war/military

I found the following Web site, PzG, as I was comparison shopping on the Web for a 1:6 action figure that I wanted for customization [to strip of the Nazi associations and use for other, fictional purposes!]. PzG bills itself as “Your Third Reich Nazi Adolf Hitler HQ!” According to its index page, it sells

Distinctive Panzer, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, Waffen SS, and German WWII Nazi resources for hobbyists, teachers,museums and all students of Third Reich history in one convenient location.

As I clicked through the various pages of the site, I quickly realized that it was an Aryan supremacist/Nazi apologist storefront.  Interestingly enough, though, PzG knows that its views are objectionable to many and even addresses this on the page selling mousepads.

The mousepad page says:

No place to hang your favorite war art or recruitment poster? Wife or roomate [sic] dosn’t [sic] approve of your artwork selections? NOT A PROBLEM ANYMORE! Get your perfect piece of historical nazi artwork in an everyday usable format. Get all your favorite designs and change your mousepads often to keep your workspace an inspiring and motivational headquaters [sic].

Note how the page acknowledges that spouses and housemates probably won’t like pro-Nazi displays in their houses. Nevertheless, the page accentuates the “positive” attributes of Nazi culture and iconography [creating an “inspiring and motivational” work place], but never forgets its militaristic origins [mousepads are used in “headquaters”]. This site especially sparks discussions about the use of language to construct a societally acceptable image for a group that most people would find viscerally objectionable.

Incidentally, on the same site, you can also find the site owners’ discussion of the Mothers’ Cross [medals given to women under the Third Reich who birthed many children]. The historical discussion of these medals shifts almost seamlessly into a glorification of the site owner’s large, expanding family, with photos of wife and children as they grow. Is this family practicing the principles elaborated in our earlier discussion about the Mothers’ Cross medal?

People in Muslim countries don’t think so:

(worldpublicopinion.org, via Kevin Drum at Mother Jones and Alas a Blog).

Hyperion submitted a great illustration of cultural change. Today, cigarette smoking is illegal in most public places, but there was a time in which cigarette smoking was normative instead of deviant. This radar analysis instrument, in use through the 1950s through 1980s, includes a built-in cigarette lighter and ashtray:

More on this and like instruments here.

Thanks Hyperion!

Laura W. sent us a link to a review of sex education in the U.K. that featured a three minute video. The video is a clip from a 1917 film, called “Whatsoever a Man Soweth,” encouraging Canadian soldiers to refrain from having sex with prostitutes. It was important for states to keep their soldiers from hiring prostitutes because soldiers filled up the sick bay with sexually transmitted infections that, during World War I, were not easily cured with antibiotics. Watch it here.

Also in soldiers and STIs: “Bad” women as disease vectors.

Brady sent me a link to a story in the Times Online about a poster put out by the British National Party, a right-wing anti-immigrant political party. Here’s the poster (found at the BNP website):

They’re clearly trying to connect efforts to defend Britain during World War II to the idea of a modern “battle for Britain,” which this time is against immigrants. However, they missed a detail when the chose the image for their poster, according to the Times story:

[The plane] could be clearly identified by its RF marking as belonging to 303 Squadron, an expatriate Polish unit, even though the BNP campaigns against immigration from Eastern Europe.

The BNP claims they knew it all along and did it on purpose; others believe they’re just trying to cover an incident that they find embarrassing.

Regardless, it brings up interesting questions about nationhood and definitions of who can be included in a country’s idea of its history. In the imagining of the BNP, would immigrants’ contributions be erased? Would they be acknowledged, but only as something that was appropriate and welcome in the past? After all, one of the very groups they’re vilifying played a role in defending Britain during the exact era that the BNP is trying to symbolically connect itself to. I suspect they might try to make an argument that the ex-pat Polish fighters were involuntary and temporary refugees that were being protected by Britain during a time of warfare and were in fact fighting to retake their own country, which is different than permanent immigrants who take British jobs and mess up the culture and whatnot, but that’s just a guess.

Of course, this isn’t something unique to the BNP; nativist groups everywhere face the problem of having to erase or explain away the contributions of groups they’re trying to exclude from citizenship.

Thanks for the tip, Brady!

I’ve previously blogged about how, during World War II, Americans were expected to sacrifice in ways that we simply do not expect Americans to sacrifice today.  Specifically, my post addresses how people were encouraged to save gas and carpool (“Hitler rides in the empty seat!”), but people made all sorts of sacrifices: from going to work, to victory gardens, to eschewing panty hose.

Penny R. sent in another example that I found really interesting, staying off of phone lines during the hours when soldiers were likely to call home.  These government-sponsored ads were found in a 1944 Southern California Telephone Company phone books for West Los Angeles (found at This Book Is for You):

Text:  “Night-time is about the best time a service man has to call home.  That’s a good point to remember when you feel the urge to make a Long Distance call between 7 and 10 P.M.  If it isn’t important, we hope you won’t make it.   Let the men in service have first call on the wires.”

