Did German Jews Help Plant the Seeds of the Second World War During the First?

During World War I, most of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Jewish subjects were eager to show their devotion to their fatherland and, despite the persistent claims of anti-Semites to the contrary, were quite willing to risk their lives at the frontlines. The historian Tim Grady, in his new book A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War, pushes this observation a few steps farther, making much of those Jews, and Jewish converts to Christianity, who distinguished themselves by their hyper-patriotism—such as Fritz Haber, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist who weaponized poison gas. Jews, argues Grady, even played a role in concocting the myth that a socialist “stab-in-the-back” precipitated Germany’s defeat, which was quickly transformed into a myth about a Jewish “stab-in-the-back.” Allan Arkush writes in his review: