Anne Laurie brought our attention to Dr. Carson’s recent comments regarding Jewish Armed resistance, or the lack thereof, against the NAZIs during World War II. Earlier today, between a conference call and doing some other work related stuff I came across Steve M’s much fuller treatment on the topic. Steve traces the history of the assertion that had Jewish Germans been allowed to keep and bear arms, then they would have been able to either provide significant resistance to the NAZIs. This argument originated, as Steve noted, with the founders of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) who did an analysis of the German firearms laws and restrictions – both those from the late 1920s and the latter set from the late 1930s.
I recently dealt with this at another website – this is the unplanned guest post that I have mentioned a couple of times in comments. I want to follow up and address this here too and I’m adapting some of what I had written at the link above, as well as adding some new information. There are really three different issues to be addressed here: 1) is there really a historical analogy between the German context in the interwar period?; 2) what exactly was the context for Jewish Germans and based on that context would more permissive German firearms laws have made any difference?; and 3) was their actually any Jewish Armed resistance against the NAZIs during WW II? I’m not going to take these in order, in fact I’m going to go backwards (and jump around a bit) – it’ll make more sense this way.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum actually covers the topic of armed Jewish resistance against the NAZIs. This is how it is treated on its website:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005441
and here:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005213
So to does the Yad Vashem in Israel:
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/07/resistance.asp
There was Jewish and non-Jewish armed resistance against the NAZIs. However, most of this resistance came late, after 1942, when it became very, very clear that the Final Solution was NOT simply ethnic cleansing through relocation, but ethnic cleansing through industrial scale extermination. Even where there was armed resistance, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it was not effective for very long. And while I’m a big fan and supporter of the right of self defense, especially in extremis, in this case it simply would have prolonged the inevitable.
The reason for this is that the NAZIs were first fielding the powers of the state as they consolidated their control, then that of an actual military with the resources of the German state. Ultimately they were also able to utilize the resources of many of the states they had conquered. And all of this would eventually be directed to the support of the military, its needs, and its dual mission of conquering Europe and executing the Final Solution. So we know and can document as a fact there was significant, if somewhat belated resistance. This includes both the Jewish armed resistance and that of both non-Jewish Germans and non-Jewish citizens of other European countries. Some of this is the partisan activity of underground and irregular forces, but it also include the actual armed forces of a number of European states. These actual armies and militaries where unable to stop the NAZIs in one on one fights, so what chance would armed Jewish Germans have really had? Very little.
There are several reasons for this. Despite limiting formal party affiliation for several years out of internal security concerns, the NAZIs still managed to mobilize the vast majority of German society either explicitly or implicitly behind their activities. This is, essentially, the Goldhagen thesis, but even if the cooption of German state, society, and citizenry was not as complete as Goldhagen argues, it was still sufficient to have rendered any real Jewish German resistance futile. The NAZIs had a state and society as a resource, which allowed them to mobilize the power of the state through force – using all elements of national power (diplomatic, informational, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement/DIME-FIL) to achieve their ends.
Prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, and despite being very vocally anti-Semitic, the NAZIs held their cards pretty close to their vests. Kristallnacht was basically an internal, blitzkrieg like pogrom. It is important to note that only 1% of the German citizenry were Jewish – about 500,000 out of a total German citizenry of 67 million. Only a portion of this 1% were emancipated (secular/assimilated as Germans who’s religion just happened to be Jewish as opposed to the very visible ultra-orthodox Jewish Germans). This means that there were less than 500,000 Jewish Germans that might have been acculturated/socialized enough to modern notions of self defense and that might have been willing to resist. Aside from the fact that these are not good odds, and ignoring the fact that Jewish Germans began to flee or go underground or actually engaged in forms of resistance, it ignores a more important concern: there was no Jewish German, let alone Judaic, way of war at that time.
Bad Historical Analogy Theater: Jewish Armed Resistance Against the NAZIsPost + Comments (114)