Jason Crouthamel | Grand Valley State University (original) (raw)

Edited Volumes by Jason Crouthamel

Research paper thumbnail of Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

This collection investigates the social and cultural history of trauma to offer a comparative ana... more This collection investigates the social and cultural history of trauma to offer a comparative analysis of its individual, communal, and political effects in the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to witness testimony, to procedures of personal memory and collective commemoration, and to visual sources as they illuminate the changing historical nature of trauma. The essays draw on diverse methodologies, including oral history, and use varied sources such as literature, film and the broadcast media. The contributions discuss imaginative, communal and political responses, as well as the ways in which the later welfare of traumatized individuals is shaped by medical, military, and civilian institutions. Incorporating innovative methodologies and offering a thorough evaluation of current research, the book shows new directions in historical trauma studies.

Research paper thumbnail of Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

This transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis moves beyond the existing histo... more This transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis moves beyond the existing histories of medical theory, welfare, and symptomatology. The essays explore the personal traumas of soldiers and civilians in the wake of the First World War; they also discuss how memory and representations of trauma are transmitted between patients, doctors and families across generations. The book argues that so far the traumatic effects of the war have been substantially underestimated. Trauma was shaped by gender, politics, and personality. To uncover the varied forms of trauma ignored by medical and political authorities, this volume draws on diverse sources, such as family archives and narratives by children of traumatized men, documents from film and photography, memoirs by soldiers and civilians. This innovative study challenges us to re-examine our approach to the complex psychological effects of the First World War.

Research paper thumbnail of Languages of Trauma: History, Memory and Media

University of Toronto Press, 2021

This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of tr... more This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights.

Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa – striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures.

Research paper thumbnail of Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion: Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe

Berghahn Books, 2018

During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, an... more During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics.

Books by Jason Crouthamel

Research paper thumbnail of The Great War and German Memory: Society, Politics and Psychological Trauma, 1914-1945

University of Liverpool Press, 2009

The central focus of this book is the traumatized German war veteran. Using previously unexplored... more The central focus of this book is the traumatized German war veteran. Using previously unexplored source material written by the psychologically scarred veterans themselves, this innovative work traces how some of the most vulnerable members of society, marginalized and persecuted as ‘enemies of the nation,’ attempted to regain authority over their own minds and reclaim the authentic memory of the Great War Under Weimar Germany and the Third Reich, the mentally disabled survivor of the trenches became a focus of debate between competing social and political groups, each attempting to construct their own versions of the national community and the memory of the war experience. Views on class, war, masculinity and social deviance were shaped and in some cases altered by the popularised debates that surrounded these traumatized members of society. Through the tortured words of these men and women, Jason Crouthamel reveals a hidden layer of protest against prevailing institutions and official memory, especially the Nazi celebration of war as the cornerstone of the ‘healthy’ male psyche. He also shows how these ‘social outsiders’ attempted to reform healthcare and reconstruct notions of ‘comradeship’, ‘manliness’ and the national community in ways that complicate the history of the veteran in this highly militarized society. By examining the psychological effects of war on ordinary Germans and the way these war victims have shaped perceptions of madness and mass violence, Crouthamel is able to illuminate potent and universal problems faced by societies coping with war and the politics of how we care for our veterans.

Research paper thumbnail of Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War

Bloomsbury, 2021

This book explores the impact of violence on the religious beliefs of front soldiers and civilian... more This book explores the impact of violence on the religious beliefs of front soldiers and civilians in Germany during the First World War. The central argument is that religion was the main prism through which men and women in the Great War articulated and processed trauma. Inspired by trauma studies, the history of emotions, and the social and cultural history of religion, this book moves away from the history of clerical authorities and institutions at war and instead focuses on the history of religion and war 'from below.'

Jason Crouthamel provides a fascinating exploration into the language and belief systems used by ordinary people to explain the inexplicable. From Judeo-Christian traditions to popular beliefs and 'superstitions,' German soldiers and civilians depended on a malleable psychological toolbox that included a hybrid of ideas stitched together using prewar concepts mixed with images or experiences derived from the surreal environment of modern combat. Perhaps most interestingly, studying the front experience exposes not only lived religion, but also how religious beliefs are invented. Front soldiers in particular constructed new, subjective spiritual and religious concepts based on encounters with industrialized weapons, the sacred experience of comradeship, and immersion in mass death, which profoundly altered their sense of self and the supernatural. More than just a coping mechanism, religious language and beliefs enabled victims, and perpetrators, of violence to narrate concepts of psychological renewal and rebirth. In the wake of defeat and revolution, religious concepts shaped by the war experience also became a cornerstone of visions for radical political movements, including the National Socialists, to transform a shattered and embittered German nation.

