C-Span Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

As many as 150,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen of partial Jewish descent served in Adolf Hitler's forces.

Historian Brian Mark Rigg considers their role in the new book, Hitler's Jewish Soldiers.

This talk is an hour and 15 minutes.

Well, for those of you I said, I want to thank the University Press of Kansas

and also C-SPAN's Book TV for being here tonight because this is a special event.

Not only have I had the honor of having Professor Rigg speak here once, but he's here twice.

He was here about this time last year.

And Brian received his bachelor's degree with honors in history from Yale University in 1996.

He was then awarded the Henry Fellowship for Graduate Study at Cambridge University,

where he received his master's and his Ph.D.

Currently, he is professor of history at American Military University.

And he has served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army.

And as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.

In addition to his extensive research travel,

he has also engaged in humanitarian work in Romania, Bulgaria, the Bahamas, South Africa, and France.

An unprecedented and invaluable result of his work

and his efforts to record the stories of these men in this book

has been his success in gathering over 30,000 pages of records,

more than 500 hours of videotape interviews, and 3,000 photographs.

That document the military experiences of these men.

In 1997, the Federal German Military Archives purchased what is now called the Brian Mark Rigg Collection.

And these materials are now housed in the Bundesarchiv in Freiburg.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Dr. Brian Mark Rigg.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

If I don't use the microphone here at the podium, can everybody hear me?

I always feel like I need to be in a church or a temple if I'm behind a podium.

I'd like to first give some thanks to some very special people who have helped me throughout the years.

At Yale University, I'd like to thank Professor Paula Hyman, Henry Turner, and Jeffrey Sammons

for their continued support and help, especially during my undergraduate years.

And I'd also like to especially thank my graduate professor at Cambridge University, Jonathan Steinberg,

who helped me tremendously during my master's and graduate work.

Also, I'd like to thank Professor...

Professor Michael Baerbaum, who helped me tremendously in putting my work together

and then with some other projects that I've been working on.

He's been incredibly generous with his time and helpful.

And he's a research director at the Shoah Foundation, for those who do not know Michael Baerbaum.

And he's a brilliant, brilliant historian.

I'd also like to thank the William Colby Symposium for the award that they gave me this year for my book

for first-time author in military history.

I was indeed honored by that.

Before I begin talking to you tonight about my research about Jews and men of Jewish descent

who served in the German military during World War II,

I'd like to give you a little background on my person,

which will maybe help you understand a little bit about my motivation

and my drive to look into this subject matter.

I was born in Texas in 1971 and was brought up in a very Protestant environment.

I didn't know about my own Jewish background until I was 21.

When I went over to Germany, started researching my family's background,

and found this out, which was quite shocking for me.

And when I found this out, I started thinking to myself, you know,

what would have happened to me and my family had we remained in Germany and not come over to America?

And so this played with my imagination quite a bit at this time when I was 21,

which was basically at the time when I started really becoming very interested

in the Holocaust and World War II history.

I also have the dubious honor of having failed first grade twice.

I have what people today call 80s.

I have what people today call 80s.

I have what people today call 80s.

I have what people today call 80s.

I have what people today call ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

And I also had a speech impediment when I was young.

I got my T's and F's mixed up quite often, so that made for quite interesting conversation

when I played with my trucks around my family's friends

or when I asked the babysitter to tuck me into bed and so on.

So my mother was very worried about me as a young child.

And after failing first grade for the second time,

she realized she had to do something very quickly to get me back on track.

So she looked around for special schools.

And she found a wonderful school at Texas Christian University called Starpoint.

And it was for severe learning disabled kids.

I met all the requirements and was accepted there.

And when I went there, if you look at my file from the Child Study Center there in Fort Worth,

you will read that I had the philosophy at the time, I can't.

I can't do it.

They would start doing a test with me.

I would finish halfway.

I mean, I'd go halfway through, stop it.

I couldn't finish it until the doctor or the nurse,

the nurse that was working with me, I can't do it.

So I went to this school.

I expressed my frustrations.

I also expressed how everybody thought I was abnormal.

Or that's at least the way I felt.

I mean, the church that we went to was also the school that I had failed first grade at twice.

So every time we went to church on Sunday,

the kids that I had gone to school with didn't let me forget my failure.

Now, when I went to Starpoint, I had a wonderful teacher.

Her name was Mary Stewart.

And she pulled me underneath her wings and she said,

No, you're not a freak.

You're not abnormal.

You're just different.

And I'm here to help you find your strengths.

And in this one year, I went from not being able to pronounce individual words

to reading books at the third and fourth grade level,

doing elementary geometry and algebra.

And in that year, I realized I was a contrarian in many respects.

Somebody told me I couldn't do something.

Well, you know, I'll look into it and see what I can do.

Also, I learned that the limitations put on people usually come from themselves,

not from what other people are saying.

And so it's a matter of who you listen to as far as criticism is concerned.

And that teacher really instilled in me a great confidence.

And when I graduated from Yale University, Mary Stewart was there.

And I went on, as Sam Anthony mentioned.

And thank you, Sam, for that warm introduction.

And so I went on from Yale and went on to Cambridge University where I did my graduate studies.

And I mentioned that story about my background also to help you understand a little bit about my motivation also with this research.

When I first began doing this research,

I had a lot of opposition from professors that I talked to about it.

And they said, I wouldn't find anything.

Don't waste your time.

And then here again, that voice inside of me said, well, I'll look into it.

They say, I can't do it.

I'll see what I can find out.

Now, when people hear about my research,

about Jews and men of Jewish descent who served in the German armed forces during World War II,

I often get the question, how did you get involved with this research?

Well, it started in 1992 when I had finished my first year at Yale University

and decided to spend the summer in Germany

learning the language of my ancestors and researching my family's background.

I enrolled in the Goethe Institute for German Language.

And after a month of studying there,

I asked one of my instructors if he could recommend a film I could watch to improve my German.

He in turn asked me, well, what subject matters are you interested in?

And I told him World War II and the Holocaust.

He then told me, you've got to go see the film Europa, Europa.

So I went to a Berlin theater in the middle of the city,

bought my ticket, and entered an empty auditorium.

And while waiting for the film to begin,

I heard the doors open up behind me,

and I turned to see an old man walk in.

His eyes had not adjusted to the darkness,

and he was a little discombobulated with his surroundings.

He leaned up against the wall,

and it was evident that he was unsure of his footing.

So with my good Texas upbringing,

I went up to the man and asked him if I could help him find a seat.

He was very appreciative, and I sat him next to me.

He quickly heard that my German was not very good,

and he began to speak English to me.

In fluent British English,

he told me if I had any questions during the film,

that I should just ask.

We basically translated the entire dialogue.

And since we were the only ones there,

we were not worried about bothering anyone.

The film is about Shlomo Perel,

a German Jew who fled to Poland in 1936

due to Nazi persecution.

In 1939, when Germany invaded Poland,

he escaped to Russia.

In 1941, when Germany invaded Russia,

he had nowhere else to run to,

and he was taken prisoner outside of the city of Minsk.

And during his interrogation,

he emphatically denied that he was Jewish,

and he said that he was a Volksdeutsche,

an ethnic German instead.

His testimony was accepted,

and a few days later,

he found himself serving in a tank company

as their interpreter,

since he could speak Polish, Russian, and German.

He spends one year in this combat unit,

and after this year,

his company commander, Captain von Munchau,

who was childless at the time,

decides to adopt him, of all things,

and sends him back to a Hitler youth prep school

where he survived the war.

Now, after this film,

I asked the gentleman next to me,

his name was Peter Milius,

what he thought about this film.

And he said,

wait, it's very close to my own history,

would you like to go talk?

And I said, sure.

And we walked down the street to a restaurant

where he would tell me a story

until the early hours of the morning.

Peter was of Jewish descent,

and spent four years in the German armed forces.

He told me about the fear he felt

of falsifying his documents

and serving in the German army.

The German military at the time

was called a Wehrmacht.

I'll be using this term quite often.

And he also told me about

the pain and suffering he experienced

when he lost his only brother, Walter,

at the Battle of Leningrad in 1942.

And he also told me about the constant worries

he felt for his half-Jewish mother.

After the war,

the Russians took him prisoner,

and he spent the next four and a half years

in a Siberian prisoner war camp.

Now, after this experience with Peter,

I thought it was a strange coincidence

that here this kid from Texas

goes to Germany

to learn the language of his ancestors,

research his family's background,

and in the process,

goes to this film

about a Jew who served in the Nazi military,

only to sit next to

a Wehrmacht veteran of Jewish descent.

And then one month later,

I go and research my own family's background,

and I find Jews in my family tree,

which I'd never known before.

So that's how I originally got involved

with this subject matter.

Now, what have I found?

In the fall of 1992,

I returned to Yale

to begin my sophomore year,

and I began to ask several of my professors

about looking for more men

of Jewish descent who served in the German military.

And they all told me

that they had studied the Holocaust

and World War II history

for 20, 30, even 40 years,

and that they had never heard about this before.

They recommended that I study

some serious German history

instead of chasing after some curious anomalies

who would not add anything

to our understanding of the Third Reich.

Now, most of these professors were very nice to me.

They gave me their professional opinion.

However, once I found out

that they had not looked into this subject matter,

or they didn't know anybody who had looked into it,

I decided to explore it.

I thought if I could find 20 or 30 individuals

like Shlomo or Peter,

that I could write an interesting senior essay.

So I began to conduct or take courses

on the Holocaust and World War II history

with great energy,

and by the end of this year,

I was awarded a scholarship from Yale

to return to Germany,

live with Peter,

and document his life more thoroughly.

After this summer with Peter,

I came back to Yale,

and I began to organize a seminar

at Yale University

to bring Shlomo Perel from Israel to Yale

and speak there at the Hillel

in the history department,

which actually happened in April of 1994.

I also, during this year,

began to conduct independent studies

about the World War II and the Holocaust,

and by the end of this year,

I had documented seven living

Wehrmacht veterans of Jewish descent.

Now, I wanted to go to Europe

to interview these individuals,

so I applied for several small scholarships

and got many of them.

I knew it was a fight against time.

Because of the age of these veterans,

so I actually decided

to take off a year

between my junior and senior years

and dedicate the next 14 months

to this project.

I mean, to give you a sense of urgency

I felt at the time,

I'll tell you a quick story

about Alexander Stahlberg,

who I called up for an interview.

Alexander Stahlberg,

and also I'll describe

how I went about doing my interviews,

and Stahlberg is a perfect example

for that as well.

I called him up

when I went over to Germany,

and I said,

Mr. Stahlberg,

can I please interview you?

And Stahlberg was the adjutant

to the famous Field Marshal

Erich von Manstein,

who was actually born von Lewinsky.

And as a result,

many people thought he was Jewish.

And Alexander Stahlberg

was of Jewish descent,

and he was claiming to me

that he had evidence

that Manstein was also

of Jewish descent.

So I called him up

and I said,

Herr Stahlberg,

this is the project I'm doing.

Can I come interview you?

And he says,

Sure.

I'd love to talk to you.

However, you better hurry up.

I have one foot in the grave

and another one on the banana peel.

If you want to get here,

you better do it now.

I was like,

Okay, Herr Stahlberg.

I'll get there as soon as I can.

And so I packed up my backpack,

and this is how I did my research.

I had a backpack with a tripod,

a radio,

a camera,

a computer,

a printer,

a transformer,

some extra food,

and some clothes there.

And I would bike around Germany.

As soon as I'd find somebody,

I'd set up my studio,

interview them,

and basically rescue their story

before they took it to the grave.

So when I started looking at the map

where Stahlberg lived,

I was like,

Oh, my goodness.

Because I also had a mountain bike,

riding around Germany

with the backpack on my back,

with the mountain bike,

riding around.

And I looked at the map,

and I saw he lived

in the middle of Mecklenburg,

at Gartow,

and the closest town there,

with a train link,

was Wittenberger,

about 70 miles away.

I was like,

Oh, my goodness.

How am I going to do this?

Well, you got to do

what you got to do.

So I got on the train

really early one morning,

and I got out of Wittenberger,

biked all day,

70 miles there,

and got,

it was in December,

so it got dark early,

and I was on a dirt road,

and,

I didn't see a few of the potholes,

so I,

you know,

bloodied up my lip a few times,

got very dirty.

So when I showed up at his home,

I was a disaster.

And he opened the door,

and instead of,

you know,

inviting me in

to give me some tea,

he's like,

you probably want to take a shower.

I was like,

yes, please.

So I cleaned up,

and then for the next two days,

I conducted several interviews with him,

and they were

a wealth of information.

And sure enough,

three weeks later,

he passed away.

Not because of the interview,

but,

he was just an old guy

in frail health.

So this was the sense of urgency

I felt

during this year.

I,

I was a fight against time.

So this year,

my goals were to interview

between 20 and 30 individuals,

make my German fluent,

and find supporting documents

in the German archives.

Well,

in the first month alone,

I conducted over 30 interview,

30 interviews,

and it never slowed down thereafter.

By the end of this year,

I had conducted

almost 200 interviews,

and collected

over 10,000 pages of documents.

I returned to Yale

to begin my last year

in the fall of 1995,

and I had the honor

to write a book

about my life

and about my family.

And,

you know,

it was a great experience

for me.

I also had the honor

to write my senior essay

under the supervision

of professors

Jeffrey Sammons,

Henry Turner,

and Paula Hyman.

I graduated with honors

in history

and was awarded

the Henry Fellowship

to conduct graduate studies

at Cambridge University.

And while at Cambridge,

I had the honor

to study under

Jonathan Steinberg.

Many of you will know

who his famous father,

famous rabbi

in New York was,

and that was

Milton Steinberg,

who wrote the book

As a Driven Leaf.

Now,

when I was in Cambridge,

I spent,

on average,

two weeks

every month

going to Austria

or Germany

to conduct more interviews

and collect more documents.

By the end of this year,

I had conducted

almost 400 interviews

and collected

over 20,000 pages

of documents.

The Federal Archives

became interested

in my research,

inspected my documents,

and then offered me

an archive office

in their Federal Archives

in Freiburg

in exchange

for my collection.

I took them up

on their offer,

moved to Germany,

and for the next two years,

I organized my collection.

It is now called

the Brian Mark Rigg

Collection

and it comprises

over,

as Sam introduced,

as he was introducing me,

he mentioned,

it comprises

over 30,000 pages

of documents,

over 500 hours

of video

with 430 interviewees

and over 3,000 photographs.

It documents

by name

and rank

over 1,700 men

who were

of Jewish descent

and served

in the German Armed Forces

during World War II.

And many of these men,

1,700,

and many of these men

were very prominent

individuals

during the Third Reich

and World War II.

So,

the Third Reich

and World War II history.

And during my speech,

when I describe people

or use terms like

half-Jew,

quarter-Jew,

or Aryan,

please,

in your mind's eye,

have these terms

in quotation marks.

They are Nazi terms,

but they give the history

its meaning.

The first prominent individual

I'd like to describe to you

is State Secretary,

half-Jew,

Erhard Milch.

Milch became

a powerful field marshal

during the Third Reich.

Field marshal

is equivalent

of a five-star general.

He ran the Luftwaffe,

the German Air Force,

and was its most powerful figure

for personnel,

planning,

production,

and strategy.

His greatest contribution

to the Luftwaffe

was to organize

the massive program

of aerial rearmament

begun in 1933.

And by 1936,

under Milch's leadership,

the German air industry

had become

a first-class organization

producing modern aircraft

reaching

Luftwaffe flying units.

Hitler had said,

in 1936,

that there are two names

linked together

with the birth

of our Luftwaffe,

Gurins and Milchs.

In April of 1940,

when Germany started

to encounter a lot of problems

with its invasion of Norway,

Milch's skills

as an excellent organizer

and administrator

helped lay the foundation

for air power in Norway.

Hitler was eventually successful

in this Norwegian campaign

thanks to the solid leadership

generals like Milch displayed.

Now, had Germany been unable

to secure its northwest flank

in Norway in 1940,

Hitler probably would have been

unwilling,

and possibly unable,

to launch his invasion of France

one month later.

And for his accomplishments

during the Norwegian campaign,

Hitler awarded Milch

the Knight's Cross,

the Richard Kreutz,

the U.S. equivalent

of the Medal of Honor.

Right here,

always worn around the neck.

A few months later,

after the successful conclusion

of the war in France,

Milch was one of three

Luftwaffe generals

who Hitler promoted

to Field Marshal.

And by 1944,

this half-Jew

ranked seventh

in the German army

in the German army.

And by 1944,

this half-Jew

ranked seventh

in the German army.

And by 1945,

this half-Jew

ranked seventh

among Hitler's subordinates.

Now, many of you

might be asking yourself,

how in the heck

does a half-Jew

become a Field Marshal

in the Luftwaffe

back then?

