Western States, Military Masculinity and Combat in the Age of World Wars

Tracking representations and experiences of military masculinities in the first half on the twentieth century in Europe and the United States, this paper examines to which degree and in which ways the industrialization, brutalization and ‘totalization’ of Western warfare--new weapons of mass destruction, the targeting of civilians, and the mobilization of ever larger sections of males and females for the war project—has changed constructions of military masculinity. Attention will be drawn to the relation of two trajectories: first, the representations of military masculinity (e.g. in laws, literature, and artifacts) as the epitome of gendered concepts of nationhood and citizenship; and second the subjective experience and appropriation of such representations of military masculinity, or the construction of different concepts of masculinity, especially by combat soldiers in both wars. Challenging popular views on military masculinities as promulgated by and in the wake of Klaus Theweleit’s now classic Male Phantasies, I shall argue that in the age of the two World Wars traditional concepts of exclusive and heroic masculinity gave way to inclusive, protean masculinities. Their fabric as tutorials for coping with the emotional, moral, and physical challenges of total war allowed for the integration of soldiers with different personalities and different social backgrounds into the cohesive face-to-face combat group that proved crucial for the fighting morale of modern armies. While men within these homo-social groups could perform a broad range of seemingly contradictory, manly and femininely coded emotions and practices, these groups yet relied on the exclusion of women.