When the Nazis came to power, they used various strategies to expel German Jews from social, cultural, and economic life. Fighter, Worker, and Family Man focuses on the gendered experiences and discrimination that German-Jewish men faced between 1933 and 1941.

Sebastian Huebel argues that Jewish men’s gender identities, intersecting with categories of ethnicity, race, class, and age, underwent a profound process of marginalization that destabilized accustomed ways of performing masculinity. At the same time, in their attempts to sustain their conceptions of masculinity these men maintained agency and developed coping strategies that prevented their full-scale emasculation. Huebel draws on a rich archive of diaries, letters, and autobiographies to interpret the experiences of these men, focusing on their roles as soldiers and protectors, professionals and breadwinners, and parents and husbands.

Fighter, Worker, and Family Man sheds light on how the Nazis sought to emasculate Jewish men through propaganda, the law, and violence, and how in turn German-Jewish men were able to defy emasculation and adapt – at least temporarily – to their marginalized status as men.

Sebastian Huebel is a faculty member in the Department of History at the University of the Fraser Valley and head of the Department of Humanities at Alexander College in Vancouver.

Sebastian Huebel's profile page

• Short-listed, WCGS Book Prize 2022 Awarded by The Waterloo Centre for German Studies
• Short-listed, The Wallace K. Ferguson Prize Awarded by the Canadian Historical Association

"Huebel’s book invites us to further investigate the history of masculinities in the Third Reich. It will not only enrich historiographical debates about this period, but also enliven discussion in the classroom."

<em>Monatshefte</em>

"Huebel shares the hope that a study of the erosion of Jewish male masculinity under Nazism can ‘sharpen our understanding of contemporary issues related to gender.’"

<em>Jewish Independent</em>

“Huebel, without losing sight of Nazi power, invites us to change our perspective and see how many men, despite the hardships they had to face, were still able to retain their humanity and express their own agency. Fighter, Worker, and Family Man is a book about resistance, revealing how many German-Jewish men were able to find ways to fight against a system that wanted to humiliate, dehumanize, and ultimately kill them.”

<em>Central European History</em>

"This is a story of the gradual adaptations German Jewish men and their families made in the face of increasing legal restrictions, defamation, and violence. Huebel tells it very well. This is crucial reading."

<em>CHOICE</em>