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Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military
On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process 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. Rigg demonstrates that the actual 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 even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers.
The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far 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 a 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 truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.
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. Rigg demonstrates that the actual 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 even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers.
The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far 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 a 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 truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.
460 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2002
17 people are currently reading
573 people want to read
About the author
Bryan Mark Rigg
7 books13 followersBryan Mark Rigg teaches history at American Military University and Southern Methodist University. Dr. Rigg's work has been featured in the New York Times and on programs including NBC Dateline and Fox News. Dr. Rigg has served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army and as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He currently lives in Dallas, Texas.
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June 12, 2021
For years I taught Holocaust history and showed my students the film “Europa, Europa” based on the life of Slomo Perel, a story about a young Jewish boy who joins the Hitler Youth and winds up in the Wehrmacht as a means of avoiding persecution and death. I often wondered how many other young Jews did the same and fought for the Nazi regime. The answer to that question is clearly laid out in Bryan Mark Rigg’s study, HITLER’S JEWISH SOLDIERS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF NAZI RACIAL LAWS AND MEN OF JEWISH DESCENT IN THE GERMAN MILITARY.
Mischlinge is defined as “half caste, mongrel or hybrid,” the key term that permeates Rigg’s narrative and the vehicle used to categorize half and quarter Jews as designated by the Nazis after the Nuremberg Blood Laws of 1935. According to Rigg perhaps 150,000 Mischlinge served in the German military and Adolf Hitler played a central role in the process.
As Rigg develops his narrative a number of things become clear. The Nazi reaction to racial laws was not consistent and, in many cases, appeared hypocritical as many Nazis including Hermann Goring, Head of the Luftwaffe did not conform to racial laws. Many military officials believed that half and quarter Jews were experienced and excellent soldiers who they would need in combat and found Hitler’s anti-Semitism to be irrelevant to the Wehrmacht. The war was paramount and the use of Mischlinge at least up until the invasion of Russia in June 1941 was the primary concern of German generals. Following the summer of 1941 more and more Mischlinge would be thrown out of the Wehrmacht and deported to die in Hitler’s ovens as Martin Bormann, a rabid anti-Semite who opposed the concept of the Mischlinge serving in the German military would become Hitler’s secretary and right hand man.
Riggs is determined to explain that the lack of uniformity on the part of Nazis toward Mischlinge was very confusing for these half and quarter Jews and created an Eriksonian identity crisis as they suffered from extreme role confusion. Many realized that the only way to survive was to enlist or be drafted into the Wehrmacht and prove themselves to be brave and outstanding soldiers. They believed that this could save their families in addition to themselves. Many tried to shed their Jewishness as soon as society allowed and others who fought for Austria and Germany in World War I believed that the assimilation they achieved through their service would assist them. In the end this approach did not save most from death, though a large number did survive some through luck, some through perseverance and playing the Nazi system ingeniously, and lastly, some received special exemptions from Hitler himself who was intimately involved in categorizing people reflecting his obsession over racial policy.
Riggs approach to his topic does not lead to a smoothly written monograph. In fact, it reads like a well cited dissertation as he relates countless examples of individuals within the Wehrmacht, the Nazi hierarchy, and Jewish citizens who were greatly affected by Nazi racial policy and the categorization of the Mischlinge. Riggs stresses the confusion felt by Nazi leadership as the Mischlinge were part German and could be a significant asset in the war. But Hitler despised most of them as he saw them as invisible and with the ability to infect the Aryan with their inferior blood.
For the Mischlinge themselves they would be deprived of citizenship, the rights to sleep with Aryans, university education, etc. The racial laws forced Mischlinge to dramatically alter their lifestyle “causing many to live without confidence.” The result was numerous divorces as people tried to protect themselves, children disowned, and many grandparents rejecting their grandchildren. In this instance Riggs needs to provide more than anecdotal evidence in discussing how families were destroyed and how individuals came to terms with their loss of identity.
For the Nazis it was very difficult to identify Mischlinge and further they did not have the necessary resources to accomplish the task. Riggs does provide a historical breakdown of the number of Jews that had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and other conflicts to arrive at his 150,000 figure which seems accurate. For the Mischlinge most were unaware they were even Jewish until after 1933.
Riggs effort is well researched. He provided voluminous foot notes, a strong bibliography, in addition to interviewing over 400 Mischlinge and their relatives, and received access to many of their personal records, both in their possession and government archives.
Despite the valuable information that Riggs provides the title of the book is misleading as historian Richard J. Evans argues that the monograph is not about Jews as is commonly understood, but about Mischlinge or people that were categorized as half or quarter Jews, many of which were unaware that they were Jews in the first place. These people were neither Jewish by their own identity, religious law, or even Nazi law. The book’s title is a teaser because it appears to the uninformed that the book is about Jews in the Wehrmacht which is not accurate and many of these Mischlinge were anti-Semites themselves. Interestingly as historian Jeremy Noakes argues less than 10% of half Jews saw themselves as Jewish, and only 1.2% of quarter Jews considered themselves as Jewish. Riggs had an opportunity to explore the nature of Jewish identity beyond Nazi definitions, but he chooses to forgo that opportunity. Further, Riggs relates that with few exceptions, none of the men he interviewed had any idea of the abuse and massacres that occurred as the Nazis tried to exterminate German and European Jewry. Riggs concludes that “like most other Germans, many Mischlinge knew about deportation, but did not equate them with systematic murder.” Further, Mischling serving in the Wehrmacht did not understand what was happening to their loved ones. Most claimed they learned what happened to their relatives after the war.
Riggs is successful in digging up a great deal of fascinating detail, but he does not really add to the historiography of Nazi Germany except for Hitler’s obsession with minute points of racial doctrine and how that concern was translated and executed by Wehrmacht leadership and German soldiers in general. I agree with David J. Fine in his H-Net Review in the Humanities and Social Sciences of July 2004 that the book “will be of interest to students of the Wehrmacht and Nazi racial policy, [but] it falls short of exploring the bigger questions of the role of Jews in supporting the Nazi state or of German soldiers’ acknowledgement of their role as perpetrators in the Holocaust.”
Mischlinge is defined as “half caste, mongrel or hybrid,” the key term that permeates Rigg’s narrative and the vehicle used to categorize half and quarter Jews as designated by the Nazis after the Nuremberg Blood Laws of 1935. According to Rigg perhaps 150,000 Mischlinge served in the German military and Adolf Hitler played a central role in the process.
As Rigg develops his narrative a number of things become clear. The Nazi reaction to racial laws was not consistent and, in many cases, appeared hypocritical as many Nazis including Hermann Goring, Head of the Luftwaffe did not conform to racial laws. Many military officials believed that half and quarter Jews were experienced and excellent soldiers who they would need in combat and found Hitler’s anti-Semitism to be irrelevant to the Wehrmacht. The war was paramount and the use of Mischlinge at least up until the invasion of Russia in June 1941 was the primary concern of German generals. Following the summer of 1941 more and more Mischlinge would be thrown out of the Wehrmacht and deported to die in Hitler’s ovens as Martin Bormann, a rabid anti-Semite who opposed the concept of the Mischlinge serving in the German military would become Hitler’s secretary and right hand man.
Riggs is determined to explain that the lack of uniformity on the part of Nazis toward Mischlinge was very confusing for these half and quarter Jews and created an Eriksonian identity crisis as they suffered from extreme role confusion. Many realized that the only way to survive was to enlist or be drafted into the Wehrmacht and prove themselves to be brave and outstanding soldiers. They believed that this could save their families in addition to themselves. Many tried to shed their Jewishness as soon as society allowed and others who fought for Austria and Germany in World War I believed that the assimilation they achieved through their service would assist them. In the end this approach did not save most from death, though a large number did survive some through luck, some through perseverance and playing the Nazi system ingeniously, and lastly, some received special exemptions from Hitler himself who was intimately involved in categorizing people reflecting his obsession over racial policy.
Riggs approach to his topic does not lead to a smoothly written monograph. In fact, it reads like a well cited dissertation as he relates countless examples of individuals within the Wehrmacht, the Nazi hierarchy, and Jewish citizens who were greatly affected by Nazi racial policy and the categorization of the Mischlinge. Riggs stresses the confusion felt by Nazi leadership as the Mischlinge were part German and could be a significant asset in the war. But Hitler despised most of them as he saw them as invisible and with the ability to infect the Aryan with their inferior blood.
For the Mischlinge themselves they would be deprived of citizenship, the rights to sleep with Aryans, university education, etc. The racial laws forced Mischlinge to dramatically alter their lifestyle “causing many to live without confidence.” The result was numerous divorces as people tried to protect themselves, children disowned, and many grandparents rejecting their grandchildren. In this instance Riggs needs to provide more than anecdotal evidence in discussing how families were destroyed and how individuals came to terms with their loss of identity.
For the Nazis it was very difficult to identify Mischlinge and further they did not have the necessary resources to accomplish the task. Riggs does provide a historical breakdown of the number of Jews that had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and other conflicts to arrive at his 150,000 figure which seems accurate. For the Mischlinge most were unaware they were even Jewish until after 1933.
Riggs effort is well researched. He provided voluminous foot notes, a strong bibliography, in addition to interviewing over 400 Mischlinge and their relatives, and received access to many of their personal records, both in their possession and government archives.
Despite the valuable information that Riggs provides the title of the book is misleading as historian Richard J. Evans argues that the monograph is not about Jews as is commonly understood, but about Mischlinge or people that were categorized as half or quarter Jews, many of which were unaware that they were Jews in the first place. These people were neither Jewish by their own identity, religious law, or even Nazi law. The book’s title is a teaser because it appears to the uninformed that the book is about Jews in the Wehrmacht which is not accurate and many of these Mischlinge were anti-Semites themselves. Interestingly as historian Jeremy Noakes argues less than 10% of half Jews saw themselves as Jewish, and only 1.2% of quarter Jews considered themselves as Jewish. Riggs had an opportunity to explore the nature of Jewish identity beyond Nazi definitions, but he chooses to forgo that opportunity. Further, Riggs relates that with few exceptions, none of the men he interviewed had any idea of the abuse and massacres that occurred as the Nazis tried to exterminate German and European Jewry. Riggs concludes that “like most other Germans, many Mischlinge knew about deportation, but did not equate them with systematic murder.” Further, Mischling serving in the Wehrmacht did not understand what was happening to their loved ones. Most claimed they learned what happened to their relatives after the war.
Riggs is successful in digging up a great deal of fascinating detail, but he does not really add to the historiography of Nazi Germany except for Hitler’s obsession with minute points of racial doctrine and how that concern was translated and executed by Wehrmacht leadership and German soldiers in general. I agree with David J. Fine in his H-Net Review in the Humanities and Social Sciences of July 2004 that the book “will be of interest to students of the Wehrmacht and Nazi racial policy, [but] it falls short of exploring the bigger questions of the role of Jews in supporting the Nazi state or of German soldiers’ acknowledgement of their role as perpetrators in the Holocaust.”
June 5, 2015
This is a fascinating treatise about Jewish men who fought in Hitler's military. The background of each one of them was researched fully and the reason they were accepted and allowed to serve the Fuhrer is explained in detail. This is a little known part of the history of the third Reich that would interest anyone interested in WWII and the Holocaust.
March 20, 2007
I bought this book after visiting the Holocoust museum in DC. Until then, I didn't know (and wouldn't have thought) there were Jewish soldiers in the Nazi Army. This was an eye-opening book, which I am glad to have read.
January 18, 2008
est thing I have read in awhile.
Author Bryan Mark Riggs was in his late twenties when he wrote this a couple of years ago. He is a (Reform?) Jew. At that point he had already earned a PhD at Cambridge, served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army and US Marines, and was teaching at SMU. This book grew out of his (undergraduate!) thesis at Yale. He found and interviewed a huge number of "Mischlinge" -- half or quarter-Jews who served in the Nazi military during WWII, sometimes with as high a rank as general.
Rigg improbably estimates there may have been as many as 150,000 such soldiers under Hitler.
Many of these men served to escape death. Some were just strong German nationalists.
The interesting part is that both Jewish halakah and Nazi law regarded many of these men as Jews, while most themselves did not! By Nazi law anyone who was 25% Jewish was a Jew whether or not he was baptized, a Nazi Party member, practiced another religion, etc. But those who had already shown loyalty to the German military often were given special exemptions if they continued to serve. Remarkably, most of those part-Jews were proud Germans, with roots in the nation hundreds of years back, who did not practice Judaism. Some were even somewhat anti-Semitic, looking down on the culturally, economically and educationally less advanced (and religiously more Orthodox) East European Jewish immigrants (Ostjuden) as inferior.
Sadly most fought bravely for the very government that was murdering their relatives, and would surely murder most of them when the war was over and they were no longer needed. (Some lost their exemptions even during the war).
The madness and the vicious absurdity of the Nazis is portrayed very skillfully by Rigg.
Rigg goes on longer than he needs to. But the topic is so engrossing, the mini-biographies so complex and full of contradictions, and the writing style so clear and enthusiastic that I am wanting more. I will read everything he writes in the future.
The next book Rigg wrote last year, BTW, I just started -- its about how the Lubivitcher Rebbe was rescued from Warsaw during Nazi occupation and smuggled out of the country by cooperation between American spies and a part-Jewish Nazi intelligence agent! That book is the most unbelievable story I have ever read. (A Past in Hiiding by Mark Roseman being a close second).
Any WWII buff MUST read both of these.
Author Bryan Mark Riggs was in his late twenties when he wrote this a couple of years ago. He is a (Reform?) Jew. At that point he had already earned a PhD at Cambridge, served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army and US Marines, and was teaching at SMU. This book grew out of his (undergraduate!) thesis at Yale. He found and interviewed a huge number of "Mischlinge" -- half or quarter-Jews who served in the Nazi military during WWII, sometimes with as high a rank as general.
Rigg improbably estimates there may have been as many as 150,000 such soldiers under Hitler.
Many of these men served to escape death. Some were just strong German nationalists.
The interesting part is that both Jewish halakah and Nazi law regarded many of these men as Jews, while most themselves did not! By Nazi law anyone who was 25% Jewish was a Jew whether or not he was baptized, a Nazi Party member, practiced another religion, etc. But those who had already shown loyalty to the German military often were given special exemptions if they continued to serve. Remarkably, most of those part-Jews were proud Germans, with roots in the nation hundreds of years back, who did not practice Judaism. Some were even somewhat anti-Semitic, looking down on the culturally, economically and educationally less advanced (and religiously more Orthodox) East European Jewish immigrants (Ostjuden) as inferior.
Sadly most fought bravely for the very government that was murdering their relatives, and would surely murder most of them when the war was over and they were no longer needed. (Some lost their exemptions even during the war).
The madness and the vicious absurdity of the Nazis is portrayed very skillfully by Rigg.
Rigg goes on longer than he needs to. But the topic is so engrossing, the mini-biographies so complex and full of contradictions, and the writing style so clear and enthusiastic that I am wanting more. I will read everything he writes in the future.
The next book Rigg wrote last year, BTW, I just started -- its about how the Lubivitcher Rebbe was rescued from Warsaw during Nazi occupation and smuggled out of the country by cooperation between American spies and a part-Jewish Nazi intelligence agent! That book is the most unbelievable story I have ever read. (A Past in Hiiding by Mark Roseman being a close second).
Any WWII buff MUST read both of these.
February 8, 2016
Please give me a helpful vote at http://www.amazon.com/review/RPKDI6HI...
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers
By Bryan Mark Rigg.
This is an extremely well-done book.
We can clearly see how this book might be dynamite. The risk of this book is that this very important unearthing of a part of the Holocaust that normally doesn’t get discussed will be seized by the fever-swamp to imply that the Jews were, somehow, responsible for their own predicament. Riggs avoids this by extensive scholarship, academic objectivity and show casing the inhuman quandary that “Mischling” – Germans with a Jewish parent or one or two Jewish grandparents – found themselves in because of the inhuman system of National Socialist racism.
The “problem” that the National Socialists found themselves in upon seizing power was determining “who were the Jews?” Clearly, Germans who were religiously Jewish were Jews, but were Germans who had converted from Judaism? How about people who had a parent, or a grandparent, who had converted from Judaism? Was someone who was Christian and whose parents were Christians but had a Christian grandparent who had married a convert to Christianity from Judaism a “Jew”? What about those people in that situation who had no idea of their grandparent’s conversion? Were they Jewish?
The Nazi answer about Germans who had converted from Judaism was that they remained “racially” Jewish. This represented a substantial departure from historic Christianity, which treated converts as equally Christian as non-converts. But the question of such a person’s descendants was more difficult and the policy treatment of such persons changed over the course of the Third Reich.
Rigg opens his book with an in-depth bit of analysis into the question of the size of the Mischling population. The answer is not precise, but the general conclusion is “a whole bunch.” Here is Riggs’ conclusion:
“One does not know how many full Jews served. If the ratio of 97 full Jews for every 967 half-Jews can be applied from the data collected for this study, and given the estimate that 60,000 half-Jewish soldiers served, then one could assume that at least 6,019 full Jews also served in the Wehrmacht. The numbers presented here are insignificant relative to the Wehrmacht’s size, but are startling in light of the Holocaust. The idea that at least 150,000men of Jewish ancestry served in the Wehrmacht is hard to accept. Nevertheless, the evidence strongly suggests that was the case.” (p. 65.)
This may be the least interesting conclusion of the book…..but…gosh!
Rigg reaches his conclusion from intermarriage trends, which resulted in the estimate that “quarter Jews were twice as plentiful as half Jews, putting their numbers at 140,000.” (p. 64.) This is a sizable number, but it must be kept in mind that 17 million served in the Wehrmacht, making the Mischling component less than 1% of the total manpower of the Wehrmacht. (p. 64.)
The Nazis tended to distinguish between full Jews and Mischling, but, nonetheless, discriminated against Mischling. The Nazi concern, in part, was that treating Mischling like full Jews would be demoralizing to Non-Jewish Germans, aka “Aryan Germans,” who would see their relatives being persecuted by the State. (Concern about demoralizing Mischling soldiers was not something that mattered to the National Socialists.) As a result, while there was persecution of Mischling, the persecution was less than that directed at full Jews. Thus, Mischling could serve in the military, but they could not hope to advance beyond a low-level non-commissioned officer position. Also, periodically during the war, after the victory in Poland, the Party issued orders requiring the discharge of Mischling from the military, which order was countermanded when manpower was needed. It seems that a quite a number of Mischling were able to survive the Holocaust by virtue of being in the Wehrmacht and riding out the changes in policy with the help of officers who needed trained soldiers or were uninterested in Nazi racial fanaticism.
The depth of racial fanaticism is demonstrated by the long discussion in this book about how Hitler personally undertook to review every exemption provided to any Mischling from the Nazi racial classification system. The system provided some flexibility for Mischling who had proven their bravery on the battlefield. Exception or connected or lucky soldiers – as well as civilians – were able to obtain a Deutschblutigkeitserkarung which declared them de jure Aryans. Others were able to acquire a Genehmigung – an exemption – that permitted them to remain in the Wehrmacht with the promise that their Aryan status would be determined after the war. The system was complex and convoluted and involved investigations of families and photos, ruling out candidates that looked “too Jewish.” (A similar system was put in place for mixed Aryan-Jewish marriages.) At the end of the line, Hitler’s approval was required, such that no matter how the war was going, he would spend a few hours a day pondering photos to determine exemptions. (He would also eventually decree that exemptions would only be given to those who had demonstrated dedication to the Nazi Party.)
The idea of “Jewish” Nazi Party members can cause an even more severe moment of cognitive dissonance, but this underscores a major subtext of the book; being a “Jew” didn’t mean to the Third Reich what it means to us. I suspect that most people thought of “Jews” as “those guys” – religiously and culturally Jewish, not “one of us” an assimilated Christian. Many of the “Jews” had had no contact with Judaism for generations; they were Protestant or Christian for generations, and they might never have known that Grandma Sophie had converted when she got married in 1872. The Nazi true-believer – Heydrich, Jules Streicher and others – though had a fully worked out theory of Jewish contamination that extended to the Aryan wives of German men. Quarter Jews and Half-Jews soon found themselves in a legal limbo.
