“Onward to Israel”
Imperial Germany and the Founding of Israel
Imperial Germany and the Founding of Israel
Zionism, Ashkenazim, the Kaiser, and the Sultan.
Even before the outbreak of the Great War, Zionist leaders, particularly Theodor Herzl, saw Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire as essential partners if the dream of a Jewish state in Palestine was to become a reality. Ottoman support was necessary since Palestine was under direct Turkish control. The German Kaiser’s support was considered valuable because Germany was an important supporter of Ottoman ambitions and in the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in the face of pressures from Balkan independence movements, British and French colonialism, and the Russian Empire.
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 . 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 his 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, the Zionists would consolidate and pay off the Ottoman Empire’s foreign debt and help to regulate Turkish finances.
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 secret protocols that essentially linked Turkish support of a Jewish homeland (now officially referred to in correspondence as “Israel”) to an overall diplomatic and military agreement that included a firm German-Turkish military alliance, and German and Zionist economic support for Turkish industrialization\rearmament. In exchange for this, Turkey agreed to lease to Germany a series of naval bases and related territorial concessions in the Levant and Near East in the event of War with France, Britain, and/or Russia. Among these territorial concessions was Palestine, which would become a home for Jews of the Diaspora. As a result of this clear support for Zionist aims by Turkey and Germany, most key Jewish leaders in Europe ceased believing that any other European power could be a valuable patron in the struggle for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, despite the presence of several important Zionist organizations in Britain.
With Ottoman support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine assured, emigration to the protectorate began in earnest. Initially, most of the settlement was sponsored solely by international Zionist organizations in Europe and the United States. German interest focused primarily surveying and mapping potential naval bases in Haifa, and in Turkish controlled Basra on the Persian Gulf. 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 immigrant saw Imperial German and the Kaiser as their most powerful protectors. From 1903 until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, it is estimated that as many as 1.2 million Jews from central Europe migrated to Palestine. Jewish settlement tended to be concentrated along the coast, although there were isolated settlements throughout the area.
The Great War
Although mercifully short, the Great War ripped apart several prewar European empires and radically restructured the colonial and non-western world. Germany was the clear victor, however this victory was quite possibly only made possible by radical changes in German prewar mobilization and military planning early in 1914. German military leaders were well aware that their nation could not survive a long two-from war against both France and Britain, and most members of the General Staff considered compact, modern, industrialized France to be Germany’s most dangerous enemy but, paradoxically, the one that could be most quickly defeated. Accordingly, repeated plans drawn up by General Helmuth von Moltke featured a massive invasion of northern France through neutral Belgium, bypassing the well-defended Franco-German border. Anticipating that Russian mobilization would be slow and ponderous, Germany would adopt a defensive posture in the east. Although promising the possibility of quick military success over France, violating Belgian neutrality would virtually ensure immediate and full-strength British entry to the war on the continent.
This strategy was also problematic to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who throughout his reign liked to imagine Britain as a natural friend of the German Empire – a friend that had unfortunately fallen victim “at present to irrational fears regarding our legitimate and fraternal desire to join with the British Empire as an equal in bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathen world.” The Kaiser, his civilian advisors, and many in the Reichstag, all understood that Britain would feel obliged to assist France and Russia in the event of war between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. However, they also believed that unless especially provoked, Britain’s military commitment to the Entente would be limited, consisting of little more than the age-old British stratagem of naval blockade and colonial war, commitments that might be swiftly reconsidered should either France or Russia be decisively defeated. Increasingly the Kaiser came to believe that an invasion of Belgium would be such a provocation, and further, if France appeared likely to fall to German armies this in itself would provoke a full-scale British intervention on the continent. On February 5, 1914 he ordered his General Staff to prepare entirely new plans featuring a defensive stance along the common Franco-German border and a massive invasion of Russia. In retrospect, this decision may have saved his reign and the German Empire.
Although none of the European powers really wanted war, growing mistrust – especially between Britain and Germany over the latter’s naval and colonial aims – made it inevitable that a spark would eventually ignite one, and that spark was provided by the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists in the summer of 1914. The purpose of this work is not to discuss the Great War in detail, so the following discussion is necessarily brief, focusing on broad outcomes of the conflict, especially as these ultimately related to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine.
