Max Hattingen.

14

See Notes from the Caucasus, Kirchhorst, 21 January 1943.

15

The Shelling of Paris [Paris-Geschütz] was a long-distance artillery offensive using the huge new weaponry made by the Krupp firm. Between 12 March and 8 August 1918, Paris was hit by approximately eight hundred shells.

16

E. J.’s recollection of words he perceived in dreams bears little resemblance to standard communication and thus must be accepted as a highly personal linguistic recombination.

17

In 1892, the anarchist Ravachol was sentenced to death for murders and a bombing he committed.

18

Goethe’s Theory of Colors [Zur Farbenlehre, 1810] describes the perception of the color spectrum, rather than its physical properties.

19

Cellaris, E. J.’s pseudonym for Ernst Niekisch, was jailed for anti-Nazi resistance in 1937 and, because he was arrested and tried by the police and not by the Gestapo, was sent to a civil prison and not to a concentration camp. He survived the war.

20

The Convention of Tauroggen, 30 December 1812, was an armistice between the Prussian troops and the Russian army that permitted the Russians to pursue Napoleon’s retreating forces.

21

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 26 June 1941.

22

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 12 August 1942.

23

Reference to Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759).

24

E. J.’s word Sternpilot could also correspond to the modern word “astronaut,” but that would obscure the possibility of a pilot who flies a star.

25

For this concept, see note to entry of 1 March 1943.

26

E. J.’s original spelling “Tanzen” recorded incorrectly from memory Alfred C. Toepfer’s estate in Lower Saxony called the “Thansen Hof.”

27

Munich version: refers to the National Socialist ideology, which was closely associated with the city of Munich where Party headquarters was located.

28

Die Titanen, poem by Friedrich Georg Jünger, published 1944.

29

See Notes from the Caucasus, Voroshilovsk, 7 December 1942.

30

The entire quotation asserts that “One who did not live before 1789 never knew the pleasure of life.”

31

The dark irony of this phrase is revealed by juxtaposing its terms: soldiers would expect, “To the victorious Wehrmacht from a grateful Party.”

32

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 22 October 1942.

33

Tunis fell to the western allies on 12 May 1943. The defeat brought the end to Axis resistance in Africa and the capture of more than 230,000 German prisoners of war.

34

Der Stürmer: the National Socialist tabloid newspaper known for its virulent propaganda and coarse anti-Semitic and anti-Socialist caricatures.

35

A quotation from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s drama about tolerance, Nathan der Weise [Nathan the Wise] (1779).

36

This discussion included topics such as the symbolist poet Stefan George and a man who influenced him, the neo-pagan Alfred Schuler, a member of a politically conservative, occult circle, the Blood Beacon, of which the philosopher Ludwig Klages was also a member. Klages wrote a book about George’s poetry in 1902.

37

César Birotteau (1837), character in a novel of the same name by Honoré de Balzac.

38

Madame Baret, shopkeeper’s wife with whom Casanova had an affair.

39

Hitler’s so-called Night and Fog Decree (Nacht-und-Nebel Erlass) of 7 December 1941 stipulated that opponents of the regime be arrested and then vanish without a trace. No questions would be answered about a prisoner’s whereabouts. The measure imposed a new level of intimidation on the populace.

40

This event from 1928–1930 refers to the book by Daniel Floch: Les Oubliés de Saint-Paul on Île Saint-Paul [The Forgotten Ones on Saint Paul Island]. The story is of the island in the Indian Ocean where seven workers in the lobster cannery were left to guard the installation, and only three were rescued two years later.

41

Reference to the accusatory principle, a style of interrogation used in legal proceedings.

42

E. J. engages here in linguistic mysticism, a subject he had explored in In Praise of Vowels (1934). In this, as in so many speculative passages in his journals, he teases meaning out of word associations. The reference to “Hamann’s H” does not mean the first letter of the philosopher’s name but rather, in Hamann’s philosophy, a silent phonetic sign that connotes secret things—a symbol of the spiritual content of words. E. J. is here attempting to convey the spiritual world that letters embody everywhere (in atoms, in our world, at home.)

43

Walt and Vult are twin brothers in Jean Paul’s novel, Flegeljahre [Adolescent Years] (1804).

44

Roman emperor who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and sacked the temple.

45

Theodor Fontane, the great novelist of realism in the nineteenth century, descended from Huguenots who emigrated from France to Protestant Prussia in the seventeenth century.

46

See Notes from the Caucasus, Kirchhorst, 22 January 1943.