Well, Hitler

and his warped ideology

felt like he could

look at somebody

and if they looked

like an Aryan,

phenotypically,

they had blonde hair,

blue eyes,

a good military track record,

he would actually

give them the kosher stamp

of approval of Aryanhood.

Milch received

one of these exemptions,

or one of these awards,

if you will.

And he was

given one.

And also,

what makes Milch's case

quite interesting

is what his mother did.

And she's an example

of what many mothers

tried to do.

Most were unsuccessful.

She was successful.

And that is,

she went to Goering

and said,

you know,

my Jewish husband,

Anton Milch,

is not the father

of my six children,

but it's my Aryan lover,

who happens also

to be my uncle.

They inspected

the documents.

They looked

at the files.

And sure enough,

they declared

all six children Aryan.

So,

the Jewish ancestry

was horrible.

But incest

was all right.

The next distinguished

general I'd like

to tell you about

is Hapju Helmut Wilburg.

Wilburg was

an incredibly

intelligent man

and a first-rate

commander

who helped develop

the operational concept

that we today

call Blitzkrieg.

During World War I,

he was the first

air commander

to organize

and employ

whole air groups

in the ground support role.

He was one of the most

senior air commanders

in the German Air Force

and commanded

over 700 planes

in the campaign

in 1917

during a high point

of German air power

during the Great War.

The Army considered him

a leading pioneer

in ground support tactics.

And in 1920,

after the Versailles Treaty

was in full force

in Germany,

he was handpicked

by the government

and military leadership

to be the Luftwaffe

chief commander

that was operating

secretly in Russia.

In 1935,

when the Luftwaffe

officially came back

into being,

so to speak,

a different term

in World War I,

he prepared

the manual

which served

as the Luftwaffe's

primary expression

of battle doctrine

into World War II.

Also in 1935,

he was head of

the War College.

In 1936,

Hitler allowed him

to be the staff officer

of the Condor Legion

during the Spanish Civil War.

He was in charge

of the entire operation.

Now this Civil War

provided Germany

with more combat

trained veterans

than any other

military in the world

when Hitler

launched the Globe

into World War II

in 1939.

One general wrote

of Wilburg

after the war

that owing to his career

and abilities,

he was the logical choice

to command the Luftwaffe,

a position given

to Goering

because of party politics.

He was tall,

good looking,

and a pleasure

to work for.

Unfortunately,

he was a 50% Jew.

He would die

in a plane crash

in 1941.

The last distinguished

commander I'd like

to tell you about

is Quarter Jew,

Admiral Bernhard Rogge.

Rogge was the most

successful surface raider,

our auxiliary cruiser captain

during World War II.

These ships were also

called Q-ships.

Now what surface raiders were

is that they would,

these ships would

masquerade around

the high seas

as freighters

or merchant marine vessels

and when they would get close

to an enemy ship,

they would drop

their hidden doors,

revealing their cannons,

and tell the enemy

either surrender

or we're going to blow

you out of the water.

Rogge captured

or sank almost two dozen

combined total

150,000 metric tons.

He was awarded

the Oak Leaves

to his Knight's Cross

for his accomplishments

during World War II.

Basically,

he was awarded

two medals of honor.

Also,

he probably had

a profound impact

on the way Japan

launched its invasion

of Southeast Asia

in 1941

after it attacked us

at Pearl Harbor.

In 1940,

Rogge captured

a British steamship

which had several

confidential documents

on board

drawn up

by the British

Army.

Among many

other things,

these documents had

detailed notes

on British war strength

in East Asia,

had an assessment

on the feasibility

of Australia

and New Zealand

coming into war

if Japan were

to attack,

and then how

they would operate

under the Commonwealth.

It also had detailed

blueprints

on Singapore's

fortifications

and then had an assessment

on the feasibility

of Japan

entering the war.

Rogge turned

these invaluable documents

over to the Japanese,

and the Japanese Emperor

awarded him

a summarized sword.

Now,

only two other Germans

during World War II

were awarded

summarized swords

by the Emperor of Japan,

and they were

Reichsmarschall Goering

and Field Marshal Rommel.

And with the success

that Japan had

with its invasion

of Southeast Asia

in late 1941

and early 1942,

one can see

that they put to good use

the documents

Rogge gave them.

So,

as one has just heard,

many of these men

who I have documented

were not curious anomalies,

but had significant roles

during the history

of World War II

and the Third Reich.

Now,

recently,

interest in World War II

and the Holocaust

has grown dramatically.

Books on the subject matter

frequently hit

the bestseller list,

and newspapers

run articles

on the Holocaust

or World War II history

every week.

Whether it is

a doctoral thesis

calling the vast majority

of Germans

Hitler's willing executioners

or an expose

on IBM's role

in the Holocaust,

it seems like

the general public

just cannot get enough.

And also,

the thirst for knowledge

about World War II

and the Holocaust

has grown even more.

Now,

it is true,

however,

that there are

many areas of study

relating to the Holocaust

and World War II history

that remain

largely unexamined

and poorly understood.

And my research

represents

one of these areas

of study.

And while I do not pretend

to offer the final word,

I do hope

to provide

my readers

and listeners

with a new way

at looking at

one of the most central issues

of the history

of the Holocaust

and the history

of the Holocaust

in the Third Reich,

namely,

Jewish identity.

To understand

my research,

one must first be aware

of Jewish law,

Halakha,

and how it defines

a Jew,

because this causes

a lot of confusion

about my research.

For Jews today,

especially observant Jews,

a Jew is a person

who is born

of a Jewish mother

or who converts

to Judaism.

Knowing this

will help one

understand

the confusion

surrounding the men

I have documented

and whether they are Jewish

or not.

To understand

my research,

one must have

a fundamental

understanding

of the Nazi

racial laws.

In 1935,

the Nazis issued

the Nuremberg Laws,

which created

the racial categories

of Jew,

half Jew,

and quarter Jew.

A full Jew,

according to

the Nazi

racial laws,

was a person

who had three

or more Jewish

grandparents,

or a person

who practiced

the Jewish religion.

A half Jew,

also called

a Mischling

of the first degree,

was an Jehovah's Witness

or Jewish

or Jewish

Jew.

A half Jew

was considered

a Jewish

or Jewish

Jew.

A half Jew

was considered

a Jewish

Jew.

The γération

of Jewish

Jews

was considered

Jewish

Jews

and Jewish

Jews

couldn't

participate

in religious

religious

relations.

Half Jew

was considered

a Jewish

Jewish grandparent. Now for all the Nazi talk of the Jews being a race, they ultimately had to use

religious criteria to define that race. Death certificates, birth certificates, marriage

certificates throughout Germany always noted a person's religion involved. And as a result,

the Nazis had to use these documents to define somebody's race instead of looking at their blood

to use their Nazi term. Are there physical characteristics of having big noses, big ears,

and flat feet? Knowing this, one sees just how bankrupt the Nazi racial laws were. Nonetheless,

people had to take them very seriously, and they caused a tremendous amount of trauma and pain in

tens of thousands of families. And by way of illustration to show a little bit of the confusion

that went on, the next story is quite telling. In 1937, five-year-old half-Jew Erwin Fuchs

boarded a crowded streetcar with his older brother. Now, they had both been

told by their parents they could not sit down in public transportation because the Nazis in their

town had prohibited this of people who were of Jewish descent, so they remained standing.

And as the tram was moving down the street, an elderly woman scooted across her seat

and said to Erwin, here's half a seat for you, little one. Erwin became confused. He looked down

at the old woman and then up at his brother and asked, which side of me is Jewish, the left or

right? Now, this sad story dramatically illustrates the pain and confusion and

trauma that swept literally hundreds of thousands of people's lives and turned their whole identity

upside down. Now, when people hear about these Nazi racial laws, I often get the question,

how could people affected by these laws serve in the military? I thought anybody with any

Jewish descent was exterminated. Well, this is where my research becomes very interesting.

Full Jews who I've documented who served in the German armed forces during World War II

did so with false documents. As far as their commanders, as far as their commanders were concerned, they were

Aryans and treated accordingly. In other words, the official policy of the Nazi government was

that full Jews could not serve. Half Jews, on the other hand, had to serve. The conscription laws

of 1935 included half Jews in the draft. However, they could not become NCOs or officers without

Hitler's personal permission. In other words, they couldn't become professional soldiers. Now, on the

one hand, Hitler possibly allowed these men to serve because he did not want to deny the Wehrmacht

so many potential soldiers.

