soc.history.war.world-war-ii

wrote:

> Germany, Japan, England, Russia, Italy.... What did they have to give
> their troops more of a reason to fight?

I guess pinups and sexy starlettes, and the ubiquitous merry display thereof
in the press, newsreels, etc. were something quite peculiar to the American
way of life and mentality. Rather than anything the average European
fighting man, poorer, less exuberant, and bound to more traditional morals
was inured to, or allowed.

In Italy, the Catholic Church (and the mainstream mentality) stood as a
formidable barrier against anything perceived as sexual immorality, and
pinups the American way were sexual immorality. Both the Church and the
Fascist regime portrayed the American sexual freedom as Sodom and Gomorrah,
a hell of corruption and depravation. Popular French erotic magazines
appeared as the epitome of Western decadence and an evidence of how France
was becoming a wormridden den of iniquity ripe for destruction. So pinups
were not a familiar presence in the everyday life of the Italian soldier.

By contrast, brothels were commonly accepted and the even more sexually
repressed British made a joke of the Italian "motorized brothels" they
captured in Libya - they may not have been aware that brothels (class-based
service: topnotch service for the officers, medium quality for NCOs,
indifferent to low quality for the troops) were regularly provided for in
the Italian military.

Haydn