Almost 53,000 American soldiers were killed in the First World War and over 202,000 were wounded.
Initially neutral, the US began to change its position after a German U-boat sank the Lusitania in 1915, and when it was revealed that Germany sought to urge Mexico to attack the United States. But even as their first troops landed in France in June 1917, few Americans fully understood let alone supported this faraway conflict.
In a study published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, Eric Wycoff Rogers argues that the US Government and military took drastic action to use sexuality to motivate its conscripted soldiers to embrace their roles in the war.
“The war didn’t feel relevant to young American men in the way it did to European men,” Rogers says.
“Particularly after President Wilson’s sudden U-turn on American belligerency, the government had to work hard to convince civilians to support the war, and this was doubly true for soldiers, many of whom were drafted against their will.
“In this context, the War Department actively exploited sexuality to psychologically manipulate American soldiers to fight.”
This involved enforcing sexual abstinence while simultaneously exposing soldiers to carefully controlled forms of sexual stimulation. Believing that sexually satisfied men could not be easily motivated, the aim of this teasing was to generate unmet sexual desire, which the War Department could leverage as motivation to fight, especially through appeals to chivalry and heroism.
While earlier historians have covered aspects of the CTCA, Rogers has shown that it was part of a broader morale-building machine that had its own logic. The CTCA was established in April 1917 to get soldiers’ sexual behaviours under control as they trained for combat. The Military Morale Section (MMS), which became the Morale Branch at the end of the war, was founded a year later as American Expeditionary Forces were being deployed to Europe.
Led by Edward Lyman Munson, a high-ranking medical officer, the Morale Branch and its predecessor took increasing control over the CTCA.
Drawing on the relatively neglected records of the morale agency, and the writings of the academics and reformers who led it, Rogers shows that these powerful figures believed that sexual climax wasted the energy which fuelled a man’s motivation. They also believed, however, that stimulating and then diverting a soldier’s sex drive could boost his motivation.
Based on this “parasexual logic”, as Rogers terms it, these theorists of morale designed a range of manipulative policies and activities that both regulated and stimulated soldiers.
