Battle Cry of the Real Whipped Men

While there are a lot of men's magazine covers depicting women in various states of undress being whipped, branded, frozen, stretched on racks and just generally being tortured, (usually by Nazis), there are also a surprising number depicting men being whipped by Nazi babes. So many, in fact, that one can't help but suspect that this was a personal fantasy on the part of some publishing executive.  This Battle Cry cover from October 1967 is pretty typical, with some strapping shirtless GI strung up by his ankles being lashed by a couple of whip wielding Aryan beauties.  It's clearly hot work, whipping enemies of the Reich, as these  women inevitably seem to have either to strip to their underwear, or unbutton their tops to an extent that their breasts are in danger of falling out.  (Although, judging by the girl with the swastika armband, it was too tight in the first place and the strain of trying to contain her breasts caused all the buttons to  pop off.

The featured stories on the cover are the usual men's magazine combination of sex, perversion, war crimes and venality in various combinations.  Not surprisingly, that old favourite, wife swapping, features prominently.  Of course, none of the stories could ever live up to the promises being made by their titles, but that wasn't the point - it was the possibility that they might which sold the magazine.  The average adolescent male (the main audience for these magazines by the late sixties), was desperate for titillation and willing to pay out their thirty five cents on the off chance that this month publishing guidelines had relaxed enough for some real smut to be hiding behind the garish cover.  Inevitably, as real porn magazines became more readily available and, with increased sexual permissiveness, began to lose their stigma, the men's magazines had to respond by becoming ever more lurid: although those whip cracking Nazi babes remained a constant.

This September 1973 edition of Real Men illustrates the point - the girl with the whip and the swastika armband is threatening to spill out of her shirt as she gives another hapless guy a good lashing.  (And is that Adolf himself looking on?)  The headlines are ever more sensational, hinting at three-in-a-bed action, white slavery, swinging sex nymphos and greed in the form of ill-gotten war criminal treasure.  The content is much the same, just played at an even louder volume. It was all in vain, of course - as the seventies progressed the men's magazines faltered, the only survivors being forced into becoming actual soft core porn magazines.  But they were great fun while they lasted.