American Jews have, over the almost two and a half-centuries of U.S. history, made contributions to the success of our armed forces far beyond our numbers. Their stories are not often told by U.S. historians nor known by American Jews. These men and women should be role models by the Jewish community as well as the rest of the country. Their stories and sacrifices help us answer the anti-Semitic trope that our community has “divided” loyalties. This article covers three men and one woman whose accomplishments are significant and relatively unknown.
Adolph Marix – A Man with Three Firsts
Adolph Marix’s parents immigrated to the United States in 1848. His father, Dr. Henry Marix was a professor language in his native Saxony and during the American Civil War translated European newspapers and documents for the State and Treasury departments, often meeting with Lincoln. Through the president, Adolph Marix obtained an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and in 1864, he became the institution’s first Jewish midshipman.
His early assignments as a young officer included a polar expedition as well as a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic squadron before he was brought back to serve in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) office. This was followed by a tour of duty in the Navy’s Hydrographic Office where he helped standardize the way nautical charts are organized and formatted.
Before the Spanish American War broke out, he was the executive officer of the U.S.S. Maine. He rotated out of that billet a few weeks before the ship exploded in Havana. During the war, Marix distinguished himself as the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Scorpion during the second and third battles of Manzanillo (a harbor on the southwest side of Cuba).
Marix was assigned as the JAG officer on the inquiry that looked into the loss of the U.S.S. Maine. As a member of the board, he used his knowledge of the ship to help guide the board to ultimately determine the explosion was caused by coal dust, not a mine. This led to a decision by the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ships to change from coal to oil to power ships.
Before he retired as a Vice Admiral, Marix was on the board that purchased and evaluated the U.S. Navy’s first submarines purchased. Marix served in the U.S. Navy for 42 years, 24 of which were at sea and was the first American Jew and naval officer to become an admiral and the first to reach the three star rank.
Hedy Lamarr, Actress, Spy and Inventor
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna on November 9th, 1914 when World War I was just over three months old. Her father was from Lvov in the Ukraine and her mother was a Hungarian from Budapest. By 18, Hedy was playing leading roles in German produced movies.
She married Freidrich Mandl, a wealthy Austrian arms merchant by whose father was Jewish. Mandl treated her as a trophy wife and his close ties to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini made the marriage unworkable.
In 1937, Hedy fled to Paris and then to London where she met Louis Meyer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer who brought her to Hollywood in 1938 where she adopted the stage name of Hedy Lamarr. She starred with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Spencer Tracy in Boom Town, with Gable again in Comrade X and with Jimmy Stewart in Come Live With Me. Billed as one of the most beautiful women in the world, Lamarr was now a star by every measure.
Lamarr believed she owed the United States and wanted to help fight the Germans and Italians. By the time World War II began, she invented and patented a tissue dispenser and an automated traffic signal.
After the merchant ship City of Benares was torpedoed by a U-boat and 83 German Jewish émigré children were lost, Hedy and her friend George Antheil, an avant-garde musician and composer, began analyzing the sinking.
From conversations she’d had with Mandl and his subordinates, she understood the difficulties in finding and sinking German submarines. Both she and Antheil believed that radio guidance would make anti-submarine torpedoes more accurate but also susceptible to jamming.
Between 1940 and 1942, the pair worked on a solution that enabled radios to rapidly change or “hop” between 88 frequencies within a certain band and make the signal un-jammable. Their patent application outlined how a torpedo (or any other weapon) could receive constant guidance via radio that changed frequencies every few milliseconds. It made the weapon more accurate because the radio signal would be impossible to jam.
On August 11th, 1942, Lamarr and Antheil received U.S. Patent Number 2,292,387 for a “Secret Communication System.” The government classified their work as Top Secret and seized the patent in late 1942 charging that she had “contacts with an adversarial power” and threatened to deport both Anthiel and Lamrr. In order to protect Lamarr from deportation as a foreign alien, MGM leaked some of their ideas to the media as way to promote her movies and her patriotism.
