sábado, 10 de noviembre de 2018

Sex Life in the Trenches of the First World War (1)


SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

Normal Sex Life Impossible in Trenches — German Physicians Extol Abstinence—" Steel Bath of the Nerves"— Origin of Sex Sublimation Theory —French Institution of "Marraines" — Sexual Abnormalities Due to War — Masturbation a Necessary Evil — Case Histories of Onanism — Profanity and Lewdness of Speech — Obscene Songs— Pornographic Photographs- Indecent Literature— Plaster Phalli Found in Trenches— Erotic Dreams- Excerpts from War Diaries— Tattooing and its Sexual Origin— Pleasure in Excremental Functions — Latrine Stories — Unnatural Sex Satisfactions — Anal Eroticism of Soldiers— Sodomy— Instances of Bestiality—Impotence
Resulting from Enforced Continence — Ejaculatio Praecox — Serious Problem of Sex Hunger

THAT the war, at the begnining, could appear to many as a way to erotic liberation and unlimited expression of sensuality points to one of the numerous errors that springs from complete ignorance
of modern warfare. Had people been able to realize what war actually signified, humanity would at least have been spared the illusion, and the disappointment which inevitably followed. Instead
we find in this connection, as in almost every other, an almost terrifying ignorance with which human beings met the greatest catastrophe in their history. It was necessary for the war, with all its frightful reality, to show up, in tragic-comic fashion, the slight possibility of release for the erotic impulse as compared to the extremely farflung expectations on that subject.

For the majority of those who participated in the war and did not have the opportunity of spending the years of the world conflagration in the amorous paradises provided at various military war-stations, the same thing happened to the much touted business of erotic freedom as happened to the Italian futurists with their much eulogized freedom of action in whose name their prophet, Marinetti, had demanded the entrance of Italy into the war. It turned out that in this war there could be no question of freedom of action or freedom in any sense; that modern war was inhuman discipline completely devaluating and deflating all notions of human dignity, and that it signified nothing so much as the restraint of all free expression in all matters, including the sexual life. In the trenches the common soldier ceased to be a human being; but what is much worse, is that through the altered circumstances of life he was compelled to stop being a man. In the trenches there
was no place for sexual life, at least not for a normal one. Here one became an animal, only without the right of the animal to enjoy the free satisfaction of its instincts.

It is as significant as it is sad that in this case also science willingly placed itself in the service of war. German physicians especially were extremely concerned in singing hymns of praise to abstinence with an enthusiasm that was more than a little suspicious. In France, on the other hand, a systematic treatment of this question was avoided and in England the old tradition of publicly avoiding, as much as possible, all discussion of sexual problems was maintained. In German medicine there had even before been savants who had espoused the theory that sexual abstinence was not only innocuous but even salubrious. At the beginning of the war German public opinion frequently cited the belief of German physicians that abstinence would actually produce very beneficial results as continence would be tantamount to treasuring up the best powers of the body. Now this might have been true had
the war lasted, as was expected at the beginning, for a few months or, at the most, a year. But when the duration of the war was protracted far beyond the original expectations, quite a different con-
dition became apparent; and so we must reckon among the most evil and deplorable consequences of the war such as war prostitution and the spread of veneral diseases, also the enforced abstinence. No one will be surprised that literature gave considerable assistance to the scientific apostles of abstinence whose patriotism far exceeded their scientific truth. Everyone knows that, especially
in the early period of the war, literature and journalism stood right under the banner of the ideology of the war in that it suffered itself to be entirely influenced by it and then returned this influence strengthened by its own professional contribution. Medical science espoused the cause of hygienic abstinence. Literature and the press assumed the view that from the war there would result a tremendous sublimation of the sexual impulse. This went so far that even such a reputable investigator of the erotic realm as Eulenburg, who died during the war, coined the frequently
quoted expression of the steel bath of the nerves. Let us quote one example of the literary expression of this point of view. In an article called War and Eroticism, Hans Natonek gave expression to
the following viewpoint which was characteristic of the sentiments espoused and propagated by the literature of that period.

"If one regards the eroticism of man as something to which the subject spirit is more relevant and important than the object woman, then the war, with its completely non-erotic atmosphere,
with its hard, sweet necessity of being womanless, seems to have been peculiarly created to restore the dreamy, mild, yearning hunger of true eroticism. Where formerly sex had been an ugly, soulless,
rather brutish and almost mechanically sober indulgence, the situation as a result of enforced abstinence became quite different. For months there was no woman to be seen and this alone would have to make the most gross of men somewhat finer, and the most matter-of-fact ones a bit deeper. Formerly the en j oyer would have to do nothing more than to stretch out his hand for that which
he desired, and so his pleasure and indulgence became for him something habitual, dull or almost superfluous. Life was lived in an erotic atmosphere and one had continually to talk in order to
believe in it. Renunciation and the tension induced by want were unknown. Erotic culture in which people had come to believe that they were living, had, as a matter of fact, been destroyed through
the continuous presence and possession of woman. But during the war many millions of men were torn out of their erotic mechani- zation and placed into a form of life in which woman became so
distant and so wonderfully strange as to be reached only in the dream of yearning. In this way every erotic form of life is simplified, and becomes more honest and genuine. It almost appears as
though the relationship of man and woman in all its fineness can only become obvious when woman is lacking."

(...) The sublimation of the sexual impulse soon turned out to be nothing more than a dream and a very ugly one. The soldiers who, in rain and frost, surrounded by death, cowered in their trenches
like living corpses, instead of idealizing woman spoke of her, accord- ing to the testimony of all participants of the war, in the most filthy and profane fashion. We may anticipate and say that this
extreme nastiness of speech constituted a sort of substitute satis- faction — that when one could not actually have the love object to deal with, one could at least brutalize it with words.

...
It is a curious fact, but a true one nevertheless, that letters from home frequently had erotic effects upon their recipients. The abnormality in the sexual conditions aggravated the general feeling
of dissatisfaction almost to the point of madness and induced psycopathic mental states and depressions which were frequently erroneously attributed to fighting alone. (Lowenfeld's Sexualleben und Nervenleiden contains considerable material on this subject.) Thus a patient in the psychiatric ward of a hospital related that each time he would receive a letter from home he would have a pollution. Furthermore the same patient related that he would also have ejaculations when he was on a post awaiting an attack by the enemy, or whenever he would witness an altercation among his
own comrades. The smallest excitement would induce a painful erection — against which he had long struggled in vain and from which he finally sought release by masturbation. He assured the
authorities that before the war he had never manifested any sexual abnormalities.

That the evil of self-abuse (or self-satisfaction) was widespread in every army and not infrequently had unwholesome consequences is not to be established from statistics, but the judgments of all
military surgeons lend great probability to our assertion. Let us quote from Dr. P. Lissmann who has devoted a monograph to the influences of the war upon the sex life of men. "During the war a
great role was played from the sexo-neurological point of view, by masturbation (ipsalind). In peace times this practice is exceedingly common. It is assumed that ninety-six per cent of all young people
in the second decade of their life masturbate. But during the war it became far more widespread, according to private and professional records. The biologically imperative sexual impulse of the soldiers, whether in active service or reserve regiments, could not, in many cases, be eliminated or suppressed by religious or ethical scruples, or by fear of infection. On this point I have questioned hundreds of men of all nationalities, and in general, have received the answer that was expected under the circumstances— that there was current an enforced or substitute masturbation. Indeed not a few older men, who at home were accustomed to regular sex intercourse, confessed that they had chosen this way of escape from the torture of the senses, to avoid the scruples of conscience, and the dangers consequent upon illegitimate sexual intercourse. In these masturbators it was not at all a question of abnormal, psychopathic constitution. As far as the consequences of masturbation are concerned (which, while not without their evil effects, have, nevertheless, been greatly exaggerated) changes in character and temperament, melancholic depressions, etc.— I have not had enough exact experience of them in the field. The customary self-reproach and certain neurasthenic symptom complexes were observable in a few cases which had masturbated excessively. In general I shared Hirschfeld's impression that the elastic nerves of the healthy, strong man can easily overcome this single alteration of sex satisfaction.

