Were There Jews in the Nazi Army?

chronicle.com ^ | May 3, 2002 | DANNY POSTEL

[LarryLied]

I feel obliged to point out that any Christian support for the Nazis out of anti-Communism was fundamentally mistaken.

It sure was. The Old Guard in Germany thought they could use Hitler to put down the communist threat and at the same time contain him. As you know, they were mistaken.

[LarryLied]

To say that Nazism was just as anti-Christian as Communism just flies in the face of all facts.

They were anti-Christian but in a different way. Stalin, Kaganovitch and their associates simply killed Christians and blew up churches. The Nazis were molding Christianity into something very un-Christian and gradually replacing that with a teutonic paganism. Unless you were a resisting Christian such as Boenhoeffer, you survived in Nazi Germany. In the Soviet Union, you stood little chance of staying alive.

[Marduk]

" Stalin, Kaganovitch and their associates simply killed Christians and blew up churches. The Nazis were molding Christianity into something very un-Christian and gradually replacing that with a teutonic paganism. "

I would say they were trying to "Aryanize" Christianity. But this is irrelevant because Christianity was "Aryanized" during the early Christian period as the European pagans converted to Christianity. For instance, the birth of Christ was set as December 25, which was a traditional European pagan Holiday.

Traditional Christianity as we know it is in reality a fusion of some pagan European traditions with the traditions of early Christianity. During the process of conversion Christianity itself was transformed.

Thus, in fact, the Christianity that we know is very different from that of the early Christians. Protestantism was in some regards an attempt to make Christianty more like what it was in the early period. While Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity continued to retain that fusion of traditions.

So what I say to you is that whether this Nazi policy was anti-Christian or not depends on what "Christianity" we are talking about. It depends on what we mean by "Christianity" because not all forms of Christianity are the same.

[LarryLied]

No matter what form of Christianity that I know of you want to mention, it would be against the essence of German National Socialism. The concept of a "Volk" is contrary to Christian thought. In Christian theology, people are equal before God, no one is above another and everyone is welcome. They were not in Nazi ideology.

[Polybius]

What interested me greatly was Rigg's analysis of Jewish participation in World War 1 for Austria-Hungary and Germany.....The Anzacs at Gallipoli were commanded by Lt.General John Monash ,an Australian Jew,and his opposite number assisting the Turkish Army was Field Marshall Otto Liman von Sanders,a German who was half-Jewish.I find this kind of stuff interesting.

One German Jew that was lionized by Germany during World War I was the 20 victory ace Lt. Wilhelm Frankl who was awarded the Pour le Merite (the Blue Max) and whose portrait was featured in Sanke cards that glorified Germany's heroes during the war.

When the Nazis assumed power, Frankl's named was dropped from the rolls of Pour le Merite winners. His name was reinstated after World War II.

Frankl's Albatros fighter was the cover illustration of the 1924 book Judische Flieger im Weltkrieg (Jewish Flyers in the World War). Frankl's Albatros was decorated with his personal insignia which was, ironically,........................ a swastika.

Of course, during World War I, the swastika was merely a good luck symbol popular both in Europe as well as in the USA. The Lafayette Escadrille ace Raul Lufbery also decorated his SPAD 7 aircraft with a swastika.

[Marduk]

In that case much of what goes by the name of "Christianity" really isn't. Christianity has tolerated many social inequalities, and even justified them, particularly things such as slavery and other forms of racial inequality in a variety of countries ranging from the USA, to Latin America to South Africa, and wherever the European Christians went and settled.

The word "Volk" means something similar to what the words "folk" or "people" might mean to us. So I don't see how that in and of itself is unchristian. If those concepts are unchristian then we would have to say that all national states are unchristian and that only a theocracy, perhaps something like the old Papal states, is genuinely "Christian".

