#World War II queer History

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[scarfacemarston]

So I took the Captain America history book list I'm curating a little too seriously....

I told myself no more than 15 books, but there were multiple categories and I received a few more requests. Now I don't know which to post first/the order. Here is how it stands: (The focus was meant to be on Bucky, then Peggy, then the Commandos and it spread from there. PLEASE feel free to leave a comment!

I also have a tiny Misc. section. Edit: Just to clarify, these are lists that I'm posting on my blog for you all to use as a reference!

[omgthatdress]

During World War II, entertainment was a crucial part of maintaining troop morale. Because of the difficulties in getting professional entertainers to the front lines, it was usually up to the soldiers themselves to put on shows. Because of the lack of women, female roles had to be played by men.

Drag was immensely popular on all sides of the war, even in the German army.

(German soldiers in drag)

(A British Army drag show is interrupted by an attack, soldiers respond in drag)

One of the most popular "soldier shows" was This is The Army, a musical by Irving Berlin. A movie version with multiple performances by soldiers in drag was made in 1943. It starred Ronald Reagan.

[yeoldecryptid]

How come non interactive historical re-enactments are always battle scenes? I want political debates. I want scientific discoveries, I want treason trials and family drama. There’s nothing juicy about battle scenes. Where’s the spice? Where’s the plot? Where’s the drama?

Some re-enactments that I think would be fun:

The Tennis Court Oath

Solving the enigma machine

The discovery of laughing gas

The musical duel of Adolff Sax

a Houdini performance.

The time Dante was in a court case on whether or not the pope was possessed.

Some re-enactments I think would be important:

The Thermidor speech.

The Oscar Wilde trials.

And finally, a single battle sequence that I would love to see:

A pirate fight featuring Zheng Li Sao.

[theprioryorange]

Felice Schragenheim, 1941

one of the coolest women i’ve learnt about; talented writer who was apart of the jewish underground community during wwii, proud lesbian and feminist, wooed the wife of a nazi and died because she was brave enough to express herself as she pleased - we can all learn how to be a little like felice

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"SHE POSED AS MAN EVEN TO DRAFT CARD," Toronto Star. January 5, 1943. Page 2. ---- Mildred Allen, 29. is shown as she was arrested in Chicago. Police said she admitted having posed as a man for 15 years. Detectives said she was carrying a draft card bearing the name of Thomas Vernon. She was held without a formal charge.

[troythecatfish]

[twicedailyquotes]

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.

Gordon Bowsher in a love letter to Gilbert Bradley (circa 1940s)

[raeynbowboi]

Oh but do go on about 'back when men were men'. By all means, tell on yourselves.

[icoulduseapairofbrassknuckles]

So I'm reading "Coming Out Under Fire" by Allan Bérubé which is about gays in the military in WW2 and there's something really hilarious to me about the deadpan sentence:

"Heterosexuality was not a functional prerequisite for making it through basic training."

[makingqueerhistory]

About Queer Happened Here

This sprawling, unique visual history of New York City’s queer spaces documents the evolution of LGBTQ+ culture, community, and activism within Manhattan’s dynamic landscape over the course of a century, spanning from 1920 to 2020. New York’s LGBTQ+ history is everywhere, but rarely is it visibly documented. Aside from current venues and a handful of landmark plaques, important queer spaces from the city’s past have otherwise been forgotten about, or remain entirely hidden. This multifaceted book joyfully and poignantly explores a century of LGBTQ+ gathering spaces across Manhattan through hundreds of historic photographs, flyers, posters, club membership cards, magazine spreads, and more. Author Marc Zinaman’s carefully researched, engaging text includes first-person accounts and little-known facts that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking. From 1920s bathhouses, drag balls, and the ascent of homophobia during World War II, to the protests and parades of the 1960s and 1970s, to the horrors of AIDS; from the vibrant nightlife scene of the 1990s to 2018’s Rainbow Wave, which saw a record number of queer elected officials in the US, to the rise of geosocial dating apps, every major milestone of LGBTQ+ social history is thoughtfully documented. The result is a powerful and compelling testament to the endurance of queer culture, and an important contribution to its preservation and celebration.

[entity9silvergen]

Highly recommend the film Great Freedom (2021). It feels like something Tumblr would like but also from a historical/educational perspective as a queer person, it is a lot. I want to talk more about it and what it means but I think you just need to experience it. There is so much about it.

