Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, 1788–1918 by Peter C. Appelbaum (review)

Reviewed by: Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, 1788–1918 by Peter C. Appelbaum Jonathan Lewis Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, 1788–1918. By Peter C. Appelbaum. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2022. 325 pages. 24. 95 (paper). "The Jewish soldier in the diaspora deserves to be rescued from oblivion and subjected to serious historical study" (Penslar, 2). This was the theme of a ground-breaking 2013 work by Derek Penslar, Jews and the Military–A History. This challenge has been accepted by Peter Appelbaum who, in retirement from a career as a micro-biologist, has triangulated his two previous studies, Loyalty Betrayed: Jewish Chaplains in the German Army during the First World War (2014) and Loyal Sons: Jews in the German Army in the Great War (2015), with his new book Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army 1788–1918. Applebaum summarizes his findings at the outset: Austro-Hungary was the first country sic. in Europe to allow Jews into the army, and, throughout the sixty-year reign of Kaiser Franz Joseph overt antisemitism in the army was rare. Austro-Hungarian soldiers fought bravely but often surrendered to the enemy out of exhaustion, bad leadership, atrocious weather, poor nutrition and incompetence. Unlike their German counterparts, who were End Page 168 well led, Habsburg soldiers recognized and complained loudly about incompetent leadership. Czech regiments had a reputation for disloyalty but closer analysis reveals that their performance was often due to bad leadership and other factors. Language problems with Hungarian and Slavic speakers in the multiethnic army complicated smooth functioning, but were largely overcome by Jewish soldiers, who usually spoke German and/or Yiddish (1). The polyglot Habsburg Empire comprised numerous nationalities, including Jews who represented four to five percent of its 52 million subjects. By 1914, the Austro-Hungarian army comprised soldiers from approximately 20 different nationalities, with different languages and traditions. In the First World War, some 100, 000 Jews served in the German army, 180, 000 in the Russian army, and 300, 000–350, 000 in the Austro-Hungarian army, totalling some 600, 000. Of those in the Austro-Hungarian army, some 30, 000–40, 000 died. Habsburg Jewish soldiers comprised two main groups: assimilated Jews from large cities such as Vienna, Budapest, and Prague; and Orthodox Jews primarily from Galicia, Bukowina, and northern Hungary. Many Habsburg Jewish families had up to eight sons serving simultaneously and suffered multiple casualties. Jews served in disproportionately higher numbers in the infantry, with one infantry regiment containing so many Jews that it was dubbed the "Rothschild Regiment" (39, 42, 113). As in other countries, Jews were also disproportionately represented in the medical corps, and many of the military physicians on the Eastern Front were Jewish. Appelbaum has tried to include only Jewish soldiers but cautions that statistics do not always distinguish between them and baptized Jews or "Jews of Jewish origin" with one Jewish parent (44). The progress of Jewish officers in the Habsburg armies saw four phases. They are the first half of the nineteenth century, when generally only converts could make a career in the military; the liberal period between the 1860s and the end of the century, which witnessed a rapid increase of Jews in the Officer Corps; a period of decline in the years prior to 1914; and the Great War, when the End Page 169 number of Jewish officers again increased rapidly and comprised a significant number of the Corps (30). Before the First World War, Habsburg Jews strove to assimilate, if necessary, through baptism. Several baptized families were ennobled, and all of them sent their sons, as the crowning achievement of their assimilation, into the Professional Officer Corps. While Jews represented only four to five percent of the population of the Austro-Hungarian empire, they comprised about one third of high school students before the First World War, and about one fifth of the Reserve Officer Corps, for which a high school diploma was required. Jews played a significant role in the army; officer status and senior rank were not closed to them, although the journey was painstaking. Prussia by contrast had not allowed Jews to become officers, so that. . .