From his experience in World War I, he knew how many men could be lost in one battle and

perhaps he felt he needed to field every person he possibly could without bending his ideology

too much once the war came. On the other hand, it is very difficult to find rational

explanations for Hitler's behavior. Allowing tens of thousands of half Jews to serve in

the military did not make sense when looked through the glass of Nazi racial ideology.

And Hitler and the Nazis would soon encounter a lot of problems with this policy.

Subtitles by the Amara.org community

After the successful conclusion of the war in Poland in 1939, tens of thousands of half Jews

returned home only to find that their families were being even more persecuted than before they

left for war. Dad had lost his job. Mom was being slapped around the street by Gestapo agents.

Grandma was being arrested by the SS and thrown in prison. And many of these soldiers went to

their commanders and said, hey, look, I served this country honorably. I have the Iron Cross.

I bled for this nation. Look how you're treating my family.

A disgrace. And to the credit of thousands of Aryan officers, they sent such complaints

up the chain of command. Even the families affected by this persecution felt the need

to get into the action and write the government and military directly. For example, a very

brave, courageous woman, full Jew, Clara von Mettenheim, wrote Commander-in-Chief

of the Army in 1949, General von Brauchitsch, on behalf of all half Jewish soldiers for

him to work with the party to alleviate problems families like hers experience. She wrote,

I speak to you as a mother of three soldiers and as an old army officer's wife. My sons

are soldiers from head to toe. The crown prince of Germany is the godfather of one of my sons,

and General von Secht held the other one at his christening. My sons are half Jews because

of me, and while they were serving on the front lines in Poland, we were persecuted

on the home front as if there were no more important tasks to be done during the war.

Please stop this mistreatment of half Jewish soldiers and that of their families. Now,

Clara von Mettenheim felt desperate, and she did not understand why a family of her

social standing should endure such persecution. She pleaded with Brauchitsch to remove the

obstacles her sons faced, and she also obviously felt deeply responsible for the misfortune

that had visited them. She also described how disturbed it had made one of her sons,

Dieter, feel when he returned home from the front, only to find that his mother had been

slapped and hit basically down to the ground by an SS officer, and that his sister had

been expelled from several organizations, one of the most important organizations in the

world. He also had accompanied her to the Jewish Affairs Office in Frankfurt to get

her Jewish identification papers on Hermesweg, and on that day he wore his full-dress military

uniform, not to provoke anyone, but because he had to return to his unit later that evening.

Well, when they entered this office, the Nazi bureaucrats there were horrified to see this

Jewish woman with her soldier's son, and she received her ID papers under humiliating

circumstances.

Dieter later returned to his unit that evening very disturbed and reported this to his commander,

who then sent a complaint at the chain of command.

And Claire von Mettenheim obviously felt the need to write the Commander in Chief of the

Army about this story.

Now this story reached Hitler, and many stories like this actually did reach Hitler. When

he heard about this story with Claire von Mettenheim and Dieter, amongst others, he

declared such events intolerable. He said that either they needed to protect the Jewish

parents of half-Jewish soldiers, or they needed to protect their own Jewish soldiers as well.

He said that either they needed to protect the Jewish parents of half-Jewish soldiers,

or they needed to protect their own Jewish soldiers as well.

or they needed to discharge the half-Jews.

Well, Hitler said, we cannot protect full Jews.

Discharge the half-Jews.

And this discharge order went out on the 8th of April, 1940.

Now, all half-Jews serving in units that would invade Denmark and Norway

on the 9th of April remained untouched

because this discharge order never reached them.

And the vast majority of the men who were serving in units

that would invade France one month later

also remained untouched due to bureaucratic mishaps

and the secrecy involved with the invasion.

However, after Hitler successfully defeated France in only six weeks,

many of these men were found and dismissed.

According to one man who worked in the Supreme Headquarters of the Army

who I've been able to interview,

he said by the end of 1940, over 70,000 half-Jews had been dismissed.

Now, from my research, 50% of all the half-Jews who I have documented

were still serving by the summer of 1941.

And this indicates to me that many of these half-Jews

were not known to be half-Jews,

many of these half-Jews were successful at hiding their ancestry,

and that this discharge order wasn't being widely enforced.

Also, this discharge order, Hitler had decreed within this order

that any half-Jew who had performed well in battle

was allowed to apply for clemency.

And when one did so, this allowed him to remain several months in his unit

as he got his application together and as a decision was given.

So, that's the policy that affected half-Jews.

Quarter-Jews also had to serve with the conscription laws of 1935,

but they, like their half-Jewish counterparts,

could not become NCOs or officers without Hitler's personal permission.

And this policy did not change throughout the entire war.

Now, when people hear about half-Jews and quarter-Jews serving,

I often get the question,

well, how many people are we actually talking about here?

Well, looking at assimilation records, birth rates, mixed marriage rates,

and talking to a few statisticians and mathematicians,

I conservatively,

estimate that 60,000 half-Jews and 90,000 quarter-Jews

served in the Wehrmacht during World War II.

Now, when one knows that 17.5 million men went to the ranks of the Wehrmacht,

one sees that this number is a very small percentage.

I mean, less than 1% of these 150,000 Michelin soldiers

represent the total size of the German armed forces back then.

But in light of the Holocaust, this number is quite shocking.

And this number is both shocking and impressive

and important for what it tells us about how Jewish identity was viewed,

constructed, and contested by German citizens, Nazi leaders,

military commanders, and the German-Jewish population within German borders,

and for what it tells us about how these perceptions saved some

while condemning others to the death camps.

Also, my research is very important for what it tells us about Hitler

and his involvement with the Jewish question,

especially giving exemptions to Mischlinge.

Generals, admirals, U-boat captains, battleship captains, fighter aces,

and tens of thousands of ordinary Mischlinge soldiers

all served because Hitler allowed them to.

Many of them with a personal exemption from him.

Now, it seems like there were three types of exemptions

that allowed a half-Jew to remain in the military.

The first type simply allowed him to remain.

The second type allowed him to remain and be promoted.

These forms are called genehmigungen, or special permissions.

The third types were called Deutschblutigkeit,

or the German blood declarations.

And this allowed a recipient to describe himself as an Aryan

in all official documentation.

Now, how many men actually received some form of clemency?

Well, due to the chaotic filing system,

it is very difficult to ascertain the exact number.

The different departments and offices that dealt with these applications

did not create a central database.

Nonetheless, after the war, Hitler's secretary of state, Lambert,

said that Hitler gave thousands during his rule.

And I concur with this assumption.

And I agree with this assessment,

especially when one knows that Hitler had decreed

that any Michelin soldier who had been severely wounded in battle,

i.e., lost both his legs, his arms, his eyesight,

was to be retroactively declared an Aryan to the date of his injury.

Also, Hitler had decreed that any Michelin soldier who had died in combat

was to be posthumously declared an Aryan.

Hitler said, and I quote,

I do not want to be ungrateful to Michelin soldiers

who have shed blood for the Third Reich.

Now, I want to go on to the next section very quickly.

This is a, although this picture was not used for an application,

this is a typical application, a photograph series that was a requirement.

Hitler laid great emphasis on how somebody looked in the application.

And if he looked phenotypically Jewish, he was immediately rejected.

And if he looked Aryan, he had good chances of being Aryanized.

And he always wanted front and side shots of the person.

This is a great example of those type of photographs.

Now, when people hear about tens of thousands of Michelin serving,

and that many of them were generals and admirals, U-boat captains,

battleship captains, divisional commanders, and so on,

I often get the question,

well, didn't these men know about the Holocaust?

Soldiers in war usually have enough trauma with the physical hardships

and the psychological burdens with killing and death

that constitute the everyday life of combat.

Then also have to worry about their persecution

and the persecution of their relatives

at the hands of their own countrymen.

Jewish and Michelin soldiers not only served in armed forces

controlled by a government hostile to them as racially inferior beings,

but many of them did so at a time when they were experiencing their own persecution,

witnessing the persecution of their loved ones,

and even the occasional deportation and death of a family member.

So as I conducted this research, I closely looked at the question,

did these men know about the Holocaust?

And when I say the Holocaust, I mean the systematic extermination

of six million Jews under Hitler.

And when I began this research, I thought that overwhelmingly, yes,

I would find that all of these men knew about the Holocaust.

How could they not know?

Shockingly, I found the opposite to be true.

Yes, many of these men knew about deportations,

but where their relatives were being deported to was beyond their knowledge.

