Ernst Jünger is chiefly known for his writings in the years of the Weimar Republic, when he was one of the leading figures of the Conservative Revolution, the cultural and political movement that served as “intellectual vanguard of the right.” Embracing some of the best-known writers, academics, journalists, politicians, and philosophers of the period, the Conservative Revolution produced a flood of radical nationalist writings in the form of war diaries and works of fiction, political journalism, manifestos, and theoretical tracts outlining the development and destiny of political life in Germany and the West. During the Weimar years the Conservative Revolutionaries became the major innovative interpreters of the First World War for the Right, sometimes associating themselves closely with the paramilitary war veterans' organization, Stahlhelm, and with the NSDAP, which they briefly saw as a revolutionary party that embraced their ideals. Examining the tensions in their portrayal of the war and their political exploitation of the war experience sheds light not just on their personal preoccupations but also on the political culture of the Weimar years.

Among the Conservative Revolutionaries it is particularly Ernst Jünger whose work displays these tensions. In the Weimar period Jünger was the most significant representative of that branch of the Conservative Revolution known as new nationalism, which sought to carry forward military values and structures into peacetime society, and which redefined socialism in terms of the community of frontline soldiers.