Madagascar

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Gott
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Madagascar

#1

Post by Gott » 13 Aug 2002, 13:46

who proposed sending jews to Madagascar? if it did happen, would the jews be spared from holocaust?

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#2

Post by AirborneAllTheWay » 13 Aug 2002, 13:58

The Madagascar Plan
Before the Nazis decided to murder European Jewry in gas chambers, they considered the Madagascar Plan - a plan to move 4 million Jews from Europe to the island of Madagascar.

Who's idea was it?
Like almost all Nazi ideas, someone else came up with the idea first. As early as 1885, Paul de Lagarde suggested deporting Eastern European Jews to Madagascar. In 1926 and 1927, Poland and Japan each investigated the possibility of using Madagascar for solving their over-population problems.
It wasn't until 1931 that a German publicist wrote: "the entire Jewish nation sooner or later must be confined to an island. This would afford the possibility of control and minimize the danger of infection."1 Yet the idea of sending Jews to Madagascar was still not a Nazi plan.

Poland was the next to seriously consider the idea; they even sent a commission to Madagascar to investigate.


The Commission
In 1937, Poland sent a commission to Madagascar to determine the feasibility of forcing Jews to emigrate there. Members of the commission had very different conclusions. The leader of the commission, Major Mieczyslaw Lepecki, believed that it would be possible to settle 40,000 to 60,000 people in Madagascar. Two Jewish members of the commission didn't agree with this assessment. Leon Alter, the director of the Jewish Emigration Association (JEAS) in Warsaw, believed only 2,000 people could be settled there. Shlomo Dyk, an agricultural engineer from Tel Aviv, estimated even fewer.
Even though the Polish government thought Lepecki's estimate was too high and even though the local population of Madagascar demonstrated against an influx of immigrants, Poland continued its discussions with France (Madagascar was a French colony) over this issue.

It wasn't until 1938, a year after the Polish commission, that the Nazis began to suggest the Madagascar Plan.


Nazi Preparations
In 1938 and 1939, Nazi Germany tried to use the Madagascar Plan for financial and foreign policy arrangements.
On November 12, 1938, Hermann Göring told the German cabinet that Hitler was going to suggest to the West the emigration of Jews to Madagascar. Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank president, during discussions in London, tried to procure and international loan to send the Jews to Madagascar (Germany would make a profit since the Jews would only be allowed to take their money out in German goods). In December 1939, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, even included the emigration of Jews to Madagascar as part of a peace proposal to the pope.

Since Madagascar was still a French colony during these discussions, Germany had no way to enact their proposals without France's approval. The beginning of World War II ended these discussions but after France's defeat in 1940, Germany no longer needed to coordinate with the West about their plan.


The Beginning...
In May 1940, Heinrich Himmler advocated sending the Jews to Madagascar. About this plan, Himmler stated:
However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the Bolshevik method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as un-German and impossible."2
(Does this mean Himmler believed the Madagascar Plan to be a better alternative to extermination or that the Nazis were already starting to think of extermination as a possible solution?)
Himmler discussed his proposal with Hitler of sending the Jews "to a colony in Africa or elsewhere" and Hitler responded that the plan was "very good and correct."3

The news of this new solution to the "Jewish question" spread. Hans Frank, governor-general of occupied Poland, was elated at the news. At a large party meeting in Krakow, Frank told the audience,

As soon as sea communications permit the shipment of the Jews [laughter in the audience], they shall be shipped, piece by piece, man by man, woman by woman, girl by girl. I hope, gentlemen, you will not complain on that account [merriment in the hall].


Yet the Nazis still had no specific plan for Madagascar; thus Ribbentrop ordered Franz Rademacher to create one.


The Plan
Rademacher's plan was set down in the memorandum, "The Jewish Question in the Peace Treaty" on July 3, 1940. In Rademacher's plan:
French would give Madagascar to Germany
Germany would be given the right to install military bases on Madagascar
The 25,000 Europeans (mostly French) living on Madagascar would be removed
Jewish emigration was to be forced, not voluntary
The Jews on Madagascar would operate most local governmental functions but would be responsible to a German police governor
The entire emigration and colonization of Madagascar would be paid by Jewish possessions confiscated by the Nazis
This plan sounds similar, though larger, to the set-up of the ghettos in Eastern Europe. Yet, an underlying and hidden message in this plan, is that the Nazis were planning to ship 4 million Jews (the number did not include the Jews of Russia) to a location deemed ill-prepared for even 40,000 to 60,000 people (as determined by the Polish commission sent to Madagascar in 1937)! Thus, was the Madagascar Plan a real plan in which the effects were not considered or an alternate way of killing the Jews of Europe?

Change of Plan
The Nazis had been expecting a quick end to the war so that they could transfer European Jews to Madagascar. But as the Battle of Britain lasted much longer than planned and with Hitler's decision in the fall of 1940 to invade the Soviet Union, the Madagascar Plan became unfeasible. Alternate, more drastic, more horrific solutions were being proposed to eliminate the Jews of Europe. Within a year, the killing process had begun.


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Gott
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#3

Post by Gott » 13 Aug 2002, 16:24

why did the Poles, the germans and the japs chose madagascar? what is the significance of that island?

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#4

Post by michael mills » 14 Aug 2002, 07:55

Airbornealltheway wrote:
(Does this mean Himmler believed the Madagascar Plan to be a better alternative to extermination or that the Nazis were already starting to think of extermination as a possible solution?)
Himmler discussed his proposal with Hitler of sending the Jews "to a colony in Africa or elsewhere" and Hitler responded that the plan was "very good and correct."3
What it meant is that the precedent of physical extermination of whole population groups as a means of solving the problem of their existence was staring the German Government in the face, having been established by the Bolshevik regime in Russia as early as 1920 (the Razkazachivanie, perpetrated mainly by Bolsheviks of Jewish origin, the Cossacks being their traditional enemies), and reinforced after 1928 (the Razkulachivanie).

Some circles in the German Government MAY have been advocating in 1940 the use of Bolshevik methods against Bolsheviks or their sympathisers, but Himmler himself obviously rejected such an idea.

Thus, was the Madagascar Plan a real plan in which the effects were not considered or an alternate way of killing the Jews of Europe?
The Madagascar Plan had no exterminatory "hidden agenda", although contemporary Jewish propagandists claimed that it did. The highlands of Madagascar have a temperate climate and are well-suited to European settlement. Its climate was in fact better than that of Palestine at the beginning of the 20th Century, when malaria was still a big problem. Furthermore, Madagascar is a big island, far larger than Palestine, and could easily have accommodated four million Jews. If four million Jews could settle in Palestine (which was the Zionist target ever since the Balfour Declaration), then the same number could settle in Madagascar without any problem.

Note that the German Government saw the British Mandate Government in Palestine as a model for the administration of Madasgascar with its proposed Jewish colonies. See the book "The Third Reich and the Palestine Question" by Francis Nicosia).
Change of Plan
The Nazis had been expecting a quick end to the war so that they could transfer European Jews to Madagascar. But as the Battle of Britain lasted much longer than planned and with Hitler's decision in the fall of 1940 to invade the Soviet Union, the Madagascar Plan became unfeasible. Alternate, more drastic, more horrific solutions were being proposed to eliminate the Jews of Europe. Within a year, the killing process had begun.
There was not a direct transition from the Madagascar Plan to mass-killing. The Madagascar Plan was in fact succeeded by a plan to deport the Jews of Europe into the territory to be conquered from the Soviet Union. That is the plan that was revealed at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942.

The Madagascar Plan was abandoned at the end of 1940, when Hitler's final decision to attack the Soviet Union opened up new possibilities for forced removal of Jews from the German sphere of influence in Europe. The decision to attack the Soviet Union did not include a decision to kill all Jews; the only Jews selected for execution were those in high State and Party positions in the Soviet Union, ie Jewish Bolsheviks in the true sense of the word.

In November 1941, the RSHA was working on the Generalplan-Ost, a plan for the deportation to Siberia of 31 million non-Germans from the conquered territories in the East, and the settlement of 10 million Germans in the area. The 31 million included 5-6 million Jews, indicating that as of November 1941 the plan was to deport the Jews of Europe to Siberia, not to kill them en masse. The Generalplan-Ost of the RSHA has not been found, but it is known from a detailed analysis of it made in April 1942 by Erhard Wetzel, an official of Rosenberg's Ostministerium.

