The Great War and German Memory

The treatment of disabled veterans of the First World War in Germany is not uncharted territory. A number of studies have explored the tensions which arose when the new Weimar Republic, defining itself explicitly as a welfare state, sought to take care of an unprecedented number of veterans with permanent injuries and proved unable to meet expectations, due to financial constraints and the medical experts’ emphasis on making the disabled fit for work rather than turning them into recipients of pensions. Jason Crouthamel’s book, originally a doctoral dissertation supervised by James Diehl, makes a valuable contribution to this debate. Following up in particular on Paul Lerner’s work on the treatment of ‘war hysterics’, Crouthamel examines debates and conflicts concerning this group of disabled veterans from the period of the war itself into the Nazi era. Instead of essentialising ‘trauma’, the author takes a constructivist position, reading the arguments made by the veterans as part of a strategy to make claims for recognition and compensation. The core part of the impressive body of sources he draws upon consists of letters written by veterans with a mental trauma to the labour ministry in Berlin, the institution in charge of making decisions about pensions. Central to these letters was a concept of masculinity which emphasised what Thomas Kühne has described as the softer side of comradeship and challenged the ideal of hardened masculinity propagated by the political right. How successfully this concept could be adapted to different political circumstances is the main focus of the book

German · Masculinity · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Weimar Republic · Gender Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Law · Psychology