November 17, 2006

Thomas Kühne (Clark University)

Male Bonding and Genocidal War: Germany, 1918-1945

Why did the Holocaust happen? What made Germans stick together amidst a catastrophic total war? Thomas Kühne presents a new answer to these questions by focusing on male bonding among ordinary soldiers. It was neither the Hitler-myth nor an eliminationist Antisemitism nor even just group pressure but--group pleasure: Since WWI Germans became fascinated with an idea of comradeship and togetherness which eventually would be realized by genocidal warfare from 1939 on. Both suffering from mass death and practicing mass killing as well as mass murder mutually reinforced each other: Physical death provided social life.

Thomas Kühne is the Associate Professor of History and Strassler Family Chair in Holocaust History at Clark University. An expert in modern German history, he has published widely about electoral and party history and the history of masculinities and mass violence in the 20th century. He is the author of Prussian Three-Class Electoral Law and Electoral Culture in Wilhelmine Germany (1994) and Comradeship. Soldiers of the Nazi War and the 20th Century (2006).