47

Capua: a city in Italy 25 kilometers north of Naples, synonymous with brutality in many European minds because of the Roman gladiatorial training center there.

48

Here E. J. quotes a famous adage found in Montaigne and Rabelais: “Fais ce que voudras” [Do as you wish].

49

César Biroteau (1837): novel by Honoré de Balzac.

50

E. J. here infers hidden meanings from language. Vokale means vowels; Pokale means chalices, goblets.

51

Reference to Hans Otto Jünger, E. J.’s brother, a physicist.

52

Cayenne: the French penal colony known as Devil’s Island.

53

The mayfly’s brief life span of a single day provides the metaphor for humans in the sight of God.

54

E. J. seems to misidentify this church. Whereas there is no church named Saint-Pierre Charron, he might mean Saint-Pierre de Chaillot, although that is not a small building. The “gate of death” [Todestor], in addition to its metaphorical association, is also the portal to the crypt.

55

The book is later identified as Maurice Alhoy, Les Bagnes (Paris, 1845). Bagnes (bagnos) were prisons where inmates were subjected to hard labor.

56

Abbé Sabatier was one of several clerics murdered by mobs during the Paris Commune in May 1871.

57

Cythera: Greek island off the Peloponnesus, said to be the birthplace of Aphrodite and, thus, the isle of love.

58

Schwarze Front: a splinter party during the Weimar Republic formed in 1930 by Otto Strasser after he was expelled from the NSDAP. The group, which opposed the National Socialists and desired a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, was dissolved after a few months.

59

Gospel of Luke 12:48.

60

E. J.’s Gärten und Strassen. Aus den Tagebüchern von 1939 und 1940 (1942) [Gardens and Streets. Excerpts from the Journals, 1939–1940] was published in French in 1942.

61

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 28 July 1942.

62

See note to Second Paris Journal, Paris, 12 May 1943.

63

Guelph (Ger. Welf): a German princely family and European dynasty; they were dukes of Saxony and rivals to the House of Hohenstaufen for the imperial crown.

64

Gross-Deutscher: literally, “greater German,” an adherent of the nineteenth-century policy in support of the unification of all German states, including Austria.

65

Not an actual word.

66

The final raid on Hamburg during so-called Operation Gomorrah took place on 3 August, killing approximately forty-three thousand people and injuring thirty-seven thousand more. A million civilians were forced to flee. Hamburg experienced sixty-nine more air raids during the war.

67

Westwall: series of fortifications built between 1938 and 1940 along the western frontier between the Netherlands and Switzerland, called the Siegfried Line by the Allies.

68

Schiller’s poem “Drei Worte des Glaubens” [“Three Words of Faith”] names “free,” “virtue,” and “God” as watchwords at the core of human values. Goethe’s “Urworte. Orphisch” [“Primal Words”] is a cycle of five short poems on metaphysical and mythological questions of human life.

69

Urpflanze: the archetypal plant, reference to Goethe’s theory of a basic, hypothetical botanical form from which other plants descend.

70

Wallenstein: drama by Friedrich Schiller.

71

Sadowa: “Revenge for Sadowa” was a slogan heard in Austria after the Prussian defeat of the Austrian forces at Konigggrätz (Czech, Sadowa) on 3 July 1866, during the Austro-Prussian War.

72

Levasseur was the deputy representing Sarthe at the National Convention from 1792 to 1795.

73

Allusion to E. J.’s own novel, On the Marble Cliffs (1939). There the Mauritanians seek a nihilistic despotism founded on the theory of the superman that represents a negation of Western values.

74

George Bernard Shaw’s fourth novel, published in 1882.

75

Pre-Lenten season known in some places as Mardi Gras, is called Karneval in the area of the Rhineland.

76

Nigromontanus: a fictional character of E. J.’s private mythology who first appears in Das abenteuerliche Herz (1938). He interprets the world as a conundrum that reveals its mysteries to fine-tuned vision capable of perceiving simultaneous incongruities.

77

Hottentot Venus: reference is to Sara “Saartjie” Baartmann (c. 1790–1815), a woman of the Khoikhoi tribe, whose effigy and skeleton were exhibited in nineteenth-century Europe for her physical anomalies. In 2002, her remains were returned to her hometown in South Africa.

78

E. J. views “Fire on the Kent,” which was first exhibited in 1827. This ship of the British East India Company burned in the Bay of Biscay on 1 March 1825. Eighty-one people on board died, while five hundred and fifty survivors were rescued by the Cambria.

79

Lares and penates were Roman household gods, frequently represented in house altars or wall paintings.