Many of them knew about concentration camps,

but what actually was going on in the camps was beyond their imagination.

Many of them knew about executions going on in the East,

but many of them thought that these executions,

or many of them rationalized that these executions

were for criminals, prisoners of war, partisans.

Most of them did not know that when their relatives were deported,

they most often were deported straight to their deaths.

And on average, each man who I've documented

lost between seven and eight relatives in the Holocaust.

And the most telling fact to prove these men's ignorance

is the story of half-Jews in Organization Tot,

the OT forced labor camps.

By late 1941, tens of thousands of half-Jews had been dismissed.

And here's an irony of history.

While most of these men were dismissed,

and one would think, okay, it's going to be really bad for them,

they were lucky because of their status of being half-Jews,

because they were also half-Aryans.

So they were protected by that side to some degree.

And the Nazis didn't really know what to do with them yet.

So most of them returned home, and they found work,

or they began to study.

Most of the time it was substandard work,

and in the universities they were not usually allowed to study

what they wanted to because medicine and law, for example,

were unworthy.

I mean, they were unworthy to study these prestigious topics.

So they had to take lesser degrees.

But nonetheless, they were still able to study,

and they were relatively safe at home, or they were able to work.

While their Aryan comrades had the honor to go to Russia

and get slaughtered.

When one knows that 75% of all Germans who died in World War II

died on the Russian front, one sees as a percentage-wise

that half-Jews survived at a higher percentage

than their Aryan comrades.

But by 1944, Hitler had decided to utilize

this valuable pool of manpower,

and he started to deport them to forced labor camps.

Now, had half-Jews known about the Holocaust,

why did they report to their own deportation stations?

The vast majority of the men who I have documented

reported when called, and this indicates to me

that they did not know.

Because had they known, one would think they would have done

everything they could have to have gone into hiding,

obtained false documents, and gone underground,

or even tried to escape to a search

for Switzerland or Sweden.

Now, it is true that it was very difficult to find

a hiding place in Nazi Germany back then,

and obtaining false documents was a risky business at best.

Also, reaching Switzerland was very difficult

because the border was heavily patrolled on both sides,

and also Sweden was also very difficult to reach,

being separated from Germany by the Baltic Sea.

Nonetheless, had these men known about the Holocaust,

one would think that they would have tried their luck

no matter what the cost.

And many of them had a chance to make a quick getaway.

Most of them received their deportation notices

from the Gestapo or local employment agencies,

which gave them several days, if not months,

until they had a report.

Nonetheless, the most reported when called,

and this was the beginning of their own Holocaust.

As one man told me, he said,

I didn't know why we were being called up,

or where we were going to.

I didn't even know about Auschwitz until after the war,

and I simply thought my life was not in danger.

Here was a man who lost seven relatives in Auschwitz.

Another man told me, he said,

even when I was in the camp and talking amongst the other half,

Jews, none of us came to the idea

that the relatives that we had who were deported before us

were deported to their deaths.

It was simply beyond our imaginations.

Renowned professor in England, Ian Kershaw,

eloquently describes how difficult it was

to know about the Holocaust during World War II.

He wrote, during the war years,

interest in the Jewish question declined further.

The deportation passed off apparently little heeded

by the population.

The German people seemed to have asked little and cared less

about the fate of the Jews.

The war, its worries and deprivations

dominated public opinion.

The Jews were out of sight and out of mind.

Knowledge of executions going on in the East were widespread,

and rumors of executions going on in the East circulated.

Details about the systematic gassing program

appear, however, to have been largely unknown.

There are many historical insights.

One can glean from my research,

by seeing just how difficult it was

to know about the Holocaust.

My research shows us that we cannot look at the Third Reich

in extremes of black and white.

Not every German soldier who wore a uniform back then

was a Nazi, as we use that term today.

And not everybody of Jewish descent

was a victim of the death camps.

Also, my research shows us that there were

hundreds of thousands of people

who were persecuted for being Jewish,

not because they themselves called themselves Jewish,

but because the Nazis called them Jewish

and treated them accordingly.

And with this in mind, it is interesting to note

that half-Jews in Poland and Russia

were labeled as full Jews

and sent off to the death camps,

although many of them had converted to Christianity

and assimilated and had no more contact to Judaism.

But since they were half-Slavic,

they didn't have that half-Aryan Germanic blood

to protect them, and they didn't have those

Aryan relatives to help them out,

they were deemed unworthy,

and they were slaughtered within that six million.

So one sees with this history

just how complicated life was

during the Third Reich.

The Mischling policy, the Nazi shows,

was a maze of confusion and contradiction

which reflected the regime's own uncertainty

with how to deal with Germans of partial Jewish descent.

Now it seems like there were many reasons

why it was so difficult to implement this policy.

One reason was that the Nazi ideology of race

came into conflict with maintaining power.

Had Hitler been too aggressive

with his mistreatment of Mischling

in the 1930s and 1940s,

he might have lost the support

of thousands of Aryans who held key positions

in the government, economy, and military

who had Mischling relatives.

Nathan Stoltzfus, a historian,

brings this point out very well

in his book, Resistance of the Heart.

Also, until 1935,

this category of people, the Mischling,

had never existed.

So the bureaucrats had to rely on denunciations,

honest confessions, and church and court

and temple records to identify these people.

In the Wehrmacht, discharge orders

were often hindered by officers

who valued a trained soldier

and an honest comrade

more than they did the Nazi racial laws.

I mean, the very fact that Hitler

reserved the right to give exemptions

to his racial laws shows that even he saw

how contradictory and confusing they could be.

But as renowned professor at Yale University,

Henry Turner wrote,

Hitler was driven by an unshakable conviction

that reality would eventually conform to his will.

Hitler truly believed that he could make

his irrational philosophy meet up with reality

and his diplomatic and military triumphs

from 1933 to 1940 reinforced his own belief

in his infallibility as leader,

as the prophet, leader, and racial hygienist.

Hitler perverted the German legal system

and he forced it to implement his racial ideas as laws.

Now, in light of how aggressively

he pursued the persecution of the Jews,

it is quite shocking how much time he spent

on the Mischling, especially giving them exemptions.

I mean, maybe one can understand

the careful analysis of keeping

a Mischling general at his post,

but many to whom Hitler gave an exemption to

were privates, common soldiers,

who had no bearing on the war's outcome.

I mean, Hitler giving these exemptions

to these type of men and the support

of thousands of Aryan officers

in connection with these applications

contradicted the Nazi worldview.

I mean, the very fact that the arch anti-Semite himself,

Adolf Hitler, gave even one exemption

is quite shocking, but he gave thousands.

But as Professor Kirchhoff wrote,

nothing was as it seemed during the Third Reich.

I mean, many of Hitler's actions seemed to demonstrate

that he believed that Jewish blood,

to use a Nazi term again,

even in minute amounts, ruined a person.

Other actions seemed to demonstrate

that he believed in Mendel's theories of genetics

and that a half-Jewish, a Mischling soldier,

could actually inherit all of his blood

from his Aryan parent.

Hitler continued to waver on facts about race,

and many of his decisions during the Third Reich

did not reflect the true categories of race

so central to Nazi rhetoric and ideology.

Also, Hitler's policy with the Mischlinge

shows the triumph of Nazi ideology over reason.

In 1942, when Hitler was encountering a lot of difficulties

at the Battle of Stalingrad,

he could have recalled probably around 70,000 half-Jews

who he had dismissed at that time.

But instead, he focused on a few hundred men

to see if they were blonde enough,

blue-eyed enough to be declared of German blood.

I mean, did Hitler have nothing better to do

than at the height of the Battle of Stalingrad

than to look at an application from a private

to see if he looked Aryan enough

to be brought into the fold?

I mean, Hitler shows just how obsessed he was

with the racial ideology under the Nazis

with this process and with these actions.

He also demonstrates with this behavior

that he valued an Aryan society

more than he did winning the war.

As Hitler has said,

the Jewish question takes priority over all other matters.

Now, after the unsuccessful bomb attack on his life in 1944,

he actually started to revoke most of the exemptions

that he had given to date.

Now, discharging so many high-ranking officers,

many of them generals with the Knight's Cross,

did not make strategic sense at this time period.

But as the war worsened,

Hitler's persecution of not only of the Jews

but of the Mischlinge dramatically escalated.

And had Germany prolonged the war,

God forbid, had Hitler won the war,

half Jews would have shared the fate of the full Jews.

And quarter Jews would have been selectively sterilized

and in some cases, as the decree was written,

exterminated if they looked to Jewish.

And that was a sad fate that awaited Mischlinge's soldiers.

Now, as many of you probably have thought about during this talk,

my research often departs from history

and enters into the realm of identity.

And before I tell you two quick stories,

I'd like to give you the background on this photograph here.

In 1939, a memorandum went out from the propaganda ministry

in Berlin under Goebbels

to several German military units

asking for the most Aryan-looking soldier you have.

Werner Goldberg won the competition.

And for three months, he was the Nazi propaganda child

for the typical Aryan German soldier

until they found out that his father was Jewish.

Here's just another example of how absurd

the Nazi racial laws were.

Now, the first story I'd like to tell you about,

let's call the gentleman Heinrich Bayer.

That's not his real name.

And Bayer had served two years in the German military.

He was discharged, sent to a forced labor camp.

And after the war, he said,

you know, I'm going to do something for my...

Luckily, he survived.

He said, I'm going to do something for my Jewish family.

I'm going to go to Israel, I'm going to fight in the wars there,

and I'm going to help establish that country.

So he goes there, and for several years,

he fights in the battles there.

And in 1953, his battalion commander calls him

to the duty hut and says,

you need to go down to the courthouse

and get your ID papers in order.

So he goes down to the courthouse,

and as the bureaucrat is looking through his file,

he says, okay, you were persecuted for 12 years

for being a Jew in Nazi Germany.

You served in the military.

How'd that happen? He explained.

You were sent to a forced labor camp.

You lost your father in Auschwitz.

What about your mother?

Oh, my mother, well, she's a Christian.

She's Gentile.

For 12 years, I was persecuted for being a Jew.

I served in a forced labor camp.

My father died in Auschwitz.

I now have served this country as an officer.

I'm a captain for six years.

I've been wounded seven times.

You're telling me I'm not Jewish?

The bureaucrat said, hey, I'm just telling you what's on the books.

You can either prove that your mother's Jewish,

or you can convert to Judaism.

Well, I'm an atheist, Bayer said.

Well, we have a problem, said the bureaucrat.

Bayer got so fed up with this process

that he went back to Germany, and he said,

the next story I'd like to tell you about

is about Heinrich Hamburger.

Hamburger, I just finished up interviewing him

outside of Munich, and I was packing up my bag,

putting all my things in it for my studio,

my wandering studio.

And as I was doing so,

his girlfriend walked in and said,

you know, you should take the young American tonight.

And he tried to hush her up very quickly.

She's like, no, Heini, the young American

would find it very interesting.

You should take him this evening.

So I looked at Herr Hamburger, and I asked him,

what's going on this evening?

And he said,

the veterans from my unit,

we get together at a bar once a month

and talk about our lives and drink some beer

and talk about the war.

Would you like to come?

I was like, yeah, that sounds very interesting.

He said, well, if you come,

you've got to promise me two things.

The first thing is, you can't tell anybody

that I'm a half Jew.

For the last 60 years, I've kept this hidden,

and I'd like to keep it that way.

I was like, okay, Herr Hamburger,

I won't tell anybody that you're Jewish.

Because then they'll wonder why you came and talked to me.

You've got to tell them you're studying something like

the artillery tactics of the mountain troops

or something of that sort.

I was like, well, how about I tell them

I'm studying the social dynamics of the Wehrmacht

on the company level.

And he went, yeah, yeah, that's good, that's good.

Tell them you're doing that.

I was like, okay, Herr Hamburger,

that's what we'll tell them when I'm studying.

So a few hours later, we entered this bar,

and as we opened the door, the smell of smoke

smarted our nostrils, and I could hear the men

who were there.

And he took me to a back room, a conference room,

where there was about 40 veterans.

And many of them had been told beforehand,

because Hamburger called up a few of them

to tell them about the young American historian.

So they're very eager to meet me.

And they brought their diaries, and some of them

brought their medals and photographs.

And as we walked into the room,

Herr Hamburger, I could tell he was very nervous.

He was latched onto my right shoulder

as if to prevent me from jumping up on the table

and telling everybody that he was a half Jew.

But after about an hour, he realized

that I was dead, and I started working my way

around the table.

And I eventually came into conversation

with the company commander, who was still alive

at the time, 93 years old, big brood of a guy,

about 6'4", 220 pounds.

He had scars all up and down his forearms and hands,

where in 1943, he had been knocked unconscious

by a concussion grenade, and when he came to,

he was in a Russian prisoner of war camp.

And he was put on burial details.

And during one of these details,

he noticed on some nearby hills

where the Russian guards were watching them

that they were not doing their job very well.

So he had his men bury him alive

in a wooden crate.

And when he was sure the Russian guards were gone,

he clawed his way out of this crate,

out of the earth, and made it back to his lines

where he served two more years as an infantry officer.

So this guy was pretty hardcore,

who I was talking to.

And as he was describing the tactics he used

and how he trained his men and his experiences in Russia,

I asked him, you know,

during my study about the social dynamics

of the Wehrmacht on the company level,

I've come across an interesting phenomenon

about Jews and men of Jewish descent

who served in the Nazi military.

Have you ever heard about this before?

He looked at me in a very surprised way.

He spotted Hamburger in the other end of the room

and then said to me in a conspiratorial tone,

don't tell Hamburger,

but we know he's a Jew.

I won't say anything.

Now this story is very important

for several things that it tells us.

And the first thing that it told me back then

and it was something I was continually encountering

which I was not expecting to find,

and that is that for many of these men's comrades,

they had accepted these so-called

Jews into the fold.

Many of them had known about the racial background.

Many of them actually tried to help these people

and their families in their precarious situation.

And that was something I was not expecting to find.

Another thing that was very interesting about

getting back to that very first point,

also this company commander

who I was talking to,

on three separate occasions

he wrote recommendations for Hamburger

to get him the German blood declaration

because Hamburger had been severely wounded in battle.

And under the clause of exemptions,

if you were severely wounded in battle,

you could apply for clemency.

And on three occasions this company commander did so

and on the third occasion he was finally successful.

Hamburger to this day still believes

it was his battalion commander who died in battle

not his company commander.

Now the second thing that was very interesting

that this story tells us

and this is something I found consistently

with the men I interviewed

is that a lot of them cower at being called Jewish

and they do everything they can to prevent this knowledge

from getting out there to the public.

But what's interesting about Hamburger

and he's also an example of many men

who have been documented

and that is when you walk into his office

his bookshelf is lined with books

about Judaism, German Jewish history

and Israel.

Even a menorah in the corner of his room.

He's fascinated by this topic.

And when I asked him about this

he's like yeah,

when I called him on this really

he's like yeah I know I'm a paradox.

I'm a closet Jew.

So as one sees when looking at this research

that I especially have done

identity was very crucial to look at.

I mean where does it come from?

Does it come from my parents?

Does it come from the religion I'm born into?

Does it come from the government I'm born under?

Can I decide who I am?

Am I black or am I white?

Am I a Jew or am I a Christian?

Am I worthy to live or am I worthy not to live?

Who decides the answers to these questions?

And I believe it is very important

to look at these questions

because ultimately

the way I come to define myself

directly influences the way I understand

and interpret history

and more importantly

the way I treat others.

And therein lies the wisdom.

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.

Well we do have time for questions

and answers from the audience.

So I just want to let you when I come up to the microphone

you can just speak in your normal tone

because we'll hear you and I'll be right back.

Before we start though I want to make a comment Brian.

I remember last year when you spoke

and then this year your book has been the recipient

of the 2003 Colby Award.

Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Bob can I ask you to tell?

Can I have the honor? There's a very distinguished author

we have here tonight, Bob Sorley

and he will do a much better job

and a much more eloquent job of describing this.

He is part of the symposium.

I was just awarded the award from it.

So please.

I'd be honored to do that.

The Military Writers Symposium

at Norwich University

is the venue in which the

Colby Writers Award is presented.

The first year that they had

such a symposium, William Colby

the former Director of Central Intelligence

was the leading figure taking part.

By the time of the next year's

conference he had died and so

to honor him and thank him for what he had done

they named it then the Colby

Military Writers Symposium.

Each year at Norwich University

over a period of about three days

young authors

like Brian are invited there

to talk about their books

to go to classes, to sign books

in the bookstore and then

the piece de resistance is a

panel session with about six authors

and a moderator and then a banquet

at which the

recipient of the award is

given his award.

That is always given to a

first time author although the others who take

part may be very well known

authors. So this year in the

spring at Norwich Brian was

the recipient of the

Colby Award and he gave a

great talk there.

