Cross-dressing for the fatherland: sexual humour, masculinity and German soldiers in the First World War

Abstract

This article explores several interrelated questions concerning the consequences of the First World War on German front veterans' perceptions of gender and sexuality: how did soldiers respond to military and civilian attempts to control male sexuality and define masculine ideals? How did soldiers perceive sexual behaviours and masculine norms as a result of the traumatic experiences of the trenches? Focusing on sexual humour in front newspapers, this article argues that ordinary soldiers sought to escape prevailing masculine expectations and coped with the stress of the trench experience through gender transgression that included a wide range of `deviant' behaviours, including heterosexual promiscuity, homosocial and homosexual bonds, and female mimesis. Sexual humour in front newspapers reveals that many soldiers sought more than just the absorption of `feminine' characteristics into their masculine image of comradeship, as scholars have highlighted. Soldiers also fantasized and experimented with escaping from war-time violence and masculine restrictions by crossing genders. Referring to front newspapers, soldiers' letters, and documents produced by civilians and the War Ministry, this article uses archival sources recently collected at the federal archive/military archives in Berlin and Freiburg, the Schwules Archiv (Gay Archive) in Berlin, and regional archives in Stuttgart and Munich.