On the other hand, there were Mischling Germans who knew that their parents, grandparents or relatives were Jewish in the classic sense. This book is filled with the unimaginably tragic stories of Mischling soldiers who would return home on leave to find out that a father or mother had been deported. There are stories about how Mischling Wehrmacht soldiers would go to Dachau to visit a father or mother; in one story, such a soldier obtained the promise of a camp commandant that so long as his father remained well-behaved and kept his boots shined, he would look out for him.
These Mischling found themselves risking their lives for a country that they knew was murdering their family members and discriminating against them, but they lacked any feasible option, and many honestly loved their country.
They also knew that they might well be the next victims. As the war continued, the contest between the Nazi radicals and the Interior Department, including Bernhard Losener – who Riggs depicts as something of a hero of the Mischling cause (p. 271 – 272) – moved in the direction of the radicals, with the direction of persecution heading toward treating half-Jews and then quarter-Jews as full Jews, with all attendant consequences. Riggs opines that if Hitler had won the war, the Mischling populations would have been murdered.
Riggs has a fascinating final chapter about what the Mischling might have known about the Holocaust. The answer is that to a man they claimed that they didn’t know about the Holocaust. They knew that their relatives were being murdered; some had actually witnessed the mass murder of Jews; some had been to Auschwitz; but they didn’t put together the pieces they knew into a a conclusion about the Holocaust. Rigg writes:
“From the evidence, one would think that most Germans should have been aware of what today is called the Holocaust. This assertion applies even more to the Mischlinge who had opportunities to find out about the Holocaust. But most refused to believe or failed to assess the incriminating evidence they heard about or witnessed. Although many doubted the accuracy of the death certificates of relatives that stated they had died of “natural causes in the camps,” they did not believe their relatives had been systematically murdered. Many could not understand why the people they had grown up with would want to kill them or their families. Deported Jews often led their Mischling relatives to believe that their deportation was not serious. When Harald Ettheimer’s aunt left for her deportation, she told him not to worry because she would soon return.
Since the victims themselves, according to Holocaust historian Lucy Davidowicz, alleged that it was beyond their imagination that they would be gassed and killed, one should not expect ordinary Germans to much more. Steinberg wrote, “Holocaust records show that Jews themselves often refused to believe what was happening in spite of the evidence of their own eyes.” Another Holocaust historian, Leni Yahil, claimed that systematic murder was beyond anyone’s imagination. Marian Kaplan wrote, “But a far more effective barrier to their comprehension was the sheer inconceivability of the genocide. Even those who received information frequently reacted with disbelief or repressed it. “ If Jews did not believe what was happening to them, it follows that most Mischlinge also could not believe the Holocaust was happening, because they had less direct exposure to persecution. Almost all the interviews conducted for this book supports this conclusion. The average German who had even less contact with those who were persecuted, was highly unlikely to suspect the extent of the Holocaust.” (p. 265.)
Rigg offers many examples of this failure to comprehend:
“Hans Schmechel , who lost both grandparents, Emma and Wilhelm Gotha, at Theresienstadt, manned a flak gun in 1944 while the Nazis deported his brothers, Horst and Heinz, to an OT forced labor camp. They found it quite ironic that two of them had to perform forced labor in an OT camp while the other served in the Luftwaffe. Schmechel’s family had only heard about the atrocities when his Aryan uncle, Walter Schmechel, a guard at Auschwitz, came home in 1943 and reported what he had seen. The family believed the uncle but still did not know that systematic extermination of millions was under way.
An even more bizarre case was that of Horst Reinhard’s family. While Reinhard served with false papers to make the authorities think he was a quarter-Jew, his father was forced to serve as an army staff sergeant in the SS guard unit at the concentration camp Flossenburg. Reinhard’s Jewish mother, Marie, even lived with her husband in the camp’s staff housing and thus survived. Reinhard said that although he wrote letters to his parents at the camp, he did not know about the Holocaust until the 1950s. He knew about deportations but, like most other Germans, never thought the Jews were being systematically murdered. The Schmechel and Reinhard families had more information than most families, but they still failed to either understand or believe the signs they received.” (p. 253 – 254.)
There is a fascinating insight in this about how knowledge may be a communal activity; we know things when we discuss our different perspectives and reach conclusions. The ability to take counsel – as St. Thomas Aquinas would put it – was denied in the totalitarian Nazi society.
A final interesting feature of Nazi racism is the appeal to the relatively modern science of genetics. I have recently watch the Kenneth Branagh movie “Conspiracy” about the Wannsee Conference. There is a scene where Stuckart, played by Colin Firth, is advocating to sterilize Mischlinge and does a brief speech about “Mendeling out.” Nazis used Mendel’s name as a verb to descript genetic expression between mixed breeds.” (p. 320, fn. 180.)
My appreciation for that movie, and my understanding of the issues these Nazi characters were discussing. Rigg writes:
“The racial theorist Dr. Achim Gercke in the RMI introduced another argument when he wrote in September 1935 that Mischling could really be disguised Jews. Anyone who mathematically defined “50 percent, 25 percent, 12 percent, 6.25 percent, etc., Mischlinge” had not understood Mendel’s laws of genetics, Gercke maintained. Gercke warned that Mischlinge could also “mendel out pure Jews.” (p. 96.)
Hitler followed this genetic approach:
“As the war worsened, Hitler became less generous with his exemptions. He told General Jodl during an afternoon tea session on 10 May 1942 that he regretted giving exemptions to so many half-Jewish soldiers. “For experience showed, “ Hitler said,” “that from these Jewish offsprings, four, five or six generations of pure Jews keep Mendeling out.” (p. 219 citing Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier, 1941 – 1942.) (Sidenote: Rigg’s sources is encyclopedic and deep.)
“On 2 July, Bormann wrote Bouhler complaining that Bouhler had continued to send applications to Hitler that did not meet the criteria. Bormann explained that Hitler had expressed his indignation at the handling of Mischling cases. He explained that only men who had performed special service to the Party during the Kampfzeit should be considered. Party membership alone was not enough. Hitler warned that if they were not careful, the Mishlinge would create a new Jewish race. One needed to exercise caution, Hitler had told Bormann, because it had been proven that Mischlinge always “Mendeled” out Jews. Hitler pointed to Cripps and Roosevelt to support his claim.” (p. 223.)
My take-away on this is that the facile assumption that Nazi anti-Semitism was simply Christian anti-Semitism ignores the injection of the new science.
This book is full of surprises, perhaps, because we have a model of what Nazi anti-Semitism must have been like. Adding the details of the treatment of the Mischlinge corrects what has become a more or less politically correct morality tale. The actual facts are more nuanced, and less about “either/or” – either Germans knew about the Holocaust or they are lying and either the victims were Jews or they were not. And that leads to some fascinating observations about humanity and human behavior.
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers
By Bryan Mark Rigg.
This is an extremely well-done book.
We can clearly see how this book might be dynamite. The risk of this book is that this very important unearthing of a part of the Holocaust that normally doesn’t get discussed will be seized by the fever-swamp to imply that the Jews were, somehow, responsible for their own predicament. Riggs avoids this by extensive scholarship, academic objectivity and show casing the inhuman quandary that “Mischling” – Germans with a Jewish parent or one or two Jewish grandparents – found themselves in because of the inhuman system of National Socialist racism.
The “problem” that the National Socialists found themselves in upon seizing power was determining “who were the Jews?” Clearly, Germans who were religiously Jewish were Jews, but were Germans who had converted from Judaism? How about people who had a parent, or a grandparent, who had converted from Judaism? Was someone who was Christian and whose parents were Christians but had a Christian grandparent who had married a convert to Christianity from Judaism a “Jew”? What about those people in that situation who had no idea of their grandparent’s conversion? Were they Jewish?
The Nazi answer about Germans who had converted from Judaism was that they remained “racially” Jewish. This represented a substantial departure from historic Christianity, which treated converts as equally Christian as non-converts. But the question of such a person’s descendants was more difficult and the policy treatment of such persons changed over the course of the Third Reich.
Rigg opens his book with an in-depth bit of analysis into the question of the size of the Mischling population. The answer is not precise, but the general conclusion is “a whole bunch.” Here is Riggs’ conclusion:
“One does not know how many full Jews served. If the ratio of 97 full Jews for every 967 half-Jews can be applied from the data collected for this study, and given the estimate that 60,000 half-Jewish soldiers served, then one could assume that at least 6,019 full Jews also served in the Wehrmacht. The numbers presented here are insignificant relative to the Wehrmacht’s size, but are startling in light of the Holocaust. The idea that at least 150,000men of Jewish ancestry served in the Wehrmacht is hard to accept. Nevertheless, the evidence strongly suggests that was the case.” (p. 65.)
This may be the least interesting conclusion of the book…..but…gosh!
Rigg reaches his conclusion from intermarriage trends, which resulted in the estimate that “quarter Jews were twice as plentiful as half Jews, putting their numbers at 140,000.” (p. 64.) This is a sizable number, but it must be kept in mind that 17 million served in the Wehrmacht, making the Mischling component less than 1% of the total manpower of the Wehrmacht. (p. 64.)
The Nazis tended to distinguish between full Jews and Mischling, but, nonetheless, discriminated against Mischling. The Nazi concern, in part, was that treating Mischling like full Jews would be demoralizing to Non-Jewish Germans, aka “Aryan Germans,” who would see their relatives being persecuted by the State. (Concern about demoralizing Mischling soldiers was not something that mattered to the National Socialists.) As a result, while there was persecution of Mischling, the persecution was less than that directed at full Jews. Thus, Mischling could serve in the military, but they could not hope to advance beyond a low-level non-commissioned officer position. Also, periodically during the war, after the victory in Poland, the Party issued orders requiring the discharge of Mischling from the military, which order was countermanded when manpower was needed. It seems that a quite a number of Mischling were able to survive the Holocaust by virtue of being in the Wehrmacht and riding out the changes in policy with the help of officers who needed trained soldiers or were uninterested in Nazi racial fanaticism.
