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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Anti-Semitism and history
Message-ID: <387@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Dec-85 20:12:07 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.387
Posted: Thu Dec 12 20:12:07 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 17:49:56 EST
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13 Dec 85 01:12:07 GMT
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
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In article <11213@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> tedrick@ernie.UUCP (Tom Tedrick) writes:
>
>>5.  Jews were anti-militaristic (this easily follows from 1-4).  In a
>>    militaristic age, anti-militarism incurred resentment from the
>>    walking wounded of Europe's wars.
>
>I suspect this is a myth. I read an attempted refutation of this
>idea in "Germany without Jews" by Bernt Engelmann, which gives
>examples of very excellent military achievements by various Jews.

It's good to point out the difference between public myth and
documented fact, as I imagine Engelmann was doing.  There's a
recent film called *Colonel Redl*, about a ficticious colonel
who reached the rank of the Austro-Hungarian general staff.
In that story, the Jews in the military were tolerated and also
singled out.  The only reason they were tolerated seemed to be
that the government needed Jewish money.

Which *is* documented: the Rothschilds paid for the deficits
of the monarchy, and only that saved the Empire from bankruptcy.
As a condition for their assistance, the Rothschilds required
that governments tolerate and not abuse their Jewish populations.
Austria under the Empire was a relatively good place for Jews.

Germany was different.  See the following.

>Even some German military figures had Jewish blood, including
>Field Marshall Milch of the Luftwaffe (who was too valuable to
>lose despite being Jewish), Heydrich himself (who had a Jewish
>grandparent, and conceived and began the implementation of the
>"final solution" before being assasinated), and possibly even
>Hitler (there is a good chance that one of his grandparents was
>Jewish).

Unlike in Austria, however, these figures were assimilationist
and even Jew-hating.  If I were Jewish, I wouldn't take military
pride in a killer like Heydrich.  Is he described in Engelmann's
book?  If he is, the book must have been written for Germans,
who appreciate those kinds of paradoxes.

>Today the Israeli military forces are qualitatively the finest
>in the world.

A fact to take pride in, of course.  (?)

>Let me finish with a story: a close friend of mine happens to
>be Jewish. Her grandfather served with the Austrian army in
>WWI. He was wounded and spent a long time in a Russian prisoner
>of war camp. He was finally released. After Hitler took over,
>he was put in a concentration camp and killed along with almost
>all of my friend's relatives.

Tony Wuersch
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