Although often referred to as a “World War”, the 1914-17 conflict actually involved only a handful of European nations (plus Japan as essentially an extension of British naval aims in the Pacific) and the Ottoman Empire. After some dithering, Italy opted not to enter the war as a belligerent, despite its prewar alliances with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Other than Serbia, which was quickly defeated by Austria-Hungary in 1914, the Entente added no new allies other than rebellious Arabs in the Ottoman Empire and a variety of nationalist terrorists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The United States made its intention clear to remain neutral and President Woodrow Wilson offered his offices to help mediate peace, an offer that was eventually accepted by most of the warring powers in 1917.
This neutrality was tested in late 1914 when Germany announced its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Had the 1915 attack on RMS Lusitania carrying a large number of US passengers to Britain resulted in the ship’s sinking, this could have led ultimately to US involvement. However, only one torpedo struck the stern of the ship and apparently failed to detonate. Nonetheless the attack was universally condemned in the US press and in Congress as reckless piracy. In response to US protests, Germany abandoned its “sink on sight” policy and, after a few months, the potential crisis was forgotten.
As anticipated – or more accurately hoped – by the Germans, Russian forces were soon in full retreat in Poland, Kurland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. However, ultimate German victory in the east was only assured after the January Revolution of 1916 in St. Petersburg forced the Czar and his family to abdicate and flee through Finland to Sweden. Several coups and counter coups between royalists, socialists, and nationalists followed. During this period of chaos, Russian military resistance essentially ceased, and Germany was able to seize much of western Russia and forge a direct link through the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. This gave the German Empire vast swathes of land, some of which was actually of little interest to Germany and was bargained away in 1917 to the newly established, but unstable, Federated Russian Republic in the Treaty of Warsaw.
Also, as expected, France bled itself dry by repeated assaults on entrenched German armies along the German border. French commanders never lost their belief that their poilus fortified with the elan and an offensive spirit could eventually overcome German machine guns, barbed wire, and mortars. By the fall of 1916, France had lost nearly 2,000,000 men in in such attacks, far more than suffered by all other combatants in the Great War, with the possible exception of Russia. Although the Germans did occasionally give ground in the face of these mass charges, it was the French who suffered. Troop morale dropped and revolutionary sentiments multiplied. Finally, in April 1916, French troops across the front mutinied when given yet another order to charge the German lines. News of this rebellion spread to Paris, leading ultimately to the political collapse of the 3rd Republic. Backed by nationalist elements, units commanded by a young army officer named Charles de Gaulle seized power in Paris on the pretext of preempting a radical socialist revolution and ending the war. Having achieved all of its possible aims in the east, Germany offered de Gaulle’s people very favorable terms: no territorial claims against France or its colonial empire, surprisingly modest reparations, and a joint agreement to permanently demilitarize the Franco-German border. De Gaulle’s self-styled “Fourth Republic” (actually a military junta), signed a separate armistice with Germany on this basis on June 6, 1916. Because unofficial German war aims widely discussed in the press and Reichstag were much more draconian, De Gaulle’s junta was able to present this armistice to the French public as a military victory.
With both allies dead or dying by the end of 1916, the British government began to consider making peace. This was certainly helped by the peace offered to France by Germany, which both preserved the independence and power of France as a western European bulwark against Germany and avoided any border changes in the west (such as German occupation zones in France) that would more directly threaten Britain.
However, unlike France and Russia, Britain was in a very strong position and did not depend on German mercies. With her entire military strength focused outside of Europe and a Royal Navy that dominated the sea, she had quickly seized all of Germany’s colonies in Africa while her Japanese ally had done the same in China and the Pacific. Britain and her Arab nationalist clients had wrested all of Arabia from Ottoman control. Other than slight damage from zeppelin airship and naval coastal raids, Britain was untouched by war and, with the assistance of the Imperial Dominions, had raised a large and well-equipped army that was largely intact and still expanding.
The most important factor in ending the war occurred in the North Sea, when Britain won an overwhelming victory over the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland (Skaagerak) in June 1916. This virtually eliminated the German Navy as a serious threat to British naval dominance. Against the loss of one battleship, three battlecruisers, two obsolete armored cruisers, and fewer than 6000 men, an overwhelming force of the Royal Navy under Lord Jellicoe succeeded in trapping and eliminating a large element of the German Navy – sinking or mortally crippling eight dreadnought battleships, four pre-dreadnoughts, and four battlecruisers as well as numerous other light units. Only dwindling British ammunition reserves and poor visibility allowed the remnants of the routed German fleet to escape. Over 21,000 German officers and men lost their lives in the disaster, including Admirals Scheer and Hipper. Another 1550 men were rescued from the sea into British captivity. In the words of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, “Admiral Jellicoe is the one man who could have won or lost this war in a single day…and in the tradition of Nelson he has won it!”
While Churchill and a few others in the war cabinet argued that the Jutland victory should encourage Britain to continue the war until complete victory was secured, the Asquith government demurred. Britain had, by force of arms, eliminated Germany’s overseas empire and destroyed the only means Germany might have to threaten Britain with direct invasion. In Germany, the Reichstag, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the generally hawkish German press were in a state of shocked apoplexy. In a single battle Britain virtually destroyed the fleet that Tirpitz and Wilhelm II had lovingly created over the preceding decade, with billions of Reichsmarks somewhat grudgingly provided by the Reichstag now resting in Davy Jones’ locker. In a manner surprisingly equivalent to the thinking of Asquith and his advisors in Britain, Germany’s leaders realized that the naval defeat at Jutland did not change the balance of power in Europe, where Germany was victorious in the east and that Britain might accept this now that Germany was no longer a threat to its global oceanic empire. Thus, both Britain and Germany came to see there might be basis to negotiate peace without total victory.
Although France and Russia had already agreed to separate agreements with Germany in early 1917, the United States offered to mediate a British-German peace treaty that would also provide comprehensive settlement among all combatants and establish the structure for a permanent peace in Europe and elsewhere. Negotiations began on July 5, 1917 in Washington DC. Initially only Germany, France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Japan attended. Russia, still in the throes of civil war, did not send a representative, and Serbia no longer existed as an independent nation. In late 1917, representatives from several newly independent countries carved out of the former Russian Empire were also invited by US President Wilson to sit in. These included the Grand Duchy of Poland, the Kingdoms of Belorussia and Ukraine, and the Federated Baltic Kingdoms. Finland, which had achieved independence without German assistance, attended to ensure its new nationhood was internationally recognized.
Although the Washington Treaty as finally signed in August 6, 1918 did not live up to Woodrow Wilson’s lofty and ultimately unrealistic goal to serve as the springboard for a permanent “League of Nations” it proved to be an enduring document that:
1. Formally ended the European war and restored normal diplomatic relations throughout Europe
2. Provided formal recognition of the previous Russo-German and Franco-German treaties and armistices,
3. Provided international recognition for the new nations of central and eastern Europe and established several border adjustments
4. Provided international recognition for Finland
5. Recognized the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Serbia
6. Recognized the independence of Iraq, Syria, and Palestine under British protection
7. Ended the war between Britain and Germany on terms that were acceptable, if not ideal, to both parties. These terms included:
a. Resumption of full diplomatic and economic ties between both empires
b. Formal dissolution of the Franco-British alliance
c. British acceptance of a sphere of German dominance in central and eastern Europe
d. German acceptance of the loss of its African colonies to Britain
e. An agreement by Britain and Germany to negotiate with Japan regarding the return of German colonies and concessions in China and the Pacific to Germany
Recognizing that the Anglo-German naval arms race was a prime cause of the Great War, the Washington Treaty also included a separate naval reduction codicil between Britain and Germany that formally limited the size of any future German navy to one-half of the tonnage of the British navy, with specific limitations on the actual numbers of some capital ship classes for both powers.
There were, however, a number of unresolved issues or snubs that caused some participants not to sign the treaty and created the stage for future regional conflicts as well as one major war over the following four decades.
The Washington Treaty did not address the Balkans, other than to affirm Austro-Hungarian gains and the extinction of Serbia as an independent nation. As a result, nationalist movements continued to thrive in and outside of Austria-Hungary, and the Dual Monarchy also found itself embroiled in border conflicts with the new German-sponsored nations of Poland and Ukraine. In addition, numerous non-signatories such as Italy and Romania had their own claims and border disputes against Austria and Hungary that the treaty did not address. This, together with increasing instability in the empire, led in 1926 to the negotiated breakup of the Dual Monarchy, with Austria eventually joining the federal structure of the German Empire as the Kingdom of Austria. The Kingdom of Hungary, with German assistance, resorted to sometimes draconian measures as it sought to maintain its control over restive Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, south Slavs, Croats, Romanians, and others within its expanded borders.
The Ottoman Empire understandably chafed at being asked to sign a document that recognized the loss of its Arabian territories. However, since the Ottoman government saw little chance of retaining these territories in the foreseeable future, it eventually signed the treaty to restore valuable economic support from Britain and France. Dissatisfaction with this treaty was so high in Turkey, however, that it eventually led to the overthrow of Sultan Mehmed IV by a military coup. Later, Mehmed was returned to the throne as a figurehead monarch under a dictatorship headed by Mustafa Kemal.
Japan did not sign the treaty, seeing it as yet another attempt by western powers to deprive it of its well-earned conquests in war. Japan also refused to negotiate with either Germany or Britain regarding this matter. This in turn antagonized the United States, which saw the Japanese Pacific conquests as a direct threat to its own possessions in the western Pacific, particularly the Philippines and Guam. The Americans specifically demanded that German control be restored to the Marshalls, which lay between the United States and the Philippines, or have them ceded to the US. Finally, the US sought to have the Anglo-German naval reduction treaty extended to include at least the United States and Japan, with Japan limited to the same ratio vis-à-vis the US as the German-British ratio. This was unacceptable to both Japan and Britain. As a result, despite hosting the peace conference, the US also refused to sign the Washington Treaty, and the 1931-32 Pacific War was a direct result.
The Great War and its aftermath in the Levant
The outcome of the 1914-1916 European War was a setback for the Zionist movement, despite Germany’s overall success. Although Berlin achieved virtually all of its territorial aims in the former Russian Empire, and the war in the west left prewar borders barely changed and France weakened by economic collapse and political instability, Britain was able to overpower Turkish and German naval and military resistance in the eastern Mediterranean. At war’s end, Britain and its Arab nationalist allies had wrested much of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant from Turkish control, making the establishment of Israel under German or Turkish sponsorship seem to be a lost dream. By 1922, the entire area had been carved up into several nominally independent Arab kingdoms that in effect, were little more than British protectorates.
Because of a decade of Jewish immigration from central Europe supported by Germany Palestine had large Yiddish speaking population. Its population was pro-German and looked upon Britain not as a liberator but as an occupying enemy. This, in turn, led Britain to treat it as an occupied territory and it was placed under direct colonial office administration until a final resolution to the “German-Jewish problem” could be determined.
More ominously for the settlers, Britain appointed Mohammad Amin al-Husayni as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1922, replacing an early Ottoman-appointed Grand Mufti who was tolerant of the Jewish settlers as long as they respected the Islamic holy sites. Al-Husayni, on the other hand, was an aggressive Arab nationalist and violent anti-Zionist. Although he had no temporal power outside of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, he was instrumental in fomenting occasional Arab pogroms against Jewish settlements throughout Palestine, forcing the immigrants to retreat to walled-in and fortified communities near the coast for protection. Having little sympathy for the pro-German Zionists, British colonial authorities initially did relatively little to quell the violence until al-Husayni issued fatwas in 1925 calling on his followers to resist British “infidel occupiers” as well as the Yiddish-speaking settlers. As a result, British officials provided a modicum of protection to the settlers and removed al-Husayni from the post to exile in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The British also did not appoint a replacement for al-Husayni, and from then on the relationship between the Jewish settlers and British colonial office was correct, if not necessarily cordial.
Until 1937 Palestine remained under British administration, and in deference to British Zionists, British colonial administrators continued to permit some Jewish immigration. As a result the Jewish population of the territory continued to increase, fed by immigrants from German-occupied Poland and the Ukraine as well as central Europe. Most of the immigrants settled near the fortified coastal communities established during the Arab pogroms, which became in effect self-governing enclaves with no direct British oversight.
This increased immigration was actually inspired more by German policy than international Zionism. Following the 1917 Treaty of Warsaw with the provisional Russian Republic, the German Empire found itself in control of Poland, the Baltics, Belorussia, and vast swaths of the Ukraine. Although eventually established as independent kingdoms these areas were in effect German protectorates. The Germans soon found that the collapse of the Russian Empire made them responsible for ensuring stability in satellite regimes containing a myriad of ethnicities who had centuries of axes to grind against each other. Chief among the groups victimized by this ethnic hatred were huge numbers of German-or Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi Jews in Poland and the Ukraine who were aware of German support for the Zionist movement and looked to Germany as their chief protector.
For its part, the German Empire began to see Jewish emigration to Palestine as a way to resolve at least one element of the ethnic instability it its new eastern empire. This solution also had the added benefit of contributing to instability in Britain’s empire. Working openly through Zionist and humanitarian organizations in the Netherlands and especially the United States, and secretly through military recruitment, Berlin facilitated the emigration of over a million Yiddish-speaking Jews from Silesia, Poland, and the Ukraine to Palestine. German-supported Freiheit(“Freedom”) organizations sprang up throughout Jewish communities in the east to help recruit prospective settlers.
