Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T06:05:35.265Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Drinking Rituals, Masculinity, and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2018

Edward B. Westermann*
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University—San Antonio

Abstract

During the Third Reich, alcohol served as both a literal and metaphorical lubricant for acts of violence and atrocity by the men of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Schutzstaffel (SS), and the police. Scholars have extensively documented its use and abuse on the part of the perpetrators. For the SA, the SS, and the police, the consumption of alcohol was part of a ritual that not only bound the perpetrators together, but also became a facilitator of acts of “performative masculinity”—a type of masculinity expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. In many respects, the relationship among alcohol, masculinity, sex, and violence permeated all aspects of the Nazi killing process in the camps, the ghettos, and the killing fields. After the outbreak of war in September 1939, such practices were increasingly radicalized, with drinking and celebratory rituals becoming key elements for these closed male communities of perpetrators, who used them to prepare for acts of mass killing and, ultimately, genocide.

Für die Gewalt- und Gräueltaten der Männer von SA, SS und Polizei während des Dritten Reiches diente Alkohol im wörtlichen wie auch im übertragenen Sinn als Schmiermittel. In der Forschung ist der Gebrauch und Missbrauch von Alkohol seitens der Täter ausführlich dokumentiert worden. Alkoholkonsum gehörte für die SA, die SS und die Polizei nicht nur zu einem Ritual, das sie als Täter zusammenschweißte, sondern half ihnen auch zu Taten „performativer Männlichkeit“—eine Männlichkeit, die ausdrücklich mit physischer oder sexueller Gewalt verbunden war. Diese Verbindung zwischen Alkohol, Männlichkeit, Sex und Gewalt durchdrang alle Aspekte der nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungspolitik in den Lagern, Ghettos und auf den „killing fields“. Nach dem Kriegsausbruch im September 1939 wurden solche Praktiken zusehends radikalisiert: In diesen geschlossenen männlichen Tätergemeinschaften wurden Trinken und feierliche Rituale zu Schlüsselelementen, um sich auf Massenmord und letzten Endes Genozid vorzubereiten.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Dagmar Herzog, Billy Kiser, Thomas Kühne, Jürgen Matthäus, Yves Müller, Andrew Port, Amy Porter, and the anonymous referees for their insights, comments, and suggestions.

References

1 Jeffords, Susan, “Performative Masculinities, or, ‘After a Few Times You Won't Be Afraid of Rape at All,” Discourse 13, no. 2 (1991): 102-18Google Scholar.

2 Lifton, Robert J., The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 432Google Scholar.

3 Kühne, Thomas, The Rise and Fall of Comradeship: Hitler's Soldiers, Male Bonding and Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 293CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 443-44.

5 Frevert, Ute, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society, trans. Boreham, Andrew and Brückenhaus, Daniel (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 171-72Google Scholar.

6 Jones, Mark, Founding Weimar: Violence and the German Revolution, 1918–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 4Google Scholar.

7 Quoted in Jones, Nigel H., A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis: How the Freikorps Blazed a Trail for Hitler (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004), 135Google Scholar.

8 Müller, Yves, “Männlichkeit und Gewalt in der SA am Beispiel der ‘Köpenicker Blutwoche,’” in SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung, ed. Hördler, Stefan (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2013), 130Google Scholar; Klemperer, Victor, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI-Lingua Tertii Imperii, trans. Brady, Martin (London: Athlone Press, 2000), 3Google Scholar. Klemperer uses the expression “heroes of bar-room brawls” in his description of the SA.

9 Lemle, Russell and Mishkind, Marc E., “Alcohol and Masculinity,” Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 6, no. 4 (1989): 214CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Lemle and Mishkind cite a study of Finnish men published in 1959 as one example of the broader generalizability of their findings. For a discussion of the relationship among alcohol, aggression, and masculinity, see Polk, Kenneth, “Males and Honor Contest Violence,” Homicide Studies 3, no. 1 (1999): 6-29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Lemle and Mishkind, “Alcohol and Masculinity,” 215.

11 Peralta, Robert, Tuttle, Lori A., and Steele, Jennifer L., “At the Intersection of Interpersonal Violence, Masculinity, and Alcohol Use: The Experiences of Heterosexual Male Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence,” Violence Against Women 14, no. 4 (2010): 390Google Scholar, 401.

