Brian E. Crim is an associate professor of history at Lynchburg College.

• Table of ContentsIntroduction Chater One Legacies of the Front: Antisemitism in the Imperial Army and ReichswehrChapter TwoThe Stahlhelm’s Jewish Question Chapter ThreeThe Völkisch Middle? Situational Antisemitism and the Young German OrderChapter Four“We were there also”: Jewish Veterans and the Defense against AntisemitismChapter Five“There is only loyalty or treason”: The Military Community in the Third ReichConclusionBibliography

Belying anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews shirking military service, German Jewish soldiers died on the battlefields of WWI alongside their gentile comrades, and almost half of the German Jewish soldiers were decorated for bravery. It is known that the hopes for recognition of those 80,000 who survived the war were mostly disappointed, not only by 1933, but also in the Weimar Republic, with most rightist and conservative veterans’ organizations observing increasingly anti-Semitic policies. While confirming this general view, Crim unfolds a rather nuanced picture. In five chapters, he examines anti-Semitic attitudes and politics in the German Army before, during, and after WWI, in the Stahlhelm (the most proliferate right-wing veterans association), and in the less popular and more moderate Young German Order, and he explores the responses of the Jewish war veterans association to the increasingly yet never complete ostracism of Jewish servicemen from the gentile organizations. The final chapter outlines the radicalization of these politics through 1938. What propelled anti-Jewish stances and acts was, according to Crim, not ingrained hatred or disdain, but the need of these associations to overarch, or distract from, their massive internal divisions through 'situational anti-Semitism,' as he calls it. Clearly a scholarly book, addressed to graduates and faculty. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty.