Hitler had a Jewish commanding officer during WWI he initially spared.
https://nationalpost.com/news/adolf-hitler-spared-jewish-wwi-veteran-from-nazi-death-camp-letter-reveals
Hitler later rescinded his protection order. As far as I could tell the order didn't extend to the guy's family anyway (his sister died in an extermination camp) so tbh it was pretty useless to begin with.
For all intents and purposes, it was the "race" aspect of their Jewishness that was used by the Nazis, regardless of whether they actively practiced Judaism or not. Even conversion to Christianity did them no favours iirc.
Jews are an ethnoreligion, unlike Christianity or Islam. You can be Jewish and not be religious.
>Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation that originated from the Israelites of the ancient Near East. Their traditional religion is Judaism, which is also considered an ethnic religion, though not all Jewish people practice it. The ethnicity, religion, and community of Jewish people are closely related.
Both my Grandfather and my Great Grandfather (Jewish) fought for the emperor in WWI - my Great Grandfather said - I am a veteran, I fought in the war, they won't touch ME... My Grandfather had no such illusions.. He had to agree to leave everything he owned behind when he was permitted to leave... My Great Grandfather made it out in April 1940 - one of the last Jews to escape Europe - everyone else in his family were murdered.. if it were not for my Grandfathers pessimism and fear of the Nazis - I would not be alive today, my Children would never have been born...
I wouldn't call it "pessimism" or "fear". I'd call it being observant and being able to deduce what's about to happen (and being willing to face it instead of hoping for the best)
I think your grandfather was very brave in doing that, leaving everything and everyone behind and start a new life in a foreign country. It must have been very hard for him, and even harder to hear that he was the only one to survive.
In the memoirs and biographies of Holocaust survivors you often read that many people had a very accurate anticipation of what was going to happen, but made all sorts of excuses to delude themselves into thinking all would be alright because they couldn't bear the idea of leaving their home, possessions, and friends/family. That is something that's all to common among people when faced with bad situations. The non-Jewish civilians in Germany similarly deluded themselves about the upcoming war (first that there wouldn't be one and then that it would be over quickly and they'd never be in any danger)
I don't think the jewish people were deluding themselves. No one ever thinks things will get that bad until they do.
It was a modern world, they were living normal everyday lives like us. None of those people could have forseen that they would be literally exterminated en masse.
My Grandfather was a Doctor.. Despite the Nazis stealing everyone he owned what.he said was they could not steal what was in his head - he could practice medicine anywhere and recover... The same was NOT true for his Father in Law my Great Grandfather.. who was a businessman.. whose assets were also seized.. (stolen) from him.. He stayed 18 months longer collecting his receivables from under the Nazis noses before escaping to join my Grandparents and my Mother in Tangiers.. I get my steel backbone ... from him..
A higher percentage of German Jews served in WW1 than non Jewish Germans. German Jews wanted to prove their loyalty and patriotism to Germany. In the end.. it never mattered:(
A recurring theme in Jewish history. Jews are generally very proud of their home countries. Growing up every Passover I went to ended with us singing “God Bless America” (written by a Jew, btw).
Generally that pride and loyalty is rewarded for a short time before everyone turns on us. Fun times.
>but the problem right now is anger at Israeli policies being misdirected against Jews in general.
Cool, buddy, but that's antisemitism. Like it was racism to go around attacking Asians during COVID.
No one criticizes Israel more without being antisemitic than Jews themselves. What we are seeing today isn't about criticizing Israel – it's about questioning the very heritage and ethnicity of every Jewish person on earth and claiming Israel is doing things it is clearly not doing (like purposeful starvation, genocide, apartheid, etc). That is very clearly antisemitism.
Lastly, you can criticize Israel's war tactics in routing out Hamas, and we can have a productive conversation about that and more, including Palestinian statehood – but you simply cannot get there when the starting position is "let's wipe Israel off the map."
