Habsburg Sons

Peter C. Appelbaum is Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Pennsylvania State University. His publications include Loyalty Betrayed (2014), Loyal Sons (2014), and, as translator/editor, Hell on Earth (2017), Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front (2018), Voyage into Savage Europe (2020), and Jewish Self Hate (2021). He is the recipient of the 2019 TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Hebrew-English translation.

“Reflecting Appelbaum’s wide, deep, and multilingual research, the book cites extensively from diaries, memoirs, and reports from the Eastern, Balkan, Italian, and Palestine fronts and from soldiers taken as prisoners of war. In graphic and sometimes horrifying detail, some exemplify at a personal level the futility of war… I thoroughly commend Peter Appelbaum’s scholarship, which has extended the frontiers of knowledge into an authoritative and most readable book.”— Jonathan Lewis, Antisemitism Studies“Like many of Dr. Appelbaum’s previous books, which looked at the Jewish troops and chaplains in the German Army, [Habsburg Sons] reveals a landscape we know almost nothing about: the lives of Jewish soldiers who fought on the side of the Central Powers in World War I. Because of what the Germans and Austrians and their collaborators did to the Jews in World War II, we can hardly picture the patriotic Jewish sons of Germany or Austro-Hungary—but Dr. Appelbaum’s works open that world up for us. He does not simply present a dry history of these soldiers and chaplains. Instead, acting both as author and translator, he develops their story using their own words, from their contemporaneous accounts and later memoirs… [T]he records of how the Jews served their countries and how they felt about their efforts remain a poignant testament of their belief regarding where they belonged and what they were obligated to do.”— Yossi Krausz, Ami Magazine

• Table of ContentsForeword: A History of a Bygone Era, by Manfried Rauchensteiner  Jewish Soldiers in Habsburg Austria, by Gerald Lamprecht IntroductionPlatesChapter 1. Setting the StageChapter 2. Jews in the Armies of Austro-Hungary before the Great War: A Comparative FrameworkChapter 3. The Kaiser Needs You! Initial Reaction to the Declaration of WarChapter 4. Snapshots from the Eastern Front: Diaries, Memoirs, ReportsChapter 5. Snapshots from Other Fronts: The Balkans, Italy, and PalestineChapter 6. Austro-Hungarian Feldrabbiner: Tallit, Torah, and TobaccoChapter 7. Captives of the Tsar in European Russia, Siberia, and Central AsiaChapter 8. Epilogue. The Fate of Habsburg Jewish Veterans and Their Influence on Postwar EuropeBibliography