Selling Sex in the Reich


Book Description

Focusing on issues of deviance, class, and gender, Harris reassess the experience of working in the sex trade in early-twentieth-century Germany, touching upon arguments about the meaning of prostitution and what its history tells about wider social developments.




Sex and the Weimar Republic


Book Description

Liberated, licentious, or merely liberal, the sexual freedoms of Germany’s Weimar Republic have become legendary. The home of the world’s first gay rights movement, the republic embodied a progressive, secular vision of sexual liberation. Immortalized – however misleadingly – in Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and the musical Cabaret, Weimar’s freedoms have become a touchstone for the politics of sexual emancipation. Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer shows in Sex and Weimar Republic, those sexual freedoms were only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered. In Weimar Germany, the citizen’s right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable. Sex and the Weimar Republic examines the rise of sexual tolerance through the debates which surrounded “immoral” sexuality: obscenity, male homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, heterosexual promiscuity, and prostitution. It follows the sexual politics of a swath of Weimar society ranging from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld to Nazi stormtrooper Ernst Röhm. Tracing the connections between toleration and regulation, Marhoefer’s observations remain relevant to the politics of sexuality today.




The Hidden


Book Description

Her heart died in the war – can she breathe new life into it? Dora Simon and Joe O’Cleary live in separate countries, accepting of their twilight years. But their monochrome worlds are abruptly upended by the arrival of Barbara Hummel, who is determined to identify the mysterious woman whose photograph she has found among her mother’s possessions. Forced to confront a time they thought buried in the past, Dora and Joe’s lives unravel – and entwine. For, trapped on the Channel Islands under the German occupation in the Second World War, Dora, a Jewish refugee, had concealed her identity; while Joe, a Catholic priest, kept quite another secret... This is a story of love and betrayal, shame and survival. But can a speck of light diffuse the darkest shadows of war?




Weimar Through the Lens of Gender


Book Description

DIVExploring the social and political struggles over prostitution reform in the Weimar Republic/div




Sex after Fascism


Book Description

What is the relationship between sexual and other kinds of politics? Few societies have posed this puzzle as urgently, or as disturbingly, as Nazi Germany. What exactly were Nazism's sexual politics? Were they repressive for everyone, or were some individuals and groups given sexual license while others were persecuted, tormented, and killed? How do we make sense of the evolution of postwar interpretations of Nazism's sexual politics? What do we make of the fact that scholars from the 1960s to the present have routinely asserted that the Third Reich was "sex-hostile"? In response to these and other questions, Sex after Fascism fundamentally reconceives central topics in twentieth-century German history. Among other things, it changes the way we understand the immense popular appeal of the Nazi regime and the nature of antisemitism, the role of Christianity in the consolidation of postfascist conservatism in the West, the countercultural rebellions of the 1960s-1970s, as well as the negotiations between government and citizenry under East German communism. Beginning with a new interpretation of the Third Reich's sexual politics and ending with the revisions of Germany's past facilitated by communism's collapse, Sex after Fascism examines the intimately intertwined histories of capitalism and communism, pleasure and state policies, religious renewal and secularizing trends. A history of sexual attitudes and practices in twentieth-century Germany, investigating such issues as contraception, pornography, and theories of sexual orientation, Sex after Fascism also demonstrates how Germans made sexuality a key site for managing the memory and legacies of Nazism and the Holocaust.




The Mass Psychology of Fascism


Book Description

In this classic study, Reich repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or of any ethnic or political group. Instead he sees fascism as the expression of the irrational character structure of the average human being whose whose primary biological needs and impulses have been suppressed for thousands of years.




Cradles of the Reich


Book Description

"Every historical fiction novel should strive to be this compelling, well-researched and just flat-out good." — Associated Press For fans of The Nightingale and The Handmaid's Tale, Cradles of the Reich uncovers a topic rarely explored in fiction: the Lebensborn project, a Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race. Through thorough research and with deep empathy, this chilling historical novel goes inside one of the Lebensborn Society maternity homes that existed in several countries during World War II, where thousands of "racially fit" babies were bred and taken from their mothers to be raised as part of the new Germany. At the Heim Hochland maternity home in Bavaria, three women's lives coverage as they find themselves there under very different circumstances. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she's secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official's child. And Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. Despite their opposing beliefs, all three have everything to lose as they begin to realize they are trapped within Hitler's terrifying scheme to build a Nazi-Aryan nation. A cautionary tale for modern times told in stunning detail, Cradles of the Reich uncovers a little-known Nazi atrocity but also carries an uplifting reminder of the power of women to set aside differences and work together in solidarity in the face of oppression. "Skillfully researched and told with great care and insight, here is a World War II story whose lessons should not—must not—be forgotten." — Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things




When Angels Fight


Book Description

As seen on The Today Show When she was fifteen years old, Leslie King ran away from an abusive home, looking for a better life and longing for real love. What she found instead was a man who wooed her just long enough to trap her in a life of prostitution. She became one of the many thousands of trafficked individuals in the United States, a number that continues to rise--in the biggest cities and in the most idyllic towns. As is true for so many in similar situations, life was nothing but brokenness and pain for Leslie. After years of hopelessness, she finally decided to take her own life. And then God spoke. With his promise that he was with her and had mighty things for her to accomplish ringing in her ears, she got off the streets, got clean, and got to work on the mission to which he'd called her. Now Leslie is a passionate and heroic advocate for other trafficked women and teenage girls in her community and across the country. More than a gritty, no-holds-barred deliverance story, When Angels Fight includes powerful advice from Leslie and those she's encountered in her work--police officers, judges, and other advocates and activists. She also shows you what YOU can do to make a real difference in your own community. Her call from God includes marshaling others to the cause and equipping them to fight alongside her and the angels who battle for God's children--just as they once fought for her.




Sex and the Nazi Soldier


Book Description

This book dispels the myth that military leaders, in adhering to the Nazi ideology of 'race defilement', strictly repressed soldiers' sexuality.




The Sexual Revolution


Book Description

In this book, Wilhelm Reich summarizes the criticism of the prevailing sexual conditions and conflicts as it resulted from his sex-economic medical experiences over a period of years. He demonstrates, by way of individual examples, the general basic traits of the conflicts in present-day sexual living, dealing particularly with the institution of marriage and the revolution in family life as well as with the problems of infantile and adolescent sexuality. He also presents a detailed and revealing study of the sexual revolution that occurred briefly in Soviet Russia in the first few years of their economic revolution.