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7 - Synthesizing the “Nazi Chemical Subject”: Gas Masks, Personal Armoring, and Vestiary Discipline in the Third Reich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

Peter Thompson
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Summary

The seventh chapter examines the writings of gas specialists in their various gas protection journals. Through the publication of articles and books, this group of personally and professionally connected scientists and engineers continued to heighten the German public’s concern for gas preparedness, calling for both increased gas drills and civilian familiarization with gas protection technology. This then created a greater public desire for visible steps toward national protection, including civilian gas mask distribution. With the creation of the Reichsluftschutzbund, the Nazis intended to centralize national gas protection services and to dramatize the possibility of aero-chemical attack. As part of this theatrical staging, they attempted to provide gas masks for every German civilian. Practically speaking, this endeavor proved impossible, but the distribution of gas masks was also meant as a way to visually and psychologically armor the German populace. Civilians who received gas masks were required to always keep them nearby, ready to pull them onto their faces at a moment’s notice. Thus, by forcing the individual to respond to a seemingly imminent chemical attack, the mask could ostensibly reveal the collective power of a Third Reich comprised of militarized “Nazi chemical subjects.”

Type
Chapter
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The Gas Mask in Interwar Germany
Visions of Chemical Modernity
, pp. 214 - 264
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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