Jewish homeland in Italian East Africa.

What if the Nazis and Italians decide to deport the Jews to the Italian colonies in East Africa, would it have any effect? lets assume that by January 1939 60% have been deported.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Jewish Pirates would be Awesome.

On a serious not, it would be a disaster for the Jews. The region is awful and would be a systematic extermination by means of starvation.
 
What if the Nazis and Italians

The Nazis and the Fascists, or the Germans and Italians.

decide to deport the Jews to the Italian colonies in East Africa, would it have any effect? lets assume that by January 1939 60% have been deported.

Until 1939, the Italians had no intention to get rid of their small Jewish minority, and the Germans were more than happy to let any German Jew who could and would get away on his own, do so. Since they tended to deprive them of their wealth before letting them go, that was highly preferable to having to pay for their passage to AOI.
So this brings up the question, 60% of whom? Of the German Jews who could not afford to leave on their own? Or what?
 
The Nazis and the Fascists, or the Germans and Italians.



Until 1939, the Italians had no intention to get rid of their small Jewish minority, and the Germans were more than happy to let any German Jew who could and would get away on his own, do so. Since they tended to deprive them of their wealth before letting them go, that was highly preferable to having to pay for their passage to AOI.
So this brings up the question, 60% of whom? Of the German Jews who could not afford to leave on their own? Or what?

60% of German Jews,which didn't leave on their own.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Jewish Pirates would be Awesome.

On a serious not, it would be a disaster for the Jews. The region is awful and would be a systematic extermination by means of starvation.

There is actual a fair bit of decent farmland in Ethiopia, far better than early 20th Century Palestine.

The difference is that the OTL Zionists had the biggest concerted effort in history to reshape their land. They drained swamps on a huge scale, invented hundreds of new agricultural techniques, heck, at their most ambitious, they attempted to redesign human settlement itself. Ethiopia, in contrast, didn't have a near-bottomless pit of resources like the Zionist project did, instead, they were subject to poverty, unfair global trade practices and lived under a government that grossly mismanaged an attempt to collectivise the farms.

If the Zionists put their mind, and their money, to it, they could make a thriving homeland almost anywhere. With all that money however, it becomes incredibly tempting for the natives to sell up, a Palestinian or Ethiopian landowner will only learn after a generation that the plot of seemingly desolate land he sold actually had a much greater agricultural potential than he could have ever imagined. Within a generation, a thousand-year old agricultural class will be completely displaced.
 
There is actual a fair bit of decent farmland in Ethiopia,

yes...

If the Zionists put their mind, and their money, to it,...

...but this is not what was postulated. It was the forcible deportation by Nazi Germany of the German Jews only. An operation enforced already in peacetime, with the necessary accomplicity of Italy, which is not going to be well-liked throughout the world.
While the Zionists would probably, for some reason, still want to go to Zion.
 
I think the date of January 1939 is key here. It's only two months after Kristallnacht in November 1938 when, for the first time, the German government itself actively and openly abetted persecution of the Jewish population.

After Kristallnacht, most Jews were desperate to leave Germany for any country that would take them. I'm reminded of the movie "Ship of Fools" as well as (not recalling the exact date) when Germany deported Polish Jews and, since Poland did not want them, they remained pitifully for some days in a no man's land between Germany and Poland.

Personally, I think that Mussolini could have gained a great deal of worldwide goodwill by opening up Italian East Africa, much like he did in 1934 when he opposed Hitler over Austria.

By this time, Italy was having trouble getting as many Italians to settle in Italian East Africa as desired. At one stroke, they could have 300,000 skilled and educated new citizens (60 percent of Germany's half million Jewish population) deliriously happy at being saved and a chance to start over who would help truly turn the former Ethiopia into the region's breadbasket.

There is also a German film, based on a true story, about German Jews migrating to Africa, to next-door Kenya during this same time period. Here is a review of it by Roger Ebert found at IMDB...
-----------------
"Nowhere In Africa"

BY ROGER EBERT / March 22, 2003

It is so rare to find a film where you become quickly, simply absorbed in the story. You want to know what happens next. Caroline Link's "Nowhere in Africa" is a film like that, telling the story of a German Jewish family who escapes from the Nazis by going to live and work on a farm in rural Kenya. It's a hard-scrabble farm in a dry region, and the father, who used to be a lawyer, is paid a pittance to be the manager. At first, his wife hates it. Their daughter, who is 5 when she arrives, takes to Africa with an immediate and instinctive love.

We see the mother and daughter, Jettel and Regina Redlich (Juliane Kohler and Lea Kurka), in their comfortable world in Frankfurt. The mother likes clothes, luxury, elegance. Her husband, Walter (Merab Ninidze), reading the ominous signs of the rise of Nazism, has gone ahead to East Africa and now writes asking them to join him--"and please bring a refrigerator, which we will really need, and not our china or anything like that." What Jettel brings is a ballroom gown, which will be spectacularly unnecessary.

The marriage is a troubled one. Jettel thinks herself in a godforsaken place and Walter, who works hard but is not a natural farmer, has little sympathy with her. Their sex life fades: "You only let me under your shirt when I'm a lawyer," he tells her once when his advance is turned away. But little Regina loves every moment of every day. She makes friends with the African children her age, with that uncomplicated acceptance that children have, and seems to learn their language overnight. She picks up their lore and stories, and is at home in the bush.

