Manhood and War Making:
The Literary Response to the Radicalization of Masculinity for the Purposes of WWI Propaganda
Samuel Hersh, Kent State University
Research Advisor: Kevin Floyd, Ph.D.
The New Century’s Masculinity
The Fall of Victorian Masculinity
The Victorian Age saw the decline of the 19th century definition of masculinity because of its eventual association with effeminacy and
the homosexual.
With the collapse of Victorian masculinity, a new, harsher and heartier, sense of manhood developed in an attempt to counteract the
‘womanizing’ effects felt by the previous century’s code of manliness.
The American Response:
• As the middle class became the community able to define social regulations, “turn-of-the-century manhood constructed bodily
strength and social authority as identical” (Bederman 8).
• The rise of Theodore Roosevelt in the United States allowed Roosevelt to craft himself into the embodiment of the new masculinity—a man of hard body, hearty character, and solid patriotic interests (Fehn 2005).
• The mid- to late-19th century saw the “proliferation of discourses concerned with sex,” producing an open debate and anxiety over what
was sexually normal (Foucault 18).
• Psychopathia Sexualis, published by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing in 1886, enabled Germany to become the seat of homosexual research and the stirrings of early homosexual emancipation in the late-19th century—solidifying and disseminating the newly minted homosexual identity (Beachy 1995).
• The Oscar Wilde Trails of 1895 put an end to the seemingly widespread Victorian sexual decadence and the open-secret of male homosexuality (Adut 2005).
• This fluid interaction of German sexual/psychological focus on the male body, and the destruction of British Victorian standards, produced a widespread crisis of masculinity and male sexuality.
The German Response:
• Germany’s national-minded response immediately vilified its aristocratic and ruling class, seeing them as the seat and cause of
“Wilhelmine decadence” (Domeier 738).
• The Eulenburg Scandal, “remembered today as the first major homosexual scandal of the twentieth century,” made homosexuality, and masculinity, a national issue (Domeier 737).
• The nation thus latched onto its army and the heroic/masculine ideal of the soldier, making the soldier/hero “a buoy in the…
psychological and sexological discourses on masculinity” (Prickett 68).
WWI’s Radicalization of Masculinity
While it is clear that the United States, Germany, and Britain all rebuilt similar definitions of manhood for the new 20th century, a definition built on heartiness of character and a solid muscular body, this code of manliness would be taken to an extreme when appropriated by all three countries for use in their war propaganda.
The British Response:
• The nation dove into its renaissance of empire building, called New Imperialism—“‘empire for empire’s sake,’ [an] aggressive
competition for overseas territorial acquisitions” (“British Empire”).
• Physical culture grew sharply in popularity in the country, paralleling the rise of Eugene Sandow, the “owner of a physical-culture empire with studios all over Britain” (Matz 35).
• At the start of the 20th century, Britain is left with a code of masculinity that “celebrated a militaristic and robust hypermasculinity” (Francis 640).
• Both the United States and Britain utilized the atrocity story technique, one meant to “sustain the moral condemnation of the enemy,” and
thus legitimizing the war (Sanders and Taylor 142).
• Germany’s propaganda began in a more populist way, “letters to the editor…teachers’, university professors’, and pastors’ speeches; or
war-themed merchandise” all existed as self-motivated forms of propaganda from the nation’s citizenry (Ther).
• Though all three countries used the war poster in their efforts, in turn linking correct masculine expressions with martial duty and the hypermasculine.
Johnny Got His Gun—1939
All Quiet on the Western Front—1929
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon—1920
While most works appearing in the United States after the Great War treated the war as a symbol or
theme in literature—using it to emphasize the distinct break in the zeitgeist of the world pre- and
post-WWI—Dalton Trumbo’s novel brings the war back to its physical reality, and depicts the corporeal consequences of the war and its propaganda.
Germany, in the countries studied here, was the hardest hit nation in relation to its national psyche
and fervent pre-war belief in martial-hypermasculinity, because of this, Erich Remarque’s novel
serves to illustrate what happens in an overly gendered, martial, and hypermasculine culture.
