German Bodies explores the cultural representations of German identity and citizenship before and after World War II, and offers a critical analysis of race, violence, and modernity in German history and contemporary German society. Uli Linke examines how Germans invested the body with meanings that had significance for the larger body politic and investigates how this fits within the larger consumer culture, social memory and the postwar democratization of the country.

The book is divided into three sections discussing different aspects of the German cult of the body: Aryan aesthetics, as in the postwar obsession with white nudity; blood aesthetics, as in the demonization of immigrants as a blood-contagion; and cultural violence, as in the images of genocide and dismemberment evoked in political protests during German reunification.