Jews from all walks of life rallied around the war effort. Those who did not serve in the army contributed to Germany’s war effort in other ways: women fulfilled their patriotic duty by sending food packages, medical supplies and warm clothing to the front, and volunteered as nurses for wounded soldiers. Efforts such as the Women’s Aid in Wartime, spearheaded by Margarete Goldstein, sought to improve conditions at home for women who were the sole breadwinners for their families and struggled to make ends meet.
A number of leading German-Jewish chemists, such as Adolf Frank and Fritz Haber, dedicated their scientific expertise to developing improvements in agriculture and chemical warfare, also to help the war effort. But as soon as the war was over, conservative, military and nationalist circles lost little time in blaming the Jews for Germany’s dire circumstances. They attributed the country’s economic crisis on Jewish war profiteering. The rhetoric of the countless anti-Semitic pamphlets distributed on the streets of Germany offered a first glimpse of what was to become state propaganda under the Nazis. |