Nothing happened with Lamarr’s patent until the U.S. found itself embroiled in the Cold War and was worried the Soviet’s could jam signals between sonobuoys and the airplane that dropped them. In 1955, the Navy allowed selected companies access to the patent. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1956, sonobuoys with frequency hopping capabilities were used. By the mid-1970s, the Lamarr/Anteheil patent became the foundation of the encrypted, frequency hopping radios used by the U.S. and its Allies along with GPS signals from satellites.
In 2017, the market value of the equipment based on the Lamarr patent was valued at about $30B. The sad part is that Lamarr, who died in 2000 and who raised millions on war bond tours, never received a penny in royalties from the patent.
Sydney Weinstein – Father of Modern Intelligence Gathering
Few men have changed the American military intelligence community as much as Sydney Weinstein. He was a West Point graduate who served in Vietnam. It is easy to list all the billets in which Weinstein served, but it is more interesting to look at what he accomplished during his four-year stint when he was the Commander of the U.S. Intelligence Center and the Deputy Chief for Intelligence.
First, he forced the Army’s intelligence bureaucracy to allow him to consolidate commands scattered throughout the Army and the Defense Department. Second, he changed the way the commands gathered and evaluated intelligence to make their “products” more usable by those whose lives depended on its accuracy.
When he was the Director of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander said, “General Weinstein established the Army's master plan for intelligence and that set a course for the Army to have the best intelligence corps for the next decade or two. It was a tremendous jump forward."
These words say more than any historian could about Sydney Weinstein who served this country for 33 years and was elected to the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. Weinstein passed away from cancer in 2007.
Mark Polansky – Astronaut
As of July 2019, only 566 humans have flown in space on either U.S. or Soviet spacecraft. Fourteen – 12 Americans, 1 Israeli and 1 Russian -are Jews. Boris Volynov was the first Jew in space when he rode a Soyuz space vehicle in January, 1969. One American – Judith Resnik died on Challenger when it blew up right after launch and one Israeli – Ilan Ramon was killed when Discovery broke apart on re-entry.
Mark Polansky was commissioned in 1978 and entered Air Force flight training and was awarded the Distinguished Graduate as the top student in his class. After his first squadron tour at Langley AFB flying the F-15, his skills as a pilot were recognized and he was selected to be to become an aggressor pilot flying the F-5E. Aggressor pilots simulate enemy tactics and aircraft during exercises. He flew out of Clark AFB in the Philippines and Nellis AFB. At the end of his tour, Polansky applied for test pilot school and after graduation he was stationed at Edwards AFB. Again, Polansky was the top student.
By the time he decided to leave the Air Force for NASA Mark had accumulated 5,000 hours in a variety of tactical fighters. It took two years of training, before he was selected as the pilot for space shuttle mission STS-98 on Atlantis in 2001 that brought equipment to build the International Space Station (ISS).
His next space shuttle mission was on Discovery (STS-116) that delivered more structures to the ISS. To honor his father and his heritage on this mission, he carried a teddy bear he bought at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. When he landed after his third mission on board Endeavor (STS-126), Mark had accumulated more than 309 hours in space.
After his last space shuttle mission on Endeavor, Polansky was the CAPCON, which is the primary communicator between the shuttle in space and NASA. He also served as the Chief Astronaut Instructor before he retired in 2012.
In their own ways, all four of these individuals made a significant contribution to the U.S. Armed Forces. However, there are many, many others such as Jeff Feinstein, an ace from the Vietnam War. Or, Sidney Shachnow, one of the first and most revered and highly decorated Green Berets. Or, Tibor Rubin who managed to survive the Mauthausen death camp and made it to the United States and volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army. Captured early in the Korean War, Rubin spent 30 months in a North Korean prison camp where he used the skills he learned at Mauthausen to help keep his fellow POWs alive.
American Jews began making contributions to the U.S. military during the American Revolution and have kept doing so throughout our history. These men and women should be remembered and honored. For without their efforts on our behalf, the United States would not be the great nation it is today.
