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Madagascar’s plan was a “dazzling” vision for those who have faced demographic engineering hurdles in Eastern Europe for the past nine months. This plan revived the determination of the Nazis and the outbreak of fanaticism.
Madagascar was a French colony at the time. The deportation of European Jews to this colony off the coast of Southeast Africa was not a new idea, as late as the late 1930s. Several British anti-Semites put forth such an idea.
Some time later, the British, French, and Polish governments even established a Joint Distribution Committee. The Poles went even further, sending a group of three male researchers to the island to study Madagascar’s suitability for Polish Jews, with the consent of the French authorities. Researchers have discovered that it is possible to accommodate 5,000 to 7,000 Jewish families on the island.
Wikimedia Commons Photo / Map with suggested settlements
However, the idea of these three governments was more utopian than real, and no more realistic measures were taken than the expulsion of the three researchers.
But when it came to the Nazis and their ambitions, the utopia of this idea was far from complete: Much attention and time was devoted to the plan and research of the island. In the end, however, the Nazis were hampered by their greed and calm, the belief that the Reich would still win World War II.
“All Jews are outside Europe …”
The Nazis, who had declared their evil intentions against European Jews long before, in 1933. took real action.
Photo of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum USA / Antisemitic propaganda poster
First, through fierce discrimination and violence, they forced some 250,000 German Jews to migrate beyond the Atlantic, to Britain, Palestine, or elsewhere. The rest, slightly smaller than the first, was planned to be forcibly evicted.
Non-productive land had to be perfect for this. They were deemed appropriate to prevent exiled Jews from flourishing abroad.
As early as 1938. At the beginning of the 19th century, Adolf Eichmann was assigned to present a report on the “Madagascar Plan”, because the Nazis thought that the island should be perfect.
However, the idea of the coming years did not receive the necessary attention from the Reich summits, as time and resources had to be devoted to the Nisko-Lublin plan in Eastern Europe.
With the arrival of the 1940s. For spring, it became clear to the Nazis that it was not worth using the resources and time to transport the Jews to the Lublin reservation. This did not bring the necessary benefits for military purposes, but only drew the attention of foreign states to the foreign policy applied by the Nazis and the implementation of the protocols of the secret pact. Let’s go back to Madagascar’s plan.
The main creator of the Madagascar plan was Frank Rademacher, head of the Jewish bureau of the German Foreign Ministry.
Photo from History.com / Frank Rademacher
“The preferred solution: all Jews are outside Europe” was the beginning of a major Nazi summit in 1940. in the summer, addressing the Jewish question.
The plan outlined at the Rademacher meeting called for the revocation of European Jewish citizenship and the confiscation of their properties to finance a new “superget” in the Indian Ocean.
The scheme also indicated that the new Jewish “state” in Madagascar would be led by the direct SS Nazi police force.
The Nazis hoped that after the invasion of the United Kingdom (Operation Sea Lion), they would instruct the British merchant marine to transport Jews from Europe to Madagascar.
Rademacher also suggested running the island’s reserve as propaganda: supposedly giving the world the impression that the Germans were a “generous” nation in this Madagascar plan.
Libraryofsocialscience.com Figure / Anti-Semitic Propaganda Poster
“We can use propaganda in which it appears that Germany is giving Jews cultural, economic, administrative and legal self-administration,” says the text of the Madagascar proposal, signed by its inventor in 1940. on July 3.
The idea received support.
1940 On June 3, when the French occupation seemed imminent, Frank Rademacher revealed the highlights of Madagascar’s plan, an idea that soon spread among the peaks of the Reich government.
He was endorsed by Adolf Eichmann, in charge of Jewish affairs and his evacuation from the Reich, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Hitler mentioned it in a meeting with Italian Duchess Benit Mussolini.
The defeat of France and the “obvious” Nazi victory of the time promised to give the Nazis both the vast colonial territory and the merchant marine necessary for the mass expulsion of European Jews.
“The construction of ghettos in Poland was temporarily suspended, it was hoped that they would no longer be necessary,” as more than a million Jews are expected to be deported to the island each year.
As late as August, in the summary of the plan, F. Rademacher proposed a detailed division of labor: (1) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be responsible for negotiating both a peace treaty and special agreements with other countries that regulate the Jewish question. ; (2) The SS would be responsible for the gathering of Jews in Europe and the administration of the island’s ghetto; (3) the use of Jewish property through a specially created bank would be supervised by a four-year Wohlthat plan; (4) propaganda based on Goebbels; (5) The transportation of Jews will be coordinated by Viktor Brack of the Führer’s Office.
Fallen Nazi hopes
After all, despite the dedication of some Nazis to the cause, Madagascar’s plan in this place has ended.
The reason is very simple: the plan to occupy the United Kingdom in the battle for Great Britain failed. Due to the heavy operation of the Royal Air Force, the Sea Lion in 1940. was postponed on September 17 and will never do so again.
At the same time, Madagascar’s plan failed because the Third Reich did not receive open access to the island across the Atlantic.
Finally, in 1942, the plan was finally forgotten, as in November at the Battle of Madagascar, British forces seized the island of Vichy France and handed over the administration to the former Free Government of Free France. It can be said that the Madagascar plan was born and died due to military circumstances.
Public domain photo / British Forces in Madagascar 1942
The failure to defeat Britain, fully visible in the 1940s. In September, it also did not help implement this plan. Sudden and urgent preparations in the summer months suddenly collapsed, just as the plan was set on fire.
The author of the text is a student of the Vilnius University Faculty of History and he does an internship for 15 minutes.
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