Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918

Junger draws on a series of physical and psychological impressions of World War One, narrowed down to fighting for a Copse. Each chapter describes a particular scenario; such as his dinner with airmen, the qualities of fusilier H the individualist, the underground french power station, the raid, the final battle at Copse 125 etc. Each is a mini story. The Copse stands for the meaninglessness of the war when viewed from a distance. It is only when you get up close you realise what it meant to each individual. The description is couched in Junger's philosophic insights, which reify the changes war wrought upon an individual, all based upon himself. This has more of his Nietzschean superman philosophy, which can either jar or send a stiff right arm into raptures. For me it was just a gaze onto a man who was completely traumatised, having an ability unconsciously to articulate the horrendous conditions, locked within a cerebral fantasy. Junger tries to make sense of his world from fragments that whizz past him,what was the point of the killing, it must have an end purpose. It was only in his later years he realised the nihiism of his experiences, they meant nothing other than what he could make of them. Nationalism was a hallucination following his escape into an inner fantasy, the need to shut off from sheer horror. Rather than seeing it all as Rupert Brooke kitsch; far far field etc, Junger's views aim to make sense of the mass liquidation through purporting a higher noble purpose. It is a belief system, an hallucination but an important one. It begins to explain why events unfolded as they did. It was not just economics that brought the Nasties to power but their emotional appeal based on this mass liquidation. Death must have a purpose otherwise it is senseless. This is the antithesis of Remarque and Barbusse and at first appears repellent in appearing to glorify the war. However what Junger is doing is trying to make sense of both the camaraderie engendered, the blood socialism arising between young men, the sense of a shared monstrous experience, (others were unable to capture) and how this was carried onward into civilian life. This transformed them from other mortals, those who had not endured this experience. These men were forever changed by their experiences. I can see his point, being caught in shell fire for hours, marks a man as different from those who have not had the experience,likewise seeing your friends killed, being involved in killing and the various attacks/retreats and countless small scale scenarios, each creates a psychic change. It's just whether it makes you a better person for witnessing someones head being split in two or body disintegrating? The shock induced, perhaps pushes the mind somewhere else. Or does this reflect the comfortable bourgeois life as a metre yard stick for measuring mental health. This is the fundamental challenge Junger throws up. Did this transformative experience create more profound individuals or psychological terror? This book becomes important particularly for people who have not experienced war who work with survivors, as Junger portrays a nobility in the changes that are made. It's just can they kiss the partner, play with the children and read a book afterwards? This becomes fundamental, as love between people is eradicated and instead this ersatz parade of country, flags, uniforms is pushed instead. Junger measures the world through death instead of life. This is where his Nietzschean ideology falters. He celebrates death; necrophilia. His alienated philosophising does begin to appear as a chasm and his inability to condemn the war become senseless, as he becomes addicted to it. Those wanting intimate descriptions will not find it here, instead glory, sacrifice, blood and honour, the making of a man. --By Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles

COPSE 125 was one of a quadrilogy of works Ernst Jünger wrote on his experiences as a storm trooper for Germany during the First World War. The most famous of these, of course, is THE STORM OF STEEL, which made him a celebrity, but COPSE 125 is a very different type of book, and it's no surprise to me that some who read and enjoyed STORM posted their disappointment here. STORM was an "external" memior of Jünger's four years as a front-line soldier, a period which saw him wounded sixteen times and awarded with Prussia's highest decoration for bravery, the Pour le Merité, which was also awarded to Rommel and Richtofen. By "external" I mean that the book deals almost exclusively with what happened to Jünger during the war - what he saw, what he did, what was done to him. It did NOT record what he felt, and many who read it dismissed him as a blunted, cold-blooded automaton, incapable of real human feeling, and to this day (he died only recently, at 103) he is villified as the "Godfather of fascism" for glorifying war and rationalizing the unspeakable. In fact, Jünger was a remarkably sensitive man, and withheld his feelings about combat to make them the subject of his subsequent works (including the long essay, "War as an Inward Experience"); it seems his true "crime" was in failing to conclude that war was a complete evil ("Life can only assert itself in its own destruction", he writes) and it is probably no coincidence that his harshest critics are people who have never been shot at. COPSE 125 is a battle memior of sorts, which Jünger wrote using the journal he kept during a stay at Pieseux-au-Mont in 1918, but it is not by any means a "combat" book. In fact, Jünger deliberately picked from his experiences a relatively quiet on the line to use as his source material. What he wanted to explore, among other things, was the effect of trench warfare on the human heart and soul, as well as the possible nature of war in the future, using both the successes and the failure of the German Army during the war as his learning tool. Anyone familiar with Jünger's novels knows that his prose style mingles brilliant, almost poetic prose with long, turgid, extremely German descents into philosophy, history and metaphysics, and COPSE 125 is no exception. Many of the passages are so beautifully written that they stick in your mind like an arrow, such as when he writes, "The meaning of life is not in the poor struggle for existence but the irresistible urge to power - and overwhelming power." Or, when discussing the perennial victory of fanaticism over the intellect, explains, "A sound opinion finds advocates, but no martyrs." Others are so dense and overwritten they are virtually impenetrable. And yet I would unhesitatingly say that while COPSE is no easy, breezy read, it is compelling enough that I have re-read it several times, and on each occasion gained some wisdom from its teachings. --By M. G Watson -

If you're at all interested in the views of Right Wing Germans in the period between wars (it was penned in the early '20s), this is a good read. If you simply follow Junger, you'll also be interested in this, because it's exactly the sort of thing he was trying to disavow in his later years. Junger throws in some action, some thoughts on leadership, day-to-day details from the front, and thoughts about how trench warfare evolved from 1914 to 1918. Certainly the other reviewers are correct to assert this is a nationalist book. Particularly interesting to me is the fact that Junger seems to both disavow and embrace the 'Stab-in-the-back' myth that was so prevalent in Right Wing circles of the time. When he talks about the possibility that Germany will lose the war, he says the nation as a whole is to blame. Later, he mentions that the elements responsible for the loss should be jettisoned from German society. I suspect he was all too happy to let people read the book either way. While I'm a fan of the man and everything he accomplished in a long and storied life, he was a pretty slippery character. That was true before the concept of the 'anarch' had been fully developed, and it's definitely on display here. Also on display is his genuine love for battle as he experienced it, and a love of technology. His speculation on war machinery to come was of particular interest. One could read it as an anticipation of the helicopter. The roots for his later works, such as The Glass Bees and Aladdin's Problem are here, definitely, less the dream or trance-like qualities that color his post-WWII books. This is Junger before he got burned by the ascent of the Nazis. This book amply documents why he was able to do what he wanted in occupied Paris, and why On the Marble Cliffs wasn't banned by the Nazis. I don't mean to smear him as a true-believer, but he did sow the seeds for the ascent of the NSDAP through his contributions to the post-war marketplace of ideas. He was definitely pro-Germany, pro-military, and anti-democratic. He wasn't a loyal Nazi, but he was definitely a Right Wing intellectual who was proud to wear these attitudes on his sleeve when it mattered. Thus, I thought this book was completely fascinating. I wish someone would release a new translation of Der Arbeiter, because I'm sure it's more of the same --By Graeme M. Thompson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.