the Twentieth Century, Thomas Kühne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), vii + 304 pp., hardcover $99.99, paperback $29.99, electronic version available. For those studying the twentieth-century German military, comradeship is a frequent and loaded term. In this innovative book, Thomas Kühne demonstrates that comradeship was one of the central organizing concepts for German society between 1914 and 1945, and remained important long afterward. The topic is huge: the book covers three quarters of a century. It was born out of a fascination with the social cohesion and solidarity of soldiers—comradeship—and complaints on the part of many veterans about its absence in individualistic modern society. The subject and findings of the book thus get to the heart of the perceived gulf between (combat) veterans and civilian society, a major social trope even today. Comradeship, in Kühne’s portrayal, was foremost a military concept in twentieth-century Germany. Mainstream German society largely rejects the concept today, but this still shocks veterans: for them, comradeship expresses their humanity as rooted in their service, sacrifice, and altruism. Kühne defines comradeship as “the close emotional ties of a small group of people, such as soldiers who need to cooperate in order to avert danger or cope with hardships.” As opposed to friendship, which can end any time, comradeship “denotes the relationship of people who cooperate, work and live together not by choice but by coercion, by accident, or by fate.... It is this ominous aura of fate and destiny—comradeship as the solidarity of a community of fate—that originated its popularity in Germany’s age of total wars” (p. 291). Utilizing secondary sources, memoirs, selected ego-documents, and interviews, Kühne discusses the history of comradeship in three parts: “The Myth of Comradeship, 1914–1939,” “The Practices of Comradeship, 1939–1945,” and “The Decline of Comradeship, 1945–1995.” In the first part, Kühne shows how comradeship became an important concept in coping with the horror of World War I. Weimar society was full of discourses about comradeship, and the concept often was cast in opposition to modernity and the Republic; yet, it still could include a fairly wide range of society, although the tendency was for the Right to appropriate it. The Nazi period, and more precisely the war on the Eastern Front, is the real focus. In part two, Kühne shows how the concept of comradeship became more exclusionary and coercive as time went on and the Nazi concept of Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) narrowed. He looks first at the initiation of men into the army and the practices of comradeship as taught and defined by the Wehrmacht. As Kühne describes it, the precise expression of comradeship shifted during the war years, from the euphoric “megalomania” of the soldiers during the first years of the Barbarossa campaign to the more cynical and defensive definition, fatalistic yet resilient, characteristic of the later years. Kühne is careful not to claim that all of the seventeen million men who served in the Wehrmacht accepted the same definition, and is careful to cite instances of those who felt rejected or cut off. He is quite clear that the end result of the German discourse of comradeship was murderous: “The myth of comradeship leveled the ground for a conformist ethics that honored only what served group cohesion and denounced the concept of individual responsibility. The myth of comradeship made German soldiers ready to join in or look the other way when their army waged criminal and even genocidal war” (p. 10). The final section shows how the notion of comradeship helped veterans cope with imprisonment in POW camps and the return to civilian life. But it also shows how comradeship perpetuated and enforced silence about war crimes, and how veterans groups sought—successfully in the short

中文翻译：

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同志的兴衰：20世纪的希特勒士兵，男性联结和大规模暴力事件