80

See note to First Paris Journal, Paris, 22 February 1942.

81

In this passage, E. J. avoids his customary euphemism, Schinderhütte—in these journals translated as “charnel house”—and uses “concentration camp.”

82

Priapus: a Greek god of fertility whose symbol was the phallus.

83

Decline of the West: the reference is to Oswald Spengler’s two-volume Untergang des Abenlandes, published in 1918 (vol. 1) and 1923 (vol. 2), an influential work that contributed the cultural pessimism of the 1920s and 1930s.

84

Benito Cereno (1855): novella by Herman Melville.

85

Ecclesiastes, 10:1: “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor.”

86

Rue du Roi Doré, literally Street of the Golden King, got its name from a street sign showing Louis XIII; Rue du Petit Musc, from “Put-y-Musse,” designated a street habituated by prostitutes.

87

The French Resistance sent miniature coffins to compatriots they identified as collaborators.

88

E. J. here resorts to the metaphysics of his symbolic color system to interpret and predict historical events. In this scheme, the color white represents political opposition to the regime; red, his favorite color, represents the elemental life force in nature as well as violence and revolutionary extremism; blue, on the other hand, while it is a color of calm nature, water, and air, also represents the rational and, by extension, the forces of reasoned conservatism. See Gisbert Kranz, Ernst Jüngers symbolische Weltschau (Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1968), 105–22.

89

At the two simultaneous battles of Jena and Auerstedt on 14 October 1806 near the river Saale, the armies of Napoleon encountered those of Frederick William III of Prussia. Napoleon’s forces prevailed over the Prussians.

90

Pied Piper of Hamelin.

91

E. J. uses the edition with critical apparatus edited by Eberhard Nestle of the Novum Testamentum Graece (1898).

92

Pitcairn Island. In 1790, mutineers from HMS Bounty settled on Pitcairn Island. After discord and hardship, several of them eventually turned to scripture, using the ship’s Bible as their guide.

93

Stater: a silver coin mentioned in Matthew 17:27: “go to the sea, cast a hook, and take up the first fish that comes up. When you have opened its mouth, you will find a stater coin. Take that, and give it to them for me and you.”

94

Le Crapouillot: outspoken French satirical political magazine (originally for the military) published from 1915 to 1996.

95

Cloaca maxima: the main sewer of ancient Rome.

96

E. J.’s wordplay produces the neologism einfalten—a back-formation from the adjective einfältig (foolish, simpleminded)—suggesting the activity of becoming “one-fold” or monodimensional.

97

The popular name (Christbaum, Tannenbaum) for incendiary flares dropped by parachute. These produced colored fire to mark a target area.

98

Military fort at Verdun.

99

On 27 February 1933, an arsonist set fire to the Reichstag [Parliament Building] in Berlin.

100

Wisdom of Solomon 3:6 (Apocrypha).

101

Capital letters in the typeface Antiqua that resemble hand lettering.

102

Pseudonym for Friedrich Hielscher.

103

Berchta: a female goddess from the tradition of alpine paganism. She appears during the twelve days of Christmas and oversees spinning.

104

Fasnacht: carnival.

105

Freya (Freyja): a goddess in Germanic mythology associated with fertility, love, beauty, and gold.

106

Biedenhorn refers to Jünger’s fictional character in On the Marble Cliffs, a corrupt leader of mercenaries.

107

Reference to Rashid ad-Din Sinan, called “The Old Man of the Mountain,” a leader of the sect of Ismaelite assassins in Syria at the time of the Third Crusade.

108

Volga Germans designates ethnic Germans (including Moravians and Mennonites) who in the eighteenth century were recruited to colonize areas along the Volga River in Russia where they kept their language and culture.

109

Pariser Zeitung [Paris Newspaper]: German language daily newspaper (1941–1944); the typo “nectar” [nectar] should read “hektar” [hectare].

110

Sauckel moved 5 million people from the Occupied Territories to work in Germany’s munitions industry. His methods for rounding up this labor force were infamously brutal.

111

Reference to Paul and Hélène Morand.

112

Peter Schlemiel: see note to First Paris Journal, Paris, 10 September 1942.

113

Latin, “Gate to Westphalia,” referring in this case to a gorge, also called the Westphalian Gap, in the district of North Rhine-Westphalia.

114

Beginen Tower: a fourteenth-century defensive tower, part of the original city wall, on the bank [Ufer] of the Leine River.

115

The world spirit: E. J. invokes Hegel’s concept of history, which is dominated by the deeds of important men.

