National paradoxes of the Wehrmacht

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

In the reference material on the number and ethnic composition of the prisoners, it was indicated that among the 4 million 126 thousand 964 prisoners of various nationalities we took, there were also 10 thousand 137 Jews.

Naturally, many readers had questions about whether there really were such Jews who fought on the side of Hitler. Imagine, there were many such Jews.

The ban on the admission of Jews to military service was first introduced in Germany on November 11, 1935. However, since 1933, the dismissal of Jews who wore officer ranks began. True, many veteran officers of Jewish origin then received permission to remain in the army at the personal request of Hindenburg, but after his death they were gradually sent off to retirement. Until the end of 1938, 238 of these officers were expelled from the Wehrmacht. On January 20, 1939, Hitler ordered the dismissal of all Jewish officers, as well as all officers who were married to Jewish women.

Carl Gustav Mannerheim in the Helsinki synagogue. 1944 year

However, all these orders were not unconditional, and Jews were allowed to serve in the Wehrmacht with special permits. In addition, the dismissals occurred with a creak - each boss of the dismissed Jew zealously argued that his subordinate Jew was irreplaceable in his place. The Jewish quartermasters were especially tight-fisted.

Field Synagogue, Karelian Front. 1942

On August 10, 1940, only in the VII Military District (Munich) there were 2,269 Jewish officers who served in the Wehrmacht on the basis of a special permit. In all 17 districts, the number of Jewish officers was about 16 thousand people.

Units of the national people's militia of the Wehrmacht in United Europe version 1.0

For heroic deeds in the military field, Jews could be arized, that is, appropriated German nationality. In 1942, 328 Jewish officers were arized. Checking for Jewishness was provided only for officers. For the lower rank, only his own assurance was provided that neither he nor his wife were Jews. In this case, it was possible to grow to the stafffeldwebel, but if someone was eager to become an officer, then his origin was carefully checked. There were those who, upon entering the army, recognized their Jewish origin, but they could not receive a rank higher than the senior rifleman.

Professional saboteurs of the Wehrmacht on the Palestinian front, fighting British troops

It turns out that the Jews sought to join the army en masse, considering it the safest place for themselves in the conditions of the Third Reich. It was not difficult to hide Jewish origin - the majority of German Jews bore German names and surnames, and nationality was not written in the passport.

Checks of privates and non-commissioned officers for Jewishness began to be carried out only after the attempt on Hitler's life. Such checks covered not only the Wehrmacht, but also the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, and even the SS. Until the end of 1944, 65 soldiers and sailors, 5 SS soldiers, 4 NCOs, 13 lieutenants, one Untersturmführer, one SS Obersturmführer, three captains, two majors, one lieutenant colonel - battalion commander in the 213rd Infantry Division Ernst were identified Bloch, one colonel and one rear admiral - Karl Kuhlenthal.

Karl Külenthal reward from the hands of a tribesman

The latter served as a naval attaché in Madrid and carried out assignments for the Abwehr. One of the identified Jews was immediately Aryized for military service. The documents are silent about the fate of the rest. It is only known that Kühlenthal, thanks to Dönitz's intercession, was allowed to retire with the right to wear a uniform.

The former lieutenant of the Austro-Hungarian army, Gunter Burshtyn, who created the Motorgeschütz tank project in 1911, was also Jewish, which, however, was never implemented. During World War II, the Generalbaurat of Architecture Burshtyn served the Third Reich and even invented a new type of anti-tank bullet holes. A completely racial Jew, he was recognized as an honorary Aryan. In 1941 Burshtyn received the Military Merit Cross II and I class with swords. General Guderian presented awards. On April 15, 1945, Gunter Burshtyn was killed by Soviet soldiers at his estate in Korneuburg.

There is evidence that Grand Admiral Erich Johann Albert Raeder was also a Jew. His father was a schoolteacher who converted to Lutheranism in his youth. According to these very data, it was the revealed Jewry that became the real reason for Raeder's resignation on January 3, 1943.

Robert Borchardt

Many Jews named their nationality only in captivity. So, Wehrmacht Major Robert Borchardt, who received the Knight's Cross for a tank breakthrough of the Russian front in August 1941, was captured by the British at El Alamein, after which it turned out that his Jewish father lived in London. In 1944 Borchardt was released to his father, but in 1946 he returned to Germany. 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."

Walter Hollander

Another Jewish hero turned out to be Colonel Walter Hollander. During the war years, he was awarded the Iron Crosses of both degrees and a rare insignia - the Gold German Cross. In October 1944, Hollander was captured by us, where he declared his Jewishness. He remained in captivity until 1955, after which he returned to Germany and died in 1972.

Werner Goldberg

There is also a very curious case when for a long time the Nazi press placed on its covers a photograph of a blue-eyed blonde in a steel helmet as a model of the representative of the Aryan race. However, one day it turned out that Werner Goldberg, placed in these photos, turned out to be not only blue-eyed, but also blue-assed. Further clarification of Goldberg's identity also revealed that he was also a Jew. Goldberg was fired from the army, and he got a job as a salesman in a company that sews military uniforms. In 1959-79 Goldberg was a deputy in the Chamber of Deputies of West Berlin.

Erhardt Milch

The highest-ranking Jewish Nazi is considered to be Goering's Deputy Inspector General of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Erhard Milch. In order not to discredit Milch in the eyes of ordinary Nazis, the party leadership stated that Milch's mother did not have sex with her Jewish husband, and Erhard's real father was Baron von Beer. Goering laughed for a long time about this: "Yes, we made Milch a bastard, but an aristocratic bastard."

On May 4, 1945, Milch was caught by the British in the castle of Sicherhagen on the Baltic Sea coast and was sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court. In 1951, the term was reduced to 15 years, and by 1955, he was released early.

Some of the Jewish captives died in Soviet captivity and, according to the official position of Israel's National Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Yad Vashem, are considered Holocaust victims.

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