A Deal with the Devil: The Transfer Agreement
and the Zionist Pact with Hitler - By Tara Douglas
Well-documented
but little known research has recently revealed that an alliance between certain
Zionist leaders and the Nazi party of the Third Reich began in 1933 and
lasted until the outbreak of the Second Word War in
1939. This alliance was not only instrumental in the eventual creation of Israel, it also interfered with the establishment of other
safe havens for Jews around the world. And, perhaps most significantly, the
Zionist-Nazi agreement helped to prevent the dismantling of the Nazi regime
in its earliest and most vulnerable stage. For during the pivotal year of
1933, many Jewish leaders around the world believed that in the early months
of the Third Reich, the economy was Hitler’s Achilles’ heel, and they were determined to cause the Nazi
downfall through an international anti-German economic boycott. However,
certain Zionist leaders were even more determined to sabotage these efforts
for their own gain. Both the Nazis, in the short term, and the Zionists, in
the long run, were the ultimate victors.
In
1933 the Zionists were still a small minority of the German Jewish population
and, indeed, of the Jewish population worldwide. Although well organized and
highly vocal, the World Zionist Organization was basically a fringe movement
that found support in approximately two percent of German Jews. Essentially
and fundamentally, the majority of the population of Jews considered the
philosophy of Zionism to be “self-segregating, ghettoizing practices
converging in a core of … ‘Jewish’ nationalism.”9
Zionism had come into existence as an
organized political movement in 1897, and had been formulated within an
environment and during a century of intense nationalistic development in
Europe. Under the auspices of Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jew and the founder
of the movement, Zionist ideology transformed Judaism from a religion into a
national and political ideal. Despite a varied and heterogeneous history in
the two thousand years since the Jewish Diaspora,
Herzl believed that all Jews had a common past and a common destiny. Herzl
postulated and promulgated the theory that Jews were a separate and distinct
nation, one which could not accommodate itself, nor be accommodated, to life
among other nations. Therefore, the only way to solve “the Jewish problem” was
for the Jews to have a country of their own.10
Although there were always
divergent opinions among Zionists about where and how to fulfill their aims,
during the decades following the movement’s inception, Zionist adherents in
Germany became increasingly radicalized. This extremism escalated to such a
degree that many liberal and humanitarian Zionists disassociated themselves
from the movement.11
Yet, in the radical views that became part of the official German Zionist
Federation doctrine, assimilation was identified as the dominant enemy of the
Jews, and this belief was based on the conviction that “all efforts to blend
with non-Jews must lead unswervingly to deformed Jewish life.”12
At the heart of
Zionist conviction lay the belief that Jews comprised a unique
race, as opposed to a mere ethnicity. Although the doctrine of racial
superiority was never officially adopted, German Zionists expressed a Jewish
version of the Nazi doctrine of Aryan superiority, and claims of Jewish
moral, spiritual, and intellectual advancement in comparison to other races
formed a large part of Zionist propaganda. German Zionists also believed Jews
to be a pure race, since Jewish religious leaders had always frowned upon
intermarriage, which threatened racial purity. Since Jews believed themselves
to be the ‘Chosen People,’ they had historically kept themselves separate and
apart from other races, as well as having had separation forced upon them.13
The
German Zionist philosophy also paralleled the Nazi doctrine in other respects.
Zionist ideology incorporated its own version of the German volkgeist. To
Zionists, Jews were a volk,
both a race and a nation.14
During the early part of the twentieth century, this Jewish version of the
German vision of “blood and soil” took hold. But although Jews had the
“blood,” they were missing the “soil”. This lack inspired many European
Zionists to adopt the views of the Russian Zionist Asher Ginzberg,
who believed that Palestine, the Jewish homeland two thousand years earlier,
was the true location of the Jewish nation-state that Herzl envisioned. This
view culminated during the 1912 World Zionist convention in Posen, with the
passing of a resolution calling for every German Zionist to plan to emigrate to Palestine and to abolish all ties with
Germany, since Jews had no “roots” in Germany. The passion generated by these
views provoked Polish Jew and Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky,
to later exclaim at the Twelfth Zionist Congress of 1921, “In working for
Palestine, I would even ally myself with the devil.”15 By 1933, despite the fact that the great
majority of German Jews had no interest in going there, Palestine was the
epitome of German Zionist aspirations.
