“Onward to Israel”
Imperial Germany and the Founding of Israel
Imperial Germany and the Founding of Israel
Zionism, Ashkenazim, the Kaiser, and the Sultan.
Before the outbreak of the Great War, Zionist leaders, particularly Theodor Herzl, saw Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire as likely partners if the dream of a Jewish state in Palestine was to become a reality. The World Zionist headquarters was located in Berlin, and Germany possessed a large, successful, and broadly acculturated Jewish population. In addition Ashkenazi Jews in Silesia, Poland and western Russia frequently moved into and through Germany to escape periodic Russia and Polish pogroms. Herzl saw Ottoman support as even more critical since Palestine was under direct Turkish control. The German Kaiser’s support was considered valuable because Germany was an important supporter of Ottoman ambitions and in the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in the face of pressures from Balkan independence movements, British and French colonialism, and the Russian Empire.
In 1898, Herzl and other Zionist leaders found an opportunity to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm II several times during the latter’s fall tour of the Ottoman Empire[1]. In the initial October meetings in Constantinople, the Kaiser privately assured Herzl that he would support the establishment of Israel as a German protectorate in Palestine if the Sultan would agree. Later, however, after meeting with Turkish leaders, the Kaiser again met with the Zionist delegation in Jerusalem, and this time his response was more equivocal. Rather than pledge support, Wilhelm merely noted that “the issue needs further examination and discussion”. At the time, Ottoman support for the Zionist cause was lukewarm at best.
However, Herzl continued to meet with both Turkish and German government officials to promote his idea of a Jewish homeland under German protection in Palestine, and with German assistance he finally secured a 1901 meeting with Sultan Abdulhamid II and his Grand Vizier. The Zionist proposal was simple: in return for a royal charter to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the Zionists would consolidate and pay off the Ottoman Empire’s foreign debt and help to regulate Turkish finances.
Although the Sultan was initially cool to the idea, further meetings over the next several years among Zionist, German, and Turkish officials developed a series of secret protocols that essentially linked Turkish support of a Jewish homeland (now officially referred to in correspondence as “Israel”) to an overall diplomatic and military agreement that included a firm German-Turkish military alliance, and German and Zionist economic support for Turkish industrialization and rearmament.[2] In exchange for this, Turkey agreed to lease to Germany a series of naval bases and related territorial concessions in the Levant and Near East in the event of War with France, Britain, and/or Russia. Among these territorial concessions was Palestine, which would become a home for Jews of the Diaspora. As a result of this clear support for Zionist aims by Turkey and Germany, most key Jewish leaders in Europe ceased believing that any other European power could be a valuable patron in the struggle for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, despite the presence of several important Zionist organizations in Britain.
Figure 1. Map used by Wilhem II during a 1905 meeting with the Turkish Grand Vizier showing the general boundaries of his proposed German “Judenland” protectorate and a naval base at Haifa. Apparently during a lull in the discussions, the Kaiser sketched a plan and profile view of an imaginary German battleship with an arrow pointing to Haifa. Wilhelm was an inveterate doodler and ships of the High Seas Fleet were among favorite topics (Deutches Reich Archiv, Nr2345)
With Ottoman support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine assured, emigration to the protectorate began in earnest. Initially, most of the settlement was sponsored solely by international Zionist organizations in Europe and the United States. German interest focused primarily surveying and mapping potential naval bases in Haifa, and in Turkish controlled Basra on the Persian Gulf.[3] In fact, there was initially little interest in the Zionist experiment among most acculturated German Jews, many of whom who spoke only German and had become economically successful in Germany. Most of the initial migrants were Yiddish-speaking people from Austria-Hungary, Silesia, and eastern Prussia, rather than from more cosmopolitan German cities such as Berlin or Hamburg. However, German (and its closely related dialect, Yiddish) became a common lingua-franca in Jewish Palestine, and most of the immigrant saw Imperial German and the Kaiser as their most powerful protectors. From 1903 until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, it is estimated that as many as 1.2 million Jews from central and eastern Europe migrated to Palestine. Jewish settlement tended to be concentrated along the coast, although there were isolated settlements throughout the area.
The Great War
Although mercifully short, the Great War ripped apart several prewar European empires and radically restructured the colonial and non-western world. Germany was the clear victor, however this victory was quite possibly only made possible by radical changes in German prewar mobilization and military planning early in 1914. German military leaders were well aware that their nation could not survive a long two-front war against both France and Russia, and most members of the General Staff considered compact, modern, industrialized France to be Germany’s most dangerous enemy but, paradoxically, the one that could be most quickly defeated. Accordingly, repeated plans drawn up by General Helmuth von Moltke featured a massive invasion of northern France through neutral Belgium, bypassing the well-defended Franco-German border. Anticipating that Russian mobilization would be slow and ponderous, Germany would adopt a defensive posture in the east. Although promising the possibility of quick military success over France, violating Belgian neutrality would virtually ensure immediate and full-strength British entry to the war on the continent.
This strategy was also problematic to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who throughout his reign liked to imagine Britain as a natural friend of the German Empire – a friend that had unfortunately fallen victim “at present to irrational fears regarding our legitimate and fraternal desire to join with the British Empire as an equal in bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathen world.”[4] The Kaiser, his civilian advisors, and many in the Reichstag, all understood that Britain would feel obliged to assist France and Russia in the event of war between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. However, they also believed that unless especially provoked, Britain’s military commitment to the Entente on the European continent would be limited to, at most, a small token expeditionary force, combined with the age-old British stratagem of naval blockade and colonial war, commitments that might be swiftly reconsidered should either France or Russia be decisively defeated. Increasingly the Kaiser came to believe that an invasion of Belgium would be such a provocation, and further, if France appeared likely to fall to German armies this in itself would provoke a full-scale British intervention on the continent. On February 5, 1914 he ordered his General Staff to prepare entirely new plans featuring a defensive stance along the common Franco-German border and a massive invasion of Russia. In retrospect, this decision may have saved his reign and the German Empire.[5]
Although none of the European powers really wanted war, growing mistrust – especially between Britain and Germany over the latter’s naval and colonial aims – made it inevitable that a spark would eventually ignite one, and that spark was provided by the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists in the summer of 1914. The purpose of this work is not to discuss the Great War in detail, so the following discussion is necessarily brief, focusing on broad outcomes of the conflict, especially as these ultimately related to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine.
Although often referred to as a “World War”, the 1914-17 conflict actually involved only a handful of European nations (plus Japan as essentially an extension of British naval aims in the Pacific) and the Ottoman Empire. After some dithering, Italy opted not to enter the war as a belligerent, despite its prewar alliances with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Other than Serbia, which was quickly defeated by Austria-Hungary in 1914, the Entente added no new allies other than rebellious Arabs in the Ottoman Empire and a variety of nationalist terrorists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The United States made its intention clear to remain neutral and President Woodrow Wilson offered his offices to help mediate peace, an offer that was eventually accepted by most of the warring powers in 1917.
This neutrality was tested in late 1914 when Germany announced its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Had the 1915 attack on RMS Lusitania carrying a large number of US passengers to Britain resulted in the ship’s sinking, this could have led ultimately to US involvement. However, only one torpedo struck the stern of the ship and apparently failed to detonate. Nonetheless the attack was universally condemned in the US press and in Congress as reckless piracy. In response to US protests, Germany abandoned its “sink on sight” policy and, after a few months, the potential crisis was forgotten.
As anticipated – or more accurately hoped – by the Germans, Russian forces were soon in full retreat in Poland, Kurland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. However, ultimate German victory in the east was only assured after the January Revolution of 1916 in St. Petersburg forced the Czar and his family to abdicate and flee through Finland to Sweden. Several coups and counter coups between royalists, socialists, and nationalists followed. During this period of chaos, Russian military resistance essentially ceased, and Germany was able to seize much of western Russia and forge a direct link through the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. This gave the German Empire vast swathes of land, some of which was actually of little interest to Germany and was bargained away in 1917 to the newly established, but unstable, Federated Russian Republic in the Treaty of Warsaw.
Also, as expected, France bled itself dry by repeated assaults on entrenched German armies along the German border. French commanders never lost their belief that their poilus fortified with elan and an offensive spirit could eventually overcome German machine guns, barbed wire, and mortars. By the fall of 1916, France had lost nearly 2,000,000 men in in such attacks, far more than suffered by all other combatants in the Great War, with the possible exception of Russia.[6] Although the Germans did occasionally give ground in the face of these mass charges, it was the French who suffered. Troop morale dropped and revolutionary sentiments multiplied.
Finally, in April 1916, French troops across the front mutinied when given yet another order to charge the German lines. News of this rebellion spread to Paris, leading ultimately to the political collapse of the 3rd Republic. Backed by nationalist elements, units commanded by a young army officer named Charles de Gaulle seized power in Paris on the pretext of preempting a radical socialist revolution. Having achieved all of its possible aims in the east, Germany offered de Gaulle’s people very favorable terms: no territorial claims against France or its colonial empire, surprisingly modest reparations, and a joint agreement to permanently demilitarize the Franco-German border. De Gaulle’s self-styled “Fourth Republic” (actually a military junta), signed a separate armistice with Germany on this basis on June 6, 1916. Because unofficial German war aims widely discussed in the press and Reichstag were much more draconian,[7] De Gaulle’s junta was able to present this armistice to the French public as a victory.
With both allies dead or dying by the end of 1916, the British government began to consider making peace. This was certainly helped by the peace offered to France by Germany, which preserved the independence and power of France as a western European bulwark against Germany and avoided any border changes in the west (such as German occupation zones in France or Belgium) that would more directly threaten Britain.
However, unlike France and Russia, Britain was in a very strong position in 1916-1917 and did not depend on German mercies. After some 1914 consideration of sending a strong expeditionary force to France, the British government adopted a strategy of using the Royal Navy and relatively small Empire military detachments to enforce a strict blockade of the Central Powers, dominate the Mediterranean, seize German colonies, and eventually dismember the Ottoman Empire. In early 1916, the British did commit a sizable element the royal Flying Corps to the French/German front, but in terms of manpower and potential casualties, this was relatively marginal. Overall, this "war at the margins" was a very successful strategy for Britain in that it avoided significant Empire casualties in Europe. With her entire military strength focused outside of Europe and a Royal Navy that dominated the sea, she had quickly seized all of Germany’s colonies in Africa while her Japanese ally had done the same in China and the Pacific. Britain and her Arab nationalist clients had wrested all of Arabia from Ottoman control. Other than slight damage from zeppelin airship and naval coastal raids, Britain was untouched by war and, with the assistance of the Imperial Dominions, had raised a large and well-equipped army that was largely intact and still expanding.
However, the most important factor in ending the war occurred in the North Sea, when the Royal Navy won an overwhelming victory over the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland (Skaagerak) in June 1916. This virtually eliminated the German Navy as a serious threat to British naval dominance. Against the loss of one dreadnought battleship, three battlecruisers, two obsolete armored cruisers, and fewer than 6000 men, an overwhelming force of the Royal Navy under Lord Jellicoe succeeded in trapping and eliminating a large element of the German Navy – sinking or mortally crippling eight dreadnought battleships, four pre-dreadnoughts, and every German battlecruiser in the battle, as well as numerous other light units. Only dwindling British ammunition reserves and poor visibility allowed the remnants of the routed German fleet to escape. Over 29,000 German officers and men lost their lives in the disaster, including Admirals Scheer and Hipper. Another 11,550 men were rescued from the sea or from surrendered German capital ships into British captivity. In the words of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, “Admiral Jellicoe is the one man who could have lost this war in a single day…but in the finest Nelsonian tradition he has won it!”[8]
While Churchill and a few others in the war cabinet argued that the Jutland victory should encourage Britain to continue the war until complete victory over Germany was secured, the Asquith government demurred. Britain had, with relatively little cost to itself, eliminated Germany’s overseas empire and crippled the German navy - the only means Germany might have to threaten Britain with direct invasion. Rather than seek a complete victory, which would entail a long and costly European land campaign against the experienced and well-equipped armies that toppled Russia and France, Asquith and his allies in Parliament decided instead to seek a negotiated peace with Germany, one that preserved British gains in Africa and the Middle East, while making permanent the elimination of Germany's overseas empire and her massive navy as a threat to Britain and her Empire.
In Germany, the defeat at Jutland was a shock to the Reichstag, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the generally hawkish German press and public. In a single battle Britain virtually destroyed the fleet that Tirpitz and Wilhelm II had lovingly created over the preceding decade, with billions of Reichsmarks somewhat grudgingly provided by the Reichstag under Tirpitz’s Navy Laws. The Imperial Navy never regained the prestige in the court of Wilhelm II it previously enjoyed. In addition, even the dwindling supporters of the navy realized that any attempt to replace the destroyed ships with new vessels matching construction planned and underway in Britain, Japan, and even the neutral United States, would be prohibitively expensive.
Further, the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, who had become the single largest block in parliament, agitated for an end to the war, noting that the events of 1916 had eliminated both France and Russia as dangerous enemies for the foreseeable future. In a manner surprisingly equivalent to the thinking of Asquith and his advisors in Britain, Germany’s conservative leaders came to realize that the naval defeat at Jutland gave them the “out” to seek a negotiated peace that preserved Germany’s victory on the continent while mollifying their socialist enemies in the Reichstag.
Thus, both Britain and Germany came to see there might be basis to negotiate peace without total victory. Separately, each country put out tentative peace feelers through the United States. US President Wilson jumped at the opportunity to burnish his reputation as the "president who kept us out of war".
Initially, the British government anticipated the resultant treaty would be more in the nature of an extended armistice, rather like the temporary peace of Aimens during the Napoleonic Wars a century earlier. Germany, arguably in a weaker position economically, sought a more permanent solution. For his part Wilson proposed a broader European treaty that would build on the existing peace treaties between Germany and its continental enemies and provide a comprehensive settlement among all combatants and establish the structure for a permanent peace in Europe and elsewhere. Negotiations began on July 5, 1917 in Washington DC. Initially only Germany, France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Japan attended. Russia, still in the throes of civil war, did not send a representative. Serbia, which was specifically mentioned in the treaty preamble as the nation responsible for the Great War, no longer existed as an independent nation, and the Central Powers had no desire to see it resurrected. However, in 1917, representatives from several newly independent countries carved out of the former Russian Empire by Germany were also invited by US President Wilson to sit in. These included Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine. Finland, which had achieved independence without German assistance during the Russian collapse, was also invited.
Although the Washington Treaty as finally signed in August 6, 1918 did not live up to Woodrow Wilson’s lofty and ultimately unrealistic goal to serve as the springboard for a permanent “League of Nations” it proved to be an enduring document that:
1. Formally ended the European war and restored normal diplomatic relations throughout Europe
2. Provided formal recognition of the previous Russo-German and Franco-German treaties and armistices,
3. Provided international recognition for the new nations of central and eastern Europe and established several border adjustments
4. Provided international recognition for Finland
5. Recognized the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman partition of Serbia and Ottoman control of Montenegro
6. Recognized the independence of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine under British protection
7. Ended the war between Britain and Germany on terms that were acceptable, if not ideal, to both parties. These terms included:
a. Resumption of full diplomatic and economic ties between both empires
b. Formal dissolution of the Franco-British alliance
c. British acceptance of a sphere of German economic dominance in central and eastern Europe
d. German acceptance of the loss of its African colonies to Britain
e. An agreement by Britain and Germany to negotiate with Japan regarding the return of German colonies and concessions in China and the Pacific to Germany
Recognizing that the Anglo-German naval arms race was a prime cause of the Great War, the Washington Treaty also included a separate naval reduction codicil between Britain and Germany that formally limited the size of any future German navy to one-third of the tonnage of the British navy, with specific limitations on the actual numbers of capital ships allowed to Germany, sufficient to ensure the security of the British Isles.[9]
There were, however, a number of unresolved issues or snubs that caused some participants not to sign the treaty and created the stage for future regional conflicts as well as one major war[10] over the following four decades.
The Washington Treaty did not address the Balkans, other than to affirm the extinction of Serbia as an independent nation and formalize other Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Austrian gains. Also to compensate the Ottomans for the loss if it's Arabian empire, Turkey was allowed to establish protectorates over Macedonia and Kosovo. As a result, nationalist movements continued to thrive throughout the Balkans. The Dual Monarchy also found itself embroiled in border conflicts with the new German-sponsored nations of Poland and Ukraine. In addition, numerous non-signatories such as Italy and Romania had their own claims and border disputes against Austria and Hungary that the treaty did not address.
