Masculinity, Political Culture, and the Rise of Nazism

Abstract

The relationship between masculinity and political power in the Weimar Republic has not yet been adequately explored by historians. This chapter registers its analytical potential to explain the political ascent of National Socialism. It traces the emergence of a radical critique of republican culture as emasculated and un-German, weakened by female suffrage and bloodless leadership. The Nazis ultimately commandeered the critique in a remasculinizing proposition to the electorate. Yet the Nazi movement’s gendered claims and aspirations were always contested and enmeshed in a wider struggle between competing ideals of political masculinity. The chapter deconstructs the ambiguous gendering of National Socialism in public life before 1933 and concludes by tracing the violent suppression of rival conceptions of political manhood during the seizure of power.

I would like to thank Paul Moore, Kim Wünschmann, and Nikolaus Wachsmann for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.