12 Wieland, Christina, The Fascist State of Mind and the Manufacturing of Masculinity: A Psychoanalytic Approach (London: Routledge, 2015), 26Google Scholar.

13 Cocks, Geoffrey, The State of Health: Illness in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Caplan, Jane, “Gender and the Concentration Camps” in Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories, ed. Caplan, Jane and Wachsmann, Nikolaus (New York: Routledge, 2012), 86Google Scholar.

15 For a discussion of militarized masculinity, see Krondorfer, Björn and Westermann, Edward, “Soldiering: Men,” in Gender: War, ed. Petö, Andrea (New York: Macmillan, 2017), 19-35Google Scholar.

16 Quoted in Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, and Riess, Volker, eds., “The Gold Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, trans. Burnstone, Deborah (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 165Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

17 Wildt, Michael, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office, trans. Lampert, Tom (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Westermann, Edward B., Hitler's Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial Policy in the East (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005)Google Scholar; Mallmann, Klaus-Michael, Rieβ, Volker, and Pyta, Wolfram, eds., Deutscher Osten 1939–1945: Der Weltanschauungskrieg in Photos and Texten (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 137Google Scholar.

18 For an excellent review of this research, see Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, James W., “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender and Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 829-59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term hypermasculinity can be seen as a specific manifestation of militarized masculinity or as a type of hegemonic masculinity; it also has been used to refer to the B Specials, i.e., Protestant paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland that engaged in extensive acts of political violence. See Ashe, Fidelma, “Gendering War and Peace: Militarized Masculinities in Northern Ireland,” Men and Masculinities 15, no. 3 (2012): 237CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Moore, Jacqueline M., Cow Boys and Cattle Men: Class and Masculinities on the Texas Frontier, 1865–1900 (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 9Google Scholar. Moore's claim in this case pertains to the nineteenth-century Texas frontier, but it is equally applicable to the case of the Nazis.

20 Stewart, Michael, “The Soldier's Life: Early Byzantine Masculinity and the Manliness of War,” Byzantina Symmeikta 26, no. 1 (2016): 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 37.

21 Gangulee, N., The Mind and Face of Nazi Germany (London: Butler and Tanner, 1942), 128-29Google Scholar. Banse was the author of Wehrwissenschaft: Einführung in eine neue nationale Wissenschaft (Leipzig: Armanenverlag, 1933).

22 Jünger, Ernst, In Stahlgewittern (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1920)Google Scholar.

23 Werner, Frank, “‘Hart müssen wir hier draussen sein’: Soldatische Männlichkeit im Vernichtungskrieg, 1941–1944,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 34, no. 1 (2008): 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Lemle and Mishkind, “Alcohol and Masculinity,” 214.

25 Spode, Hasso, Die Macht der Trunkenheit: Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte des Alkohols in Deutschland (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1993), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Spode, Macht der Trunkheit, 262.

27 Roberts, James, Drink, Temperance, and the Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 47Google Scholar, 129.

28 Evans, Richard J., ed., Kneipengespräche im Kaiserreich: Die Stimmungsberichte der Hamburger Politischen Polizei, 1892–1914 (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), 20-33Google Scholar. Evans notes that, by the turn of the century, beer halls had taken on an increasing role as sites for political activity and mobilization.

29 Miller, Peter et al. , “Alcohol, Masculinity, Honour and Male Barroom Aggression in an Australian Sample,” Drug and Alcohol Review 33, no. 2 (2014): 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Freudenthal, Herbert, Vereine in Hamburg: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Volkskunde der Geselligkeit (Hamburg: Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1968), 334-37Google Scholar.

31 Longerich, Peter, Die braunen Bataillone: Geschichte der SA (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989), 119-20Google Scholar.

32 Klemperer, LTI, 3. Klemperer states that Nazis received head wounds “inflicted by beer mugs or chair legs,” whereas Communists could be identified by “a stiletto wound in the lung.”

33 Kühne, Thomas, “The Pleasure of Terror,” in Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany, ed. Swett, Pamela, Ross, Corey, and d'Almeida, Fabrice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 239Google Scholar. See also Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, 22-23.

