This book is the first comprehensive study of sexual lives in Germany and occupied Europe during the First World War. Reconsidering sex in war brings to life a whole cast of characters too often left out of the historical narrative: widowed women who worked as prostitutes, fresh-faced recruits who experienced the war in a VD hospital, eugenicists who conflated sex and national decline, soldiers' wives ostracized by neighbourhood rumour mills. By considering the confluence of public discourse, state policy, and everyday life, Lisa M. Todd adds to the growing body of knowledge on war and society in the twentieth century. By incorporating the 1914-1918 experience into the longer frame of the pre-war sex reform movement and the post-war Allied occupation of the Rhineland, this book is able to more fully evaluate the impact of the war years on the history of intimate relations in early twentieth-century Germany.

Provides the first comprehensive study of sexual lives in Germany and German-occupied Europe during the First World War Utilizes a wide variety of sources from state agencies including government correspondence and health records Explains how the discourses and lived realities of wartime can provide insight into the nationalization of the private body and state intervention in intimate affairs

Autorentext

Lisa M. Todd is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick, Canada, where she teaches the history of modern Germany, war, genocide, gender, and sexuality. She is also director of the Network for the Study of Civilians, Soldiers and Society at the Milton F. Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society.

Inhalt
CHAPTER ONE Introduction.- CHAPTER TWO Enticing Men to Lechery: Sex Reform, Moral Purity, and the 'Prostitution Question' before 1914 .- CHAPTER THREE Almost All Loose Girls Are Infected: Soldier-Civilian Sexual Encounters at the Fighting Fronts.- CHAPTER FOUR Suspicious and Provocative Behavior: Regulating Prostitution on the German Home Front.- CHAPTER FIVE Six Months in Jail for Russian Love: Illegal Encounters between German Women and Prisoners of War.- CHAPTER SIX The Dangers of the Two Child Family: Reproduction, Population Politics, and Eugenics at War.- CHAPTER SEVEN To Satisfy the Physical Demands of Foreigners: Sex through Defeat, Revolution, and Occupation.- CHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion.- Bibliography.- Index