The depth of racial fanaticism is demonstrated by the long discussion in this book about how Hitler personally undertook to review every exemption provided to any Mischling from the Nazi racial classification system. The system provided some flexibility for Mischling who had proven their bravery on the battlefield. Exception or connected or lucky soldiers – as well as civilians – were able to obtain a Deutschblutigkeitserkarung which declared them de jure Aryans. Others were able to acquire a Genehmigung – an exemption – that permitted them to remain in the Wehrmacht with the promise that their Aryan status would be determined after the war. The system was complex and convoluted and involved investigations of families and photos, ruling out candidates that looked “too Jewish.” (A similar system was put in place for mixed Aryan-Jewish marriages.) At the end of the line, Hitler’s approval was required, such that no matter how the war was going, he would spend a few hours a day pondering photos to determine exemptions. (He would also eventually decree that exemptions would only be given to those who had demonstrated dedication to the Nazi Party.)
The idea of “Jewish” Nazi Party members can cause an even more severe moment of cognitive dissonance, but this underscores a major subtext of the book; being a “Jew” didn’t mean to the Third Reich what it means to us. I suspect that most people thought of “Jews” as “those guys” – religiously and culturally Jewish, not “one of us” an assimilated Christian. Many of the “Jews” had had no contact with Judaism for generations; they were Protestant or Christian for generations, and they might never have known that Grandma Sophie had converted when she got married in 1872. The Nazi true-believer – Heydrich, Jules Streicher and others – though had a fully worked out theory of Jewish contamination that extended to the Aryan wives of German men. Quarter Jews and Half-Jews soon found themselves in a legal limbo.
On the other hand, there were Mischling Germans who knew that their parents, grandparents or relatives were Jewish in the classic sense. This book is filled with the unimaginably tragic stories of Mischling soldiers who would return home on leave to find out that a father or mother had been deported. There are stories about how Mischling Wehrmacht soldiers would go to Dachau to visit a father or mother; in one story, such a soldier obtained the promise of a camp commandant that so long as his father remained well-behaved and kept his boots shined, he would look out for him.
These Mischling found themselves risking their lives for a country that they knew was murdering their family members and discriminating against them, but they lacked any feasible option, and many honestly loved their country.
They also knew that they might well be the next victims. As the war continued, the contest between the Nazi radicals and the Interior Department, including Bernhard Losener – who Riggs depicts as something of a hero of the Mischling cause (p. 271 – 272) – moved in the direction of the radicals, with the direction of persecution heading toward treating half-Jews and then quarter-Jews as full Jews, with all attendant consequences. Riggs opines that if Hitler had won the war, the Mischling populations would have been murdered.
Riggs has a fascinating final chapter about what the Mischling might have known about the Holocaust. The answer is that to a man they claimed that they didn’t know about the Holocaust. They knew that their relatives were being murdered; some had actually witnessed the mass murder of Jews; some had been to Auschwitz; but they didn’t put together the pieces they knew into a a conclusion about the Holocaust. Rigg writes:
“From the evidence, one would think that most Germans should have been aware of what today is called the Holocaust. This assertion applies even more to the Mischlinge who had opportunities to find out about the Holocaust. But most refused to believe or failed to assess the incriminating evidence they heard about or witnessed. Although many doubted the accuracy of the death certificates of relatives that stated they had died of “natural causes in the camps,” they did not believe their relatives had been systematically murdered. Many could not understand why the people they had grown up with would want to kill them or their families. Deported Jews often led their Mischling relatives to believe that their deportation was not serious. When Harald Ettheimer’s aunt left for her deportation, she told him not to worry because she would soon return.
Since the victims themselves, according to Holocaust historian Lucy Davidowicz, alleged that it was beyond their imagination that they would be gassed and killed, one should not expect ordinary Germans to much more. Steinberg wrote, “Holocaust records show that Jews themselves often refused to believe what was happening in spite of the evidence of their own eyes.” Another Holocaust historian, Leni Yahil, claimed that systematic murder was beyond anyone’s imagination. Marian Kaplan wrote, “But a far more effective barrier to their comprehension was the sheer inconceivability of the genocide. Even those who received information frequently reacted with disbelief or repressed it. “ If Jews did not believe what was happening to them, it follows that most Mischlinge also could not believe the Holocaust was happening, because they had less direct exposure to persecution. Almost all the interviews conducted for this book supports this conclusion. The average German who had even less contact with those who were persecuted, was highly unlikely to suspect the extent of the Holocaust.” (p. 265.)
Rigg offers many examples of this failure to comprehend:
“Hans Schmechel , who lost both grandparents, Emma and Wilhelm Gotha, at Theresienstadt, manned a flak gun in 1944 while the Nazis deported his brothers, Horst and Heinz, to an OT forced labor camp. They found it quite ironic that two of them had to perform forced labor in an OT camp while the other served in the Luftwaffe. Schmechel’s family had only heard about the atrocities when his Aryan uncle, Walter Schmechel, a guard at Auschwitz, came home in 1943 and reported what he had seen. The family believed the uncle but still did not know that systematic extermination of millions was under way.
An even more bizarre case was that of Horst Reinhard’s family. While Reinhard served with false papers to make the authorities think he was a quarter-Jew, his father was forced to serve as an army staff sergeant in the SS guard unit at the concentration camp Flossenburg. Reinhard’s Jewish mother, Marie, even lived with her husband in the camp’s staff housing and thus survived. Reinhard said that although he wrote letters to his parents at the camp, he did not know about the Holocaust until the 1950s. He knew about deportations but, like most other Germans, never thought the Jews were being systematically murdered. The Schmechel and Reinhard families had more information than most families, but they still failed to either understand or believe the signs they received.” (p. 253 – 254.)
There is a fascinating insight in this about how knowledge may be a communal activity; we know things when we discuss our different perspectives and reach conclusions. The ability to take counsel – as St. Thomas Aquinas would put it – was denied in the totalitarian Nazi society.
A final interesting feature of Nazi racism is the appeal to the relatively modern science of genetics. I have recently watch the Kenneth Branagh movie “Conspiracy” about the Wannsee Conference. There is a scene where Stuckart, played by Colin Firth, is advocating to sterilize Mischlinge and does a brief speech about “Mendeling out.” Nazis used Mendel’s name as a verb to descript genetic expression between mixed breeds.” (p. 320, fn. 180.)
My appreciation for that movie, and my understanding of the issues these Nazi characters were discussing. Rigg writes:
“The racial theorist Dr. Achim Gercke in the RMI introduced another argument when he wrote in September 1935 that Mischling could really be disguised Jews. Anyone who mathematically defined “50 percent, 25 percent, 12 percent, 6.25 percent, etc., Mischlinge” had not understood Mendel’s laws of genetics, Gercke maintained. Gercke warned that Mischlinge could also “mendel out pure Jews.” (p. 96.)
Hitler followed this genetic approach:
“As the war worsened, Hitler became less generous with his exemptions. He told General Jodl during an afternoon tea session on 10 May 1942 that he regretted giving exemptions to so many half-Jewish soldiers. “For experience showed, “ Hitler said,” “that from these Jewish offsprings, four, five or six generations of pure Jews keep Mendeling out.” (p. 219 citing Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier, 1941 – 1942.) (Sidenote: Rigg’s sources is encyclopedic and deep.)
“On 2 July, Bormann wrote Bouhler complaining that Bouhler had continued to send applications to Hitler that did not meet the criteria. Bormann explained that Hitler had expressed his indignation at the handling of Mischling cases. He explained that only men who had performed special service to the Party during the Kampfzeit should be considered. Party membership alone was not enough. Hitler warned that if they were not careful, the Mishlinge would create a new Jewish race. One needed to exercise caution, Hitler had told Bormann, because it had been proven that Mischlinge always “Mendeled” out Jews. Hitler pointed to Cripps and Roosevelt to support his claim.” (p. 223.)
My take-away on this is that the facile assumption that Nazi anti-Semitism was simply Christian anti-Semitism ignores the injection of the new science.
This book is full of surprises, perhaps, because we have a model of what Nazi anti-Semitism must have been like. Adding the details of the treatment of the Mischlinge corrects what has become a more or less politically correct morality tale. The actual facts are more nuanced, and less about “either/or” – either Germans knew about the Holocaust or they are lying and either the victims were Jews or they were not. And that leads to some fascinating observations about humanity and human behavior.
November 21, 2025
„Losy żydowskich żołnierzy Hitlera” to jedna z najbardziej wstrząsających i jednocześnie najbardziej niewygodnych książek dotyczących II wojny światowej. Bryan Mark Rigg podejmuje temat niemal nieobecny w powszechnej historiografii i świadomości społecznej: losy ludzi żydowskiego pochodzenia, którzy – często wbrew własnej woli, a czasem z przekonania – służyli w armii Trzeciej Rzeszy.
Autor opiera swoją pracę na dziesiątkach wywiadów przeprowadzonych z weteranami Wehrmachtu, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine i Waffen-SS oraz z członkami ich rodzin. Dzięki temu książka ma wymiar nie tylko historyczny, lecz również głęboko ludzki. To zbiór indywidualnych biografii, które burzą prosty, czarno-biały podział na oprawców i ofiary, ukazując dramat ludzi uwięzionych w systemie, który z jednej strony potrzebował ich jako żołnierzy, z drugiej skazywał jako „rasowo nieczystych”.
Rigg szczegółowo analizuje sytuację tzw. Mischlinge – pół- i ćwierć-Żydów – oraz osób uznawanych według nazistowskich ustaw rasowych za Żydów, choć często wychowanych w rodzinach chrześcijańskich i silnie zintegrowanych z niemieckim społeczeństwem. Ich motywacje były różne: patriotyzm, strach, chęć ochrony bliskich, nadzieja na przetrwanie. Wielu z nich żyło w ciągłym napięciu, balansując pomiędzy mundurem a groźbą dekonspiracji, która mogła oznaczać natychmiastową deportację do obozu koncentracyjnego.
Siłą tej publikacji jest uczciwość badawcza i wyważenie. Autor unika publicystycznego tonu czy sensacyjności. Zamiast tego oferuje rzetelne opracowanie oparte na dokumentach, archiwach i relacjach świadków, jednocześnie pozostawiając czytelnikowi przestrzeń do własnych refleksji. Pokazuje, że historia nie zawsze mieści się w prostych definicjach heroizmu i winy, a los człowieka w systemie totalitarnym bywa tragicznie skomplikowany.
Książka nie relatywizuje zbrodni nazistowskich ani nie usprawiedliwia Trzeciej Rzeszy. Przeciwnie – jeszcze mocniej uwydatnia jej absurdalność i okrucieństwo, pokazując, jak ideologia potrafiła niszczyć nawet tych, którzy formalnie służyli jej z bronią w ręku.
„Losy żydowskich żołnierzy Hitlera” to ważna i potrzebna publikacja, poszerzająca nasze rozumienie wojennej rzeczywistości. Stanowi nie tylko dokument historyczny, ale także poruszające świadectwo ludzkich dramatów, wyborów dokonywanych w sytuacjach skrajnych i moralnych pułapek, w jakie wtrąca totalitaryzm.
To lektura trudna, ale niezwykle cenna – zwłaszcza dla tych, którzy chcą spojrzeć na historię bez uproszczeń i z pełną świadomością jej bolesnej złożoności.
Autor opiera swoją pracę na dziesiątkach wywiadów przeprowadzonych z weteranami Wehrmachtu, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine i Waffen-SS oraz z członkami ich rodzin. Dzięki temu książka ma wymiar nie tylko historyczny, lecz również głęboko ludzki. To zbiór indywidualnych biografii, które burzą prosty, czarno-biały podział na oprawców i ofiary, ukazując dramat ludzi uwięzionych w systemie, który z jednej strony potrzebował ich jako żołnierzy, z drugiej skazywał jako „rasowo nieczystych”.
Rigg szczegółowo analizuje sytuację tzw. Mischlinge – pół- i ćwierć-Żydów – oraz osób uznawanych według nazistowskich ustaw rasowych za Żydów, choć często wychowanych w rodzinach chrześcijańskich i silnie zintegrowanych z niemieckim społeczeństwem. Ich motywacje były różne: patriotyzm, strach, chęć ochrony bliskich, nadzieja na przetrwanie. Wielu z nich żyło w ciągłym napięciu, balansując pomiędzy mundurem a groźbą dekonspiracji, która mogła oznaczać natychmiastową deportację do obozu koncentracyjnego.
Siłą tej publikacji jest uczciwość badawcza i wyważenie. Autor unika publicystycznego tonu czy sensacyjności. Zamiast tego oferuje rzetelne opracowanie oparte na dokumentach, archiwach i relacjach świadków, jednocześnie pozostawiając czytelnikowi przestrzeń do własnych refleksji. Pokazuje, że historia nie zawsze mieści się w prostych definicjach heroizmu i winy, a los człowieka w systemie totalitarnym bywa tragicznie skomplikowany.
Książka nie relatywizuje zbrodni nazistowskich ani nie usprawiedliwia Trzeciej Rzeszy. Przeciwnie – jeszcze mocniej uwydatnia jej absurdalność i okrucieństwo, pokazując, jak ideologia potrafiła niszczyć nawet tych, którzy formalnie służyli jej z bronią w ręku.
„Losy żydowskich żołnierzy Hitlera” to ważna i potrzebna publikacja, poszerzająca nasze rozumienie wojennej rzeczywistości. Stanowi nie tylko dokument historyczny, ale także poruszające świadectwo ludzkich dramatów, wyborów dokonywanych w sytuacjach skrajnych i moralnych pułapek, w jakie wtrąca totalitaryzm.
To lektura trudna, ale niezwykle cenna – zwłaszcza dla tych, którzy chcą spojrzeć na historię bez uproszczeń i z pełną świadomością jej bolesnej złożoności.
November 28, 2008
A book about a study, and inspired by the plot of Europa, Europa. Also, half Jew discusses half Jews! A bit scattered, I wasn't sure what Rigg was driving at. Still, the topic is really fascinating, and I was surprised at how widespread this particular phenomenon was.
July 23, 2017
This was a very interesting book about a neglected and possibly often misunderstood if not outright denied topic:
Soldiers of Jewish descent in the German armed forces of World War II.
It is a fact that they existed and despite on how you define a “Jew” this could lead to pretty different numbers. You see some call a person with any Jewish ancestry a Jew, others, primarily orthodox Jews, state that it is only via the mother line or conversion and also that anyone of Jewish descent who served in the Wehrmacht could not have been Jewish at all.
Really ironic is that in this case back then they used pretty much the same alleged indicators of “Jewishness” that are still used today even by Jews themselves. Back then a major Nazi was declared Jewish because of how he looked, a kid beaten up because of having a large nose, SA men mistaking a Gestapo agent for a Jew and brutally beating him and the Reichminister of the interior, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, claimed that officials could have ancestry investigated when a person's name sounded Jewish.
And if this wasn’t ironic enough, apparently there were Orthodox Jews agreeing with the Nuremberg laws, rabbies discriminating against mixed marriages even when it saved lives, torn identities and people being unable to comprehend Jews in the Wehrmacht. Well, it is ironic when you do not know certain sectors of Judaism who definitely have anti-miscegenation laws. And yet the only movie I know about the topic is "Europa Europa.” And speaking of films about Jews that we will probably never see:
So there was also a Jewish woman (Luise von Grafemus aka Esther Manuel) fighting for the Prussians in the Franco -Prussian war and Prussia, Austria and Bavaria had thousands of Jewish soldiers and even some generals- Why the fuck do we have no stories about that and only the same old Nazi garbage time and again?
What was also interesting was that a guy called Manstein agreed that Jewish influences should be removed from society, but his letter in 1934 showed he understood Jewishness to mean something other than what Nazi ideology claimed. Manstein thought of Jewishness as part of a cultural rather than racial identity. And Göring privately told his wife that he really did not believe in all this racial ideology.
And yes, there was also a case of teasing someone for being 1/4 jewish only to find out, you are yourself.
Also If anyone tells you Hitler was the most fervant anti-semite among the Nazi party, remind them that he let them fight out who is counted as a Jew and who not and let the RMI win (not Wagner who counted 1/8 Jews as Jews) because if he did not it would hurt his popularity and possibly the armed forces because they would lose thousands of soldiers. Although Hitler had drawn the lines of enforcement he issued new decrees regarding mongrels at a frequency that made it difficult for government agencies to avoid implementing outdated, thus conflicting, policies.
It was Very interesting how this Lösener argued that they should not treat Half-Jews as Jews as that would create more problems with Quarter Jews and that Half-Jews should not be antagonized as their German Blood, good education and above average intelligence would make them natural born leaders and therefore more dangerous than full Jews.
This wide array on how the Nazis dealt with Jewish mongrels is pretty interesting, e.g in the occupied countries half-Jews were counted as full Jews and forced to wear the star, but not in Germany, some mongrels used their status to avoid the meat grinder in the East, Himmler wanted to treat half Jews as Jews but Hitler never approved, some OT camps were very lenient and others as brutal as a concentration camp.
And not only was Hitler rumored to have Jewish ancestry (which he himself suspected), but Reinhard Heydrich as well. In fact Heydrich had a father whom everyone believed to be Jewish because of how he looked and Heydrich himself was often called "Isi" and "Isidor Suess" (both had Jewish connotations back then) as a child. Hm... would that have had an influence in his participation of the Final Solution?
Interesting how Hitlers views changed. In Dec1941 he still claimed Jewish blood would bred out but 6 months later after meeting some Herr von Liebig who, as he claimed, looked Jewish and when researchers found some ancestor had married a Jewish woman in 1616 Hitler believed Jewish blood would still "Mendel out" a full Jew after generations. Which to be honest here is not the weirdest race concept I've ever seen.
Now whether you can really say that Erhard Milch can be considered a "German jewish war criminal” depends how you define jewish as his father had converted to christianity. But either way there were others like the catcher Stella Goldschlag and other catchers. Quarter Jew Dr. Leo Killy, Dr. Hans Eppinger, the notorious Dr. of Dachau, who was offically quarter jewish but might have been half or even 75% jewish.
Sadly these questions don’t seem to be generally investigated. Too bad to be honest.
However, I think this is an important book.
Soldiers of Jewish descent in the German armed forces of World War II.
It is a fact that they existed and despite on how you define a “Jew” this could lead to pretty different numbers. You see some call a person with any Jewish ancestry a Jew, others, primarily orthodox Jews, state that it is only via the mother line or conversion and also that anyone of Jewish descent who served in the Wehrmacht could not have been Jewish at all.
Really ironic is that in this case back then they used pretty much the same alleged indicators of “Jewishness” that are still used today even by Jews themselves. Back then a major Nazi was declared Jewish because of how he looked, a kid beaten up because of having a large nose, SA men mistaking a Gestapo agent for a Jew and brutally beating him and the Reichminister of the interior, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, claimed that officials could have ancestry investigated when a person's name sounded Jewish.
And if this wasn’t ironic enough, apparently there were Orthodox Jews agreeing with the Nuremberg laws, rabbies discriminating against mixed marriages even when it saved lives, torn identities and people being unable to comprehend Jews in the Wehrmacht. Well, it is ironic when you do not know certain sectors of Judaism who definitely have anti-miscegenation laws. And yet the only movie I know about the topic is "Europa Europa.” And speaking of films about Jews that we will probably never see:
So there was also a Jewish woman (Luise von Grafemus aka Esther Manuel) fighting for the Prussians in the Franco -Prussian war and Prussia, Austria and Bavaria had thousands of Jewish soldiers and even some generals- Why the fuck do we have no stories about that and only the same old Nazi garbage time and again?
What was also interesting was that a guy called Manstein agreed that Jewish influences should be removed from society, but his letter in 1934 showed he understood Jewishness to mean something other than what Nazi ideology claimed. Manstein thought of Jewishness as part of a cultural rather than racial identity. And Göring privately told his wife that he really did not believe in all this racial ideology.
And yes, there was also a case of teasing someone for being 1/4 jewish only to find out, you are yourself.
Also If anyone tells you Hitler was the most fervant anti-semite among the Nazi party, remind them that he let them fight out who is counted as a Jew and who not and let the RMI win (not Wagner who counted 1/8 Jews as Jews) because if he did not it would hurt his popularity and possibly the armed forces because they would lose thousands of soldiers. Although Hitler had drawn the lines of enforcement he issued new decrees regarding mongrels at a frequency that made it difficult for government agencies to avoid implementing outdated, thus conflicting, policies.