Although not a specific item of the Treaty, it's ratification led to the elimination of pre-war alliance structure that had turned what should have been a limited campaign by Austria-Hungary against a rogue state into a general European War. The Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia disappeared, ending Germany's fear of encirclement and dependence on an alliance with Austria-Hungary. The military alliance between Germany and the Dual Monarchy formally ended in 1919.
The end of the German alliance, together with increasing instability in the empire, led in 1926 to the negotiated breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Despite the Austrian monarchy’s dislike for the Prussian-dominated German Empire, the weakened nation of Austria soon found itself drawn into the German orbit, eventually negotiating a place in the federal structure of the enlarged German Empire as the semi-autonomous Kingdom of Austria. Hungary, with German assistance, resorted to sometimes draconian measures as it sought to maintain its control over restive Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, south Slavs, Croats, Romanians, and others within its expanded borders.[11]
The Ottoman Empire understandably chafed at being forced to sign a document that recognized the loss of its Arabian territories, despite the Balkan scraps it was given However, since the Ottoman government saw little chance of retaining these territories in the foreseeable future, it eventually signed the treaty to restore valuable economic support from Britain and France. Dissatisfaction with this treaty was so high in Turkey, however, that it eventually led to the overthrow of Sultan Mehmed IV by a military coup. Later, Mehmed was returned to the throne as a figurehead monarch under a dictatorship headed by Mustafa Kemal.
Japan did not sign the treaty, seeing the requirement to negotiate with Britain and Germany regarding the final status of its conquests in the Pacific as yet another attempt by western powers to deprive it of its well-earned conquests in war. Japan refused to negotiate with either Germany or Britain regarding this matter. This in turn antagonized the United States, which saw the Japanese Pacific conquests as a threat to its own possessions in the western Pacific, particularly the Philippines and Guam. The Americans specifically demanded that German Micronesian and Pacific islands be demilitarized or placed under international control, neither of which the Japanese would agree to. Finally, the US sought to have the Anglo-German naval reduction codicil expanded to include at least the United States and Japan, with Japan limited to the same ratio vis-à-vis the US as the German-British ratio. This was unacceptable to both Japan and Britain. As a result, despite hosting the peace conference, the US also refused to sign the Washington Treaty,[12] and the 1931-32 Pacific War was an inevitable result.
The Great War in the Levant
In 1914, the Port of Haifa was still undergoing development as a German naval base. Virtually all of the approximately 1.3 million Jewish settlers lived in a narrow strip of terrain along the Mediterranean coast, and Haifa was in effect the unofficial capital of the colony. Two German warships, the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser SMS Breslau, called Haifa their home port when news of the outbreak of war reached them. In September, they would have been joined by another battlecruiser, SMS Von der Tann, the large armored cruiser SMS Blucher, five destroyers, and a number of colliers and transports, forming a powerful Mediterranean division. The German authorities also had established Judische Volkssturm units for protection of the settler communities and German military and naval infrastructure. These units, placed under the command of German-Jewish commanders were intended to provide a military defense of the colony.
However, when the Great War broke out in August 1914, the planned naval reinforcements never materialized, and most of the German-Jewish officers in charge of the Volksturm units were recalled to Europe. Goeben and Breslau abandoned Haifa for a safer haven in Constantinople. Haifa itself fell to a combined British/Arab assault in October 1915.
The outcome of the 1914-1916 European War was a setback for the Zionist movement, despite Germany’s overall success. Although Berlin achieved virtually all of its territorial aims in the former Russian Empire, and the war in the west left France weakened by economic collapse and political instability, Britain was able to overpower Turkish and German naval and military resistance in the eastern Mediterranean easily. Britain also fomented successful uprisings among Arab nationalist movements and at war’s end, Britain and its Arab nationalist allies had wrested much of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant from Turkish control, making the establishment of Israel under German or Turkish sponsorship seem to be a lost dream. By 1922, the entire area had been carved up into several nominally independent Arab kingdoms that in effect, were little more than British protectorates.
Because of a decade of Jewish immigration from central Europe supported by Germany, Palestine had large Yiddish speaking settler population. This population was pro-German and looked upon Britain not as a liberator but as an occupying enemy. This, in turn, led Britain to treat it as an occupied territory and it was placed under direct colonial office administration until a final resolution to the “German-Jewish problem” could be determined.
More ominously for the settlers, Britain appointed Mohammad Amin al-Husayni as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1922, replacing an early Ottoman-appointed Grand Mufti who was tolerant of the Jewish settlers as long as they respected the Islamic holy sites. Al-Husayni, on the other hand, was an aggressive Arab nationalist and violent anti-Zionist. Although he had no temporal power outside of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, he was instrumental in fomenting occasional Arab pogroms against Jewish settlements throughout Palestine, forcing the immigrants to retreat to fortified communities near the coast for protection. Having little sympathy for the pro-German Zionists, British colonial authorities initially did relatively little to quell the violence until al-Husayni issued fatwas in 1925 calling on his followers to resist British “infidel occupiers” as well as the Yiddish-speaking settlers. As a result, British officials provided a modicum of protection to the settlers and removed al-Husayni from the post to exile in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The British also did not appoint a replacement for al-Husayni, and from then on the relationship between the Jewish settlers and British colonial office was correct, if not necessarily cordial.
Until 1937 Palestine remained under British administration, and in deference to British Zionists, British colonial administrators continued to permit some Jewish immigration. As a result the Jewish population of the territory continued to increase, fed by immigrants from German-occupied Poland and the Ukraine as well as central Europe. Most of the immigrants settled near the fortified coastal communities established during the Arab pogroms, which became in effect self-governing enclaves with no direct British oversight.
This increased immigration was fostered as much by German imperial policy as international Zionism. Following the 1917 Treaty of Warsaw with the provisional Russian Republic, the German Empire found itself in de facto control of Poland, the Baltics, Belorussia, and vast swaths of the Ukraine. Although Poland, Ukraine, and Belorussia were eventually established as independent kingdoms they were in effect German satellites, and German-speaking minorities within them - including Yiddish-speaking Askenazim who had welcomed German occupation and now looked to Berlin for protection. The Germans soon found that the collapse of the Russian Empire made them responsible for ensuring stability in satellite regimes containing a myriad of ethnicities who had centuries of axes to grind against each other.
Thus, the German Empire began to see Jewish emigration to Palestine as a way to resolve at least one element of the ethnic instability it its new eastern empire. This solution also had the added benefit of contributing to instability in Britain’s empire. Working openly through Zionist and humanitarian organizations in the Netherlands and especially the United States, and secretly through military recruitment, Berlin facilitated the emigration of over a million Yiddish-speaking Jews from Silesia, Poland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine to Palestine. German-supported Freiheit(“Freedom”) organizations sprang up throughout Jewish communities in the east to help recruit prospective settlers.
Figure 2. German soldiers on occupation duty in Lida, Belorussia with some admiring Ashkenazim. The German troops saw their friendly reception in the Yiddish-speaking settlements as a welcome relief from the general hostility they received from ethnic Poles and Ukrainians, who were disappointed by Germany’s establishment of Royal protectorates for their nations rather than fully independent republics. The tall beardless individual standing behind the crowd in the left-hand photograph is a Jewish Freiheit member who has been recruited by the German army for military training and eventual settlement in Palestine (Hadashot Ha'aretz)
Figure 3. Paramilitary Freiheit members from Lida, Belorussia, posing before leaving for Palestine in 1929. This particular group followed a circuitous route that took them from Belorussia to Potsdam for six-months of military training, then to Hamburg for sea passage to New York, then by an American steamer to Constantinople, and eventually were landed at night by several small Turkish-registered fishing boats chartered by an American Jewish relief organization (Hadashot Ha'aretz).
What has only recently become known through German and Israeli documents is the fact that these ”Onward to Israel” Freiheit organizations were supported financially by the German Empire, quasi-military in nature, and composed largely of young men (and some women) of military age who received training from the German army before their emigration to Palestine. As a result, not only did the Jewish population of British Palestine grow to over two million people, a significant proportion immigrated illegally and essentially formed an underground “Zionist Liberation Army” that saw Germany as its chief ally.
