Hitler's Jewish soldiers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

150 thousand soldiers and officers of the army, air force and navy could repatriate to Israel, according to the Law of Return. This suggests that in almost every Jewish family in Germany in the 40s, someone fought on the side of the Nazis …

In the photo: private Wehrmacht Anton Mayer

Rigg's Raids

He crossed Germany by bicycle, sometimes doing 100 kilometers a day. For months he kept himself on cheap sandwiches with jam and peanut butter, slept in a sleeping bag near provincial train stations. Then, there were raids in Sweden, Canada, Turkey and Israel. The search trips lasted six years, in the company of a video camera and a laptop. In the summer of 2002, the world saw the fruits of this asceticism: 30-year-old Brian Mark Rigg published his final work - "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and People of Jewish Descent in the German Army."

Brian, an evangelical Christian (like President Bush), from a working-class Texas Bible Belt, IDF volunteer, and US Marine officer, suddenly became interested in his past. Why, one of his ancestors served in the Wehrmacht, and the other died in Auschwitz?

Behind Rigg was his studies at Yale University, a grant from Cambridge, 400 interviews with Wehrmacht veterans, 500 hours of video footage, 3,000 photographs and 30,000 pages of memoirs of Nazi soldiers and officers - those people whose Jewish roots allow them to repatriate to Israel even tomorrow. Rigg's calculations and conclusions sound quite sensational: in the German army, on the fronts of World War II, up to 150 thousand soldiers who had Jewish parents or grandparents fought.

The term "mishlinge" in the Reich called people born from mixed marriages of Aryans with non-Aryans. The racial laws of 1935 distinguished the Mischlinge of the first degree (one of the parents was Jewish) and the second degree (the grandmother or grandfather was Jewish).

Despite the legal "spoilage" of people with Jewish genes and despite the loud propaganda, tens of thousands of "mishlinges" lived peacefully under the Nazis. They were usually called up in the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, becoming not only soldiers, but also part of the generals, at the level of commanders of regiments, divisions and armies. Hundreds of "mishlinges" were awarded Iron Crosses for bravery. Twenty soldiers and officers of Jewish origin were awarded the highest military award of the Third Reich - the Knight's Cross.

Veterans of the Wehrmacht complained to Rigg that the authorities were reluctant to introduce them to the orders and were drawn to promotion in rank, mindful of their Jewish ancestors (a similar "clamp" of Jewish front-line soldiers was in the Soviet army).

Fate

The revealed life stories might seem fantastic, but they are real and confirmed by documents. Thus, an 82-year-old resident of the north of Germany, a Jewish believer, served as a captain in the Wehrmacht during the war, secretly observing Jewish rites in the field.

For a long time, the Nazi press put on their covers a photo of a blue-eyed blonde in a helmet. The picture read: "The ideal German soldier." This Aryan ideal was the Wehrmacht fighter Werner Goldberg (with a Jewish dad).

Major of the Wehrmacht Robert Borchardt received the Knight's Cross for a tank breakthrough of the Russian front in August 1941. Then, Robert was assigned to Rommel's Afrika Korps. At El Alamein Borchardt was captured by the British. In 1944, a prisoner of war was allowed to come to England to reunite with his Jewish father. In 1946, Robert returned to Germany, telling his Jewish dad: "Someone has to rebuild our country."

In 1983, shortly before his death, Borchardt told German schoolchildren: "Many Jews and half-Jews who fought for Germany in World War II believed that they should honestly defend their Fatherland while serving in the army."

Colonel Walter Hollander, whose mother was Jewish, received a personal letter from Hitler, in which the Führer certified the Aryanism of this Halachic Jew. The same certificates of "German blood" were signed by Hitler for dozens of high-ranking officers of Jewish origin. Hollander, during the war years, was awarded the Iron Crosses of both degrees and a rare insignia - the Gold German Cross. Hollander received the Knight's Cross in July 1943, when his anti-tank brigade destroyed 21 Soviet tanks at the Kursk Bulge in one battle. Walter was given leave; he went to the Reich through Warsaw. It was there that he was shocked by the sight of the destroyed Jewish ghetto. Hollander returned to the front spiritually broken; Personnel officers entered into his personal file - "too independent and little controlled", hacking to death his promotion to the rank of general. In October 1944, Walter was captured and spent 12 years in Stalin's camps. He died in 1972 in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The story of the rescue of the Lubavitcher Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson from Warsaw in the fall of 1939 is full of secrets. The Chabadniki in the United States have turned to Secretary of State Cordell Hull for help. The State Department agreed with Admiral Canaris, the head of military intelligence (Abwehr), on the free passage of Schneerson through the Reich to neutral Holland. The Abwehr and the Rebbe found a common language: the German intelligence officers did everything to keep America from entering the war, and the Rebbe used a unique chance to survive. Only recently it became known that the operation to remove the Lubavitcher Rebbe from occupied Poland was led by Abwehr Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Ernst Bloch, the son of a Jew.

Bloch defended the rabbi from the attacks of the German soldiers accompanying him. This officer himself was "covered" with a reliable document: "I, Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer of the German nation, hereby confirm that Ernst Bloch is of special German blood." True, in February 1945, this paper did not prevent Bloch from being dismissed. It is interesting to note that his namesake, a Jew, Dr. Eduard Bloch, in 1940 personally received permission from the Fuehrer to travel to the United States: it was a doctor from Linz who treated Hitler's mother and Adolf himself in childhood.

Who were the Wehrmacht "mishlinges" - victims of anti-Semitic persecution or accomplices of the executioners?

Life has often put them in absurd situations. One soldier with the Iron Cross on his chest came from the front to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to … visit his Jewish father there. The SS officer was shocked by this guest: "If it were not for the award on your uniform, you would have quickly ended up with me in the same place as your father."

Another story was told by a 76-year-old resident of the Federal Republic of Germany, 100 percent Jewish: he managed to escape from occupied France in 1940 with forged documents. Under a new German name, he was drafted into the Waffen-SS - select combat units. “If I served in the German army and my mother died in Auschwitz, then who am I - the victim or one of the persecutors? The Germans, feeling guilty for what they have done, do not want to hear about us. The Jewish community also turns its back on people like me, because our stories contradict everything that is used to consider the Holocaust."

List of 77

In January 1944, the Wehrmacht personnel department prepared a secret list of 77 high-ranking officers and generals, "mixed with the Jewish race or married to Jews." All 77 had Hitler's personal certificates of "German blood". The list includes 23 colonels, 5 major generals, 8 lieutenant generals and two full army generals. Today Brian Rigg says: "To this list can be added another 60 names of senior officers and generals of the Wehrmacht, aviation and navy, including two field marshals."

In 1940, all officers with two Jewish grandparents were ordered to leave military service. Those who were “tainted” by Jewry only from the side of one of the grandfathers could remain in the army in rank-and-file positions. The reality was different - these orders were not carried out. Therefore, they were repeated to no avail in 1942, 1943 and 1944.

There were frequent cases when German soldiers, driven by the laws of the "front-line brotherhood", hid "their Jews", not handing them over to the party and punitive bodies. Such scenes of the 1941 model could well have taken place: a German company, hiding "its Jews", takes prisoners of the Red Army, who, in turn, hand over "their Jews" and commissars for reprisal.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, a Luftwaffe officer and grandson of a Jew, testifies: “Only in my air unit there were 15-20 guys like me. I am convinced that Rigg's deep immersion in the problems of German soldiers of Jewish origin will open up new perspectives in the study of the military history of Germany in the 20th century."

Rigg single-handedly documented 1,200 examples of mishlinge service in the Wehrmacht - soldiers and officers with close Jewish ancestors. A thousand of these front-line soldiers killed 2,300 Jewish relatives - nephews, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers and fathers.

One of the most sinister figures of the Nazi regime could add to the "77th list." Reinhard Heydrich, the favorite of the Fuhrer and the head of the RSHA, who controls the Gestapo, criminal police, intelligence, counterintelligence, all his (fortunately, short) life fought against rumors of Jewish origin. Reinhard was born in Leipzig (1904), the son of the director of the conservatory. The family story says that his grandmother married a Jew shortly after the birth of the father of the future chief of the RSHA. As a child, older boys often beat Reinhardt, calling him a Jew (by the way, Eichmann was also teased as a “little Jew” at school), as a 16-year-old boy, he joins the chauvinist organization Freikorps to dispel rumors about a Jewish grandfather.

In the mid-1920s, Heydrich served as a cadet on the training ship Berlin, where the captain was the future Admiral Canaris. Reinhard meets his wife Erica, arranges Haydn and Mozart's home violin concerts with her. But in 1931, Heydrich was dismissed in disgrace from the army for violating the officer's code of honor (seducing the young daughter of the ship's commander). Heydrich climbs the Nazi stairs. The youngest SS Obergruppenfuehrer (rank equal to an army general) intrigues against his former benefactor Canaris, trying to subjugate the Abwehr. Canaris's answer is simple: the admiral, at the end of 1941, hides photocopies of documents about Heydrich's Jewish origin in his safe.

It was the chief of the RSHA who held the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question." Heydrich's report clearly states that the grandchildren of a Jew are viewed as Germans and not subject to reprisals. One day, having returned home drunk to smithereens at night, Heydrich turns on the light in the room. Reinhard suddenly sees himself in the mirror and shoots him twice with a pistol, shouting to himself: "Vile Jew!"

Air Field Marshal Erhard Milch can be considered a classic example of a "hidden Jew" in the elite of the Third Reich. His father was a Jewish pharmacist. Due to his Jewish origin, Erhard was not admitted to the Kaiser's military schools, but the outbreak of the First World War gave him access to aviation, Milch got into the division of the famous Richthoffen, met the young ace Goering and distinguished himself at the headquarters, although he himself did not fly airplanes.

In 1920, Junkers patronized Milch, promoting the former front-line soldier in his concern. In 1929 Milch became the CEO of Lufthansa, the national air carrier. The wind was already blowing towards the Nazis, and Erhard provides free Lufthansa aircraft for the leaders of the NSDAP. This service is not forgotten. Having come to power, the Nazis declare that Milch's mother did not have sex with her Jewish husband, and Erhard's real father is Baron von Beer. Goering laughed for a long time about this: "Yes, we made Milch a bastard, but an aristocratic bastard!" Another aphorism of Goering about Milch: "In my headquarters, I myself will decide who is Jewish and who is not!"

Field Marshal Milch actually led the Luftwaffe on the eve and during the war, replacing Goering. It was Milch who oversaw the development of the new Me-262 jet and V-rocket. After the war, Milch served nine years in prison, and then, until the age of 80, worked as a consultant for the Fiat and Thyssen concerns.

Reich's grandchildren

Dr. Jonathan Steinberg, Project Manager for Rigg at the University of Cambridge, praises his student for daring and overcoming the hardships of the study: "Brian's findings make the reality of the Nazi state more complex." The young American, in my opinion, not only makes the picture of the Third Reich and the Holocaust more voluminous, but also forces the Israelis to take a fresh look at the usual definitions of Jewry.

Previously, it was believed that in World War II all Jews fought on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition. Jewish soldiers in the Finnish, Romanian and Hungarian armies were seen as exceptions to the rule. Now Brian Rigg confronts us with new facts, leading Israel to an unheard-of paradox.

Think about it: 150 thousand soldiers and officers of the Hitlerite army could be repatriated, according to the Israeli Law of Return. The current appearance of this law, spoiled by the late insertion about the separate right of a Jewish grandson to aliyah, allows thousands of Wehrmacht veterans to come to Israel! Left-wing Israeli politicians are trying to defend the grandchildren amendment by saying that the Jewish grandchildren were also persecuted by the Third Reich.

Read Brian Rigg, gentlemen! The suffering of these grandchildren was often reflected in the delay in the next Iron Cross. The fate of the children and grandchildren of German Jews once again shows us the tragedy of assimilation. Grandfather's apostasy from the religion of the ancestors boomerangs the entire Jewish people and his German grandson, who is fighting for the ideals of Nazism in the ranks of the Wehrmacht.

Unfortunately, a galut escape from one's own "I" characterizes not only Germany of the last century, but also Israel today.

"Vesti", 22.08.2002