Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
http://members.internettrash.com/library/zionism.htm
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left
the German port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters
for its name, "Tel Aviv," while a swastika banner fluttered from
the mast. And although the ship was Zionist-owned, its captain
was a National Socialist Party member. Many years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a "metaphysical
absurdity." Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a littleknown
chapter of history: The wide-ranging collaboration between
Zionism and Hitler's Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled
with the "Jewish question": that is, what is the proper role of
Jews in non-Jewish society? During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and
German National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal
with this perplexing issue. They agreed that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong
in Germany. Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded
not as "Germans of the Jewish faith," but rather as members of
a separate national community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also
implied an obligation by Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine,
the "Jewish homeland." They could hardly regard themselves as
sincere Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany
or any other "foreign" country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism,
maintained that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a
natural and completely understandable response by non-Jews
to alien Jewish behavior and attitudes. The only solution,
he argued, is for Jews to recognize reality and live in a
separate state of their own. "The Jewish question exists
wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers," he wrote in his
most influential work, The Jewish State. "Where it does not
exist, it is brought in by arriving Jews ... I believe I
understand anti-Semitism, which is a very complex phenomenon.
I consider this development as a Jew, without hate or fear."
The Jewish question, he maintained, is not social or religious.
"It is a national question. To solve it we must, above all,
make it an international political issue. ...."
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted
a detailed memorandum to the new government that reviewed GermanJewish
relations and formally offered Zionist support in "solving"
the vexing "Jewish question." The first step, it suggested, had to
be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences:
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish
condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational
pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture
not rooted in one's own tradition. Zionism recognized decades
ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of
deterioration were bound to appear ...
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national character, must also come about in the
Jewish national group. For the Jewish people, too, national origin,
religion, common destiny and a sense of its uniqueness must be
of decisive importance in the shaping of its existence. This
means that the egotistical individualism of the liberal era must
be overcome and replaced with a sense of community and collective
responsibility ...
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany
that can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish
question, take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which,
in truth, will have to be dealt with by most European peoples ...
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and
racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify
these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage
and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject
any trespasses in the cultural domain, we -- having been brought
up in the German language and German culture -- can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win
the collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile
to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question not
sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose
solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people ...
Boycott propaganda -- such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways -- is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism
wants not to do battle but to convince and to build ...
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and
will continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews
severe disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable
conditions for other peoples.
A young Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz, who later settled in the United
States and became head of the American Jewish Congress, wrote in
his 1934 book, Wir Juden ("We Jews"), that the National Socialist
revolution in Germany meant "Jewry for the Jews." He explained:
"No subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire
a new concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race."
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together
for what each group believed was in its own national interest.
As a result, the Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism
and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-1941,
when the Second World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic
about pulling up roots to begin a new life in far-away Palestine.
Nevertheless, more and more German Jews turned to Zionism during
this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist
Federation's bi-weekly Jüdische Rundschau grew enormously.
Numerous Zionist books were published. "Zionist work was in full
swing" in Germany during those years, the Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected "in
its composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists."
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism.
An internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wideranging
support for Zionism by the government and the Party
as the best way to encourage emigration of Germany's Jews to
Palestine. This would require increased Jewish self-awareness,
Jewish schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural
organizations -- in short, everything that would encourage
this new consciousness and self-awareness -- should be
promoted, the paper recommended.
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based on his firsthand observations,
von Mildenstein wrote a series of twelve illustrated articles
for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff that appeared in
late 1934 under the heading "A Nazi Travels to Palestine." The
series expressed great admiration for the pioneering spirit and
achievements of the Jewish settlers. Zionist self-development,
von Mildenstein wrote, had produced a new kind of Jew. He praised
Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world. A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his
concluding article, "pointed the way to curing a centuries-long
wound on the body of the world: the Jewish question." Der Angriff
issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one side and a Star of
David on the other, to commemorate the joint SS-Zionist visit. A
few months after the articles appeared, von Mildenstein was promoted
to head the Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in
order to support Zionist migration and development more effectively.
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its
support for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: "The
time may not be too far off when Palestine will again be able
to receive its sons who have been lost to it for more than a
thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official goodwill,
go with them." Four months later, a similar article appeared in
the SS paper:
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and
not on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The
government finds itself in complete agreement with the great
spiritual movement within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its
recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the world and its
rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany
undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in
the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner
service from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933
providing "strictly kosher food on its ships, under the
supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate."