34 Bessel, Richard, “Violence as Propaganda: The Role of the Storm Troopers in the Rise of National Socialism,” in The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919–1933, ed. Childers, Thomas (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986), 144Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

35 Walter, Dirk, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1999), 214Google Scholar. For a contemporary depiction of this process in popular culture, see Schönstedt, Walter, Auf der Flucht erschossen: Ein SA Roman 1933 (Paris: Editions du Carrefour, 1934), 11-32Google Scholar. This popular novel, though written by a German Communist exile in Paris and with an anti-Nazi theme, still captures the atmosphere of the Sturmlokal as a site of male camaraderie, ritual, and political violence.

36 Reichardt, Sven, Faschistische Kampfbünde. Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), 449Google Scholar.

37 Krebs, Albert, The Infancy of Nazism: The Memoirs of Ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs, 1923–1933, ed. trans., and William Sheridan Allen (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976), 57-58Google Scholar.

38 Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, 142.

39 Langa, Malose and Eagle, Gillian, “The Intractability of Militarised Masculinity: A Case Study of Former Self-Defence Unit Members in the Kathorus Area, South Africa,” South African Journal of Psychology 38, no. 1 (2008): 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, 469, 471.

41 Dillon, Christopher, Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Kühne, “The Pleasure of Terror,” 239.

43 Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, 458.

44 Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamburg, 337.

45 Matthäus, Jürgen, Kwiet, Konrad, Förster, Jürgen, and Breitman, Richard, Ausbildungsziel Judenmord? “Weltanschauliche Erziehung” von SS, Polizei, Waffen-SS im Rahmen der Endlösung (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2003), 61-64Google Scholar.

46 Westermann, Hitler's Police Battalions, 118-20.

47 Wackerfuss, Andrew, Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2015), 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, 127.

49 Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, 201.

50 Plotkin, Abraham, An American in Hitler's Berlin: Abraham Plotkin's Diary, 1932-33, ed. Collomp, Catherine and Groppo, Bruno (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 58Google Scholar.

51 Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, 127. Beer was the primary drink for such occasions, and SA men who demonstrated an inability to drink and maintain control were served low-acohol-content bier (Malzbier) instead.

52 Ibid., 141.

53 “Heavy Drinking Rewires Brain, Increasing Susceptibility to Anxiety Problems,” Science News (Sept. 2, 2012) (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120902143143.htm).

54 Reichardt, Sven, “Violence and Community: A Micro-Study on Nazi Storm Troopers,” Central European History 46, no. 2 (2013): 276CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Berger, Sara, Experten der Vernichtung: Das T4-Reinhardt-Netzwerk in den Lagern Belzec, Sobibor und Treblinka (Hamburg: Verlag des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung, 2013), 336Google Scholar. Berger also provides an excellent discussion of the use of alcohol and the concept of comradeship among the camps’ SS guards.

56 Siemens, Daniel, Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 237Google Scholar. For a discussion of this practice within the Order Police, see Westermann, Hitler's Police Battalions, 62-66.

57 Peukert, Detlev, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life, trans. Deveson, Richard (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 205Google Scholar.

58 Haynes, Stephen R., “Ordinary Masculinity: Gender Analysis and Holocaust Scholarship,” in Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey, ed. Randall, Amy E. (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 170Google Scholar.

59 Matthäus, Jürgen, Böhler, Jochen, and Mallmann, Klaus-Michael, War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 59Google Scholar.

60 Benz, Angelika, Handlanger der SS: Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol, 2015), 212Google Scholar.

61 Ryback, Timothy, Hitler's First Victims: The Quest for Justice (New York: Knopf, 2014), 89Google Scholar.

62 Dillon, Dachau and the SS, 39. Ehmann's failed attempt to kill the Communist leader involved shooting at his home, which resulted in the severe wounding of the man's wife.

63 Joshi, Vandana, Gender and Power in the Third Reich: Female Denouncers and the Gestapo, 1933–1945 (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Kogon, Eugen, The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them, rev. ed., trans. Norden, Heinz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950), 51-52Google Scholar, 79-80. In periods of extremely cold weather, the prisoners sought to stay warm by adding more layers to their clothing. See The Buchenwald Report, ed. and trans. David A. Hackett (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 49.

65 Benz, Handlanger der SS, 213-14.

66 Kogon, Theory and Practice of Hell, 118. See also The Buchenwald Report, 44.

67 Müller, Filip, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, ed. trans., and Susanne Flatauer (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1979), 93Google Scholar.