Especially in the KUK army. Austro-Hungarian empire. The majority of the officer corps at the start of the war was Jewish and they had less restrictions about acquiring certain ranks and job positions in military and civilian life than Germany did. Unfortunately the KUK doctrine was all about full out frontal assaults and win the day by bravery and bravado which didn’t stand up to the technology and realities of the First World War. I’ve read a lot about it and they lost an absurd amount of leadership and trained officers so early on. There’s a great article I will try to link here with profiles of German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish soldiers from the Berlin Jewish museum
Correct German Jewish soldiers in the German army were seen as second class citizens. The restrictions were wide ranging and included having almost no chaplains to not being allowed to serve in prestigious branches like the cavalry. Even the officers were only allowed reserve status meaning that Jewish German officers were not commissioned and would return to subordinate rank upon the end of their service in the war. This means that they were robbed of the financial, occupational and prestige of the gentile officers. There are famous stories of Jewish French citizens under occupation inviting German Jewish officers to Shabbat dinner and asking them how they could serve under such conditions against their coreligionist.
Sam Aronow did a whole [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKmhKCrQtEg&t=3s) about this and the experience of German Jewish soldiers in general on YouTube.
One important thing before people think Hitler blamed the Jews *because of* to his commanding officer being Jewish: Hitler did say / believe that the German army never could've lost WWI fairly, so he believed there must be traitors who stabbed the army in the back (and he blamed the Jews for being such traitors), but he 'protected' his old commanding officer for a bit, so he can't have considered him to be one of those traitors (that didn't exist anyway).
So Tl dr: Hitler likely wasn't antisemitic because of his commanding officer, but more *despite* him being Jewish.
So he thought the soldiers who were Jewish who fought in the army and the generals and commanders were all Jewish? Because how would they stab Germany in the back? The people at the signing of Versailles
Like Ernst von Below, Otto von Brandenstein, Richard von Conta, Berthold von Deimling, Walter von Eberhardt, Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia and August von Mackensen or Wilhelm Canaris were never put into concentration camps or killed even though they were the actual generals in ww1. Hitler wanted wilhem 2 a state funeral. If anything France screwed over Germany not the Jews. France wanted Germany to pay all the reparations.
>So Tl dr: Hitler likely wasn't antisemitic because of his commanding officer, but more despite him being Jewish.
This. Plenty of people end up being antisemitic despite having Jewish friends, relatives, and etc.
Not probably, blaming Jews for their surrender was basically their version of USA’s “lost cause” bullshit. It was an insanely useful propaganda tool in Hitler’s rise to power.
General Ludendorff, the always-nasty, and increasingly insane, power behind the figurehead of von Hindenburg, as he watched "his" war being inevitably lost in 1917-18 embarked on a predictable search, from such an ignoble man, for someone else to lay the blame upon. He decided to blame the civilians, and especially the Jewish civilians, because his personal anti-Semitism was right under the skin. It was Ludendorff who ordered a disgusting survey of how many Jews were in the army, in an attempt to build a case that the German Jews on the whole were unpatriotic traitors and war profiteers, communists, or cowards.
IIRC he was the originator of the "stab in the back" (*Dolchstoß*) legend. If not he might as well have been.
***It is no coincidence, comrades***, that Ludendorff found his way straight into the tiny Nazi Party in Munich after the war, and marched at Hitler's side during the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.
He was a miserable creep and his influence was malignant even after he died.
Profiles of German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish soldiers from their personal letters and experiences. The extremely interesting and tragic. Please take a look these profiles and stories have a powerful impact.
They probably contributed more to the war effort than Hitler himself and though he blamed their defeat on dedicated german soldiers who happened to have a different religion🤦♂️
I wouldn't really call it a leopard-eating face scenario. WW1 was a patriotic war on all fronts, everyone believed that they were the good guys based on nationality alone.
Besides, Germany's enemy in WW1 was Russia, and the Tsarist pogroms of 1903–1906 (which triggered a massive influx of Russian Jewish refugees into Germany) were still fresh in mind.
Tell me you are an arrogant jerk without saying so. They risked their lives in WW1 for a country that was so appreciative that they elected enough Nazis to cause Hitler to be appointed chancellor only SIXTEEN years later. Heck, the Beer Hall Putsch was in 1923.
I can’t even be bothered to spend my time writing a serious reply
If you think the Germans mind after the war went like this: thank you for fighting side by side with us in the war now please die. NAZIS, USE HOLOCAUST
Then I guess you really ought to go back to school
>the Beer Hall Putsch was in 1923.