[not100bees]

I realize I'm basically like those Japanese soldiers that didn't realize World War II was over for like decades and that basically everybody has decided that I was on the wrong side of history on that one but I don't care. I'm never going to be super cool with the word queer. I don't like it and I don't have to like it and you can't make me.

[padawan-historian]

(1) Queer domestic worker and jazz lover Mabel Hampton (1919)

(3) Annie Bell and Sammie Pratt (1905)

(4) Mr. and Mrs. Joe Spears (1914)

(5) Bride and Groom (1926)

(6) William Biggers and his family (1916)

(7) A well-dressed couple strolling together (1925)

(8) A stylish New York couple in Harlem (1932)

(9) Lorraine Hurdle, a Black lesbian, posed in her United States Women’s Army Corps (WAC) uniform alongside a bespeckled lady friend during World War II

(10) A Family Portrait in Fort Scott, Kansas (1950)

(11) The wedding of transgender essayist Dawn Pepita Hall and her husband, auto-mechanic John Paul Simmons (1969)

(12) A couple shares a kiss inside a photo booth (1930s-40s)

(13) Two men share a kiss under a tree (1977-78)

Special Love to the Holsinger Collection, KyKy Archives, James Van Der Zee Studio, Mabel Hampton Collection, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"DRAFT ENDS EIGHT-YEAR MASQUERADE AS WOMAN," Toronto Star. April 9, 1943. Page 2. ---- Because his companions called him "Sissy," Reb Lucian Dookrey, 26, of Blossom, Texas, eight years ago donned women's clothing. He was held for physical examination in the garb, LEFT, and charged with failing to register for the draft. RIGHT, Dookrey is seen after a haircut and change of clothing

[burberrycanary]

Nine TBRs for 2025

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, tr. Benjamin Jowett — I've never actually buckled down and read Thucydides, just excerpts. But I'm going to Greece this year, so if not now: when?

Every Summer After by Carley Fortune — Sometimes you try to win an argument and end up playing yourself, which is how this ended up on my TBRs.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates — I've liked Coates' other books and this is touching some deeply fraught third rails within American politics.

What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France by Mary Louise Roberts — When a throwaway detail you cut from a story you've already published haunts you to the point where you plan to read a whole book on the subject—well, let's say that I can't believe anybody, myself included, writes as a hobby, for fun. Oh well.

Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard — Beard's books on Roman history are always entertaining and go down easy but are also thoughtful, a little contrarian and worth the time spent. Among classicists she—and Anne Carson—are the great, brilliant, rigorous, skeptical, slightly cockeyed popularizers of our age.

The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European by Stefan Zweig, tr. Anthea Bell — This one is to-be-finished. Zweig does autobiography almost as cultural history and I got all the way from the lost world of late 19th-century Europe, centered on but not limited to Vienna, through WWI and the brutal inter-war experience. But the American election lined up with hitting the despairing lived-in lead-up to WWII and I didn't have the heart to keep going. But I should and I mean to.

The Piano Teacher: A Novel by Elfriede Jelinek, tr. Joachim Neugroschel — I'm fascinated by the process of adapting written works to film, which is a roundabout way to find this novel, but here we are.

The Oresteia by Aeschylus, tr. Tony Harrison — An adaptive translation I've seen performed, sadly only on a poor quality TV broadcast transfer but also amazingly since it was an obscure British production from 1983 that was never commercially released, so thank fuck for the long tail of youtube and the kindness of strangers uploading things from the same very deep rabbit hole you find yourself in. Shouldn't be your first Oresteia, which very niche hot take imo should be Anne Carson's An Oresteia, but to each their own. Harrison's translation is a version for people who love this improbably enduring work that is fundamentally concerned with the problems of injustice.

City of Night by John Rechy — Here is another to-be-finished, technically, but I'd probably start from the beginning again. This is an important first-hand account of mid-twentieth-century queer experience in the form of modernist fiction. There is going to be some moment where reading this book makes sense in the coming year or so I hope. It's a character flaw but I'm moody about reading fiction. Maybe it'll be this year's beach read. Here's hoping.

Tagging, if you'd like to play and haven't yet, @village-skeptic, @booksandabeer, @bromcommie, @imreallyloveleee, @voylitscope,, @cardamomsage, @skarabrae-stone, @starlightafterastorm and @gloromeien. 📚🥂🎉