Also, because the Jewish settlements had largely retreated to large closed communities on or near the coast, Freiheit organizations found it relatively easy to smuggle large amounts of German arms and equipment to the settlers, all of which could be relatively easily hidden from British customs. Most of this equipment arrived by sea at the port of Haifa, around which many of the fortified settlements had been established. In addition, Zionist organizations in the United States funded the construction of several airports in and near the Jewish settlements. These were ostensibly civil aerodromes, but could be (and soon were) adopted for a more martial purpose. By 1935, the settlers had secretly amassed a large stockpile of modern small arms, machine guns, artillery, ammunition, trucks, medical supplies, fuel, materiel, trained cavalry horses, and even a few light tanks and personnel carriers which had begun life as imported “tractors” before the addition of armor plate and weapons. All of this was ready when the call to action finally came.
Figure 4. “Onward to Israel” 1935 Freiheit recruiting poster distributed in Poland and Lithuania by the Imperial German Air Service (Luftstreikrafte) and Imperial Army (Deutches Heer). Posters such as this indicate the extent to which the German military was directly involved in recruiting and training Jewish men specifically with the aim of fighting a war of Zionist independence against Britain and its Arab allies.
That time came in the fall of 1937, when as a cost-saving measure, the Conservative Government of Neville Chamberlain determined to end the colonial status of Palestine and transfer the entire territory to the nominally independent Kingdom of Egypt on January 1, 1938. Prior to assuming the throne in 1936 Egypt’s King Farouk I had on several occasions written that the Jewish presence in Palestine was an offense against both Islam and Arab sovereignty, and indicated that he would restore al-Husayni as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem if he had the power to do so. This gave the Jews in Palestine clear indication of what lay ahead for them under Egyptian rule.
In response to US and German objections, as well as angry reaction by domestic Zionists and their supporters in the Conservative party, Chamberlain backtracked somewhat and offered to carve out a small protected Jewish homeland on the densely settled Mediterranean coastline between Haifa on the north to Jaffa/Tel Aviv on the south. Upon the transfer of Palestine to Egypt, Britain would designate this enclave as a British Crown Colony and give it a high degree of local self-governance. Although the British Zionist community was excited by this prospect and the few Anglophile Zionists in Palestine supported the idea, the majority Ashkenazi community considered this offer far too little and far too late. Not only were many of them German in outlook, they were in Palestine because of generous German support. Further they believed they already had sufficient military equipment, training, and advice from Germany to obtain independence for a far larger and more powerful Israel on their own terms. Meeting in Haifa on November 15, 1937 the provisional ruling council of Israel determined to stall on the British offer and prepare for war on New Year’s Day, 1938.
As a result, three days before the transfer of Palestine to Egypt was to take effect, the ruling council unilaterally declared independence from Britain, which was immediately recognized by Germany, as well as by the United States and several South American republics. Germany was informed in advance this would happen and had already set in motion plans to assist Israel. The US, or at least some within the Roosevelt Administration, were also appraised of the situation. The boundary of this self-proclaimed “Israel” was not formally defined at this time, but most on the council considered the 1905 map sketched by Kaiser Wilhelm II (Figure 1) as the basis for the State of Israel, with an exact border to be defined in negotiation with Britain.
War Breaks Out
Naïve Zionist hopes for a negotiated settlement with Britain were soon dashed. Although Britain was still willing to establish its small colony for the Jewish population, Whitehall quite reasonably refused to recognize the presumptive government of Israel and completely ignored the declaration of independence. Further, Britain declared that, since the declaration had come after Britain had decided to cede Palestine to the Kingdom of Egypt, the Jews had declared their independence from Egypt, not Britain. Thus, the situation was now an internal Egyptian matter, not one that Britain needed to resolve. The following statement from Prime Minister Chamberlain is quite instructive regarding the somewhat confused nature of British policy at the time:
“…in ceding Palestine to the Kingdom of Egypt, this government acknowledges the concerns Jewish people may have that the Jewish residents of the territory may be treated less than favorably by their new rulers. We have even offered to maintain protection for them at Haifa and Jaffa. However, this in no way justifies the Zionists’ illegal declaration of an independent Israel – a large Israel that I add may in time become a Turkish-German dagger aimed at the heart of our Arab friends in the Near East. Well-meaning people throughout the world may rest assured that I have and will continue to strenuously urge King Farouk to treat his new subjects with kindness and decency, and this government will offer certain inducements to this end. However, if the Zionists persist in their rebellion, this Government will have no course but to wash its hands of this matter.”
The Jewish settlers did not accept Chamberlain’s vapid assurances of Egyptian restraint, nor were they going to wait for a new round of pogroms to act. One day after Israel’s formation and before Egyptian forces were even mobilized to take over administration of the Kingdom’s new province, Jewish forces struck. In a coordinated campaign, well-equipped and well-organized Freiheit units, some with “volunteer” German commanders, moved out from the coast and preemptively seized all the weakly defended British air and military bases in Palestine, gathering large amounts of British equipment and supplies in the process. Concurrently, Israeli mechanized infantry and cavalry pushed into the predominantly Arab areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank to preempt any immediate organized resistance against the new Jewish state. Within a matter of days, Jewish forces had secured all of their main strategic goals in Palestine and had begun preparing defenses in anticipation of the inevitable Egyptian counteroffensive.
Figure 5. Colonel Erwin Rommel. Rommel is perhaps the most renowned German “volunteer” who commanded Freiheit forces during the initial offensive to seize the territory that became Israel. A highly decorated Great War officer, Rommel became fluent in Yiddish and was extremely popular among his Askenazi troops, who called him “the Desert Fox”. In the photograph on the right, Rommel and an adjutant are shown in conference with Freiheit field commanders planning border defenses along the west bank of the Jordan. The Frieheit officer at the extreme right of the picture is Lieutenant (later General) Hugo Gutmann, who in 1946 was named Chancellor of Israel by Wilhelm III
Because of Israeli success, other Arab states joined the Egyptian cause. The Kingdoms of Iraq and Syria entered the conflict, as did Jordan later, styling this alliance as the Arab League for Palestine. Although Egypt welcomed these allies, the expanded alliance soon became a mixed blessing. Not only did the alliance foster an incorrect popular impression in most neutral European nations, and especially the United States, that the conflict was between a small Jewish “David” and huge Arab League “Goliath”, the different Arab states failed to coordinate their military strategy, and even eventually began fighting amongst themselves when Britain tired of the conflict and outright victory over the Zionists became less and less likely.
Eagles of Zion
Most surprisingly, the Israelis unveiled a powerful and efficient air force. Under Luftstreitkrafte tutelage, Ashkenazi Freiheit aviators had been training secretly in Germany for several years in anticipation of an eventual conflict to establish Israel. These men, and a few women, initially flew surplus German aircraft that had been crated and shipped disassembled to Palestine as “automobiles”, “agricultural equipment” and “furniture” primarily by ships of the U.S. American Export Lines and Dutch Rotterdamsche Lloyd shipping firms charted by New York based Zionists. The aircraft were successfully smuggled into Palestine by intermixing sub-assemblies of the airplanes within crates containing legitimate tractor or automobile parts, and disassembled furniture. Generaloberst Hermann Goring of the Luftstreitkrafte, who masterminded this effort, is reported to have said, “Take apart a Mercedes and Fokker and what do you have? Pieces of metal and wood! No Englishman will tell the difference!”[13] More than anything else, Israeli command of the air in the early stages of the conflict solidified Israeli gains and made the later Arab offensives costly and difficult.
Figure6. German architects of the Israeli Luftkrafte. On the far left is Generaloberst Erhard Milch, speaking with the Great War ace, Theodor Osterkamp in Tel Aviv. Milch commanded the German “Eagle Legion” volunteer force in the war and served for several years as the head of the Israeli air force after independence. On the right is Generalmajor Herman Goring, a highly decorated Great War ace, who was responsible for recruiting and training Zionist flight crews in Prussia and arranging the surreptitious transport of German aircraft to Palestine in the years leading up to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Only Milch could be considered Jewish, although since his mother was a Gentile, he was not considered a Jew by the Ashkenazi aviators who served under him, nor by the Israeli government. (Deutches Archiv).
Chief among the German aircraft flown by the Israeli forces during early stages of the conflict was the Fokker D. XXI fighter, which was being withdrawn from first-line Luftstreitkrafte service in the late 1930’s. Others included the even more antiquated Albatros D.XXII parasol monoplane fighter, and a few Dornier G.V bombers. In addition, working through Zionist organizations in the United States, Goring was able to procure a number of Boeing P-26 fighters and B-9 Bombers for the Israelis. As a result, this clandestinely developed air force emerged almost magically from the sands of Palestine as the best-equipped and best trained air arm in the Middle East.
After the conflict was in full swing, Germany and the United States negotiated arm deals with the new nation, and international Zionist organizations provided loans to Israel for this purpose. Among the first-line German types provided to Israel, were German BFW D.Va and D.Vb fighters, Hansa-Brandenburg G.XX bombers, Dornier G. VI bombers, and Junkers C.IV dive bombers, often flown by German “volunteer” personnel. Israel also openly purchased a variety of US types, including Curtiss-Wright CW-21 fighters, Curtiss P-36 fighters, and even a handful of early model B-17s, giving them a small long-range bomber force capable of striking targets throughout the Mediterranean and Near East.
Figure 7. Sergeant Hermann Mann of the Israeli Luftkrafte scores his first kill. Mann and most other Israeli fliers of the 1938-1939 War of Liberation flew former Luftstreitkräfte aircraft supplied through American and Dutch channels, such as this Fokker D.XXI. Later, when German support for the Israelis became open, German "volunteers" flying newer German aircraft, such as Dornier G. VI and BFW D.Vb entered the fray and the Israelis dominated the air (painting by famed Irish aviation artist Felix Dunn)
Figure 8. Dornier G.V bomber in Lufthansa livery with a group of Jewish Freiheit flight cadets. Fifteen of these “Lufthansa” aircraft were flown intact to Haifa from Constantinople in the days immediately preceding the Israeli declaration of independence. Because they were duly registered as commercial transports on scheduled flights from Turkey, they escaped notice from British officials as potential illicit arms shipments. These airplanes were in fact equipped as bombers. That these flights occurred immediately prior to the Israeli rebellion shows that the German Empire not only supported the rebellion, but that Germans knew of Israeli plans in advance and collaborated with the Zionists from the beginning (Deutches Reich archive)
Figure 9. American Boeing P-26 fighter and B-9 bomber. Several aircraft of these types were procured by Germany in the US through Zionist sources. These were based in Pola and flown directly to Israel by Freiheit crews upon the commencement of hostilities. This further indicates that the timing of the Jewish revolt was coordinated between Germany and the Israeli leaders (Boeing Aviation).
Figure 10. Israeli BFW D.Vb Falke, freshly delivered from the German Empire flies over a small airfield near Haifa. Israeli ground crews are preparing a couple of Fokker D.XXIs for a sortie. As German volunteer participation increased, Zionist Jewish pilots were increasingly relegated to secondary duties, flying obsolescent types such as the D.XXI against the poorly trained Syrians, Iraqis, and Egyptians, while Luftstreitkräfte personnel flew against the few seasoned British Empire “volunteers” advising the Arab national air forces. The BFW D.Vb was easily the premier fighter in the world in 1939.
Britain Vacillates and Reacts
The speed and efficiency with which Germany assisted the Jewish fighters made the Kaiser’s role and aims in the conflict clear to Britain. Israel was not just fighting for independence and protection; the Zionists and Germany were fighting to establish a militarized German-allied colony in the Levant as a threat to Britain Empire and its Arab clients. Many Liberals and even some in the Conservative government pushed for Britain to decisively enter the war to make in clear to Germany that the forceful establishment of a German colony in a former British protectorate would not be allowed. Never far from their minds was the fact that German support for a Zionist enclave in Palestine since the early 20th century was little more than a thinly-veiled attempt to obtain a major naval base in the eastern Mediterranean - a base that Britain pre-empted by seizing Palestine during the Great War. To people such as Winston Churchill, this was intolerable:
“Twenty Years ago, the British Empire was deprived of a complete victory in the Great War by short-sighted politicians who threw away our greatest naval victory since Trafalgar and accepted a flawed peace - a peace that allowed central and eastern Europe to fall behind a curtain forged from the hardest Krupp steel. Today, behind that Steel Curtain, the ancient cities of Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, Minsk, Kiev, and Odessa are strangled in the coils of a Bloated Teutonic Serpent, ruled by strutting Prussian overlords who exploit their new lands to create an Evil Empire of plunder and plutocracy. In 1918, the Kaiser promised this would be enough for him. But now, the Reptilian Monster he rules over has once again awakened from its sleep and is looking elsewhere for a meal. And it is looking directly at our British Empire. Now is the time for Britain to cut off the dragon’s head. Unless we wish to fight this monster on our own beaches and in our own cities ten years from now we must Strike now! The Germans must be stopped!”[14]
However, Churchill’s sentiments were clearly out of fashion in Whitehall. The Chamberlain government made it clear that open war with Germany over Palestine was off the table. This reflected the political and economic realities of Europe in the 1930’s. France, still recovering from the effects of the civil war and the reactionary National Front assumption of power in 1928, was hostile to Britain as well as Germany. Socialist Russia was rebuilding its strength and remained hostile to Germany, but was in no position to threaten a direct invasion of the Reich. In any event the Russians were far more concerned with events in Manchuria and Japan than Palestine. Powerful and expansionist Hungary was solidly in the German camp. Only Italy, and to a lesser extent Greece, both of whom harbored their own resentments over territorial adjustments made after the Great War, were seen as potential allies in the event of a war between Britain and Germany over Palestine.
Perhaps most critically, British caution reflected a legitimate concern that outright British military action against the Zionists could bring the US into the conflict, given the broad American support and early recognition of the infant Israeli state. In the years following the Great War, Britain lost is alliance with Japan[15] and invested considerable effort into securing an understanding with the Americans for favorable non-belligerency in any conflict in Europe between Britain and another European power. Many in the Chamberlain government were unwilling to test this agreement in a conflict of marginal importance to the survival of Britain, especially when it was clear that the US was already assisting the Zionist forces.
Also, British popular opinion was decidedly split on the Palestine question. A significant number of Britons (not only Jews and Zionists) were broadly supportive of the Jewish settlers on principle. Others questioned the wisdom of supporting Egypt, given some of the pronouncements made by King Farouk regarding how he might deal with the Jews in Palestine. A few people even accepted German claims that their support for Zionism was humanitarian in nature – that the best way to solve the age-old problem of anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland and the former Russian Pale of Settlement was to give the Jews a homeland in Palestine.
Nonetheless, a majority in Parliament believed that Britain was honor-bound to uphold its commitment to Egypt. Accordingly, the Chamberlain government determined to do everything short of a direct commitment of regular British combat forces to assist its Arab clients. Initially, this involved the sale or transfer of British arms, equipment, and aircraft to the Arabs, and underwriting arms transfers and sales to the Arabs from other nations, most notably Italy and Japan. Through this process, the Arab League forces eventually obtained modern Bristol Blenheim and Fairey Battle bombers, Hawker Hurricane fighters, and over 350 Cruiser Mark I light tanks. The Italians sold the Arabs Savoia-Marchetti SM-79 bombers and a large number of Fiat L3/35 light tanks, while Japan was eager to sell the Arabs fifty Nakajima Ki-27 fighters and Mitsubishi Ki-21 bombers. All three nations also sold the Arab league states a variety of small arms. This assistance provided the Arab league with equipment that was eventually equal in quality to what the Israelis fielded, and in greater numbers.
What the Arabs lacked, however, were the well-trained and capable personnel to operate these aircraft, vehicles, and weapons, something the Israelis had in abundance. During the initial phase of the war, the Israelis and their German advisors consistently outfought and outmaneuvered the confused Egyptians. This fact was not lost on the British. As a result, during the eight-month lull after the initial Israeli offensives that established a defensive border of Israel at the Jordan River, in Sinai, and on the Golan Heights, the British worked openly and behind the scenes to buttress their Arab allies.
Stealing a page from Germany’s book, the British government unofficially fostered and supported a number of “volunteer” forces to assist the Arabs. Initially, a number of British RAF officers served with the Arab air forces as advisors, and they often flew as “volunteers” in combat with their trainees. After the initial Arab defeats, British and Commonwealth volunteers assumed many first-line command responsibilities in Arab armies, and provided over 50% of Arab flight crews and armored vehicle crews. Volunteering was popular as it allowed career enlisted men as well as non-commissioned and junior officers in the British and Commonwealth armies to earn combat pay and promotions in an era of general peace.
