The figure of the officer : class, gender, and military hierarchy in the Swiss army in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

Taking the example of military education and everyday life in the Swiss army during the World War II, this article aims to address two issues that have so far only found marginal consideration in most studies of military history. First, the article attempts to explore in what way the military hierarchy was gendered, thus borrowing from Joan Scott s argument that the category of gender can be useful for studying power relationships within social institutions. Second, it will discuss the extent to which this gendered system of command and subordination was linked with the concept of class and it will examine the role of the army as a training camp for establishing relations of social power. It will be argued that the figure of the officer functions to interconnect these two aspects, since it incorporated a form of manliness which can be characterized as hegemonic masculinity.