There is a book from the 1980s called Male Fantasies written by a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota. He analyzed a rather strange body o literature, the writings produced in German in the 1920s by veterans of the Freikorps. Most of these men had fought in the German Army in WWI (though some had just been too young to get in). But the Freikorps were paramilitary groups who fought against Bolshevism more or less as mercenaries in places like Poland, The Baltic states or the Ukraine. It was thanks to their efforts that places like the Baltic states were't reabsorbed by Russia in 1919 or 1920. Although Hitler was not among their number, Nazi ideology really begins with this group, growing out of their alienation from any kind of traditional culture (they had been at war, some of them from age 18 to 28, and suffered a crushing defeat). The female characters in this literature are all nurses. The Nurses serving in the Freikorps are white nurses. Invariably the sister of one of the officers in the unit, they are completely etherialized, sexless sources of limitless maternal love and approval. The red nurses, on the other hand, who serve in the Bolshevik units, are sluts who service whole companies of men at a time and take the greatest delight not only in murdering but in torturing and disfiguring any German who falls into their hands as a captive; they are infinitely more evil and hateful than the communist soldiers. The author found in this dichotomy the beginning of Nazi ideology.

I just searched for the book on Google books. Bizarrely they only have a selection from vol II. The stuff about the nurses makes up vol. I.


http://books.google.com/books?id=NcpDvzHS7lAC&dq=theweleit+%22Male+Fantasies%22+women+floods+bodies+histories&source=gbs_navlinks_s

I'm friends in real life with a pediatric nurse, and I've read your posts about the things you deal with every day at your job, and my most overwhelming opinion is that nurses do a job that must be physically and emotionally exhausting, all for the sake of other people. It's so incredibly admirable.