German Jewish military personnel of World War II
Up to 150,000[dubious – discuss] men deemed to be of Jewish ancestry (60,000 "half-Jews" and 90,000 "quarter-Jews") served in the Wehrmacht during World War II despite the openly and aggressively anti-semitic policies of Nazi Germany.
[6] In April 1935, upon the replacement of the Reichswehr with the Wehrmacht, there was debate between those who favoured "Mischlinge" being conscripted for military service (such as Reichsminister of War Werner von Blomberg) and those who opposed this (such as Reichsleiter Martin Bormann).
[14] The Ministry of the Interior drafted an edict stating that "half-Jews" and "quarter-Jews" who served as frontline soldiers would be deemed equivalent to persons of "German blood", other than still facing marriage restrictions, but it was not approved by Hitler.
Following a lobbying campaign by the Washington, D.C.-based attorney Max Rhoade, the German diplomat Helmut Wohlthat agreed to arrange for Schneersohn to be evacuated from Poland in an attempt to maintain good relations with the United States.
Bloch, a veteran of World War I, was the son of a Jewish father who had converted to Christianity and an Aryan mother who was described as an "assimilated half-Jew".
[2] On 28 March 1940, Werner Blankenburg of the Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP (KdF) wrote to Major Gerhard Engel, Hitler's army adjutant, noting the problems for morale caused by the treatment of "half-Jews" and "quarter-Jews" while on leave, and the consequent risks associated with their having accessing to military secrets, proposing the exclusion of "half-Jews" from the Wehrmacht.
[21] Some personnel duly turned themselves in; on one occasion, a commanding officer summarily executed a Jewish soldier, "infuriated at having his ranks sullied".
[24] In September 1940, the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) stated that "again and again cases have come to the attention of the OKH in which Jewish Mischlinge of the first degree (50%) or soldiers married to such Jewish Mischlinge are still in active military service in violation of the [8 April 1940] order" and insisted that all active personnel sign a declaration relating to their racial status.
"[26] Some "well-placed" persons of mixed "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" descent, such as Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch and General der Flieger Helmuth Wilberg, were granted German Blood Certificates.
[20][22] In 1944, Hitler signed declarations for 77 high-ranking Wehrmacht officers who were "of mixed Jewish race or married to a Jew", asserting that they were of German blood.
[6] In January 1945, the Orthodox yeshiva student Simon Gossel, who had spent two years in Auschwitz concentration camp, was transported by boxcar back to Germany.
Despite being circumcised and having an Auschwitz tattoo, Gossel was able to masquerade as an "ethnic German", and went on to serve in the Wehrmacht, enabling him to survive the remainder of the war.
[1] Beyond personnel of Jewish descent serving in the Wehrmacht, Jewish slave labour was utilised extensively to support the German war effort, with captive Jews forced to perform tasks such as digging anti-tank ditches, repairing vehicles, demining, digging underground tunnels, and manufacturing equipment such as uniforms, artillery shells, and V-2 rockets.
In September 1942, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) ordered that all Jews engaged in armament production in the Generalgouvernement were to be replaced by Poles; in response, General Curt Ludwig von Gienanth (the commander of the Wehrmacht in the Generalgouvernement) argued that the removal of Jews was resulting in a "a decline in the military potential of the Reich".
[34] Beginning in autumn 1944, between 10,000 and 20,000 "half-Jews" and persons related to Jews by "mixed marriage" were recruited into special units of the Organisation Todt, a civil and military-based engineering programme that utilised forced labour to deliver large-scaled constructional projects throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe.
