Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
Working in newly opened archives and reexamining old evidence, historian
Bryan Mark Rigg turns up a surprising wrinkle in the history of Nazi
Germany: the presence of part-Jewish soldiers not only in the ranks but also
in the upper echelons of the German military. One such soldier recalled, "I
served because I wanted to prove Hitler's racial nonsense wrong. I wanted to
prove that people of Jewish descent were indeed brave and courageous
soldiers." By Rigg's estimate, as many as 150,000 soldiers, sailors, and
airmen of partial Jewish descent (Mischlinge, in Nazi terminology) served in
Adolf Hitler's forces - some, such as field marshal and war criminal Erhard
Milch, placed in high positions by Hitler himself even as he tightened the
noose on the Jews of Europe. Rigg considers the role of these men as they
negotiated the confusion of the monolithic, racist state in dealing with
Germans of partial Jewish descent. "Their experience clearly demonstrates
the complexity of life in the Third Reich," writes Rigg.
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.
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Know Your enemy!
No time to waste. Act now!
Tomorrow it will be too late
What You Don?t Know Can Kill You!
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