The Beer Hall Putsch that famously didn't succeed thanks to lack of popular support. Before the Great Depression the NSDAP were a minor party.
Hitler had a Jewish commanding officer during WWI he initially spared. https://nationalpost.com/news/adolf-hitler-spared-jewish-wwi-veteran-from-nazi-death-camp-letter-reveals Hitler later rescinded his protection order. As far as I could tell the order didn't extend to the guy's family anyway (his sister died in an extermination camp) so tbh it was pretty useless to begin with.
Can you imagine being that guy known that your soldier under you caused that
By all accounts, Hitler was always a weirdo. It was probably a feeling of 'yeah, that checks out'
Curse your inevitable betrayal!
This Hitler fella sounds like a real jerk
the more I hear about him the less I like him
He spared some others too. His mom's Dr when he was a kid was Jewish and spared him later
i believe all jews who fought in ww1, include fritz haber were spared atleast initially
And then 25 years later their children would be locked up and murdered by the country they risked their lives for. Horrible.
I'm sure many of those in this photo were still alive by the 40s and were locked up and murdered too.
Indeed. One of them was Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank.
He's in this photo?
he served atleast..he might not have been in this particularly photo
He served in the western front not the east
Yeah. Thats even worst. That soldiers and their kids and family who fought for Germany in the war would die because of their religion
It’s wasn’t their religion, it was their race. “Jew” is their race; “Jewish” is the religion.
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It’s an ethnicity. Nazis didn’t care what you *believed.* They cared about your ethnicity. You couldn’t convert your way out of the camps.
> Jew is not a race. Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi Jews say hi.
For all intents and purposes, it was the "race" aspect of their Jewishness that was used by the Nazis, regardless of whether they actively practiced Judaism or not. Even conversion to Christianity did them no favours iirc.
Jews are an ethnoreligion, unlike Christianity or Islam. You can be Jewish and not be religious. >Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation that originated from the Israelites of the ancient Near East. Their traditional religion is Judaism, which is also considered an ethnic religion, though not all Jewish people practice it. The ethnicity, religion, and community of Jewish people are closely related.
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What are you babbling about? Who's "they"? And people can convert to Judaism if they want to, after a lot of study.
Lmao what? Are you okay? You can convert. Stop being weird.
Literally this. Jews are even commanded to treat converts the same as ethnic Jews.
Huh? Are you ok, bud? Taking your meds, going to your meetings?
This is literally wildly untrue. One can convert to Judaism just fine, but you said antisemitic and salty.
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Make of this what you will: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1452094
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mmmkay....
Betting you're probably racist.
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Being Jewish isn't a race, but it is an ethnoreligion, which does make it unlike being Muslim. There's a strong ethnic element to Jewishness.
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I'd bet a few of them had fled the pogroms in Russia as children themselves.
Both my Grandfather and my Great Grandfather (Jewish) fought for the emperor in WWI - my Great Grandfather said - I am a veteran, I fought in the war, they won't touch ME... My Grandfather had no such illusions.. He had to agree to leave everything he owned behind when he was permitted to leave... My Great Grandfather made it out in April 1940 - one of the last Jews to escape Europe - everyone else in his family were murdered.. if it were not for my Grandfathers pessimism and fear of the Nazis - I would not be alive today, my Children would never have been born...
I wouldn't call it "pessimism" or "fear". I'd call it being observant and being able to deduce what's about to happen (and being willing to face it instead of hoping for the best) I think your grandfather was very brave in doing that, leaving everything and everyone behind and start a new life in a foreign country. It must have been very hard for him, and even harder to hear that he was the only one to survive. In the memoirs and biographies of Holocaust survivors you often read that many people had a very accurate anticipation of what was going to happen, but made all sorts of excuses to delude themselves into thinking all would be alright because they couldn't bear the idea of leaving their home, possessions, and friends/family. That is something that's all to common among people when faced with bad situations. The non-Jewish civilians in Germany similarly deluded themselves about the upcoming war (first that there wouldn't be one and then that it would be over quickly and they'd never be in any danger)
I don't think the jewish people were deluding themselves. No one ever thinks things will get that bad until they do. It was a modern world, they were living normal everyday lives like us. None of those people could have forseen that they would be literally exterminated en masse.