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to "reeducate"
Germany's Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it
in his 1985 survey, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question:
"Zionists were encouraged to take their message to the Jewish
community, to collect money, to show films on Palestine and
generally to educate German Jews about Palestine. There was
considerable pressure to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying
themselves as Germans and to awaken a new Jewish national identity
in them."
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the
situation: "The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote
emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often received their
help when we required anything from other authorities regarding
preparations for emigration."
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the
Reichstag adopted the so-called "Nuremberg laws" that prohibited
marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in
effect, proclaimed the Jews an alien minority nationality. A few
days later the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau editorially welcomed
the new measures:
Germany ... is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it
is again possible to establish normal relations between the German
nation and Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany
its own cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be
able to shape its own schools, its own theatre, and its own sports
associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects
of national life ...
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life
of the Jewish minority: Jewry's process of growth into a nation
will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the
establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the "Revisionist" Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of
the Berlin Jewish Community, declared in an interview with the
Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end of 1935:
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition
for living together without conflict. ... I have long supported
such a separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws ... seem to me, apart from their
legal provisions, to conform entirely with this desire for a separate
life based on mutual respect. ... This interruption of the process
of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had been promoted
through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish point of view,
entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New York rally in June 1938: "I am not an American
citizen of the Jewish faith, I am a Jew ... Hitler was right in one
thing. He calls the Jewish people a race and we are a race."
The Interior Ministry's Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
Lösener, expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared
in a November 1935 issue of the official Reichsverwaltungsblatt:
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of
them were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as
completely resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least
amount of opposition to the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws
have been shown by the Zionists, because they realize at once that
these laws represent the only correct solution for the Jewish people
as well. For each nation must have its own state as the outward
expression of its particular nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized
a network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their new
lives in Palestine. Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from
displaying the German flag, Jews were specifically guaranteed the
right to display the blue and white Jewish national banner. The flag
that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at the Zionist
camps and centers in Hitler's Germany.
Himmler's security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel Polkes for information about the situation
in Palestine and for help in directing Jewish emigration to that
country. Meanwhile, the Haganah was kept well informed about German
plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin headquarters of
the SS. Haganah-SS collaboration even included secret deliveries of
German weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian
Arabs.
In the aftermath of the November 1938 "Kristallnacht" outburst
of violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet and continue its work in
Germany, although now under more restricted supervision.
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the United States, Britain and other countries
to mobilize "their" governments and fellow citizens against Germany.
As long as world Jewry remained implacably hostile towards National
Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority of Jews
around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the Zionist
"promised land," a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not
really "solve" the international Jewish question. Instead, German
officials reasoned, it would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous
anti-German campaign. German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state.
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany's interest because it would
not be able to absorb all Jews around the world, but would only
serve as an additional power base for international Jewry, in much
the same way as Moscow served as a base for international Communism.
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy, the German
press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for Palestinian Arab
resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when tension and conflict
between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing.
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned
that in spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, "it
would nevertheless be a mistake to assume that Germany supports
the formation of a state structure in Palestine under some
form of Jewish control. In view of the anti-German agitation of
international Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of
a Palestine Jewish state would help the peaceful development of
the nations of the world." "The proclamation of a Jewish state
or a Jewish-administrated Palestine," warned an internal memorandum
by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, "would create for Germany
a new enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments
in the Near East." Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state
"would work to bring special minority protection to Jews in every
country, therefore giving legal protection to the exploitation
activity of world Jewry." In January 1939, Hitler's new Foreign
Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned in another
circular bulletin that "Germany must regard the formation of a
Jewish state as dangerous" because it "would bring an international
increase in power to world Jewry."
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions
and misgivings that his policies might contribute to the formation
of a Jewish state, decided to support Jewish migration to Palestine
even more vigorously. The prospect of ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers.
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938
and 1939. In response, the SS security service concluded a secret
alliance with the clandestine Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet
to smuggle Jews illegally into Palestine. As a result of this
intensive collaboration, several convoys of ships succeeded in
reaching Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both
legal and illegal, from Germany (including Austria) to Palestine
increased dramatically in 1938 and 1939. Another 10,000 Jews
were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the outbreak of war
in September brought the effort to an end. All the same, German
authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish emigration to
Palestine during 1940 and 1941. Even as late as March 1942, at
least one officially authorized Zionist "kibbutz" training camp
for potential emigrants continued to operate in Hitler's Germany.
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler
era was the Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of
thousands of German Jews to migrate to Palestine with their
wealth. The Agreement, also known as the Ha'avara (Hebrew for
"transfer"), was concluded in August 1933 following talks between
German officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of
the Jewish Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist
Organization.
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money
was used to purchase German-made agricultural tools, building
materials, pumps, fertilizer, and so forth, which were exported
to Palestine and sold there by the Jewish-owned Ha'avara company
in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish emigrant
upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to his
deposit in Germany. German goods poured into Palestine through the
Ha'avara, which was supplemented a short time later with a barter
agreement by which Palestine oranges were exchanged for German
timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and other goods. The
Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing Jewish settlers
and development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving
the German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would
undermine the international Jewish economic boycott against Germany.
But Zionist officials reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key
figure behind the Ha'avara arrangement, stressed that the Agreement
was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur Ruppin,
a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact, pointed out that "the Transfer Agreement in
no way interfered with the boycott movement, since no new currency
will flow into Germany as a result of the agreement. ...." The
1935 Zionist Congress, meeting in Switzerland, overwhelmingly
endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the Zionist "shadow
government" in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha'avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany's Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans Döhle, for example, sharply criticized
the Agreement on several occasions during 1937. He pointed out
that it cost Germany the foreign exchange that the products exported
to Palestine through the pact would bring if sold elsewhere. The
Ha'avara monopoly sale of German goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement. A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal
bulletin referred to the "foreign exchange sacrifices" that resulted
from the Ha'avara.
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: "There is no doubt
that the Ha'avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to
the very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement
provided not only the largest source of money (from Germany!),
but also the most intelligent group of immigrants, and finally
it brought to the country the machines and industrial products
essential for development." The main advantage of the pact, the
memo reported, was the emigration of large numbers of Jews to
Palestine, the most desirable target country as far as Germany was
concerned. But the paper also noted the important drawbacks pointed
out by Consul Döhle and others. The Interior Minister, it went on,
had concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed
the advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated.
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally
reviewed the policy in July and September 1937, and again in
January 1938, and each time decided to maintain the Ha'avara
arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from Germany, he
concluded, justified the drawbacks.
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in foreign countries could help German Jews
emigrate to Palestine. Almost $900,000 was eventually channeled
through the Intria to German Jews in Palestine. Other European
countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration concluded agreements
with the Zionists modeled after the Ha'avara. In 1937 Poland
authorized the Halifin (Hebrew for "exchange") transfer company.
By late summer 1939, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy
had signed similar arrangements. The outbreak of war in September
1939, however, prevented large-scale implementation of these
agreements.
Achievements of Ha'avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha'avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany's 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent of Palestine's 1939 Jewish population.)
Some Ha'avara emigrants transferred considerable personal wealth
from Germany to Palestine. As Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted:
"Many of these people, especially in the late 1930s, were allowed to
transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories -- indeed rough
replicas of their very existence."
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha'avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million German marks (then equivalent to more than
$40 million). This amount included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8
million) provided by the Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may
have flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial
agreements and special international banking transactions. The
German funds had a major impact on a country as underdeveloped
as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed out. Several major
industrial enterprises were built with the capital from Germany,
including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile firm.
The influx of Ha'avara goods and capital, concluded Black,
"produced an economic explosion in Jewish Palestine" and was
"an indispensable factor in the creation of the State of Israel."
The Ha'avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development
in Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German Foreign Office circular bulletin
reported, with some misgiving, that "the transfer of Jewish property
out of Germany [through the Ha'avara agreement] contributed to no
small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine."
Former officials of the Ha'avara company in Palestine confirmed
this view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published
in 1972: "The economic activity made possible by the influx German
capital and the Haavara transfers to the private and public sectors
were of greatest importance for the country's development. Many
new industries and commercial enterprises were established in Jewish
Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the economy of the State of Israel owe their existence
to the Haavara." Dr. Ludwig Pinner, a Ha'avara company official in
Tel Aviv during the 1930s, later commented that the exceptionally
competent Ha'avara immigrants "decisively contributed" to the
economic, social, cultural and educational development of Palestine's
Jewish community.
