2 - State interventions 1914???1945

Summary

The pre-World War I period had already seen a growing publicity around sexual matters, and an upwelling of ordinary people's interest in improving their own experiences of sex as well as avidly monitoring and theorizing about the choices made by others. Yet the impact of World War I on sexual politics and sexual mores and practices was to be tremendous. The war dramatically quickened changes in the organization and understanding of sexuality that had been underway since the turn of the century. In many nations, the interwar period would then be a time of considerably greater loosening of sexual customs. The interwar period, however, would also be marked by unprecedented efforts on the part of national and local governments to intervene in their citizens’ private lives. This would be true both for those nations that turned to fascism and for those that remained democratic. But no changes would be as convulsive and consequential as those wrought by the slaughter unleashed by Nazi Germany across the European continent in World War II.