It was Very interesting how this Lösener argued that they should not treat Half-Jews as Jews as that would create more problems with Quarter Jews and that Half-Jews should not be antagonized as their German Blood, good education and above average intelligence would make them natural born leaders and therefore more dangerous than full Jews.
This wide array on how the Nazis dealt with Jewish mongrels is pretty interesting, e.g in the occupied countries half-Jews were counted as full Jews and forced to wear the star, but not in Germany, some mongrels used their status to avoid the meat grinder in the East, Himmler wanted to treat half Jews as Jews but Hitler never approved, some OT camps were very lenient and others as brutal as a concentration camp.
And not only was Hitler rumored to have Jewish ancestry (which he himself suspected), but Reinhard Heydrich as well. In fact Heydrich had a father whom everyone believed to be Jewish because of how he looked and Heydrich himself was often called "Isi" and "Isidor Suess" (both had Jewish connotations back then) as a child. Hm... would that have had an influence in his participation of the Final Solution?
Interesting how Hitlers views changed. In Dec1941 he still claimed Jewish blood would bred out but 6 months later after meeting some Herr von Liebig who, as he claimed, looked Jewish and when researchers found some ancestor had married a Jewish woman in 1616 Hitler believed Jewish blood would still "Mendel out" a full Jew after generations. Which to be honest here is not the weirdest race concept I've ever seen.
Now whether you can really say that Erhard Milch can be considered a "German jewish war criminal” depends how you define jewish as his father had converted to christianity. But either way there were others like the catcher Stella Goldschlag and other catchers. Quarter Jew Dr. Leo Killy, Dr. Hans Eppinger, the notorious Dr. of Dachau, who was offically quarter jewish but might have been half or even 75% jewish.
Sadly these questions don’t seem to be generally investigated. Too bad to be honest.
However, I think this is an important book.
November 7, 2024
I have to say that this book is definitely worth reading for those who are interested in the Second World War. I was truly stunned by what I read. I had heard about Hitler having Jewish soldiers, but I never knew there was about 150,000 Jews, Half-Jews, and Quarter Jews who served for the Third Reich. Some served because they were opportunists and wanted to protect themselves and their families, some were German patriots who disliked Hitler but loved the fatherland, and some surprisingly were diehard fanatical Nazis who hated Jews. It's really interesting because many didn't know they were Jewish until the 1935 Nuremberg Race laws.
Reading this, I realize how hypocritical the Nazis and Hitler could be. Hitler hated the Jews, no doubt, but he shielded many of them. Goering was a key figure in the Final Solution, yet he shielded Erhard Milch and others who were Jewish in the Luftwaffe. Hitler even said that no one is really racially pure, which to me is the pinnacle of irony, because Hitler preached all about this idea of Germans being pure.
The stories of these Jewish soldiers is one of soldiers who were caught in the middle: hated by their own people because they were half Jews or were serving in the Wehrmacht, and hated by the Nazi government because they had Jewish blood.
They the truth is stranger than fiction, well this story would be an example of that.
Reading this, I realize how hypocritical the Nazis and Hitler could be. Hitler hated the Jews, no doubt, but he shielded many of them. Goering was a key figure in the Final Solution, yet he shielded Erhard Milch and others who were Jewish in the Luftwaffe. Hitler even said that no one is really racially pure, which to me is the pinnacle of irony, because Hitler preached all about this idea of Germans being pure.
The stories of these Jewish soldiers is one of soldiers who were caught in the middle: hated by their own people because they were half Jews or were serving in the Wehrmacht, and hated by the Nazi government because they had Jewish blood.
They the truth is stranger than fiction, well this story would be an example of that.
September 21, 2019
Original and New Research.
The author began this project as an undergraduate. It ultimately became a book from his doctoral thesis.
The book is based on a large amount of primary source material from the Bundesarchive Aachen, Berlin, Freiburg and Archiv der Republik of Austria in Vienna. Additionally, it contains references from the the German Army Archives from Berlin and source notes from hundreds of interviewees.
This book specifically explores the the history of Jewish Mischlinge ( Mixed Race) that served in the German Army during WW II. This study and book unequivocally demonstrates Hitlers direct involvement and intervention in permitting mishlinge to serve in the Armed Forces; he even allowed some to become Generals and Admirals.
The book is organized chronologically and shows the development of official policy and where and how "exemptions" could be obtained.
More remarkable are the source documents - of which the author has copies - and the diary entries and comments from the jewish soldiers that were classed as 1/4 and 1/2 Jewish.
This book is a gem for anyone studying WW II and the Holocaust.
At time the book is a bit dry and sometimes redundant, but the author is stating his case and does so clearly. More importantly is the detail to which the author goes in order to demonstrate his case.
I highly recommend this book.
The author began this project as an undergraduate. It ultimately became a book from his doctoral thesis.
The book is based on a large amount of primary source material from the Bundesarchive Aachen, Berlin, Freiburg and Archiv der Republik of Austria in Vienna. Additionally, it contains references from the the German Army Archives from Berlin and source notes from hundreds of interviewees.
This book specifically explores the the history of Jewish Mischlinge ( Mixed Race) that served in the German Army during WW II. This study and book unequivocally demonstrates Hitlers direct involvement and intervention in permitting mishlinge to serve in the Armed Forces; he even allowed some to become Generals and Admirals.
The book is organized chronologically and shows the development of official policy and where and how "exemptions" could be obtained.
More remarkable are the source documents - of which the author has copies - and the diary entries and comments from the jewish soldiers that were classed as 1/4 and 1/2 Jewish.
This book is a gem for anyone studying WW II and the Holocaust.
At time the book is a bit dry and sometimes redundant, but the author is stating his case and does so clearly. More importantly is the detail to which the author goes in order to demonstrate his case.
I highly recommend this book.
February 25, 2024
(There is a whole lot more to this but others have written better and more exhaustive reviews. I have my own less thorough review.) I am just amazed that people (Book is really not about 100% Jews but rather 1/2 Jews, 1/4 Jews, married to Jews) could see what was happening and not realize it. Sometimes they knew and it was helplessness, or that nobody could believe people would commit genocide. But they saw their family deported to camps! Their relatives committed suicide rather than go to the camps. And still they fight for Germany. Even if they didn't know they were torture/death camps how could you still fight for that? And after the regime makes you a second class soldier? You'd still fight for it?
Also. Jews thought they were German's first and not even Jewish except their blood said otherwise, or that they were German Jews and Hitler was just planning to expel East-European Jews, and that the antisemitism wasn't aimed at them? Hunh? They were okay with that! Even the Jews were racist within their own ranks. And worse. It is still happening in Israel today! Ethiopian Jews are poorly educated immigrants and therefore not real Jews. Russian Jews who died fighting for Israel (2008) were not allowed to be buried as Jews or even given Jewish last rights? Then there are orthodox Jews who are more Jewish than... you get the idea.
And then it gets even worse! I am just amazed that people (Jews) could see what was happening to people just like them (other Jews not them or their family) and help that aim. A man helps the Nazi's. His disabled Jewish daughter is spared, because he continues to support the machine that would have had his daughter killed (+ himself & mother) and ignores that the fate he just spared for his family was happening to others? Wait. What did I just read?? This is crazy as why Jews (Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account) who burned the bodies of, the workers they were replacing, (and therefore they knew they were going to die next!) still did the work instead of going down swinging! Huh? I need to get a psychology degree to understand this stuff!
I got this from the Author on FB and is what made me look up this book. The following are his words not mine.
No fewer than 21 generals, seven admirals, and one field-marshal of Jewish descent served with Adolf Hitler’s consent in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Hitler actually personally exempted them from his Racial Laws often signing official “German-Blood-Declarations” (Deutschblütigkeitserklärungen) for them officially “Aryanizing” them or, as I like to say, giving them the kosher stamp of Aryanhood approval. Hitler did so mainly because they looked “Aryan” (that is, had blue eyes and blond hair), had good military records, had rendered Germany a unique service, or had come from distinguished families.
Erhard Milch was a political animal and cared only about himself and his career. He was an opportunist and rarely worried about those he had to step on in order to climb the ladder of success. As a result, he had no problem becoming a Nazi Party member, and his actions also showed that he believed in many things the Nazis espoused. He was indeed an incredible organizer of the Luftwaffe, but also a nasty person and a hardcore Nazi.
Erhard Alfred Richard Oskar Milch, born on 30 March 1892 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, became a powerful man in the Third Reich. According to historian James Corum, Milch “ran the Luftwaffe and was its most powerful figure for personnel and planning issues, production and even strategy.”
After completing high school in 1910, he enlisted in the army as an officer candidate in the First Heavy Artillery Regiment in Königsberg, East Prussia, and was promoted to lieutenant a year later. During World War I, he served as a battalion aide on the Russian front. Although he liked the artillery, he transferred in 1915 to the Imperial Air Service and became a pilot. The Army would award him the Iron Cross First Class (somewhat akin to the Silver Star in the U.S. Armed Forces) for a courageous reconnaissance flight he conducted during the battle of Verdun in 1916. By the end of the war, he rose up through the ranks and onto the General Staff, obtained the rank of major, and conducted many of the coordinated attacks using artillery batteries and fighter plane squadrons in combined-arms attacks during the last year of the war (the beginning of Blitzkrieg).
After WWI, he worked for Lufthansa and rose up through the ranks of this organization developing it into a first-class civilian airline. During this time, he became very friendly with Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring and believed the Nazi Party was the key to Germany getting back its military, gaining full independence, and shedding the manacles of the hated Versailles Treaty of 1919. The Nazis issued him a Nazi Party membership card in 1929 that was only officialized in 1933 after Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
When Hitler seized power, he knew he needed Milch to build out his Luftwaffe. By now, everyone who had worked with Milch recognized he was brilliant when it came to logistics and organization. He knew how supply chains should be run, how technology should be developed and how large operations should be organized. As a result, Hitler had a private meeting with him and told him: “Now look, I haven’t known you for very long, but you’re a man who knows his job, and we have few in the Party who know as much as you about the air. That’s why the choice has fallen on you. You must take the job. It’s not a question of the Party, as you seem to think—it’s a question of Germany and Germany needs you.”