What has only recently become known through German and Israeli documents is the fact that these”Onward to Israel” Freiheit organizations were not merely local emigration societies. They were supported financially by the German Empire, quasi-military in nature, and composed largely of young men (and some women) of military age who received training from the German army before their emigration to Palestine. As a result, not only did the Jewish population of British Palestine grow to over two million people, a significant proportion essentially formed an underground “Zionist Liberation Army”.
Also, because the Jewish settlements had largely retreated to large closed communities on or near the coast, Zionist organizations found it relatively easy to smuggle large amounts of German arms and equipment to the settlers, all of which could be relatively easily hidden from British customs. Most of this equipment arrived by sea at the port of Haifa, around which many of the fortified settlements had been established. In addition, Zionist organizations in the United States funded the construction of several airports in and near the Jewish settlements. These were ostensibly civil aerodromes, served by American-flag airlines, but could be (and soon were) adopted for a more martial purpose. By 1935, the settlers had secretly amassed a large stockpile of modern small arms, machine guns, mortars, ammunition, trucks, medical supplies, fuel, materiel, trained cavalry horses, and even a few light tanks and personnel carriers which had begun life as imported “tractors” before the addition of armor plate and weapons. All of this was ready when the call to action finally came.
That time came in the fall of 1937, when the Conservative Government of Neville Chamberlain determined to end the colonial status of Palestine and transfer the entire territory to the nominally independent Kingdom of Egypt on January 1, 1938. Prior to assuming the throne in 1936 Egypt’s King Farouk I had on several occasions written that the Jewish presence in Palestine was an offense against both Islam and Arab sovereignty, and indicated that he would restore al-Husayni as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem if he had the power to do so. This gave the Jews in Palestine clear indication of what lay ahead for them under Egyptian rule.
In response to US and German objections, as well as angry reaction by domestic Zionists and their supporters in the Conservative party, Chamberlain backtracked somewhat and offered to carve out a small protected Jewish homeland on the densely settled Mediterranean coastline between Haifa on the north to Jaffa/Tel Aviv on the south. Upon the transfer of Palestine to Egypt, Britain would designate this enclave as a British Crown Colony and give it a high degree of local self-governance. Although the British Zionist community was excited by this prospect and the few Anglophile Zionists in Palestine supported the idea, the majority Ashkenazi community considered this offer far too little and far too late. Not only were many of them German in outlook, they were in Palestine because of generous German support. Further they believed they already had sufficient military equipment, training, and advice from Germany to obtain independence for a far larger and more powerful Israel on their own terms. Meeting in Haifa on November 15, 1937 the provisional ruling council of Israel determined to stall on the British offer and prepare for war on New Year’s Day, 1938.
As a result, on the day the transfer of Palestine to Egypt was to take effect, the ruling council unilaterally declared independence from Britain, which was immediately recognized by Germany, as well as by the United States. Germany was informed in advance this would happen and had already set in motion plans to assist Israel. The US, or at least Henry Morgenthau within the Roosevelt Administration, were also appraised of the situation. The boundary of this self-proclaimed “Israel” was not formally defined at this time, but most on the council considered the 1905 map sketched by Kaiser Wilhelm II (Figure 1) as the basis for the State of Israel, with an exact border to be defined in negotiation with Britain.
War Breaks Out
Naïve Zionist hopes for a negotiated settlement with Britain were soon dashed. Although Britain was still willing to establish its small protectorate for the Jewish population, Whitehall quite reasonably refused to recognize the presumptive government of Israel and completely ignored the declaration of independence. Further, Britain declared that, since the declaration had come after Palestine was ceded to the Kingdom of Egypt, the Jews had declared their independence from Egypt, not Britain. Thus, the situation was now an internal Egyptian matter, not one that Britain needed to resolve. The following statement from Prime Minister Chamberlain is quite instructive regarding the somewhat confused nature of British policy at the time:
“…in ceding Palestine to the Kingdom of Egypt, this government acknowledges the concerns Jewish people may have that the Jewish residents of the territory may be treated less than favorably by their new rulers. We have even offered to maintain protection for them at Haifa and Jaffa. However, this in no way justifies the Zionists’ illegal declaration of an independent Israel – a large Israel that I add may in time become a Turkish-German dagger aimed at the heart of our Arab friends in the Near East. Well-meaning people throughout the world may rest assured that I have and will continue to strenuously urge King Farouk to treat his new subjects with kindness and decency, and this government will offer certain inducements to this end. However, if the Zionists persist in their rebellion, this Government will have no course but to wash its hands of this matter.”
The Jewish settlers did not accept Chamberlain’s vapid assurances of Egyptian restraint, nor were they going to wait for a new round of pogroms to act. One day after Israel’s formation and before Egyptian forces were even mobilized to take over administration of the Kingdom’s new province, Jewish forces struck. In a coordinated campaign, well-equipped and well-organized Freiheit units, some with “volunteer” German commanders, moved out from the coast and preemptively seized all the weakly defended British air and military bases in Palestine, gathering large amounts of British equipment and supplies in the process. Concurrently, Israeli mechanized infantry and cavalry pushed into the predominantly Arab areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank to preempt any immediate organized resistance against the new Jewish state. Within a matter of days, Jewish forces had secured all of their main strategic goals in Palestine and had begun preparing defenses in anticipation of the inevitable Egyptian counteroffensive.
Because of Israeli success, other Arab states joined the Egyptian cause. The Kingdoms of Iraq and Syria joined the conflict, as did Jordan later, styling this alliance as the Arab League for Palestine. Although Egypt welcomed these allies, the expanded alliance soon became a mixed blessing. Not only did the alliance foster an incorrect popular impression in most neutral European nations, and especially the United States, that the conflict was between a weak Jewish “David” and powerful Arab League “Goliath”, the different Arab states failed to coordinate their military strategy, and even eventually began fighting amongst themselves when Britain tired of the conflict and outright victory over the Zionists became less and less likely.
Eagles of Zion
Most surprisingly, the Israelis unveiled a powerful and efficient air force. Under Luftstreitkrafte tutelage, Ashkenazi Freiheit aviators had been training secretly in Germany for several years in anticipation of an eventual conflict to establish Israel. These men, and a few women, initially flew surplus German aircraft that had been crated and shipped disassembled to Palestine as “automobiles”, “agricultural equipment” and “furniture” primarily by ships of the U.S. American Export Lines and Dutch Rotterdamsche Lloyd shipping firms charted by New York based Zionists. The aircraft were successfully smuggled into Palestine by intermixing sub-assemblies of the airplanes within crates containing legitimate tractor or automobile parts, and disassembled furniture. Generaloberst Hermann Goring of the Luftstreitkrafte, who masterminded this effort, is reported to have said, “Take apart a Mercedes and Fokker and what do you have? Pieces of metal and wood! No Englishman will tell the difference!” More than anything else, Israeli command of the air in the early stages of the conflict solidified Israeli gains and made the later Arab offensives costly and difficult.
Chief among the German aircraft flown by the Israeli forces during early stages of the conflict was the Fokker D. XXI fighter, which was being withdrawn from first-line Luftstreitkrafte service in the late 1930’s. Others included the even more antiquated Albatros D.XXII parasol monoplane fighter, and a few Dornier G.V bombers. In addition, working through Zionist organizations in the United States, Goering was able to procure a number of Boeing P-26 fighters and B-9 Bombers for the Israelis. As a result, this clandestinely developed air force emerged almost magically from the sands of Palestine as the best-equipped and best trained air arm in the Middle East.
After the conflict was in full swing, Germany and the United States negotiated arm deals with the new nation, and international Zionist organizations provided loans to Israel for this purpose. Among the first-line German types provided to Israel, were German BFW D.Va and D.Vb fighters, Hansa-Brandenburg G.XX bombers, Dornier G. VI bombers, and Junkers and C.IV dive bombers, often flown by German “volunteer” personnel. Israel also openly purchased a variety of US types, including Curtiss-Wright CW-21 fighters, Curtiss P-36 fighters, and even a handful of early model B-17s, giving them a small long-range bomber force capable of striking targets throughout the Mediterranean and Near East.
This also made Germany’s role and aims in the conflict clear to Britain. Israel was not just fighting for independence and protection; it was fighting with and for the Kaiser to weaken the British Empire and its Arab clients. Although the Chamberlain government made it clear that open war with Germany over Palestine was off the table, Britain determined to do everything short of a direct commitment of Regular British combat forces to assist its Arab clients. For the most part, this involved the sale or transfer of British arms, equipment, and aircraft to the Arabs, and expediting arms transfers and sales to the Arabs from other nations, most notably Italy and Japan. Through this process, the Arab League forces obtained large numbers of modern Bristol Blenheim and Fairey Battle bombers, Hawker Hurricane fighters, as well as Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM-79 bombers and even a few Japanese Nakajima Ki-27 fighters and Ki-21 bombers. What the Arabs lacked, however, were the well-trained and capable flight crews to operate these aircraft, something the Israelis had in abundance. A number of British RAF officers did serve with the Arab air forces as advisors, and they often flew as “volunteers” in combat with their trainees.
