Table of Contents

Military Conscription and Civil Society: Historical TrajectoriesI. War, Nation, Gender Images: Core Concepts in Conscription in the Early Nineteenth Century * Criticism of Existing Prussian Army Structures * Conscription: Setbacks on the Road to a 'National Army' * The Battle for the Middle Classes * Military Service, Wartime Service, and Manliness * 'Female patriotism'II. 'Both Citizen and Soldier'? Prussia in the Vormrz Period (1815-48) * The Law on Wartime Service: Rules and Practice * The Landwehr as a Citizen's Militia? * Citizenship and Masculinity: The Jewish Population Demands Participation * The Army as the 'Training School' for War and Peace * Soldiers and Civilians: Soldiers as Citizens?III. Military Systems in the 'Third Germany' * The Move from Exemption to Substitution * Army Service: The View from Inside * Civilian Counterparts: An Armed Citizenry and a Man's Right to Bear Arms * Civilian Militias During the Vormrz period and in 1848-9 * The 'Martial Spirit' in Military Associations or Dreams of a Democratic Army IV. War and Peace: Imperial Germany in the Prussian Barracks * Constitutional or Military State: Paving the Way in the Pre-Empire Years * Middle-Class Arrangements: One-Yearers and Reserve Officers * Soldiers at the 'School of Manliness' * The Regiment as a Family: The Potential and Limits of Military Comradeship * Liaisons Dangereuses: The Military and Civil Society V. The Twentieth Century: The (Ex-)Soldier as Citizen * The Post-World War I Years: Militarisation without Military Service * Soldiers and 'Volksgenossen': The Escalation of Violence Under the Nazis * Post-war Germany: From Disarmed to Rearmed State * Civic Spirit and Gender Politics: The End of Conscription?

Promotional Information

Also available in hardback, 9781859738818 GBP50.00 (September, 2004)

About the Author

Ute Frevert is Professor of History, Yale University. She is the author of Women in German History.

Reviews

'Ute Frevert's characteristically sweeping and incisive history of military conscription in Germany makes an original and stimulating contribution to our understanding of the problem of militarism in German society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this book Ute Frevert confirms her reputation as one of the most original and wide-ranging historians writing on the last two centuries of Germany's troubled past.' Professor Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University 'A gripping account of the meaning and impact of conscription in Germany from the nineteenth century to the present. By challenging the view that conscription helped forge a relationship between the state and its citizens, A Nation in Barracks will become required reading for anyone interested in the relationship between violence, gender, and civil society.' Joanna Bourke, Professor of History, Birkbeck College, London, and author of An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth-Century History 'This lucid, intelligent book fills a big gap. It ranges widely and uses rich, often unfamiliar source material superbly. From gender to nation-building, Ute Frevert illuminates every subject she touches. A major work by a major historian, A Nation in Barracks is rigorous, imaginative and original.' David Blackbourn, Harvard University 'In this superb book, Ute Frevert takes the important subject of military conscription to cast new light upon the relationship between the individual, society and the state in modern Germany. Richly illustrated from the archival record, A Nation in Barracks demonstrates the work of Germany's leading historian of gender at the top of her form.' Deborah Cohen, Brown University 'Frevert offers a dense and detailed description of the social functions and consequences of conscription in the "long nineteenth century" in the German societies - first in Prussia and the Southern German States, then in the German Empire. Even well-informed readers will find many new and surprising aspects of the interdependence of military life and civilian life in peacetime Germany.' Journal of Modern History, Vol. 80, No. 1, March 2008