Ever since the groundbreaking work of John Keegan transformed military history, scholars have increasingly examined the day-to-day experience of warfare from the perspective of the soldiers themselves. More recently, these studies have used theories of masculinity to understand how war impacted soldiers and their sense of themselves as men. The book under review, a translation of the Czech original titled Muži proti ohni: Motivace, morálka a mužnost českých vojáků Velké války, 1914–1918 (Prague, 2016), applies these concepts to understand the impact of World War I on Czech soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Based on extensive primary sources, both published memoirs and private correspondence, it documents the changing attitudes of Czech soldiers in the course of the war. With the notable exception of the published diary of Egon Erwin Kisch, who went on to fame as a German journalist and chronicler of Prague life, the sources are all in Czech. All of the authors were conscripts, none were professional officers. Using the model developed by John Lynn in his study of the French revolutionary army, the book is divided into three phases: the initial phase of enlistment, the sustaining phase of long periods of training and waiting, and the combat phase of actual fighting.

The first chapter on mobilization notes that, as in other countries in the opening stage of the war, there was little resistance and some enthusiasm among the Czech soldiers for a war that was expected to be short. In addition to illusions about the coming war, some soldiers saw the coming conflict as an opportunity to advance their status in the male hierarchy, as a “tournament of manliness” (29). Early setbacks in the war effort, however, led to disillusionment, especially among the Czech-speaking troops who were often scapegoated for the mistakes of the military hierarchy. The next four chapters focus on how their loyalty was sustained or undermined during what turned out to be an unexpectedly long and grueling conflict. The first chapter examines how the failure to supply troops with basic needs like food and shelter undermined support for the war effort. It also examines the psychological impact of modern mechanized warfare that made soldiers into automatons and turned “wartime manliness into an endless compromise” (84). In this context, women took on contradictory roles, with prostitutes regarded as passive and weak, while the “hilfskräfte” (female auxiliaries at the front) were feared as threatening the male monopoly on warfare. The next chapter focuses on factors sustaining commitment to the war, starting with “comradeship.” The collegiality of the wartime experience became a “key symbolic space” (117) where masculinity was transformed and men could “incorporate the dangerous, potentially feminizing aspects of their wartime experience into their own masculinity as they experienced it” (130). This sense of solidarity, however, was undermined by tensions between the officer corps and the men they led, the subject of the next chapter. Although this conflict was not unique to the Austro-Hungarian army and was supported by the pre-war class divide, it was especially galling for the Czech troops, who felt themselves unfairly maligned as cowards and traitors by a distrustful military hierarchy. The next chapter examines how the concept of home created different venues for the performance of masculinity. While on the military front, masculinity meant obedience to authority; on the home front it entailed control and power over a man's family and environment. The final chapter turns to the actual experience of combat, showing how it was a form of “ritualized masculinity” (229) similar to the pre-war practice of dueling. Nonetheless, in their letters and memoirs, Czech solders were reluctant to discuss their role in the slaughter.

The conclusion emphasizes how wartime shortages and deprivations undermined faith in the Dual Monarchy and opened the way for new loyalties. In the case of Czech soldiers, the dismissive attitude of the military authorities “ended up inadvertently subverting the essential sense of their masculine self-worth, pushing them towards national identity that was already available and fostered by the Czech political and intellectual elites for decades” (259). This carefully researched examination of loyalty and identity during a time of war has much to offer scholars of the era, as well as students of military history, nationalism, and the politics of gender.