Jews in the Military Service of the Hapsburg Empire

The ramshackle Austro-Hungarian empire kept spotty records, but it is estimated that some 300,000 - 350,000 Jews served in the Imperial and Royal (“kaiserlich und königlich,” or k. u. k.) Armies during the First World War. Between 30,000 and 40,000 died of wounds or illness, and at least 17% became prisoners of war (mainly in Tsarist Russia.)

Deeply rooted in Western Christian consciousness was the notion that Jews should not be permitted to possess weapons, own land, or practice the profession of arms. In many nations, this was the law until well into the 19th century. Austria was an exception. Emperor Joseph II who ruled from 1765 to1790, was an enlightened ruler, (although he famously complained that Mozart’s music had “too many notes.”) Seeking to reduce the power of the Church, in 1782 he issued an edict of tolerance that extended some civil rights to Jews, and also made them subject to military conscription.

This book is organized in eight chapters:

Ch. 1: Setting the Stage

Ch. 2: Jews in the Armies of Austro-Hungary before the Great War

Ch. 3: The Kaiser Needs You! Initial Reaction to the Declaration of War

Ch. 4: Snapshots from the Eastern Front

Ch. 5: Snapshots from Other Fronts: The Balkans, Italy, and Palestine

Ch. 6: Austro-Hungarian Feldrabbiner [Jewish chaplains ]

Ch. 7: Captives of the Tsar

Ch. 8: Epilogue: The Fate of Habsburg Jewish Veterans

The book would be improved by a couple of good maps: the geography of Eastern Europe can be confusing to readers, since national boundaries often shifted, and many cities mentioned in the text have multiple names (notably Lemberg/Lwów/Lviv; Czernowitz/Chernivtsi/Cernau?i.)

The author pays tribute to Austro-Hungarian field rabbis (p. 228):

"These were modest men, imbued with supranational loyalty to the empire, which made them count among the most loyal of the Kaiser’s subjects. They wrote little but acted greatly. They asked no credit for themselves, and were only concerned with the welfare of the men entrusted to them, including prisoners."

Based on letters, diaries, and a few autobiographical novels, the chapter on the experience of prisoners of war in Russia contains harrowing and gruesome descriptions of the suffering these men endured. Diseases like typhus, typhoid fever, cholera and the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic along with malnutrition caused high mortality in POW camps.

Jewish Hungarian war veterans, many radicalized in Russian POW camps, were prominent in the short-lived Communist regime that seized power in Hungary for a few months in 1919, notably Béla Kun (1886-1938,) who was executed by Stalin in the Great Purge. In Austria itself, the postwar Jewish population of about 180,000, with a high proportion of war veterans, was virtually destroyed in the Holocaust.

Habsburg Sons concludes with these words (p. 303):

"We are still living with the unresolved problems of World War I…This current book attempts to shed light on a group of Jewish veterans whose fatherland turned on them murderously two decades after the end of the war. Their fate was the same as that of their German compatriots: bravery, loyalty, courage mattered nothing to the annihilating antisemitism of National Socialism. If this book speaks for these long dead and long forgotten soldiers, I am content."

An Emeritus Professor of Pathology at Pennsylvania State University, Peter C. Appelbaum’s earlier wrote Loyal Sons: Jews in the German Army in the Great War and Loyalty Betrayed: Jewish Chaplains in the German Army During the First World War.

Habsburg Sons is not an easy read, the text is often repetitious; but it should be of great interest to historians of the First World War.

Note: Habsburg Sons is also available in hard cover and e-editions.

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