68 Müller, Eyewitness, 94.

69 Quoted in Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 193. For SS drinking on the selection ramp, see also Borowski, Tadeusz, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. Vedder, Barbara (New York: Penguin, 1967), 35Google Scholar.

70 Wachsmann, Nikolaus, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016), 272-73Google Scholar.

71 Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen (Ludwigsburg), Daily Order Nr. 5, “Polizei-Einsatzstab Südost, Ch. d. St.-, Veldes, Betr.: A) Bekanntgabe eines Befehls RFSSuChdDtPol” [January 9, 1942], 503 AR-Z 9/1965, Bd. I, Unbekannt, Tatort Veldes Jugoslawien.

72 Heck, Alfons, A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika (Phoenix, AZ: Renaissance House Publishers, 1985), 103Google Scholar. See also Königs, Wolfhide von, Kriegstagebuch einer jungen Nationalsozialistin: Die Aufzeichnungen Wolfhilde von Königs, 1939–1946, ed. Keller, Sven (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2015), 46-47Google Scholar, 142, 146, 158, 172, 186, 194; Myrick, Inge, The Other Side! The Life Journey of a Young Girl through Nazi Germany (Phoenix, AZ: Acacia, 2006), 26Google Scholar.

73 US Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, Der Reichsführer-SS, Tgb. Nr. 35/44/41 [Feb. 22, 1941], reel 3, RG-68.035M (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt SS).

74 Patel, Kiran Klaus, Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933–1945, trans. Dunlap, Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Love, Nancy S., Trendy Fascism: White Power Music and the Future of Democracy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), 2Google Scholar, 104, 117. Love's study, though focused on contemporary white-supremacist groups, offers important and relevant insights into the use of song and music to generate hatred and spur acts of political or racial violence, and thus has clear applicability to the use of both under Nazism.

76 Höss, Rudolf, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, ed. Paskuly, Steven, trans. Pollinger, Andrew (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 63Google Scholar.

77 Mallmann, Klaus-Michael, “‘Mensch, ich feire heut’ den tausendsten Genickschuβ’: Die Sicherheitspolizei und die Shoah in Westgalizien,” in Die Täter der Shoah: Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche?, ed. Paul, Gerhard (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002), 119Google Scholar.

78 Ibid.

79 Murdoch, Brian, Fighting Songs and Warring Words: Popular Lyrics of Two World Wars (London: Routledge, 1990), 126Google Scholar.

80 Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 22Google Scholar. The use of song to build camaraderie can also be seen in the American West. See Moore, Cow Boys and Cattle Men, 129.

81 For an insightful discussion of the ways in which song and music can be used to generate hatred and spur acts of political or racial violence, see Love, Trendy Fascism.

82 Kater, Michael H., The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 141-42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, 454; Baird, Jay W., To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 79Google Scholar.

84 Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt, 200.

85 Kühne, Rise and Fall of Comradeship, 33.

86 Pieper, Henning, Fegelein's Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare: The SS Cavalry Brigade in the Soviet Union (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 108Google Scholar.

87 Kühne, “The Pleasure of Terror,” 239-40.

88 Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Institute of Law, Nazi Crimes in Ukraine, 1941–1944, trans. V. I. Biley, S. I. Kazandy, and A. E. Sologubenko (Kiev: Naukova Dumka Publishers, 1987), 106, 212.

89 Wachsmann, KL, 331.

90 Musmanno, Michael A., The Eichmann Kommandos (Philadelphia, PA: Macrae Smith Company, 1961), 171Google Scholar. In this case, SS Standartenführer Walter Blume organized these events for the men under his command.

91 Ingrao, Christian, The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The History of the Black Hunters, trans. Green, Phoebe (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), 115Google Scholar.

92 Miller et al., “Alcohol, Masculinity, Honour and Male Barroom Aggression,” 137.

93 Matthäus, Böhler, and Mallmann, War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 70.

94 Ibid., 78.

95 Lower, Wendy, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 110-11Google Scholar.

96 Klemp, Stefan, Freispruch für das „Mord-Bataillon” (Münster: LIT Verlag, 1998), 49Google Scholar.

97 For Hermann Göring's so-called shooting order, see Gritzbach, Erich, ed., Hermann Göring: Reden und Aufsätze (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1939), 17-18Google Scholar; Haynes, “Ordinary Masculinity,” 170; Dillon, Dachau and the SS, 185. Dillon cites Himmler's order to have homosexual SS men brought to a concentration camp to “be shot while trying to escape.” This was a situation in which the use of a weapon was intended to prove the masculinity of the shooter while, at the same time, emphasizing the emasculation and lack of masculinity of the intended victim.

98 Mellström, Ulf, “Changing Affective Economies of Masculine Machineries and Military Masculinities? From Ernst Jünger to Shannen Rossmiller,” Masculinities and Social Change 2, no. 1 (2012): 5Google Scholar.

99 Klemp, Freispruch, 48-49. The name Krochmalna was taken from a street in the ghetto where Jews attempted to trade goods for food with the outside world.”

100 Jürgen Matthäus, “An vorderster Front: Voraussetzungen für die Beteilung der Ordnungspolizei an der Shoah,” in Paul, Täter der Shoah, 157.

101 Geldmacher, Thomas, “Wir Wiener waren ja bei der Bevölkerung beliebt”: Österreichische Schutzpolizisten und die Judenvernichtung in Ostgalizien, 1941–1945 (Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2002), 117-19Google Scholar.

102 Breitman, Richard, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), 92Google Scholar.

103 Mallmann et al., Deutscher Osten, 132. Police Battalion 9, along with Police Battalion 3, were the two battalions that served with the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied East. For a discussion of their activities, see Klemp, Stefan, “Nicht Ermittelt”: Polizeibataillone und die Nachkriegsjustiz. Ein Handbuch (Essen: Klartext, 2005), 78-84Google Scholar, 88-103.

104 Kühne, “The Pleasure of Terror,” 241; Buchheim, Hans, Anatomie des SS-Staates, vol. 1: Die SS: Das Herrschaftsinstrument Befehl und Gehorsam (Munich: DTV, 1967), 255Google Scholar. The use of gendered insults to denote alleged weakness or femininity was not unique to Nazi Germany, but can be found in the socialization process of many military organizations. See Barrett, Frank J., “The Organizational Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity: The Case of the US Navy,” Gender, Work, and Organizations 3, no. 3 (1996): 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 Grabowski, Jan, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 94Google Scholar.

106 Mallmann et al., Deutscher Osten, 37.

107 Ibid., 47.

108 Friedlander, Saul, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 110Google Scholar.

109 Kimberly Allar, “Ravensbrück's Pupils: Creating a Nazi Female Guard Force,” Lessons and Legacies XIV: The Holocaust in the 21st Century, paper at Claremont-McKenna College, Nov. 6, 2016. In a similar way, German women were lectured about the perils of alcohol use, a message that apparently found little resonance among the female SS guards at Ravensbrück. See Helm, Sarah, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (New York: Doubleday, 2014)Google Scholar, 20, 26, 141, 376.

110 Mailänder, Elissa, Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942–1944, trans. Szobar, Patricia (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2015), 253Google Scholar. It is interesting that these women primarily used their firearms to pistol-whip prisoners, a practice certainly influenced by the expectations of the male members of the SS.

111 Ibid., 252; Foger, Edith Eva, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (New York: Scribner, 2017), 60Google Scholar; Lengyel, Olga, Five Chimneys (Chicago, IL: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1995), 108Google Scholar.

112 Benz, Handlanger der SS, 219.

113 Browning, Christopher, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 66Google Scholar, 72.

114 Giancola, Peter R., Helton, Emily L., Osborne, Abigail B., Terry, Michael K., Fuss, Angie M., and Westerfield, Johnna A., “The Effects of Alcohol and Provocation on Aggressive Behavior in Men and Women,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol 63, no. 1 (2002): 64Google ScholarPubMed.

115 Gregory, Jeanne and Lees, Sue, Policing Sexual Assault (London: Routledge, 1999), 131Google Scholar. For a contemporary perspective linking hypermasculinity with cases of sexual assault in the US military, see Michael T. Crawford, “A Culture of Hypermasculinity is Driving Sexual Assault in the Military,” Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-t-crawford/a-culture-of-hypermasculi_b_5147191.html).

116 Mühlhäuser, Regina, Eroberungen: Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion, 1941–1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010), 77Google Scholar.