Making use of letters between soldiers and civilians, diaries, memoirs and front newspapers, Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War offers a unique glimpse into the belief systems of men and women at a turning point in European history.

Research paper thumbnail of An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality and German Soldiers in the First World War

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

This study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how German soldiers in the Great War experienc... more This study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how German soldiers in the Great War experienced and enacted masculinity. Drawing on an array of relevant narratives and media, it explores the ways that both heterosexual and homosexual soldiers expressed emotion, understood romantic ideals, and approached intimacy and sexuality.

Papers by Jason Crouthamel

Research paper thumbnail of “Even a Jew Can Fight Back”

Jewish Soldiers in the Collective Memory of Central Europe, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of 2 Religious Language in German Soldiers’ Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914–1918

Languages of Trauma, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War

Edited volumes serve an important purpose: when executed correctly, they help consolidate a body ... more Edited volumes serve an important purpose: when executed correctly, they help consolidate a body of scholarship, encourage dialogue between the volume's contributors and set an agenda for future research. The historical study of trauma has been well-catered for in this respect by Traumatic Pasts, edited by Mark S. Micale and Paul Lerner, and published in 2001.(1) Micale and Lerner's work helped to establish the view that the experiences and labels applied to traumatic experiences are inextricably historical. This central argument of Traumatic Pasts remains popular, with the volume still commended in recent studies. Edited collections that follow Micale and Lerner's volume will, therefore, and however unfairly, be compared to its high benchmark. Yet the issues that existed at the time of the publication of Traumatic Pasts have only grown or intensified since. The concept of trauma has significantly broadened. Psychiatric theories of it have diffused more widely, bound up in what Didier Fasin and Richard Rechtman identify as a rise of 'victim culture'.(2) Hence the spread of terms like 'trigger-warning', the emergence of concepts like 'transgenerational trauma' and the political movements that cohere around the term 'survivor' ('sexual assault survivor', 'domestic violence survivor', etc.). Hence also why theories of trauma are now heavily implicated in societal response to domestic terrorism, torture, natural disaster and migration. In a mere 16 years, the trauma industry has grown, and at considerable speed. Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese, joint editors of two new collections on the history of trauma, are attentive to these developments and the challenges they pose for historians. Indeed, their two volumes, which emerged from a conference in Copenhagen in 2013, might be read as a response to developments

Research paper thumbnail of Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After

