Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#256

Post by David Thompson » 31 Mar 2012, 03:28

Michael -- You wrote: (1)
But if a Malagasy can live on one dollar per day, why cannot a Jew also live on one dollar per day?
Set the example and try it. You might learn something from bringing in $365 a year. Let us know your experiences, and whether your family survived on your earnings.

(2)
Is there any clause in the Mosaic Law that decrees that all Jews must have the same standard of living as the Jewish population of the United States?
Mosaic law and the Jewish standard of living in the US have nothing to do with the issue being discussed, and All Fools' Day isn't here yet, so let's not be premature about celebrating it:
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The research sections of the forum are meant for persons who are fairly well-informed on the topics being discussed, and our discussions are not directed at the lowest common denominator of readership. Rural customs of discourse, such as feigned ignorance, pettifogging, playing at peek-a-boo, or "stonewalling" denials of facts well-known to most informed persons, are strongly disfavored here.

The object of the research sections of the forum is to exchange information, not to engage in dim wrangling as a form of diversion. Our readers are intelligent people, who have already taken the time to inform themselves on the topic under discussion and don't have a lot of time to waste playing games. Shrill and highly polemical posts are also strongly disfavored.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=53962

(3)
When the first shipment of exiled British convicts arrived at the present Sydney in January 1788, there was even less there than there was in Madagascar in 1940. There was no indigenous agriculture, no towns, just a primitive population living by hunting and gathering.

Nevertheless, the convicts and their guards, although they suffered great hardship, did not all starve to death. For the first few years, until they could start farming, they depended for food on supply ships coming from Britain or India, and often their supplies ran dangerously low. But they survived; the death rate was relatively low.
What was the average age of those convicts that got sent to Australia in the 18th century? How about the average age of German Jews in Germany in 1940? You're making the comparison, so why are the two situations comparable?

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#257

Post by michael mills » 31 Mar 2012, 04:25

why are the two situations comparable
Because both involved expelling an unwanted population group, regarded as dangerous and criminal by the respective governments, to a distant and undeveloped place as an alternative to imprisoning or executing them at their places of origin.

The perceived gain from their removal from their place of origin, in the eyes of the respective governments, outweighed the cost of transporting them to a distant destination and maintaining them there.


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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#258

Post by David Thompson » 31 Mar 2012, 04:35

Michael -- You wrote, in response to a question I asked about you comparison between the transported convicts of 18th centry Australia and the planned Jewish expulsion of the NS-regime c. 1940:
why are the two situations comparable
Because both involved expelling an unwanted population group, regarded as dangerous and criminal by the respective governments, to a distant and undeveloped place as an alternative to imprisoning or executing them at their places of origin.
Yes, but we were talking about survival, not policy motivations of the deporting government.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#259

Post by wm » 31 Mar 2012, 11:26

michael mills wrote:Nevertheless, the convicts and their guards, although they suffered great hardship, did not all starve to death. For the first few years, until they could start farming, they depended for food on supply ships coming from Britain or India, and often their supplies ran dangerously low. But they survived; the death rate was relatively low.
The convicts were transported at an easily manageable rate of 2000 per year, the Jews would have been at a rate of a million per year.
The convicts remained in government hands throughout the first five years and then settlers had taken them into employment. They were provided for with food and clothing. The Jews would have been simply dumped on the beaches.
michael mills wrote:Accordingly there is no reason why Jews exiled to Madagascar could not have been supplied, particularly if the states defeated by Germany were roped in to help, and aid were supplied by the Jewish Establishment in the United States.
The defeated states lacked resources themselves, because they had been heavily in war debt already and Germany was using their resources to wage its wars.
A Jewish family in the US would have had to fully support with everything 3 or 4 Jewish families in Madagascar for many years. It simply was not possible and would not have happened.
michael mills wrote:The 10-fold population increase in the 20th Century shows that Madagascar is quite capable of supporting a large population, despite all the alleged difficulties.
Of course it is but only because of the relatively slow population growth rate - 2.7%. The Jewish influx would have increase the rate to 50%.
A Malagasy family and its small farm could support a few children. A Jewish family would not have a farm, or the means and knowledge on how to run one.
michael mills wrote:But if a Malagasy can live on one dollar per day, why cannot a Jew also live on one dollar per day?
A Malagasy family is self sufficient, they grow and consume their own food, their tools and household items are self made. The cost of the work is not factored into the GDP as long as they do not sell anything.
In reality they do not live on one dollar, its a hundred or so dollars per day but the dollars are constantly recycled in the family.

Additionally the Jewish arrival would create an instant huge price hike for all types of food and food shortages because of the inefficient local agriculture. The end result would be a brutal and disastrous civil war between the Malagasian and Jews.
Additionally, taking into account that a large part of the Jewish population would consist of childrens, older people, disabled or sick persons, or people without any useful skills it is hard to imagine that the survival rate would be better than, let's say 30%.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#260

Post by Sid Guttridge » 31 Mar 2012, 13:48

Hi Guys,

Do such details matter?

The fact of the matter is that the best case on offer, even by Michael, is that millions of entirely innocent Jews would be dispossessed and expelled, without discrimination or justification.

The worst case, which is what actually happened, was that the Nazis tried to kill all the Jews within their reach.

The "Madagascar Plan" was less of a plan than one transient notional solution to an entirely self created "problem" of the Nazis.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#261

Post by michael mills » 31 Mar 2012, 15:03

the Jews would have been at a rate of a million per year.
That was a concept. The actual rate of arrival, if the plan had been implemented, would have been determined by logistical realities, eg how much shipping was actually available.

In human history, plans have a habit of turning out a lot different in practice from what was envisaged.
The Jews would have been simply dumped on the beaches.
We have no way of knowing that. It is simply a surmise.
The defeated states lacked resources themselves, because they had been heavily in war debt already and Germany was using their resources to wage its wars.
The Madagascar Plan was to be implemented after the end of the war, assuming a German victory. Accordingly, Germany would not be waging war, and would not need to be using the resources of the defeated states for that purpose.

The conceptual plan developed by Rademacher provided for the transport and settlement of the Jews to be financed by confiscated Jewish assets, channelled through a bank set up for that purpose.
A Jewish family in the US would have had to fully support with everything 3 or 4 Jewish families in Madagascar for many years.
Somewhat of an exaggeration. As stated, Jewish charities in the United States were already supporting one-third of the Jews in Poland, about one million persons. It was not just a matter of supplying candy for their children; Jewish investigators from Western countries unanimously reported that by the late 1930s, due to the economic boycott, one-third of the Jews in Poland were entirely dependent for their livelihood on charity from abroad.
A Jewish family would not have a farm, or the means and knowledge on how to run one.
Jewish settlers were already running farms in Palestine, either collectives or co-operatives. They received training in agricultural schools called "hachsharot", run by the Zionist Organisation. The National Socialist German Government allowed hachsharot to operate on its territory, since training Jews to be farmers in Palestine served the purpose of getting them out of Germany.

There is no good reason why the training in farm management provided by the hachsharot could not have been put into practice in Madagascar rather than Palestine.

The capital to finance Jewish settlement in Palestine obviously came from somewhere, and there is no reason why it could not have been available to finance settlement in Madagascar.
The end result would be a brutal and disastrous civil war between the Malagasian and Jews.
In case wm has not noticed, there has been a brutal civil war going on between the native Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish settlers ever since Jewish settlement in Palestine began. So far as I can see, the Jews appear to be winning it; at the very least they have not all perished, and their numbers are increasing.

Why would the situation in Madagascar have been any different?

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#262

Post by michael mills » 31 Mar 2012, 15:16

Yes, but we were talking about survival, not policy motivations of the deporting government.
Indeed.

But a lot of people seem to be assuming that if Jews were exiled to Madagascar, they would inevitably have perished because there was "nothing there".

I am pointing out that Britain transported convicts to Australia, a place where there was truly nothing when the first transports arrived, but the convicts did not all die of starvation, although they suffered great hardship.

In Madagascar there was already a French administration which could have been required to provide for the transported Jews in the initial stages. In this counterfactual, Britain and France are both defeated states that have accepted Germany's terms for peace, so they could have been required to supply logistical support for the transport and settlement of the Jews, supplementing the capital derived from the liquidation of Jewish assets in Europe.

In the 1930s, Jews from Europe emigrated to Palestine, where they put on shorts and floppy hats and went out to work in the fields in the hot sun. There is no reason why they could not have done the same in Madagascar in the 1940s.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#263

Post by panzerplatten » 31 Mar 2012, 17:43

Yes that is a very valad point, and even though its a hypothesis, heydrich had invisaged a healthy Jewish population on madagascar under German administration not French, which could be drawn on for labour when required, but as Michael has said the Australia system worked for the British above all the hardships involved. And looking at it from that perspective it seems quite a workable system, under the hypothesis the British made peace with germany.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#264

Post by wm » 31 Mar 2012, 18:09

michael mills wrote:I am pointing out that Britain transported convicts to Australia, a place where there was truly nothing when the first transports arrived, but the convicts did not all die of starvation, although they suffered great hardship.
at a rate of 2000 a year...
michael mills wrote:In Madagascar there was already a French administration which could have been required to provide for the transported Jews in the initial stages.
for the millions of Jews? Only a brass band playing cheerfully for the new arrivals.
michael mills wrote:As stated, Jewish charities in the United States were already supporting one-third of the Jews in Poland, about one million persons. It was not just a matter of supplying candy for their children; Jewish investigators from Western countries unanimously reported that by the late 1930s, due to the economic boycott, one-third of the Jews in Poland were entirely dependent for their livelihood on charity from abroad.
But you still have no references for this.
In fact the Jewish charity reached its maximum in 1929, the to the amount of 200 million zloty per year (provided only in small part by the Jewish charities in the US), usually in services such as religion, education, health. (according to Joseph Marcus, Social and political history of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939).
michael mills wrote: Britain and France are both defeated states that have accepted Germany's terms for peace, so they could have been required to supply logistical support
The Britain defeat was impossible, France was in huge debt.
michael mills wrote:In the 1930s, Jews from Europe emigrated to Palestine, where they put on shorts and floppy hats and went out to work in the fields in the hot sun. There is no reason why they could not have done the same in Madagascar in the 1940s.
In Palestine the Jews were living in large numbers already for years, the infrastructure was there, and new Jews arrived at a manageable rate of 25 thousand per year.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#265

Post by The_Enigma » 31 Mar 2012, 18:23

I am pointing out that Britain transported convicts to Australia, a place where there was truly nothing when the first transports arrived, but the convicts did not all die of starvation, although they suffered great hardship.
Because they were sent with what they needed to survive, they were sent with supplies, they were sent to establish themselves there, they were given support, they were given military support, they were given govenership, and they had supply ships. Furthermore once the prisoners had finished their term of sentance they could be returned to the UK or given land to farm. Rather than being a place to dump people, the initial prisoners and their military guards established a settler colony that prisoners back home wanted to be sent to. The middle classes, prehaps even some of the upper class, were established by ex-cons who had made it. Sure it wasnt easy going for the first waves but the comparison is flawed.

All the information provided thus far as noted how it was just an idea with no real thought put into how the plan would have been undertaken, assumptions that the local colonial administration would be able to support the influx of colonists, and that outside organistions would be able to provide enough relief to sustain the colonists. Furthermore, not knowing the exact nature of the island in question one does ponder if the medical requirements were even thought about. Colonial death rates were quite high, before vacinations etc.

Rather than the foundtion of settler colonies on the far side of the world, the Partition of India looks more like a more correct comparison: violent ethnic clensing and displaced people, which was not a nice luxary cruise to new farm land an a happy life on a tropical island.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#266

Post by waldzee » 31 Mar 2012, 22:59

michael mills wrote:
why are the two situations comparable
Because both involved expelling an unwanted population group, regarded as dangerous and criminal by the respective governments, to a distant and undeveloped place as an alternative to imprisoning or executing them at their places of origin.

The perceived gain from their removal from their place of origin, in the eyes of the respective governments, outweighed the cost of transporting them to a distant destination and maintaining them there.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Your agruement may be advanced , Mike, if you didn't attached labels like 'dangerous' & 'criminal' to the Eastern European Jews as a group, as some may see this as anti semite... & some of us see it as , simply " light weight'.
Also, dropping 'boss Jew' names & claims like Lucien Wolf, out of context of their statemetns is more silly than impressive.
Lucien Wolf argued for a League of Nations framework of minority rights, so that Jews displaced from the Ukraine could voluntarily return. He never dreamed of pushing them involuntarily across the new state lines. Beck, fo r one, reviled him because he felt his hands were shackeled on his infamous 'third starve, third comvert, third emigrate 'plans.

On the plus side, Madagascar woudl have been feasible, over time, with enormous developmental inputs- so you are 'right' there. the error is to see it as a'plan'- as it really was never to happen- & was used as propaganda.. A bullet to the neck is cheaper than relocation,- & the einzegruppen had 'no mercy'.
Last edited by waldzee on 01 Apr 2012, 02:05, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#267

Post by michael mills » 01 Apr 2012, 00:37

In Palestine the Jews were living in large numbers already for years, the infrastructure was there, and new Jews arrived at a manageable rate of 25 thousand per year.
Actually, when Britain conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Empire in 1918, there were very few Jewish settlers there. Most of those who had settled there before the First World War had been expelled by the Ottoman authorities in 1914, since for the most part they were Russian nationals.

There was a small number of religious Jews who had been living in the country since the 16th Century. They were supported by Jewish charities in Europe.

As for infrastructure, there was very little. Palestine was a very backward place, with an essentially medieval social and economic structure.

Jewish immigration into Palestine after the First World War was possible because the new British administration favoured it, allowing the Jewish settlers to have their own autonomous government, the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Jewish settlement was financed by funds raised by Jewish organisations outside the country.

There is no reason why the Jewish settlement that occurred in Palestine in the 1920s and early 30s, supported by the colonial administration and financed by the Jewish Establishment, could not have been replicated in Madagascar.

Bear in mind that the declared Zionist aim, expressed immediately after the First World War, was to settle four million Jews from Eastern Europe in Palestine, the same number as proposed for Madagascar, a far larger territory. At the time many observers thought that that goal was unachievable, given the undeveloped nature of the country, but there about six million Jews living there now.

Palestine is a very small territory, yet, according to wm, 25,000 Jews could settle there per year, once the large-scale Jewish immigration began with the establishment of British rule after the First World War.

Those 25,000 Jews who arrived annually were not distributed over the whole territory of Palestine, since the entire southern half of the country is desert. They were concentrated in a very small area. Even so, the settlement of 25,000 per year was quite feasible, given the support of the colonial administration.

The area suitable for European settlement in the highlands of Madagascar is far larger than the inhabitable area of Palestine. If 25,000 Jews per year could be absorbed into Palestine, then a far larger annual total could have been absorbed into Madagascar.

Bear in mind also that with an assumed end to the state of war between Britain and Germany in 1940, the Jewish emigration to various destinations that had been in progress in the 1930s could have been resumed, given the removal of wartime obstacles. Madagascar would have been by no means the only destination for Jews emigrating from German-controlled Europe. Probably the bulk of the Jewish population of German-occupied Poland would have been transported there, but it is likely that the total number would have been appreciably less than the four million postulated in the conceptual plans prepared by Eichmann and Rademacher.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#268

Post by michael mills » 01 Apr 2012, 01:10

Another way of approaching the issue is to look at the number of Jews living in German-occupied Poland in January 1942, before the commencment of the mass extermination.

According to the book "Dimension des Völkermords", there were 2.3 million Jews living in German-occupied Poland (= Generalgovernement + annexed areas) in Janaury 1942. Of those, 0.6 million lived in two territories conquered from the Soviet Union in 1941, Distrikt Galizien and Bezirk Bialystok. That leaves 1.7 million Jews who had come under German rule in September 1939.

What that means is that 1.7 million Polish Jews had survived the harsh German rule for a period of 30 months. In other words, German rule did not inevitably lead to Jews dying en masse; they were able to survive the minimal means of existence imposed upon them.

Accordingly, there is no reason to believe that Jews would have died en masse living under German rule in Madagascar either.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#269

Post by michael mills » 01 Apr 2012, 02:06

I have found some interesting data in the book "The Jew in the Modern World".

According to Table XVII "Mass Immigration to the State of Israel: May 1948 - December 1951", the small Jewish state was able to absorb a total of 684,201 immigrants in a period of 44 months. That equates to an average rate of 16,545 per month.

In other words, that number of Jewish immigrants could fit into the very small area of the new Jewish state that was habitable (bearing in mind that over half of its area consisted of desert), and World Jewry was able to provide the capital to finance the transport and settlement of that number, despite the fact that the greater part of European Jewish wealth had been consumed during the war (confiscated by the German Government and used up in its war effort).

The habitable area of Madagascar was far greater than that of the new Jewish State as it was in 1948, and so was physically capable of accommodating in 48 months a far greater number of Jewish immigrants than the 684,201 who could be squeezed into the small area of the Jewish State.

Furthermore, if the German-British war had come to an end in 1940, European Jewish capital would not have been destroyed to the extent that it was in historical reality. Of course it would still have been confiscated by the German Government, as happened in reality, but it could have been used to fund the transportation of European Jews to Madagascar and their settlement there, as was specifically provided for in the conceptual plan produced by Rademacher. In addition to that European Jewish capital, there would have been available the other Jewish capital that in historical reality was used to finance mass Jewish immigration to and settlement in the new Jewish State after 1948.

Given the much greater habitable area of Madagascar by comparison with Palestine, and the Jewish capital available in 1940, it is probable that Madagascar could have absorbed in a 48-month period a far greater number of Jewish immigrants than the new Jewish state did in a similar period in 1948-51. Assuming it could have absorbed five times as many, that would have meant 3.421 million Jewish immigrants in Madagascar absorbed in four years. If the period of transportation and settlement were doubled to eight years, that would equate to an absorption rate of 35,635 Jews per month, a little over twice the rate at which they were absorbed into the new Jewish State between May 1948 and December 1951. That does not seem unfeasible.

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Re: Britain makes peace in 1940 - What happens to the Jews?

#270

Post by wm » 01 Apr 2012, 10:36

Israel had advanced civilization, agriculture and infrastructure in place already. Millions of people were living there. The place is in a middle of a global transportation nexus, in close proximity to Europe and the Middle East. Everything is at arm's reach.

Madagascar is in a middle of nowhere. Its arable lands are hundreds of kilometers inland in the double middle of nowhere. The weather is terrible, cyclones are destroying crops and everything in their paths regularly.
The coastal plains were deadly for Europeans at that time. There were no roads, no infrastructure.
This is why the Polish commission saw no hope there, the place was a Middle Ages hell at the end of the world.

After the WWII, in Israel an east-European farmer, after a short trip from Europe, could jump on a bus, visit some village, buy a piece of land, order a Lamborghini tractor from Italy and fertilizes from France, have the goods delivered in a week or two and using his already acquired knowledge he would produce a massive harvest in a few months' time.

In Madagascar he would simply die from malaria on a dirt street of the decrepit port town of Antsiranana. The arable lands of Madagascar even after so many years are lying useless. It is that hard to do something useful there. The Koreans are trying to rent them for free right now and put them to good use throwing billions of dollars and most modern agriculture machinery at the problem.

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