Text:  “We appreciate the help you are giving us in keeping the Long Distance lines open for war calls.  The production of munitions . . . the movement of troops . . . the building of ships and bombers . . . have put the Long Distance lines squarely up against their biggest task.  Materials for building telephone lines are no longer available — they are needed on the fighting fronts.  That is why we ask that only really necessary calls be made to war-busy centers.  Thank you for your fine co-operation.”

Text: “This year, war is on the wires.  And the Long Distance lines to war-busy centers must be kept open for calls that help to build planes and ships and move supplies and troops.  We cannot add to the lines–that would require the use of materials needed by our armed forces.  That is why we ask that only really necessary calls be made to war-busy centers.  Your co-operation means that we can do a better war job for you and for the Nation. Thank you.”

Text:  “The trained eyes and fingers of telephone operators are needed, these days, at the switchboards that are heavily loaded with war calls.  Telephone equipment of every kind is deep in the war task.  Will you help us to make every bit of equipment count?  Here is one way: Please look in the Directory for any number you are not sure of.  Please look there first before you call ‘Information.’  Thousands of calls daily, in which ‘Information’ is asked to help, are for numbers that are IN the Directory.  Our foremost job is the war job. It just is not feasible to do all the things for our customers that we were able to do in peace time.  We appreciate your understanding and your friendly cooperation.”

Can you imagine being asked to stay off the internet every evening?  Impossible!!!

Stephen W. sent in a link to a music video promoting the National Guard.   He saw the video before a screening of Taken in Sioux Falls, SD. At the moment, the National Guard website (warning: noisy) features Kid Rock and Dale Earnhardt Jr.  The opening graphics, set to a snippet of Rock’s Warrior, feature a military helicopter followed by a race car and then a picture of an anonymous African-American National Guard member with the rock star and car star:

A few clicks into the website leads you to this music video:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeVt4j_T7-8[/youtube]

In the photographs made available, pictures of Kid Rock’s life as a rock star are mixed with pictures of people in the National Guard, and the lines between the two blur:

Some observations on the marketing of military service:

First, the glorification of military service is an American phenomenon.  (See this post which features an American and a Swedish military recruitment commercial back-to-back.  The difference is quite amazing.)  In this video, the glorification is particularly acute when the light-skinned driver of the Hummer manages to avoid hitting the blue-eyed, olive-skinned, dark-haired boy and then comes out with his giant gun to kick the ball back to him, inspiring a look of awe from the child who’s country he is likely (given the politics in the last 8 years) invading.  We’re left, assured, that the U.S. military are all around good folk.

Second, in this case we have military service being marketed with celebrity tie-ins.  The website deliberately blurs the line between being a famous rock star, a celebrated race car driver, and a member of the National Guard.  Similarly, this Air Force recruitment ad blurs the line between various extreme sports and military service:

These links between military service, skateboarding, and being a rock star are disingenuous, to say the least.  And it reminds me of a series of recruitment ads I’ve been seeing lately that highlight the super cool jobs you could end up doing in the Air Force (like being a fighter pilot). I don’t know about you, but both of my family members who joined the military (in their cases, the Army) ended up being bus drivers.

Third, which celebrities are being used to market the National Guard tells us something about who they are trying to recruit.  Clearly, they are reaching out to young, working class, perhaps rural, white men.  This is not part of the National Guard marketing aimed specifically at this group, the entire National Guard website (warning: noisy), at this time, is entirely devoted to this theme. It speaks to who fights American wars?  Studies have shown that, while once military service was required of elites, this changed during Vietnam.  Today military service is overwhelmingly performed by working- and middle-class men.

Finally, the re-framing of the role from “soldier” to “warrior,” one who wages war, is very interesting.  I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

More fodder for discussion, if you need it:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In Something from the Oven, Laura Shapiro explains that, after WWII, the U.S. government made a huge push to get women out of jobs and back into the kitchen. So much for Rosie the Riveter.

Part of the propaganda involved a return to time-consuming home cooked meals. But this propanganda was up against a contradictory need of food-related companies to market to the general public the advances they had made during the war in non-perishable and pre-cooked and packaged food.  So, on the one hand, women were encouraged to spend all day on a roast and, on the other hand, they were encouraged to take advantage of new food technologies. 

This ad, from the 1940s, incites women to take advantage of Campbell’s pre-made soup:

Text:

“WOULDN’T I BE SILLY TO MAKE IT MYSELF?”

“Go to all that bother.. when Campbell’s is so homey and nourishing?  Not me!”

“When I was a little girl I remember we always made our own vegetable soup.  Mother used to devote just hours to to it. But one day when she was rushed, she tried Campbell’s Vegetable Soup.  My dad’s not so easy to please, but he ate a bowlful, and then another.  Since the Mother has served Campbell’s… and Dad’s been as pleased as a kid!

“I’m married now myself and — well, we young-marrieds all feel that same way.  I mean why bothe to make vegetable soup when Campbell’s Vegetable Soup is so wonderful — a grand-tasting beef stck and all those fifteen garden vegetables.  Why, every time I serve it my husband says: ‘Gosh, daring, this is really swell!’  And what better music can a wife hear than that?  Now I ask you!”

Ad via Found in Mom’s Basement.