ABSTRACT
Gender and the Long Postwar examines gender politics during the post- World War II period and the Cold War in the United States, East and West Germany. The authors show how disruptions of older political and social patterns, exposure to new cultures, population shifts, and the rise of consumerism affected gender roles and identities. Comparing all three countries, chapters analyse the ways that gender figured into relations between victor and vanquished and shaped everyday life in both the Western and Soviet blocs. Topics include the gendering of the immediate aftermath of war; the military, politics, and changing masculinities in postwar societies; policies to restore the gender order and foster marriage and family; demobilization and the development of postwar welfare states; and debates over sexuality, gay and straight..
“This is by all accounts an impressive collection on an important subject. The contributions significantly revise our understanding of postwar gender conceptualizations in the United States and both Germanys.”
—Petra Goedde, Temple University
“Clearly demonstrates that a gender history approach can lead to a new perspective on the postwar history as a whole.”
—Frank Biess, University of California San Diego
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Karen Hagemann and Sonya Michel
INTRODUCTION
Karen Hagemann and Sonya Michel
Gender and the Long Postwar: Reconsiderations of the United States and the Two Germanys, 1945–1989
I. GENDERING THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
1. Atina Grossmann
The “Big Rape”: Sex and Sexual Violence, War and Occupation in German Post-World War II Memory and Imagination
2. Rebecca Boehling
Gender Roles in Ruins: Local Politics under American Occupation, 1945–1955
3. Laura McEnaney
A Women’s Peace Dividend: Demobilization and Working-Class Women in Chicago, 1945–1953
4. Ulrike Weckel
Teaching Democracy on the Big Screen: Gender and Re-education of Postwar Germans in A Foreign Affair and The Big Lift
II. THE MILITARY, POLITICS, AND CHANGING MASCULINITIES
5. Kathleen J. Nawyn
Banning the Soldier Hero: American Regulations, German Youth, and Changing Ideals of Manhood in Occupied Württemberg-Baden, 1945–1949
6. Friederike Brühöfener
Sending Young Men to the Barracks: West Germany’s Struggle over the Establishment of New Armed Forces in the 1950s
7. Amy Rutenberg
Service by Other Means: Changing Perceptions of Military Service and Masculinity in the United States, 1940–1973
8. Steve Estes
Man the Guns: Race, Masculinity and Citizenship from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement
III. RESTORING FAMILIES AND RECASTING WELFARE STATES
9. Angela Tudico
White on Departure? The Impact of Race on War Bride Immigration to the United States after World War I
10. Alice Weinreb
Hot Lunches in the Cold War: The Politics of School Lunches in Divided Postwar German
11. Donna Harsch
Women, Family and “Postwar”: The Gendering of the GDR’s Welfare Dictatorship
12. Jennifer Mittelstadt
The Soldier-Breadwinner and the Army Family: Gender and Social Welfare in the Post-1945 U.S. Military and Society
IV. FORGING NEW SEXUALITIES AND CREATING NEW GENDER IDENTITIES
13. Joanne Meyerowitz
The Liberal 1950s? Reinterpreting Postwar U.S. Sexual Culture
14. Robert G. Moeller
Private Acts, Public Anxieties: The Fight to Decriminalize Male Homosexuality in Postwar West Germany
15. Jennifer V. Evans
Homosexuality and the Politics of Masculinity in East Germany
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX