Gianluca Fantoni, "Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

August 7, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In April 1946, a British military police investigator named Jack Barkley was ordered to travel from Milan to La Spezia, where South African military police had detained several British soldiers alongside a convoy of Holocaust survivors. The soldiers were from the Jewish Brigade—the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during World War II—and they had been using their positions to smuggle refugees toward Palestine. That investigation, which Gianluca Fantoni discovered by chance in the archives, became the narrative spine of his book Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026). Fantoni, a historian of modern Europe at Nottingham Trent University, reconstructs both the brigade's wartime experience and its later life in public memory, showing how a small formation of fewer than 5,000 men became a contested symbol in debates about Zionism, anti-fascism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Brigade's Creation: A Long Negotiation

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of New Books in Jewish Studies

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (01:29) **Introduction & Book Origin** - Gianluca Fantoni introduces his book *Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers* and explains how a contemporary controversy in Italy led him to write a history of the Jewish Brigade.
2 (06:44) **Why a Book on the Jewish Brigade?** - Fantoni explains the book’s structure and its goal of providing a corrective to existing heroic narratives.
3 (09:24) **The Three Roles: Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers** - Fantoni explains the book’s title, which summarizes the three distinct roles members of the brigade played.
4 (11:00) **History vs. Memory and Political Use of the Past** - Fantoni distinguishes between history and memory, and identifies recurring features of the political misuse of history.
5 (13:40) **The Jack Barkley Detective Story** - Fantoni introduces the unpublished Barkley Report, a detective story that runs through the book as a narrative device.
6 (19:28) **Creation of the Jewish Brigade** - Fantoni details the long and frustrating negotiations that led to the brigade’s formation in September 1944.
7 (26:09) **Who Were the Soldiers?** - Fantoni describes the diverse backgrounds and motivations of the brigade’s volunteers.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the military and human experience of the brigade in Italy and investigates its enduring and controversial place in memory and public debate.

Formed in 1944, the JBG saw combat in the final stages of the Italian campaign, where its soldiers fought with distinction against German forces. After the war, many of its members – who often had little or no military training, and included artists, scientists, and farmers – engaged in clandestine efforts to smuggle Holocaust survivors and weapons into Palestine, laying the groundwork for the future Israeli state. Others sought retribution against Nazis and collaborators in acts that revealed both the trauma of genocide and the desire for justice.

Far more than a conventional military history, Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers is both a critical study of the political uses of history and a vivid, passionate narrative that brings to life the men and women of the brigade. Accessible and engaging, this book offers readers a rare lens through which to understand the intersections of war, memory, and politics in twentieth-century Europe.

Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at [email protected]. Blusky and IG: @robbyref

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies