"Lisa" <mandotar@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:8a151e16-8ccd-4b0d-9ca1-9cb43f08b3e8@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
was a little surprised that they brought it up, but maybe it was
unavoidable. FYI, the pro-Nazi Arab battalion was called the "German-
Arab Infantry Battalion 845."
After a 60 year lapse, Germans are now resuming scholarly analysis of
the Quran. Methinks the fur is going to fly:
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When are the hebes going to claim reparations from the yids who served in
Hitler's armed forces, jew ****?
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 do***ents 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.
To see more photographs from the book, click here
"Through videotaped interviews, painstaking attention to personnel files,
and banal do***ents 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 im****tantly, 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 ****tion of 20th century German military
history."--Helmut Schmidt, Former Chancellor of Germany
"An impressively researched work with im****tant 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 reader****p 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 scholar****p 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
im****tant 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 im****tant history. It is original, it has
outstanding scholar****p, 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 Fellow****p 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 do***ents 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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