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Untold Sequel Bryan Mark Rigg. Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Fought for the Third Reich. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. xiv + 314 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7006-1638-1. Reviewed by David Yelton Published on H-German (June, 2010) Commissioned by Benita Blessing (Oregon State University) Bryan Mark Rigg's Lives of Hitler's Jewish Sol‐ protect themselves and their families from the diers: Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Nazi regime. Most of the individuals profiled in Fought for the Third Reich recounts the military twenty-one mini-biographies had hoped that ex‐ experiences of selected German men of mixed emplary soldierly conduct would prove their loy‐ Jewish-Gentile descent (officially labeled Mis‐ alty to Germany. Some men sought medals for chlinge [mixed race, or crossbreed] during the bravery. Many of these soldiers wanted official Nazi years) who served in the Wehrmacht. Rigg's protection from government persecution based book seeks to explain why these partially Jewish on their Jewish ancestry: various Nazi provisions men served a regime based on a virulently anti- permitted a kind of "Germanization" that replaced Semitic ideology that launched a policy of perse‐ officialracial status as part Jewish (such as the cution and genocide against those people that it Deutschblütigkeitserklärung, or the Gehemigung). considered to be of full or partial Jewish ancestry. This explanation for voluntary military service by This is Rigg's second book on this topic and fol‐ these Jewish-Gentiles seems plausible. lows his very successful Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: Another common theme raised by Rigg's bi‐ The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of ographies is that identity was never a clear-cut is‐ Jewish Descent in the German Military (2002). As sue for these men--and indeed remained complex with most sequels, this book disappoints some‐ after 1945. Many of these soldiers stressed that what, since it generally echoes the frst book's they did not identify themselves as Jewish until themes. the Nuremberg Laws forced that definition upon Rigg estimates that 150,000 men of mixed them. Some admitted to feeling hostility, alien‐ Jewish-Gentile ancestry served at some time in ation, or resentment towards their Jewish rela‐ the German Wehrmacht. He contends that the pri‐ tives and ancestors. Indeed, until the Nazis in‐ mary motivation for their service was a desire to formed them of their Mischling status, several H-Net Reviews men had never known they had Jewish ancestry. ed them from the Reich's racial laws. Likewise, the All of them recalled viewing themselves as patri‐ story of Major Ernst Bloch, who was involved in otic Germans. After the war, most of the men the rescue of the Lubbavitcher Rebbe Joseph Isaac were either non-religious, Christian (two became Schneersohn, receives considerable attention. pastors), or otherwise distanced themselves from This example, however, only illustrates that a few any Jewish identification. The title of this book, Jewish-Germans helped rescue Jews. which refers to the men as Jewish, is thus ques‐ The book, part of the University of Kansas's tionable. Although Rigg discusses extensively the highly regarded Modern War Studies, contains in‐ topic of identity, he does not explore it deeply. Nor formation of interest to the specialist. Nonethe‐ does he investigate the possibility that these men less, its target audience is unclear. Several sec‐ may well have served in the Wehrmacht to prove tions, such as his overview of the Wehrmacht's to everyone--perhaps even to themselves--that history, are unnecessary for historians of World they were German, not Jews. War II. Likewise, other, tangential, issues detract The book is largely based on oral histories. In from Rigg's focus, such as his discussion on how addition to the interviews, Rigg utilized personnel postwar Germany has better confronted its war records and secondary sources, particularly for crimes than has Japan (pp. 130-131). the more prominent individuals such as Luftwaffe In both style and content, the book is fawed. Field Marshal Erhard Milch. Given the source It is frequently repetitive; for example, details base, the work inevitably suffers from the limita‐ about the same set of brothers in chapter 1 are tions that interviews impose: conflation of events, also in chapter 2, and nearly identical explana‐ forgetfulness, selective memory, reluctance to of‐ tions of Hitler's banning of half-Jews from the mil‐ fer the full truth (particularly regarding difficult itary in 1940 appear throughout the book. Rigg's issues, such as their knowledge of the Holocaust), extensive introductions of his interviewees may and self-justification. Rigg is a sympathetic author have been intended to personalize their biogra‐ and, presumably, interviewer. This attitude to‐ phies, but they are sometimes light-hearted, awk‐ wards his interview subjects probably coaxed ward, and superfluous. Readers will not learn these men into divulging more information than more about these soldiers' histories with descrip‐ one might expect. Yet, at the same time, Rigg re‐ tions of, for instance, a ninety-year-old "who frains from asking hard questions about the moti‐ moved with great energy" (p. 76-77) or "a kindly vations of these men. 'grandpa' type who has enjoyed his life and fami‐ While Rigg's conclusions are largely enlight‐ ly" (p. 41). It is almost embarrassing to read that ening and reasonable, he does not address the is‐ one man had "enjoyed the company of women sue of whether the experiences of his interlocu‐ and had been quite the player when young" (p. tors are representative of all, or even most, 77). mixed-ancestry Wehrmacht soldiers. Rigg never The book is riddled with errors and careless explains how he chose the individuals for this phrasings. In one instance, Rigg writes, "During book. To be sure, the mere availability of some the period known as the Phony War--between 1 men justified interviewing them, but he seems to September 1939 and 9 May 1940, the date when have also sought out famous individuals, such as fighting broke out between the Allies and Ger‐ Milch or General Helmut Wilberg. Their presence many in the west …" (p. 60). This troubling state‐ in this book adds little to his argument beyond es‐ ment moves the actual invasion date ahead by tablishing that some Mischlinge achieved high- one day and presents the German invasion as an ranking offices after Adolf Hitler himself exempt‐ unimportant border incident. Similarly, "The suc‐ 2 H-Net Reviews cess of the Blitzkrieg style of attack on Poland en‐ couraged Hitler soon thereafter to invade France" (p. 80) distorts--or ignores--significant scholarly work on Nazi wartime strategic thinking. Rigg maintains that General Helmut Wilberg "devel‐ oped the operational concept called Blitzkrieg" (p. 171), although there is general agreement in the field that no single individual created this con‐ cept. Surprisingly, we learn that General Wilberg faced difficulties in Spain "because the whole in‐ frastructure of the country had been destroyed," an exaggerated assertion (p. 190). Rigg mentions that a German Jew "emigrated to Israel" in the late 1930s (p. 88) and that a soldier's anti-tank unit employed "bazookas" (p. 245) in late 1941--when neither the country nor the weapon existed at those times. These mistakes and oversights de‐ tract from Rigg's argument. Overall, Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers per‐ forms the important function of preserving sto‐ ries of men whose life experiences illuminate an interesting aspect of life during the Third Reich. It also highlights the complexity at the individual level of the Nazis' effort to implement radical poli‐ cies based upon a simplistic racial dichotomy. Rigg also shows that average Germans did not fully ac‐ cept the Nazis' racial ideologies; some Germans protected individuals whom they did not believe should be persecuted as Jews. Moreover, the book demonstrates that the Third Reich was inconsis‐ tent in its persecution and genocide of those it la‐ beled Jews. These contributions to the scholarly research on race and the Holocaust are not new; indeed, Rigg made them in his previous book. For those interested in German-Jews and the Wehrmacht, Rigg's book is worth reading, with the caution that the book's subtitle of "Untold Tales" may claim too much. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-german 3 H-Net Reviews Citation: David Yelton. Review of Rigg, Bryan Mark. Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Fought for the Third Reich. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2010. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30367 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 4.
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