Britain’s heavy involvement in World War One, reflected by their leadership in the Allied Powers
and their increasing use of propaganda for recruitment, produced untold horrors and unimaginable
deaths for the nation; Owen and Sassoon’s poetry was thus written with the sole intention of public
consumption to provide a counter-propagandist, dissenting voice.
• The novel’s structure surrounds Joe Bonham, the protagonist, and the interior monologue that takes
place in his head when he realizes he has lost his entire face and all four limbs.
• Joe remarks upon the widespread pressure for men to enlist, commenting that “churches and
schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress” made promoting the idea of enlistment
“their business” (Trumbo 115).
• America’s use of gendered and hypermasculine propaganda gets reflected by Joe’s observations as
well: “And when they couldn’t hook the little guys into fighting for liberty or freedom or democracy or independence or decency or honor they tried the women” (Trumbo 113).
• The climax occurs when Joe finally makes contact with the outside world again, through typing Morse Code with his head, and asks to be toured around the country as a visual sign to warn
against the realities of war (Trumbo 225-231).
• His efforts are thwarted when the establishment around him simply types back—“What you ask is
against regulations” (Trumbo 234-235).
• Joe thus becomes the product of a “propaganda machine…unhindered by resistant voices,” destined to never speak the truth he knows (Blackmore).
“He could tell all these high-talking murdering sonsofbitches who screamed for blood just howwrong they
were. He could tell them mister there’s nothing worth dying for I know because I’m dead. There’s no word
worth your life. I would rather work in a coal mine deep under the earth and never see sunlight and eat
crusts and water and work twenty hours a day. I would rather do that than be dead. I would trade democracy for life. I would trade independence and honor and freedom and decency for life. I will give you all these
things and you give me the power to walk and see and hear and breathe the air and taste my food. You take
the words. Give me back my life.”
• After the close of the Great War, Germany’s defeat was incredibly shameful for the nation, both in
national prestige and because of the destruction to their national image of the unbeatable soldier/
hero (Whalen).
• Remarque, like Trumbo, accuses national institutions and public rhetoric in furthering the state
propaganda and essentially forcing young men to enlist; they were “the Iron Youth” of their nation
(Remarque 18).
• Once at the frontline, the protagonist Paul Baumer and his fellow soldiers see how useless a hypermasculine identity is in the face of bombs, and so they enact feminine/dissenting actions in an attempt to save their humanity.
• The boys act toward each other like family and pseudo-mothers (Remarque 29), they recreate
scenes of domestic home life (Remarque 231), and they form intimate bonds that mirror the romantic connections of back home (Remarque 94-95).
• Despite the boys’ efforts, they do all die in the end, caught up as pawns in a larger war that trapped
them with hypermasculine lies and propaganda based on an unattainable military ideal.
“But we do not forget. It’s all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how
they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don’t act like that because we are
in good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces. Even so we cannot
hold out much longer; our humour becomes more bitter every month.”
​—Erich Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
​—Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
• Before the onset of war, the impending Great War seemed like a timely “opportunity to exhibit virtues like physical courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice,” or in other words, 19th century British war
ideals (Pividori 163).
• Wilfred Owen’s poetry provided a subversion to the overarching compulsory martial hypermasculinity imposed on the soldiers of World War One through the conflation of the state, Britain’s cultural history, and harmful propaganda.
• After the war, Sassoon went on to have a prolific writing career that never strayed from a focus on
the Great War and speaking about the horror caused by it, including his belief in pacifism and his
resentment of the British nation (Dollar 235).
• Both poets use themes of the ghostly or ethereal, hyperrealist portrayals of the frontline and battle,
and a focused attention to the body and the effects of war on the body and psyche.
• Through these poets, there exists an entire collection of postwar poetry that aims to heavily critique unnecessary destruction, essentially hollow concepts of heroism and national duty, and forceful masculinist propaganda.
“He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon he was drafted out with drums and cheers.”
“‘We’re none of us the same!’ the boys reply.
‘For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind;
Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find
A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change.’
And the bishop said: ‘The ways of God are strange!’”
—Siegfried Sassoon, “‘THEY’”
—Wilfred Owen, “Disabled”
Works Cited
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Image credits:
Photo 1 and 2: Library of Congress
Photo 3 and 4: Library of Congress
Photo 5 and 6: Imperial War Museum