Milch took the job, but there was the problem of his ancestry. Milch noted on 1 November 1933 in his diary that Göring had made sure “everything was now in order” with his background check—his Jewish father would not stand in his way of building up a strong air force for the Third Reich.
How did the Nazis and Milch get around him having a Jewish father? Field-Marshal Milch’s method of securing his “Aryanization” was the most famous case of a Mischling falsifying a parent’s identity in order to gain exemption from the racial laws. After sitting down with his mother, Clara née Vetter, and talking with her about their issue, they came up with a plan. She would give her son-in-law, Fritz Heinrich Hermann, police president of Hagen and later an SS general, an affidavit stating her uncle Carl Wilhelm Bräuer had fathered her six children, rather than her Jewish husband, Anton. Her uncle and her husband were deceased at the time this documentation was put together. She claimed her parents knew about the relationship and had prohibited her from marry Uncle Carl because of the close bloodlines and that her Jewish husband knew about the relationship. When this “evidence” was presented to Hitler, he accepted it and declared Milch a “100 percent” Aryan. During this time, evidence also arose that Milch’s mother was also Jewish, but the Nazi research into the mater turned out to be inconclusive although historian Robert Wistrich did find out that she was Jewish. If this was the case, Milch was not “50 percent” Jewish, but “100 percent” Jewish. If that had become part of the official record, Milch’s position would have been precarious among the Nazi elite to say the least.
Ironically, the Nazis did not object to incest, but Jewish ancestry was indeed a problem. Milch’s mother sacrificed her reputation, as well as her husband’s, to protect her children. Without her lie, Milch might have lost his career and, along with it, his ability to protect his youngest daughter, Helga, who had Down’s syndrome, from Hitler’s euthanasia program. This program, called Aktion T4, murdered at least 100,000 disabled people (most of whom were mentally handicapped), among them, Aloisia Veit, Hitler’s own cousin. Milch’s mother’s affidavit also allowed her daughter to remain married to an SS General, and her other son, Werner, to rise up through the ranks of the Wehrmacht as a paratrooper, later earning the Ritterkreuz while fighting the Russians.
With his Jewish problem taken care of, Milch went to work building up the Luftwaffe. With his credible connections militarily, politically and economically, he built the Luftwaffe into one of the most modern Air Forces in the world in just three years, overseeing the planning and development of some of the best aircraft of the world like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter-plane, the Junker Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber and the Heinkel He 111 medium bomber. Hitler claimed in 1936 that “there are two names linked with the birth of our Luftwaffe,” Göring’s and Milch’s.
When war erupted on the European scene, Milch helped oversee the successful invasion of Poland and did a phenomenal job of taking after-action reports about his machines, just like he had done during the Spanish Civil War with his Condor Legion, thereby modifying and improving all his airplanes. Moreover, he continued to learn about the training of his pilots and took a keen interest in how to perfect the training of his “knights of the air.” By 1940, German pilots were the best trained in the world, with the possible exception of the Japanese carrier naval pilots. In April 1940, when Germany invaded Norway and encountered several logistical nightmares, Milch was brought in and saved the day at several sectors of the overall battle for this Scandinavian country. Without securing Norway, Hitler could not have invaded France one month later. For his brilliant logistical accomplishments, Hitler awarded Milch the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (the Ritterkreuz)—somewhat akin to the U.S. Medal of Honor.
During the next two years of war, Milch continued to see his Luftwaffe mount one success after another and Hitler would award him with a bonus prize of ℛℳ 250,000 (Reichsmarks) (equivalent in 1942 to $625,000 or in 2020, $10,000,000) on his 50th birthday for all the services he had given to the Third Reich.
When the war turned against Germany, Hitler often would turn to Milch for help. When Stalingrad was going poorly for Germany in January 1943, Hitler brought in Milch to save the day, but it was too little too late. Milch was not able to work his magic like he had done in Norway in 1940. However, the effective defense against Allied bombers seen in 1943 and 1944 was largely due to Milch’s skills as an organizer and production manager. He also oversaw the successful V-1 program, or in modern parlance, the first cruise missile ever to be developed.
However, for all of Milch’s successes, one of his major military flaws was that he failed to see that Hitler would be fighting the entire world by 1942. The wars with Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia were engagements Milch had planned for and helped win—short, fast, shocking attacks that brought quick victories. However, when Germany decided to take on the Soviet Union and the United States, his could not modify his organization to meet Hitler’s demands for a global war. Few people, if any, could keep up with Hitler’s requests for more men, more guns and more airplanes.
Nonetheless, for all his accomplishments, Milch ranked seventh among Hitler’s subordinates by February 1944. After the unsuccessful bomb plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, Milch was one of the first men to write Hitler a letter of congratulations: “I cannot begin to express my heartfelt joy that a merciful Providence has protected you from this cowardly murder attempt and preserved you for the German Volk and its Wehrmacht.” Perhaps Milch really believed what he said, or perhaps he was trying to protect himself, knowing that the events on 20 July made the situation for Mischlinge (“partial Jews”) more precarious.
Milch survived the war and was brought before the Second Nuremberg Trials. When asked about the Holocaust at the trial he denied all knowledge of it. However, documentation surfaced that he knew about the brutal human experiments that went on in Dachau. He liked the research gathered there to help his pilots! He also knew about slave labor being used at Auschwitz, so he clearly was lying when he claimed he did not know about the Holocaust. As historian James Corum rightly notes, these facts “alone makes Milch a genuine war criminal.” In 1947, at the conclusion of his trial in Nuremberg, the Allies sentenced Milch to life in prison. However, the sentence was reduced and, in 1954, he was discharged. He then returned to Lufthansa in particular, and the German air industry in general, and worked there until his death in 1972.
As an incredibly gifted organizer, Milch helped the Luftwaffe develop into the menacing force that it became by 1939. Although he had a Jewish father, he did not let this get in the way of obtaining the power he so desperately craved within the Third Reich. He viewed his ancestry as a tiny speed bump in the race to the top of Hitler’s regime. He believed in Hitler and his goals of the Fatherland and did everything he could to make sure Germany would win the war. He made a Faustian trade-off and had no regrets. Unfortunately, there were many like him at the top of the Wehrmacht and government. And if they did not support the regime like Milch, they were “forced to echo it and suppress their own thoughts” according to historian Liddell Hart. As philosopher Immanuel Kant rightly noted, “War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.”
For more information on these topics, see “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers” https://www.amazon.com/dp/0700611789/...… “The Rabbi Saved by Hitler’s Soldiers” https://www.amazon.com/Rabbi-Saved-Hi...…
Also. Jews thought they were German's first and not even Jewish except their blood said otherwise, or that they were German Jews and Hitler was just planning to expel East-European Jews, and that the antisemitism wasn't aimed at them? Hunh? They were okay with that! Even the Jews were racist within their own ranks. And worse. It is still happening in Israel today! Ethiopian Jews are poorly educated immigrants and therefore not real Jews. Russian Jews who died fighting for Israel (2008) were not allowed to be buried as Jews or even given Jewish last rights? Then there are orthodox Jews who are more Jewish than... you get the idea.
And then it gets even worse! I am just amazed that people (Jews) could see what was happening to people just like them (other Jews not them or their family) and help that aim. A man helps the Nazi's. His disabled Jewish daughter is spared, because he continues to support the machine that would have had his daughter killed (+ himself & mother) and ignores that the fate he just spared for his family was happening to others? Wait. What did I just read?? This is crazy as why Jews (Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account) who burned the bodies of, the workers they were replacing, (and therefore they knew they were going to die next!) still did the work instead of going down swinging! Huh? I need to get a psychology degree to understand this stuff!
I got this from the Author on FB and is what made me look up this book. The following are his words not mine.
No fewer than 21 generals, seven admirals, and one field-marshal of Jewish descent served with Adolf Hitler’s consent in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Hitler actually personally exempted them from his Racial Laws often signing official “German-Blood-Declarations” (Deutschblütigkeitserklärungen) for them officially “Aryanizing” them or, as I like to say, giving them the kosher stamp of Aryanhood approval. Hitler did so mainly because they looked “Aryan” (that is, had blue eyes and blond hair), had good military records, had rendered Germany a unique service, or had come from distinguished families.
Erhard Milch was a political animal and cared only about himself and his career. He was an opportunist and rarely worried about those he had to step on in order to climb the ladder of success. As a result, he had no problem becoming a Nazi Party member, and his actions also showed that he believed in many things the Nazis espoused. He was indeed an incredible organizer of the Luftwaffe, but also a nasty person and a hardcore Nazi.
Erhard Alfred Richard Oskar Milch, born on 30 March 1892 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, became a powerful man in the Third Reich. According to historian James Corum, Milch “ran the Luftwaffe and was its most powerful figure for personnel and planning issues, production and even strategy.”
After completing high school in 1910, he enlisted in the army as an officer candidate in the First Heavy Artillery Regiment in Königsberg, East Prussia, and was promoted to lieutenant a year later. During World War I, he served as a battalion aide on the Russian front. Although he liked the artillery, he transferred in 1915 to the Imperial Air Service and became a pilot. The Army would award him the Iron Cross First Class (somewhat akin to the Silver Star in the U.S. Armed Forces) for a courageous reconnaissance flight he conducted during the battle of Verdun in 1916. By the end of the war, he rose up through the ranks and onto the General Staff, obtained the rank of major, and conducted many of the coordinated attacks using artillery batteries and fighter plane squadrons in combined-arms attacks during the last year of the war (the beginning of Blitzkrieg).
After WWI, he worked for Lufthansa and rose up through the ranks of this organization developing it into a first-class civilian airline. During this time, he became very friendly with Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring and believed the Nazi Party was the key to Germany getting back its military, gaining full independence, and shedding the manacles of the hated Versailles Treaty of 1919. The Nazis issued him a Nazi Party membership card in 1929 that was only officialized in 1933 after Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
When Hitler seized power, he knew he needed Milch to build out his Luftwaffe. By now, everyone who had worked with Milch recognized he was brilliant when it came to logistics and organization. He knew how supply chains should be run, how technology should be developed and how large operations should be organized. As a result, Hitler had a private meeting with him and told him: “Now look, I haven’t known you for very long, but you’re a man who knows his job, and we have few in the Party who know as much as you about the air. That’s why the choice has fallen on you. You must take the job. It’s not a question of the Party, as you seem to think—it’s a question of Germany and Germany needs you.”