This is an author's preprint version. It is posted here by permission of the copyright holder for... more This is an author's preprint version. It is posted here by permission of the copyright holder for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version is published as '"No longer Normal": Traumatized Red Army Veterans in Postwar Leningrad', in Peter Leese and Jason Crouthamel (eds), Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 119-141. This version is the final version prior to copy-editing and proof reading. "No longer Normal" Traumatized Red Army Veterans in Postwar Leningrad Robert Dale Introduction On 10 February 1946 Maria Golubeva wrote to her sister in Simferopol' describing the difficulties and disappointments of life in postwar Leningrad. Maria was living in one room with five family members. In November 1945 her son Andrei, following his demobilization from the Red Army, joined them. His living space had been occupied by other people during the Siege of Leningrad, and he was now attempting to reclaim it through the courts. Andrei was working as an artist in a state institution, although he wasn't receiving a ration card. He had been granted permission to enter university at the start of the next academic year, but his transition to civilian life was anything but smooth. As his mother wrote; "He is after all an invalid and worse still, he is psychologically abnormal." 1 On 18 September 1952 the Leningrad city court found Vladimir Krymov, a Red Army veteran, guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, a political crime. On 5 August 1952, according to a series of witnesses Krymov, in a state of intoxication, had created a scandal in a central Leningrad shop, which involved using unprintable language (netsenzurnaia bran'), slandering Communist party leaders, expressing anti-Semitic views and spreading rumours of a forthcoming war in front of staff and customers. 2 Vladimir was not a dangerous political dissident, but rather an alcoholic exserviceman who had failed to readjust to civilian life. In late August 1953 his mother Olga Krymova wrote a letter of appeal to the USSR State Prosecutor explaining that her son was mentally ill and needed psychiatric care. She claimed that Vladimir had suffered two traumas (travmyi): the first a head injury (kontuziia golovy) whilst serving in the Army, the second a nervous breakdown prompted by his wife leaving him for another man. Vladimir, according to his mother "was an 1 Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (hereafter TsGA-SPb) f.7384/op.36/d.186/ll.76-7. 2 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF) f.R-8131/op.31/d.36,641/ll.5-7. 2 abnormal person" and a "typical schizophrenic". She attributed Vladimir's outburst to mental illness, and questioned whether, "Soviet law makes provision to try a psychiatrically ill person for abnormal ravings (nenormal'nyi bred)." 3 These two vignettes, one from the war's immediate aftermath the other over seven years after the end of fighting, illustrate the difficulties Leningrad's returning soldiers experienced reintegrating into civilian society, and the responses of Leningraders to the unconventional and disorderly behaviour of traumatized veterans. The war on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 exposed soldiers to years of strain, privation, violence and killing, as well as separation from their families. Many veterans witnessed and participated in deeply traumatic events. In serving the motherland Red Army soldiers had to be prepared to sacrifice not only life and limb, but also their nerves. When Maria Golubeva and Olga Krymova described their sons as no longer normal they were grasping for a language to describe veterans' traumatic reactions to modern industrialized warfare. According to the official myth Red Army veterans largely survived the war without crippling mental trauma, and were immune to the aftershocks of war which plagued the capitalist west. In a society where psychological trauma, especially amongst veterans, created ideological difficulties and was frequently repressed it was difficult to find a suitable vocabulary to discuss war trauma. Veterans, civilians and psychiatrists all found it difficult to interpret and explain the psychological and emotional damage of war. Medical professionals, veterans and their relatives often used different phrases to describe trauma, and when they shared a common terminology they often meant different things. These two mothers may have struggled with medicalized terminology, but "no longer normal" veterans traumatized by their wartime experiences were a social and medical reality in postwar Leningrad. Although "war trauma" was a problematic concept for late Stalinist public culture, not least finding languages to describe and explain mental disturbance, Soviet society never entirely denied its existence. In the aftermath of war it was obvious to many Leningraders that a moral fight against fascism and Soviet social structures, contrary to propaganda myths, were no protection against psychological categories. This chapter argues that Red Army veterans, like ex-servicemen elsewhere, sometimes experienced post-traumatic reactions and mental health problems following their demobilization. Readjusting to civilian life in Leningrad was exceptionally difficult; veterans faced numerous obstacles in rebuilding their lives. Instances of trauma amongst veterans, however, were most commonly the product of damaging wartime experiences, no doubt exacerbated by the difficulties of 3 GARF/f.R-8131/op.31/d.36,641/ll.16-17.

Research paper thumbnail of Love in the Trenches

Gender and the First World War

Research paper thumbnail of Gender and the First World War

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Research paper thumbnail of Nervous Nazis: War Neurosis, National Socialism and the Memory of the First World War

War and Society, 2003

When it appeared in German cinemas in 1930, the film version of Remarque's All Quiet on the W... more When it appeared in German cinemas in 1930, the film version of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front presented an image of German soldiers in war that shocked civilians and outraged many veterans, particularly those organised in rightwing paramilitary and veterans' organisations. Thousands of men organised by Berlin's Nazi leader Josef Goebbels and the paramilitary Stahlhelm veterans' organisation protested outside Berlin cinemas and disrupted screenings.! Audiences were shocked by the film's depiction of German soldiers breaking down under stress. The newspaper Vossische Zeitung praised the film's accurate representation of combat and asserted that traurnatised soldiers and civilians were finally ready to discuss the war: 'Immediately after the defeat, people's nerves were worn down. In the ten years since, they have relaxed again, and this allows an objective review of the widespread trauma of the war'.2 Stahlhelm member Hans Grote shot back: 'The nerves of front soldiers remained like steel ... (Remarque] passes over the many unforgettable happy hours of the war at the front', and he suggested that Remarque's work reflected 'the war experience of the weak' and was a figment of the pacifist imagination.3 Ministry of the Interior official and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche/ who

Research paper thumbnail of Mobilizing Psychopaths into Pacifists:Psychological Victims of the First World War in Weimar and Nazi Germany

Peace <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Change, 2005

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Comradeship’ and ‘Friendship’: Masculinity and Militarisation in Germany's Homosexual Emancipation Movement after the First World War

Gender & History, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality, and German Soldiers in the First World War by Jason Crouthamel

German Studies Review, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Love in the Trenches: German Soldiers’ Conceptions of Sexual Deviance and Hegemonic Masculinity in the First World War

Gender and the First World War, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Sexuality, Sexual Relations, Homosexuality | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)

This article provides an international overview of the history of sexuality in the Great War, inc... more This article provides an international overview of the history of sexuality in the Great War, including (1) the venereal disease epidemic, prostitution, and expanding state surveillance of sexuality; (2) the war’s effects on perceptions of intimacy and sexuality; and (3) the war’s effects on sexual reform movements, particular the homosexual emancipation movement in Germany. While military authorities in both democratic and authoritarian societies tried to enforce hegemonic gender and sexual norms, the war fragmented and complicated soldiers’ and civilians’ perceptions of “normal” sexuality, which were transformed in response to the traumatic effects of total war.

Research paper thumbnail of Giftpfeile über der Front—Flugschriftpropaganda im und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg

Research paper thumbnail of Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

This collection investigates the social and cultural history of trauma to offer a comparative ana... more This collection investigates the social and cultural history of trauma to offer a comparative analysis of its individual, communal, and political effects in the twentieth century. Particular attention is given to witness testimony, to procedures of personal memory and collective commemoration, and to visual sources as they illuminate the changing historical nature of trauma. The essays draw on diverse methodologies, including oral history, and use varied sources such as literature, film and the broadcast media. The contributions discuss imaginative, communal and political responses, as well as the ways in which the later welfare of traumatized individuals is shaped by medical, military, and civilian institutions. Incorporating innovative methodologies and offering a thorough evaluation of current research, the book shows new directions in historical trauma studies.

Research paper thumbnail of Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

This transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis moves beyond the existing histo... more This transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis moves beyond the existing histories of medical theory, welfare, and symptomatology. The essays explore the personal traumas of soldiers and civilians in the wake of the First World War; they also discuss how memory and representations of trauma are transmitted between patients, doctors and families across generations. The book argues that so far the traumatic effects of the war have been substantially underestimated. Trauma was shaped by gender, politics, and personality. To uncover the varied forms of trauma ignored by medical and political authorities, this volume draws on diverse sources, such as family archives and narratives by children of traumatized men, documents from film and photography, memoirs by soldiers and civilians. This innovative study challenges us to re-examine our approach to the complex psychological effects of the First World War.

Research paper thumbnail of Languages of Trauma: History, Memory and Media

University of Toronto Press, 2021

This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of tr... more This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights.

Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa – striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures.

Research paper thumbnail of Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion: Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe

Berghahn Books, 2018

During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, an... more During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics.

Research paper thumbnail of The Great War and German Memory: Society, Politics and Psychological Trauma, 1914-1945

University of Liverpool Press, 2009

The central focus of this book is the traumatized German war veteran. Using previously unexplored... more The central focus of this book is the traumatized German war veteran. Using previously unexplored source material written by the psychologically scarred veterans themselves, this innovative work traces how some of the most vulnerable members of society, marginalized and persecuted as ‘enemies of the nation,’ attempted to regain authority over their own minds and reclaim the authentic memory of the Great War Under Weimar Germany and the Third Reich, the mentally disabled survivor of the trenches became a focus of debate between competing social and political groups, each attempting to construct their own versions of the national community and the memory of the war experience. Views on class, war, masculinity and social deviance were shaped and in some cases altered by the popularised debates that surrounded these traumatized members of society. Through the tortured words of these men and women, Jason Crouthamel reveals a hidden layer of protest against prevailing institutions and official memory, especially the Nazi celebration of war as the cornerstone of the ‘healthy’ male psyche. He also shows how these ‘social outsiders’ attempted to reform healthcare and reconstruct notions of ‘comradeship’, ‘manliness’ and the national community in ways that complicate the history of the veteran in this highly militarized society. By examining the psychological effects of war on ordinary Germans and the way these war victims have shaped perceptions of madness and mass violence, Crouthamel is able to illuminate potent and universal problems faced by societies coping with war and the politics of how we care for our veterans.

