Would it surprise anyone to learn that there were upwards of 150, 000 soldiers of partial Jewish descent serving in the Nazi army during World War II? I had no idea until I attended a lecture by Bryan Mark Rigg discussing his book entitled Hitler's Jewish Soldiers. What is even more startling is that Adolf Hitler was aware of this and for a while allowed them to serve. In most cases these soldiers had no knowledge of the Holocaust killing machine. From their point of view they were simple German patriots fighting for their country. Many did not even consider themselves Jewish. Some were unaware of their "Jewish blood". According to his book, at least 20 soldiers of "Jewish blood" were awarded The Knights Cross. Included in the ranks were two field marshals and fifteen generals. The most prominently known of these commanders of Jewish descent was General Erhard Milch who had one Jewish parent. He was deputy to Herman Goring, the head of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force).

The common public notion is that no one of Jewish descent would have ever been allowed to serve in the Nazi regime and, if discovered, would be immediately deported to a forced labor or extermination/concentration camp. This was not the case. The Nazi racial classification or "Nuremberg Laws" were complex and bizarre as to who was classified as a "Jew". This classification dispute is responsible for some controversy. Some scholars have complained that the title of Riggs's book is sensational and misleading because it implies that these Nazi soldiers were Jewish when, in fact, many of them would not be classified as Jews under Jewish law (Young men were considered Jewish if their mothers were Jewish.). Many of the soldiers interviewed did not consider themselves Jewish at all and had been baptized into a Christian tradition. I view this as a simplistic criticism since the overall issue of how Hitler bent and twisted the racial laws of his regime to serve his own bizarre purposes in the face of the Nuremberg laws is a fascinating idea that Riggs explains from a unique perspective. Riggs demonstrates the willingness of the Nazis to bend their own laws of racial classification and Jewish persecution and documents Hitler's extensive, obsessive involvement in deciding which "Jews" received a pass, which would be discharged, and which would ultimately be deported. Riggs also explores the historical, religious and cultural individual personal conflicts of "The Jewish Identity". A very interesting side-note to Riggs's book is that his research has popped up on Holocaust Revisionist websites as support for their outrageously bizarre claim that there was substantial support for Hitler from parts of the Jewish Community.

While most of Jewish descent were ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers, some rose to very high-ranking positions of authority in the Nazi Regime. Some either directly or indirectly participated in the Jewish killing machine. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country whose official policy was that they were regarded as second-class citizens and, in most cases, not even human. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country that was deporting their relatives to concentrations camps for eventual extermination. Germans of Jewish descent were fighting for a country who, some say, planned to ultimately exterminate them also when Germany won the war. How could these "Jews" fight for a country that planned their extinction? Why did Hitler allow this to take place? We know it is not due to the common misconception that Hitler was part Jewish. Scholars universally agree that there is no evidence of this. Rigg's thesis certainly goes against everything I believed about my identity as a Jew and what it means to be a Jew. Does having "Jewish blood" in itself make you Jewish? While the simple answer seems to be no, it was quite complicated in Nazi Germany.

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