Monday 12 November 2007

Noble Enmity

“I always strove throughout the war to view my opponent without hatred, and to reckon him a man in accordance with his courage. In battle I endeavoured to seek him out and kill him, and expected from him nothing different; but I never thought low of him.”

[“Ich war im Kriege immer bestrebt, den Gegner ohne Haß zu betrachten und ihn als Mann seinem Mute entsprechend zu schätzen. Ich bemühte mich, ihn im Kampf aufzusuchen, um ihn zu töten, und erwartete auch von ihm nichts anderes. Niemals aber habe ich niedrig von ihm gedacht.”]

Ernst Jünger, In Stahlgewittern (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), p.65.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the real shame of war, is it not? Men who might otherwise be friends trying desperately to kill one another.

Deogolwulf said...

True enough.

Anonymous said...

According to my dog-eared copy of Hegel, these death wars are merely the Spirit becoming conscious of itself through the three-step process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Couldn't be more simpler. All academics agree with it, so it is probably true.

Anonymous said...

The Wehrmacht was full of these self-identifying officer-gentleman types, but their idealism couldn't withstand the reality that no man can faithfully serve two masters:

The fear of the German counter-measures must be stronger than the threats of the wandering bolshevistic remnants. Being far from all political considerations of the future the soldier has to fulfill two tasks:

1. Complete annihilation of the false bolshevistic doctrine of the Soviet State and its armed forces.

2. The pitiless extermination of foreign treachery and cruelty and thus the protection of the lives of military personnel in Russia.

This is the only way to fulfil our historic task to liberate the German people once forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger.


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