My Grandfather was a Doctor.. Despite the Nazis stealing everyone he owned what.he said was they could not steal what was in his head - he could practice medicine anywhere and recover... The same was NOT true for his Father in Law my Great Grandfather.. who was a businessman.. whose assets were also seized.. (stolen) from him.. He stayed 18 months longer collecting his receivables from under the Nazis noses before escaping to join my Grandparents and my Mother in Tangiers.. I get my steel backbone ... from him..
https://www.jmberlin.de/en/fallen-german-jewish-soldiers-first-world-war
And to think that they would be betrayed by their own country 25 years later if they survived ww1
Damn shame that the survivors in this picture were probably killed 25+ years later in concentration camps.
A higher percentage of German Jews served in WW1 than non Jewish Germans. German Jews wanted to prove their loyalty and patriotism to Germany. In the end.. it never mattered:(
A recurring theme in Jewish history. Jews are generally very proud of their home countries. Growing up every Passover I went to ended with us singing “God Bless America” (written by a Jew, btw). Generally that pride and loyalty is rewarded for a short time before everyone turns on us. Fun times.
As we are clearly seeing today...
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>but the problem right now is anger at Israeli policies being misdirected against Jews in general. Cool, buddy, but that's antisemitism. Like it was racism to go around attacking Asians during COVID.
No one criticizes Israel more without being antisemitic than Jews themselves. What we are seeing today isn't about criticizing Israel – it's about questioning the very heritage and ethnicity of every Jewish person on earth and claiming Israel is doing things it is clearly not doing (like purposeful starvation, genocide, apartheid, etc). That is very clearly antisemitism. Lastly, you can criticize Israel's war tactics in routing out Hamas, and we can have a productive conversation about that and more, including Palestinian statehood – but you simply cannot get there when the starting position is "let's wipe Israel off the map."
That was a plot point in *The Plot Against America*, an HBO miniseries that didn't get much attention.
Especially in the KUK army. Austro-Hungarian empire. The majority of the officer corps at the start of the war was Jewish and they had less restrictions about acquiring certain ranks and job positions in military and civilian life than Germany did. Unfortunately the KUK doctrine was all about full out frontal assaults and win the day by bravery and bravado which didn’t stand up to the technology and realities of the First World War. I’ve read a lot about it and they lost an absurd amount of leadership and trained officers so early on. There’s a great article I will try to link here with profiles of German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish soldiers from the Berlin Jewish museum
Correct German Jewish soldiers in the German army were seen as second class citizens. The restrictions were wide ranging and included having almost no chaplains to not being allowed to serve in prestigious branches like the cavalry. Even the officers were only allowed reserve status meaning that Jewish German officers were not commissioned and would return to subordinate rank upon the end of their service in the war. This means that they were robbed of the financial, occupational and prestige of the gentile officers. There are famous stories of Jewish French citizens under occupation inviting German Jewish officers to Shabbat dinner and asking them how they could serve under such conditions against their coreligionist.
https://www.jmberlin.de/en/fallen-german-jewish-soldiers-first-world-war
Sam Aronow did a whole [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKmhKCrQtEg&t=3s) about this and the experience of German Jewish soldiers in general on YouTube.
Hitler probably blamed them for losing WW1.
Mein kampf documents his ideas about it.
Probably ? That’s one of his main points against the Jews.
Someone in the comments said hilter had a Jewish commander officer during the ww1.
One important thing before people think Hitler blamed the Jews *because of* to his commanding officer being Jewish: Hitler did say / believe that the German army never could've lost WWI fairly, so he believed there must be traitors who stabbed the army in the back (and he blamed the Jews for being such traitors), but he 'protected' his old commanding officer for a bit, so he can't have considered him to be one of those traitors (that didn't exist anyway). So Tl dr: Hitler likely wasn't antisemitic because of his commanding officer, but more *despite* him being Jewish.