The
first wave of European Jewish immigration to Palestine following the creation
of the World Zionist Organization began in 1904. But it was not until the
creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, established after WWI primarily
as a result of the collaboration between British Zionists (under Chaim Weizmann) and the British government,
that Jews living in Palestine were permitted to have their own
political governing body. This governing body was known as the Jewish Agency.
Although somewhat autonomous, the Jewish Agency was essentially directed and
controlled from London. The Jewish Agency had evolved during the 1920s from
the Zionist Commission, which had originally been created by the British in
1919, as part of their own imperialist interests in the Middle East. The
British supported the Zionists for well over a decade, but the conflict
between the Arabs, who had inhabited this region for hundreds of years, and
the European Jewish settlers was escalating to such an extent that by the
1930s the British began to make it increasingly difficult for Jewish
immigrants to come to Palestine, unless they were “capitalist” settlers in
possession of $5,000 (or L1,000).32 And despite almost three decades of Zionist
efforts to mobilize world Jewry to immigrate to Palestine, by 1933 there were
just 200,000 Jews living in Palestine, comprising only nineteen percent of
the population.33 The Zionist leaders in Palestine,
therefore, believed that in order to achieve their national and political
aims, it was essential to increase the Jewish population. They considered the
situation a race between Arabs and Jews, and they were determined to win that
race.34 And the Zionists were also determined not to
be out-manoeuvred by the British.
Meanwhile,
in the United States, there were two main Jewish defense
organizations as of March 1933. The American Jewish Committee had been
founded by wealthy German Jews in 1906, and was comprised of assimilated Jews
who considered themselves superior to the Jews of Eastern Europe. Although
the Committee had only 350 members, it had money and political influence. The
American Jewish Congress was essentially an Eastern European Jewish
organization, founded by Rabbi Stephen Wise. The Congress represented a much
larger constituency and was much more politically vocal than was the
Committee, but it was also much less financially viable, and therefore, less
influential. However, both organizations were aware that they potentially
possessed one weapon that Hitler most feared – an economic boycott.3
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An
international economic boycott against German goods and services would be disastrous
to the newly formed Nazi government, as Hitler’s election platform was based
on the promise of substantial economic improvement. The Jewish organizations
had a history of successfully using the weapons of boycotts and protests to
fight anti-Semitism, including a boycott against one of America’s richest
men, Henry Ford.4 Even Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda
Minister, was concerned about this mounting threat, about which he wrote in
his diary, “We are defenselessly exposed to the
attacks of our adversaries.”5
However, this time the Committee, because of its associations with Germany
and its fear of Nazi reprisals on German Jews, preferred diplomatic action.
The Association of Jewish War Veterans, the Congress, and Jews around the
world wanted to take a more aggressive public stand.
The
protests began quickly. On March 20, Polish Jews organized a large
rally. On March 23, thousands of Jews
came out to take part in a boycott parade in New York City, and thousands
more people cheered from the sidelines. On March 27, a huge protest took
place in New York City that was coordinated with 80 other cities throughout
the USA, while millions listened to live broadcasts. Anti-Nazi boycott
movements were growing worldwide, and not only among Jews. Countries like
Lithuania, France, Holland, Britain, and Egypt were organizing protests and
displaying signs that said: “Boycott German Goods.” Steamship lines in New
York cancelled bookings with German companies. Labour unions put up boycott
posters all over London. The international Jewish leadership, spearheaded by
Wise, began to plan a much more massive boycott.6
The
Nazi reaction to this economic threat was swift. On March 23, Hitler gave a
speech which focused on Germany’s desire for good international trade relations,
in which he stated that “Germany needs contact with the outside world and
foreign markets – otherwise we cannot regulate our foreign debt.” 7
On March 25, Hermann Goering, Minister of the Interior, summoned the leaders
of several German Jewish organizations to his office for a meeting.8
No Zionist representatives were invited.
When
German Zionist leaders found out about the meeting with Goering, Kurt Blumenfeld, president of the German Zionist Federation,
arranged to attend. Goering threatened severe reprisals unless the German
Jewish community put a stop to the looming economic boycott. The Nazis had
devised an anti-Jewish boycott of their own, which would begin on 1 April
1933 and would end when anti-German boycotts in New York and London also
ended. Only Blumenfeld was capable of meeting with
other Jewish world leaders, since the Zionists were part of an international
organization whose headquarters were in London, and whose branches existed in
numerous other countries. The Zionists then set about to deny the atrocities
that were taking place under the Nazis, and to put a halt to the boycott.16
While
the German government struggled in private over how to handle economic
boycotts, the German Zionist leaders in London also schemed and plotted behind
the scenes. Unable to get any support for their anti-boycott efforts from the
World Zionist Organization headquarters, the German Zionists sent a false
telegram to the Jewish Agency, the arm of the Zionist Organization in
Palestine and an official advisory body to the British mandatory government
there.20 Pretending to be the Executive Committee of
the World Zionist Organization, the German Zionists told the Jewish Agency to
cable Hitler and tell him that the Agency was not in favour of an anti-German
boycott. The telegram was also a message to the Zionist membership in
Palestine that their international leadership opposed the boycott. The Jewish
Agency did as they were directed.21
What
official Zionists in London also did not know was that on 16 March 1933 a
meeting had taken place in Palestine that was destined to change the course
of Palestine’s history. On this date four men from the Jewish Agency
(including Felix Rosenbluth, a former president of
the German Zionist Federation and the future state of Israel’s first Minister
of Justice) met to discuss issues of finance. The world response to Jewish
persecution in Germany was so vast that Jewish defense
and refuge organizations were receiving huge amounts of funds. However, none
of these funds were earmarked for the Zionist cause. The Agency Jews were
concerned about how to prevent these donations from stabilizing German Jews
or allowing Jewish immigration to other parts of the world.
Despite
subsequent Zionist propaganda, many other opportunities for Jewish settlement
did exist. One mass resettlement in particular was being planned for South
America by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society (HIAS) and the
Zionists believed that this project was taking vast amounts of money away
from the Agency. The Jewish Agency had to act because its financial situation
was desperate. If circumstances continued unchanged, it would soon be facing
bankruptcy. As one of the meeting’s participants complained in regard to
another American agency, two million dollars in relief aid was raised, and
there was not one Zionist among the trustees. To counter this situation, the
Jewish Agency leaders decided to create a new refugee fund with Zionist
trustees but without any outer identification with either Palestine or Zionism.
They wanted Chaim Weizmann, who was no longer an
official of the World Zionist Organization, to run the new fund.35
Although
getting a share of the donated funds was an important issue, another problem
was pressing on these men’s minds. The Zionist leaders in Palestine were also
worried that German Jews with money would go to other countries, and that
Jews without means would end up in Palestine. Yet wealthy middle class Jews
who did want to leave Germany were hampered by a currency restriction that had
been imposed on all Germans in 1931, which prevented money from leaving the
country without permission. Middle class Jews had the means to pay the
British entry requirements to Palestine, but they would not want to leave
their assets behind in Germany.
It
was then that the Agency’s Felix Rosenbluth made
the crucial suggestion: perhaps the Zionists should try to negotiate with the
German government for special concessions for wealthier Jews who would
emigrate to Palestine. The Jewish Agency needed these Jews and their money. A
few days later, Sam Cohen, an influential German Jewish businessman who was
also a non-Zionist, was commissioned by the Agency to undertake the secret
negotiations between the Zionists and the Nazis.36
Thus,
in late March, Sam Cohen began to negotiate the first stages of what was to
become known as the Haavrara
or Transfer Agreement.37 After arranging meetings with two German
government officials, Cohen asked for special currency exemptions for Jews
who wanted to emigrate to Palestine. Terms were
agreed upon which were weighted heavily in favour of the German government.
Middle class Jews would liquidate their assets and then give all their money
to the government, in the form of taxes or in frozen bank accounts, with the
exception of the $5,000 needed for entrance to Palestine. In exchange, the
Zionist movement would actively block the anti-German boycott and would also
promote German exports, thereby increasing foreign currency in Germany.38
The agreement did not satisfy George Landauer, a
director of the German Zionist Federation and one of the few people who knew
about the arrangement.39
He wanted more money for Palestinian Zionists. And although the German
government was initially supportive, in a few short weeks the agreement fell
apart.
Pressure on the arrangement began as soon as
the 1 April anti-Jewish rally took place as planned. Throughout April, the
Nazis also put legal measures in place that took rights and work away from
German Jews.40
These actions inflamed an international Jewish demand for economic reprisals
against Germany. Despite the anti-boycott stance of the Zionist leaders in
Palestine, the Jewish population there had refused to follow their leaders’
instructions and actively supported the boycott. These Jews cancelled orders
for German agricultural equipment and other German exports, and did
everything they could to damage all German economic activities. By mid April
the German government cancelled the exemption agreement because the Agency
Zionists who had concocted this plan had not kept their side of the bargain.
The boycott momentum was growing, not diminishing.41
In
early May, Cohen met with the same government officials, pretending to
represent the official Zionist Leadership. He hired Siegrfried
Moses, head of the German Zionist Federation, to accompany him, in order to
lend credence to his ruse. This time Cohen offered the Nazis an even better
arrangement, based on the use of his own company, Hanotaiah
Ltd.42 Wealthy and middle class Jewish emigrants
would swap their accounts with other foreign currency buyers, less the
required taxes. Palestine Zionists would control a share of the funds, and
they would then buy farm equipment, pipes, chemicals, and other German goods
with the money from these blocked accounts, through Cohen’s company. The new
Palestinian immigrants would be given land (bought cheaply from Arab
landowners) and farm equipment, in exchange for giving up their money. Thus
all the Jewish assets would be divided between Palestine and the Third Reich,
in Germany’s favour. The agreement appealed to the German government. The
Nazis would get Jewish money; increased trade (since emigration was linked to
the purchase of goods); a doorway into the expanding Middle Eastern market;
increased domestic employment; and the removal of Jews, all in one fell
swoop. The Jewish immigrants would be forced to work the land and develop
Palestine, in what would amount to indentured servitude, since they would
have no money. To the Zionists, that would be a small matter, since labourers
were needed in Palestine, not merchants.43
A
short time after the Transfer Agreement was arranged, the operation of the
arrangement was taken over by Agency and German Zionist leaders and the
Anglo-Palestine Bank, which agreed to front for the Zionists. At the
Eighteenth World Zionist Congress, held in August of 1933, a surprised
Zionist membership was asked to vote on and pass the Transfer Agreement, and
work to establish a state of Israel in Palestine, which would adopt the
Zionist symbol as its new flag. With the Agency’s success with the Agreement,
all efforts would now be directed at getting German Jews to immigrate to
Palestine and to develop Israel. However, the majority of German Jews were
anti-Zionist, had no interest in Palestine, and wanted to fight for their
rights in Germany. But the Transfer Agreement was not a rescue or relief
project for the Jews in Germany, and the Zionists had little concern for the
agreement’s impact on the Jews there. The Zionist leaders were unwilling to
protect Jewish rights in Europe just at the time when that course of action
was most needed. They wanted money and labour to build up Palestine, and
their main concern was for the German Jews who did want to emigrate there.44
In
order to boost immigration, new strategies were needed. Chaim
Weizmann started a new organization, the Central Bureau for the Settlement of
German Jews. This organization, which worked out of London, coordinated
efforts between Palestine and the German government, and made all life and
death rescue decisions for the following fifteen years. Palestine needed
young, strong, healthy workers. This need became a primary factor in
determining which Jews were accepted, and which were rejected as settlers in
Palestine.45
In her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt
verified the intimate connection between the Nazis and the Zionist leaders,
who were the only Jews in the early months of the Hitler regime to associate
with the German authorities and who used their position to discredit
anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. According to Arendt, the German Zionists
urged the adoption of the slogan, “Wear the yellow star with pride” to end
Jewish assimilation and to encourage the Nazis to send the Jews to Palestine.46
And
although at that time many countries were willing to take Jewish refugees,
Zionist propaganda successfully convinced many German and European Jews that
there were no other places to go Countries as disparate as Australia, Crimea,
Ukraine, and Manchuria, as well as South American and African countries
offered to accept refugees. The World Zionist Organization rejected them all.
The Zionist leadership even fought for German regulations to prevent German
Jews from saving their wealth in any other way than through investing in
Palestine. As the amounts of transferred funds grew, it was not long before
what began as a “noble” ideal of building Palestine into a Jewish homeland
disintegrated into a situation of commercial and business opportunities, with
a rush of entrepreneurs anxious to control the capital of captive German
Jews. All the while, Hitler was growing stronger and Nazi evil was spreading.46
The
alliance with Germany, based on trade, shifted Zionist priorities from a
people caught in a crisis to money caught in a crisis. The Zionists knew that
the success of the Agreement was dependent upon the survival of the Nazi
economy. The economy needed to be stabilized and safeguarded, because if the
Nazis fell, the Zionists would be ruined. As well as investing in Palestine,
the Zionists invested the transferred funds in major German companies and in
enterprises like the railways. And Zionist leaders in London, New York and
Germany worked very hard to prevent the economic boycott from happening.
Cohen devised a system of safeguarding, in his bank accounts, money belonging
to Jews who wanted to emigrate later on, and he used the money to break
boycott support in other areas. As well, pro-Palestine propaganda developed
in full force. Penniless refuges in Europe were straining the resources of
other countries’ charitable organizations, such as those in France, Holland,
and Czechoslovakia, since, with the help of Chaim
Weizmann, money had been successfully diverted from other relief
organizations into Zionist hands. Now Jews in these and other countries were
being told by Weizmann that caring for German Jewish refuges was tantamount
to importing anti-Semitism into their countries. He even mimicked Hitler’s
rhetoric and called the refugees “germ carriers of a new outbreak of
anti-Semitism.” Of course, there was only one answer to this problem:
Palestine.47
Meanwhile,
although international support had been amassing all summer, Rabbi Wise of
the American Jewish Congress, one of the boycott leaders, had dithered and
delayed about announcing the huge boycott, caught under opposing pressure
from boycott supporters on one hand, and the Zionists and the American Jewish
Committee on the other. Finally, the international Jewish leadership, which
had been planning and organizing for the boycott for months and had wanted to
announce the boycott’s inauguration, at the very latest during the Second
World Jewish Congress in Geneva in September, were instead directed to turn
over all political affairs to the Paris-based Committee of Jewish Delegations,
a Zionist group. With this decision, the leadership of the worldwide boycott
was handed over to the Zionists. Wise had caved in to the Zionist pressure.48
When a boycott did occur over the
winter, it was haphazardly funded and organized by a few die-hards. But it
was too little, too late, to really affect the German economy or to lessen
Hitler’s hold on the reigns of power. However,
thanks to the Transfer Agreement, the Jewish population in Palestine tripled
in three short years and Jewish Palestine began to flourish with young German
émigrés, and the reconstruction that their capital contributed. By 1939, ten
percent of German Jews had moved to Palestine and 140 million RM had been
transferred.49
Towns and settlements had grown up along the coastal plain of the
Mediterranean, and Haifa was a bustling German immigrant city. Palestine was
on its way to becoming a Jewish state. The Transfer Agreement was renewed in
February of 1934, and, due to the great success of their enterprise, the
Zionists created another company, the Near and Middle East Commercial
Corporation (NEMICO) which opened German expansion throughout the Middle
East.50
But, by the end of the decade, circumstances had changed. For the Nazis, the
exodus of the Jews from Germany was taking place too slowly. And the rest of
the world, now seemingly saturated with 100,000 penniless Jewish refugees,
began to close its doors.
