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I'm not sure what Halbrook's thesis is, but those
Jews from the Austro-Hungarian Empire scattered throughout
Eastern Europe would have been present in countries
either allied with Germany or overrun by them.
Men in their 30s,
40s, and 50s aren't the first choice for soldiers, but the experience of the
guys too old for the militia
who attacked British troops at Lexington &
Concord suggests that they can be dangerous. Samuel Whittemore
was 80, and killed a number of British troops
before they shot, bayonetted, and clubbed him into submission.
He lived another 16 years. A bunch of guys in
their 50s aren't going to be all that successful against an
equivalent number of young soldiers in direct
combat, but they can be surprisingly effective in guerilla warfare.
I've seen the figure of 10:1 for the ratio of
regular troops required to suppress committed guerilla forces in the
right environment.
Concerning the Warsaw Ghetto: one of the
difficulties there was not only a severe shortage of guns (and not
just in the Ghetto, but among Polish civilians
outside), but a lack of military training. The Polish Army had
been pretty fiercely "nationalistic" (a nice
euphemism for anti-Semitic) after World War I, and Jews had not
been present in large numbers. Of course, the
right time to have fought back against the Germans was not
after being shipped to the Warsaw Ghetto, but when
ordered to show up at the trains.
Israel Gutman's chapter in Yahil's book has a
rather interesting set of examples of how Jews working in
German weapons factories smuggled out weapons
parts, one at a time. In one case, they managed to
get an entire machine gun, with belts of
ammunition, one piece at at time, assembled it, and used it in
the defense of their ghetto. Most of the Jews
there died, but in the fight, about 10% managed to escape
to the forces, and lived.
Sure, the Germans could have just bombed the Warsaw
Ghetto and solved the problem. The whole point
of having the population widely armed is to make
sure that there is enough potential resistance to prevent
this sort of ghettoization.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 9:49
PM
Subject: Re: Halbrook thesis: Armed
resistance to Hitler
the 300,000 figure for jews in the austo-hungarian army is
misleading for this discussion because they were spread all over eastern
europe; halbrook's thesis might plausibly have some merit if there had been
300,000 jewish war vets in austria, all armed and presumably ready to fight,
20 years after they put down their guns (they would not be in their late 30s,
40s, or even 50s. this in itself makes them implausible fighters, but
the point is that most of the 300,000 were not in austria, they were scattered
throughout what had been the empire.
it is implausible to
believe the jews in the warsaw ghetto could have been armed a
great deal more than they were. many, perhaps most, of the jews in the
warsaw ghetto had been transported there from elsewhere and would have been
disarmed before being removed; it is also just as plausible that a heavily
armed warsaw uprising would have been smashed more quickly; the germans took
so long in warsaw at least in part because they did not expect resistance and
thought it would be quickly crushed; consider what the german airfoce
did to rotterdam in a day or two; imagine what the germans could have done to
the warsaw ghetto!
paul finkelman
Clayton E. Cramer wrote:
It's certainly true that if a minority is small
enough, armed resistance might provide the excuse for
more violence. The night of broken glass
was provoked (or at least, this was the claimed provocation)
by a Jew killing a German diplomat in
Paris. Ironically, that diplomat appears to have been part of
the movement around von Stauffenberg that was
engaged in resistance to Hitler. (At least, _Target:
Hitler_ makes that claim.)
It is also true that resistance in 1933 would
have made little sense. Hitler was full of fury at the Jews,
but at least initially, there was not much
reason to assume that something like the Holocaust was
going to be implemented. It was very easy
to assume that all the sound and fury about Jews in
_Mein Kampf_ was empty words. In 1939,
once the war had started, however, it might well have made
sense for Jews who remained in Germany to fight. At least for some, it was
becoming apparent that Hitler's
anti-Semitism was more than just a short-lived attempt to rouse the masses behind
der Fuehrer.
Why did the fighting culture of German
Jews matter? Because in some parts of Eastern Europe, a
quite strong pacifist culture had developed,
and with some good reason. When a pogrom happened,
there were two choices: put up a fight, and be
slaughtered by the majority culture, or hope that the
fury would pass quickly. Israel
Gutman's _Resistance_ and his chapter on this subject in Leni
Yahil's book about the Holocaust discuss this
in some detail. The difference this time was that
Hitler's rage at Jews wasn't a short-term burst
of anger, but a long-term plan of extermination. It was
in these populations where both gun control and
a tradition of peasants being unarmed made a big
difference. If the Jews of Poland had
been as well armed as the average American, the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising (and the dozens of smaller uprisings
across occupied Eastern Europe) would have tied up
far more German soldiers, probably shortening
the war. Of course, the number of Jews in the former
Austro-Hungarian Empire matter on this count,
because this is where a fair number of the victims of
the Holocaust were murdered.
----- Original Message -----
Sent:
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 2:48 PM
Subject:
Re: Halbrook thesis: Armed resistance to Hitler
I was at the German Historical Institute Conference when
Stephen gave this paper about 7 years ago; the German and the American
scholars familiar with WWII were almost unanimous in thinking it was
wrong. There were far fewer than 550,000 Jews in Germany by 1933;
Germany was a considerably smaller place after WWI; and the
Austro-Hungarian numbers are rather meaninless, since the empire no longer
existed and the number of Jews in Austria were much smaller. I don't
have figures handy, but about half of all Jews left Germany between 1933
adn 1939. The German Jewish population was really quite small, and
even if the small number of Jews had resisted, they would have been
crushed quickly; Most people who are law abiding do not immediately
reach for a gun when they do not like a government policy. The
cultural issue is not about Jews being good soldiers or not (the evidence
that Halbrook presents that they were implies that is we should not expect
Jews to be soldiers, i will decline to explore the motivations for such
evidence);.
The cultural issue is that most Jews saw themselves as
good German citizens, and obeyed the law. They could not have
imagined, in 1933 oe 1934 what would happen 6 or 7 years later. But,
had all the ablebodied Jewish men in 1933 started fighting the German
government, does anyone really believe they would have prevailed? Or
would that have simply been an excuse of the new regime to slaughter all
Jews in Germany; indeed, in retrospect the only survival strategy for
German Jews was to leave. Many did; more would have if the US, Canada, and
Britain had offered them sanctuary. Many of the young men who did
leave, returned to Germany in 1945 in British and American uniforms.
Paul Finkelman
--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Richard
F. Griffiths wrote:
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
--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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