Citation

Crouthamel J. J. Hist. Sex. 2008; 17(1): 60-84.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1353/sex.2008.0006

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the history of the intersections between war, gender, and sexuality, historians have debated the degree to which the age of total war represented a step toward "remasculinization," a process by which traditional constructions of masculinity are bolstered and strongly redefined as a reaction to a breakdown of hegemonic conceptions of masculinity. In German society the First World War led to particularly intense debates over whether or not combat had been essentially healthy or destructive for the male psyche and body. On the brink of 1914 doctors and critics anticipated that the war would reinvigorate men weakened by decades of peace and the accelerated pace of modernity. The brutality and stress of modern warfare, however, seriously tested traditional gender norms and boundaries. The postwar milieu was wrenched by cultural debates over the social effects of the war, intensified by the political divisions in the wake of defeat and revolution. Conflicts over the rise of the "new woman" and debates over the memory of the war as something either horrifying or laudable culminated with the Nazi seizure of power. The Nazi state aimed unprecedented violence against men and women who failed to conform to the regime's social and sexual ideals. Through remilitarization and war Nazi ideologues hoped to counter allegedly degenerative behaviors like homosexuality and restore the health of the male body and psyche.