In the first two decades of the nineteenth century in Prussia and other parts of Germany, the patriotic-national discourse was to a remarkable extent shaped by war and used for the intellectual mobilization for war. The new form of mass warfare was distinguished not merely by the size of the armies, but also by its infusion with patriotic and national ideologies, which facilitated the mobilization of vast forces, now increasingly composed of conscripts, militias and volunteers, as well as long-service professionals. As conservative regimes like Prussia also deployed mass armies, not only was the conduct of warfare transformed, but the social and gender order and political culture along with it. Soldiers and civilians of all classes – men and women alike – had to be mobilized for war on an unprecedented scale. In 1813–15 the Prussian and other German governments thus promised men political rights in return for military service. They had to use a highly gendered patriotic-national rhetoric in their war propaganda to serve the zeitgeist and gain the support from society, which they needed to be able to win the war against Napoleonic France. Not just conservative-monarchic regents and regencies, but also their early-liberal and German-national opponents used such rhetoric, which led to intensive debates about the meaning of key concepts in the political discourse on nation and state, military and warfare and the social and gender order, both in war and in peacetime.