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Equal civic rights also meant equal obligations, and Jews were required to serve in the army. Although many of them identified with their homelands and willingly took part in their war efforts, this did not remove the suspicions that others had regarding the Jews.
In 1895, the Jewish French officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly convicted of spying for Germany. Later, in World War I (1914-1918), in which around 1.35 million Jewish soldiers took part on both sides of the divide, German Jews were accused of dodging service in combat units. Following the war, the ‘stab-in-the-back’ calumny was circulated in Germany, according to which Germany’s defeat stemmed from the treachery of the Jews and the Marxists.
