From “Total Destruction” to “Total Dictatorship”: The Influence of Ernst Jünger’s Visionary Fascism

<p>This paper seeks to answer one central question: How can the life and work of Ernst Jünger help illuminate the development of fascist ideas, culture, politics, and power across Europe from 1920-1945? The components of that question are: what were the core elements of Jünger’s aesthetics, morality, and politics? How did he synthesize these elements to create his influential vision of German fascism? What were Jünger’s interactions and exchanges with other European fascists, as well as influential Nazis including Carl Schmitt, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolph Hitler himself? How did Jünger’s new Fascist politics and aesthetics affect them? I argue that Imperial German military culture and French Symbolist aesthetics are central, yet overlooked elements of his innovative totalitarian vision. Furthermore, this vision had a measurable, although ambivalent influence—on top Nazi officials, resistance to the Reich, and the seeds of postwar revisionism. My sources include primary and secondary sources in English and German, including original archival research, bringing together cultural, intellectual, military, political, and economic history, and adhering to Wolf Kansteiner’s view of cultural and intellectual history as a process of production and consumption in the context of traditions, as well as the varying interests of memory makers and consumers. I end this thesis by reflecting on how Jünger’s life and work inform larger issues: the role of literary and intellectual culture in cycles of mass violence, the consequences of experience in Imperial Armies on post-imperial German culture, individual responsibility, and European memory of World War Two.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Liberal Studies

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2024

Author dc:creator

• Schiff, Nick

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Benjamin Carter Hett

• Comparative Literature
• European History
• German Literature
• Holocaust and Genocide Studies
• Intellectual History
• Political History
• World War One
• Fascism
• Weimar Republic
• Third Reich
• German Intellectual History

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5842

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-6919