Antisemitism in the German Military Community and the Jewish Response, 19141938
By (author) Brian E. Crim
Publication date:
17 April 2014Length of book:
230 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
236x162mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780739188552
Antisemitism in the German Military Community and the Jewish Response, 1914–1938 explores how German World War I veterans from different social and political backgrounds contributed to antisemitic politics during the Weimar Republic. The book compares how the military, right-wing veterans, and Jewish veterans chose to remember their war experiences and translate these memories into a political reality in the postwar world. Antisemitism addresses several neglected issues.
First, there is relatively little scholarship discussing antisemitism in the imperial German army and the impact former imperial officers had on the antisemitic predilections of veteran associations. This subject deserves attention given that veteran politics during the Weimar Republic were of tremendous significance to the collapse of democracy and the rise of National Socialism, and that the primary architects of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” were either World War I veterans or had been members of paramilitary organizations in the interwar period.
The second issue addressed is how veterans influenced the definition of “Aryan” identity, or how race came to be perceived through the prism of war and political violence. Since German Jews had to fight both accusations of shirking military service and the perception of the “Jew” as effeminate, the manner in which these veterans tried to reforge Jewish identity and their relationship with their former comrades is an extraordinarily important issue.
The third issue concerns situational antisemitism, or the process by which an organization expressed an opinion or policy concerning Jews in response to internal dissension and external influences.
First, there is relatively little scholarship discussing antisemitism in the imperial German army and the impact former imperial officers had on the antisemitic predilections of veteran associations. This subject deserves attention given that veteran politics during the Weimar Republic were of tremendous significance to the collapse of democracy and the rise of National Socialism, and that the primary architects of the Third Reich and the “Final Solution” were either World War I veterans or had been members of paramilitary organizations in the interwar period.
The second issue addressed is how veterans influenced the definition of “Aryan” identity, or how race came to be perceived through the prism of war and political violence. Since German Jews had to fight both accusations of shirking military service and the perception of the “Jew” as effeminate, the manner in which these veterans tried to reforge Jewish identity and their relationship with their former comrades is an extraordinarily important issue.
The third issue concerns situational antisemitism, or the process by which an organization expressed an opinion or policy concerning Jews in response to internal dissension and external influences.
Belying anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews shirking military service, German Jewish soldiers died on the battlefields of WWI alongside their gentile comrades, and almost half of the German Jewish soldiers were decorated for bravery. It is known that the hopes for recognition of those 80,000 who survived the war were mostly disappointed, not only by 1933, but also in the Weimar Republic, with most rightist and conservative veterans’ organizations observing increasingly anti-Semitic policies. While confirming this general view, Crim unfolds a rather nuanced picture. In five chapters, he examines anti-Semitic attitudes and politics in the German Army before, during, and after WWI, in the Stahlhelm (the most proliferate right-wing veterans association), and in the less popular and more moderate Young German Order, and he explores the responses of the Jewish war veterans association to the increasingly yet never complete ostracism of Jewish servicemen from the gentile organizations. The final chapter outlines the radicalization of these politics through 1938. What propelled anti-Jewish stances and acts was, according to Crim, not ingrained hatred or disdain, but the need of these associations to overarch, or distract from, their massive internal divisions through 'situational anti-Semitism,' as he calls it. Clearly a scholarly book, addressed to graduates and faculty. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty.