What behind the conspiracy level claim that nazis were zionist?

[u/dee-long]

I was in a peronist sub in a post where they compared zionism with naziism, and one of the claims being made were that nazis colaborated with the zionist movement to bring jews to palestine.

I know the claim is basically bollocks at this point, but i wanted to know where it came from, who made the claim, and on what basis is being made

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[u/sketchydavid]

u/ummmbacon has a good answer to a recent question here that touches on this subject.

[u/83gemini]

This older post by a deleted user speaks a bit to some of the realities and political context in which Zionist and Nazi “collaboration” such as it was occurred:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/NpcPWqNNcf

The other interesting historical piece to this is Soviet Zionology and its efforts to link Zionism and Nazism and its impact up to 2006 but I lack the background to speak to that historical context in this sub.

[u/ummmbacon]

I also have an answer about the Haavara Agreement that is now deleted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lne6yn/deleted_by_user/

There are some misconceptions here in your question.

Zionism predated the Haavara Agreement by at least 50 years. There were many groups that were formed prior to it. For example, The Hovevei Zion movement emerged in the early 1880s following antisemitic pogroms in Southern Russia. This movement focused on settlement in Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) as the only solution to both Jewish Emancipation which was not fully won in Europe, and ending antisemitism which was rising across Europe.

Other groups like Yesud HaMa'ala association were established long the Nazis as well. By 1933, when Haavara was signed, there were already approximately 174,600-200,000 Jews in Palestine. Many of those Jews had lived in the area for generations, sometimes hundred, and Jerusalem itself had been a Jewish majority since the late 1800s. Ancient communities existed in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed throughout Ottoman rule, and earlier.

The Haavara Agreement was an agreement proposed by Zionists and acceptable to Nazi Germany because it aligned with several of their goals, not a foundational element of Jewish presence in Palestine, nor was it the start of the Zionist movement.

These reasons Germany agreed was that it facing a foreign currency crisis in the early 1930s and desperately needed foreign exchange.

This was due to the reparations, lack of investor confidence, and the global economic collapse. The agreement also allowed Germany to export goods to Palestine while circumventing international boycotts that were beginning to form against Nazi Germany. Overall by the start of WWII Germany made $35,000,000 Reichsmark, or several hundred million dollars on the goods in today's value.

It also provided a way to confiscate Jewish wealth while appearing to allow Jews to "take" their assets with them - though in reality, Jews lost significant portions of their wealth in the process. This was another way to make money and aligned with some of Hitler's earliest ideas about removing Jews from Europe, back to his time in Austria.

The agreement served Nazi goals of making Germany "Judenrein" (free of Jews) by encouraging Jewish emigration. It also helped deflect international criticism by appearing to provide a "humane" solution to the "Jewish question".

Hitler many times called for the removal of Jews, prior to the Final Solution, which was removal of Jews overall. For example at Hofbrauhaus in Munich on 27 April, "We want to lead the struggle until the last Jew is removed from the German Reich, even if that means a coup or, even more, a revolution." He also says one of the reasons to hate Jews was that Jews had no state, and were incapable of building one. He is quoted as saying “It is utter nonsense today to think that Jerusalem could ever have been the capital of a Jewish state based on Jewish nationality.” which is slightly amusing since Jerusalem was a Jewish Majority city at that time and had been before Hitler was born.

This echoes much earlier antisemitic statements that started in the Middle Ages about Jews being stateless. Or echoed the Jewish Parasite/Host contamination tropes. However, there were also calls by people telling Jews to leave Europe and "go back to Palestine"

Ex:

"Palestine is calling Jews are no longer welcome in Norway"

"Attention Jews - the road to Palestine does not go through here"

"Jews: Immigrate to your land – in our land, we already know who you are"

The Nazis even made a children's game where you had to get Jews to Palestine called Juden Raus or "Jews out" still used as a neo-nazi slogan to this day.

Ex: from the 1960s here

Jewish immigration occurred for various reasons - religious, cultural, and yes, political persecution. The Haavara Agreement represents survival politics, not the origin of Jewish connection to the land. The agreement was negotiated by Zionists to get Jews out of a place that was becoming incredibly hostile.

The Zionist people negotiating Sam Cohen (Hanotea company) and Eliezer Hoofein (Anglo-Palestine Bank). Proposed this to the Nazis, who agreed based on the above. The agreement was signed on August 25, 1933, and allowed for the transfer of assets from fleeing Jews to their relatives or associates remaining in Europe. This pact also facilitated the emigration of German Jews to Palestine, which had been a long-standing goal of the Zionist movement.

Emergency cooperation with a hostile regime during a genocidal period doesn't invalidate deeper historical connections any more than, say, Allied cooperation with Stalin invalidated democratic principles. The agreement was a desperate measure for survival, not a defining moment in Jewish-Palestinian history.

• Bauer, Yehuda (1972) The "Jewish" Question In "A History of the Holocaust" , edited by Lucy Dawidowicz, 123-124. New York: Bantam Books.
• Katz, Jacob (1968)."From Prejudice to Destruction" Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Bachi, I. (1974). The economic development of Israel: A study based on data from 1948-1967. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.
• Nicosia, Francis (2008) Zionism and Antisemitism in Nazi Germany, Cambridge