MASCULINITY, WAR, AND REFUSAL: VICISSITUDES OF GERMAN MANHOOD BEFORE AND AFTER THE COLD WAR A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Steven Lester Gardiner May 2004 © 2004 Steven Lester Gardiner MASCULINITY, WAR, AND REFUSAL: VICISSITUDES OF GERMAN MANHOOD BEFORE AND AFTER THE COLD WAR Steven Lester Gardiner, Ph.D. Cornell University 2004 Over the course of the last two centuries, Germany has experienced several shifts in its position in what I refer to as the war system. The war system is an important determiner of masculinity such that variations in one impact the other. The total surrender of Germany in 1945, combined with the association of the Nazi regime with heroic, soldierly masculinity, has opened the door in post-World War II Germany for new forms of masculinity to arise. A key value in the new configuration is the increased importance of refusal and the decreased importance of obedience and subordination. Between 1945 and 1990, Germany remained a nation both divided and occupied. This, combined with the literal feminization of German society in the immediate post-war period, led to the valorization of refusal. In effect, in an occupied society, the relationship of masculinity to nation-state is shifted. At the same time, of course, market pressures have led to a more individuated society—yet it is important to point out that though refusal has become much more common in all Western societies, in none of the traditional Great Powers has the culture of the military itself become so accommodating to the idea of refusal. This shift, I think, can be attributed to the institutionalization of refusal within the Bundeswehr, and its valorization in German society as a whole, as subsequent generations encounter the failed refusal of the Nazi period in a war system context that has isolated the German military from deadly combat—a situation which is, of course, changing in the here and now. These trends can only really be understood through an analysis that triangulates on changing masculinity by making use of a variety of evidence, historical, literary, institutional and personal. Finally, the relationship between war and masculinity itself should be seen in a longer evolutionary perspective and assumptions about inevitability challenged through comparative ethnography and review of the archeological evidence. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Steven Lester Gardiner holds a B.S. in anthropology and sociology from Lewis & Clark College and a M.A. in cultural anthropology from Cornell University. Gardiner is a fifth-generation Oregonian who has lived and worked in Portland, Gresham and Boring, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Lawton, Oklahoma; El Paso, Texas; Newport Beach, California; White Sands, New Mexico; Ithaca and New York, New York; and Scwäbisch Gmünd and Berlin, Germany. He spent the early part of the 1980s in the first Pershing II nuclear missile unit to be deployed in Germany. More recently he spent seven years as a researcher, writer, editor and director for a Portland- and Seattle-based civil rights group, the Coalition for Human Dignity. In June 2003 he married Angie Reed Garner and they live together in Prospect, Kentucky. iii for Angie Reed iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation has been almost seven years in the making, from the moment I entered graduate school—for the second time—at Cornell, to completion. Over the course of all those years, moving from Portland to Ithaca, Ithaca to Berlin, Berlin to Chicago and Chicago to Kentucky, Angie Reed Garner, my partner and wife, has been there with me. Without her encouragement and support, I would not have gone back to graduate school, would not have undertaken this particular research, and would not have finished writing the dissertation itself. She assisted materially in the research process itself, using her far superior social skills to draw out reluctant informants and make connections that would have been impossible for me to make alone. The ideas contained herein have been hashed out in endless conversations with her and she has been my first and most important reader and editor. Whatever merit this project may have is largely her doing. This dissertation is as much hers as it is mine and my thanks are to her first, last and always. During the spring of my second year at Cornell my father passed away, dying of lung cancer. We lived in different worlds and I am left with the feeling that I never tried hard enough to help him understand mine. As this is a work about masculinity, and each man grows up to some extent in the shadow of his father, I nod to his memory. The things I learned from him, for better or worse, are part of who I am. One of the last things he said to me before dying was that he was proud of me. It was one of the few times in his life he had ever said so. My mother deserves special thanks for attempting to understand the v strange habits of her academically-inclined, globe-trotting son. From her I learned what I know of how to be a good person. She provided financial support and encouragement through the long years I worked for the Coalition for Human Dignity, a period that forms an essential, if invisible, backdrop to this work. For offering a steady refuge from the world, I would like to thank Joyce and Gordon Garner, my mother- and father-in-law. In their home I have known much kindness and always felt welcomed. They provided financial support at key moments in the doctoral journey. Especially I would like to thank them for giving us a place to stay during our homeless summer between Ithaca and Berlin, and now again while I begin the search for paying work. I would like to thank Joyce in particular for many hours of relevant conversations and Gordon in particular for too many wonderful meals to count or remember. Joyce also gets thanks for last minute copy editing. Moving beyond the family circle, I would like to thank my activist friends for their consistent support and encouragement. Alan Rausch has been consistently kind, providing crash space during the aforementioned homeless summer, reading materials, speaking opportunities and timely loans that kept us with a roof over our heads. Devin Burghart and Eric Ward, two colleagues from my time at the Coalition, visited us in Berlin and encouraged me to finish my dissertation so that I could get back to my real work—helping them finish whatever writing projects they have in the works. Danny Levitas gave sound advice and helped with various projects as he always has. These people are out there fighting the good fight and I have appreciated their support. Special thanks to Lenny Zeskind who has written letters of vi recommendation and provided an example of how to live as a public intellectual without selling out. For friendship and fellowship that made the long months and years of research and writing enjoyable I would like to thank Scot and Sabine, Nick and Betty, and especially Leon and Mary Ann. Leon helped with computer problems at a crucial moment in my writing process and Mary Ann provided human contact with a world not obsessed with the minutia of social theory and German history. On the academic front I would like to thank Deborah Heath for encouraging me to go to graduate school and writing letters of recommendation at erratic times over the course of many years. Peter Hohendahl and Viranjini Munasinghe, the members of my special committee, come in not only for thanks but also my admiration for the example they set as scholars. John Borneman, first chair of my committee before he absconded to Princeton, has my gratitude both for supporting the proposal that funded my fieldwork and for suggesting that I do research on the military. Special thanks are due to Davydd Greenwood, whom I asked to chair my committee after John Borneman’s departure. Not once in the years since have I regretted that decision. Davydd has been consistently supportive and generous with his time, performing administrative tasks on my behalf while I traveled about pursuing other business. I also had the pleasure of taking a long-distance reading course with him via email during my first year in Berlin. The exchanges were lively and much of what I have to say here first saw the light of day at that time. Thank you Davydd for your support, your inspiration, and your humanity. Finally, I would like to thank the researchers and soldiers of the vii Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr (SOWI) and the Zentrum Innere Führung, Bereich 5 for their direction and advice and especially the Akademie der Bundeswehr für Information und Kommunikation (AIK), which allowed me to sit in on seminars and training sessions and gave me access to Bundeswehr soldiers who came from units all over Germany. This research was assisted by a grant from the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, jointly administered by the Freie Universität Berlin and the Social Sciences Research Council with funds provided by the Freie Universität Berlin. Without this funding it would not have been possible to undertake this project. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v List of Figures x List of Tables xi Preface xii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The War System: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of War 19 and Masculinity Chapter 2 The War System, Masculinity and the Development 115 of the Nation-State Chapter 3 Masculinity in Crisis and Conflict in Wilhelmine 151 Germany and the Weimar