I've read that nazis' hate for jews derived of the fact that they were a race without a nation, and as a result were considered "parasites"[sic] of other nations. Would nazis then have approved of the construction of a jewish state like Israel?

by kace91

Let me first mention, in case it's not obvious, that I don't agree with any views expressed by nazis.

I was just wondering if the removal of that concept of "nationless culture/race" would have been considered a solution for nazis, instead of eradication.

commiespaceinvader

Not really, no.

What is important to understand regarding the Nazi world view is that not only were Jews regarded as an existential thread due to their "international character" but also that Nazi policy did undergo an evolution during the Nazis' tenure in power.

As for the first factor: Rather than thinking of the Jews as "parasites" and dangerous because they didn't have a state/homeland, the lack of a Jewish state/homeland was seen as an expression of their "parasitic" and dangerous character. Within the formation of modern anti-Semitism in the 19th century, the fact that Jews were regarded as different because they had no nation/homeland quickly was turned upside down and what had been one of the initial causes for the construction of difference quickly became a viewed as a symptom of an alleged "racial character".

In the tradition of völkisch thought as formulated by thinkers such as Gobineau and Houston Steward Chamberlain races as the main historical actors were seen as acting through the nation, the latter being basically their tool or outlet to compete in Social Darwinist competition between them. The Jews thought of as a race had no nation - seen as their own race, which dates back to them being imperial subject and older stereotypes of them as "the other" - but were a "race" that acted internationally rather than nationally – the absence of a nation both evidence and symptom of this. In order to be able to compete within the racial conflict them having no nation were seen as acting in a conspiratorial manner. Chamberlain e.g. made them out to be the controlling parasites behind political action and order that was seen as anti-national such as the Catholic Church or the Habsburg Empire. The anti-Semitism that formed here in the later stages of the 19th century is in effect a ideology of conspiracy, alleging a Jewish conspiracy in order to weaken their racial competitors.

The clearest example of such a way of thinking can be found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a political treatise produced by the Tsarist Secret Police at some point in 1904/05 that alleges to be the minutes of a meeting of the leaders of the Jewish world conspiracy where they discuss their plans to get rid of all the world's nations and take over the world. Despite these protocols being debunked as a forgery really quick, they had a huge impact on many anti-Semitic and völkisch thinkers in Europe, not at least for some in the Habsburg empire such as Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and others which were most likely read by the young Hitler.

The whole trope of the Jewish conspiracy as formulated by völkisch thought took on a whole new importance with the end of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, and the subsequent attempts at revolution in Germany and elsewhere.

The defeat of the Central powers were seen by many of its soldiers and ardent supporters not as a military defeat but as a "stab in the back". The way the war ended in Germany with revolts of soldiers and the deposition of the monarchy by Social Democrats was the foundation for this myth that in essence revolved around Germany not being defeated by the Entente but by the enemies within. The trope of the enemy within being Jews and leftists had been brewing for a long time (see the Jew count of the German army in 1916/17) but really came to the forefront with the defeat. What follwed compounded this further. The violence of revolution and counter-revolution as well as the treaty of Versaille lead to many völkisch inclined thinkers and political actors believing that Germany's defeat and the subsequent peace terms could only be explained by a concerted act of the jewish conspiracy leading to internal enemies stabbing Germany in the back, threatening the very German way of life through Bolshevism and preparing the Jewish-Bolshevik takeover of Germany by making it defenseless through the Versaille treaty.

Democracy seen as faulty and antithetical to the German racial character and communism as an essential anti-national movement were both shunned by these völkisch ideologues and explained through a concerted effort by a conspiracy of the anti-national "race", the Jews. This was the very core idea of völkisch thought and of Nazi Weltanschauung. In the end, for Hitler and many of his followers it was the only way to explain the state of the world because it hinged on this Social Darwinist, ultra-nationalist view of history being a history of races competing for power and supremacy.

Within this matrix of ideological delusion, the effort of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish national homeland in Palestine were not seen as an attempt to overcome this assumed "international character" of Judaism but rather as a further ploy in its international machinations to fight the "Aryan race". Rather than being welcomed by völkisch ideologues, Zionism was condemned as "unnatural" for there was no traditional, bllod-and-soil homeland of the Jews and "artificially" creating rather than having one through racial tradition was seen as dangerous rather than welcomed. Thus, the Nazis very explicitly did not approve of any such initiatives to create a state like Israel or the Zionist project as a whole, because no matter where they were, the Jews were always regarded as a danger and a mortal enemy.

But the Nazis once in power were also following a path of what was possible and thus an internal, ideologically constraint pragmatism. Once in power, what seemed possible was to rid Germany of the Jews. Not having had concrete plans of physical annihilation, the program that seemed viable was to rid all of their controlled territory of Jews. Thus, the frequently cited Haavara agreement between Zionist organizations and the Third Reich represents an outcome of this ideological pragmatism in the sense that while for the Zionists it was a way to save Jews from German discrimination, for the Germans it was a way to reach their intermediate goal – ridding Germany of Jews – and profiting economically from it. Rather than an endorsement of Zionism, it represented a policy of what was possible at the time.

The same applies to the Madagascar Plan, meaning the plan to deport the Jews in Europe under German rule to Madagascar after the capitulation of France. I've written about this before here but it is imperative to recognize the plan for what it was: A proposal that already contained elements of genocide.

Rather than envisioning a Jewish state on the Island, the proposal for the plan made it out to become what was basically a large scale concentration camp: Deporting 5 million people toparts of the island that could only support – according to their own estimates – 7000 families. They designed the whole thing basically like a ghetto and assumed the Jews would succumb to the harsh conditions as they were already in other German Ghettos.

So, in short, the creation of a Jewish homeland was never planned nor welcomed by the Nazis. Rather, it was regarded as dangerous and any plans made by the Nazis themselves such as the Madagascar Plan did not want to establish a Jewish state, rather planning a huge ghetto/concentration camp where the Jews would die slowly under German supervision.

Sources:

  • Chrisoph Dieckmann: Jüdischer Bolschewismus 1917 bis 1921. In: Fritz Bauer Jahrbuch 2012.

  • Robert Gerwarth: The Central European Counter-Revolutionary: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria, and Hungary after the Great War.

  • Andre Gerrits: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Communism in Easter Europe.

  • Peter Pulzer: The rise of political anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria.

Makratus

Yes, there was a lot of varied thought about this and many proposed solutions during the 1930s-'40s, the "Madagascar Plan" being one of the most well-known, and probably the best example of attempts to remove Jews from Europe. In the '30s there were some limited proposals for removal of Jewish families to Madagascar but plans were actually drawn up in 1940. Franz Rademacher wrote a memorandum that called for "all Jews out of Europe"; he believed Madagascar was more suitable than Palestine (which, after the war, became the location of the new Jewish state of Israel) since it was a possession of France rather than Britain and that Germany could better leverage the relocated Jews for political reasons. Adolf Eichmann, who dealt with 'Jewish affairs', called for a million Jews to be relocated each year to Madagascar, for four years. They intended to negotiate with France for Madagascar after the war, then use the British fleet to transport Jews to the island, which would then be controlled by the SS. The British fleet being an important part of the plan meant that after the invasion of England was made impossible following the Battle of Britain, the Madagascar plan was postponed, eventually being largely abandoned after Madagascar was taken from Vichy France by the U.K. in 1942. As relocation plans became decreasingly viable, the Jews were sent en Masse to the camps in what is commonly known as the Holocaust.

Sources:

Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Simon and Schuster.

Longerich, Peter (2012). Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford University Press.

Browning, Christopher R. (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution : The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942. University of Nebraska Press.

Hilberg, Raul (1973). The Destruction of the European Jews. New Viewpoints.

The actual plan:

Rademacher, Franz (1940). The Madagascar Plan: The Jewish Question in the Peace Treaty. Jewish Virtual Library.

Edit: Removed possible inaccuracy.