The Generalplan-Ost was not implemented because of the failure of Germany to defeat the Soviet Union decisively, first at the end of 1941, then again at the end of 1942. The mass-killing of Jews, first in the Soviet Union and then in Occupied Poland, was a reaction to the FAILURE of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, not of the invasion itself. The policy of extermination was adopted because it was no longer possible to deport the Jews to Siberia.

If the initial attack on the Soviet Union had been successful, and victory had been achieved before the end of 1941, as originally envisaged by Germany, then the deportation of Jews into a Russian rump state in Western Siberia would probably have begun in 1942. It was not the failure to defeat Britian that led yo mass-killing of Jews, but rather the failure to defeat the Soviet Union.
Last edited by michael mills on 15 Aug 2002, 03:15, edited 1 time in total.

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#5

Post by Luca » 14 Aug 2002, 10:24

WWWWOOOOOOWWWWWWW 8O

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Re: Madagascar

#6

Post by Gorque » 15 Nov 2015, 23:11

Paul Lantos wrote:
Gorque wrote:Yes, the U.S.A. A May 29th opinion poll found
"only 7.7 percent of the people favored immediate American entry into the war. Only 19 percent believed that the country should intervene if the defeat of the Allies appeared certain. Forty percent opposed U.S. participation under any circumstances."
Gorque wrote:I think you are forgetting that Roosevelt was up for re-election in November 1940 and therefore had to tread carefully.
What is your evidence that these somehow tamed Hitler's Jewish policy?
My evidence on the taming Hitler's Jewish policy? Where did you come up with the notion that the Madagascar Plan was going to tame Hitler's Jewish policy? Certainly not from me. :D Hitler's policy from the beginning was emigration/expulsion of the Jews from Germany. The Madagascar Plan was just that, a grandiose expulsion plan which would have resulted in an inordinate number of early deaths.
Do you need a list of quotes and speeches he made about Jews in 1939 and 1940, including his infamous 1939 "prophecy" speech before the Reichstag? Hitler's public persona and rhetoric were stridently antisemitic over this time. So do you mean to argue that Hitler was PUBLICALLY virulently antisemitic, but in the secrecy of the Madagascar planning he was PRIVATELY humane for the sake of the American electorate?
Please go through the effort of listing all of Hitler's bombastic statements from January 30, 1939 through the end of 1940 and once you have needlessly exerted yourself perhaps you could also provide evidence of all the effort that was expended in the realization of his bombast in the years 1939 - '40.
Hitler hoped to keep America out of the war by keeping the Jews hostage. That is expressed in almost direct terms in Rademacher's Madagascar correspondence -- see my quote from Longerich's book. America's Jews were to be controlled through violent reprisals against the Jews in Maagascar. He doesn't say to keep America out of the war, but he says to control the behavior of America's Jews. And because the NS regime blamed international Jews for both WWI and the impending WWII, it is safe to consider this synonymous. Hitler had NO problem publicly threatening European Jews because he felt that threat was his specific leverage against American Jews.
Hitler's intentions or Rademacher's? Your quote mentions a July 2nd correspondence where Rademacher outlines the draft of his plan to his superiors. Where in the quotation that you have provided is there any mention that Hitler had approved of Rademacher's Madagascar Plan? In 1940, there were no plans by Hitler or the Nazi's to exterminate the Jews. No vernichtungslagers were constructed during this time frame. The Nazi policy in regards to its Jewish population in this time frame was emigration and expulsion.
Gorque wrote:
Paul Lantos wrote:The '45 expulsions weren't exactly a Sunday stroll. Large numbers (approximately 1.4 million out of an estimated 12 to 14 million) of civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly perished.
I haven't once in this thread mentioned anything about events of 1945 -- I don't quite follow what that has to do with 1940 judenpolitik.
I mentioned it for the purpose of analogy. My original statement was "I'd opine it was planned to be somewhat similar to the expulsions that were occurring in 1945, just harsher in that the Madagascar Plan was to occur in an undeveloped area."
Yes, people died en masse from all sorts of inhumanity, including mass expulsions and mass human movement. That has nothing to do with the specifics of Madagascar, which I'd argue was conceived as a plan for mass attrition and not benevolent resettlement.
I never wrote that the Madagascar Plan was for "benevolent resettlement." How on Earth did you manage to so badly misconstrue what I had written?