Based on what is now known, it can
be argued, although it is certainly not a popular argument to make, that if
the world’s Jews had organized and united, they might have had an excellent
chance of containing, if not toppling, Hitler’s regime in early 1933. The
economy was a critical issue in Germany at that time, and American companies
controlled much of German industry. If the German economic depression had
deepened, Hitler would most likely have been blamed and another coalition
government would have been forced to form. The retribution on German Jews
would most likely have been extreme. But it would have been visible, with
greater likelihood of international intervention. And it would hardly have
compared to the slaughter that the German and other European Jews ultimately
experienced. But the Zionists, in their subterfuge, were successful in
opposing the boycott and the window of opportunity, which could have been
seized, was quickly closed. After September 1933, it was too late.
However,
what actually occurred was that the Zionists were successful in fulfilling their
own ambitions for Palestine. The Transfer Agreement and the Zionists’
economic relationship with the Nazi regime, with all its ramifications, was
an indispensable factor in the creation of Israel. Through the Transfer
Agreement, the Zionists were able to build up Palestine’s Jewish population
and infrastructure. They were able to focus world attention on the viability
of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews. They skilfully inculcated the
belief, among Jews and Gentiles alike, that there were no other options and
that a return to Palestine was something all Jews had longed for, for the
previous two thousand years. When the atrocities of the Holocaust were
revealed, the Zionists were ready to take advantage of this opportunity, and
they again presented Palestine to the world as the only viable alternative for Jews.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Arendt,
Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem New
York: Viking Press, 1963 Barkai, Avraham.
From Boycott to Annihilation – The
Economic Struggle of German Jews,
1933 Ben-Elissar, Eliahu. La Diplomatie du
III Reich et Les Juifs, 1933-1939. Geneve:Julliard, 1969
Berger,
Elmer. Judaism or Jewish Nationalism,
The Alternative to Zionism. New York:Bookman Associates, 1957
Black,
Edwin. The Transfer Agreement: The
Untold Story of the Secret Pact Between theThird
Reich & Jewish Palestine. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,1984 Haim, Yehoyada.
Abandonment of Illusions – Zionist
Political Attitudes Toward
Palestinian
Arab Nationalism, 1936-39. Boulder: Westview Press,
1983 Kimche, Jon. Palestine or Israel. London:
Secker & Warburg, 1973 Niewyk, Donald. The Jews in Weimar Germany.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana StateUniversity Press, 1980
Sodaro, Michael and Nathan Brown. Comparative Politics, A Global
Introduction.Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002
The
American Jewish Committee. The Jews in
Nazi Germany. New York, 1935
The
Royal Institute of International Affairs. Great
Britain and Palestine 1915-1945. London: 1937
The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine is a book written by author Edwin Black, documenting the transfer agreement ("Haavara Agreement" in Hebrew) between Zionist organizations and Nazi Germany to transfer a number of Jews and their assets to Palestine.
Shortly after Samuel Untermeyer's return to the U.S. from Germany in
1933, articles appeared on the front page of newspapers in London and
New York declaring that "Judea declares war on Germany" This resulted in
an effective boycott of German goods in many countries, affecting
German exports significantly. The agreement was partly inspired by this
boycott which appeared to threaten the Reich.[1]
Controversial as it may be seen in hindsight, it marked one of the few
rescues of Jews and their assets in the years leading up to the
Holocaust.[2] - WIKIPEDIA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transfer_Agreement
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