《二十世纪》，托马斯·库恩（剑桥：剑桥大学出版社，2017），vii + 304页，精装书$ 99.99，平装书$ 29.99，电子版。对于那些研究20世纪德国军队的人来说，同志是一个经常且繁重的名词。在这本富有创意的书中，托马斯·库恩（ThomasKühne）证明，同志是1914年至1945年间德国社会的主要组织概念之一，并在以后很重要。主题非常大：这本书涵盖了四分之三世纪。它源于对士兵的社会凝聚力和团结（同志）的迷恋，以及许多退伍军人抱怨它在个人主义现代社会中的缺失。因此，这本书的主题和发现触及了（退役的）退伍军人与公民社会之间鸿沟的核心，即使在今天也是一个重要的社交团体。在库恩（Kühne）的刻画中，同志关系是20世纪德国的军事概念。今天，德国主流社会在很大程度上拒绝了这一观念，但这仍然震惊了退伍军人：对他们而言，同志心将他们的人道精神植根于他们的服务，牺牲和利他主义。库恩将同志定义为“一小群人之间的紧密情感纽带，例如需要合作以避免危险或应对困难的士兵。” 与可以随时结束的友谊相反，同志“表示的是合作，工作和共同生活的人的关系，不是选择，而是通过胁迫，偶然或命运……。这就是命运和命运的不祥之兆。命运-同伴关系是命运共同体的团结-起源于德国全面战争时代”（第291页）。库恩利用次要资料，回忆录，精选的自我文献和访谈资料，从三个部分论述同志的历史：“同志神话，1914-1939年”，“同志实践，1933-1945年”和“衰落” 1945年至1995年。” 在第一部分中，库恩（Kühne）展示了同志如何成为应对第一次世界大战的恐怖的重要概念。魏玛社会充斥着关于同志的论述，这个概念常常与现代性和共和国背道而驰。然而，它仍然可以包括相当广泛的社会，尽管趋向于使权利得到适当使用。真正的焦点是纳粹时期，更确切地说是东线战争。在第二部分中 库恩（Kühne）展示了随着时间的流逝以及纳粹（Volksgemeinschaft）（人民社区）概念的缩小，同志的概念如何变得更加排斥和具有强制性。首先，他着眼于将军人参军以及国防军的教导和定义。正如库恩所描述的那样，战时的同志关系的精确表达发生了变化，从在Barbarossa战争的头几年士兵欣喜若狂的“狂妄自大”，到后来几年的特征，更愤世嫉俗，更具防御性，宿命但又富有弹性。 。库恩非常小心，不要断言在国防军中服役的一千七百万男人都接受相同的定义，并小心地列举那些感到被拒绝或被切断的人。他非常清楚，德国战友话语的最终结果是致命的：“战友神话为遵循伦理的道德奠定了基础，这种伦理只尊重服务于团队凝聚力并谴责个人责任的观念。同志神话使德国士兵在军队发动刑事甚至种族灭绝战争时准备加入或换个角度看”（第10页）。最后一部分显示了同志概念如何帮助退伍军人应对战俘营中的监禁和重返平民生活。但是，这也表明了战俘如何使战争罪行永久化并保持沉默，以及退伍军人团体是如何寻求的-在短时间内成功 “志同道合的神话为遵循伦理的道德奠定了基础，这种伦理只尊重那些有助于团队凝聚力并谴责个人责任的概念。同志神话使德国士兵在军队发动刑事甚至种族灭绝战争时准备加入或换个角度看”（第10页）。最后一部分显示了同志概念如何帮助退伍军人应对战俘营中的监禁和重返平民生活。但是，这也表明了战俘如何使战争罪行永久化并保持沉默，以及退伍军人团体是如何寻求的-在短时间内成功 “志同道合的神话为遵循伦理的道德奠定了基础，这种伦理只尊重那些有助于团队凝聚力并谴责个人责任的概念。同志神话使德国士兵在军队发动刑事甚至种族灭绝战争时准备加入或换个角度看”（第10页）。最后一部分显示了同志概念如何帮助退伍军人应对战俘营中的监禁和重返平民生活。但是，这也表明了战友对战争罪行的永久保留和强制沉默，以及退伍军人团体在短时间内成功寻求的方式 最后一部分显示了同志概念如何帮助退伍军人应对战俘营中的监禁和重返平民生活。但是，这也表明了战友对战争罪行的永久保留和强制沉默，以及退伍军人团体在短时间内成功寻求的方式 最后一部分显示了同志概念如何帮助退伍军人应对战俘营中的监禁和重返平民生活。但是，这也表明了战俘如何使战争罪行永久化并保持沉默，以及退伍军人团体是如何寻求的-在短时间内成功