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler's Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler's Third Reich did more than any other
government during the 1930s to support Jewish development in
Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was
made by the radical underground "Fighters for the Freedom of
Israel," better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its leader,
Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical nationalist
"National Military Organization" (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over the
group's attitude toward Britain, which had effectively banned
further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern regarded Britain
as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal "for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi]
in the war on the side of Germany" is worth quoting at some length:
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation. ("Jew-free Europe").
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition
for solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can
be totally achieved is through settlement of these masses in the
homeland of the Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment
of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by
the Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization
in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem
in this way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people
forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German
Reich government and its officials towards Zionist activities
within Germany and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view
- that
-
- Common interests can exist between a European New Order based
on the German concept and the true national aspirations of the
Jewish people as embodied by the NMO.
- Cooperation is possible between the New Germany and a renewed,
folkish-national Jewry [Hebräertum].
- The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national
and totalitarian basis, and bound by treaty with the German
Reich, would be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening
the future German position of power in the Near East.
On the basis of these considerations, and upon the condition that
the German Reich government recognize the national aspirations of
the Israel Freedom Movement mentioned above, the NMO in Palestine
offers to actively take part in the war on the side of Germany.
This offer by the NMO could include military, political and
informational activity within Palestine and, after certain
organizational measures, outside as well. Along with this the
Jewish men of Europe would be militarily trained and organized
in military units under the leadership and command of the NMO.
They would take part in combat operations for the purpose of
conquering Palestine, should such a front by formed.
The indirect participation of the Israel Freedom Movement in the
New Order of Europe, already in the preparatory stage, combined
with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem
on the basis of the national aspirations of the Jewish people
mentioned above, would greatly strengthen the moral foundation of
the New Order in the eyes of all humanity.
The cooperation of the Israel Freedom Movement would also be
consistent with a recent speech by the German Reich Chancellor,
in which Hitler stressed that he would utilize any combination
and coalition in order to isolate and defeat England.
There is no record of any German response. Acceptance was very
unlikely anyway because by this time German policy was decisively
pro-Arab. Remarkably, Stern's group sought to conclude a pact
with the Third Reich at a time when stories that Hitler was bent
on exterminating Jews were already in wide circulation. Stern
apparently either did not believe the stories or he was willing
to collaborate with the mortal enemy of his people to help bring
about a Jewish state.
An important Lehi member at the time the group made this offer
was Yitzhak Shamir, who later served as Israel's Foreign Minister
and then, during much of the 1980s and until June 1992, as Prime
Minister. As Lehi operations chief following Stern's death in 1942,
Shamir organized numerous acts of terror, including the November
1944 assassination of British Middle East Minister Lord Moyne
and the September 1948 slaying of Swedish United Nations mediator
Count Bernadotte. Years later, when Shamir was asked about the 1941
offer, he confirmed that he was aware of his organization's proposed
alliance with wartime Germany.
Conclusion
In spite of the basic hostility between the Hitler regime and
international Jewry, for several years Jewish Zionist and German
National Socialist interests coincided. In collaborating with
the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to
a complex problem, the Third Reich was willing to make foreign
exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain and anger
the Arabs. Indeed, during the 1930s no nation did more to
substantively further Jewish-Zionist goals than Hitler's Germany.
Journal of Historical Review 13/4, (May-June 1993), 29ff. Mark
Weber's footnotes have been removed from the text that appears
above. The complete article is available on the IHR website.
For further discussion of this subject, see Ingrid Weckert's
(off-site) study of Jewish emigration from the Third Reich,
available at CODOH.
>>>-----------------------------------------------------------------<<<
>> GIV Mailinglist : http://mailing.giv-seiten.info <<
>>>-----------------------------------------------------------------<<<
http://www.giv-seiten.info/www.giv-archiv.de/2002/Oktober/021031GI.010
>> Kasnazaniya / Casnazaniyyah: http://video.giv-seiten.info <<
>>>-----------------------------------------------------------------<<<
>> Further Informations about Iraq and Palestine: <<
>> <<
>> GIV-Pages Online : http://www.giv-seiten.info <<
>> GIV-Page : http://giv.giv-seiten.info <<
>> Iraq-Page : http://irak.giv-seiten.info <<
>> Jemen-Page : http://jemen.giv-seiten.info <<
>> Jordanien-Page : http://jordanien.giv-seiten.info <<
>> GIV-Archiv : http://archiv.giv-seiten.info <<
>> GIV-Archiv : http://www.giv-archiv.de <<
>>>-----------------------------------------------------------------<<<
|
