Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War

The peer-reviewed series seeks to provide an international platform for new approaches to the study of modern Jewish history. Covering the period from the Enlightenment to the 21st century, the series focuses on cutting-edge work in social, cultural, economic, and political history. It seeks to explore new avenues in the understanding of modern Jewries in their historical contexts, encouraging a multi-layered exploration of topics which transcend the analytical boundaries of ethnicity, nation, and religion. The series embraces monographs and challenging research-oriented anthologies dedicated to a deeper understanding of essential themes in the main fields of Jewish studies, such as Jewish thought, migration, biography, Israel and the Middle East, Holocaust studies, the history of memory, and identity.

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In Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War David J. Fine offers a surprising portrayal of Jewish officers in the German army as integrated and comfortably identified as both Jews and Germans. Fine explores how both Judaism and Christianity were experienced by Jewish soldiers at the front, making an important contribution to the study of the experience of religion in war. Fine shows how the encounter of German Jewish soldiers with the old world of the shtetl on the eastern front tested both their German and Jewish identities. Finally, utilizing published and unpublished sources including letters, diaries, memoirs, military service records, press accounts, photographs, drawings and tomb stone inscriptions, the author argues that antisemitism was not a primary factor in the war experience of Jewish soldiers.