An Intimate History Of The Front

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The epochal shifts that the First World War effected in political, economic, and intellectual history has long been an object of scholarly inquiry, but the war's impact on ideas of gender and sexuality have received far less attention. This eye-opening study gives a nuanced but provocative account of how German soldiers in the Great War experienced, articulated, and enacted masculinity.

Drawing on an impressive array of relevant narratives and media - including front newspapers, family correspondence, diaries, and military court records - it explores the ways that both heterosexual and homosexual soldiers expressed emotion, understood romantic ideals, and approached intimacy and sexuality.

As author Jason Crouthamel demonstrates, German soldiers both transgressed and reinforced gender roles, developing complex notions of masculinity that diverged from national ideals of self-sacrifice and emotional self-control. As a result of their often traumatic experiences on the front, these men experimented with emotions and behaviors otherwise considered deviant, redefining them as acceptable or even necessary for surviving modern war.

Review: Crouthamel makes an important contribution to First World War scholarship. Rather than simply endorsing the 'crisis of masculinity' notion that historians have perpetuated, he deftly separates civilians' expectations of masculinity from soldiers' lived experience to argue for a 'spectrums of masculinity' approach.

As a result, An Intimate History of the Front emphasizes soldiers' ability to negotiate and challenge hegemonic ideals of masculinity on their own terms. - Erika Kuhlman, Director of Women's Studies, Idaho State University, USA Crouthamel's excellent study on how German soldiers experienced, endured, and communicated the 'chaotic universe in the trenches,' and on how they often failed to adopt the heroic, self-sacrificing male warrior ideals, breaks new ground.

It avoids any simple generalization of a common 'frontline experience,' and instead leads the reader into a sensitively written analysis of a given broad spectrum of masculinities, which emerged from trench warfare in World War I. -Christa Hammerle, Associate Professor of Modern Women's and Gender History, University of Vienna, Austria 'Brilliantly and unerringly written-a key work for understanding the complex modes in which rigid images of pre-war masculinities were challenged by the creative and twisted ways in which German soldiers in the First World War experienced, enacted, expressed, and reflected upon the 'intimate universe' of their shifting emotions, gender identities, and performances, as well as wartime sexual experiences and perceptions.

Crouthamel unfolds the iridescent spectrum of tested gender roles and masculinities at war with skillful subtlety.' -Julia B. Kohne, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany 'Exploring a widely neglected aspect of the history of the First World War, Jason Crouthamel illuminates the emotional and symbolic world of homosexual German frontline soldiers and their creative agency in transcending the boundaries of traditional martial and heterosexual gender cliches.

A ground-breaking study, a must-read for all students of military history, gender history, and modern German history.' -Thomas Kuhne, Strassler Professor of Holocaust History, Clark University, USA, and author of Belonging and Genocide (2010)

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