Hitler's Jewish Soldiers (Modern War Stories): The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military FROM THE PUBLISHER
On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, due largely to his crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he had anticipated. As Bryan Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was the heinous process of racial cleansing more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military. Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid 1930s. He demonstrates that the number was much higher than previously thought -- perhaps as many as 150,000 men -- including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals. As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not consider themselves Jewish and had embraced military life as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been fully absorbed into the German armed forces, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which now was forced to examine the ancestry of its soldiers.
Investigation and removal of Mischlinge from the military, however, was marred by the highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow soldiers to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these exemption orders.) But as the war dragged on, Nazi politics came to trump military logic, even in the face of the Wehrmacht's growing manpower needs, closing legal loopholes and making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich. Based on deep and wide-ranging research in archival and secondary sources, as well as extensive interviews with more than four hundred Mischlinge and their relatives, Rigg's study breaks new ground in a crowded field and presents yet another angle on the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule. The thousands of pages of documents and oral testimonies (8mm and VHS video) the author collected for this study are now housed in the Bryan Mark Rigg Collection at the Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv in Freiburg, Germany.
SYNOPSIS
"Through videotaped interviews, painstaking attention to personnel files, and banal documents not normally consulted by historians, and spurred by a keen sense of personal mission, Rigg has turned up an unexplored and confounding chapter in the history of the Holocaust. The extent of his findings has surprised scholars."—Warren Hoge, New York Times
"The revelation that Germans of Jewish blood, knowing the Nazi regime for what it was, served Hitler as uniformed members of his armed forces must come as a profound shock. It will surprise even professional historians of the Nazi years." —John Keegan, author of The Face of Battle and The Second World War
"Startling and unexpected, Rigg's study conclusively demonstrates the degree of flexibility in German policy toward the Mischlinge, the extent of Hitler's involvement, and, most importantly, that not all who served in the armed forces were anti-Semitic, even as their service aided the killing process."—Michael Berenbaum, author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust
"Rigg's extensive knowledge and the preliminary conclusions drawn from his research impressed me greatly. I firmly believe that his in-depth treatment of the subject of German soldiers of Jewish descent in the Wehrmacht will lead to new perspectives on this portion of 20th century German military history."—Helmut Schmidt, Former Chancellor of Germany
"An impressively researched work with important implications for hotly debated questions. Rigg tells some exquisitely poignant stories of individual human experiences that complicate our picture of state and society in the Third Reich."—Nathan A. Stoltzfus, Florida State University, author of Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany
"An impressive work filled with interesting stories. . . . By helping us better understand Nazi racial policy at the margins—i.e., its impact on certain members of the German military—Rigg's study clarifies the central problems of Nazi Jewish policies overall."—Norman Naimark, Stanford University, author of Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
"An illuminating and provocative study that merits a wide readership and is sure to be much discussed."—Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado College, author of Tannenberg: Clash of Empires
"An outstanding job of research and analysis. Rigg's book will add a great deal to our understanding of the German military, of the place of Jews and people of Jewish descent in the Nazi state, and of the Holocaust. It forces us to deal with the full, complex range of possible actions and reactions by individuals caught up in the Nazi system."—Geoffrey P. Megargee, author of Inside Hitler's High Command
"With the skill of a master detective, Bryan Rigg reveals the surprising and largely unknown story of Germans of Jewish origins in the Nazi military. His work contributes to our understanding of the complexity of faith and identity in the Third Reich."—Paula E. Hyman, Yale University, author of Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History and The Jews of Modern France
"A major piece of scholarship which traces the peculiar twists and turns of Nazi racial policy toward men in the Wehrmacht, often in the highest ranks, who had partly Jewish backgrounds. Rigg has uncovered personal stories and private archives which literally nobody knew existed. His book will be an important contribution to German history."—Jonathan Steinberg, University of Pennsylvania, author of All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-1943 "An original, groundbreaking, and significant contribution to the history of the Wehrmacht and Nazi Germany."—James S. Corum, School of Advanced Air Power Studies, author of The Roots of Blitzkrieg and The Luftwaffe
"Rigg's work has discovered new academic territory."—Manfred Messerschmidt, Freiburg University, author of Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat (The Wehrmacht in the Nazi State)
"Rigg's bracing and unintimidated study lays bare the contradiction, confusion and expedience that governed Mischlinge policy and the maiming cost to those whose lives were burdened by anxiety, guilt and collusion. In the end we must be grateful for his book, a penetrating light cast on some of the murkier corners of the human psyche."—Michael Skakun, Aufbau
"Rigg has opened brand new territory for historians and students of war, offering new insight into the Nazi mentality on race."—World War II Magazine
"Rigg has done a very significant piece of historical research and writing."—Milt Rosenberg, WGN Radio, Chicago
"Rigg has written a truly important history. It is original, it has outstanding scholarship, and there is plenty of it!"—James F. Tent, author of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans
"A brilliant and extremely disturbing work of masterful historical research. A must read for everyone. It raises more moral dilemmas than one can answer."—Steve Pieczenik, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and co-creator of the best selling novels and TV series OP-Center and Net Force
Author Biography: Bryan Mark Rigg received his B.A. with honors in history from Yale University in 1996. Yale awarded him the Henry Fellowship for graduate study at Cambridge University, where he received his M.A. in 1997 and Ph.D. in 2002. Currently Professor of History at American Military University, he has served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army and as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. His research for this book has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and London Daily Telegraph.
The thousands of pages of documents and oral testimonies (8mm and VHS video) the author collected for this study have been purchased by the National Military Archive of Germany. The Bryan Mark Rigg Collection is housed in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg, Germany.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
What the Nazis called partial Jews, or mischlinge, served in the Wehrmacht during World War II, often joining to prove their loyalty and becoming decorated soldiers. Rigg, who received a B.A. from Yale in 1996, studied at Cambridge and currently teaches at the online American Military University, estimates their numbers to have been in the range of 150,000. He begins by carefully describing Nazi racial law and recounting the assimilation and military service of "/ Jews" (among other categories) in the German and Austrian states in the two centuries before WWI. Moving on to the Nazi era, Rigg details the exemptions to Aryan law that allowed mischlinge to serve. The extent to which the mischlinge knew of the regime's true character is a constant theme, and feelings of helplessness in the face of knowledge of the Holocaust are vividly illustrated with numerous examples, such as the mischling soldier who visited Jewish relatives the night before they were deported to an extermination camp not knowing then that "deportation" meant "death." Interviews with some surviving mischlinge (including former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who served in the Luftwaffe), along with quotations from memoirs and diaries, help to enliven an otherwise dry, academic style. By 1944, many of the loopholes in the racial purity laws were closed, and many military mischlinge perished in the camps. Those who survived were later often rejected by the Jewish community because of their service in the German armed forces. (May) Forecast: A Dateline episode planned for May is just the latest attention given to Rigg's research, which has been covered in the New York Times and elsewhere. Rigg, raised a Texas "Bible belt" Protestant, discovered his own mischling status while researching his German ancestry, which inspired his research. He traveled through Germany on a bicycle gathering more than 400 interviews as an undergraduate, and the press photo included shows that he is young and photogenic. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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