“Onward to Israel”
Imperial Germany and the Founding of Israel
a 4th Level Completion Thesis
by Fritz G. Meir
submitted in partial fulfillment of a
Master of Arts Degree
Rhode Island University
Imperial Germany and the Founding of Israel
a 4th Level Completion Thesis
by Fritz G. Meir
submitted in partial fulfillment of a
Master of Arts Degree
Rhode Island University
Setting the stage - Zionism, Ashkenazim, the Kaiser, and the Sultan.
In the late 19th Century, Zionist leaders, particularly Theodor Herzl and his supporters, saw the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine as the only ideal solution for the vicious and frequently murderous pogroms faced by Jews in the Russian Empire. Palestine was at the time administered as an undeveloped and impoverished backwater of the Ottoman Empire, with a population variously estimated between 500,000 and 700,000 people. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants were Arabs - Sunni or Shiite Moslems - with a small population of Druze, Christians, and Jews. The majority of Jews resided in the largest town, Jerusalem, where they accounted for 40,000 of town’s 60,000 permanent inhabitants. At certain times of the year, Jerusalem was also crowded by thousands of additional Christian and Moslem pilgrims visiting the region’s holy sites.
Variously, Herzl or his representatives considered either Great Britain or Imperial Germany the most likely major powers with the economic and/or diplomatic power to secure Ottoman support of – or at least acquiescence to – some sort self-governing Jewish homeland in Palestine. The World Zionist headquarters was located in Berlin, and Germany and Britain both possessed a successful, acculturated, and politically influential Jewish population. In addition, thousands of Ashkenazi Jews from Silesia, Poland, and western Russia frequently moved into and through Germany to escape periodic Russian and Polish pogroms. Not infrequently, these impoverished migrants found homes with acculturated Jewish relatives in Germany. This influx of often unwanted Jewish immigration into and through the Reich increased the latent anti-Semitism already present in certain circles of German society. This made an ever-increasing number of German politicians up to and including the Kaiser consider ways to reduce and, hopefully, virtually eliminate the immigration of unaculturated Jews to and through Germany.
In 1898, Herzl and other Zionist leaders found an opportunity to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm II several times during the latter’s fall tour of the Ottoman Empire[1]. The Kaiser immediately saw German sponsorship of a Jewish protectorate in Palestine both as a way to solve his “Immigrant Problem” while at the same time adding to Germany’s colonial empire. Further, a permanent German presence in the Mediterranean would provide German warships an effective base from which to operate in the event of war, presumably against France. In the initial October meetings in Constantinople, the Kaiser privately assured Herzl that he would support the establishment of Israel as a German protectorate in Palestine if the Sultan would agree. Later, however, after meeting with Turkish leaders, the Kaiser again met with the Zionist delegation in Jerusalem, and this time his response was more equivocal. Rather than pledge support, Wilhelm merely noted that “the issue needs further examination and discussion”. At the time, Ottoman support for the Zionist cause was lukewarm at best.
However, Herzl continued to meet with both Turkish and German government officials to promote the idea of a Jewish homeland under German protection in Palestine, and with German assistance he finally secured a 1901 meeting with Sultan Abdulhamid II and his Grand Vizier.
The Zionist proposal was simple: in return for a royal charter to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine under German protection, the Zionists would consolidate and pay off the Ottoman Empire’s foreign debt, regulate Turkish finances, respect Moslem and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and pledge to respect the political and property rights of Moslems and Christians residing in the protectorate.
Although the Sultan was initially cool to the idea, further meetings over the next several years among Zionist, German, and Turkish officials developed a series of tentative understandings that essentially linked Turkish support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine (now officially referred to in German and Zionist correspondence as “Israel”) to an overall diplomatic and military agreement that included a German-Turkish military alliance in the event either party was attacked by another power or powers. These understandings also committed German and Zionist economic support for Turkish industrialization and rearmament, and a commitment by Germany that any eventual Jewish administration in Palestine would respect the political, property, and religious rights of Palestine’s indigenous Moslem and Christian inhabitants.[2] In exchange for this, Turkey agreed to allow unfettered Jewish immigration to Palestine and establishment of a self-governing Jewish protectorate under the umbrella of the Ottoman Empire but protected by Germany. The Ottomans also agreed to lease to Germany a series of naval bases and related territorial concessions in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East. These understandings formed the basis of the Zimmerman Declaration that was released to the world jointly by Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the main Zionist organizations on August 10, 1906.
With Ottoman support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine assured, emigration to the protectorate began in earnest. Initially, most of the emigration was financially sponsored by international Zionist organizations in Europe and the United States, and strongly encouraged the German government, which provided financial incentives to both native German Jews and Ashkenazi immigrants. German interest also focused on surveying and mapping potential naval bases in Haifa, and in Turkish controlled Basra on the Persian Gulf.[3]
In fact, there was initially little interest in the Zionist experiment among most acculturated German Jews, many of whom who spoke only German and had become economically successful in Germany. Most of the initial migrants were Yiddish-speaking people from Austria-Hungary, Silesia, and eastern Prussia, rather than from more cosmopolitan German cities such as Berlin or Hamburg. However, German (and its closely related dialect, Yiddish) became a common lingua-franca in Jewish Palestine, and most of the immigrants saw Imperial Germany and the Kaiser as their most powerful protectors. From 1906 until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, it is estimated that as many as 300,000 Jews from central and eastern Europe migrated to Palestine. In deference to agreements with the Ottomans, most of these prewar immigrants were settled in relatively unpopulated areas on or near the coast, many in the vicinity of the German naval base being constructed at Haifa. Despite the Zionists' initial attempts to live in peace with the local Arabs, violence occasionally broke out leading to the creation of several Jewish self-defense brigades that later became the basis of the nascent Israeli military.
[1] Wilhelm’s interest in the Zionist movement is surprising as are Herzl’s repeated efforts to enlist his assistance in the Zionist endeavor. In his private writings and conversations, the Kaiser often expressed the casual anti-Semitism characteristic of virtually all western and central European aristocrats, which in his case was further exaggerated by his strong self-identification as a crusading Christian ruler against non-Christian enemies. See G. Berliner (1965) The Secret Kaiser: Wilhelm II’s Global Loves and Hates for a good discussion of this paradox.
[2] In signing these agreements, Abdulhamid was fully aware that he was in effect admitting his Empire’s bankruptcy and decline to near-vassal status to Germany. Before signing he is reported to have said “May I not live to see the full effect of my acts today.”
[3] Of these only Haifa ever became a full-time German naval base. Plans for Basra were first foiled by the outcome of the Great War, which saw the establishment of Iraq as a British protectorate, and then by the 1918 Treaty of Washington in which Germany accepted the loss of most of its Colonial empire and agreed to reduce the size of its Navy, reducing the need to develop as many overseas naval bases