ABSTRACT
The Fascist elevation of the naked male body to representational eminence was the outcome, in part, of the efforts of German nineteenth-century historians and philosophers and the product in part also of those rebels, idealists and altruists of the fin de siècle seeking ‘the healing power of the sun and the rhythms of nature’ as antidotes to industrialization, urbanization and materialism.
This cult of the naked body was eventually fully incorporated into National Socialist ideology. The nude became symbolic of right-wing values. Art provided images of power – racially acceptable stereotypes of Aryan men. Under Fascism the imagery of male nudity projected heroic warriorhood. The Great War, according to George Mosse, cast a long shadow over the national male stereotype of the post-war years, while for the influential Ernst Jünger, for example, this war shaped supermen; it produced a masculinity characterized by a new beauty – hard, ruthless, aggressive and for the first time openly sexual in libidinal violence; it exalted a manhood which had been tried and tested in battle.
