2017/12/08 by Brian E. Crim · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #European history and politics #German History and Society #German #Political science #History #Ancient history #Archaeology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghx133
published in German History 36(2), 295-297 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2017/12/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Stories of German-Jewish veterans from the First World War clinging futilely to notions of patriotism and national belonging even as the Third Reich engulfed them may surprise and unsettle students of the Holocaust, but they are not unusual. Viktor Klemperer’s diaries written in hiding frequently reference his war service with pride along with an unwavering belief in ‘Germanness’. Other, less fortunate Jews insisted on displaying their Iron Crosses in the ghettos, concentration camps and death camps in a vain attempt to evade a predetermined fate. German Jews’ profound disorientation and sorrow amid the flurry of anti-Semitic legislation in 1933 and the onset of what Marion Kaplan termed a ‘social death’ in their own national community is partly explained by their enthusiastic participation in the First World War. Jews fought and died in great numbers, embraced aggressive German nationalism and colonial ambitions in both Africa and Eastern Europe and lamented the infernal Treaty of Versailles alongside other Germans. On 3 August 1934 the newspaper Der Schild, the principal organ for the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, commemorated the twentieth anniversary of Germany’s entry into the First World War with a plea for inclusion in the new Nazi state. ‘Was that all just a dream 20 years ago?’ one veteran wrote. ‘Have I not participated, no, lived, as part of the Volksgemeinschaft?’ (Der Schild, 3 August 1934). Tim Grady’s comprehensive account of German Jews’ myriad experiences during and immediately after the First World War reminds us that the entire Jewish community lived through the war the same way other Germans did—as supporters, opponents, efficient killing machines and victims. Grady’s insistence on recovering the ‘ordinariness of many Jewish lives’ during the war is a prerequisite for the second and more substantive argument he makes, which is that ‘German Jews have to be seen as “constitutive” in shaping what quickly turned into a bloody conflict, sharing the same hope and value as many other Germans’ (p. 3). Scholars are unlikely to discern new revelations in A Deadly Legacy, although the letters from Jewish front soldiers, their families or local rabbis and activists certainly provide evocative and often poignant details about the effects of total war on a minority population negotiating a fraught political environment. Grady’s principal contribution is combining many threads of existing scholarship on German Jews and the First World War into an engaging book appropriate for scholars and advanced students alike. Grady is to be commended for complicating simplistic narratives of Jews as victims of the war experience, either as scapegoats for defeat or as unfairly maligned shirkers, and the equally reductive description of Jewish soldiers as ‘heroes’ for fighting and dying for the Fatherland with patriotic zeal. Grady spends considerable space on Jews as wilful perpetrators of total war, propagandists at home and abroad in conquered territory and even contributors to the post-war chaos and reactionary violence which often targeted Jews collectively and destabilized the fledgling Weimar Republic. Grady’s third argument concerns this ‘deadly legacy’ of the wartime culture of which Jews were constituent members, a topic he explored in his first monograph The German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory (Liverpool, 2012). Grady begins by situating German Jews within the imperial era, noting that assimilation contended with a new and vibrant Zionist movement for influence. Grady surveys Jewish newspapers throughout the book and concludes that the Jewish press was as unconcerned or ignorant of the crises facing Europe as the rest of the newspapers. The emperor’s declaration of a ‘civic truce’ in August 1914 seemed to validate centuries of Jewish struggle for inclusion as Jews swarmed the recruiting stations along with other Germans, readying themselves for the great adventure ahead. Grady alternates between telling the stories of average German Jews and luminaries like Arnold Zweig, who hoped for a new era of German-Jewish symbiosis. Zweig wrote soon after volunteering, ‘In my inherently Jewish way, I will make Germany’s cause, my cause’ (p. 33). Other figures like Walter Rathenau, Fritz Haber and Zionist leader Kurt Blumenfeld each served in different ways. Grady details the Jewish ‘holy war’ against Russian oppression, demonstrating that Jewish intellectuals and politicians used the infamous pogroms as a rallying cry for German expansion. Only German civilization could alleviate Jewish suffering and poverty in the East. Grady notes throughout the text that the interaction between German Jewish soldiers and administrators assigned to the occupation and the so-called ‘Ostjuden’ was complex and often uncomfortable for both parties. German Jews were simultaneously intrigued and repelled by their Eastern brothers. Grady is at his best when illuminating Jewish contributions to the German colonial project in the East, specifically Oberost, and Jewish interest in exploring and categorizing conquered races as an academic exercise. At every stage of the war, Jews shared in the violence, food shortages, nationalist sentiment, adherence to grandiose war aims and the misery of attrition, which is why the infamous Jew census in the autumn of 1916 came as such a blow. Responding to anti-Semitic agitation and Reichstag pressure, the Prussian War Ministry initiated a humiliating and haphazardly executed census to somehow ‘prove’ Jews were shirking service at the front. The results were inconclusive and never published, although right-wing agitators released their own numbers after the war. While many Jews felt betrayed, such as philosopher Ernst Simon who declared after the census that ‘we were now all Zionists’, Grady suggests most front soldiers carried on dutifully to the bitter end (p. 156). After the collapse in November 1918 and the aborted revolution that followed, German Jews contended with the insidious ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend, the influx of Jewish immigrants from the East, and the unfortunate perception that prominent Jews like Rosa Luxemberg and Kurt Eisner spread chaos on the home front, a crime for which all Jews were now charged. Grady concludes that the war experience so many Jews clung to for validation was used against them in the post-war period. Ultimately, it seemed, the feeling of national belonging was a dream after all. Grady writes the story of German Jews from multiple perspectives, including opposing ideologies, religious denominations and regional differences. Readers either unfamiliar with the issues he raises or those seeking a comprehensive narrative useful in the classroom will appreciate this concise volume.