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Zionism and the Third Reich
By Mark Weber

Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its
name, “Tel Aviv,” while a swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And
although the ship was Zionist-owned, its captain was a National
Socialist Party member. Many years later a traveler aboard the ship
recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical absurdity.”/1
Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a little-known chapter of
history: The wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s
Third Reich.

Common Aims

Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German
National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal with this
perplexing issue. They agreed that Jews and Germans were distinctly
different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in Germany. Jews
living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans of
the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the “Jewish homeland.” They
could hardly regard themselves as sincere Zionists and simultaneously
claim equal rights in Germany or any other “foreign” country.

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own. “The Jewish
question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,” he wrote in
his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it does not exist,
it is brought in by arriving Jews … I believe I understand
anti-Semitism, which is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this
development as a Jew, without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not social or religious. “It is a national question. To
solve it we must, above all, make it an international political issue
…” Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute
not merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
/2 Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered the world a welcome “final solution
of the Jewish question.”/3

Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the new government that reviewed German-Jewish
relations and formally offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing
“Jewish question.” The first step, it suggested, had to be a frank
recognition of fundamental national differences: /4

Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition. Zionism recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear
…

Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national character, must also come about in the Jewish
national group. For the Jewish people, too, national origin, religion,
common destiny and a sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive
importance in the shaping of its existence. This means that the
egotistical individualism of the liberal era must be overcome and
replaced with a sense of community and collective responsibility …

We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples …

Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these
fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses
in the cultural domain, we — having been brought up in the German
language and German culture — can show an interest in the works and
values of German culture with admiration and internal sympathy …

For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples and
at the present moment especially the German people …

Boycott propaganda — such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways — is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build …

We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.

The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and desires a far-reaching and constructive solution.
For this purpose Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all
peoples, whether pro- or anti-Jewish, because, in its view, we are
dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental problem, the
solution of which all peoples are interested.”/5 A young Berlin rabbi,
Joachim Prinz, who later settled in the United States and became head
of the American Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden
(“We Jews”), that the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant
“Jewry for the Jews.” He explained: “No subterfuge can save us now. In
place of assimilation we desire a new concept: recognition of the
Jewish nation and Jewish race.” /6

Active Collaboration

On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own national interest. As a result, the
Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and Jewish emigration
to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-1941, when the Second World War
prevented extensive collaboration.

Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new life in far-away Palestine.
Nevertheless, more and more German Jews turned to Zionism during this
period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished in Germany
under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s bi-weekly
Jüdische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books were
published. “Zionist work was in full swing” in Germany during those
years, the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes. A Zionist convention held in
Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its composition the vigorous party life
of German Zionists.”/7

The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would
require increased Jewish self-awareness. Jewish schools, Jewish sports
leagues, Jewish cultural organizations — in short, everything that
would encourage this new consciousness and self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended. /8

SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based on his firsthand observations, von
Mildenstein wrote a series of twelve illustrated articles for the
important Berlin daily Der Angriff that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He praised Zionism as a great benefit for
both the Jewish people and the entire world. A Jewish homeland in
Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article, “pointed the way to
curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the Jewish affairs department of the
SS security service in order to support Zionist migration and
development more effectively. /9

The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for more than a thousand years. Our good wishes,
together with official goodwill, go with them.”/10 Four months later,
a similar article appeared in the SS paper: /11

The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the
solidarity of Jewry around the world and its rejection of all
assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures
that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling
of the Jewish problem around the world.

A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships, under the supervision of the Hamburg
rabbinate.” /12

With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question: “Zionists
were encouraged to take their message to the Jewish community, to
collect money, to show films on Palestine and generally to educate
German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure to teach
Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans and to
awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” /13

In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote emigration,
particularly to Palestine. We often received their help when we
required anything from other authorities regarding preparations for emigration.” /14

At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority nationality. A few days later the Zionist
Jüdische Rundschau editorially welcomed the new measures: /15

Germany … is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when it
declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority.
Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again
possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and
Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own
cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to
shape its own schools, its own theatre, and its own sports
associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of
national life …

Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority: Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby
be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of
more tolerable relations between the two nations.

Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community, declared in an interview with the Berlin
daily Der Angriff at the end of 1935: /16

For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict… I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws … seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform entirely with this desire for a separate life
based on mutual respect… This interruption of the process of
dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had been promoted
through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish point of view,
entirely welcome.

Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American
citizen of the Jewish faith, I am a Jew… Hitler was right in one
thing. He calls the Jewish people a race and we are a race.” /17

The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
Lösener, expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in
a November 1935 issue of the official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: /18

If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown
by the Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws
represent the only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For
each nation must have its own state as the outward expression of its
particular nationhood.

In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine. Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the
German flag, Jews were specifically guaranteed the right to display
the blue and white Jewish national banner. The flag that would one day
be adopted by Israel was flown at the Zionist camps and centers in
Hitler’s Germany. /19

Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel Polkes for information about the situation in
Palestine and for help in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah was kept well informed about German plans by a
spy it managed to plant in the Berlin headquarters of the SS. /20
Haganah-SS collaboration even included secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
/21

In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet and continue its work in Germany,
although now under more restricted supervision. /22

Official Reservations

German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the United States, Britain and other countries
to mobilize “their” governments and fellow citizens against Germany.
As long as world Jewry remained implacably hostile toward National
Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority of Jews around
the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the Zionist “promised
land,” a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve”
the international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned,
it would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore limited to support for a
Jewish homeland in Palestine under British control, not a sovereign
Jewish state. /23

A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all Jews around the world, but would only serve as
an additional power base for international Jewry, in much the same way
as Moscow served as a base for international Communism. /24 Reflecting something of a shift in official policy, the German press expressed
much greater sympathy in 1937 for Palestinian Arab resistance to
Zionist ambitions, at a time when tension and conflict between Jews
and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. /25

A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to assume that Germany supports the
formation of a state structure in Palestine under some form of Jewish
control. In view of the anti-German agitation of international Jewry,
Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish state
would help the peaceful development of the nations of the world.”/26
“The proclamation of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated
Palestine,” warned an internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs
section of the SS, “would create for Germany a new enemy, one that
would have a deep influence on developments in the Near East.” Another
SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring special
minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving legal
protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”/27 In January
1939, Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise
warned in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the
formation of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it “would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” /28

Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and misgivings that his policies might contribute to the formation of a
Jewish state, decided to support Jewish migration to Palestine even
more vigorously. The prospect of ridding Germany of its Jews, he
concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. /29

Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS security service concluded a secret alliance
with the clandestine Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle
Jews illegally into Palestine. As a result of this intensive
collaboration, several convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany (including Austria) to Palestine increased
dramatically in 1938 and 1939. Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to
depart in October 1939, but the outbreak of war in September brought
the effort to an end. All the same, German authorities continued to
promote indirect Jewish emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941.
/30 Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized
Zionist “kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to
operate in Hitler’s Germany. /31

The Transfer Agreement

The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was the Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement,
also known as the Haavara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in
August 1933 following talks between German officials and Chaim
Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine
center of the World Zionist Organization. /32

Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold
there by the Jewish-owned Haavara company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the
sales was given to the Jewish emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine
in an amount corresponding to his deposit in Germany. German goods
poured into Palestine through the Haavara, which was supplemented a
short time later with a barter agreement by which Palestine oranges
were exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery,
and other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and development capital to Palestine, while
simultaneously serving the German goal of freeing the country of an
unwanted alien group.

Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the
Haavara arrangement, stressed that the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur Ruppin, a Zionist Organization
emigration specialist who had helped negotiate the pact, pointed out
that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the boycott
movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a result of
the agreement…” /33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting in Switzerland, overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow government” in Palestine) took over direct control of
the Ha’avara, which remained in effect until the Second World War
forced its abandonment.

Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans Döhle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it
cost Germany the foreign exchange that the products exported to
Palestine through the pact would bring if sold elsewhere. The Haavara
monopoly sale of German goods to Palestine through a Jewish agency
naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there. Official German
support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German markets throughout
the Arab world. The British government also resented the arrangement.
/34 A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to
the “foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Haavara. 3/5

A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Haavara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the very
rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided not
only the largest source of money (from Germany!), but also the most
intelligent group of immigrants, and finally it brought to the country
the machines and industrial products essential for development.” The
main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was the emigration of
large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most desirable target country
as far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the
important drawbacks pointed out by Consul Döhle and others. The
Interior Minister, it went on, had concluded that the disadvantages of
the agreement now outweighed the advantages and that, therefore, it
should be terminated. /36

Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided to maintain the Haavara arrangement. The goal of
removing Jews from Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. /37

The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in foreign countries could help German Jews
emigrate to Palestine. Almost $900,000 was eventually channeled
through the Intria to German Jews in Palestine. /38 Other European
countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration concluded agreements
with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In 1937 Poland
authorized the Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By
late summer 1939, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had
signed similar arrangements. The outbreak of war in September 1939,
however, prevented large-scale implementation of these agreements. /39

Achievements of Haavara

Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some
Ha’avara emigrants transferred considerable personal wealth from
Germany to Palestine. As Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many
of these people, especially in the late 1930s, were allowed to
transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories — indeed rough
replicas of their very existence.”/40

The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million German marks (then equivalent to more than
$40 million). This amount included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8
million) provided by the Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.
/41

Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the
1930s, he pointed out. Several major industrial enterprises were built
with the capital from Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and
the Lodzia textile firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods and capital,
concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in Jewish Palestine”
and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of the State of
Israel.”/42

The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German Foreign Office circular bulletin
reported, with some misgiving, that “the transfer of Jewish property
out of Germany [through the Ha’avara agreement] contributed to no
small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”/43

Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity made possible by the influx German capital and
the Haavara transfers to the private and public sectors were of
greatest importance for the country’s development. Many new industries
and commercial enterprises were established in Jewish Palestine, and
numerous companies that are enormously important even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”/44
Dr. Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively contributed” to the economic, social, cultural
and educational development of Palestine’s Jewish community. /45

The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third Reich did more than any other
government during the 1930s to support Jewish development in
Palestine.

Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler

In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel,”
better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its leader, Avraham Stern, had
recently broken with the radical nationalist “National Military
Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over the group’s attitude toward
Britain, which had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of
Palestine. Stern regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.

This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of Germany” is worth quoting at some length: /46

In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation. (“Jew-free Europe”)

The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.

The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.

The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:

1. Common interests can exist between a European New Order based on
the German concept and the true national aspirations of the Jewish
people as embodied by the NMO.

2. Cooperation is possible between the New Germany and a renewed, folkish-national Jewry [Hebräertum].

3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by treaty with the German Reich, would
be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening the future German
position of power in the Near East.

On the basis of these considerations, and upon the condition that the
German Reich government recognize the national aspirations of the
Israel Freedom Movement mentioned above, the NMO in Palestine offers
to actively take part in the war on the side of Germany.

This offer by the NMO could include military, political and
informational activity within Palestine and, after certain
organizational measures, outside as well. Along with this the Jewish
men of Europe would be militarily trained and organized in military
units under the leadership and command of the NMO. They would take
part in combat operations for the purpose of conquering Palestine,
should such a front by formed.

The indirect participation of the Israel Freedom Movement in the New
Order of Europe, already in the preparatory stage, combined with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem on the basis
of the national aspirations of the Jewish people mentioned above,
would greatly strengthen the moral foundation of the New Order in the
eyes of all humanity.

The cooperation of the Israel Freedom Movement would also be
consistent with a recent speech by the German Reich Chancellor, in
which Hitler stressed that he would utilize any combination and
coalition in order to isolate and defeat England.

There is no record of any German response. Acceptance was very
unlikely anyway because by this time German policy was decisively
pro-Arab. /47 Remarkably, Stern’s group sought to conclude a pact with
the Third Reich at a time when stories that Hitler was bent on
exterminating Jews were already in wide circulation. Stern apparently
either did not believe the stories or he was willing to collaborate
with the mortal enemy of his people to help bring about a Jewish
state. /48

An important Lehi member at the time the group made this offer was
Yitzhak Shamir, who later served as Israel’s Foreign Minister and
then, during much of the 1980s and until June 1992, as Prime Minister.
As Lehi operations chief following Stern’s death in 1942, Shamir
organized numerous acts of terror, including the November 1944

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