Building a British Superman: Physical Culture in Interwar Britain

Abstract

The celebration of the 'body beautiful' in the 1920s and 1930s is commonly associated with fascist Italy or nazi Germany. Focusing on the physical culture movement, this article argues that the endeavour to build a 'superman' was not confined to fascist dictatorships or Britain's small fascist parties. The physical culture movement played an important role in cementing the link between manliness, physical fitness and patriotism in interwar Britain. Stimulated by the Edwardian 'national efficiency' campaign, physical culturalists represented physical fitness as an obligation of citizenship and a patriotic response to the needs of the British Empire. This aspiration acquired a renewed sense of urgency after the first world war. Despite a penchant for rituals and displays which some might read as fascist, the relationship between fascism and the physical culture movement was complex and contested. During the early 1930s, some physical culturalists championed fascist leaders and ideology and parts of the physical culture press moved to the extreme right. The effort to align British physical culturalists with fascism was unsuccessful, however, and in the late 1930s the physical culture press backed the centre-right National Government which launched a National Fitness Campaign in the face of a growing threat from nazi Germany.