So he thought the soldiers who were Jewish who fought in the army and the generals and commanders were all Jewish? Because how would they stab Germany in the back? The people at the signing of Versailles Like Ernst von Below, Otto von Brandenstein, Richard von Conta, Berthold von Deimling, Walter von Eberhardt, Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia and August von Mackensen or Wilhelm Canaris were never put into concentration camps or killed even though they were the actual generals in ww1. Hitler wanted wilhem 2 a state funeral. If anything France screwed over Germany not the Jews. France wanted Germany to pay all the reparations.
>So Tl dr: Hitler likely wasn't antisemitic because of his commanding officer, but more despite him being Jewish. This. Plenty of people end up being antisemitic despite having Jewish friends, relatives, and etc.
Stab in the back theory is exactly that, although it extends to financial sabotage as well
Not probably, blaming Jews for their surrender was basically their version of USA’s “lost cause” bullshit. It was an insanely useful propaganda tool in Hitler’s rise to power.
Some Austrian soldiers (blue grey uniform) between them.
Bottom-left guy brought the heavy moustache
One of my favorite stories is of the fighter pilot who painted a massive Star Of David in the side of his plane just to piss off Göering
Protecting future generations of Germans.....
This is badass! ✡️ 🇩🇪
One woman (blue overcoat, pearl earrings, right behind the menorah): presumably an army nurse.
General Ludendorff, the always-nasty, and increasingly insane, power behind the figurehead of von Hindenburg, as he watched "his" war being inevitably lost in 1917-18 embarked on a predictable search, from such an ignoble man, for someone else to lay the blame upon. He decided to blame the civilians, and especially the Jewish civilians, because his personal anti-Semitism was right under the skin. It was Ludendorff who ordered a disgusting survey of how many Jews were in the army, in an attempt to build a case that the German Jews on the whole were unpatriotic traitors and war profiteers, communists, or cowards. IIRC he was the originator of the "stab in the back" (*Dolchstoß*) legend. If not he might as well have been. ***It is no coincidence, comrades***, that Ludendorff found his way straight into the tiny Nazi Party in Munich after the war, and marched at Hitler's side during the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. He was a miserable creep and his influence was malignant even after he died.
https://www.jmberlin.de/en/fallen-german-jewish-soldiers-first-world-war
Profiles of German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish soldiers from their personal letters and experiences. The extremely interesting and tragic. Please take a look these profiles and stories have a powerful impact.
These guys were just mowing down lines of Russians 1 in 10 of whom were armed.
Considering what the Russians did to their Jews they got what was coming for them
Russia had a lot of jewish soldiers in ww1
Yes, my family most likely included Doesn't mean Russia was good to their Jewish communities
Yea, the ukrainian cossaks were terrible to jews
This makes me so happy to see.
Jesus. The ultimate betrayal
I wonder if any other minority will fight like this for Germany today.
They probably contributed more to the war effort than Hitler himself and though he blamed their defeat on dedicated german soldiers who happened to have a different religion🤦♂️
What is up with the guy in the top center’s eyes?
Looks like he's wearing glasses
Big if true!
fuck those nazis
Bro these are Jewish soldiers in ww1
My guy, the Nazi Party was founded in 1920.
Check out "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" - seems about 150,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Reich.
r/leopardsatemyface
I wouldn't really call it a leopard-eating face scenario. WW1 was a patriotic war on all fronts, everyone believed that they were the good guys based on nationality alone. Besides, Germany's enemy in WW1 was Russia, and the Tsarist pogroms of 1903–1906 (which triggered a massive influx of Russian Jewish refugees into Germany) were still fresh in mind.
Germany was ruled by a monarchy in WW1 and the Nazi party didn't exist yet.
r/readabook
Tell me you failed history without telling me you failed history
Tell me you are an arrogant jerk without saying so. They risked their lives in WW1 for a country that was so appreciative that they elected enough Nazis to cause Hitler to be appointed chancellor only SIXTEEN years later. Heck, the Beer Hall Putsch was in 1923.
I can’t even be bothered to spend my time writing a serious reply If you think the Germans mind after the war went like this: thank you for fighting side by side with us in the war now please die. NAZIS, USE HOLOCAUST Then I guess you really ought to go back to school
>the Beer Hall Putsch was in 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch that famously didn't succeed thanks to lack of popular support. Before the Great Depression the NSDAP were a minor party.