Broken supermen: Disabled veterans and soldiers in Nazi Germany, 1939-1945

“Broken Supermen: Disabled Veterans and Soldiers in Nazi Germany, 1939-1945,” focuses on physically disabled veterans as a critical and contested site for the articulation of Nazi ideology and practice. I argue that the regime presented the approximately 1.7 million disabled veterans as exemplary representatives of Nazi ideology and utilized them in an attempt to align the broader German population with Nazi ideals of race, gender, class, and able-bodiedness. The historiography presents disabled veterans in the Third Reich primarily as representations of fiscal and social threats to the regime. “Broken Supermen” cautions against both interpretations. Nazi leaders’ concern that the rapidly growing number of disabled men could eventually overwhelm the national economy existed and the regime periodically placated disgruntled veterans to head off the formation of a potentially substantial oppositional group. Both notions, however, overlook the sheer confidence of Nazi leaders, the confidence that they could culturally and technocratically manage both disability and disabled veterans. Many top Nazi leaders engaged in this management were disabled veterans of the First World War—and they were convinced they understood the meaning of combat-related disability, that they held the panacea. The men needed honorary stipends to stave off pension neurosis, privileged positions at the center of German everyday life such as in theaters and public transportation, government intervention to secure the men wives and children, and land in the east to join the construction of racial utopia. And the regime felt no compunction in enforcing these measures with state power. Yet Nazi leaders badly misjudged their ability to transform the war wound into a symbol of German racial and masculine superiority. Disabled veterans enthusiastically accepted the honors and privileges the regime bestowed upon them. But they were not content in the absence of greater material privilege. Combat experience—the experience most valued in Nazi ideology—did not translate into white-collar employment. Class and religious barriers, supposedly non-existent in the new People’s Community, proved insurmountable for men searching for life companions. And the prospect of a farmer’s existence in the newly conquered East paled in comparison to the allure of modern urban life. The Nazi attempt to stabilize the meaning of the war wound faltered against the everyday realities of life as a disabled veteran in the Third Reich. And even as the Nazis shifted and expanded the borders of acceptable (military) disabilities in the Third Reich, the German people proved resistant to tolerating some forms of military disability, performing the new cultural rites of military disability to show their esteem, or elevating the disabled veteran as an exemplary model in their own lives. “Broken Supermen” contributes to historicizing the “disabled veteran,” a figure that looms large in national mythologies. The dual status of veterans—their involvement in violent institutions and their position as casualties of war—challenges, and perhaps undermines, historians’ attempts to categorize them neatly as either perpetrators or victims. Historical contextualization resists oversimplifications that labels such as “veteran” or “disabled” overshadow all other ascriptions, identities, or individual agency. Furthermore, the disabled veteran presented a dire challenge to the modern nation-state. In some ways, dying for the nation was easier to integrate into the concept of citizenship than sacrificing bodily integrity and continuing to live—a fate often considered worse than death itself. Modern nations were confronted with what was often a greater challenge than convincing its citizens to die for the nation: convincing disabled veterans to continue living and to reintegrate into the nation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Goodwin, Christopher Thomas

Contributors dc:contributor

• Fritzsche, Peter
• Liebersohn, Harry
• Micale, Mark
• Steinberg, Mark

• Disability
• Germany
• Nazi Germany
• Veterans
• Disabled Veterans
• Masculinity
• Disability History

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Christopher Goodwin

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124356

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F124356