In many ways, the Lost Generation expressed a new humanity in that they understood life differently and had different aspirations. They were also ready to accept new roles and new ways to live.

It could be said that for a short time, this generation found a new humanity. This new ‘humanity’ was fated to die in the rising sentiment and expectation of a new war, but for a short time, many barriers went down that would only go down again many decades later. 

Gender relationship in the interwar years

The most visible was the relationship between men and women. 
This had already started to change before the war, and really ever since the New Woman appeared at the end of the 19th century. 
Women had started to demand new freedom and recognition, get an education, and even enter professions, though these were still rare.

But during the Great War, women had not only proved to be ‘as good as men’. They had actually substituted men in many aspects of life: as workers, as breadwinners, as family leaders. 
On the battlefields, women shared their experiences with men, often side by side. 

For the Lost Generation, who had not had the actual time to experience the world before the war, and the way men and women were supposed to interact, this life was the first meaningful experience they had of gender relationships. 
For the older generation, the norm was a neat separation between the male and the female spheres, while for the Lost Generation, working side-by-side was the best way to get on and even survive. 

When the war was over, this kind of gender relations remained. 
Young men didn’t mind having a New Woman as a girlfriend. They didn’t mind to consider her a companion, not a helper in their life. They accepted her in their peer circles, did things together, and frequented the same places. They sought experiences together. 

On her part, the New Woman didn’t need a man to take up her life. She didn’t need to be protected. She recognised that vulnerability is not cowardice. 

Even if the social discourse focused on the returning hero, the Lost Generation actually accepted that people have a lot of flaws and vulnerabilities, and that’s just the way it is. 
The vulnerable person is not cowardly or incapable. They are just humans. 
With all their decadence, the Lost Generation tended to be more tolerant and more accepting. 
And this went even beyond the mere gender discourse. 

The Lost Generation and minorities

The barrier between the sexes was not the only one the Great War brought down. 
The primary instinct of survival destroyed all kinds of barriers in the trenches: Gender, class, culture, race barriers – all became irrelevant when surviving was the main goal. 

The mix and mutual support that these youths learned during the war, which they still embraced once they went home and that was already crumbling in the 1930s, is a very distinguished characteristic of the Lost Generation of the 1920s. 

For sects of society like Jews and African Americans, the Great War was an experience that showed them new opportunities as they fought together with their compatriots and – like in the case of the Jews – often side by side. 
This produced a new awareness that they could be full citizens of their respective nations, which was true for the Jews and for African Americans alike. 
After the war, these sectors sought a new space and often found it, if only for a short time. They found and opportunity to mix and contribute to the larger society they were part of.

RESOURCES

Enzo Travero, A ferro e fuoco. La guerra civile europea (1914-1945), Il Mulino, Bologna, 2008 (Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945, Verso Publishers, 2016)

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