Programme

The military is usually connected with (male) soldiers, but furthermore thousands of family members form part of military communities around the world, organised by the armed forces and heavily affected by the work of their husbands and fathers. During the cold war, about 70,000 wives and children followed a similar number of British soldiers to Northwest Germany. Numbers were halved in the 1990s with the reduction of troops, and further declined between 2010 and 2019 with the withdrawal from Germany.

Over decades, many German towns had a noticeable British population whose life significantly differed from civilian life and which was characterised by a special demographic structure: The community was young – with an average age of around 30 years, many children, and no-one above retirement age – and it was male-dominated. On the other hand, community and family life was equally marked by the absence of husbands and fathers, because soldiers frequently went on exercises or were deployed to conflict regions for weeks and months.
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What can images tell us about military and domestic masculinities under military occupation?

The ‘military man’ and ‘domestic man’ in the modern era have often been seen as different or competing masculine identities. But where do we place, say, the heterosexual married soldier, who, as part of his military work, is expected to act as a model husband and father, all while wearing his military uniform? This is precisely what was expected during the Allied Occupations of Germany and Japan in the wake of World War II, when thousands of wives and children of Allied men arrived to participate in the occupation hierarchy. Occupier men were tasked with visually representing an alternative masculinity within a democratic family life as compared to the “hypermasculine” Nazi or the “feudal” Japanese. As Stephen Atherton (2009: 822) reminds, “men perform a cultural repertoire of masculinities that are specific to particular situations” – what he calls “the fluidity of multiple masculinities”. The first premise of this paper is to harness military occupation as a case study to consider domestic and military masculinities as integrated rather than autonomous performances of gender, while doing military labour. The paper will specifically reference Australian men in the Allied Occupation of Japan between 1946 and 1952.
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From Madrid to Vienna, art museums and churches, private buildings and public spaces are crammed with artists’ representations of warfare in the early modern period. These images have long been central to scholarly understanding of the experience of military conflict in the West. In recent years, however, as historians have aimed to build a broader, more inclusive “war and society” approach, attention has turned away from such sources. Focusing on soldiers on the battlefield has seemed antithetic to “war and society” goals. And, if you’ve seen one hyper-macho cavalry charge, haven’t you seen them all? (Show less)

Stories of war and violence have fascinated human beings throughout history. Soldiers have shared their experiences of war in narratives that also serve as a way to attach meaning and justification to their acts of violence. These verbal or textual narratives force listeners to visualise these representations of violence in their minds.

When violent acts become too vivid narrators may turn to linguistic methods to hide the actual meaning and consequences of their actions. This way language provides avenues to de-visualise narratives of violence by fading killing and maiming other human beings somewhere in between the lines.
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During Franco-British occupation of Greek Macedonia from 1915-1918, a substantial number of Balkan origin civilians contributed their labour to support the Allied cause and sustain the war economy. They were primarily labourers, contracted to work for the Allies in a variety of positions, including road construction, dock labour, translators, foremen, domestic workers, etc.

Given that the Entente forces were operating in a formally neutral state until June 1917, the exploitation of its resources, both human and natural, required validation. To this end, they employed propagandistic visual material (photographs) mostly in the press to achieve distinct goals for different kind of audiences. They aimed to clarify to both internal audiences (the public opinion in Britain and France) and external audiences (the Central Powers and Greek royalists) that they were not violating Greek sovereignty rights and human rights in general. Additionally, they sought to demonstrate to neutrals that the public was benefiting greatly from their presence. As such, numerous newspaper reports from Macedonia featured images of contented labourers working alongside smiling officers, usually accompanied by articles detailing the advantages enjoyed by civilians working with Allies.
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