the german writer ErnstJünger (1895-1998) he was one of the most expressive prose writers and essayists of the 20th century. Member of the German army, he was a combatant in the First World War and, as well as other writers who also participated in it, such as J. A. A. Tolkien and Erich Maria Remarque, the catastrophic ambience surpassed much of his work. The novel “Steel Storms” became one of the most raw and realistic portraits of the First War. However, Jünger also stood out for the reflections he undertook regarding the radical transformation that the warModern (expressed by the First World War of 1914) provoked in the conception of work of the European population in the 1920s and 1930s.
In his essay “THEmobilizationtotal”, published in 1930, Jünger sought to understand the elementary difference that existed between the Great War that broke out in 1914 and previous wars. The first and most striking difference lay in the question of the modernization of armies, especially the German army, of which the writer was a part. The technological development provided by the Second Industrial Revolution, which enabled the creation of efficient and complex machines, was also directed towards war. Thus, the deadly power of the weapons used in World War I was infinitely superior to that of wars fought in the 19th century, such as the
WarFranco-Prussian.The other main differences were: 1) the type of soldier who swelled the ranks of World War I was basically a “mirror” of the men who joined the ranks of industries and large urban centers from the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century. The demographic growth brought about by the advent of the industry produced new human characters; 2) this mass of men that made up the armies that faced each other in the war had as its counterpart another mass that was also engaged, but producing weapons and ammunition in the factories. Thus, the world of war (with the “serial production of the dead”) was followed by the world of work (with the serial production of deadly articles).
This ubiquitous relationship of production, both on the battlefields and in the factories (but also in the daily lives of homes, streets, etc.), Jünger called “total mobilization”. This concept aimed to express the collectivist character of society that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. In an excerpt of his essay, Jünger stated:
“Thus: the image of war as an armed business, increasingly, flows into the amplified image of a gigantic work process. Alongside the armies that clash on the battlefields, new types of army appear: that of transit, that of food, that of the arms industry - the army of work in general. In the last phase, which was already insinuated towards the end of this last war, there was no further movement - even that of a housewife at her sewing machine-in which she did not reside at least one function directly war. In this absolute capture of potential energy, which transformed the belligerent industrial states into volcanic steelworks, it is announced, perhaps in the most evident, the dawn of the labor era - this capture makes the world war a historical phenomenon whose meaning is much more important than that of the Revolution French.” [Jünger, Ernst. (2002). Total mobilization. Human nature, 4(1), 189-216. Recovered on November 25, 2014.]
The “potential energy” Jünger speaks of would be channeled and managed, in the 1920s and 1930s, by totalitarian political regimes such as fascism and Nazism. No wonder that these regimes provided an idolatry to the world of work and to the body of workers and soldiers alike. The essentially ambivalent “power” for construction (labor) and destruction (war) was the humus of totalitarianism.
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* Image credits: Shutterstock and rook76
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/guerras/guerra-trabalho-no-pensamento-ernst-junger.htm