DVD Talk Review: Hitler's Jewish Soldiers The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military and the book: Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
Kyte The fact that there were the odd Jewish soldiers in the German Army surprises me not at all, in fact I would have been more surprised if there were no stories of this type. The ultimate aim of all humanity is to survive and people will do the most amazing things in order to achieve this. I have always been eternally grateful that I personally was never put to the test of having to survive starvation or torture, both of which were readilly used by the Third Reich to achieve their nefarious purposes. It is also well known and understood that within the concentration camps themselves some Jews chosen to carry out the most unthinkable tasks in order to save their lives and again, I and others, can understand this and be thankful that we were never called upon to make choices of this kind. So dear Kyte, I am not surprised by these stories, just grateful that I never had to face the experience myself. Ron
I would add that there is no such thing as a half-Jew or a quarter-Jew or a sixteenth-Jew. To resort to such absurd classifications is to play the race game. There is no Jewish race. There is a Jewish religion, Judaism, and an ancient and highly respected Jewish culture. Many non-practising Jews belong to the latter and are proud to be known as Jews. Die-hard high-ranking Nazis such as Milch, for example, were not by any stretch of the imagination Jews, and certainly not 'half-Jews'. Having completely and totally rejected Judaism and Jewish culture by no stretch of the imagination could they be considered Jews, nor were they that utter absurdity 'Aryan'. However, when Fascism was founded in 1919 by Mussolini, many of the founding members, the Fascisti della prima ora were Jews, as were many right-wing Italian Nationalists. Nazism and Fascism were then quite different political concepts, it was Stalin who in the 1930s first described them as being the same. It is not surprising that there should have been Italian Fascists who were Jews. Jews like any other members of society embrace the full range of political beliefs, from extreme left to extreme right. It was only in 1938 that Italian Fascism began to ape Nazi racial beliefs, based on the myth of Aryan superiority, and thousands of Italian Fascists were expelled from the party. To their credit most Italians and many Fascists thought the whole idea was a farce, and Mussolini himself secretly encouraged his military commanders during WW2 to stall, ignore, and otherwise frustrate Nazi efforts to have Jews shipped to Germany either from Italy or any area occupied by Italians.