116

The Elisabeth Linné phenomenon: at the age of nineteen, Elisabeth von Linné (daughter of the naturalist) wrote an article describing the flash of light in nasturtiums (Indian cress) at dusk; later research revealed it to be an optical anomaly.

117

Angelus Silesius was born to Protestant parents but converted to Catholicism when he was twenty-nine. He strove to persuade Protestants to return to the Catholic faith. His epigrammatic, mystical poetry, and hymn texts aimed to encourage devotion.

118

Attila’s hall: refers to the Middle High German epic Das Nibelungenlied, in which the king’s hall is the site of a bloodbath.

119

Urpflanze: see note to Second Paris Journal, Paris, 13 August 1943.

120

Quotation from the drinking song “Und als der Herr von Rodenstein “by Viktor von Scheffel (c. 1856).

121

Bellarmin: refers to Friedrich Hölderlin’s epistolary novel Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland [Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece], published in 1797 (vol. 1) and 1799 (vol. 2). One letter that Hyperion writes from Greece to his friend Bellarmin contains a particularly severe criticism of Germany and the Germans.

122

Bosch’s triptych (1490–1510), one of his best-known works, hangs in the Prado Museum (Madrid).

123

“Let us be easygoing about words”; Bismarck reputedly used this phrase to mean it did not matter whether the navy was called Prussian or North German.

124

Reference to E. J.’s On the Marble Cliffs.

125

Adversative conjunctions such as “but, yet, however” introduce contrast or opposition.

126

The first name refers to Stendhal’s novel, The Life of Henri Brulard; Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky is a character in Dostoevsky’s novel The Demons.

127

Stralau is a section of Berlin. E. J. lived there on Stralauer Allee in 1928.

128

Makrobiotik oder die Kunst das Menschliche Leben zu Verlängern (Jena, 1797), [Macrobiotics or the Art of Extending Human Life].

129

The colloquial designation schwarz [“black”] describes committed zealots who support the regime. By contrast, see Second Paris Journal, Kirchhorst, 29 February 1944.

130

Reference to One Thousand and One Nights.

131

“For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

132

“White”: military colloquialism, connoting a skeptical, potentially subversive attitude toward the regime.

133

Jan Bockelson (1509–1536), “John of Leiden”: Anabaptist leader of the Münster Rebellion.

134

Johann Peter Eckermann was Goethe’s secretary and biographer.

135

La Grande Roquette: dungeon in Paris where those condemned to death were incarcerated.

136

A breakout battle [Ausbruchsschlacht] is a military maneuver to escape encirclement.

137

The compound Salvarsan (arsphenamine) was introduced in 1911 as the first effective treatment for syphilis.

138

Mycelium: the vegetative part of a fungus made of long, branching, threadlike tubes.

139

Reference to the blue-enameled cross, badge of the order Pour le Mérit [For Merit], the highest German military honor. E. J. earned this decoration in September 1918 for his valor in combat during World War I.

140

See note to Second Paris Journal, Paris, 1 August 1943.

141

E. J. cites the original Low German dialect: “Unser Ein is hire to vele. Westu nicht, dat wi wol twintig tonnen pulvers under den voten hebben?”

142

Bight: a nautical term for bay. The German Bight is the southeastern bight of the North Sea, bounded by Denmark and The Netherlands.

143

Les Trois Vallées [the Three Valleys] is a region of the Savoie in the South of France near the Italian border.

144

Fronde (French, “sling”): a political faction in France opposed to the policies of Cardinal Mazarin; metaphorically, any violent political opposition.

145

Whereas the two brothers in The Marble Cliffs belong to the old Order of the Mauritanians, E. J. also sometimes uses the reference to allude to his own earlier activity as a political activist with nationalist leanings.

146

Becerillo: a particularly vicious dog of the conquistadors (sixteenth century).

147

Reference to E. J.’s earlier reading, see Notes from the Caucasus, Berlin, 15 November 1942.

148

Reference to T. E. Lawrence, “of Arabia.”

149

The first line of Platen’s poem, “Tristan” (1825). It continues: “is at the mercy of death.”

150

Phrase from the title of Bloy’s book, Propos d’un Entrepreneur de Démolitions (1884) [Remarks of a Demolition Contractor].

151

Bologna bottle, also called Bologna phial: a container strong enough on its outside to hammer a nail, while a small scratch on its interior causes it to shatter; often used in physics demonstrations and magic tricks.

152

Reference to Glasir, a tree or grove in Norse mythology that bears golden red leaves beside the gates of Valhalla.

153

Reference to the German designation. The first element of the word (klatsch) means clap, snap.

154

See Second Paris Journal, Paris, 25 June 1943.

155

This image evokes “Nature, red in tooth and claw” (Tennyson) and is E. J.’s metaphor for the Darwinian struggle for existence.

156

E. J. admitted that he sometimes conflates experiences. It has been determined that the last bombing raid on Paris ended on 27 May 1944 at 13.45. By the evening then, the roof of the Raphael was indeed a safe place, and there were no squadrons overhead that evening. See Tobias Wimbauer, “Kelche sind Körper. Der Hintergrund der ‘Erdbeeren in Burgunder’–Szene,” in Anarch im Widerspruch. Neue Beiträge zu Werk und Leben der Brüder Ernst und Friedrich Georg Jünger, 2nd ed. (Hagen-Berchum: Eisenhut Verlag, 2010), 25–76.

157

Fragment of a famous line in Goethe’s Faust in which Faust addresses the moment, saying, “Tarry a while, thou art so fair.”

158

Luigi Galvani, professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna after 1775, induced muscular contractions by attaching electrodes to laboratory specimens.

159

Hoplite: armed Greek warrior.

160

Reference to Jan Bockelson. See entry of Second Paris Journal, Kirchhorst, 29 February 1944.

161

The so-called V-weapons (V-1 and V-2) were long-range artillery rockets used against cities, particularly London in 1944–1945.

162

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 23 February 1942.

163

Reference to Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

164

1756–1763, a war fought across the globe by all the major powers.

165

Reference to La Noche Triste on 30 June 1520 when the conquistadors were expelled from the Mexican capital at Tenochtitlan.

166

Bendlerstrasse: address of the German ministry of war in Berlin.

167

Although Berlin issued a report of Rommel’s supposed automobile accident in Normandy, the field marshal actually sustained severe wounds and a concussion from a fighter attack.

168

Here, the NSDAP (National Socialist Party).

169

See Notes from the Caucasus, Kirchhorst, 21 January 1943. E. J.’s comment acknowledges the subservience of the army to the Party.

170

Reference to the drama Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1831) by the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer treating the mythological story of Hero and Leander. E. J. could have been reminded of these tragic lovers by Rodin’s sculpture of Cupid and Psyche.

1

Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben was executed after the 20 July 1944 bomb plot on Hitler’s life.

2

E. J. copied Rotsart’s title incorrectly. It should read “de Hertaing.”

3

Lämpchen. Nickname for Ursula Lampe, art historian.

4

E. J. refers to such bases as Igelstellungen, “hedgehog positions.”

5

Key, key, valve, rabbit hutch, cloister (prison, enclosure), clandestine, noose (snare), conclusion (end).

6

Natura naturans, “nature naturing,” that is, expressing its own self-generating activity, which is the infinite essence of God; Natura naturata, “nature natured,” that is, all created things, the products of God’s attributes.

7

Maquis: armed resistance groups who hid in rural areas of occupied France.

8

One Homeric epithet for Agamemnon is “shepherd of the people.”

9

Hunting books: E. J.’s catalogues of beetles he has collected.

10

See note to Second Paris Journal, Paris, 5 October 1943.

11

The wave offering [Ger. Webopfer] derives its name from the Old Testament ritual in which the priests held up the offering and waved it back and forth before the altar.

12

Francs-tireurs, literally “free shooters,” a term for irregular military units during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871); sometimes applied generally to guerrilla fighters.

13

Tantalus: a son of Zeus and thus immortal who was punished for his crime of stealing the food of the gods and giving it to mortals. He was made to stand in water forever receding before he could drink, beneath a fruit tree with branches that moved beyond his grasp before he could eat.

14

Palinurus, helmsman of Aeneas, was overcome by the god of sleep and fell overboard.

15

For Head Forester, see note to First Paris Journal, Paris, 1 February 1942.

16

Reference to the group of friends who met regularly in Paris the Hotel George V.

17

In his elliptical way, E. J. here expresses regret at what he perceives as the collectivization, that is, politicization, of language by the primitive ideological jargon of National Socialism. The function of the liaison officer would be to act as interpreter.

18

E. J. quotes her dialect: “Ek was fertig, as es to Enne was.”

19

In 1933, Göring appointed Diels to head the new political branch of Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo [Secret State Police]. Caught in the power struggle between Göring and Himmler, Diels was dismissed in 1934. When working in Hannover, he had refused to round up Jews, but he escaped punishment thanks to Göring’s protection.

20

The so-called People’s Court [Volksgerichtshof] was established by Hitler in 1934 to enforce the agenda of the NS party without regard for due legal process. The judge-president E. J. alludes to is Roland Freisler (1893–1945).

21

Stepan Trofimovich is a character is Dostoevsky’s novel, The Demons (1872).

22

See note to Second Paris Journal, Paris, 1 September 1943.

23

Apollo and Artemis killed Niobe’s children because she boasted that, as the mother of so many children, she was thus the equal of Leto.

24

Johan Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe (1836; 1848).

25

See Notes from the Caucasus, 23 December 1942.

26

Popular saying attributed (probably falsely) to Tacitus.

27

See First Paris Journal, Paris, 5 July 1941.

28

Thereby changing prendront (will capture) to rendront (give up, return).

29

See Gospel of Matthew, 25:7. In this parable, the five wise virgins went out to meet the bridegroom with oil in their lamps, while the lamps of the foolish virgins had gone out.

30

Wicked husbandman, recte: husbandmen or tenants. See Gospel of Matthew 21:33–46; Mark 12:1–12; Luke 20:9–19.

31

Gospel of Matthew 25:14–30, parable of the servant who buried his master’s talents (unit of currency), rather than increase his fortune through commerce.

32

Teocalli: the Aztec pyramid, on top of which is the temple where human sacrifice was performed.

33

Marat: The Russian battleship Petropavlovsk was renamed Marat in 1921 by the Soviets after the radical journalist and politician of the French revolutionary.

34

E. J. glosses a German proverb about the nature of dreams: “Träume sind Schäume [Dreams are foam, froth].

35

E. J. refers to payloads (Kettenwurf) dropped from aircraft flying in wedge formations, called the Keil (wedge) or Kette (chain).

36

E. J.’s word Hundssterne evokes Sirius in the constellation Canis Major, the brightest star visible in the night sky of the northern hemisphere and is thus an appropriate metaphor for aerial flares.

37

Steller’s Sea Cow (Hydrodamilas gigas).

38

On 29 November 1944, Gretha Jünger, Ernst’s mother, dreamed of having an eyetooth pulled.

39

The Tannenberg Memorial commemorated the German soldiers who died at the second battle of Tannenberg (1914). The coffin of Paul von Hindenburg, who had commanded the German troops, was placed here in 1934.

40

Pitcairn: In 1790, the mutineers from the HMS Bounty, together with other Polynesians, settled these islands in the south Pacific.

41

Reference to a regional verb for splitting that means literally “to split something apart or rive open a log.”

42

E. J. cites in translation the words of the Roman poet Lucretius (first century BCE), ludibrium pelagis (plaything of the waves).

43

Houdon; see First Paris Journal, Paris, 9 March 1942 and 14 March 1942.

44

De Profundis, see Psalm 130: De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine [From the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord].

45

The strategy of carpet-bombing, or saturation bombing, was used by both sides in Europe. The goal was to inflict maximum destruction within a specific target area.

46

Carus is E. J.’s imaginary son. See First Paris Journal, Paris, 18 January 1942.

47

Guinea worm: parasite ingested by drinking water infested with water fleas.

48

See Second Paris Journal, Paris, 5 August 1944.

49

Gospel of Luke 20:27–36.

50

Diels was actually married to Hermann Göring’s cousin.

51

Reichsarbeitsdienst [RAD]: The official state labor organization established during the Weimar Republic, originally to counter unemployment, and adapted and expanded after 1933.

52

Feldmeister: a rank equivalent to lieutenant in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD).

53

Gauleiter: a district leader, Gau being an old Frankish term used to designate Nazi Party administrative regions.

54

Kreisleiter: county leader(s), a Nazi Party administrative rank.

55

1866: Reference to the Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks’ War between the German Confederation lead by the Austrian Empire versus Prussia. The war resulted in Prussian dominance over the German states.

56

“‘Lannewehrbusch’ of the old Landwehr”: this patch of forest takes its local name from the Landwehr, the old territorial militia before World War I.

57

Jena (1806) was a major victory of Napoleon over the Prussian armies; at Sedan (1870), the decisive victory in the Franco-Prussian War, the Germans defeated the French and were thus able to march on to Paris.

58

E. J. cites Boëthius, The Consolation of Philosophy, as he had earlier on 22 November 1944, but now he has just witnessed a procession of white stars on the armored vehicles of the invaders and, refusing to see this as a symbol of defeat, he reads it as one of hope.