In the interests of the National Socialist state - Nazi Zionism

[wm]

In January 1935, the Bavarian political police issued a memo clearly stating its preference for Zionism:

The revival of the inactive Jewish youth organizations, which give vocational teaming of Jews in farming and crafts prior to their emigration to Palestine, is in the interests of the National Socialist state... 

The members of the Zionist organizations are, in view of the activities directed toward emigration to Palestine, not to be nested with the same strictness which is necessary toward members of the German Jewish organizations (assimilationists). 



A similar law in February was issued that temporarily forbade the meeting of any Jewish organization which advocated that Jews should remain in Germany.
The Nazis left no doubt that they preferred Zionist youth groups and ideology to the message of the CV and the Bund. 


Zionist youth groups like Betar were allowed to wear uniforms indoors as the Nazis hoped Jewish youths would be attracted to clubs actively working for Jewish emigration.
The Dilemma of German-Jewish Youths in the Third Reich by Glenn R. Sharfman

CV - Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith,
Bund - Federation of Jewish Youth.

Betar formation in Berlin (1936)

Young_Jewish_members_from_German_Chapter_of_Betar_in_Berlin,_1936.jpg (39.96 KiB) Viewed 1269 times

[wm]

Mildenstein had taken an early interest in Zionism, even going so far as to attend Zionist conferences to help deepen his understanding of the movement. He actively promoted Zionism as a way out of the official impasse on the Jewish question: as a way of making Germany Judenrein (free of Jews).
Some Zionists, whose movement had grown tremendously in popularity among German Jews since Hitler came to power, co-operated.
On 7 April 1933, the Juedische Rundschau, the bi-weekly paper of the Zionist movement, declared that of all Jewish groups only the Zionist Federation of Germany was capable of approaching the Nazis in good faith as "honest partners".

The Federation then commissioned Kurt Tuchler, an acquaintance of Mildenstein, to make contact with possible Zionist sympathizers within the Nazi Party. Tuchler hoped to convince von Mildenstein's circle that the Nazis should openly promote Jewish nationalism. Tuchler asked von Mildenstein to write something positive about Jewish Palestine in the press. Mildenstein agreed, on condition that he be allowed to visit the country in person, with Tuchler as his guide. So, in the spring of 1933 a party of four set out from Berlin, consisting of von Mildenstein, Tuchler, and their wives.
They spent a month together in Palestine, and von Mildenstein began to write a series of articles for Der Angriff, a Nazi Party newspaper in Berlin, founded by Joseph Goebbels in 1927. According to Lenni Brenner, Von Mildenstein himself remained in Palestine for a total of six months before his return to Germany, and He even learned a few words of Hebrew.
In August 1933 Hitler's government and German Zionists entered into the Haavara Agreement, which encouraged emigration by allowing Jews to transfer property and funds from Germany to Palestine.

On his return to Berlin, von Mildenstein's suggestion that the solution to the Jewish problem lay in mass migration to Palestine was accepted by his superiors within the SS.
Between 9 September and 9 October 1934, Der Angriff published a series of twelve quite pro-Zionist reports by Mildenstein, entitled A Nazi Goes to Palestine, in honor of which the newspaper issued a commemorative medallion, cast with the swastika on one side and the Star of David on the other.

medal.jpg (85.83 KiB) Viewed 1264 times

From August 1934 to June 1936, von Mildenstein worked in the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the security service of the SS, in Section II/112, in charge of the Jewish Desk, with the title of Judenreferent (Jewish Affairs Officer). This title meant that he was responsible for reporting on "Jewish Affairs" under the overall command of Reinhard Heydrich.
During those years, von Mildenstein favored a policy of encouraging Germany's Jewish population to emigrate to Palestine, and in pursuit of this policy he developed positive contacts with Zionist organizations. SS officials were even instructed to encourage the activities of the Zionists within the Jewish community, who were to be favored over the assimilationists, said to be the real danger to Nazism.

Adolf Eichmann, later one of the most significant organisers of the Holocaust, believed that his big break came in 1934, when he had a meeting with von Mildenstein, a fellow Austrian, in the Wilhelmstrasse and was invited to join Mildenstein's department. Eichmann later stated that Mildenstein rejected the vulgar anti-semitism of Streicher. Soon after his arrival in the section Mildenstein gave Eichmann a book on Judaism by Adolf Böhm, a leading Jew from Vienna.

In the summer of 1935, then holding the rank of SS-Untersturmführer, von Mildenstein attended the 19th Congress of the Zionist Organization in Lucerne, Switzerland, as an observer attached to the German Jewish delegation.

Von Mildenstein's apparently pro-Zionist line was overtaken by events, and after a dispute with Reinhard Heydrich in 1936 he was removed from his post and transferred to the Foreign Ministry's press department. He had fallen out of favor because migration to Palestine was not proceeding at a fast enough rate.

[wm]

Anti-Semitism became official German government policy when Hitler was named Chancellor of the German Reich on January 30, 1933. The spring of 1933 also witnessed the beginning of a period of private cooperation between Zionism and the German fascist regime to increase the inflow of German Jewish immigrants and capital to Palestine.

The Zionist authorities succeeded in keeping this cooperation a secret for a long period, and only since the beginning of the 1960's have criticisms of it been expressed here and there. The Zionist reaction has usually consisted of declarations that their onetime contacts with Nazi Germany were undertaken solely to save the lives of Jews. But the contacts were all the more remarkable became they took plan at a time when many Jews and Jewish organizations demanded a boycott of Nazi Germany.

On the occasion of the Sixteenth Convention of the Israeli Communist Party, a paper was submitted at the outset of the conference in which it was stated that
after Hitler's taking of power in Germany, when all anti-fascist forces in the world and the great majority of the Jewish organizations proclaimed a boycott against Nazi Germany, contacts and collaboration existed between Zionist leaders and the Hitlerite government.

The paper quoted the Zionist official Eliner Livneh who had been editor of the Haganah organ during the Second World War) as declaring, during a symposium organized by the Israeli newspaper Alaaria in 1966, "that for the Zionist leadership the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means" (i.e., establishing a Jewish state in Palestine). To question the reaction of the Zionist movement to German fascism, which in the course of its twelve-year rule, murdered millions of Jews, is a taboo in the eyes of the Zionist leaders. Only rarely it is possible to come across authentic evidence or documents concerning these occurrences.
The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941 by Klaus Polkehn

[wm]

Tel Aviv Was Built With Raw Materials From Nazi Germany
...
The so-called Transfer Agreements of 1933 let German-Jewish families sell their assets and deposit the money in a bank account in Germany. Amid the economic crisis at the time, Jews weren't allowed to take their money out of Germany. But in return for some of the money deposited, they were issued certificates allowing them to immigrate to Palestine.

The plan also included the purchase by the departing Jews of German products such as concrete and machinery, which was sent to Palestine, where the new immigrants were compensated for some of their former assets. The immigrants were permitted to send over a shipping crate with some of their belongings.
...
the Transfer Agreements enabled more than 50,000 German Jews to immigrate, in addition to the transfer of huge amounts of goods from Nazi Germany that helped develop the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Ottoman and then British Palestine.
...
The Transfer Agreements injected life into the Yishuv's economy; the volume of imports, Trezib told Haaretz, was huge; in the 1933-1939 period this number doubled the export volume of the longer period of 1919 to 1933. The securities market, which had barely existed, also flourished.
...
The textile industry also flourished because of the Transfer Agreements.

Porters hauling German immigrants' belongings under the 1933 Transfer Agreements with the Jewish authorities in Mandate Palestine.