Research paper thumbnail of Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War

Bloomsbury, 2021

This book explores the impact of violence on the religious beliefs of front soldiers and civilian... more This book explores the impact of violence on the religious beliefs of front soldiers and civilians in Germany during the First World War. The central argument is that religion was the main prism through which men and women in the Great War articulated and processed trauma. Inspired by trauma studies, the history of emotions, and the social and cultural history of religion, this book moves away from the history of clerical authorities and institutions at war and instead focuses on the history of religion and war 'from below.'

Jason Crouthamel provides a fascinating exploration into the language and belief systems used by ordinary people to explain the inexplicable. From Judeo-Christian traditions to popular beliefs and 'superstitions,' German soldiers and civilians depended on a malleable psychological toolbox that included a hybrid of ideas stitched together using prewar concepts mixed with images or experiences derived from the surreal environment of modern combat. Perhaps most interestingly, studying the front experience exposes not only lived religion, but also how religious beliefs are invented. Front soldiers in particular constructed new, subjective spiritual and religious concepts based on encounters with industrialized weapons, the sacred experience of comradeship, and immersion in mass death, which profoundly altered their sense of self and the supernatural. More than just a coping mechanism, religious language and beliefs enabled victims, and perpetrators, of violence to narrate concepts of psychological renewal and rebirth. In the wake of defeat and revolution, religious concepts shaped by the war experience also became a cornerstone of visions for radical political movements, including the National Socialists, to transform a shattered and embittered German nation.

Making use of letters between soldiers and civilians, diaries, memoirs and front newspapers, Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War offers a unique glimpse into the belief systems of men and women at a turning point in European history.

Research paper thumbnail of An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality and German Soldiers in the First World War

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

This study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how German soldiers in the Great War experienc... more This study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how German soldiers in the Great War experienced and enacted masculinity. Drawing on an array of relevant narratives and media, it explores the ways that both heterosexual and homosexual soldiers expressed emotion, understood romantic ideals, and approached intimacy and sexuality.

Research paper thumbnail of “Even a Jew Can Fight Back”

Jewish Soldiers in the Collective Memory of Central Europe, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of 2 Religious Language in German Soldiers’ Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914–1918

Languages of Trauma, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War

Edited volumes serve an important purpose: when executed correctly, they help consolidate a body ... more Edited volumes serve an important purpose: when executed correctly, they help consolidate a body of scholarship, encourage dialogue between the volume's contributors and set an agenda for future research. The historical study of trauma has been well-catered for in this respect by Traumatic Pasts, edited by Mark S. Micale and Paul Lerner, and published in 2001.(1) Micale and Lerner's work helped to establish the view that the experiences and labels applied to traumatic experiences are inextricably historical. This central argument of Traumatic Pasts remains popular, with the volume still commended in recent studies. Edited collections that follow Micale and Lerner's volume will, therefore, and however unfairly, be compared to its high benchmark. Yet the issues that existed at the time of the publication of Traumatic Pasts have only grown or intensified since. The concept of trauma has significantly broadened. Psychiatric theories of it have diffused more widely, bound up in what Didier Fasin and Richard Rechtman identify as a rise of 'victim culture'.(2) Hence the spread of terms like 'trigger-warning', the emergence of concepts like 'transgenerational trauma' and the political movements that cohere around the term 'survivor' ('sexual assault survivor', 'domestic violence survivor', etc.). Hence also why theories of trauma are now heavily implicated in societal response to domestic terrorism, torture, natural disaster and migration. In a mere 16 years, the trauma industry has grown, and at considerable speed. Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese, joint editors of two new collections on the history of trauma, are attentive to these developments and the challenges they pose for historians. Indeed, their two volumes, which emerged from a conference in Copenhagen in 2013, might be read as a response to developments

Research paper thumbnail of Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After

This is an author's preprint version. It is posted here by permission of the copyright holder for... more This is an author's preprint version. It is posted here by permission of the copyright holder for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version is published as '"No longer Normal": Traumatized Red Army Veterans in Postwar Leningrad', in Peter Leese and Jason Crouthamel (eds), Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 119-141. This version is the final version prior to copy-editing and proof reading. "No longer Normal" Traumatized Red Army Veterans in Postwar Leningrad Robert Dale Introduction On 10 February 1946 Maria Golubeva wrote to her sister in Simferopol' describing the difficulties and disappointments of life in postwar Leningrad. Maria was living in one room with five family members. In November 1945 her son Andrei, following his demobilization from the Red Army, joined them. His living space had been occupied by other people during the Siege of Leningrad, and he was now attempting to reclaim it through the courts. Andrei was working as an artist in a state institution, although he wasn't receiving a ration card. He had been granted permission to enter university at the start of the next academic year, but his transition to civilian life was anything but smooth. As his mother wrote; "He is after all an invalid and worse still, he is psychologically abnormal." 1 On 18 September 1952 the Leningrad city court found Vladimir Krymov, a Red Army veteran, guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, a political crime. On 5 August 1952, according to a series of witnesses Krymov, in a state of intoxication, had created a scandal in a central Leningrad shop, which involved using unprintable language (netsenzurnaia bran'), slandering Communist party leaders, expressing anti-Semitic views and spreading rumours of a forthcoming war in front of staff and customers. 2 Vladimir was not a dangerous political dissident, but rather an alcoholic exserviceman who had failed to readjust to civilian life. In late August 1953 his mother Olga Krymova wrote a letter of appeal to the USSR State Prosecutor explaining that her son was mentally ill and needed psychiatric care. She claimed that Vladimir had suffered two traumas (travmyi): the first a head injury (kontuziia golovy) whilst serving in the Army, the second a nervous breakdown prompted by his wife leaving him for another man. Vladimir, according to his mother "was an 1 Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (hereafter TsGA-SPb) f.7384/op.36/d.186/ll.76-7. 2 Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF) f.R-8131/op.31/d.36,641/ll.5-7. 2 abnormal person" and a "typical schizophrenic". She attributed Vladimir's outburst to mental illness, and questioned whether, "Soviet law makes provision to try a psychiatrically ill person for abnormal ravings (nenormal'nyi bred)." 3 These two vignettes, one from the war's immediate aftermath the other over seven years after the end of fighting, illustrate the difficulties Leningrad's returning soldiers experienced reintegrating into civilian society, and the responses of Leningraders to the unconventional and disorderly behaviour of traumatized veterans. The war on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 exposed soldiers to years of strain, privation, violence and killing, as well as separation from their families. Many veterans witnessed and participated in deeply traumatic events. In serving the motherland Red Army soldiers had to be prepared to sacrifice not only life and limb, but also their nerves. When Maria Golubeva and Olga Krymova described their sons as no longer normal they were grasping for a language to describe veterans' traumatic reactions to modern industrialized warfare. According to the official myth Red Army veterans largely survived the war without crippling mental trauma, and were immune to the aftershocks of war which plagued the capitalist west. In a society where psychological trauma, especially amongst veterans, created ideological difficulties and was frequently repressed it was difficult to find a suitable vocabulary to discuss war trauma. Veterans, civilians and psychiatrists all found it difficult to interpret and explain the psychological and emotional damage of war. Medical professionals, veterans and their relatives often used different phrases to describe trauma, and when they shared a common terminology they often meant different things. These two mothers may have struggled with medicalized terminology, but "no longer normal" veterans traumatized by their wartime experiences were a social and medical reality in postwar Leningrad. Although "war trauma" was a problematic concept for late Stalinist public culture, not least finding languages to describe and explain mental disturbance, Soviet society never entirely denied its existence. In the aftermath of war it was obvious to many Leningraders that a moral fight against fascism and Soviet social structures, contrary to propaganda myths, were no protection against psychological categories. This chapter argues that Red Army veterans, like ex-servicemen elsewhere, sometimes experienced post-traumatic reactions and mental health problems following their demobilization. Readjusting to civilian life in Leningrad was exceptionally difficult; veterans faced numerous obstacles in rebuilding their lives. Instances of trauma amongst veterans, however, were most commonly the product of damaging wartime experiences, no doubt exacerbated by the difficulties of 3 GARF/f.R-8131/op.31/d.36,641/ll.16-17.

