ISBN:
9781501751035
Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (312 p)
,
22 b&w halftones, 1 map
Edition:
[Online-Ausgabe]
Year of publication:
2020
Series Statement:
Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History
Keywords:
World War, 1914-1918 Veterans
;
Masculinity Religious aspects
;
Judaism
;
Jewish veterans Social conditions 20th century
;
Antisemitism History 20th century
;
Jews, German History 20th century
;
World War, 1939-1945 Jews
;
HISTORY / Jewish
Abstract:
At the end of 1941, six weeks after the mass deportations of Jews from Nazi Germany had begun, Gestapo offices across the Reich received an urgent telex from Adolf Eichmann, decreeing that all war-wounded and decorated Jewish veterans of World War I be exempted from upcoming "evacuations". Why this was so, and how Jewish veterans were able to avoid the fate of ordinary Jews under the Nazis – at least, initially – is the subject of Comrades Betrayed.Michael Geheran deftly illuminates how the same values that compelled Jewish soldiers to demonstrate bravery in the front lines in World War I made it impossible for them to accept passively, let alone comprehend, persecution under Hitler. After all, they upheld the ideal of the German fighting man, embraced the Fatherland, and cherished the bonds that had developed in military service. Through their diaries and private letters, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving family members, and police, Gestapo, and military records, Michael Geheran presents a major challenge to the prevailing view that Jewish vets were left isolated, neighborless, and had suffered a social death by 1938.Tracing the path from the trenches of the Great War to the extermination camps of the Third Reich, Geheran exposes the painful dichotomy that, while many Jewish former combatants believed that Germany would never betray them, the Holocaust was nonetheless a horrific reality. In chronicling Jewish veterans' appeal to older, traditional notions of comradeship and national belonging, Comrades Betrayed forces reflection on how this group made use of scant opportunities to defy Nazi persecution and, for some, to evade becoming victims of the Final Solution
Abstract:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Reappraising Jewish War Experiences, 1914–18 -- 2. The Politics of Comradeship: Weimar Germany, 1918–33 -- 3. “These Scoundrels Are Not the German People”: The Nazi Seizure of Power, 1933–35 -- 4. Jewish Frontkämpfer and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft -- 5. Under the “Absolute” Power of National Socialism, 1938–41 -- 6. Defiant Germanness -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Note:
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
,
In English
DOI:
10.1515/9781501751035
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