"Moreover, the practice of masturbation was virtually impossible for my regiment while it was in position. Whoever has been in the field with front-line divisions knows the dense concentration of
men in the wooded positions which never permits men, and especially young officers, to remain alone. The various military duties at the post, sentry duty, the public nature of the latrines, the com-
mon mess, make it next to impossible to be alone and hence extremely difficult to go through the motions of peripheral, mechanical masturbation. Of course it is impossible to guess what prohibitive
or restraining influence the public life of the military camp would have on psychic masturbation which, in its nervous sequela?, is much more grave. I want to adduce an illustrative case to render
concrete this condition which Hirschfeld has termed sexual hyperesthesia. A certain strongly sexed man of thirty gave himself up to erotic imagination so long and intensively that ejaculation would
result without any external stimulation of the genital organs. He suffered considerably from the customary masturbationists' hypochondria which drove him to believe in the well-known desiccation
of the spinal marrow. This, however, did not hinder him from surrendering again and again to his erotic fantasies."

The great number of erotic stories that were circulated during the war, both among the troops at the field and also at home, give proof of the wide dissemination of the practice. For example, one
of the best known epigrams of the war was the statement of an old Austrian Landsturm man, "Formerly my wife was my right hand, now my right hand in my wife." A former Hungarian officer has de- scribed to us the case of a Bosnian who served in his army and had to be given a furlough and sent home because he would, in keeping with his low mental state, masturbate before all his com-
rades. When this unusually strong man returned from his fortnight furlough, during which he had had normal intercourse with his wife, he had grown strong and healthy and regained all his former
power.

A former French lieutenant has told us of a similar case. One day, as he was inspecting the dugouts, he came to a dimly lit corner where a tremendous crowd of poilus and a mysterious fluid caused him to stop at the threshold to see what was going on. Unseen he observed that they were standing around a young private (from the suburbs of Paris to judge by his accent) who was reciting something with the greatest elan and the most impressive vividness. The Parisian was describing his bridal night in the gayest colors, accompanying his story with appropriate movements of hand, body and head, and the most ludicrous tones, even to the imitation of a woman's voice. The excitation into which he had gotten himself was communicated to his comrades. "As far as I could make out in the darkness, they seemed to be drawn closer and closer to him and to hang onto his words. Finally, on tiptoe, I crept nearer. After my eyes had grown accustomed to the semi-darkness, I was able to see clearly the purpose and effect of the vivid recitation of this youth from Panama (argot for Paris). The delighted and ravished poilus were standing around with unbuttoned trousers. . . ."

It is certainly no exaggeration to see in the unhygienic effects of onanism practiced in the field, a direct consequence of the abstinence induced by the war, inasmuch as most of those war mas-
turbators were people who, under normal circumstances, would not have fallen prey to self-pollution. In his Winter lager einer geschlagenen Armee Egon Erworn Kisch has related the significant
fact that, as soon as the army entered a place where normal sex intercourse was possible, those soldiers, who continued even now to indulge in the common substitute of self-satisfaction, were mocked and jeered at by their comrades who forthwith took advantage of the opportunity for heterosexual intercourse. Very frequently the masturbation practiced by soldiers must have led to those twilight states in which various military crimes, like desertion, for example,
were committed.

That under certain circumstances war itself induced masturbation is difficult to prove, but may, none the less, be assumed. We need only remember the erotic effects which certain war situations, as, for example, bombardment, exert upon the female psyche in order to conclude that, in like situations, similar reactions can be observed among men. It is an established historical fact that in the midst of the battle of Abensberg, Napoleon had a woman brought into his tent and had intercourse with her. In this connection we might mention the sadistic major concerning whom Bruno Vogel has reported as masturbating while observing a military encounter through field glasses. Even if this figure were a ficti- tious one, it is still true psychologically — just as true as the figure in de Sade's writing, a century earlier, who got an orgasm when Vesuvius erupted. Lissmann has reported the following case: "A thirty-year-old man, otherwise normal neurologically, used to get ejaculations, without erections or passion, during strong artillery fire. During continued firing he would get two or three ejaculations without showing any particular signs of lassitude or exhaustion. He had also come across another man of twenty-five who, during the bombardment of a town, had taken refuge in a cellar, and, while cowering there in terror, had repeated ejaculations without erection.

But it must not be supposed that masturbation was the only form of substitute satisfaction to which soldiers resorted in their sex hunger. Even during peace time the cursing and profanity of the soldiery is proverbial; and need we spend any time in pointing out the drastic way in which the sex impulse manifests itself in this coprolagnic activity? Hence, it is no wonder that in war, profanity, lewdness and nastiness of speech were more widespread than ever before, according to all observers. The speech of the garrison is, in general, a mixture of expressions which designate details of the digestive process or sexual intercourse. In his study of the ethical and moral effects of the war upon Germany, Baumgarten cites a letter sent him from the trenches by one of his former students: "Is there any possibility that in the slime of the trenches there is an increase in the power of the soul to keep itself pure? Few young people have so strong an inner life that they can retain the purity of their souls by their own power. It is almost a year now that we have been without the companionship of modest, noble women or girls, a factor which does much to equilibriate passion and ennoble the soul. To be sure, we have the will to remain pure and modest, even as we have the will to be victorious. But, just as without proper leadership, we are doomed to failure no matter how brave and courageous we may be, so also in the matter of morality we are doomed to defeat, despite all the exertion of our will-power if we lack spiritual and ethical guidance. I myself have had the experi- ence, despite all my efforts to the contrary, of again and again wallowing in filth, until one comes to regard it as a necessary con- sequence of the war to spice one's speech with the proper flavor of bawdiness and foulness."

A not inconsiderable part of soldiers' jokes and songs refer to sexual life. (..) Old songs, opera hits or popular ballads were sung with certain textual changes, practically always of an erotic sort. The novel Perhobstler, referred to above, contains examples of this type of erotic textual emendations which cannot be quoted here.

Another form of substitute satisfaction, besides lewd chatter and songs, was the pornographic products with which the soldiers were provided. Early in 191 5 the Hungarian papers expressed their intense dissatisfaction at the thriving export trade in pornographic (especially masochistic) photographs. Accordingly to the testimony of various participants in the war, these pictures were very wide- spread and contributed much to help the inhabitants of the dug- outs in their enforced continence. For the most part these pictures were of the sort well known to us even in peace times — the most shameless pornographic photographs which are still vended in the streets of Paris and advertised in many newspapers and journals all over the world.

Furthermore, the soldiers were kept supplied with erotic reading matter. We may refer here to a French advertisement captioned, Pour nos soldats, under which were advertised the most depraved
kind of pornographic literature including a work of the well-known sadistic author who bears the significant nom de plume, Aime Van Rod. And when the shipment from home stopped, there were other measures adopted in various places. The German press frequently printed accounts of women's hats, dresses and underthings being found in abandoned French trenches, which were later occupied by German troops. In addition to these mementoes of visits that women had paid to those places were found photographs of coitus scenes and phalli of plaster. At a meeting devoted to military medicine,
held at Tubingen in 19 14, a physician, Dr. Gaupp, exhibited a large phallus, 19.5 c. long and 5.5 cm. in diameter, found in the knapsack of a French officer. There were all sorts of notions con- cerning the possible uses of the instrument. Dr. Gaupp asserted that such instruments had repeatedly been found in the bags of fallen French soldiers and this had aroused the suspicion in Ger- man military circles that they were instruments for inflicting brutal injuries on German women and girls. The questioning of French wounded elicited no explanation other than that these mysterious objects were seulment pour rire. Gaupp, however, believed that this was improbable, for no object so heavy and large would be forced into a knapsack only for fun. Nor was there much to be said for the hypothesis that it was used for pederastic purposes. It seemed much more likely that the object was really a talisman, only the size and weight of the object were against this explanation. Perhaps there was a sort of exhibitionism here in which a sexually perverse person would become excited at the sight of the shame and insult that women would feel when confronted with the giant phallus. It was Iwan Bloch's hunch that the purpose of the instrument could be found in a sort of fetishistic substitute reaction.
In the professional circles of Germany, this question aroused con- siderable interest. It may be likely that this was merely an indi- vidual find which, in normal times, free from war psychosis, would
not have aroused any great interest or led to such intricate and fine-spun conclusions concerning French eroticism. In this connec- tion, it is well to remember that at the same meeting at which
the phallus question came up, Iwan Bloch read an obscene parody of the French training regulations which had also been found on the person of a French soldier. Bloch opined that no such produc-
tions could or would be found among the German soldiers. How- ever, this optimistic guess was utterly contradicted by the late hap- penings of the war. There was scarcely one trench dugout in which, during periods of inactivity and comparative rest, the devastating tedium of a comatose and stupefying vegetativeness was not re- lieved by erotic titillation. This biological thrill was purveyed to German and other soldiers frequently by erotic and even obscene reading matter. A special favorite was the erotic parody of military orders. There is extant a copy of an album, distributed at the front in innumerable copies, bearing the title Schweineriade and containing "the instructions of a corps of Amazons to be organized in 191 5." There is also extant a pamphlet of similar content en- titled: Official Orders Concerning the Organization, Practice, Mili- tary Leadership, etc., of Mobile Field- and Reserve-Houses of Joy.