(10) Anastasia, July 8, 2020 9:08 AM
Mistake in the article
This article has a rather insulting mistake. Just like Spain, Italy, or China, Ukraine does not need an article. Some put "the" in front mistakenly thinking or "wittingly" calling Ukraine a colony of Russia. It isn't so. Ukraine is an independent country and is not a part of any other collective system, thus it is just "Ukraine". Thank you
(9) Ed, August 30, 2019 1:42 PM
Uriah Levy
Uriah Levy, who eliminated flogging in the US Navy and who saved Monticello from destruction.
(8) Lawrence Levine, August 29, 2019 11:48 PM
a mega thanks !!!
it is heartening to know ! we are often ignorant of the events, or forgotten them, never knowing the Jewish component.
(7) Jeffrey Zucker, August 28, 2019 6:33 AM
It is important to know the contribution of Jews to the US.
I read with regret that California wanted to avoid the role of Jews in both American and California history when trying to put together an ethnic studies program in its high schools. Jews as few as we have been in the total population of the US have contributed to its well-being way beyond our proportion in numbers. From colonial days to the present Jews have been active socially, politically, financially and in every other endeavor required to make the US a success.
I personally love the story of the Jewish soldier who while freezing at Valley Forge was lighting his menorah. General Washington saw this event and questioned the soldier about what he was doing. The soldier explained the story of Chanukah; thus, bringing hope to the General and inspiring him to continue the fight. Later on, General Washington had a special medal made which he presented to the soldier after the war. It can be found at the Jewish History Museum in NYC.
Let's not forget Haym Solomon, Uriah Heap Levy and others who helped to transform this great nation. Few other ethnic groups have contributed so much and in such disproportion, to their numbers, as the Jews have done for America.
(6) sheldon ohren, August 28, 2019 2:36 AM
National Museum of American Jewish Military History
I am a Past National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA. We are the oldest veterans service organization founded in 1896 to do away with lie that Jews don't serve in the military. We have a museum in Washington, D.C. named the National Museum of Jewish Military History which documents that we served since the Revolutionary War. I encourage all to visit the museum.
(5) Juan A. Rodriguez-Sero, August 27, 2019 11:42 PM
Hedy Lamarr's invention WAS used in World during World War II
During the war it was used to create a communications link that was un-jammable; its code name was "green hornet." It was to assure reliable communications between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill; only 8 stations were built, because in those times before real miniaturization a very large truck had to be used to carry the electronics. And it used the equivalent of a "Code pad" that was used only once.
(4) SUMNER S SACHS, August 27, 2019 7:42 PM
Representation
The number of Jews in todays armed forces is considerably less than the demographic would suggest{line officers exclusive of doctors,lawyers.hospital admin} The number I have been led to believe is about 20,000.Throughout my 26 year career{retired in 1980} I was inevitably the senior officer of the Jewish faith.Maybe we need to bring back conscription and make for a democratic and representative military Sumner S Sachs ,Col. USAF Ret
(3) Ted Green, August 27, 2019 7:21 PM
More
I believe this is a very important article at this time in America's life. I believe that the Jews are not getting their due as American citizens who are heroes, whether military or otherwise. I think there needs to be more discussions and classes about the Jews and their history taught in the schools. It would seem that most Americans know Jews only by the caricatures that are printed in the cartoon editorials. The Jews, from the very beginning, six or seven thousand years ago, have had a hand in shaping history and in so many instances, changing it.
(2) Robert, August 27, 2019 5:57 PM
This is a fascinating article, but it begs the question of Jews in the military:
All of these Jews were secular. Is there a place for religious Jews in the military? Or does one have to assimilate in order to serve?
(1) ISRAEL BLAJBERG, August 27, 2019 2:35 PM
Brazilian Jews in the Military
Congratulations for this interesting article. Brazilian Jews also made a contribution in the military, since Portuguese Admiral Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500. Some 30 Brazilian Jews fought in WW2, under General MArk Clark, Commander of the 5th USA Army in Italy, he himself son of a Jewish mother of Dutch origin. Brazil sent 25,000 soldiers and one Fighter Group to Italy, forming the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.