The "Jewish Threat": Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "ALTHOUGH COLONEL McCAIN WROTE THESE WORDS IN 1920, he was actually expressing a trepidation that had been widespread among officers of the United States Army..." (more)
Key Phrases: subversive situation, political biology, leftist infiltration, United States, New York, War College (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The "Jewish Threat" makes the dramatic allegation that, throughout most of the last century, rampant racism in the highest ranks of the United States Army helped to shape important American public policies. Historian Joseph W. Bendersky bases most of his arguments on documents from Military Intelligence Division (MID) files that "identified a myriad of [Jewish] institutions and individuals that could be drawn upon and formed into various malleable combinations when necessary." The MID, says Bendersky, used these files to build conspiracy theories positing Jewish plans for world domination. Between 1918 and 1941, hundreds of officers contributed thousands of entries to the MID subject files indexed under the heading "Jews: Race." Bendersky's readings of these documents allege that the Army's campaign against Jewish immigration to the United States in the 1920s was motivated by racism, and that racism in the Army's highest ranks helps to explain America's slowness in responding to the Holocaust. Vigorously argued and rigorously researched, The "Jewish Threat" will fascinate students of World War II and of American race relations. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Booklist

Bendersky, author of History of Nazi Germany (1985), spent 10 years researching this important history of anti-Semitism in the U.S. Army. He offers evidence that vicious anti-Semitism permeated the highest ranks of the U.S. Army from the turn of the century through the 1970s. He found that the Army's Military Intelligence Division (NM) created a separate classification for Jews to accommodate pertinent reports, memoranda, and correspondence. Bendersky also discovered letters between officers, secret agents, state secretaries, and embassies abroad, in which information on Jews was exchanged, including lists of prominent Jews who supposedly dominated or influenced German banking, industry, and politics. These Jewish files, Bendersky shows, reveal that an anti-Semitic worldview persisted in the army officer corps throughout World War II. Although the presence of anti-Semitism in the army has never been a secret, Bendersky's documented study reveals for the first time the extent of this insidious policy of Judeophobia. This is truly a significant work. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; illustrated edition edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465006175
• ISBN-13: 978-0465006175
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,106,682 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well researched but misses the "big picture", January 23, 2005

By	mike duffy (Chicago) - See all my reviews

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.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very responsible and important study, March 21, 2006

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Jewish Threat: Anti-semitic Politics Of The U.s. Army (Paperback)

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.

11 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important work, October 3, 2001

By	J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.