Being a German-Jewish war veteran in Nazi Germany meant living in a unique and contested space, existing in the interstices between two major Nazi imperatives: the veneration of World War I and eliminationist, racial antisemitism. The cult of the war sacralized Germany's participation in the conflict and hailed wartime comradeship and devotion to the national cause, while racial antisemitism defined Jews as a distinct race and targeted Jews regardless of their political affiliations, religiosity, or levels of acculturation, through discrimination, exclusion from German economy and society, and ultimately extermination. Many Jewish soldiers had forged close bonds with non-Jewish co-combatants or formed relationships in postwar veterans' groups, which spared some the full force of Nazi antisemitic degradation and persecution. Others, especially decorated heroes and former front fighters, found protection through their status and connections—for a while. The safe space for Jewish veterans began to shrink, gradually contracting after the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and especially after Kristallnacht (1938), although even after the Final Solution was underway in 1941, some veterans defiantly asserted their status, and a fortunate handful found protection through personal connections even at the height of the Holocaust.

As a watershed event in German-Jewish history, World War I has become justifiably well-trodden historical ground. Scholars have pored over the key moments, from the eruptions of exuberant national identification in August 1914, through the notorious “Jew count” of 1916 that questioned whether Jews' service to the country stood in proportion to their population, to the intellectuals and religious thinkers for whom contact with the more traditional and “authentic” Jewish communities of East Europe sparked a reconsideration of the normative liberal Judaism of their parents. Recent works like Tim Grady's A Deadly Legacy (2017) and the co-edited volume Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion (2018) have pushed the field past questions of Jewish acceptance and assimilation and added nuance to older historiographic themes, stressing, e.g., the “normalness” of Jewish involvement in the war and the variety of experiences, political perspectives, and outcomes that prevent simple generalizations about the impact of World War I on German-Jewish life.

Michael Geheran's book is a welcome addition to this recent scholarly wave, a tight and thorough survey of Jewish soldiers' experiences and attitudes, which begins during the war and stretches through the Weimar period, the rise of the Nazis, the consolidation of Nazi rule, and the Holocaust. Based on a close analysis of memoirs, letters, and official documents, Geheran's well-researched account brings the veterans' voices to light and effectively writes this group into German and German-Jewish history. His analysis foregrounds gender and shows the importance of German masculine codes to the identity and aspirations of this group as a way of both defying stereotypes and asserting their Germanness. Indeed, antisemitic propaganda portrayed Jews as bookish and weak, as effeminate shirkers, and this image motivated many men to prove themselves as stalwart and brave combatants and as dyed-in-the-wool loyal German subjects. Geheran emphasizes the fervent patriotism and even nationalism of many German-Jewish veterans—even documenting cases of Jews fighting among ultra-nationalist Freikorps bands—who saw their time in the war as a transformative experience and who staked their aspirations for acceptance on wartime service.

While Jewish war service did nothing to prevent the sharpening of antisemitic discourse (and violence) in the Weimar period, Jewish veterans, Geheran demonstrates, were more likely to have formed significant connections with non-Jewish Germans than their co-religionists who did not serve. Through these kinds of connections, some Jewish men were able to navigate the early years of the Nazi regime relatively unscathed. Displaying wartime medals might have warded off SA militants during the April 1933 boycotts, and, significantly, war veterans were exempt from the Civil Service Law of April 1933 which removed Jews from government positions. Hitler was compelled to make this exception for Hindenburg (and for the sake of broader, middle-class support), whose antisemitism was only tempered by his reverence for the army. Even after Hindenburg's death, the Nazis remained wary of openly persecuting war veterans, afraid of the bad publicity this might generate. Most veterans, for their part, clung to their service record as they literally clutched their medals, avowing their patriotism and masculinity, and by implication, Geheran suggests, disparaging the insufficient masculinity of those Jews who did not serve.

Geheran's account continues through the heightening of Nazi persecution to Kristallnacht—the decisive turning point in his narrative of veteran exceptionality—and into the ghettoes and concentration camps. Here, he presents some of his most original and intriguing material. Some Jewish veterans continued to receive better treatment and preferred assignments (e.g., the Jewish Order Police) even amid these horrifying conditions; they were accustomed to drilling, for example, or they might have found a sympathetic ear in a camp guard. Although the select few may have found some relief or protection through their status or connections, by and large distinctions between “good Jews” who served and other Jews became less and less relevant by the beginning of the war and especially by the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Still, even through the bleakest, most abject conditions of the genocide, many of Geheran's subjects remained unshakable in their patriotism, continuing to uphold distinctions between Germans and Nazis and having faith in the innocence (and ignorance) of the German general public.

It is commendable that Geheran devotes so much attention to masculinity, but his work might have benefited from adding more nuance to the category, taking into account, for example, men's roles as fathers or husbands and treating masculine ideals beyond notions of military “hardness” and courage. At times his account also risks reifying the dichotomy between German and Jewish identities, overlooking the efforts of so many Jewish Germans to harmonize their Jewish faith, heritage, or community belonging with a commitment to German culture and society, a dynamic which animates so much of German-Jewish history from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Still, despite these minor concerns, Comrades Betrayed is an impressive, well-crafted, and persuasive work, an enormously valuable contribution to German history, Jewish history, and the history of the Holocaust, which vividly and compellingly humanizes a unique group of the Nazis' victims.