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Re: Madagascar

#7

Post by Paul Lantos » 16 Nov 2015, 07:58

Gorque wrote:I never wrote that the Madagascar Plan was for "benevolent resettlement." How on Earth did you manage to so badly misconstrue what I had written?
I was referring more to Mr. Mills with that, who seems to be selling real estate in the highlands of Madagascar. Hey, I'd go, I love Africa and lemurs are cute and furry.

Anyway, I've said my piece. I've put forth analyses by two of the world's leading academic historians of the Holocaust -- who both agree that the Madagascar plan was intended to be murderous. Go back to my quotes from the two of them.

If you disagree with Peter Longerich or Christopher Browning, please share what it is that you know that they don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Longerich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning
Christopher Browning in [i]The Origins of the Final Solution[/i] wrote: It was out of this conjuncture of factors that the Madagascar Plan was born, offering the prospect of a final solution to the Jewish question in Europe through the total removal of the continent's entire Jewish population. It was a heady and intoxicating vision to those who had experienced the bottlenecks of demographic engineering in eastern Europe over the past nine months and thus rekindled the flames of Nazi determination and fanaticism in this regard. However fantastical in retrospect, the Madagascar Plan was an important psychological step on the road to the Final Solution.

...

It is clear that had the Nazis carried out the plan as they intended, it would have been a murderous operation. Whatever the illusions of the naive and dilletantish Rademacher, the Nazi demographic engineers in east Europe had already deminstrated that "decimation" of the uprooted was not only no deterrence but even an added attraction to their population policies. This was not yet the Final Solution -- a compulsive and comprehensive program to murder every last Jew that the Nazis could lay their hands on -- but it was nonetheless genocidal in its implications.
Peter Longerich in [i]Holocaust[/i] wrote: On 3 July [1940] Rademacher presented a draft for the Madagascar project. ..."the part of the island that has no military importance would be placed under the administration of a German police governor who would report to the office of the Reichsfuhrer SS..." Another document by Rademacher, dated 2 July, contains further information about his intentions. "From a German perspective, the Madagascar solution means the creation of a huge ghetto. Only the security police have the necessary experience in this field; they have the means to prevent a break-out from the island. In addition, they have experience of carrying out in an appropriate manner such punishment measures as become necessary as a result of hostile actions against Germany by Jews in the USA."

Whilst Rademacher was obtaining expert opinion on the feasibility of his project, the Reich Security Head Office was putting together its own version of the Madagascar Plan. It contained the suggestion that a 'police state' be set up for the four million Jews who would be on the island at that point under German rule.

In a later note, dated 30 August, Rademacher explicitly supported a suggestion that had in the meantime been made by Victor Brack, who was based in the Chancellery and responsible for overseeing the 'euthanasia programme.' [suggestion regards transport systems for Jews to Madagascar] The mention of Brack and the fact that another key figure responsible for the 'euthanasia programme', Philipp Bouhler, was being considered for the role of Governor in Madagascar, taken together cast the Madagascar Project in a very dark light.

Rademacher's document shows that the estimate of the number of Jews that were to be settled on Madagascar had by then reached 6.5 million, wich suggests that the Jews from the south-east European states and the northern French colonies were now being included in the plans for deportation.

Fantastic though the Madagascar Plan now seems, it cannot simply be dismissed as merely distraction tactics for a Judenpolitik that had reached a dead-end. It is precisely the lack of feasibility in this plan that points out the cynical, calculating nature of German Judenpolitik: the idea that millions of European Jews would be deported to Madagascar for years and years, and the fact that -- without even considering the 'punishment measures' that Rademacher envisaged -- a large proportion of the transported Jews would presumably die there relatively quickly as victims of the hostile living conditions they would meet, all this makes it perfectly clear that behind this project lay the intention of bringing about the physical annihilation of the Jews under German rule... Inspired by the intention to annihilate the Jews under German rule, Hitler was to keep coming back to the Madagascar Project time and again until 1942, by which time the idea of 'anywhere' had been replaced by that of 'nowhere'.

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Re: Madagascar

#8

Post by michael mills » 17 Nov 2015, 06:40

I've put forth analyses by two of the world's leading academic historians of the Holocaust -- who both agree that the Madagascar plan was intended to be murderous.
The critical word here is "intended".

