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Francis R. Nicosia. Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

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Francis R. Nicosia. Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 Francis R. Nicosia. Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xiv + 324 pp. $85.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-88392-4. Reviewed by Roderick Stackelberg Published on H-German (May, 2009) Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher In his latest book, Francis R. Nicosia returns by Nazis and Zionists on how best to resolve Ger‐ to and explores in greater detail one of the major many's "Jewish question" before the Second topics of his important earlier book, The Third Re‐ World War, he frmly rejects any suggestion of ich and the Palestine Question (1985): the com‐ moral or political equivalency between German plex and sometimes symbiotic relationship be‐ and Jewish nationalism. While Jewish nationalists tween German Zionists and the National Socialists wished to found a Jewish state in Palestine to es‐ before the Holocaust. Unlike most previous stud‐ cape from European antisemitism, German na‐ ies of relations between Germans and Jews in the tionalists encouraged Jewish emigration to Pales‐ modern era, which have focused on the incompat‐ tine to rid their country of Jews. Both Zionists and ibility of German ethnic nationalism and the dom‐ antisemites rejected the liberal Enlightenment inant liberalism of most Germans,[1] Nicosia's ideal of full Jewish assimilation in their host soci‐ study addresses a different confrontation: the re‐ eties as free and equal citizens, but they did so for lationship of völkisch German nationalism and very different reasons. However, their differing antisemitism to Zionism, described in the intro‐ motives and mutual hostility to each other did not duction as "a völkisch Jewish nationalist ideology prevent Nazis and Zionists from temporarily col‐ and movement that started from some of the laborating to achieve their respective ends. same philosophical premises as German national‐ Most of Nicosia's thoroughly researched book ism with regard to nationality, national life, and is devoted to examining how German Zionists the proper definition and organization of peoples tried to gain Nazi cooperation in the Zionist and states in the modern world" (p. 2). Although project and how the Nazis tried to use the Zionist Nicosia traces völkisch influences on Zionist movement to achieve their primary aim of creat‐ thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth ing a judenrein German Reich in the years before century and reveals certain assumptions shared the Holocaust. In the frst of his eight chapters, H-Net Reviews "The Age of Emancipation," Nicosia traces the con‐ struggle against tsarist Russia, where Jews were vergence of interests that slowly evolved in the openly persecuted. ZVfD leaders even questioned nineteenth century between the requirements of the sincerity of the British Balfour Declaration of Jewish nationalism in Palestine and the imperial‐ November 1917 and successfully induced the Ger‐ ist ambitions of the European powers in the Mid‐ man government to make a similar gesture in fa‐ dle East. Ironically, in view of the prevalence of vor of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine in antisemitism in the German Empire, it was to Wil‐ January 1918. Throughout the Weimar era, as helmine Germany that early Zionists such as Nicosia details in chapter 2, the German govern‐ Theodor Herzl looked for support, believing "that ment continued to support Zionism as a means of antisemites and their governments, perhaps more promoting German economic goals in the than most, would prove to be friends of Zionism" Mideast. In keeping with its "ethnocentric defini‐ (p. 14) for reasons both of geopolitics and anti‐ tion of nationhood" (p. 54), the ZVfD stayed out of semitism.[2] Zionists expected antisemites to sup‐ German politics and prohibited its officials from port their project because of their shared view of seeking high political office in Germany. It also Jews as a distinct people who should avow and ruled out cooperation with the venerable Cen‐ embrace their separate nationality. Although Wil‐ tralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen helm II refused to give Zionists the diplomatic Glaubens (CV), founded to combat antisemitism in support they sought for fear of alienating his Ot‐ 1893, for fear of reinforcing the CV's assimilation‐ toman ally, he favored Jewish emigration to and ist tendencies. Kurt Blumenfeld, president of the settlement in Palestine, both to give Germany a ZVfD from 1924 to 1931, identified the appeal of foothold in the Middle East and to redirect east Marxism, the "ultimate assimilationist mecha‐ European Jewish emigration away from Germany nism" (p. 60), as the greatest danger to Jews, and and the West. Even such notorious racial anti‐ propagated Jewish separateness as a prelude to semites and proto-Nazis as Paul de Lagarde, Con‐ emigration to Palestine as the only workable form stantin Frantz, Theodor Fritzsch, Houston Stuart of Jewish self-defense against the hostility they Chamberlain, Heinrich Class, or Hermann faced in Europe. Yet, Zionism had little appeal to Ahlwardt recognized the utility of Zionism as a German Jews. In 1933 membership in the Cen‐ means of freeing Germany of Jews. Their fear that tralverein outnumbered ZVfD membership by a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine might more than ten to one. Nonetheless the ZVfD faced strengthen the imagined "Jewish world conspira‐ continuing attacks from the antisemitic radical cy" was paradoxically mitigated by their simulta‐ Right during the Weimar years, not only as a Jew‐ neous prejudice that Jews lacked the personal and ish organization, but also for supporting the racial traits required to build and defend a func‐ British mandate in Palestine. tioning modern state. German Zionists found Determined to reassert a positive Jewish iden‐ themselves in a dilemma at the outbreak of the tity and convinced of the futility of assimilation, First World War. German Zionist leaders tended to underestimate The World Zionist executive declared its neu‐ the threat of the Nazis coming to power and to trality in the war, moving its headquarters from overestimate the opportunities that a Nazi gov‐ Berlin to neutral Copenhagen, and eventually es‐ ernment might open up for the Zionist movement. tablishing itself in London after the war. Its Ger‐ In chapter 3, "Nazi Confusion, Zionist Illusion," man branch, however, the Zionistische Vereini‐ Nicosia traces the pragmatic cooperation between gung für Deutschland (ZVfD), like other German- Zionists and the Nazi government leading to the Jewish organizations, declared its full support for Haavara Transfer Agreement of September 1933, the German war effort, framing the war as a which made it possible for German Jews to emi‐ 2 H-Net Reviews grate to Palestine without leaving all their assets ment addressed to the Nazi regime in June 1933, behind, while boosting the German economy by the ZVfD "questioned the French Revolution's no‐ promoting exports to Palestine. Approximately tion of the individual and a nation of individuals fifty-three thousand German Jews were able to that rejected the idea of a people bound together use the Haavara system to migrate to Palestine be‐ by blood, history, and a spiritual uniqueness" (p. fore the termination of this program in December 92). Right-wing Revisionist Zionists, represented 1939 as a result of the disruption of all commer‐ in Germany by the newly formed Staatszionistis‐ cial and diplomatic relations with Britain after the che Organisation, issued a position paper in 1935 start of the war. Yet. between 1933 and 1937 Ger‐ recognizing "the right of the German people to man Jews comprised only 20 percent of Jewish form its own national life that will exclude all un‐ immigrants to Palestine and constituted propor‐ desirable mixing of peoples" and calling for the tionally even less of the total Jewish population of dissolution of "any Jewish organizations in Ger‐ Palestine. Although even such extreme anti‐ many that oppose such [separatist] measures" (p. semites as Alfred Rosenberg were quite prepared 95). German Revisionist Zionists also proved use‐ to exploit the Zionist movement to force Jews out ful to the Nazis in opposing an international boy‐ of Germany, their tactical support for Zionism as a cott of German goods, even defying Vladimir means to create an ethnically pure Volksgemein‐ Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist move‐ schaft in no way diminished their distrust of Jews ment, on this particular issue. as alleged agents of sedition and subversion, nor In separate chapters on "Zionism in Nazi Jew‐ did it diminish their certitude that Jews were out ish Policy," "German Zionism: Confrontation with to dominate the world. Nicosia is particularly suc‐ Reality," "Revisionist Zionism in Germany," and cessful in feshing out the complexities and con‐ "Zionist Occupational Retraining and Nazi Jewish tradictions in "the dual nature of Nazi policies to‐ Policy," Nicosia describes in detail the ftful collab‐ ward Zionism" in the 1930s (p. 73). On the one oration even beyond the Kristallnacht pogrom be‐ hand, the Nazi regime exploited Zionism to pro‐ tween German Zionists, preparing for Jewish re‐ mote Jewish emigration to Palestine (though not newal in Palestine, and Nazis, eager to expel Jews to create a Jewish state); on the other hand, the in preparation for the coming war for German liv‐ regime refused to grant Zionist demands for Jew‐ ing space in the east. Revisionist Zionists, who ish civil rights as an officially recognized national supported the Nazi ban on intermarriage, also minority in Germany during the transition. Aware proved
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