Tonight is an expansion I would say

of even more interesting than that.

Congratulations.

Thank you Bob.

Let's get to the first question here.

I'd like to ask whether

you ran across any

ranking personalities

who were officers

at the very heart of racism

in Germany. Members of the

Reichssicherheitshauptamt,

the SD and the SS. I ask

that because I didn't

ever run across this. I was field

office commander of CIC in

Berlin right after the war

rounding these guys up

and this question never really

arose.

Good question sir. You're speaking about

the extermination policies and

you're probably talking more about the SS

and I have

found a few men who were

a part of the SS but they're a small, small

minority and no distinguished

personalities. The SS was

very methodical about looking

into the ancestry of their personnel. If you were

an enlisted personnel you had to take your ancestry back to

1800. If you were an officer you had to take it back

to 1750. There was one

notorious case

of a woman who probably was responsible for

several hundred if not a few thousand

people's deaths who was a Jew

who served in the capacity

of a catcher, a greifer

under the Gestapo. Her name was Stella

Goldschlag and she was called the

Blonde Poison. She was a very beautiful

woman, blonde, blue-eyed.

The Gestapo had

even promised her potential

honorary Aryan status

after the war if she continued on working for them.

What they did to her

is they deported her parents,

had her parents write a couple hundred

postcards, then killed the parents

and then had one postcard

go every two or three weeks.

They employed her in the Gestapo office in

Berlin and said, hey, if you work for us

we'll keep your parents alive and you will remain

alive. What we want you to do is go around and find the Jews

in hiding and then tell us where they are.

She would go around, find Jews and say, hey, I'm also

looking for a hiding place. Can you tell me where to go

and where to hide in your address book? Then she would

take it back. This is a horrible

situation. What was going on

was a few

of the people I've identified.

Erhard Milk, the field marshal, he could also be considered

a war criminal.

He was a half-Jew and he knew

about the extermination going on.

He knew about slave labor going

to Auschwitz to be processed.

He also knew about the experiments going on

in Dachau and he actually sanctioned them,

the high altitude experiments.

After the war he was brought up in the second

Nuremberg trials and found guilty

and sentenced to life in prison. He was

sent out after ten years and did a lot of work

I think for BMW and Mercedes

and so on. So you do have a small,

small percentage, but luckily

none of the higher ups

that you might be thinking about.

Heydrich, there was a lot of

rumors about him. Heydrich, the SS

general, there was a lot of rumors that he possibly had

Jewish ancestry, possibly even Hitler.

And why this question comes up quite often,

I'll go ahead and answer this, especially since it's germane

to your question, because if Heydrich did have Jewish

ancestry, he would be one of the people that you're

talking about. One thing that we can be certain

about these two people is that they

worried that they had Jewish ancestry.

According to Dr. Fritz

Redlich, the former head

of psychiatry at Yale University,

he wrote a book called Hitler, The

Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet.

And he goes really into depth

about Hitler's tormented soul

in many respects, about the fear of possibly having

Jewish ancestry. And

you know, these are the facts about Hitler. Hitler's

grandmother was 42 years old

working in a home

in Austria as a maid

when she suddenly becomes pregnant.

And when Hitler was rising

in the 20's and in the 30's

there was a lot of rumors, rising in the political

arena, there was a lot of rumors about his

potential Jewish background. Because his

father was born a

Schicklgruber. He wasn't born Hitler. His father later on

took the adopted name Hitler

when he was in his 40's. And it's

interesting to think that had his father not done it,

if Hitler could have actually risen to power

with Heil Schicklgruber, it just doesn't

sound right.

But there was a lot of rumors going

around back then of Hitler

having Jewish background.

Hans Frank, his lawyer, claimed in the

Nuremberg trials after the war that Hitler

with all these rumors flying around, ordered him

in late 20's, early 30's to go down

to Austria and inspect

this. And Hans Frank claimed that

he found documents that the

grandmother had been working in a Jewish

home in Graz, Frankenreich or Frankenberger.

We've never been able to find this family by the way.

But according to his testimony

that the grandmother was working

in this home when she suddenly becomes pregnant.

And then he found correspondence between the Jewish family

and Hitler's grandmother.

And for 13 years

Hitler was

given child support. Interesting law

in the books back then in Austria

was that if you had a child at a wedlock and they knew who you were

you had to support the kid for 13 years.

Interesting coincidence. Also when the Nuremberg

laws came out,

Hitler had it ordered that

no Aryan woman

under the age of 45 could work in a Jewish

home for fear that she would be impregnated.

Coincidence?

Also he had supposedly

a lot of documents about his family

destroyed and also even a

cemetery destroyed in

Dollarsheim. So Hitler was

definitely scared about something.

He had many reasons to be scared about

several things in his family, especially back in

that generation. His father was born out of wedlock.

His father was an alcoholic. His father

beat his mother and beat the kids, even beat the

dog. There was

a history of incest in the family.

And there was a history of

insanity. Surprise, surprise.

And these type of things,

he had a lot of demons he was trying to get rid of.

And Redlich really focuses on in his book

about the possibility of Jewish ancestry.

Heydrich is also the same story. He had a lot of

people in the 20s and 30s throwing

rumors at him, hey you have Jewish ancestry.

The Seuss in your family

was actually Jewish and so on. And Bruno

Heydrich, I interviewed

somebody who actually had a mother

who took piano lessons under Bruno Heydrich.

Bruno Heydrich was the father of Heydrich

and he was a musician and music

teacher in Halle.

And everybody thought he was a Jew in town.

So when Heydrich was rising up,

Heydrich didn't look anything like his father. His father was

short, dark, swarthy.

And so a lot of people said, yeah he's a Jew. He has to be.

Look at him. His son was very

tall, blonde, and blue eyed.

And so he never got it for his phenotypical traits

although he had a very high voice.

And in the Navy they actually called him the blonde Moses.

Interesting enough.

And so he took people to court

several times for slander. For calling

him of Jewish

descent and so on. And he definitely worried about

it. But those are the only two

cases where you're talking about the center of extermination

policies where you might have heard

yeah there were some of those people of Jewish descent like

Heydrich. But there's no documents to prove it.

Alright, we have a question

over here. Could you comment

about the motives of the

Jewish soldiers? Were they in

support of the German aims

or the Nazi aims? Or were they

just doing this to survive

and for their family's

survival? Very good question, sir.

You know we have to realize that most

of these men were drafted.

They had to serve. They didn't have a choice.

Also, one thing

we have to realize, and this is the sad

tragedy of German Jewry,

is that they came from very proud

traditions of military service.

Let's not forget that in World War I

100,000 German Jews

served in the German military.

12,000 of them died in combat.

More Jews died in the German

military in World War I

than all Jews in Israeli conflicts

from 1948 to 1982.

The Austrian-Hungarian Empire is even

a more dramatic example.

300,000 Jews served in the

Empire's military in World War I.

25,000 died in combat.

More Jews died in the Austrian

military in World War I than all Jews

in all Israeli conflicts to date.

So these men came from very strong

military traditions. Their fathers and

grandfathers, uncles, cousins had all been drafted.

So when they were drafted, yes

there was a lot of

confusion at times.

But they didn't think it was a

little bit absurd as we do today.

They were serving their country.

Also, many of them in the 30s thought

Hitler will be just like one of the other

Weimar Republic parties.

Rise up, do a few things, and then

be kicked out. They didn't think he was

going to be there for 12 years, and they

definitely didn't think that they would

start being exterminated, especially

when they were serving. Now getting to

another angle of your question, many of

these men, what gave their service meaning

once they were there was saying, hey,

they're not going to touch a grandmother.

They're doing more in combat to help

protect their families, and also

protect themselves. So it was

to one extent, to be

part of the crowd. To do

what everybody else in society

was doing, and also survive.

Now the full Jews, a lot of times

that was strictly survival technique.

But when you get to the half Jews and quarter Jews,

you're dealing with choiceless

choice. To use Lawrence Langer,

a wonderful

writer of his

Holocaust testimonies. You're dealing with a lot

of choiceless choice with

these men. And had they

gone to the authorities and said, hey, I don't want to serve.

I feel Jewish. You're persecuting my family.

Not only do they put themselves in jeopardy, but they put

their whole family in jeopardy. And in

countless cases, these men's service

did actually postpone, and

even in some cases, actually prevent

the deportation and death of loved ones.

Gestapo agents come to the house to pick

up grandma, and they see a picture of all

the grandsons in military uniforms, and

they go away confused.

