The old-new ‘stab-in-the-back’ lie
Author and activist Susan Abulhawa recently accomplished something unusual: She drew millions of views to a social-media post about World War I. Attention, however, is not accuracy.Responding to reports about Israel and the International Criminal Court, Abulhawa wrote that “zios” had “boasted and took credit for Germany’s defeat” in the war, leading to the Treaty of Versailles and “extreme anti-Jewish sentiment.” She ended ominously: “History will rhyme.”Strip away the contemporary setting and the claim is familiar. It echoes the Dolchstoßlegende—the “stab-in-the-back” myth that Germany had not truly been defeated on the battlefield but had been betrayed from within, with Jews among the principal villains.As a historian, I am less interested in online outrage than in chronology. And the chronology is fatal to Abulhawa’s claim. The campaign against German Jewish loyalty did not arise after Germany’s defeat. It preceded it.On Oct. 11, 1916—more than two years before the Armistice and nearly…
Author and activist Susan Abulhawa recently propagated a historical falsehood on social media, claiming that "zios" boasted about Germany's defeat in World War I, leading to the Treaty of Versailles and antisemitism. This echoes the "stab-in-the-back" myth (Dolchstoßlegende) that blamed Jews for Germany's internal betrayal.
The chronology is fatal to Abulhawa’s claim.
The campaign against German Jewish loyalty predated Germany's defeat. In 1916, the Prussian War Ministry ordered the Judenzählung (Jewish Census) to investigate claims of Jewish shirking, but the census failed to substantiate these accusations. Despite findings in 1917 that the claims were unfounded, the government did not publish the results, allowing antisemitic narratives to persist. Postwar research by Jacob Segall in 1921 confirmed that approximately 100,000 German Jews served, with 80,000 at the front, and 12,000 died. The author, as chief historian of "Operation Benjamin," highlights efforts to correct grave markers of Jewish servicemen, emphasizing that these historical records rebut the mythology of Jewish disloyalty and sacrifice.
© All rights to the original article belong to the source. Din Online shows a headline, an excerpt and a link only. The objectivity rating is computed automatically and is an estimate only.
Discussion
No comments yet — be the first to comment.