Milch took the job, but there was the problem of his ancestry. Milch noted on 1 November 1933 in his diary that Göring had made sure “everything was now in order” with his background check—his Jewish father would not stand in his way of building up a strong air force for the Third Reich.
How did the Nazis and Milch get around him having a Jewish father? Field-Marshal Milch’s method of securing his “Aryanization” was the most famous case of a Mischling falsifying a parent’s identity in order to gain exemption from the racial laws. After sitting down with his mother, Clara née Vetter, and talking with her about their issue, they came up with a plan. She would give her son-in-law, Fritz Heinrich Hermann, police president of Hagen and later an SS general, an affidavit stating her uncle Carl Wilhelm Bräuer had fathered her six children, rather than her Jewish husband, Anton. Her uncle and her husband were deceased at the time this documentation was put together. She claimed her parents knew about the relationship and had prohibited her from marry Uncle Carl because of the close bloodlines and that her Jewish husband knew about the relationship. When this “evidence” was presented to Hitler, he accepted it and declared Milch a “100 percent” Aryan. During this time, evidence also arose that Milch’s mother was also Jewish, but the Nazi research into the mater turned out to be inconclusive although historian Robert Wistrich did find out that she was Jewish. If this was the case, Milch was not “50 percent” Jewish, but “100 percent” Jewish. If that had become part of the official record, Milch’s position would have been precarious among the Nazi elite to say the least.
Ironically, the Nazis did not object to incest, but Jewish ancestry was indeed a problem. Milch’s mother sacrificed her reputation, as well as her husband’s, to protect her children. Without her lie, Milch might have lost his career and, along with it, his ability to protect his youngest daughter, Helga, who had Down’s syndrome, from Hitler’s euthanasia program. This program, called Aktion T4, murdered at least 100,000 disabled people (most of whom were mentally handicapped), among them, Aloisia Veit, Hitler’s own cousin. Milch’s mother’s affidavit also allowed her daughter to remain married to an SS General, and her other son, Werner, to rise up through the ranks of the Wehrmacht as a paratrooper, later earning the Ritterkreuz while fighting the Russians.
With his Jewish problem taken care of, Milch went to work building up the Luftwaffe. With his credible connections militarily, politically and economically, he built the Luftwaffe into one of the most modern Air Forces in the world in just three years, overseeing the planning and development of some of the best aircraft of the world like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter-plane, the Junker Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber and the Heinkel He 111 medium bomber. Hitler claimed in 1936 that “there are two names linked with the birth of our Luftwaffe,” Göring’s and Milch’s.
When war erupted on the European scene, Milch helped oversee the successful invasion of Poland and did a phenomenal job of taking after-action reports about his machines, just like he had done during the Spanish Civil War with his Condor Legion, thereby modifying and improving all his airplanes. Moreover, he continued to learn about the training of his pilots and took a keen interest in how to perfect the training of his “knights of the air.” By 1940, German pilots were the best trained in the world, with the possible exception of the Japanese carrier naval pilots. In April 1940, when Germany invaded Norway and encountered several logistical nightmares, Milch was brought in and saved the day at several sectors of the overall battle for this Scandinavian country. Without securing Norway, Hitler could not have invaded France one month later. For his brilliant logistical accomplishments, Hitler awarded Milch the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (the Ritterkreuz)—somewhat akin to the U.S. Medal of Honor.
During the next two years of war, Milch continued to see his Luftwaffe mount one success after another and Hitler would award him with a bonus prize of ℛℳ 250,000 (Reichsmarks) (equivalent in 1942 to $625,000 or in 2020, $10,000,000) on his 50th birthday for all the services he had given to the Third Reich.
When the war turned against Germany, Hitler often would turn to Milch for help. When Stalingrad was going poorly for Germany in January 1943, Hitler brought in Milch to save the day, but it was too little too late. Milch was not able to work his magic like he had done in Norway in 1940. However, the effective defense against Allied bombers seen in 1943 and 1944 was largely due to Milch’s skills as an organizer and production manager. He also oversaw the successful V-1 program, or in modern parlance, the first cruise missile ever to be developed.
However, for all of Milch’s successes, one of his major military flaws was that he failed to see that Hitler would be fighting the entire world by 1942. The wars with Poland, Norway, Denmark, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia were engagements Milch had planned for and helped win—short, fast, shocking attacks that brought quick victories. However, when Germany decided to take on the Soviet Union and the United States, his could not modify his organization to meet Hitler’s demands for a global war. Few people, if any, could keep up with Hitler’s requests for more men, more guns and more airplanes.
Nonetheless, for all his accomplishments, Milch ranked seventh among Hitler’s subordinates by February 1944. After the unsuccessful bomb plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, Milch was one of the first men to write Hitler a letter of congratulations: “I cannot begin to express my heartfelt joy that a merciful Providence has protected you from this cowardly murder attempt and preserved you for the German Volk and its Wehrmacht.” Perhaps Milch really believed what he said, or perhaps he was trying to protect himself, knowing that the events on 20 July made the situation for Mischlinge (“partial Jews”) more precarious.
Milch survived the war and was brought before the Second Nuremberg Trials. When asked about the Holocaust at the trial he denied all knowledge of it. However, documentation surfaced that he knew about the brutal human experiments that went on in Dachau. He liked the research gathered there to help his pilots! He also knew about slave labor being used at Auschwitz, so he clearly was lying when he claimed he did not know about the Holocaust. As historian James Corum rightly notes, these facts “alone makes Milch a genuine war criminal.” In 1947, at the conclusion of his trial in Nuremberg, the Allies sentenced Milch to life in prison. However, the sentence was reduced and, in 1954, he was discharged. He then returned to Lufthansa in particular, and the German air industry in general, and worked there until his death in 1972.
As an incredibly gifted organizer, Milch helped the Luftwaffe develop into the menacing force that it became by 1939. Although he had a Jewish father, he did not let this get in the way of obtaining the power he so desperately craved within the Third Reich. He viewed his ancestry as a tiny speed bump in the race to the top of Hitler’s regime. He believed in Hitler and his goals of the Fatherland and did everything he could to make sure Germany would win the war. He made a Faustian trade-off and had no regrets. Unfortunately, there were many like him at the top of the Wehrmacht and government. And if they did not support the regime like Milch, they were “forced to echo it and suppress their own thoughts” according to historian Liddell Hart. As philosopher Immanuel Kant rightly noted, “War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away.”
For more information on these topics, see “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers” https://www.amazon.com/dp/0700611789/...… “The Rabbi Saved by Hitler’s Soldiers” https://www.amazon.com/Rabbi-Saved-Hi...…
January 19, 2020
This is a unique read about an obscure part of the Second World War in Europe. I had never read anything about Jews or partial Jews serving Nazi Germany. The writer blends unique anecdotes with historical narrative. The big problem I have is that many of the people mentioned here are obscure and are not previously known. Therefore many of them are only mentioned once or twice and then never again or perhaps much later in the book after I had already forgotten about them. It's hard to track who is who, which usually happens with this type of book. The anecdotes flesh out the narrative and provide a human presence to what's going on but the sheer number of people makes following them arduous.
Many of the better known characters, Hitler, Himmler, Speer, Manstein, etc are covered in depth with regard to how Germany treated these people. Some of the actions taken by these characters surprised me, such as Hitler granting persecution exemptions to considerable numbers of Jews who had served honorably in the military.
Many of the better known characters, Hitler, Himmler, Speer, Manstein, etc are covered in depth with regard to how Germany treated these people. Some of the actions taken by these characters surprised me, such as Hitler granting persecution exemptions to considerable numbers of Jews who had served honorably in the military.
February 8, 2024
This is a very good book. The topic of Jews in the Wehrmacht and the SS is a topic that is unknown and that many are uncomfortable with, but is integral to understanding this part of history. Dr. Rigg did an excellent job with his research and being able to convey this important information.
August 21, 2019
Documented account that was an extremely well written account of World War II. If you have an interest in the war this should be on your reading list.
June 5, 2025
Another very sad aspect of one of the saddest periods of the sad, mean, nasty old 20th C.
If only it had all remained in the 20th C, eh?
If only it had all remained in the 20th C, eh?
December 14, 2016
Interesting book of a hard to understand book of why would someone would collarborate with such an evil regime.
October 20, 2012
This book was a young man's dissertation. It was dry, filled with facts, but the premise was very interesting. The common occurrences of intermarriages in German society created huge numbers of people with "Jewish Blood." The book describes the part-Jewish men who served in the army, the myriad of regulations imposed to deal with their enlistment and promotions and the exceptions to the rules. The book read much like a dissertation, but the topic was very interesting.
January 11, 2013
Finished reading this in one day it was so interesting. A topic rarely discussed. Many 1/4 Jewish German soldiers were allowed to keep fighting for Germany while their grandparents were sent to death camps. Others had to prove their worth to be allowed to continue to serve their "country" or be sent to a concentration camp. It has to be read to be believed.
November 13, 2010
The book starts explaining what is to be jew and the History of the jews. Then we face what happened in Germany before the rise of NSDAP and during the war through the experiences of Nazi Jewish soldiers. They joined even the Waffen SS.
December 14, 2014
There is a simple comment about this book and review. If you don't read this book you are missing a whole different angle. If you don't read this book you can't be on my list.this book goes to my recommendations file.
December 31, 2007
Really interesting book about men of partial Jewish descent serving amongst the Nazis in World War II. This book further proves the great complexity of WWII.
June 29, 2013
What I am learning from this book is that Jewish ancestry has be defined and redefined according to Halakic, Rabbinate and Nazism ideology.
July 16, 2010
Fascinating info. Very interesting to see in-depth view & broad spectrum of Germany's people across the board (regarding mixed Jewish heritage)
Read
April 10, 2013Oustanding book. There are videos on You tube that give a condesed version of the book.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews