This what-if query was inspired by pages 215-216 of W.D. Rubinstein's, The Myth of Rescue
Rubinstein page 215-216
So, let's posit an Israel established about 10 years earlier. The Peel Commission's recommendations are adopted in the ATL, and mandatory Palestine is partitioned between Jordan, and an independent Jewish state of smaller dimensions than Israel (it does not have the Negev, which goes to Jordan, or the Jaffa-to-Jerusalem corridor, which remains British for the meantime). Formal partition is implemented no later than early 1938.
First off, will Hitler's military priorities change in the way that Rubinstein imagines? Would Hitler make destruction of the Jewish state in Palestine an urgent priority goal, perhaps stripping resources from other campaigns in order to support the Afrika Korps more? For instance, Hitler postpones Barbarossa a year to pursue the defeat of the British in the Middle East and invasion, occupation and destruction of Israel in 1941?
In the realm of Hitler's intentions and what his followers have been ideologically primed to accept, it seems like a Middle East campaign to destroy a Jewish state could be very attractive to the Nazis. On the other hand, delaying Barbarossa slows down the German race's acquisition of permanent Lebensbraum. A Middle East campaign would destroy racial enemies, but offers no land for German settlement, and leaves a major power on the European continent to coexist with Nazi Germany for at least another year.
How might Hitler's military priorities have changed vis-a-vis the Middle East with Israel established in 1938?
Now, even supposing Hitler is willing to commit more to the Middle East, willing to double or treble the divisions in the Afrika Korps, is he able to do so?
Even supposing he is willing to postpone Barbarossa to complete the conquest of the Middle East in the meantime, would the logistical obstacles to supporting any larger force than OTL across the Mediterranean simply have been too great to allow the Germans to complete the conquest of Palestine, regardless of Hitler's priorities and intentions?
Rubinstein page 215-216
If the State of Israel had come into existence ten or fifteen years earlier, would this have helped [rescue people from the Holocaust] in a central way? Self-evidently, a very significant number of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe would have fled there prior to Hitler’s invasions of their countries; if Palestine/Israel had survived the war unscathed, presumably those Jews, too, would have survived the war. Yet, as we have seen previously, it is easy to overestimate the political clientele for Zionism among eastern European Jewry prior to the Holocaust; at the time, even when Nazi Germany existied, most Jews were adherents of other ideologies – Bund Socialism, Strict Orthodoxy, Marxism – which were explicitly anti-Zionist, and showed no interest in migrating to the Hebrew-speaking Yishuv, economically primitive and under constant Arab threat. Some historians have also argued that had Israel existed during the war, it might have saved Europe’s Jews in other ways. For instance, Lucy S. Dawidowicz, seldom a proponent of overly sanguine ‘might-have-beens’ of Holocaust rescue, nevertheless states without qualification that:
"Without political power Jews had no chance for survival. Had a Jewish state existed in 1939, even one as small as Israel today, but militarily competent, the terrible story of six million dead might have had another outcome. As a member of the Allied nations, contributing its manpower and military resources to the conduct of the war, a Jewish state could have exercised some leverage with the great powers in the alliance. Even though it would not have diverted Hitler from his determination to murder the Jews, a Jewish state might have been able to wield sufficient military and political clout to have inhibited Slovakia, Rumania, and Croatia from collaborating with the Germans in that murder. A Jewish state could have persuaded neutral countries to give Jewish refugees safe passage. A Jewish state would have ensured a safe havem. A Jewish state would have made the difference."It is genuinely surprising to read-alas-such a naïve and improbable statement in the writings of an author as astute and intelligence as Lucy S. Dawidowicz. Unfortunately, even if Israel had existed and attempted to use its ‘military and political clout’ to change the anti-semitic policies of ‘Slovakia, Rumania and Croatia’, it was Hitler and Hitler alone who had the final say about the fate of the Jews in these countries, just as he did in Hungary. Indeed had an independent Jewish state existed in Palestine during the war, the fate of the Jews may have been very different, but not in the way imagine here: Hitler might well have made its conquest and destruction a much higher priority than it was actually given. Rommel had only ten divisions in North Africa; with the destruction of Israel and the extermination of perhaps 1 million Jews there as his goal, Hitler might have agreed to give him twenty, thirty or whatever number of Axis divisions was necessary for a successful drive through Egypt (incidentally seizing the Suez Canal) to Palestine, doubtless fanning Arab anti-British and anti-Jewish nationalism every inch of the way. Given what we know about Hitler, which possibility was more likely?
So, let's posit an Israel established about 10 years earlier. The Peel Commission's recommendations are adopted in the ATL, and mandatory Palestine is partitioned between Jordan, and an independent Jewish state of smaller dimensions than Israel (it does not have the Negev, which goes to Jordan, or the Jaffa-to-Jerusalem corridor, which remains British for the meantime). Formal partition is implemented no later than early 1938.
First off, will Hitler's military priorities change in the way that Rubinstein imagines? Would Hitler make destruction of the Jewish state in Palestine an urgent priority goal, perhaps stripping resources from other campaigns in order to support the Afrika Korps more? For instance, Hitler postpones Barbarossa a year to pursue the defeat of the British in the Middle East and invasion, occupation and destruction of Israel in 1941?
In the realm of Hitler's intentions and what his followers have been ideologically primed to accept, it seems like a Middle East campaign to destroy a Jewish state could be very attractive to the Nazis. On the other hand, delaying Barbarossa slows down the German race's acquisition of permanent Lebensbraum. A Middle East campaign would destroy racial enemies, but offers no land for German settlement, and leaves a major power on the European continent to coexist with Nazi Germany for at least another year.
How might Hitler's military priorities have changed vis-a-vis the Middle East with Israel established in 1938?
Now, even supposing Hitler is willing to commit more to the Middle East, willing to double or treble the divisions in the Afrika Korps, is he able to do so?
Even supposing he is willing to postpone Barbarossa to complete the conquest of the Middle East in the meantime, would the logistical obstacles to supporting any larger force than OTL across the Mediterranean simply have been too great to allow the Germans to complete the conquest of Palestine, regardless of Hitler's priorities and intentions?