Recycling The Disabled Book Review

Heather Perry’s Recycling the disabled, explores the mechanized, industrial production of turning disabled army veterans back into the depleted German workforce. Looking at army veterans during and after the First World War (1914-1918), Perry asserts that the “recycling of the disabled” was a combination of culture, medical and military processes. The War itself becomes the catalyst for this mobilization, creating a redefining of orthopedic medicine, economic reconstructing of the labor sector, and societal understanding of disabilities. Perry argues, within a ‘total war’ German society, this intertwining of medicine and war, fundamentally advanced the German modernization of medicine and industry. Driven by the orthopedic profession, doctors …show more content…
This orthopedic movement became a social, economic, and a utilitarian political motive. This organization included relocating disabled soldiers back to their town and job of origin, thus creating social management of the nation at large. Moreover, the author showcases the re-education of the German public on the ideas of the disabled, their abilities in the workforce, and importance in German society. Demonstrated through Perry’s sources, ranging from campaign articles, museum demonstrations, and pamphlets, this re-educating reaches all corners of the professional, militarized and local German empire. Perry’s final analysis combines the military and industrial use of the disabled in a ‘total war’ German society. Using case studies of Saxony and the use of the disabled at factories such as Siemens, Perry illustrates the utilization of every man within all spheres of the industrial and military system. Perry shows the orthopedic specialization, social reintegration of the disabled, and propaganda re-education, ultimately highlighting a study of the impact and experience in a wartime German