How do the extracts below assist our understanding of German nationalist, counter-revolutionary movements in the period 1918-23? From which social groups were volunteers recruited, why did they volunteer, what were their aims, and how were their decisions shaped by the military, social and political context?

Revolution and counter-revolution in Germany (1918-23)

QUESTION :

How do the extracts below assist our understanding of German nationalist, counter-revolutionary movements in the period 1918-23? From which social groups were volunteers recruited, why did they volunteer, what were their aims, and how were their decisions shaped by the military, social and political context?

Documents :

(a) Ernst Jünger, Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis [Battle as an Inner Experience]
(Berlin, 1922), pp. xi-xv, 1-5

“There are moments when from above the horizon of the mind a new constellation dazzles the eyes of all those who cannot find inner peace, an annunciation and storm-siren betokening a turning-point in world history, just as it once did for the kings from the East. From this point on the surrounding stars are engulfed in a fiery blaze, idols shatter into shards of clay, and everything that has taken shape hitherto is melted down in a thousand furnaces to be cast into new values.
The waves of such an age are surging around us from all sides. Brain, society, state, god, art, Eros, morality: decay, ferment – resurrection? Still the images flit restlessly past our eyes, still the atoms seethe in the cauldrons of the city. And yet this tempest too will ebb, and even this lava stream will freeze into order. Every madness has always disintegrated against a grey wall, unless someone is found who harnesses it to his wagon with a fist of steel.
Why is it that our age in particular is so overflowing with destructive and productive energies? Why is this age in particular so pregnant with such enormous promise? For while much may perish in the feverish heat, the same flame is simultaneously brewing future wonders in a thousand retorts. A walk in the street, a glance in the newspaper is enough to confirm this, confounding all the prophets.
It is War which has made human beings and their age what they are. Never before has a race of men like ours stridden into the arena of the earth to decide who is to wield power over the epoch. For never before has a generation entered the daylight of life from a gateway so dark and awesome as when they emerged from this War. And this we cannot deny, no matter how much some would like to: War, father of all things, is also ours; he has hammered us, chiseled and tempered us into what we are [……]
As sons of an age intoxicated by matter, progress seemed to us perfection, the machine the key to godliness, telescopes and microscopes organs of enlightenment. Yet underneath the ever more polished exterior, beneath all the clothes in which we bedecked ourselves, we remained naked and raw like men of the forest and the steppes.
That showed itself when the War ripped asunder the community of Europe, when we confronted each other in a primordial contest behind flags and symbols which many sceptics had long mocked. Then it was that, in an orgy of frenzy, the true human being made up for everything he had missed. At this point his drives, too long pent up by society and its laws, became once more the ultimate form of reality, holiness, and reason […….]
What actually went on? The carriers of War and its creatures, human beings, whose lives had to lead towards War and through Him, were flung into new paths, new goals. This is what we were to Him, but what was He to us? That is a question which many now seek to ask. This is what these pages are concerned with”.

(b) Ernst von Salomon, Die Geachteten [The Outcasts] (Berlin, 1930), pp. 63-4

“[…] Slowly the peace terms were becoming known [……] Lieutenant Kay took some of us to one side [……] One by one twenty men came forward. They recognized each other in a look, a word, a smile, they knew that they belonged together.
But they were not faithful to the government, heavens, they were anything but faithful to the government. They could no longer respect the man and the command which they had obeyed till then, and the political order they were supposed to help create seemed meaningless to them.
They were the troublemakers in their companies. War had not yet demobbed them. The war had formed them, causing their most secret obsessions to break through to the surface and sparkle in the dark. It had given their life a meaning and sanctified their sense of duty. They were unruly, untamed. Cast out of the world of bourgeois norms, they had not returned to their regiments, but formed small groups to look for their own front to defend. There were many colours to rally round: which was flying most proudly in the wind?[ … ] They had seen through the fraud of the peace settlement, and wanted no part of it. They wanted no part of the political order which people were trying to make them digest with slippery promises. They had stayed under arms out of an unwavering instinct […..]
And yet each of them was looking for something else and gave different reasons for his quest: the word for it had not yet been given them. They sensed the word, indeed they pronounced it, and were ashamed of how woolly it sounded. With fear in their hearts they tried it out and played with it, or in many a conversation avoided using it altogether, and yet it still hovered over them. The word was still shrouded in a deep haze, wizened, alluring, mysterious, emanating magic powers, sensed but not recognized, loved and yet not available. The word was ‘Germany’.
Where was Germany? In Weimar? In Berlin? Once it was at the front, but the front collapsed. Then it was meant to be in the homeland, but the homeland let us down. It was heard in songs and speeches, but it sounded wrong. People spoke of the Fatherland and Motherland, but Negroes had that too. Where was Germany? Was it in people? But they cried for bread and elected those with big bellies. Was it in the State? But the State was looking for its final form amidst a torrent of words and found it only through renunciation.
[…..] Germany existed where it was being fought for, it revealed itself where armed hands struggled to give it substance, it shone out brightly where those possessed by its spirit were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for its sake. Germany was where its borders were. The articles of the Versailles settlement told us where Germany lay […..]
On 1 April 1919, Bismarck’s birthday – the fight-wing parties were holding patriotic celebrations, we left Weimar and the regiment, twenty-eight men with Lieutenant Kay at the head, without any permission or an order to do so, and travelled to the Baltic”.

Key secondary sources (excellent items to start your reading):

Richard Bessel, ‘The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War’, German History, 6 (1), 1988, 20-34
Richard Bessel, Germany After World War I, (Oxford, 1993)
Nikolaus Wachsmann, ‘Marching Under the Swastika?: Ernst Junger and National Socialism’, JCH, 33 (4), 1998
Gerwarth and Horne, ‘Vectors of Violence: Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War’, The Journal of Modern History, 83, 3 (September 2011), pp. 489-512
Robert Gerwarth, ‘The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War’, Past & Present, 200, 1, (2008), 175-209