A Mixed Bag of Loyalties: Jewish Soldiers, Ethnic Minorities, and State-Based Contingents in the German Army, 1914–1918

Abstract

The presence of subnational loyalties in the German army that fought the First World War has frequently been overlooked. With a few notable exceptions, the Kaiser’s armies have been portrayed as culturally and ethnically homogenous. This chapter seeks to address this historiographical shortcoming by placing official attitudes toward the army’s Jewish soldiers, ethnic minorities, and state-based contingents alongside one another. Before 1914, high-ranking officers possessed views of these groups that were informed by a diverse set of prejudices, ranging from intense antisemitism to a simple dislike of South German peculiarities. During the First World War, these views coalesced into an obsession with dual loyalties, a concept which, in the view of the Prussian war ministry and Supreme Command, threatened to tear the army apart from within.