That word suggests that the German Government selected Madagascar as a place of settlement for the unwanted Jews of Europe specifically because it was looking a place where conditions were so harsh that the Jews sent there were certain to die, of starvation, or exposure or disease, and Madagascar provided those exact conditions.

However, the German Government did not select Madagascar for those reasons; when it selected that place, it was following the lead of a number of others, who had suggested Madagascar as a place of settlement not only for Jews but for other peoples as well, such as Polish peasants.

The reason why Madagascar was suggested back in the 19th Century as a place of settlement for European Jews was because it was a long way from Europe, and being an island was not a place from which the Jews could easily get away. In that regard, it should be noted it was not the only African location suggested as a place of Jewish settlement; the Kenyan highlands had been offered by the British Government to the Zionist Organisation, which seriously considered the offer for a short period.

Obviously Herzl did not think that the Kenyan highlands were a place where Jewish settlers would die en masse, and there is no reason to believe that the highland regions of Madagascar would be any less suitable for European settlement.

Furthermore, it is obvious that the Polish and Japanese Governments, which were seriously considering Madagascar as a place of settlement for their surplus peasant populations, were not motivated by a desire to cause the physical destruction of the settlers. Rather, they thought of Madagascar as a place where their own people could live better than back in their overcrowded homelands, rather than as a place where the harsh conditions and tropical diseases would kill them off quickly.

The most reasonable conclusion is that the German Government settled on Madagascar as an appropriate place to which to send their unwanted Jews because it had previously been considered as a place of settlement for Europeans by the Polish Government, rather than because of any conscious murderous intent. The draft plans prepared by Eichmann suggest a serious intention to provide survivable living conditions for the Jews settled there, for example, his plan that the first Jewish settlers should consist of various professionals such as agronomists and medical staff, as well as construction workers, who would prepare the settlement areas for the main group of Jews to follow.

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Re: Madagascar

#9

Post by little grey rabbit » 17 Nov 2015, 13:42

Anyway, I've said my piece. I've put forth analyses by two of the world's leading academic historians of the Holocaust -- who both agree that the Madagascar plan was intended to be murderous. Go back to my quotes from the two of them.

If you disagree with Peter Longerich or Christopher Browning, please share what it is that you know that they don't.
Madagascar either has the highest or close to the highest life expectancy of any of the Sub-Saharan countries.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP. ... play=graph
Red line - Sub Saharan average
Yellow line - Madagascar.

So I don't see why Madagascar is so much worse as a colonization area than South Africa or Palestine

The trouble is we don't really know to what extent the mid ranking Foreign Officer bureaucrat represented official thinking. Just a month before on 3 June 1940 he was writing this
1. Erbitten einer grundsaetzlichen Festlegung des deutschen Kriegsziels in der Judenfrage vom Herrn Reichsaussenminister.

Moeglichkeiten:
a) alle Juden aus Europa,
b) Trennung zwischen Ost- und Westjuden; Ostjuden, die den zeugungskraeftigeren and talmudsicheren Nachwuchs fuer die juedische Intelligenz bilden, bleiben als Faustpfand in deutscher Hand (Lublin?), um die Amerikajuden lahm zu legen. Westjuden aus Europa (Madagaskar?).
c) Juedischen Nationalheim in Palaestina (Gefahr eines 2. Roms!)
In this version Madagascar was being proposed as the more favorable option only for the less dangerous assimilated Western Jews. Do we really know that this division had been formally abandoned a month later? Did Rademacher have the authority to make such decisions or was he just flying trial balloons?

The Madagascar plans were so vague - or at least the handful of memos drawn up in the Foreign Office were - so that is impossible to draw strong conclusions on what resettlement would have looked like. Of course, the Foreign Ministry wasn't really the bureaucracy charged with developing resettlement. At this stage it was still Goering and the Office of the Five Year plan. And that documentation has all disappeared. In July 1941 it became Heydrich.

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Re: Madagascar

#10

Post by wm » 17 Nov 2015, 16:36

Most likely a vague plan created by a few ignorants. In peacetime the Nazi Germany couldn't afford such a politically disastrous program.

