Halbrook thesis: Armed resistance to Hitler

[Richard F. Griffiths]

The possibility of armed Jewish resistance to Adolf Hitler is often simply dismissed as a cultural impossibility and as wishful thinking by pro-gun zealots. Yet Steve Halbrook documents in his excellent article, Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews, that the Nazis devoted considerable time and energy to the progressive disarmament of Hitler's political opponents and of the Jews including even their knives and old sabers. 

Were all Jewish men living in Germany so urbanized and unfamiliar with the use of weapons that resistance was simply futile?

If the Jews did serve in the German military during the World War I how many saw combat and what was their record?

Bryan Mark Rigg's work Hitler's Jewish Soldiers provides some answers to these historical questions. 

On page 72 Rigg's states:

" About 10,000 volunteered for duty and over 100,000 out of a total German-Jewish population of 550,000 served during World War I. Some 78 percent saw frontline duty, 12,000 died in battle, over 30,000 received decorations, and 19,000 were promoted. Approximately 2,000 Jews became military officers, and 1,200 became medical officers..."

On page 73

"In the Austrian-Hungarian Empire of the 300,000 Jews who served in World War I, 25,000 were officers; 25,000 died in battle. There were 76 Jewish chaplains, all holding the rank of captain. During the war, 24 Jews attained the ranl of general, 76 received the Gold Medals for bravery, and 22 the Orders of the Iron Crown Third Class..."

On page 74

"Gert Dalberg who volunteered for the Wermacht, mentioned in his application to the University of Berlin that his Jewish father had been a World War I officer and had been decorated with both Iron Crosses, the House of Hohenzollern's Knight's Cross with swords, Turkey's Iron Half-Moon Medal, and Silver Wound Badge. Dalberg's father also had fought against the Communists after World War I in the Freikorps."

According to General von Deimling ...In my corps, the Jews fought as bravely as their Christian comrades and to many of them I presented the Iron Cross."

Rich