117 Abbey, Antonia, “Alcohol-Related Sexual Assault: A Common Problem among College Students,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol Supplement 63, no. 2 (March): 118-28Google Scholar.

118 Sanday, Peggy, “Rape Free versus Rape Prone: How Culture Makes a Difference,” in Evolution, Gender, and Rape, ed. Travis, Cheryl Brown (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 337Google Scholar.

119 Quoted in Herzog, Dagmar, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 86Google Scholar.

120 Timm, Annette, “Sex with a Purpose: Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich,” in Sexual and German Fascism, ed. Herzog, Dagmar (New York: Berghahn, 2005), 225-27Google Scholar.

121 Dagmar Herzog, “Hubris and Hypocrisy, Incitement and Disavowal: Sexuality and German Fascism,” in Herzog, Sexuality and German Fascism, 6.

122 Beorn, Waitman, Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 Neitzel, Sönke, ed., Tapping Hitler's Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–1945, trans. Brooks, Geoffrey (London: Frontline Books, 2007), 199Google Scholar.

124 Burds, Jeffrey, “Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939–1945,” Politics and Society 37, no. 1 (2009): 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Matthäus, Böhler, and Mallmann, War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 77. In her study of sexual violence in the East, Regina Mühlhäuser estimates that 50 percent of all SS men ignored the ban on sexual intercourse with so-called racial inferiors. See Regina Mühlhäuser, “Between Racial Awareness and Fantasies of Potency: Nazi Sexual Politics in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union, 1942-1945,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth-Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 203.

126 Ingrao, Dirlewanger Brigade, 85; Helm, Ravensbrück, 376-77.

127 Kühne, “The Pleasure of Terror,” 245.

128 Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 80Google Scholar; Mühlhäuser, “Between ‘Racial Awareness’ and Fantasies of Potency,” 200-1.

129 Sanday, “Rape Free versus Rape Prone,” 343. Sanday's example concerns a case of gang rape by a group of men in a university fraternity, but her argument also can be applied to the actions of the SS in the occupied East. Sanday's findings about the group-bonding motive for gang rape is supported by Cohen, Dara Kay, Rape during Civil War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), 30Google Scholar.

130 In addition to Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen, other important works on this subject include Hedgepeth, Sonja and Saidel, Rochelle, eds., Sexual Violence against Women during the Holocaust (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Waitman Beorn, “Bodily Conquest: Sexual Violence in the Nazi East,” in Mass Violence in Nazi Occupied Europe: New Debates and Perspectives, ed. David Stahel and Alexander Kay (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming). I would like to thank Waitman Beorn for sharing the prepublication draft of this chapter.

131 Na'ama Shik, “Sexual Abuse of Jewish Women in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” in Herzog, Brutality and Desire, 232.

132 Mermelstein, Mel, By Bread Alone: The Story of A-4685 (Huntington Beach, CA: Auschwitz Study Foundation, 1979), 152Google Scholar.

133 Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz, 141.

134 Quoted in Theweleit, Klaus, Male Fantasies: vol. 2: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror, trans. Carter, Erica and Turner, Chris (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 300-1Google Scholar.

135 Ibid., 301.

136 Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen, 98-99; Müller, “Männlichkeit und Gewalt,” 136-37; Burds, “Sexual Violence,” 45-46.

137 For more on these activities in the killing fields, see Westermann, Edward B., “Stone Cold Killers or Drunk with Murder? Alcohol and Atrocity in the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 30, no. 1 (2016): 1-19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

138 For an extended discussion and critique of Theweleit's work, see Herzog, Sex after Fascism, 240-46.

139 Quoted in Ibid., 244.

140 Kahn, Leo, No Time to Mourn: A True Story of a Jewish Partisan Fighter (Vancouver: Laurelton Press, 1978), 57Google Scholar.

141 For a discussion of the relationship of masculinity to hunting, see Mangan, J. A. and McKenzie, Callum, Militarism, Hunting, Imperialism: “Blooding” the Martial Male (London: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar.

142 Lanzmann, Claude, Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4:00 pm (Paris: Les films Aleph, 2001)Google Scholar.

143 Knoke, Heinz, I Flew for the Führer: The Story of a German Fighter Pilot, trans. Ewing, John (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953)Google Scholar, 31, 62, 67, 70, 111, 136, 142, 151-52.

144 Lower, Wendy, The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2011), 112Google Scholar.