Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 234
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4422-2238-0 • Hardback • April 2013 • $59.00 • (£39.95)
978-1-4422-5274-5 • Paperback • June 2016 • $26.00 • (£17.95)
978-1-4422-2239-7 • eBook • April 2013 • $24.50 • (£15.95)
Benjamin Ginsberg is David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His many books include The Fall of the Faculty, Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, and Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public.
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Problem of Jewish Resistance
Chapter 2: The Soviet Union: The War of the Engineers
Chapter 3: The United States: The Anti-Nazi Coalition
Chapter 4: Jewish Intelligence
Chapter 5: Partisan Warfare
Chapter 6: Aftermath and Afterward: From Tragedy to Farce
Bibliography
Benjamin Ginsberg’s intriguing new book, How the Jews Defeated Hitler, offers a provocative new answer to an old question. In seeking to explain why the Jews failed to resist the Nazis during World War II, he declares that they not only resisted, but also helped bring about the Nazis’ defeat. . . . Readers will be especially impressed to learn about little-known Jewish contributions to the Soviet cause, including their role in inventing the T-34 tank, the La-5 aircraft, and the Katyusha rocket. . . . [R]eaders. . . are sure to be stimulated by his engaging and provocative book.
— Forward
Political science professor Ginsberg (Downsizing Democracy) takes a broad look at Jews who countered Nazism through military force and sabotage, scientific and engineering discoveries, intelligence work, and political organizing. He devotes almost as much attention to little-known figures like Mikhail Gourevich, designer of the MiG fighter, as he does to the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. Ginsberg’s most interesting chapter, reveals how Jewish financiers and other leaders, such as James Warburg, joined forced with WASP leaders like Dean Acheson who favored America declaring war against Nazi Germany.
— Publishers Weekly
[T]hrough the lens of Benjamin Ginsberg, a second generation survivor and political science professor, the truth (which is more about brains and gumption than brawn and gore) is better than the fiction. In How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism, Ginsberg gives an unexpected and thrilling history of key, Jewish contributions to the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany.
— St. Louis Jewish Light
The apparent lack of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust has long been troubling. Johns Hopkins political science professor Benjamin Ginsberg proposes a new way of understanding what actually happened: Jews did resist, not so much in the impossible environs of Nazi-occupied Europe but from elsewhere. Jews took leading roles in Britain’s codebreaking program and America’s nuclear project, eagerly served in the U.S. and Soviet military and designed some of Russia’s best weapons, including the T-34 tank. Ginsberg leaps to some invalid assumptions—the atom bomb almost certainly would not have been dropped on Germany had the Nazis held out a few months longer—but his thesis brings fresh eyes to an old subject.
— Express Milwaukee
[Benjamin Ginsberg] makes a compelling case for Jewish resistance and gives the lie to those who question otherwise.
— Hadassah Magazine
It is a common belief that the Jews of Germany and Europe went passively to their deaths in the concentration camps and surely millions were duped by the Nazis that they were merely being 'relocated.' Information about the camps was kept secret from Jew and non-Jew, and often not believed when it leaked out. How the Jews Defeated Hitler by Benjamin Ginsberg reveals that it was not whether Jews fought, though poorly armed, outnumbered, and without resources, but the means they used as participants in the anti-Nazi resistance units. . . Ginsberg concludes with a look at the way old enemies of the Jews have mutated into new ones, the most obvious being Muslims worldwide, but also those on the Left seeking an alliance with them. This is a fascinating story that has not been told in its full context until now.
— Alan Caruba, Editor, BookViews
Benjamin Ginsberg’s pathbreaking study demolishes the widely held view that Jews failed to resist during the Holocaust. He conclusively demonstrates the immense Jewish contribution, on many fronts, to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Ginsberg uncovers many forms of Jewish anti-Nazi resistance largely overlooked by other scholars. His book analyzes and details European and American Jews’ prominent role in conventional and partisan military efforts, in scientific and engineering breakthroughs critical to the Allied war effort, in undermining Nazi propaganda, and in counteracting isolationism in the West. This work will transform how scholars and the public view Jews and the Holocaust.
— Stephen H. Norwood, University of Oklahoma; author of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower and Antisemitism and the American Far Left
An exceptionally well-written and cogently argued study showing how Jews resisted Nazism vigorously and effectively. Ginsberg has done a prodigious amount of work in military, political, economic, scientific, intelligence, and cultural sources. The result is a synthesis that makes for fascinating reading, showing how and why Jewish resistance and opposition to the Nazis manifested itself in a number of settings both inside and outside German-occupied territory. A beautifully researched and written analysis of, and an original contribution to, an important subject.
— Donald M. McKale, Clemson University; author of Hitler's Shadow War and Nazis after Hitler
Exclusive Interview from the Tablet:
Interviewer: Tell me a bit about what impelled you to write How the Jews Defeated Hitler? I thought the Red Army defeated Hitler.
Benjamin Ginsberg: The immediate reason was that during a discussion of Nazism in one of my classes, a student asked the usual question: Why didn’t the Jews resist? He was a big strong guy, so he obviously wanted to resist. I said, it depends on where you situate resistance and how you define it. If resistance is narrowly defined and situated in ghettos and concentration camps, then the Jews sometimes fought bravely but their impact was small—a scattering of unarmed individuals in a city ghetto or death camp without the means to resist—and this is where people accuse the Jews of not resisting, in a place where no one could have resisted. But if you define “resisted” a bit more broadly, then Jews resisted quite vigorously. I was so impressed with my answer that I said, “There’s a book here, and I’m going to write it.”
For more of this interview, please visit http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/146441/qa-benjamin-ginsberg