This article examines self-disparaging representations of “the German man” in humorous middle-class visual and textual publications of the 1840s. Considering contemporary notions of German national character and the emergence of contradictory masculine ideals, the analysis traces the dual representation of the German man as either an emasculated philistine or a hypermasculine quixotic hero. Based on this analysis, it argues that just as a German national movement was acquiring unprecedented political potency, a highly gendered sense of German national ineptness was widespread among the German bourgeoisie. Both the philistine and the quixotic German were cast as inadequate in the face of a corruptive, feminized modernity that was unfairly advantageous to the French. These findings underscore how gender and national stereotypes in nineteenth-century Germany were mutually destabilizing and repeatedly negotiated, profoundly shaping contemporaries’ understanding of the world changing around them.

This article deals with the war crimes committed during the First World War. Whereas in historiography the presence of franc-tireurs, the new industrial warfare or the specific military and radicalised command culture of individual armies often served as explanatory patterns for the escalation of violence, this contribution attempts to introduce a different perspective into the discussion. The focus is on the specific violence of mobile warfare, which was articulated in the context of military “forward panics” (Randall Collins) on the Eastern and Balkan fronts and was responsible for a considerable part of the war crimes committed there. The article therefore deals with the nature and character of these military forward panics. Starting with a description of the spatial characteristics of the front as a specific space of violence, the role of military orders and the significance of the front as a soldierly space of imagination, the article analyses above all the structural violence of forward panics. In this context, the article discusses three factors that played an essential role in this escalation process: first, the special soldierly frame of reference of combat in mobile warfare, which continuously lowered the inhibition thresholds for the escalation of violence; second, the escalation-forcing dynamics that the swift advance or the flight-like retreat of the troops brought with it for the process of violence; and finally, third, the significance of soldierly group pressure for the process of escalation of violence.

The difference between the representation of German femininity in the 1920s and the 1930s is striking: while glamorous flappers with bob haircuts ruled the beginning of the interwar period, its end is characterized by serious and earnest—and often longhaired—young women. Rather than taking the obvious route of relating this change to the political changes in Germany, most importantly the rise of the Nazis, this article argues that the changing representation of interwar femininity in Germany was always embedded in a transnational, transatlantic process. The transformation of flappers into humble girls started well before the Nazis came to power and was fueled by a wide variety of voices, from communist to bourgeois actors.

The Wehrmacht's stunning victories in the first three years of the Second World War produced a euphoric response among Nazi leaders. Suddenly, the East became a vast expanse of nearly limitless possibilities, and creating a new racial order topped the list. Although most historians have focused on the Volksdeutsche, the regime also planned to settle veterans after the war's conclusion to serve as model Germans, farmers, and a “living wall” to defend the East. As the war dragged on into 1942 and these men continued to fight, the regime turned to disabled veterans to garrison the East. The SS designed a racial selection process that proved too restrictive to generate enough applicants and, during 1943 and 1944, settlement officials revised standards. In the process, contingency, constrained practices, and contested ideology all cast the boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, able-bodiedness, and disability as much more malleable than Nazi propaganda projected.