Male Sexuality and Psychological Trauma: Soldiers and Sexual Disorder in World War I and Weimar Germany

Threats in politics and society escalated the anxious debates on male sexuality in Germany following World War I. Though some experts predicted that World War I would "remasculinize" Germany against the threats of socialists, Jews, and the sexually liberated "new woman," writers such as sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld reported that battle had caused sexual problems for many men, with the sexual need for female companionship replaced by dependence on violence and other men. The war was often seen as a cause of increased sexual deviancy and crimes. Shell-shocked hysterical men were considered a major threat to the nation. Veterans argued that traumatic war experiences, not postwar or prewar conditions, were the cause of their sexual problems, while leftists saw the doctors who denied wartime trauma as unmanly or as rapists themselves.