A Deadly Legacy

Looking back in 1949 on his service in the German army in the First World War, the German-Jewish historian Ernst Kantorowicz mused that his wartime activities had probably ‘prepared, if indirectly and against my intention, the road leading to National Socialism’ (p. 213). Kantorowicz was one of 100,000 German Jews who had served in uniform during the war, but, as Tim Grady shows in this book, Jewish involvement went well beyond military service. Jews participated at practically all levels of the conflict: from frontline soldier to pro-war propagandist to opportunistic industrialist and beyond. According to Grady, Kantorowicz’s admission of partial responsibility for Hitler’s rise must be extended to all German Jews whose actions helped determine the nature of the war, both on the front and at home. Jews, Grady argues, were ‘co-constitutive’ with other Germans in shaping a war that made the Third Reich possible (p. 3). Grady supports this thesis by highlighting Jewish wartime activities that contributed to the militarisation of society, the legitimisation of violence, the ‘othering’ of opponents and the denigration of internal and external enemies. These developments, Grady insists, allowed German fascism to take root in fertile ground

Ancient history · Archaeology · Front (military · German · Judaism · Nazism · Political science · World War II · Engineering · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies