“Who is a Jew?” “What is Jewish?” The different laws and definitions, religiously and historically, greatly complicate the issue, especially when studying the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Many German Jews and Mischlinge, including Oppenfeld, Krüger, and Jacoby, wanted nothing to do with Jews or their own Jewish past. After the war, neither Jewish identity nor Jewish loyalty played any role in their lives. Some, such as Scholz, Löwy, and Hirschfeld, embraced their Jewishness and now call themselves Jews. Others, among them Meissinger and Techel, acknowledge their Jewish roots, but would not call themselves Jewish in any sense of the word. The group represented by Kopp and Geitner has wrestled with questions about themselves and their role in society in light of their Jewish background throughout their lives. These men acknowledge their Jewishness, but feel bewildered as to what this means in practical terms. Jewish identity is complicated and may be best summed up as historian Jonathan Steinberg claimed: “A Jew is a person who asks himself his entire life what it means to be a Jew.”
These men’s stories illustrate the wide range of experiences of German soldiers of Jewish descent, a group that probably numbered over 150,000. The trauma thousands of mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, and children suffered by being connected to them broadens the scope of the tragedy of this chapter of the Holocaust. The lives of many Mischlinge and some Jews in the Wehrmacht were traumatic, filled with difficult choices and painful experiences. Some came from families with strong military traditions, a background that encouraged them to accept service under the Third Reich as natural and honorable, which is strongly illustrated by Techel and Prager. Their fathers and uncles had served in World War I, and a few, like Milch, Wilberg, Rogge, Mendelssohn, and Jacoby, had even distinguished themselves in this very conflict, giving them a strong foundation of military service before Nazism. The majority of their families and most of these men had the customary rights of German citizens, only to have them quickly taken away once Hitler came into power.
These case studies show in vivid detail that these men fought for a government that took away their basic human rights and sent their relatives to extermination centers. Nevertheless most continued to serve, since any open resistance would have cost them their lives. Further, they mistakenly hoped their service would protect themselves and their families. For some, military service delayed the deportation of a relative, and some Mischlinge received special treatment for some period of time. However, most ultimately lost their relatives to the genocidal Nazi machine, and most Mischling soldiers surrendered more and more of their rights as the Nazis years wore on.
The fact that their Aryan superiors courageously helped many of them added to their belief that their service would help protect them. As in the cases of Günther Scheffler, Wilberg, Mendelssohn, Fischer, and Geitner, their superiors disregarded the Nazi racial laws, valuing a trained soldier and true comrade more than Nazi regulations. This helps explain why many of these men remained loyal.
The passionate patriotism felt by many Mischlinge is ironic. When drafted, most thought it their duty to obey, even though the Nazis persecuted them and their families. As half-Jew Dieter Bergman said, “I loved my Fatherland, and most half-Jews I knew all believed they were fulfilling their duty to Germany. We loved Germany and wanted to see her become great again. Unfortunately, we were lied to and were abused by the very country we held so dear.”1 Nazi policy toward Mischlinge gradually worsened and pushed them toward the world of the Holocaust.
Hitler refused to use these patriotic citizens to help win the war. This demonstrates how Hitler valued racial purity over military victory. From 1942 to 1944, Hitler assigned hundreds of trains to move “millions of Jews across Europe to the death factories in Poland” when the army could have used those trains to move “troops and war material.” Despite the constant labor shortage, Hitler exterminated millions of Jews who could have worked in factories.2 Hitler had discharged tens of thousands of half-Jews from military service by late 1942, when Germany encountered severe setbacks at Stalingrad. He could have recalled these men, and most would have fought bravely. Did Hitler have nothing better to do at the height of the battle of Stalingrad than to examine applications from Mischlinge to see if they were worthy of Aryanization? Only he could grant such an exemption, since he believed only he, like God, could discern a person’s true racial makeup. Hitler’s racial policies turned most Mischlinge against him and his government. The majority of them looked forward to the day of Hitler’s demise. Krüger admitted that had Hitler not discriminated against him, he probably would have become a Nazi. When asked why, he simply explained how difficult it is today for people to understand how attractive the movement was to young men. In front of “the evil goals of the Nazis stood the wonderful activities for young men of camping, war games, and community. It all just felt so good.”
Just as shocking as Hitler’s perverse racial policies with respect to partial Jews in the Wehrmacht is that most Mischling soldiers did not know Hitler was murdering millions of Jews, including their relatives. Like most other Germans, they knew about Nazi deportations, but what happened at the deadly destinations lay beyond their knowledge or imagination. Oppenfeld, Günther Scheffler, Kopp, and others knew about executions in the east, but not the systematic killing of millions in gas chambers.
The most convincing proof that these men did not know what was happening is the story of half-Jews in the OT forced labor camps. Had half-Jews known about the Holocaust, one would expect them to have done everything they could to avoid deportation. But as this book shows, most reported when called. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer wrote, “The Jews were the products of a civilization which stood in stark contradiction to all the premises of Nazism. It was totally incomprehensible to them that people should exist who denied the sanctity of human life, or who excluded some people from humanity altogether. They were therefore outwitted at every point, easily misled, and murdered precisely because they could not accept the reality of the world in which such murder was possible.”3 If Jews did not know the endgame of the Nazis, their Mischling relatives remained at least as ignorant of what Hitler’s plan would do to them.
The story of Mischling soldiers illustrates how corrupt and demeaning the Nazi government was and how confusing its racial laws were. These Mischlinge fought for a regime that repaid their service by murdering their relatives and persecuting them. Furthermore, had Germany won the war, its leaders probably would have slaughtered half-Jews en masse too—something many came to realize in their OT camps or after the war. Hitler’s constant attention to the details of Mischling policy support the assumption that he was at least as intimately involved in the policies that affected them as in those that affected the Jews.
The story of the Mischlinge sheds light on the Pandora’s box Hitler opened when he tried to split his society between desirables and undesirables. It demonstrates how miserably Hitler failed at this as he destroyed the lives of individuals and millions of families, both Jewish and Aryan.
Yet the Mischling story offers much more than copious evidence of Nazi discrimination, persecution, and injustice. Many Mischlinge, among them Fischer, Meissinger, Krüger, and the Scheffler brothers, did a great deal to protect their relatives. Mendelssohn, Bloch, and others saved Jews to whom they had no previous connection. We also see courage, generosity, and self-sacrifice in the face of great danger.
Unfortunately, we also see evil in the lives of some Mischlinge. Field Marshal Milch, a Nazi, represents a Mischling who turned himself over to Hitler and his goals. In the end, he served time as a Nazi war criminal. Luckily, this disgusting person was a member of a tiny minority among the Mischlinge.
In the end, the Third Reich cannot be limited to extremes. Not every soldier was an archetypal Nazi, nor was every soldier a pure Aryan. History does not fit into simple black and white categories. We must struggle to understand the gray middle where real life happens. The Mischling stories show how complicated and varied the racial laws and their effects were, especially in the military.
The Mischlinge lead us beyond the Third Reich into a discussion of identity both as individuals and as members of society. Identity can be fluid and is often forced upon a person. Who we are can be a reflection of how people view and treat us, rather than how we want to be perceived. The dramatic identity crises of the men in this book should remind each of us to ask, “Why are we the way we are?” The way we understand ourselves directly influences how we interpret history. More importantly, the way we view ourselves affects how we treat others. This lesson should never be lost on students of the Holocaust. In other words, we need to constantly monitor ourselves for how we talk about and treat others. Genocide—including the post-Holocaust genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Iraq—begins with discriminatory and prejudicial thoughts long before anyone dies. How we learn to think about others and their worth makes all the difference. The Mischlinge remind us how important it is to fight vigilantly against our tendency to denigrate others in order to bolster our own faltering self-esteem.