Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent
in the German Military
Bryan Mark Rigg
New in Paperback: September 2004
528 pages, 95 photographs, 6 x 9
Modern War Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-7006-1358-8, $16.95
Also available in cloth:
ISBN 978-0-7006-1178-2, $29.95
As featured on NBC-TV's Dateline
(first aired Sunday, June 9, 2002)
WINNER OF THE 2003 COLBY AWARD
William E. Colby Military Writers Symposium
Also of interest by author Bryan Mark Rigg: Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Click here to learn more about
the author's speaking tour.
 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 Mark 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.
Side and front photographs of "half-Jew" Anton Mayer,
similar to those that often accompanied a Mischling's
application for exemption.
"Through videotaped interviews, painstaking attention
to personnel files, and banal documents not normally consulted
by historians, and spurred by a keen sense of personal mission,
Rigg has turned up an unexplored and confounding chapter in the
history of the Holocaust. The extent of his findings has surprised
scholars."--Warren Hoge, New York Times
"The revelation that Germans of Jewish blood, knowing
the Nazi regime for what it was, served Hitler as uniformed members
of his armed forces must come as a profound shock. It will surprise
even professional historians of the Nazi years." --John
Keegan, author of The Face of Battle and The Second
World War
"Startling and unexpected, Rigg's study conclusively
demonstrates the degree of flexibility in German policy toward
the Mischlinge, the extent of Hitler's involvement, and, most
importantly, that not all who served in the armed forces were
anti-Semitic, even as their service aided the killing process."--Michael
Berenbaum, author of The World Must Know: The History
of the Holocaust
"Rigg's extensive knowledge and the preliminary conclusions
drawn from his research impressed me greatly. I firmly believe
that his in-depth treatment of the subject of German soldiers
of Jewish descent in the Wehrmacht will lead to new perspectives
on this portion of 20th century German military history."--Helmut
Schmidt, Former Chancellor of Germany
"An impressively researched work with important implications
for hotly debated questions. Rigg tells some exquisitely poignant
stories of individual human experiences that complicate our picture
of state and society in the Third Reich."--Nathan A.
Stoltzfus, Florida State University, author of Resistance
of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi
Germany
"An impressive work filled with interesting stories.
. . . By helping us better understand Nazi racial policy at the
margins--i.e., its impact on certain members of the German military--Rigg's
study clarifies the central problems of Nazi Jewish policies
overall."--Norman Naimark, Stanford University, author
of Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century
Europe
"An illuminating and provocative study that merits a
wide readership and is sure to be much discussed."--Dennis
E. Showalter, Colorado College, author of Tannenberg:
Clash of Empires
"An outstanding job of research and analysis. Rigg's
book will add a great deal to our understanding of the German
military, of the place of Jews and people of Jewish descent in
the Nazi state, and of the Holocaust. It forces us to deal with
the full, complex range of possible actions and reactions by
individuals caught up in the Nazi system."--Geoffrey
P. Megargee, author of Inside Hitler's High Command
"With the skill of a master detective, Bryan Rigg reveals
the surprising and largely unknown story of Germans of Jewish
origins in the Nazi military. His work contributes to our understanding
of the complexity of faith and identity in the Third Reich."--Paula
E. Hyman, Yale University, author of Gender and Assimilation
in Modern Jewish History and The Jews of Modern France
"A major piece of scholarship which traces the peculiar
twists and turns of Nazi racial policy toward men in the Wehrmacht,
often in the highest ranks, who had partly Jewish backgrounds.
Rigg has uncovered personal stories and private archives which
literally nobody knew existed. His book will be an important
contribution to German history."--Jonathan Steinberg,
University of Pennsylvania, author of All or Nothing: The
Axis and the Holocaust 1941-1943
"An original, groundbreaking, and significant contribution
to the history of the Wehrmacht and Nazi Germany."--James
S. Corum, School of Advanced Air Power Studies, author of
The Roots of Blitzkrieg and The Luftwaffe
"Rigg's work has discovered new academic territory."--Manfred
Messerschmidt, Freiburg University, author of Die Wehrmacht
im NS-Staat (The Wehrmacht in the Nazi State)
"Rigg's bracing and unintimidated study lays bare the contradiction,
confusion and expedience that governed Mischlinge policy and the
maiming cost to those whose lives were burdened by anxiety, guilt
and collusion. In the end we must be grateful for his book, a
penetrating light cast on some of the murkier corners of the human
psyche."--Michael Skakun, Aufbau
"Rigg has opened brand new territory for historians and
students of war, offering new insight into the Nazi mentality
on race."--World War II Magazine
"Rigg has done a very significant piece of historical research
and writing."--Milt Rosenberg, WGN Radio, Chicago
"Rigg has written a truly important history. It is original,
it has outstanding scholarship, and there is plenty of it!"--James
F. Tent, author of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi
Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans
"A brilliant and extremely disturbing work of masterful
historical research. A must read for everyone. It raises more
moral dilemmas than one can answer."--Steve Pieczenik,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and co-creator of the
best selling novels and TV series OP-Center and Net
Force
BRYAN MARK RIGG received his B.A. with honors in history
from Yale University in 1996. Yale awarded him the Henry Fellowship
for graduate study at Cambridge University, where he received his
M.A. in 1997 and Ph.D. in 2002. Currently Professor of History at
American Military University, he has served as a volunteer in the
Israeli Army and as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. His research
for this book has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles
Times, and London Daily Telegraph. For more information on Bryan Rigg, view his web site at www.bryanrigg.com.
Click here to learn more about the
author and his research experiences.
The thousands of pages of documents and oral testimonies (8mm and
VHS video) the author collected for this study have been purchased
by the National Military Archive of Germany. The Bryan Mark Rigg
Collection is housed in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv
in Freiburg, Germany.
To
view resource materials, including notes, bibliography, and index,
click here.
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