To strengthen the impression that Britain was not directly involved in the conflict, the South African politician and military hero, General Jan Smuts offered to command all volunteer forces. Diplomatically, Smuts was an excellent choice, regardless of whether or not he was actually a “volunteer” or the best military commander available. As an Afrikaner who had fought against Britain in the Boer War, then against Germany during the Great War, and who was in civilian life by 1938, Smuts was believable as a “volunteer”, especially considering that South Africans comprised the largest national group among the Commonwealth forces assisting the Arabs. Also, Smuts was known as a supporter of Zionism in principle, a fact that was often mentioned by British propagandists to show that Britain was not hostile to the Jews themselves, just their role in German expansion.[16]
In late September 1938, the expected Arab counteroffensive began. Perhaps because of the lull in action, and expecting Arab attacks to come along a broad front from the south, east, and north, the Israelis were taken by surprise and failed to mount a coordinated defense. For once, under the command of Smuts, the Arabs were coordinated. Realizing the virtual impossibility of getting three separate national armies from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria/Iraq to collaborate meaningfully along a broad front, Smuts directed the entire offense at the Jordan River, with the aim of driving westward to seize the port of Jaffa and divide Israel in two. At that point, Smuts believed he would have effectively defeated the bulk of German forces and could offer to negotiate a settlement with the Israelis himself.
The offensive achieved its military aims in less than one week, but unfortunately for Smuts’ political plans, Israeli forces were arrayed along the entire frontier of Israel, not concentrated along the Jordan River. This meant that the majority of German-led Israeli forces escaped destruction at the point of attack and were able to regroup and threaten the relatively narrow Arab salient from the flanks, particularly on the north. Still seeking to engage the main enemy force, Smuts then pushed north along the coast with the intent of taking Haifa. On December 12, 1938, his army, swollen by Palestinian irregulars, reached the outskirts of Haifa, but it had come close to outrunning its logistic support.
Three days later, the Germans and Israelis staged a counteroffensive. Smuts was now engaging the best-trained and best-equipped Israeli troops, who were rested and who seemed to have an almost inexhaustible supply of equipment and aircraft. After several weeks and fighting a well-coordinated rear-guard action, Smuts retreated from the coast to more defensible positions in the largely Palestinian West Bank, and the front stabilized at that point. More critically for Smuts’ naïve political and diplomatic goals, his army’s inability to decisively defeat the Israeli army in the field failed to drive a wedge between the Israelis and Germans, nor did it bring them to the conference table. In fact, Smuts’ retreat from Haifa was seen by most Israelis as the turning point in the war. Israel had weathered a combined Arab offensive commanded by a well-regarded foreign commander and defeated it.
Although the conflict dragged on for almost another year, British unwillingness to commit its forces directly to the conflict made Israeli victory inevitable, especially after the United States made its support for Germany and Israel crystal clear. Initially, the US merely supplied the Israelis with aircraft, trucks, and armor, but American support for the Israeli-German coalition hardened after the Syrian attack on the US consulate in Damascus, in which 26 US diplomats and staff lost their lives.[17]
In response to the attack, US President Franklin Roosevelt ordered a powerful squadron of the Atlantic Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean, anchoring off Haifa. In retaliation for the Damascus outrage, aircraft from the carrier USS Saratoga staged several bombing raids against Damascus, and in a speech to Congress announcing the action, Roosevelt promised swift reaction to any other attacks on American interests. In this speech, FDR also made it clear that he considered Britain ultimately responsible for the acts of its Arab clients.
To make this last point crystal clear, the American squadron staged several demonstrations in the eastern Mediterranean intended to dissuade Britain from becoming more directly involved in the conflict on the Arab side. During one such demonstration (Figure 11) a US Navy task group including several destroyers, the cruiser Indianapolis, battleship Colorado, and aircraft carrier Saratoga visited Malta. Throughout the task group's voyage, it was shadowed closely by the Royal Navy. The American vessels forcefully conveyed President Roosevelt's message that the US was prepared to directly enter the war on Israelis side and take military steps to halt British assistance to the Arabs if necessary. The US posture was deliberately provocative. In Figure 11, note that HMS Cossack is being buzzed by a fully armed Douglas Devastator from Saratoga, while two other aircraft circle above.
Figure 11. US aircraft buzz HMS Cossack off Malta. The timid British response to such provocations made it clear to Israel, Germany and the United States that Britain would not risk war to support its increasingly unstable and unpredictable Arab allies.
British responses to such naval provocations were muted, in part because a decade of reduced military spending by the Conservative government had left Britain ill-prepared to wage a war against the United States. Throughout the 1920’s the government continued to see Germany as its most likely future threat and persisted in judging Britain’s military preparedness in relationship to Germany. Looking across the North Sea at a Germany that was obligated by treaty to limit its navy to one-half the size of the Royal Navy and a 1:3 ratio in capital ships, and naively presuming that neither Japan nor the United States would be a prospective enemy in the near future, a series of fiscally conservative governments allowed naval expenditures to atrophy. No new capital ships were laid down after 1921 and many older ships were paid off. The US Navy, on the other hand, had been involved in a naval arms race with Japan throughout the 1920’s, and was now far larger than the Royal Navy. Further, ship for ship, it was more modern and more capable. With Japan defeated in 1932, the entire strength of this huge fleet could be sent to the eastern Mediterranean if the White House so desired.
Also, the British government itself had become increasingly divided over the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Conservative government of Neville Chamberlain continued to favor support for the Egyptian claims, but Liberal and Labour party spokesmen such as Winston Churchill had become disenchanted with the Arabs, especially after the Damascus attack. Eventually this led to a vote of no-confidence in the Chamberlain government and new elections that ultimately brought Liberals under Churchill to power.
Although Churchill initially stated his government’s willingness if necessary to enter the conflict directly to forestall German aims, he was quickly informed in private discussions with US President Franklin Roosevelt that this would lead to US intervention in Israel’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini had also been gauging the diplomatic winds for some time and notified Churchill that Italy would not support any direct British intervention in the Arab-Israeli conflict. As a result Britain bowed to the inevitable and agreed to attend peace talks hosted by Mussolini in Tripoli. Not unexpectedly, these talks were boycotted by the Arabs. The 1940 Treaty of Tripoli signed by Britain, Germany, Turkey, Italy, the United States, and Israel recognized Israel’s existence and borders based on the 1905 map sketched by Kaiser Wilhelm. When informed of this on his deathbed the aged Wilhelm simply chuckled.
The Aftermath
The Tripoli settlement left the entire Middle East in turmoil. It soon became apparent to the infant nation of Israel that German support came with a price. The Germans allowed the Israelis to establish their own parliament, initially referred to as the State Council of Israel, and exercise local self-government, but this was as a Crown colony, not a fully independent republic, as some Israelis hoped for. The German Kaiser was technically Israel’s Head of State, and had the authority to appoint Israel’s Chancellor from among German or Yiddish-speaking settler Israelis. Ostensibly to protect Israel’s security against its hostile Arab neighbors, the German navy expanded its large naval and aviation base at Haifa, and regular units of the Heer and Luftstreitkrafte were stationed throughout the country. Perhaps deliberately, many of the men stationed at these bases were German Jews, who under Israeli law also had Israeli citizenship and could vote for local elections and run for office.
Initially, Israel was established as a secular, non-religious state, dominated by elite drawn from acculturated German-Jewish settlers, many of whom under Israeli law maintained dual German/Israeli citizenship. Most of these people were German by culture, and more than a few had even abandoned the Jewish faith.
However, in the years before and after independence, Israel’s identity and demography had changed from that initially envisaged by its German and Pro-German Jewish settlers. Locally born Sabras, religiously conservative eastern European Jews recruited through the Freiheit programs, and Jewish immigrants from outside the German Empire soon outnumbered the Germans. Germany and the German Jews soon realized that Zionism was a powerful international movement they could not control. As a result, many Israelis and the majority of the popularly elected Israel State Council came to resent the extent to which their nation was formally yoked to Germany. This conflict was highlighted by the eventual establishment of Hebrew, replacing Yiddish and German as the official language of Israel. Many German Jews also objected strenuously and to laws passed in the State Council (now commonly referred to in Hebrew as the Knesset) that introduced a religious test for Israeli citizenship and which established a rabbinic court system in parallel with the secular legal structures.
The accession of Wilhelm III to the German throne in 1941 also didn’t help. As Crown Prince, the new Kaiser was well-known throughout Europe as lightweight playboy with loose morals and little serious understanding of political realities, issues that often put him at odds with his father. This pattern continued and increased into his reign as Kaiser. Although at one time interested in politics, as emperor his focus gravitated more toward to his lavish lifestyle and football (soccer). He delegated broad executive powers to his Chancellors, who developed the habit of consulting with majority party leaders in the Reichstag rather than with him in developing policies and legislation. This was actually good for Germany as it transitioned from the style of Wilhelm II to the less autocratic constitutional monarchy we see today, but had negative effects on Germany’s relationship with Israel.
Wilhelm III considered Israel – Germany’s sole warm-water overseas territory – a personal playground. Wilhelm and a large female entourage (which rarely included his own wife) would often vacation on the Mediterranean coast at Tel Aviv or Haifa. There they would exhibit behaviors that offended sensibilities of many religious Jews. He also spent lavish sums (and the labor of German military engineers and soldiers who had better things to do) building extravagant vacation homes for himself and his friends, so there was not even any real economic benefit to the locals except for the few he employed as domestic staff.
More critically, the Kaiser’s choice of Israeli Chancellors was disastrous and showed his total lack of political acumen. The most unfortunate of the lot was Israeli General Hugo Gutmann, named to the post in 1946. Not only was he an acculturated German Jew in an increasingly non-German nation, he proposed laws to the State Council that would bar any new emigration to Israel except from Germany or German-dominated eastern Europe. Also, his religious views leaned toward the “modern” and secular edges of Judaism. He did not keep kosher, and often showed contempt for Israelis he called “excessively religious”.[18] Finally, Gutmann was, like the Kaiser who appointed him, something of a libertine. He was unmarried, leading to unfounded rumors regarding his sexuality.[19] When the Israeli State Council petitioned the Kaiser to remove Gutmann and allow the State Council itself to name his replacement, Wilhelm initially refused and instead threatened to abrogate the 1941 German-Israeli treaty of Independence and Recognition. This could have resulted in direct German Imperial occupation of Israel and the certainty of violent conflict between Germany and the protectorate it had worked so hard to create.
Figure 12. Three generations of German Emperors in 1928. Crown Prince Wilhelm, the future Wilhelm III, is standing to the viewer’s left of Kaiser Wilhelm II along with his son (far right), who assumed the throne as Kaiser Wilhelm IV in 1971. Even in this informal family picture, one can get a sense of the Crown Prince’s debonair pretensions and estrangement from his father.
Figure 13. Hugo Gutmann, shown in the modest German-style uniform he habitually wore as Israeli Chancellor. After his removal by Wilhelm III, Gutmann left Israel and eventually emigrated to New York in 1955, where he owned and operated several art galleries selling works by lesser-known German and Austrian artists. It was here that he renewed a relationship with an obscure Austrian fellow immigrant, occasional artist, and part-time Metropolitan Opera set designer named Adolf Hitler, who had served under him in the Great War. Angered by his rejection by Israel, the secular Gutmann was easily influenced by Hitler’s anti-Semitic views, naively seeing them more as an attack on the Jewish religion which he had come to hate, rather than the Jewish people. Gutmann rejected his Jewish identity, changed his name to Henry Grant, and turned against the nation he had once governed. He died in 1963, unknown in the US, un-mourned in Germany, and completely unloved in Israel.
Eventually a compromise was reached and Wilhelm replaced Gutmann by a less objectionable Chancellor in 1952. But the damage was done, and from that point on, Sabra Israelis began to actively resist German influence in their nation. In 1960, Germany granted Israel full independence and sponsored its admission into the European Economic Compact. However, the internal situation within Israel remains unsettled. The nation is still economically dominated by a shrinking secular German-Jewish minority that maintains disproportionate political power and influence. As of the writing of this article (December 1963) discontent has reached the stage where political violence is a daily fact of life and the survival of Israel as a stable “Jewish state” is threatened less by its Arab enemies, who have little international support, than by its own contradictions.
The Arab League states never came to accept, or make peace with, Israel despite that fact that the British Empire offered numerous inducements for them to do so. As Britain tired of its autocratic and dysfunctional Arab protectorates, the Churchill Government approached Turkey in 1951 to negotiate returning all of them except Egypt them to Ottoman oversight, essentially reversing what the Arabs with British assistance had achieved in 1914-17. This was formally accomplished by the Treaty of Ankara in 1952. Although Turkey pledged to preserve the Kingdoms of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq as nominally independent within the framework of this renewed Ottoman Empire, the Arabs resisted and open warfare broke out between Turkey and the Arab League states. Turkey then initiated a military campaign to force the Arab kingdoms into submission. Israel, Italy, and Germany provided the Turks with extensive military assistance, while the British once again washed their hands of the situation. By 1955, Turkish victory over the Arab states was complete, but victory over their enraged and increasingly radical populations was not. Violent resistance against occupying Turkish troops and local administrators has continued to the present day, but absent any strong outside power to take up their cause, these violent Arab liberation movements amount to little more than random acts of terrorism.
An Uncertain Future
On November 11, 1962, the world permanently changed when a team of German and Israeli scientists and military engineers working in strict secrecy under the overall direction of Edward Teller and Werner Heisenberg of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik in Berlin, detonated the world’s first atomic explosion in the Negev Desert. The explosive device was named Einstein, in honor of the German-Israeli physicist whose theoretical research discovered the principles on which it was built[20]. In a joint announcement, German Chancellor Albert Bruckner and Israeli Chancellor David Ben-Gurion stated that, although the atomic device weighed less than 5,000 pounds, it exploded with a blast equivalent to over 40,000 tons of TNT and excavated a crater over 800 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The two leaders went on to say their two nations were prepared to develop atomic weapons capable of being delivered by aircraft anywhere in the world but would share the technology if the major world powers assembled together to create a world order to manage this new energy source and act decisively to ensure stability and preserve order.
On March 1, 1963, Germany and Israel jointly invited civilian and military representatives from Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, China, and the United States to Israel to witness a second nuclear explosion and discuss the possible formation of an International Security Alliance to manage these weapons. Upon arrival at Tel Aviv, they were all bussed to the Negev to see the explosion, this time an aerial bomb dropped from a “standard” Luftstreikrafte Dornier G. 220 long-range bomber[21]. At this time, the visitors were informed that 120 atomic weapons had in fact already been produced were and ready for immediate delivery to German and Israeli air force units if an international solution did not materialize.
Among the guests, the United States, Britain, and Japan had fledgling atomic research programs of their own, but these had been hampered by poor funding, lack of access to many of the top (German and Israeli) researchers in the field, and a general view by defense officials that atomic weapons were either impossible or impractical. Also, unlike the top secret German weapons program, the foreign research was carried out partially in the open, with results of research and reactor tests published in academic journals. As a result, the German researchers were able to gauge their progress against that of their rivals abroad and ensure that, when their success was made public, it would demonstrate that Germany was so far ahead in deploying these weapons that it could virtually dictate and end to the rival national programs.
Figure 14. Members of the international group invited to Israel watch the second atomic explosion, and first aerial bomb, detonated in the Negev Desert. The announcement that Germany and Israel had already produced 120 such weapons and were ready to deploy them was perhaps a bigger shock than the weapon itself, as was the implied threat behind the secret development of these terrible weapons.
This demonstration was obviously effective. Even among the representatives from the USA, Britain, and Japan, there was a general sentiment that the Germans and Israelis were so far ahead in developing atomic weapons that their national civilian/military research program would never catch up. Also, the promise that Germany would share the technology with others for both civilian and military application in an international context was attractive.
Initial formal negotiations started on May 15, 1963. At the time this article is being written, the Tel Aviv negotiations are still underway, but it appears likely that an International Security Alliance of major powers to control an unruly world may soon become a reality. Chief among the likely provisions of this agreement is a two-tier Security Alliance empowered to enforce peace and prohibit the unauthorized spread of atomic weapons.