Although the conflict dragged on for almost two years, British unwillingness to commit its forces directly to the conflict made Israeli victory inevitable, especially after the United States made its support for Germany and Israel crystal clear. Initially, the US merely supplied the Israelis with aircraft, trucks, and armor, but American support for the Israeli-German coalition hardened after the Syrian attack on the US consulate in Damascus, in which 56 US diplomats and staff lost their lives. Following this, the US Navy staged several demonstrations in the eastern Mediterranean intended to dissuade Britain from becoming more directly involved in the conflict on the Arab side. During one such demonstration (Figure 11.) a US Navy task group including several destroyers, the cruiser Indianapolis, battleship Colorado, and aircraft carrier Saratoga visited Malta. Throughout the task group's voyage, it was shadowed closely by the Royal Navy. The American vessels forcefully conveyed President Roosevelt's message that any direct involvement by Britain in the Arab-Israeli conflict would invite a direct response from the United States. In Figure 11, note that HMS Cossack is being buzzed by a fully armed Douglas Devastator from Saratoga, while two other aircraft circle above.
British responses to such provocations were muted, probably because the British government itself had become increasingly divided over the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Conservative government of Neville Chamberlain continued to favor support for the Egyptian claims, but Liberal and Labour party spokesmen such as Winston Churchill had become disenchanted with the Arabs, especially after the Damascus attack. Eventually this led to a vote of no-confidence in the Conservative government and new elections that ultimately brought Liberals under Churchill to power.
Although Churchill initially stated his government’s intent to enter the conflict directly to forestall German aims, he was quickly informed in private discussions by both US President Franklin Roosevelt and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini that this would lead to the intervention by their nations on Israel’s side and probably a second Great War. As a result Britain bowed to the inevitable and attended peace talks hosted by Mussolini in Tripoli. These talks were boycotted by the Arabs. The 1940 Treaty of Tripoli signed by Britain, Germany, Turkey, Italy, the United States, and Israel recognized Israel’s existence and borders based on the 1905 map sketched by Kaiser Wilhelm. When informed of this on his deathbed the aged Wilhelm simply chuckled.
The Aftermath
The Tripoli settlement left the entire Middle East in turmoil. It soon became apparent to the infant nation of Israel that German support came with a price. The Germans allowed the Israelis to establish their own parliament (State Council of Israel) and exercise a high degree of local self-government, but this was as a Crown colony, not a fully independent republic, as some Israelis hoped for. The German Kaiser was Head of State, and the Kaiser appointed Israel’s Chancellor from among German or Yiddish-speaking settler Israelis. To protect Israel’s security against its hostile Arab neighbors, the German navy established a large naval and aviation base at Haifa, and regular units of the Heer and Luftstreitkrafte were stationed throughout the country. Perhaps deliberately, many of the men stationed at these bases were German Jews, who under Israeli law also had Israeli citizenship and could vote for local elections and run for office.
However, in the year after independence, Israel’s identity and demography changed from one formed by and for German and Pro-German Jewish settlers to one in which locally born Sabras and Jewish immigrants from outside the German Empire began to outnumber the settlers. As a result, many Jews and the majority of the popularly elected Israel State Council came to resent the extent to which their nation was formally yoked to Germany. The resistance of many German Jews to the increasingly popular Hebrew language movement was also a source of conflict.
The accession of Wilhelm III to the German throne in 1941 also didn’t help. As Crown Prince, the new Kaiser was well-known throughout Europe as lightweight playboy with loose morals and little serious understanding of politics. This continued into his reign as Kaiser. While this was actually good for Germany as it transitioned from the autocratic style of Wilhelm II to a more limited constitutional monarchy, Wilhelm III considered Israel – Germany’s only overseas crown territory – a personal playground. Wilhelm and a large female entourage (which rarely included his own wife) would often vacation on the Mediterranean coast at Tel Aviv or Haifa, and exhibit behaviors that offended sensibilities of many religious Jews. He also spent lavish sums (and the labor of German military engineers and soldiers who had better things to do) building extravagant vacation homes for himself and his friends, so there was not even any real economic benefit to the locals except for the few he employed as domestic staff.
More critically, the Kaiser’s choice of Israeli Chancellors was disastrous and showed his total lack of political acumen. The worst of the lot was Israeli General Hugo Gutmann, named to the post in 1946. Not only was he an acculturated German Jew in an increasingly non-German nation, he proposed laws to the State Council that would bar any new emigration to Israel except from Germany or German-dominated eastern Europe. Also, his religious views leaned toward the “modern” and secular edges of Judaism. He did not keep kosher, and often showed contempt for Israelis he called “excessively religious”. Finally, Gutmann was, like the Kaiser who appointed him, something of a libertine. When the Israeli State Council petitioned the Kaiser to remove Gutmann and allow the State Council itself to name his replacement, Wilhelm refused and instead threatened to abrogate the 1941 German-Israeli treaty of Independence and Recognition. This could have resulted in direct German Imperial occupation of Israel and the certainty of violent conflict between Germany and the protectorate it had worked so hard to create.
Eventually a compromise was reached and Wilhelm replaced Gutmann by a less objectionable Chancellor in 1952. But the damage was done, and from that point on, Sabra Israelis began to actively resist German Jewish (and German) influence in their nation. In 1960, Germany granted Israel full independence and sponsored its admission into the European Economic Compact. However, the internal situation within Israel remains unsettled. The nation is still economically dominated by a shrinking secular German-Jewish minority that maintains disproportionate political power and influence, occasionally by violence. This has caused the Sabra majority to react in kind. As of the writing of this article (December 1963) discontent has reached the stage where terrorism is a daily fact of life and the survival of Israel is threatened less by its Arab enemies, who have little international support, than by its own people.
The Arab League states never came to accept, or make peace with, Israel despite that fact that the British Empire offered numerous inducements for them to do so. As Britain tired of its autocratic and dysfunctional Arab protectorates, the Churchill Government approached Turkey in 1951 to negotiate returning all of them except Egypt them to Ottoman oversight, essentially reversing what the Arabs with British assistance had achieved in 1914-17. This was formally accomplished by the Treaty of Ankara in 1952. Although Turkey pledged to preserve the Kingdoms of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq as nominally independent within the framework of this renewed Ottoman Empire, the Arabs resisted and open warfare broke out between Turkey and the Arab League states. Turkey then initiated a military campaign to force the Arab kingdoms into submission. Israel and Germany provided the Turks with extensive military assistance, while the British once again washed their hands of the situation. By 1955, Turkish victory over the Arab states was complete, but victory over their enraged and increasingly radical populations was not. Violent resistance against occupying Turkish troops and local administrators has continued to the present day, but absent any strong outside power to take up their cause, these violent Arab liberation movements amount to little more than random acts of terrorism.
An Uncertain Future
On November 11, 1962, the world permanently changed when a team of German and Israeli scientists and military engineers working in strict secrecy under the overall direction of Edward Teller and Werner Heisenberg of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik in Berlin, detonated the world’s first atomic explosion in the Negev Desert. The explosive device was named Einstein, in honor of the German-Israeli physicist whose theoretical research discovered the principles on which it was built. In a joint announcement, German Chancellor Adolf Galland and Israeli Chancellor David Ben-Gurion stated that, although the atomic device weighed less than 5,000 pounds, it exploded with a blast equivalent to over 40,000 tons of TNT and excavated a crater over 1,500 feet wide. The two leaders went on to say their two nations were prepared to develop atomic weapons capable of being delivered by aircraft anywhere in the world but would share the technology if the major world powers assembled together to create a world order to manage this new energy source and act decisively to ensure stability and preserve order.
On March 1, 1963, Germany and Israel jointly invited civilian and military representatives from Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Hungary, Japan, Turkey, China, and the United States to Israel to witness a second nuclear explosion and discuss the possible formation of an International Security Alliance to manage these weapons. Upon arrival at Tel Aviv, they were all bussed to the Negev to see the second atomic explosion, this time an aerial bomb dropped from a standard Luftstreikrafte Dornier G. 220 long-range bomber. At this time, the visitors were informed that 120 atomic weapons had in fact already been produced were and ready for immediate delivery to German and Israeli air force units if an international solution did not materialize.
This demonstration was obviously effective and led to the initiation of formal negotiations starting on May 15, 1963. At the time this article is being written, the Tel Aviv negotiations are still underway, but it appears likely that an International Security Alliance of major powers to control an unruly world may soon become a reality.
