With swastika on his chest and Jewish blood in his veins

With swastika on his chest and Jewish blood in his veins, thousands of soldiers of the German armed forces were to the front lines in defense of the Nazi regime, says the American historian Bryan Mark Rigg.
When traveling in Germany soon after starting their course of history at Yale University, Bryan Mark Rigg discovered by chance that his Protestant mother had Jewish roots. In informal conversation with a veteran of the German armed forces during World War II, Rigg heard the biography of a Jewish descendant, who fought in defense of the Nazi regime.


he Jewish soldier Anton Mayer. His appearance nothing Germanic not stop him from joining the ranks of the German Army.
The theme, which no longer left the student of history, resumed in 1996, when Rigg finished his degree with a thesis dedicated to the saga of Wehrmacht soldiers (German Army), who had Jewish ancestry. Then the historian devoted to the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University, where he researched the stories similar to the old acquaintance of his mother.



The Jewish soldier Werner Goldberg, who was blond and blue-eyed, came to have his photograph published in a German newspaper, which appeared written, "The ideal German soldier".
Unsure if the destinations analyzed were sporadic or a phenomenon that reached a representative number of people, Rigg spoke with witnesses and former combatants in Germany, Austria and throughout Southern Europe. The work has resulted in more than 400 interviews with former German soldiers of Jewish origin, including the German Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt former and the political and journalist Egon Bahr.
The meetings, documented on video by Rigg, were the starting point of the work, which is based largely on the "oral history" reported by former soldiers. Four basic issues led the Author range which had the theory of Nazi races within the Army, Navy and Air Force during World War II?
As the military dealt with the presence of Jews or considered "mixed race" (Mischlinge) of Jews and non-Jews during the war? According to the responses recorded by Rigg, some of the Jews who were part of the German Army, whose families followed military and nationalist traditions, opted for the defense of Germany.



The estimate resulting from Rigg's thesis is that at least a hundred thousand soldiers of the Wehrmacht had Jewish ancestors, and most of these would be "assimilated" and named by Christian customs. Among those involved were not only soldiers, but officers and generals, some even decorated with medals of recognition by the Nazis.



Comments on the volume Soldiers Hitler's Jewish delegate to the author credited with having lit a chapter still largely ignored the history of Nazi Germany, but there are also critical vehement due to the fact of the contradiction regarding what allegedly happened in the concentration camps, raising the public even more doubts about the so-called Holocaust.
We left the Jewish Erhard Milch, who was awarded the Ritterkreuz thanks to its air campaign in Norway in 1940. Next is the legendary hero of German aviation during World War II, Baron or General Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen.
When we watch on television how intolerant it was the regime of Adolf Hitler, it seems a joke in bad taste to see someone hypothesize there may have been in the German army itself, people were seen as a threat, and that, apparently, They had only one destination, crematory. The big difference behind these Jewish men who agreed to fight the Nazis, is that they knew what they were fighting?