Some of the unresolved issues remain the membership and structure of the two tiers, and the extent to which membership powers may be weighted toward key members. The initial German proposal was to limit membership in the alliance to the “major” powers invited to the Negev demonstration, with a smaller Executive Directorate comprising Germany, Israel, the USA, Britain, and Japan given sole the power to enforce the treaty. The US and Britain have lobbied with limited success to expand the alliance to whoever wants to join, and reduce the power of the Executive Directorate. There does seem to be a general consensus that internationalizing the ownership and use of nuclear weapons is preferable to a new global arms race with the ever-present threat that Germany might use its nuclear predominance to threaten and even eliminate potential rivals. Such a solution is even favored in the German Reichstag, whose members were completely caught unawares by the vast sums of money illegally redirected from approved funding priorities to the secret nuclear program. Whether this will come to pass is as yet unknown.
[1] Wilhelm’s interest in the Zionist movement is surprising as are Herzl’s repeated efforts to enlist his assistance in the Zionist endeavor. In his private writings and conversations the Kaiser often expressed the casual anti-Semitism characteristic of virtually all western and central European aristocrats, which in his case was further exaggerated by his strong self-identification as a crusading Christian ruler against non-Christian enemies. See G. Berliner (1965) The Secret Kaiser: Wilhelm II’s Global Loves and Hates for a good discussion of this paradox.
[2] In signing these agreements, Abdulhamid was fully aware that he was in effect admitting his Empire’s bankruptcy and decline to near-vassal status to Germany. Before signing he is reported to have said “May I not live to see the full effect of my acts today.”
[3] Of these only Haifa ever became a full-time German naval base. Plans for Basra were first foiled by the outcome of the Great War, which saw the establishment of Iraq as a British protectorate, and then by the 1918 Treaty of Washington in which Germany accepted the loss of most of its Colonial empire and agreed to reduce the size of its Navy, reducing the need to develop as many overseas naval bases
[4] This was only one of the Kaiser’s more restrained statements. In 1905, following the Russo-Japanese War, he wrote, but never posted, a letter to his cousin George V asking that Britain reconsider its alliance with Japan, ending: “The time has come for Germany and England, representing as we do the absolute pinnacle of human achievement, to unite as one being to smite and destroy the growing menace of Asian pagan buddhism with the sword of St Michael and the Judgment of Christ!” (Collected Hohenzollern Archives, Vol XXI, no. 47, Berlin). It is interesting to imagine the jokes that might have been shared around the King’s dinner table had he received this missal.
[5] It certainly saved Wilhelm’s reputation. Despite his unusual and mercurial personality, Wilhelm II had uncanny insight at times that more than once saved his nation and the world from catastrophe, perhaps without knowing it. It is no accident that he is still “revered in Germany and considered throughout the world as one of the great leaders of the 20th century” (The Economist, Vol 23, No. 12).
[6] Russia’s population loss as a result of the Great War may never be fully known, but recent estimates peg this at between 4 and 5 million people. Much was due to disease, starvation, and the long period of civil war and organized violence that continued in Russia and its lost territories well into the 1920’s Given the tendency of poorly led and surrounded Russian units to surrender after an initial stiff resistance, the Germans took over 1.5 million men prisoner. It is estimated that fewer than 350,000 Russian soldiers actually lost their lives fighting Germans. G. Rostropovich, (1954) A statistical analysis of the German War, St. Petersburg.
[7] For example, a November 1915 article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, claimed on presumably good authority that Germany, if victorious in the war, would occupy or even annex large swaths of northeastern France, seize or dismantle industries, and eventually establish protectorates over Belgium and perhaps even the Netherlands. It is unclear if this ever represented official thinking in Germany.
[8] In 1939, there was a serious effort in Parliament to fund and erect a column to Jellicoe in Trafalgar Square matching Nelson’s column in size and appearance. The two columns would have been immediately adjacent to each other and surrounded by a circular wall containing a bas-relief representation of Nelson’s ships on one half and Jellicoe’s fleet on the other. The square would have been renamed “Royal Navy Square”. According to the London Times, the scheme eventually floundered on the shoals of cost, artistic disagreement, and economy. However Jellicoe’s name has been suitably memorialized in the names of British warships since 1919, the latest being HMS Lord Jellicoe, a 65,000 ton aircraft carrier scheduled to enter the Royal Navy in late 1964.
[9] This codicil was disliked by the Kaiser and extremely unpopular among the more militant members of the Reichstag, since it seemed that Germany was being treated as something less than the outright victor in the Great War. Ratification by Germany was uncertain for several months until a separate agreement was reached with Britain requiring renegotiation and renewal of the Washington codicil every 10 years.
[10] This would be the war in 1931-32 between the United States and Japan, essentially fought over the status of the Marshall Islands and other former German Pacific colonies occupied by Japan during the Great War. Although the smaller Japanese navy achieved some early successes through initiative and guile, the much larger US fleet eventually achieved a complete victory at Truk that rivalled Jellicoe’s success against Germany in 1916. Japan sued for peace shortly thereafter. See H. Bywater (1952) The Great Pacific War for a concise and highly readable account of this conflict.
[11] The modern historian cannot criticize the crafters of the Washington Treaty enough for ignoring the Balkan tinderbox that ignited the Great War. Luckily, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy has to some extent resolved some of the problems ignored by the diplomats. With Austria uniting with the powerful German Empire and an aggressive Hungary expanding in power and influence throughout the region, many power vacuums have been filled and nationalist urges have been at least temporarily quelled.
[12] As also noted previously, the unresolved situation regarding the former German colonies was also the major causus belli of the US-Japanese war of 1931-32
[13] Goring is one of the most interesting German figures in the Israeli war of independence. Undeniably skilled as an aviator and extremely hardworking, he also lived a lifestyle involving heavy drug and alcohol use, indiscriminate sex, corruption, and a penchant for flamboyant narcissism. He was also an extreme German nationalist with anti-Semitic views. Nonetheless, he was very loyal to the Kaiser and the Empire he served, which meant that he kept these opinions to himself until his death from an accidental heroin overdose in 1941.
[14] Excerpt from Churchill’s famous June 14, 1938 “Reptilian Monster” speech given in Parliament. Not unexpectedly the aged Wilhelm II was offended and sent a strongly worded letter to King Edward demanding that the British monarch force an apology from Churchill. None, of course, was forthcoming.
[15] One of the first demands that the US made after the 1931-1932Pacific War was that Japan abrogate its alliance with Britain, which had been a source of concern for the Americans during the war.
[16] In fact, speaking to American reporters toward the end of the 1938, Smuts went so far as to declare that if Israel abandoned its alliance with Germany, he (and his large and well-equipped army) would cease operations against Israeli forces and guarantee the survival of Israel in the face of Arab opinion. This almost got him sacked by the British government, who had been deliberately non-committal regarding the fate of Israel or any Jewish state in the aftermath of an Arab victory. It did, however, play well with the people of Britain, who had come to dislike most of the Arab leaders and their many pronouncements about “driving the Jews into the sea.”
[17] This attack was only the worst of several popular uprisings in the Arab world against US and German interests in the Arab world during the conflict. Although the Damascus attack was not organized by the Syrian government, Syrian police stood by during the attack, only intervening when the self-styled “jihadists” began beheading the surviving American prisoners. This attack also shocked the British and Italian people, leading to further erosion of support for the Arab League among its allies and supporters.
[18] In this Gutmann was reflecting the increased secularization that was occurring among educated elites throughout Europe, and his opinions would have been quite unremarkable in a middle-class Christian or Jewish living room in Berlin or London. However, the non-German population of Israel was on an entirely different trajectory – one toward traditional religion, fundamentalist views, and intolerant religious extremism.
[19] Gutmann had in fact married in 1920 while still in Germany and sired two children. His wife and chilldren did not accompany him to Israel in 1928 and they divorced in 1933. In Israel he was often seen in the company of young women and young men of “ill repute”.
[20] This name was actually an ironic joke by Heisenberg. Albert Einstein was not alone in developing the theory behind nuclear fission, but was strongly opposed the development of nuclear weapons and threatened on several occasions to publicize the secret German-Israeli weapons program. On Heisenberg’s recommendation, Einstein was declared a national-security risk by both Germany and Israel and essentially kept under house arrest in Berlin from 1949 until his death in 1955.
[21] The aircraft was standard in outward appearance only. Germany later admitted that, to save weight, all normal defensive armament and armor was removed, and the plane was provided with only enough fuel to make the short hop from Tel Aviv and back again. The later, specially developed G.220.a, could carry a nuclear bomb over operational ranges but in 1963 this aircraft was only on the drawing boards.