Naturally the official literature was also interested in satisfying the demand for erotic reading matter which could be used to while away many a dismal, ugly hour in the trenches. One war partici- pant, Clemens Gert, has written an interesting essay on the subject of erotic literature in the dugouts, its spread, use, quality, etc. Among other things he says that natural unforced eroticism will seldom lead to hyper-irritation or excessive excitation of the senses.It was quite different, however, with regard to the erotic produc- tion of a writer like Marie Madeleine, whose characters always manifested some perverse trait or other. It was this type of read- ing which wrought great havoc upon inexperienced and youthful minds. The effect of the daily conversations of the men continually preoccupied with erotic subjects was not nearly so corrupting. Of course, they did arouse the desire for woman but the desire thus aroused proceeded in a natural way to its goal, that is, it aimed directly at the pleasure of love. But the situation was quite dif- ferent with the characters which Madeleine created. These were nearly always hysterical in one way or another and dominated by a perverse instinctual life. Hence, not infrequently, these erotic productions poisoned young minds even before they had come to
their first actual sex experience. It will be no exaggeration to designate Madeleine's activity as being downright poisonous for it aroused young and hot-blooded people to a pitch of abnormal ex-
citement and virtually created unnatural desires.

No special emphasis is necessary, of course, in regard to the fact
that the fantasy of these hungry men, erotically inflamed by this
type of reading, some of whom had never yet experienced a love
pleasure, should result in various erotic dreams. This will appear
perfectly comprehensible even to the reader who knows next to
nothing of psychoanalysis. Innumerable war diaries, drawings and
productions of war literature tell us that the dreams of the com-
batants were drenched with lust. There can be absolutely no ques-
tion of anything like sublimation of the sex impulse or idealization
of the women. In these erotic dreams, which we have just noted, in
which the inner man comes to expression, there is as little of the
ideal or refined elements of the higher stages of love as in the con-
versations carried on in the trenches, or in the soldiers' songs and
jokes which revolved entirely upon the theme of sex. In dreams, as
in the waking state, the oppressive sex starvation of the soldiers
showed itself in all the multifarious expressions that are so well
known. We shall confine ourselves to quoting just one illustration
from the war novel by Johannsen:

"A sleeping soldier whispers in his dream the name of some
woman. A student lying nearby shuts his eyes and soon is asleep.
The lousy, filthy blanket turns into a girl's dress and the curve of
the steel helmet on which his hand rests is transformed into a small
girl's breast. A sweet warmth runs through his veins. He dreams
of his sweetheart and, after her picture becomes somewhat pale, he
dreams of women in general."

The sexual hunger at the front and in the encampments of the
prisoners-of-war was everywhere strongly apparent. Many a man
thus got his first notion of the sex hunger that rages in prisons. . . .

Nor were there lacking on the front other well-known conse-
quences of sexual abstinence. Thus many soldiers had themselves
tattooed when there was an opportunity. There are many places in
literature, especially in the works of Italian psychiatrists, where the
erotic origin of this phenomenon is explained. We know that it is
to be attributed to sex hunger; most tattoos applied during the
World War had an outspoken erotic character. This phenomenon
was met with most frequently in sailors who naturally had more
opportunity for carrying out this practice than soldiers in the
trenches. In Freud's terminology, we are dealing with men who
have been away from women for a long time and without the op-
portunity for sexual satisaction, and who therefore, have turned
back their libido fixation upon themselves. During the World War
the sailors generally had themselves tattooed in the very first weeks
of service, a fact which has been frequently observed among pris-
oners. It is, of course, impossible to say what percentage, but among
the English sailors it is estimated that twenty per cent of the men
in service were tattooed, an estimate which also applies to the
German navy because here the national differences are submerged
by the fact that the manner of life is exactly the same. Furthermore,
our estimate of the number of soldiers who had their bodies
stamped with these erotic designs is rendered more difficult as many
soldiers who participated in the war had had themselves tattooed
previously or had behind them a prison record of longer or shorter
duration. It will be remembered that, according to fairly reliable
statistics, between fifty and sixty per cent of prisoners have them-
selves tattooed...



Magnus Hirchsfeld, The Sexual History of the Great War, 1930

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