Operation Valhalla

Friedrich Kittler (1943–2011) was a Professor of Media Aesthetics and History at Humboldt University in Berlin and the author of numerous books, including Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.Ilinca Iurascu is Associate Professor of German at the University of British Columbia.Geoffrey Winthrop-Young is Professor of German at the University of British Columbia.Michael Wutz is Rodney H. Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of English at Weber State University.

“The preeminent thinker of media in the past half century, Friedrich Kittler speaks to deep concerns of the digital age in a voice that is philosophical, wry, learned, obscure, indirect, profound, and always stimulating. To read him is to have your neurons rearranged. Kittler’s work is essential.” - John Durham Peters, coauthor of (Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History) “As demonstrated by his famous mapping of the three media operations-recording, transmitting, processing-onto ‘trenches,’ ‘blitz,’ and Ronald Reagan's Star Wars, war for Friedrich Kittler was the principle that drove media history. Although a provocation for whiggish as well as for critical thinking that found the telos of media history in humanity's progress toward democracy or capitalism's perversion of democracy, Kittler's highly original approach to media analysis opened up a road to a posthumanistic theory of media which has never been more timely than today.” - Bernhard Siegert, author of (Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, and Other Articulations of the Real) “Operation Valhalla is the best resource available for understanding the central role of warfare in Kittler’s thought and an all too relevant book for our troubled times.”- Anders Engberg-Pedersen (Critical Inquiry)

• Editor's Preface / Ilinca Iurascu, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, and Michael Wutz  viiIntroduction: The Wars of Friedrich Kittler / Geoffrey Winthrop-Young  1Part I: Guns, Germans, and Steel: The Hardware(s) of War1. Free Ways (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)   532. A Short History of the Searchlight (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  623. Fragments of a History of Firearms (Translated by Michael Wutz)  694. Tanks (Translated by Michael Wutz)  73Part II. Wires, Waves, and Wagner5. Noises of War (Translated by Michael Wutz)  796. Playback: A World War History of Radio Drama (Translated by Michael Wutz)  917. Operation Valhalla (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  1108. When the Blitzkrieg Raged (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  117Part III. Vanishing Animals and Returning Nomads9. Animals of War: A Historical Bestiary (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  12310. On Modern Warfare: A Conversation with Alexander Kluge (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  12711. Of States and Their Terrorists (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  136Part IV. Love and War12. Manners of Death in War (Translated by Michael Wutz)  15113. Ottilie Hauptmann (Translated by Ilinca Iurascu)  166Part V. Pynchon's War14. On a Novel That Would Not Only Be Fiction . . . (Translated by Michael Wutz)  19315. De Nostalgia (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  19816. Media and Drugs in Pynchon's Second World War (Translated by Michael Wutz)  211Part VI. Kittler on Kittler17. Biogeography (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  22718. Theology (Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)  233Notes  235Bibliography  273Index  287Credits  295