Research paper thumbnail of Love in the Trenches

Gender and the First World War

Research paper thumbnail of Gender and the First World War

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Research paper thumbnail of Nervous Nazis: War Neurosis, National Socialism and the Memory of the First World War

War and Society, 2003

When it appeared in German cinemas in 1930, the film version of Remarque's All Quiet on the W... more When it appeared in German cinemas in 1930, the film version of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front presented an image of German soldiers in war that shocked civilians and outraged many veterans, particularly those organised in rightwing paramilitary and veterans' organisations. Thousands of men organised by Berlin's Nazi leader Josef Goebbels and the paramilitary Stahlhelm veterans' organisation protested outside Berlin cinemas and disrupted screenings.! Audiences were shocked by the film's depiction of German soldiers breaking down under stress. The newspaper Vossische Zeitung praised the film's accurate representation of combat and asserted that traurnatised soldiers and civilians were finally ready to discuss the war: 'Immediately after the defeat, people's nerves were worn down. In the ten years since, they have relaxed again, and this allows an objective review of the widespread trauma of the war'.2 Stahlhelm member Hans Grote shot back: 'The nerves of front soldiers remained like steel ... (Remarque] passes over the many unforgettable happy hours of the war at the front', and he suggested that Remarque's work reflected 'the war experience of the weak' and was a figment of the pacifist imagination.3 Ministry of the Interior official and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche/ who

Research paper thumbnail of Mobilizing Psychopaths into Pacifists:Psychological Victims of the First World War in Weimar and Nazi Germany

Peace <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Change, 2005

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Comradeship’ and ‘Friendship’: Masculinity and Militarisation in Germany's Homosexual Emancipation Movement after the First World War

Gender & History, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality, and German Soldiers in the First World War by Jason Crouthamel

German Studies Review, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Love in the Trenches: German Soldiers’ Conceptions of Sexual Deviance and Hegemonic Masculinity in the First World War

Gender and the First World War, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Sexuality, Sexual Relations, Homosexuality | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)

This article provides an international overview of the history of sexuality in the Great War, inc... more This article provides an international overview of the history of sexuality in the Great War, including (1) the venereal disease epidemic, prostitution, and expanding state surveillance of sexuality; (2) the war’s effects on perceptions of intimacy and sexuality; and (3) the war’s effects on sexual reform movements, particular the homosexual emancipation movement in Germany. While military authorities in both democratic and authoritarian societies tried to enforce hegemonic gender and sexual norms, the war fragmented and complicated soldiers’ and civilians’ perceptions of “normal” sexuality, which were transformed in response to the traumatic effects of total war.

Research paper thumbnail of Giftpfeile über der Front—Flugschriftpropaganda im und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg

Research paper thumbnail of War Neurosis versus Savings Psychosis: Working-class Politics and Psychological Trauma in Weimar Germany

Journal of Contemporary History, 2002

Like other social and political issues in Weimar Germany, traumatic neurosis was a hotly-conteste... more Like other social and political issues in Weimar Germany, traumatic neurosis was a hotly-contested area of debate between different groups devastated by the first world war. In recent studies of the effects of the war on European society, historians have examined the social and political biases, especially with regard to gender and class, that shaped how doctors diagnosed and defined mental trauma in modern warfare. 1 This article will offer a way of looking at the war neurosis debate in Germany 'from below'. This can be done by examining the responses of psychologically-disabled war victims to the psychiatric profession's arguments on the nature of war neurosis and the memory of the war. 2 Working-class victims of psychological trauma used the war neurosis debate to define the psychological impact of the war on different social classes in Weimar Germany. War-disabled interest groups on the political left adopted the voices of war victims to argue that the middle classes, through psychiatrists and state welfare administrators, systematically sought to erase the traumatic effects of the war in an attempt to deny responsibility for its human costs or, at worst, deliberately to prepare Germany for another world conflict. In the responses of psychologically-disabled war victims to the state and psychiatrists, we find a battle over the act of forgetting, as organized working-class veterans and their representatives criticized the repression of the traumatic war experience and theorized on the lingering neuroses that crippled

Research paper thumbnail of Intro Introduction: Languages of Trauma

Languages of Trauma, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of An Intimate History of the Front

is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throu... more is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crouthamel, Jason. An intimate history of the front : masculinity, sexuality, and German soldiers in the First World War / Jason Crouthamel. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.