So I was relieved when Elliot Neaman, author of A Dubious Past. Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, forwarded me his manuscript review of the book for Berghahn from January this year - read it for yourself below and you will discover that Mitchell's title is indeed misleading, perhaps created more for effect than to reflect its author's opinion and the book's content.
I like the review, which appears to provide a good overview of the book. Since I haven't read Mitchell's book yet, I can't comment on it. But I think I will read it now - and perhaps you should too!
(I am compelled to reiterate my usual comment here that we should first read as much of the primary source as possible, Jünger's books, before venturing into other people's opinions of them.... But that should be clear to any anarch who is intent of forming his own opinions and not simply adopting or adapting the opinions of others, whoever they may be.)
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January 31, 2010
Review of "The Devil’s Captain" by Allan Mitchell.
By Elliot Neaman
Allan Mitchell’s book The Devil’s Captain is a masterfully executed reconstruction of few crucial years of the life of Ernst Jünger, a key player in the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War. Mitchell makes optimal use of the ever more complete set of archival documents and letters stored in the German Literary Archives at Marbach, as well as privately obtained sources. He has a firm grasp of the secondary literature, and, as can be expected from an expert on both National Socialism and the occupation of France, he has a keen grasp of the historical context.
The structure of the book is very compelling because Mitchell takes us along on Ernst Jünger’s travels and adventures. The short introduction and review of the secondary literature makes the convincing argument that Jünger has been treated too polemically by German scholars and though in a more balanced way in the Anglophone world, still awaits literary discovery. Mitchell signals that Jünger could someday be as well known here as Kafka or Mann.
Chapter One introduces us to Jünger’s childhood, his upbringing and his military feats in World War One, which catapulted him to fame as a war hero in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Mitchell does not ignore the fact that Jünger was, like so many of his countrymen, an enemy of the young republic, but he also makes the point, which Jünger’s critics are sometimes reluctant to admit, that this voice for some kind of national revolution early on distanced itself from the Hitler’s hordes, which he viewed as plebian and uncontrolled. Mitchell introduces a theme here for the rest of the book, Jünger as Enzelgänger, a loner, who always felt more comfortable in No-Man’s-Land than belonging to any party for too long.
Chapter Two opens with the German invasion of Poland and the nearly nine month Phony War that followed, as the French and Germans settled in on the two sides of the Maginot Line and waited. Mitchell follows Captain Jünger through the French countryside after the German army invaded France on May 10th, 1940, until he paraded on horseback through the Arche de Triomphe on April 24, 1941, ready to take up military duties as part of the German occupying force. Mitchell establishes here another theme of the book, Jünger as a dilettante: his reading is wildly eclectic and the journal style best suited for a writer who didn’t like to dwell on any one theme for too long.
Chapter Three takes us into the Paris of the early occupation years as Jünger lands a plum job as a military censor and sort of ambassador for French-German cooperation and collaboration in matters of culture. This post allowed Jünger rare privileges, such as mixing with the population out of uniform, and establishing contacts to the still vibrant world of French art and literature, diluted to be sure, by the exigencies of the war and the persecution of dissenters. Mitchell takes us inside the “belly of the beast” of the German occupation, the military headquarters at the Hotel Majestic, Jünger’s quarters for most of the period from 1941-44, next door at the elegant Hotel Raphael, and the regular evening gatherings at the Hotel George V, where cultivated members of the military administration mixed with visiting German intellectuals, artists and writers. Mitchell establishes in this chapter Jünger’s persona as a kind of dandy and man about town, a writer with a keen eye for the sights and history of the beautiful city, as well a taste for good living, including enjoying the charms of French women. We are introduced to Sophie Ravoux, the German born, Jewish wife of a French journalist. Mitchell takes a particular interest in the story of “La Dotoresse,” who probably was disguised in the journals under a string of pseudonyms. Mitchell is careful to not speculate about the nature of their relationship beyond what the letters say, but he offers a preponderance of circumstantial evidence leading to the conclusion that they had a sexual relationship and while leaving the reader hanging through most of the book, he finally affirms our suspicions in no uncertain terms at the end.
In Chapter Four Jünger is preparing for a trip to the Eastern Front. Though he loved Paris, his yearning for adventure made even a trip to the grim world of the Soviet Union seem exciting. In the previous chapter we were told of Jünger’s insomnia and occasional bouts with depression, a description that borders on a diagnosis of a nervous breakdown. The prospect of some change in life seemed advisable. In this chapter, Mitchell introduces the reader to Jünger’s pre-occupation with dreams. Throughout his writings Jünger incorporated many themes, characters and inventions from nocturnal wanderings and Mitchell associates the kaleidoscope nature of the dream world to the magical-realistic style of Jünger’s journals.
In Chapter Five Mitchell follows Jünger to Kiev and the Eastern Front. The Soviet Union was everything Paris was not, gray and primitive by contrast. Another theme emerges in this chapter, Jünger’s detachment from people and events when he felt bored, afraid or distracted. The escape into himself or his fantasies were good perhaps for his writing, but in this case Mitchell shows that Jünger was unwilling to confront the harsh reality of the war and the atrocities being committed by Germans on the Eastern Front, of which he was well aware. Mitchell does not excuse Jünger’s avoidance of these unpleasant circumstances, but his presentation of the facts could have been framed in less neutral terms.