[Marduk]

I've been looking at that stuff in that link you posted. I found this one particularly moving:

"I took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk. Our soldiers felt very badly. I helped to fish out Germans from the sunken Bismarck, which received the greatest number of torpedoes in history. I saw the population of Malta sitting in the cellars for many weeks. I saw Malta being bombed incessantly and deafened by explosions of bombs and shells. They were exhausted from constant explosions and alarms. I lived through the sinking of my own ship. I know about jumping into the water at night, dark and without bottom, and the terrifying shouts for help of the drow- ning, and then the boat, and looking for the rescue ship. It was a nightmare. I drove German prisoners captured during the invasion of Normandy. They were almost dying from fear. But all that is nothing. The real, terrible, unspeakable fear I saw during the convoying and repatriation of people to Soviet Russia. They were becoming white, green and gray with the fear that took hold of them. When we arrived at the port and were handing them over to the Russians, the repatriates were fainting and losing their senses. And only now I know what a man's fear is who lived through hell, and that it is nothing compared to the fear of a man who is returning to the Soviet hell."

[sheik yerbouty]

My guess is that this custom evoved as a consequence of rape and pillage by their "neighbors". The child of such a rape was raised as a Jew. Jews were generally forbidden to keep or bear arms for many centuries.

[LarryLied]

Familiar with Operation Keelhaul?

This occurred about the time Ronald Reagan became a Republican. Don't know if Keelhaul was the precipating event but a friend wrote that one day he went into Reagans office and found him with his head in his hands as depressed as he had ever seen him. Reagan kept repeating, "I don't know what is going to happen to America.""

[Fabozz]

"If their mothers were Jews they would qualify as 'Jews' according to Israel's law of return."

It's not quite that simple: You don't have to be a practicing Jew, but you can't be a practicing anything else. Yes, if your mother was Jewish then you're Jewish by halakha, but if you were raised Catholic and attend Mass every Sunday, you're not Jewish by Israeli civil law and are thus ineligible for the Law of Return.

[Truthsayer20]

"The Nazis at least tried to do something to stop the extermination of Christians. This is why Slavic Christians welcomed the Germans as liberators."

The feeling didn't last long, however, as the eastern Slavs started to figure out what the Nazis had in mind for them. If Germany had won the war there would be no such thing as Poland or Russia; their lands were to be colonized by ethnic Germans.

[SauronOfMordor]

but people with jewish mothers would be jewish to jews and raised as jews -

My sister-in-law was born Jewish, converted to Christianity, married a Baptist, raised her two daughters as Christians, and the oldest just married a Christian.

Would you consider them Jews?

[steamroller]

I am familiar with his story.There is now a German Air Force squadron named for him.Thanks for the reference though.

[jonatron]

That sounds reasonable to me. I agree that the truth should be known no matter how ugly it may be.

[LarryLied]

Thanks. Some think this is an attempt to smear. It is not. The crazies are created out of frustration when history is repressed and/or rewritten. Preventing that and seeking equal justice under law is what my comments, at least, are about.

[SJackson]

My sister-in-law was born Jewish, converted to Christianity, married a Baptist, raised her two daughters as Christians, and the oldest just married a Christian.
Would you consider them Jews?

No, she's Christian. Which is not to say she couldn't lie about the conversion, in which case she's Jewish if born to a Jewish mom.

From Law of Return 5710-1950

For the purposes of this Law, "Jew" means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion."

[SJackson]

This crap is just a variation of the jihadist/nazi line "The Jews did it to themselved."

Some may use that was, but it's an interesting topic. Of course, labeling them "Jewish Soldiers" is a bit bizarre, though obviously attractive from a publicity standpoint, given the fact that, by Nazi definition, they would have had no connection to Judiasm or the Jewish communith.

[swarthyguy]

It was a hotbed of espionage Portugal being a neutral country. Refugees from the Reich used it as a transit point to the Americas. Minerals needed by the Reich were mined from Portugal and sent to Germany. All the secret services were well represented in the city.

[Fabozz]

"So what about the Rabbi in Rome who converted to Catholicism at the end of the war? Was he eligible to be a Jewish citizen of Israel?"

At the end of WWII, maybe, I dunno. Now, definitely not. The rule on apostates was formed in the mid-60s, in a court case involving a monk who wanted to immigrate to Israel but remain a monk.

Under the Law of Return as presently formulated, there would definitely be many people Jewish enough to be shipped off to the camps, but not Jewish enough to flee to Israel. The Law of Return can be amended by the Knesset or the courts at any time, so one presumes that if a situation like Nazi Germany arose, Israel would rework the law to open the door wider for refugees. But, to a certain extent, the decision was made that the composition of the Jewish state would be determined by Jewish law, not de facto by Nazi German law.