It should be added, even before the infamous Polish commission (more properly Jewish-Polish) arrived in Madagascar it was known it couldn't be done:
- the French refused,
- the costs were prohibitive and nobody couldn't afford it,
- the Jews - the nation of intellectuals, charedim (orthodox Jews) and petty traders couldn't pull it off because of lack of expertise.
And later it was found out only two relatively small areas were suitable, the rest was shitholes (especially for the whites).

Madagascar (and other locations) were the invention of two Jewish organization: the Freeland League, and EMCOL (Association for Jewish Emigration and Colonization). Both didn't believe in Palestine, and maybe even were ashamed of the Jewish imperialism going on there.

In Poland they were joined by a Polish version of EMCOL (Maritime and Colonial League - strangely similar name), one of its goals were Polish colonies. From the Polish side it was - look at these poor, suffering Jews! give us a colony.

So all that was done by what is called today NGOs, actually the Polish Government was slightly embarrassed by all the chutzpah and that show of Polish colonialism.
And actually Polish colonial claims were legitimate (as one of the successor of the German Empire).

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Re: Madagascar

#11

Post by wm » 18 Nov 2015, 00:46

OK, I flicked through the book written by a member of that commission and the story is like this:
- the island was quite densely populated by millions of natives,
- the climate was hell for Europeans, additionally tropical fevers including malaria were endemic.

But they found a suitable place called Bealanana District. It was lightly populated (because was inaccessible - mountain ranges, swamps blocked access) and quite cold (because of high elevation). It's shown below, the small rectangle - about 90x70 kilometers:
madagascar.jpg
madagascar.jpg (51.17 KiB) Viewed 1526 times
Actually they didn't find it. A Frenchman C. Champenois discovered it earlier, and in 1933 wrote a memorial to the French Government proposing the place for colonisation.
Because of that or maybe for other reasons the French administration gave anybody who didn't look too insane a piece of land there (or elsewhere in Madagascar) without much fuss. There weren't many takers but some people were actually successful.

So the plan was like nothing and nonsense, and the commission was aware of this beforehand - thanks to Mssr. Champenois.
Below the Jewish-Polish commision enjoying their free vacation in Madagascar:
Image
pictures from: Mieczysław Lepecki, Madagaskar. Kraj, ludzie, kolonizacja.

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Re: Madagascar

#12

Post by Paul Lantos » 18 Nov 2015, 03:09

michael mills wrote:The critical word here is "intended".
What was intended became attached to various degrees of cruelty throughout the process of Nazi radicalization. I've never contended that an "exterminatory" program was synonymous with, say, Grossaktion Warsaw or other mass murder events in the coming years. But it was designed at a time when the Nazis had already undertaken mass murder programs and enormous ethnic cleansing programs (that resulted in death, not just mass movement).

The Madagascar plans also took place around the time that the Nazis were debating just how the hell they were planning to pay for provisioning closed ghettos in Poland, and the balance between starvation and provisioning there was a plainly economic one. So this leads one to ask whether the Nazis REALLY would have gone to efforts to ensure the survival of millions of Jews in a guarded mega-ghetto in the south Indian Ocean -- or whether (more likely) the lucky would live and the unlucky would die.

Either way what is the most benign possible interpretation of Madagascar? It was to be a gargantuan effort at ethnic cleansing that to be done "humanely" would have required a tremendous infrastructure of material and food whose cost and logistics were never part of the planning -- and therefore the likelihood of mass suffering and death was very high. Given the Nazis' affinity for modeling this sort of thing, as they did in their pre-Barbarossa planning and all the economic planning for the ghetto economies and slave labor programs, it seems far fetched to think that they did not anticipate this eventuality.

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Re: Madagascar

#13

Post by michael mills » 18 Nov 2015, 05:05

So this leads one to ask whether the Nazis REALLY would have gone to efforts to ensure the survival of millions of Jews in a guarded mega-ghetto in the south Indian Ocean -- or whether (more likely) the lucky would live and the unlucky would die.
The real issue is whether, if the Madagascar Plan were implemented and European Jews were transported there, the German Government would have prevented assistance being provided to the transported Jews by other bodies, eg by other governments, or by Jewish organisations outside the region under German control.

