Were there Jewish Men in the Nazi Party?

Today on a documentary about Goering on the History Channel, they had a Nazi who the narrator said was not of full German ancestory and thus Goering said, 'I decide whose a Jew.' I forgot the man's name. If you saw the program, can you kindly tell me if he was he Jewish? Do you know who I mean and do you remember his name? Were there any Jewish men who were members of the Nazi party? If so, who were they? How high up did they get? Were they double agents working against them? What became of them? Every time I see this documentary I get confused. If he wasn't Jewish, they sure make it sound like he was. If he was, they should have just flat out said it. Thank you in advance.

This is a trivial theme, but there seems to be abundant documentation if you are really interested, e.g. senior Luftwaffe Gen. Milch was (I think) just one of those in high places with a Jewish grandparent.

The point is that official Nazi racial legislation was enacted only in 1933 (dismissal of non-Aryans from the civil service) and 1935 (Nuremerg Laws.) Before these dates Nazi politics appealed to millions of Germans on non-racial grounds (e.g. German history, grievances about WW1, fears of Communism, etc.)

Goering was Hitler's plenipotentiary in charge of 'resolving the Jewish question' and thus authorised all actions against Jews by the SS and others on Hitler's behalf. This included the question of defining which German citizens were in fact Jewish for the purposes of the Nuremberg laws and thus eligible for despoliation, deportation and murder. Throughout the war, Germans who had one Jewish parent and one 'German' parent were excluded from the scope of the Nuremberg laws, largely because of the extreme public pressure from the German relatives of such people. Hitler was always sensitive to public opinion, at least until 1943, and so he allowed Goering to allow these 107.000 Mischlinge to remain in Germany. The same applied to the 28,000 Jews married to Germans, incidentally.

Goering also connived in the survival of many individual Jews who were friends of his Swedish wife's family by allowing their emigration. It was when he was challenged in this activity that he said, quite correctly, 'I decide who is a Jew'.

Jews or half-Jews were not allowed to join the NSDAP or indeed to have many civic rights at all.

I didn't see the television show but Goering was reported to have made the statement about Erhard Milch, Goering's deputy in the Luftwaffe and previously, head of Lufthansa airlines.

As to whether Milch was 'Jewish', it's always dangerous to attempt to make sense of the Nazi's cockamamy racial schemes and concepts of 'Jewishness' - they don't necessarily have any relationship to anything we could recognize as reality.

It was rumored that Milch's father was Jewish - although almost certainly his father was not a practicing religious Jew. If Milch's father was 'Jewish', it was only under one or more of the Nazi's racial descent theories. In any case, the possible 'problem' was resolved in Milch's case when Milch's mother signed an affidavit (reportedly under Nazi pressure) attesting to the 'fact' that Milch's 'real' father was not her husband but rather her Aryan lover - thus removing any possible stigma on Milch's racial background.

Again, the Nazi concept of a 'Jew' was their own twisted and not necessarily coherent racial theory. Indeed, the criteria for 'Jewishness' or 'non-Jewishness' was not necessarily consistent over time as various criteria for inclusion and exclusion were grafted onto or subtracted from the basic racial 'standards'.

It seems unlikely that any practicing religious Jews rose very high in the Nazi party. OTOH, certainly there were people who could have been labelled 'Jewish' under one or more of the various Nazi 'racial' theories who were members of the Nazi party and some gained relatively high status in the party. Indeed, there is a theory - so far less than completely substantiated - that Hitler himself could have been classified as 'Jewish' under Nazi 'standards' and that some tinkering with his genealogy was required to disguise this 'fact'.

You just can't apply present-day concepts of 'Jewishness' or 'Jew' to the distorted racial theories and classifications of Nazi Germany. Milch may or may not have been 'Jewish' under the Nazi racial classification schemes but he certainly was NOT Jewish by religion, education, culture, or upbringing.

The Nazi racial standards were ultimately non-sensical. There is no particular profit in trying to determine who was or was not a 'Jew' under criteria which make no logical or scientific sense at all.

Cheers and all,

Milch, was Herman's Main Man in the Luftwaffe. I suppose he was nominally a 'nazi'. Momma Loshen, he avoided.