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Historian Thomas Kuehne and student Brian Libby examined the impact of war and violence on gender identity in Nazi Germany. |
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Meet the researchers:
Masculinities and Nazi War
Interview with Professor Thomas Kuehne and Brian Libby
Through his research, historian Thomas Kuehne creates a picture of how wartime and mass violence affected gender roles and interpersonal relationships in Nazi Germany. In a recent interview, summarized below, he and student Brian Libby '05 described the ideals and realities of masculinity and comradeship among German youth and soldiers during World War II.
Dr. Kuehne, what led to your interest and research in recent German history, specifically the Holocaust and gender roles?
About ten years ago, there was a controversy in Germany between young people and the older people who had experienced and participated in World War II. The debate centered on to what degree ordinary soldiers were involved in the mass murder of Jews. The young people accused the older generation--the former soldiers--of having enjoyed killing and murdering people.
The former soldiers were quite shocked by such an accusation. They talked, not about having murdered people, but about being good comrades to each other. This notion of comradeship was quite important for their own self-image as former soldiers. When they talked about comradeship during the war, they did it in a very tender and warm way. Comradeship, in their view, referred to an experience of nearly feminine feelings, not to male toughness, or to killing people. I wanted to understand what relationship comradeship had with male toughness, mass violence, and mass murder.
Could you explain the significance of comradeship in Nazi Germany in more detail?
As a comrade, one was obliged not only to demonstrate male toughness, but also to be affectionate and to express tender, feminine feelings. Comradeship therefore was the codeword for everything a civil society would regard as humane behavior. However, such humane behavior was directed only to the in-group, that is, to those who conformed--other comrades. The comrade was the one who gave himself and his individuality up for others in his community. He conformed and participated whenever and wherever necessary.
This combination of solicitude and pressure was the basis of a moral system opposed to any notion of individual responsibility or guilt. In Nazi Germany, this moral system attained a level of significance unusual for industrial societies. The ultimate test of conformity, and therefore comradeship, was the collective willingness to break with the norm. In order to be acknowledged as a "man among men," a soldier had to be prepared to do forbidden, or even criminal, things. The moral grammar of comradeship always followed the same rule: everything was allowed as long as it enriched and intensified social life and the coherence of the bond of comrades, that is, the male bond.
The principle of male community building through norm breaking blurred the boundaries to crimes of all sort. Attacks by partisans offered grounds for the murder of civilians, especially of Jews, because according to Nazi propaganda, all Jews were partisans. The honor of the comradely community, which screamed for and also excused revenge, legitimized the massacres against the defenseless. And where there were no partisans, they were imagined and the population at large murdered instead. The group demanded actions of violence to prove itself.
Does this understanding of comradeship suggest other directions for research?
Yes. Now I'm broadening my research horizon. I'm becoming interested in other kinds of social bonding during that time period, such as those between women, and between men and women. How were these bonds shaped by the war and the Holocaust? How did the perpetrator society and the victims-Jews, mainly--react to those events? How were the social bonds between Jews in the ghettos and concentration camps shaped by the experience of mass violence? So I'm interested in exploring how a variety of social bonds were affected by mass violence.
As a historian, what kinds of sources do you use to form a picture of these social bonds?
Historians have different ways of approaching potential sources. Some historians prefer to use only one kind of source, for instance, just documents, or just interviews. I prefer to use a wider range of sources. I'm looking for any kind of source that mirrors feelings and emotions, anything that sheds light on the issue of social bonding. Those sources primarily consist of letters, diaries, and memories. I prefer to work with letters and diaries. Memories can be very difficult because they usually tell us more about the time when they come forth than the time they refer to.
Are there any particular obstacles that have come up in the course of your research?
As a historian, I wanted to understand the perpetrators of violence and transfer this understanding to a broader public. But the problem is that it's not that easy to understand the perpetrators or to develop any kind of empathy. I have to maintain a balance between empathy and keeping a distance. That's the main problem and challenge, and it makes the work of the historian quite interesting.
Some people think that the purpose of history is to enable us not to repeat certain events, like genocide. What are your thoughts on that?
That's a very good question, but one of the most difficult for historians. Historians, sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists have gathered lots of information about the preconditions for genocide. From that we can learn to a certain degree. The problem is that usually the people making political decisions don't consult historians! They frequently make decisions in ignorance of historical knowledge.
But there's another problem. The same history doesn't happen again in exactly the same way. It's always new in large part. That's why the possibilities to learn from history are quite limited. I think the most important lesson that we can learn from history is that the world is always changing, and that nothing is always stable. Another lesson to be learned is that there always exists a variety of options for individuals and societies. The historian can help us see that there's always more than one option. But the historian cannot say which option should be chosen.