Jettel, meanwhile, has a rocky start with Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), the farm cook. He is a tall, proud, competent man from the regional tribe, the Masai, who soon loves Regina like his own daughter. Jettel makes the mistake of treating him like a servant when he sees himself as a professional. He never compromises local custom regarding cooks. Asked to help dig a well, he explains, "I'm a cook. Cooks don't dig in the ground." And for that matter, "Men don't carry water."

They are outsiders here in three ways: as white people, as Germans and as Jews. The first presents the least difficulty because the tribal people on the land are friendly and helpful. Their status as Germans creates an ironic situation when war is declared and they are rounded up by the British colonial authorities as enemy aliens; this is absurd, since they are refugees from the enemy, but before the mistake can be corrected, they are transported to Nairobi and interred--ironically, in a luxury hotel that has been pressed into service. As high tea is served to them, a British officer asks the hotel manager if the prisoners need to be treated so well. "These are our standards and we are not willing to compromise," the manager replies proudly.

To the Africans, they are not Jews, Germans or aliens, but simply white farmers; the rise of anti-colonialism is still in the future in this district. Regina, so young when she left Europe, therefore hasn't tasted anti-Semitism until her parents send her into town to a boarding school. Now a pretty teenager (played by Karoline Eckertz), she is surprised to hear the headmaster say, "The Jews will stand outside the classroom as we recite the Lord's Prayer."

As time passes and the beauty and complexity of the land becomes clear to Jettel, she begins slowly to feel more at home. Her husband is vindicated in moving his family to Africa; letters arrive with sad news of family members deported to death camps. But he always considers Africa a temporary haven, and his attention is focused on a return to Europe. Each member of the Redlich family has a separate arc: The mother grows to like Africa as the father likes it less, and their daughter loves it always.

The story is told through the eyes of the daughter (Eckertz is the narrator); Link's screenplay is based on a best-selling German novel by Stefanie Zweig, who treats such matters as Jettel's brief affair with a British officer as it might have been perceived, and interpreted, by the daughter.

Link's style permits the narrative to flow as it might in memory, and although there are dramatic high points (such as a fire and a plague of locusts), they are not interruptions but part of the rhythm of African life, and are joined by the sacrifice of a lamb (for rain) and an all-night ritual ceremony that the young girl will never forget.

Link's film, which won five German Film Awards, including best film, has now been nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign language film, and comes after another extraordinary film, her 1996 "Beyond Silence," also an Oscar nominee. That one was also about the daughter of a troubled marriage; the heroine was the hearing child of a deaf couple. I respond strongly to Link's interest in good stories and vivid, well-defined characters; this film is less message than memory, depending on the strength of the material to make all of the points. We feel as if we have lived it.
 
I wonder what effect this would have on Israel, if the Jews are able to live well in Ethiopia, not all of them would want to emigrate to Isreal when(if?) it is established.
Also Jews taking the land of the indigenous famers in Italian East Afirca, might have the consequence of making the decolonialization movements anti-semitc.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
The biggest effect is that Ethiopia is to big to be taken over by the Jews, I think it could go both way either they would help stabilise the country in the post-WWII periode and help transform Ethiopia into if not a modern economy, but at least less of a disaster than in OTL, the other way is that the Ethiopian deport them in the post-WWII periode and they end up in Israel by default*. The positive effect would likely result in a good relationship with Israel and no communist dictartorship.

*which would still in TTL become a independent state,
 
Early 20th c Palestine had plenty of good farmland. The idea that it was a desert is a myth. Also, Zionist immigration was initially gradual and could build on the significant infrastructural improvements the Ottomans made, and it also was part of the world economic system, i.e. food and other goods could be easily shipped there if necessary. Ethiopia did not have these advantages, and the good farmland there had the inconvenient presence of a very large number of Ethiopians ruled by a government with no particular incentive to try to displace them in favor of Jewish settlers.

Any attempt to do so would lead to massive bloodshed, economic dislocation, and famine and disease for everyone. It's one thing to send large numbers of people to a relatively advanced place like Palestine and another to dump them in an undeveloped, isolated, and extremely poor place like Italian East Africa.

There is actual a fair bit of decent farmland in Ethiopia, far better than early 20th Century Palestine.

The difference is that the OTL Zionists had the biggest concerted effort in history to reshape their land. They drained swamps on a huge scale, invented hundreds of new agricultural techniques, heck, at their most ambitious, they attempted to redesign human settlement itself. Ethiopia, in contrast, didn't have a near-bottomless pit of resources like the Zionist project did, instead, they were subject to poverty, unfair global trade practices and lived under a government that grossly mismanaged an attempt to collectivise the farms.

If the Zionists put their mind, and their money, to it, they could make a thriving homeland almost anywhere. With all that money however, it becomes incredibly tempting for the natives to sell up, a Palestinian or Ethiopian landowner will only learn after a generation that the plot of seemingly desolate land he sold actually had a much greater agricultural potential than he could have ever imagined. Within a generation, a thousand-year old agricultural class will be completely displaced.
 
60% of German Jews,which didn't leave on their own.

You still have not defined the number.
"Didn't leave on their own", by what date? Obviously the number of Jews who had not left on their own by the end of 1937 is not the same as the number of Jews who had not left on their own by the end of 1938.
 
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