Bryan Mark Rigg

Bryan Mark Rigg ( born March 16, 1971 in Texas, USA ) is a German-born American historian and writer.

Biography

Bryan Mark Rigg was brought up by his Baptist family. In 1991 he went to Germany to learn the language of his 1863 immigrated from Germany ancestors. As a history student, he wanted to know more about his family history and found out that a great-grandmother of the Jewish community had listened. Rigg known to Judaism.

In 1996, Rigg his bachelor's degree in history with honors from Yale University. At the University of Cambridge in 1997 he made his master; in 2000 he received his doctorate in Philosophy ( Ph. D. ). He served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army and as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Rigg taught Holocaust, Military History and Religion at American Military University in Manassas, Virginia and Southern Methodist University, Dallas. In 2006 he completed this activity.

In December 2008, Rigg founded a private company, the SPARS Wealth Management, LLC ..

Awards

Rigg was awarded in 2003 for the book Hitler's Jewish Soldiers with the William E. Colby Award.

Review " Hitler's Jewish Soldiers "

Rigg is best known for his work " Hitler's Jewish Soldiers. " Rig turned out that even after 1940, the Wehrmacht " Jewish mongrels " and " married to Jewish " were used, although an arrangement was to dismiss them. Some stayed until 1944 with "leaders permit" as officers in the armed forces. Rigg documented 1,671 cases and conducted interviews with 430 surviving German soldiers of Jewish descent and their relatives. The interviewees made ​​him a source of material available, which had remained hitherto unknown or unappreciated. This subsequent archival research further access to important documents.

Rigg explored the destinies under a threefold question:

  • The consistency with the Nazi racial policy was conducted in Army, Air Force and Navy?
  • How were handled in the Wehrmacht with the parties concerned?
  • What motives had German Jewish origin to serve in the Armed Forces?

Among the persons mentioned in his book include Ernst Benda, Egon Bahr, Erhard Milch, Robert Borchardt, Walter Dutch, Walter Lehweß - Litzmann and Bernhard Rogge. Total received by Riggs Information 244 Jews of mixed the Iron Cross, one of the German Cross in Silver, 19, the German Cross in Gold and the Knight's Cross 15 of the Iron Cross. Rigg illustrates that at least 21 German generals and admirals had Jewish ancestors.

Contemporary documents and interviews, the rig but also on VHS for his book project in 8- mm film can gather, were purchased and archived in 1997 for the military archives of the Federal the Military History Research Office ( MGFA ) of the Bundeswehr in Potsdam.

In his book " Hitler's Jewish Soldiers " Rigg quantifies the number of "Jewish half-breeds" (as defined by the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law ) of military age at 117000-190000. Therefore, he estimated the number of servicemen, according to the Yale Alumni to 60,000 " half " and 90,000 "quarter - Jews ".

The historian Beate Meyer criticized Riggs book as a "sham ," accusing the author of a lack of source criticism, and objected to the above figures. It had a maximum of 33,000 " half-breeds" or with these " persons married " given military age, of which only a part was also drafted. Christoph Rass called Riggs numerical data of 150,000 Wehrmacht soldiers of Jewish descent as " rightly controversial ."

Other projects

Riggs investigation of " Hitler's Jewish Soldiers " served as the basis for a planned documentary producer Frank Thomas, who completed a 90- minute program for co-producing WDR with the documentary Heike Mundzeck that should be presented to the public in the summer of 2006, but what to spring of 2007 did not happen. The "Film Foundation NRW" promoted this project.

Publications

  • Hitler's Jewish Soldiers. Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn, 2003. ISBN 3-506-70115-0
  • Rabbi Schneersohn and Major Bloch: an incredible story from the first year of the war. Hanse, Munich 2006. ISBN 978-3-446-20730-1
  • The Untold Stories of Hitler 's Jewish Soldiers University of Kansas Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7006-1638-1
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