First, to explain the German term 'Judenzählung'.....it loosely translates to 'Jewish counting' or a census of Jews.
So, in the middle of WW I (Oct 1916)...roughly 27 months into the war....things were going not so great, and the newspapers needed someone to blame. So articles were being written to say that while Jews did participate in the war effort....the majority were on rear-action jobs....not at the front lines.
Lt Gen Heinrich Adolf Wild von Hohenborn decided to settle the question, and held a 'count' of Jews in the German Army (listing them....rear-action and front-action....ONLY soldiers, not the general population).
End-result? Around 80-percent were on the front lines. Afterwards, some came to note (numbers vary) that at this key point of Oct 1916....around 12,000 had already died in the war, and upwards to 30-plus thousand had been cited for heroic actions.
So, here's the interesting thing. A number of things indicate that the general never asked permission to do the count, and roughly two weeks after he ordered the review to occur....he was 'fired'.
Disagreement with the perception of Hindenburg? More or less.
Were the results ever published (1916)? No.
Did anyone in the general public ever find this fact out? There's not a lot to suggest the fact not existing until after WW II.
Had this come out in 1917....would it have changed the anti-Jew slant going on in Germany? It might have lessened things a but not dissolved the whole slant.
No comments:
Post a Comment