Chapter Six does address, logically then, the question about Jünger’s relationship to Hitler and National Socialism. No really new ground is broken here. Mitchell dismisses, quite rightly I think, Jünger’s early enthusiasm for National Socialism as an understandable youthful reaction to the lost war. He also explores Jünger’s fascination with the persona of Hitler, who often appeared to him in his dreams. Finally he shows how Jünger remained aware of, but carefully outside of the growing movement among some officers in the military administration in Paris to support various plots being hatched inside the army against Hitler.
In Chapter Seven the climax of the story is reached, as Jünger is caught up in the whirlwind surrounding the failed assassination attempts by Rommel, which never got off the ground, and by Stauffenberg, which Hitler with dumb luck survived. (In my view the Rommel plot was more potentially significant than Mitchell allows, but no one can know for sure). Mitchell takes up the oft-posed question of Jünger’s aesthetic glorification of violence, the passages in his journals where he seems to take delight in the power of destruction. Mitchell come to the conclusion, that while he may have gone too far at times, the literary value of capturing these moments is high. Mitchell might have added that Jünger is far from alone - both among writers and ordinary people - at falling prey to the rubber-necker’s fascination with acts of destruction. The chapter ends with the gory aftermath of the failed plots against Hitler. Jünger had managed once again to stay out of the danger zone - Cocteau once said some had clean hands, some had dirty hands, Jünger had no hands – but some of his closest friends and colleagues from the Majestic ended up at the looped end of the SS’s piano wire.
In Chapter Eight Mitchell analyses the style and content of Jünger’s Paris Diaries in relation to both private and public ethical issues. He returns to the topic of the Captain’s amorous adventures and his need to hide his activities from an ever increasingly suspicious wife. Mitchell brings up the accusation of Jünger’s anti-Semitism, his dealing with ordinary Parisians and the troubling historical analogies he made in trying to grapple with National Socialism and German’s looming defeat. Mitchell points out that Jünger’s literary style necessarily mixed fact with fiction and that although one can accuse him of cowardice to take a stand on the stark moral conundrums everyone confronted during the war, he was at the end a writer, an observer, whose value lies more in the literary record he has left behind rather than as an individual who may or may not have done more to alleviate the suffering caused by the madness of war. Here he sides with Jünger’s self-description as a seismograph that records, but does not judge the earthquakes. Some will argue that he lets Jünger thereby too easily off the hook. I find this way of approaching the man comes closer to the truth than the many attempts to castigate him, which seem aimed at a caricature instead of a living, complex person. Mitchell emphasizes the ambiguity of Jünger’s situation and implies, I think, that it is too easy for us to judge him after the fact from our comfortable and safe perch in time.
Chapter Nine is a kind of Epilogue, in which we follow Jünger back home to his wife and personal troubles, both with her and because of the death of his father and the devastating news that his son had died in battle. It is curious that Mitchell neglects two significant parts of the last story, first that when Jünger went to try and free his son after his capture, he wore his World War medals on his uniform, and second that Ernstel, though freed from jail, was probably executed anyway since he was sent on a Strafexpedition into the Marble Mountains (!) of Carrara. In other words he was sent on an expedition from which it was unlikely he would return alive.
Chapter Ten is about Jünger and his friendships, male and female, German and foreign. Mitchell takes an almost prurient interest in Jünger’s sex life, but the reader is glad to follow the amorous adventures. Mitchell is also a good detective. He sifts the evidence carefully and slyly and reaches sure verdicts about whether he bedded Banine (no), Florence Gould (maybe) and Sophie Ravoux (yes). To be fair, these relationships do tell us much about the man and his times. Jünger was often accused of not caring about women, a put-down which can now be put to rest, though it is true that the female characters in his novels are sometimes rather mannered or wooden. Mitchell’s analysis of Jünger’s postwar novel Heliopolis in this regard is accurate. It was a spirited attempt to gather his World War II experiences into a larger-than-life novel that has ultimately not stood the test of time. This chapter would have been the place to at least devote more attention to the other important publication of the immediate post-war period, The Peace. It is a mystery why Mitchell devotes so little space to that essay-length book –written at the height of the occupation – and which had such an important impact on launching Jünger’s career as part of the intellectual reconstruction of Germany.
On the topic of friendship, one wonders why Mitchell persists in emphasizing Jünger’s reputation as lone wolf, ending the book on that note. As the postwar friendship with Sophie Ravoux shows, which he takes up at length in the postscript, Jünger could be cold at times, but he certainly didn’t cut his ties to his past or his many friends. As Mitchell himself notes, the mountains of letters to hundreds of Jünger’s correspondents, now gathered in the Marbach archive, await a scholarly and systematic treatment. Jünger was very capable of deep friendships, though Mitchell is surely right to point out repeatedly that, above all, he prized his own freedom and autonomy. Jünger had a good term for this – he called himself an Anarch, someone who obeys the rules, customs and laws on the exterior, but follows his own rules beneath the surface.
The Devil’s Captain will make a most valuable addition to the Jünger literature, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. Mitchell covers some of the same ground as Nevin’s Ernst Jünger and Germany; Into the Abyss, but so much more material is available today that Mitchell’s book supersedes Nevin, at least on the crucial years 1941-44. The Devil’s Captain is meticulously researched and carefully written, but also stages a riveting, tragic drama. Mitchell paints for us the still glowing twilight world of inter-war Parisian high society under Nazi occupation, then the descent into chaos and finally liberation and a reckoning. This book will be read and enjoyed for years to come by scholars and the general educated reader alike.
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