As I have written previously, the German authorities allowed NGOs in the United States to send food aid to occupied Poland, of which 14% was channelled to the Jewish community. That food aid continued until the entry of the United States into the war against Germany, at which point it was terminated by the United states Government, not by Germany.

Thus, Germany had a track record of allowing other agencies to provide aid to Jews under its control in Europe, so there is no reason why it would not have allowed those same agencies or other ones to provide similar aid to Jews transported to Madagascar.

It is obvious that the massive Jewish settlement in Palestine, both before and after the Second World War, was a hugely expensive operation, and it must have been financed from some source. I see no reason why that same source, whatever it was, could not have been used to finance the Jewish settlement in Madagascar rather than in Palestine.

Bear in mind that the Madagascar Plan could only have been implemented in a situation where the state of war between Germany and the Allies had come to an end. In that counterfactual situation, it is likely that as part of the peace settlement Britain and France would have been required to assist in the settlement of Jews in Madagascar. For example, we know from the extant German planning documents that those countries would have been required to provide the shipping for the transportation of the Jews.

I think it is fair to say that the German Government would not have devoted any of its own resources to the support of Jews transported to Madagascar, but that does not mean that it would not have been happy to use someone else's resources for that purpose, eg the resources of the Jews themselves, or those of other countries.

It is entirely true that the National Socialist rulers of Germany were a totally ruthless bunch, quite prepared to use cruel and murderous methods when they deemed it necessary, and without any imperative to act humanely. But that does not mean that they would automatically and in all circumstances resort to murderous methods, particularly if the costs of a particular action, such as settling Jews in Madagascar, could be offloaded onto someone else.

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Re: Madagascar

#14

Post by wm » 18 Nov 2015, 11:33

The problem was there were millions of natives there already. And they were mainly peasants themselves. Because of this there weren't any larger areas of land available in Madagascar.
The small rectangle above was the only lightly populated place there suitable for colonisation.
And it was said and written that generally the Europeans were incapable of doing heavy work in Madagascar - because of the climate.

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Re: Madagascar

#15

Post by Paul Lantos » 19 Nov 2015, 04:13

michael mills wrote:The real issue is whether, if the Madagascar Plan were implemented and European Jews were transported there, the German Government would have prevented assistance being provided to the transported Jews by other bodies, eg by other governments, or by Jewish organisations outside the region under German control.
How pragmatic and sustainable would you envision that to be even if permitted? Who would pay for the provisioning of 4-6 million people who by virtue of being guarded in an SS ghetto (as documented by Rademacher) could not have a meaningful economy?
michael mills wrote:As I have written previously, the German authorities allowed NGOs in the United States to send food aid to occupied Poland, of which 14% was channelled to the Jewish community.
Many tens of thousands of Jews died from starvation and disease (which was largely a result of starvation itself) in Lodz and Warsaw before Dec 1941 when the US entered the war. Those two ghettos accounted for at maximum 600,000 people between them. How do you think the world would provision 10 times that many in a far more remote place?
michael mills wrote:I think it is fair to say that the German Government would not have devoted any of its own resources to the support of Jews transported to Madagascar, but that does not mean that it would not have been happy to use someone else's resources for that purpose, eg the resources of the Jews themselves, or those of other countries.
Hitler took GREAT cynical pride in proving that the rest of the world would not accept the Jewish emigrants. I think it's equally likely he would have asked some ridiculous commitment on the part of the world but not cared a whit if thousands died while waiting.
michael mills wrote:But that does not mean that they would automatically and in all circumstances resort to murderous methods, particularly if the costs of a particular action, such as settling Jews in Madagascar, could be offloaded onto someone else.
In writing the Nazis only planned for the Jews to live off the land. We know that this is AT BEST callously naive -- I mean I'm no demographer, but I can guess what might happen if 4-6 million people from Europe went to an African island and had to learn how to hunt and forage. Oh, hunt while unarmed, of course -- they would be under SS guard, as Rademacher said, and I somewhat doubt they'd be given weapons. Or mechanical farming equipment or training in large scale agriculture.

So the plan never got beyond an absurd fantasy. But it had the makings of a catastrophe in it. You're right, we don't truly know how it would have transpired. But the Nazis had already started mass murder programs, two high level administrators of one mass murder program were involved in the Madagascar planning, and what we know of the plan did not have a realistic path to survival.

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