And sometimes guys come

home from the front. They hear about granddad being

deported or mom being deported. They go to the

deportation station in full-dress military uniform.

The guys say, hey, we can't deport a mother of

a soldier. That happened countless times,

which I was not expecting to find.

But the testimonies and the documents prove it.

Brian, we have a question over here. Yes.

I have several questions, if I may.

First of all, did

Hitler know about

the captain of the Bismarck

having Jewish blood?

And Henrici, isn't Henrici

his wife was Jewish or something?

You're well informed.

Your first question.

The fleet commander

that the Bismarck

was part of was Lutyens.

A lot of people think

that commander, Captain Lutyens,

was of Jewish descent. I have not found

any documents on Lutyens' background.

The reason why people think

he was of Jewish descent is because of his wife,

a born Bakkenkoller,

who was a half-Jew. And his sons were

naval officers and also

Aryanized. Also, his brother-in-law

was Admiral Bakkenkoller,

who was Aryanized, who was a half-Jew.

So he got a lot thrown on him,

so to speak, because of who he had married.

Just like General

Karl August von Gablenz,

who also was one of the

key people in building up the Luftwaffe.

A lot of people thought that he was of Jewish descent.

And there possibly might be.

I've taken his ancestry back five generations

and I can't find anything yet.

Because in the Nazi documents, there's a lot of stuff

that is written that he was of Jewish descent.

And he was having a lot of problems.

What's interesting is that his wife

was of Jewish descent.

And he got a lot of flak, so to speak,

because of that. Hein Riese is another example.

You're well informed.

Hein Riese was a four-star general.

I read your book.

Oh.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, Hein Riese,

he was in charge of the defense of Berlin

at the end of the war.

He was a defensive strategist.

And he had a half-Jewish wife.

And she and

their children had to submit

these lengthy, lengthy

applications.

One of the sons, who later became

a captain in the army,

he had to submit ten photographs

before Hitler decided to

Aryanize the family.

And the son served the entire war

and Hein Riese served with little difficulty.

Although Hitler had

some problems with him because he spoke his mind.

He got into Hitler's face quite a bit.

And there are some third,

fourth-hand stories I've heard of Hitler

going, I should have never Aryanized his wife.

But I couldn't substantiate

those claims, so I didn't bring it into my book,

although it was a wonderful story.

There's two others, if I may.

Do you know Professor Mikael

from Clemson University?

Professor who, sir?

Mikael.

He wrote Hitler's Shadow War.

And he simply says,

just what you said,

that Hitler was more interested in exterminating

the Jews than even winning the war in Russia

or even winning the war, period.

So I think, I thought it was excellent

because it was the first time

that I always suspected that.

But when I picked up this book,

I think it recently came out,

he's from Clemson, a university professor

and he's not Jewish,

wrote this thing

and I think it's good.

I would agree with him. I would agree with him totally.

Okay. Just another one.

He wrote a book,

if I may, about Europa Europa.

Mrs. Holland, who wrote it,

who directed it or produced it.

And they were expecting that to win

the Foreign Film Award in Cannes.

And they did.

Do you know why?

Excuse me for my ignorance, sir. I do not know.

Okay.

Well, we'll end on one final note.

I saw you in the research room today

and you were doing research at the National Archives.

What were you doing and what's coming up next for you?

Oh.

I just signed a two-book contract

with Yale University Press.

And the book that I've been working on here,

the National Archives, has been great

with helping me find these documents.

As I was doing my research,

I came across this crazy story

about an ultra-ultra Orthodox rabbi

being rescued by half-Jewish

Abwehr officers,

half-Jewish Secret Service military officers.

And as I looked more and more into it,

and it had been mentioned here and there

in a few books,

and one book Winfried Meyer wrote in his book,

about ten pages on it,

and it was a fascinating story.

And he was the most thorough author that I had found

that had explored this, but there was still a lot,

still a lot left to be known.

And so as I started looking

more and more into this,

I realized that our government actually

was responsible

for the rescue of this guy.

What happened was the Lubavitchers,

this rabbi was

the head of the Lubavitcher movement.

His name was Isaac Schneerson.

And the Lubavitchers is a

Hasidic group,

and they are

ultra-ultra Orthodox.

Beard, side locks,

black suits, the fur hats,

and very, very pious.

That's what Hasidic means in Hebrew,

pious.

And at the time, it's very difficult to ascertain

exactly how many followers he had,

but according to the documents here in this archive,

the leaders here in America were giving that

there were 160,000 followers in America.

And they're very passionate,

and they're very, very loyal

to this man.

They believe that he is the Moshe Rabbeinu,

the Moses of his generation.

He's also the potential Messiah.

If the Messiah is going to come,

it will be through him.

And also, he has almost like a direct link

to the divine in many respects.

I mean, he is very holy.

I mean, for Christians today,

if you tell them, you know,

Jesus made a lot of mistakes,

and he might not be the Son of God,

you know how a lot of Christians would react to that.

So, when the rabbi was in Warsaw in 1939,

when Germany invaded,

these guys in America,

160,000 of them, went crazy.

And they started writing the government,

help us save this rabbi.

Very distinguished man.

He had traveled here in 1929,

met President Hoover,

met Brandeis,

met a few senators,

Senators Wagner and Cohen and so on.

So he was fairly well connected in the government as well.

So this made it all the way up to Cordell Hall,

and it must have gotten to Roosevelt as well.

A lot of people are interested in this case.

A lot of politicians are knocking on their doors.

James Farley and so on.

Let's take it seriously.

So they got in touch with Robert Pell

in the State Department, the Foreign Affairs Office.

And Pell had been at the Avian Conference in 1938

when they were talking about refugees there.

And they met some Germans,

one of them being Goering's Secretary of State

of the Four Year Plan.

And although the refugee crisis

there was not solved,

Voltaud told Pell that if there is ever

a Jew in Germany that you want to rescue,

get in touch with me and I'll take care of it.

Well in 1939, when

Hall and a few others

in the government got in touch with Pell,

he said, I'll get in touch with Voltaud, he'll help us out.

Got in touch with Voltaud, Voltaud said yes, I'll do it.

And he got in touch with Canaris,

the head of the secret service of the

German military, the Abwehr.

And Canaris said, okay, I'll take care of it.

And that's where I come into play.

He went to Ernst Bloch,

who's half Jew, and said, hey, I got a mission for you.

I want you to take some other guys

who are missioning up to Warsaw,

get in touch with me and rescue him.

And so Bloch does what he's told.

He later on rescued some other people

and got them to Switzerland.

So this was a project that they were doing.

But if you can just imagine the situation.

These men are going up to Warsaw,

full military uniform,

and they're going around to ultra-Hasidic Jews

going, hey, we've been ordered to come up here

and find your Rebbe and help rescue him.

Can you tell us where he is?

These Hasidic Jews are like,

oh, that's great, and I want to join the SS.

Where do I sign?

The Rebbe's going to different houses

trying to escape.

These guys are there to kill him.

A lot of intrigue going on.

And they finally convince the Rebbe

through telegrams coming from America and so on

through Riga, that there is this officer.

He's there to help you. Trust him.

So they do trust him.

Now Bloch is faced with going through SS checkpoints

with these ultra-ultra-Orthodox Jews.

His mother is with him.

The Rebbe's mother is with him.

His wife, his grandson,

his son-in-law, his daughter.

There's a whole flock of them right there.

And so he'll get out to the SS

and they're like, these Jewish pigs,

we're taking them to Berlin.

We're going to shoot them after we interrogate them.

I'm under diplomatic orders to take them.

Then he gets back into the car

and according to the documents,

he must have told them eventually sometime,

he basically says, hey, don't worry.

I'm half Jewish. I'm here to help you.

What's going on here?

It doesn't make sense.

Finally, he gets them to Berlin.

Since most of the Jews that were in this party

are from Riga,

they get them to Stockholm.

From Stockholm, there's a comedy of errors

of everything they have to go through.

And then finally they get into the ocean,

U-boat infested waters,

and they make it to America.

And now we have the head of Lubavitch

in Brooklyn, New York,

and the largest Hasidic sect in the world.

So that's the next book that I'm working on.

Well, if Brian Mark Rigg

can come here to the National Archives,

so can you.

We've got facilities all around the country.

Thank you very much for coming for Book TV.

Thank you all very much for coming.

And ladies and gentlemen, Brian Mark Rigg.

Brian Mark Rigg is author of

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers.

It's published by University Press of Kansas.

On the web at kansaspress.ku.edu.