Brian, what prompted you to take Dr. Kuehne's course Gender, War, and Holocaust?
I was interested in the course's interdisciplinary nature. Because I'm double-majoring in history and sociology, I like to take courses that integrate both perspectives. Also, I was particularly interested in taking a course on gender, because I hadn't really done that yet. I wanted to examine gender issues as they applied to both sociology and history. I thought that Germany in WWII and the Holocaust would be an interesting time period against which to examine gender issues.
I've taken some other courses in German 20th century history, and I think it's a time period, World War II especially, that lends itself to different avenues of research and to examination through different lenses--sociological, psychological, historical, etc.
Can you describe your research project for the course?
I'm looking at the different masculinities that existed in World War II Germany. There was a dominant form of masculinity propagated by Hitler and the government. There were also different masculinities, embodied especially in the youth who were growing up on the home front and the soldiers who were away fighting in the war. How did men consciously or unconsciously adopt the dominant form of masculinity, but at the same time create and personify different masculinities? How did they negotiate between what was socially and ideologically perceived to be the male gender role, and their own personal ideas of masculinity? How did they come to terms with the events they were experiencing, in terms of dominant and subordinate masculinities? Also, I try to examine how different experiences of the war shaped the multiple masculinities embodied in men; how war experience simultaneously reinforced and contradicted both dominant and alternative forms of masculinity.
So far I've outlined the different masculinities and compared them with theoretical works about masculinity during that time period. Looking back in time, it can be easy to make broad generalizations about how men lived their lives. I think it's interesting to see a more nuanced and detailed version of male identity throughout history, and I think it's important to realize that, in all time periods, many different masculinities exist other than the ideological or societal conceptions of manhood. In fact, embodying many different masculinities is often more characteristic of male identity than submitting to one dominant form.
Can you give examples of those masculinities?
The dominant masculinity at the time was a very hyper-masculine, rigid, soldierly masculinity, and very anti-feminine. A "masculine" man was a good soldier and emotionally distant, although, at the same time invested in the soldierly cause. The values of manhood disseminated by the Nazi state emphasized an aggressive, unemotional, militaristic, and often violent masculinity, and because of the political and military agendas of the Nazi regime, many men were socialized into or forced to conform to these values in their lives as German youth, soldiers, perpetrators, etc.
Have you reached any conclusions so far?
One conclusion I've reached in my research is that participating in the war did not always mean that a man adopted the hyper-masculinity propagated by Hitler. War experience often led men to embody "weaker" forms of masculinity. For example, the horrors of war often led men to find solace in comradeship, by which an emotional bonding normally seen as being "feminine" was able to take place between men. Also, some of the youth memoirs show boys having relationships with their mothers that are very important to them. Brought out by their war experiences, male youths as well as men in battle longed for the feminine and distanced themselves from the dominant hyper-masculinity, often by engaging in very close, emotional, and tender relationships with each other. I've found that sensitivity, emotionality, and a desire for non-violence is often more commonly seen among men in war than an adaptation to the hyper-masculinity. It's interesting to compare how youth and soldiers experienced masculinity, and how the war shaped that experience.
What kind of sources are you exploring?
Primarily, I'm using English translations of wartime memoirs of German youth and soldiers. Although I would have liked to examine memoirs of adult men on the home front as well, it's more difficult to find memoirs from men who weren't soldiers. I also look at letters, but it's more difficult to come by those in translation.
Can you comment on the process of conducting your own research, in contrast to learning from class discussions and textbooks?
Doing your own research is definitely much more difficult and time-intensive. Sometimes it's more difficult to reach conclusions when you're doing your own research. In a classroom, in some ways, you get led in a certain direction. Even though you're making your own conclusions and interpretations, there are already established conclusions that are examined in class. But when you're doing your own research, you have to come to your own conclusions, and that's a lot more difficult.
For example, the war memories I read don't explicitly talk about masculinity, and the men writing them often don't trace their internal conflicts of identity back to issues of conflicting masculinities. It's not something that's consciously written about, so I have to read between the lines. Based on how men and youth wrote about the war and their experiences, I have to evaluate how masculinities existed. So the conclusions are harder to come by, but once you do reach them, it's much more rewarding I think. That's definitely the advantage of doing your own research. But I think class work and your own projects go hand in hand. I know from my own experience that what we've talked about in class has been a basis from which I can do this research.
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Additional Resources
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Thomas Kuehne and Brian Libby
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Reaching your own conclusions