As the massive influx of questions about Ken Livingston's, former mayor of London and Labour politician, remarks about Hitler and Zionism proves, there is some really great interest in the question of the validity of said remarks, their historical background and the sources for his claim.
In the interest of our readers and user, I have put together this META thread that will not only collect the answers to previous threads but where I'll also do my best to sum up the state of research into this topic.
/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov and /u/gingerkid1234 discuss the Haavara agreement, emigration of German Jews to Palestine, and the issue of forced emigration in the 1930s from Nazi Germany here
/u/tayaravaknin also discusses the Haavara agreement and /u/Prufrock451 goes into the economic background of forced emigration here
/u/tayaravaknin goes into further detail about the Haavara agreement here
/u/marisacoulter goes into detail why saying Hitler supported Zionism is disingenuous here
I myself provide some background on the historian on whose work Livingstone based his assertions on here
As can be gleaned from the summary above, it can be unequivocally stated that Hitler did not support Zionism.
When the Nazis came to power, their early conception of what they saw as the "solution to the Jewish question" was at first the emigration of Jews from Germany. The background to this was their staunch anti-Semitism, which in its essence saw the presence of Jews as an existential threat to the German racial community.
It is imperative to imagine Nazi policy not as wanting to systematically murder all Jews immediately from the outset of their rule in 1933 as I discuss in our AskHistorians Podcast 057 - Intentionalism and Functionalism in the Holocaust. Rather, in the 1930s -- and the closer the war came, the greater the pressure -- their goal was the emigration of Jews from Germany. This also served as a ways to get money in their coffers since emigration included the "Reich flight tax" that made Jews emigrating from Germany a hefty sum of money for their emigration. The Haavara agreement needs to be seen in that context since its basics were about Jews buying their property back from the Nazis via transferring them to Palestine as export goods thus shoring up German foreign currency accounts (foreign currency as something the German economy was heavily lacking).
The Haavara agreement had nothing to do with supposed sympathies between the Nazis and Zionism. For the Nazi leadership, especially the German financial authorities, it was a way to obtain desperately needed foreign currency. For the German Zionist Federation and the Anglo-Palestine bank it it was a pragmatic decision in order to get Jews out of Germany where they faced discrimination.
The idea that Hitler and the Nazis somehow supported Zionism -- a movement in its essence designed to empower Jews, to give them their own state -- is as has been said in the linked answers above disingenuous. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:
... while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
During the war, this was somewhat followed up when during the Africa campaign, the Nazis planned a Einsatzgruppe for Palestine, most likely with the goal of killing the Jews in Palestine.
Also, in connections to further contacts between Zionist organizations and the Nazis, in 1937 Adolf Eichmann and his then boss, Herbert Hagen, did indeed attempt to travel to Palestine in order to meet representatives from Zionist organizations. Their expedition ended in Egypt when the British authorities refused them visas to Palestine. There they met Feival Polkes, an agent of the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary force from Palestine. Polkes suggested that more Jews should be able to leave under the Haavara agreement but Eichmann and Hagen refused and a deal fell through. Their argument why they refused is pretty clear: According to David Cesarani: Eichmann: His Life and Crimes, 2005 who cites Eichmann's report about the expedition, Hagen refused Polkes because further Jewish emigration to Palestine might lead to a Jewish state there, which would be heavily against Reich policy.
As has been pointed out in one of the linked answers above, the Haavara agreement has been and is used to somehow try and implicate Zionists in the Holocaust, which is, to put in friendly terms, a questionable undertaking.
Livingstone referred to Lenni Brenner as his source. I talk about Brenner in the above linked post but the essence of it is that Brenner has a clear political agenda and he cherrypicks his evidence (concentrating only on the Lehi e.g.) and instead of putting the sources into context crafts a narrative heavily influenced by his own political and moral standards. Brenner's book is a political pamphlet, and not a historical work. Whether you agree with Brenner and Livingstone about Zionism and Israel or not, their allegations do not come from a historically informed and well sourced place but from one of pure politics.
Sources:
Avraham Barkai: German Interests in the Haavara-Transfer Agreement 1933–1939, 1990
Yehuda Bauer: Jews for sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945, 1996.
Tom Segev: The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust, 2000.
Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers: “Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine”: The Einsatzkommando of the Panzer Army Africa, 1942.
Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1 and 2 by Saul Friedländer.
How does the Madagascar Plan fit into all this?
How much of this discussion and controversy comes down to the fight over the definition of the word Zionism (and inherent in that the concept itself)?
I'm not familiar with Livingstone, and I'm only knowledgable enough about the history of Zionism to know that much of the language dealing with it is coded with subtext. Is there a way that we can parse out that subtext with history?
Apologies if this is more of an etymology question but my background is in philosophy.
Has anyone done research into the historical context as to what could lead to the worldview that the Jewish people were such a threat, that they needed to be either deported, or worse?
I posted a little thought a little thought experiment about this, just recently in the Germany subreddit, as part of a discussion I began about my idea that there has always been ethnic diversity in the biggest trading hubs of Europe.
Of course, I can't know if I'm anywhere close to the mark there, but I'd love to hear other people's perspectives (and research) on this aspect of continental European history.
But beyond the Haavara agreement, was there actual collaboration in the Nazi Party with Zionist organizations? I am aware that certain Nazi officials such as Leopold Von Mildenstein had close contacts and good relations with the WZO, and even were formally invited to visit their communities in Palestine, eventually becoming sympathetic to the Zionist cause.
Were these views extended in the high hierarchy of the party, up to Hitler himself, or were they rather an excentricity confined to Von Mildenstein and few others?
Even if Hitler couldn't possibly have personally "supported Zionism" as Livingstone declared, perhaps it can be argued that he was using Hitler as shorthand for his regime, and that in that case his claims were not entirely historically wrong.
Can someone answer why there are so many removed posts preferrably a mod or someone with screencaps.
Is there a thread similar to this one about similarities between Nazis and Zionists and Nazi Germany and modern Israel?
Maybe I missed it, but I can't see a reference to Brenner's book, on which Livingstone based his comment about Nazi/Zionist cooperation:
History as I was taught it agrees with Livingston's way of looking at it. As always apiece of history has more than one version of events.
"negotiations continued after Hitler came to power, in the belief that the export of goods from Germany would benefit German Jews if it enabled them to carry out their intention of settling in Palestine."
source: Francis R. Nicosia The Third Reich & the Palestine question
As has been pointed out in one of the linked answers above, the Haavara agreement has been and is used to somehow try and implicate Zionists in the Holocaust, which is, to put in friendly terms, a questionable undertaking.
Sure, but that doesn't mean it becomes bad history to talk about it. Guilty by association and all that.