The Jewish Threat Anti-Semitic Politics of the American Army

Bendersky, for all of his obvious hatred toward his subjects, tells a compelling story. Bendersky's sense of intellectual and moral superiority and his contempt for his Northern European subjects ooze on every page. One of the advantages of being on the winning side in these intellectual battles is that Bendersky can safely assume that any statement by a U.S. military officer that reflects negatively on Jews or Judaism is a reflection of the prejudices and bigotry of the officer and has nothing to do with the actual behavior of Jews or the nature of Judaism. Bendersky also makes it appear that reports of Jewish-Bolshevik atrocities are fantasies. Reports stated that Jewish-Bolshevik methods included not only seizure and destruction of property but also "barbarism and butchery". Included in the reports were photographs of "naked bodies with butchered flesh, hanging upside down from trees, while 'the Bolsheviki soldiers were laughing and grinning and standing about'". Bendersky writes as if such claims are unworthy of being rebutted, yet there is more than enough evidence that such things did happen. Indeed, the recently published Black Book of Communism not only documents the horrific slaughter of some 20 million Soviet citizens, the widespread torture, mass deportations, and imprisonment in appalling conditions, but reproduces the photos from 1919 of a naked Polish officer impaled through the anus hanging upside down from trees while Bolshevik soldiers are laughing and grinning and standing about. But, in the end, one just has to believe the officers whose views he chronicles and not their chronicler.

I should qualify this review by acknowledging that I am not the reader Bendersky wished to reach; the book is written for Jews and to put it bluntly; self-hating Europeans. I am neither, but I still found this to be quite the book. Of course, it is so full of flaws, lies and hilarious conjectures I don't even know where to start, but it does something else too; it details a desperate but often hidden battle being waged between two groups over the control of the official US institutions. Bendersky details the racialist worldview prevailing in the US Army, to varying degrees, on both top and bottom from the early 1900's and into the 1970's. The main thesis of the book is that the US Army was inherently "anti-Semitic", and that this was completely unfounded and wrong. The book could have been considerably shorter had not Bendersky used "" around every second word. His hatred of the officers he tells us of his so blatantly obvious, it is a painful read at times. He will write for example; ""The intelligence" of these "officers" in regarding Jews as potential "enemies" is horribly wrong". We get that Bendersky doesn't like them, but at least try to stay a little objective. What the book does though is that it unintentionally shows us what an extremely subversive influence the organized Jewish community had on US policy, in a very extensive line of subjects, and how the European majority that founded the US desperately tried to defend itself and retain control of their own nation. As he admits himself on p. 242; "Most Americans remained adamantly against admitting Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany". What in "Most", is it you don't understand, Bendersky? He also bases his entire case on racially motivated "scientists" like Franz Boas, but as Boas' "science" has been completely debunked in Dr. Kevin MacDonald's excellent book "The Culture of Critique", I find it amazing that he can actually write as he does on p. 262; "However, the two anthropologists most responsible for the shift from racial to cultural theory Franz Boas and Alfred Kroeber, were, despite their renown, never invited to lecture at the War Colleges". Who in their right mind would invite a person saying you have no right to your own land and to defend your own family into your own workplace to preach his hatred of your own kin? He cites General Patton on p. 352; "Upon entering bombed-out Berlin, the general felt depressed, lamenting that "Berlin marks the final epitaph of what should have been a great race." Hence, I can only concur with Dr. Kevin MacDonald as he points out in his excellent detailed review of this book located at his site; "Bendersky, for all his obvious hatred toward his subjects, tells a compelling story, but, in the end, one just has to believe the officers whose views he chronicles and not their chronicler". Highly recommended, but bear in mind the distortions, and compare the brave officers in this book with the present US Army, represented by Jewish general

I would strongly recommend that anyone interested in this book read the review of this book by M. Goldin on H- Net.It is comprehensive and comes from someone who served in an Armed Forces combat unit during the Second World War. This book chronicles the negative and prejudiced attitudes held by various figures of the Army throughout the past century. These attitudes may have been important in effecting the lives of individual soldiers at the unit level. They too may have had certain effect on overall U.S. policy in such matters as bombing the rail lines into Auschwitz. There were also efforts to influence negatively American attitudes towards the emerging Jewish state in Israel. This is in a way a sad and yet important book to read. It chronicles how that fundamental American ideal of equal treatment of the individual human being was violated by prejudice, and ignorance.

It's hard to review this book simply because it is the only one that I know ever written on the subject of anti-Semitism and its influence on US Army poicy from the end of WWI through the end of WWII and into the 50's. It certainly is exhaustive - the research is incredible, and it is very well written. The author has dug up dozens of Army officers, mostly mid level careerists, who held anti-Jewish views. What Bendersky has failed to do was explain how a handful of anti-Semetic officers influenced American policy or changed the course of WWII.

Much has been written recently about the previously unexplored history of racism in the US Army. My own favorite was "An Incident at West Point" though several books about the famed Tuskegee Airmen have also received wide praise. What has been given less attention is the history of anti-Semitism in the US Army. With this work, Joseph Bendersky, a noted history professor, ends that glaring omission.Bendersky documents several layers of anti-Semitism in the US army, through most of the 20th century. In the early part of the century, it was reflected in opposition to immigration based on the belief that Jews represented a "bad and unchristian" element. Moving forward, the author exposes the army subscribing to such infamous anti-Semitic canards as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" that argues for a world wide Jewish conspiracy whose goal is the destruction of Christianity. These beliefs had great impact on American policy. A great example being General Marshall's opposition to the State of Israel, when he served in Truman's cabinet.Many, myself included, will find the subject of this book disquieting. That is all the more reason that we are fortunate that an excellent scholar with meticulous attention to research and citations wrote this very fine work. It is an excellent source for those interested in the history of the Jews in America.