I’ve just read this article in the Guardian. It suggests that the Jews could have been moved to Madagascar.
I find this somewhat incredible, and at variance (if not contrary) to my recent personal connection to WW2.
I’m not sufficiently familiar with Mr Wilby’s writings to be able to say which are his views and which are the views of Mr Baker, but the article makes me very angry.
Is there any truth in the article?
IIRC, Madagascar was one of the proposed sites of a Jewish Homeland after World War 2.
After the establishment of the Jewish ghettos in all the major Polish cities, the Nazis soon noticed that they created certain problems: cost, reminding the locals of Nazi tyranny, and the possibility of rebellion. After they conquered France the Nazis didn’t want to repeat the process of establishing ghettos in the French cities, so they started discussing other possibilities. Someone floated a proposal to create a Jewish settlement in Madagascar, which was then a French colony. This would have held only the Jews from France, not from elsewhere in Europe. The history books I’ve read suggest that the idea didn’t get widespread support, and was (needless to say) soon nixed in favor of death camps.
It seems as though the existance of the Jews got in the way of the writer’s little theory (namely, Britain and the U.S. are aways wrong) so he tried to handwave it away.
Those Jews. Always trouble.
Not surprising considering Hitler’s well-publicized desire to exterminate the Jews. Pushing them off to the other end of the hemisphere, one controlled by the Nazi’s proxies, would have been no solution since the Jews could continue their supposed evil activities of world domination :rolleyes:. Better, by Hitler’s lights, to just kill them. That couldn’t have been done too publicly, for ITR champion’s reasons, so the charade of “work” camps was necessary, but transportation to camps in Central Europe was cheaper and more efficient than outsourcing the camps and, probably, the killing, half a world away. There is nothing in Hitler’s character to suggest he would just let the Jews go away.
I propose we replace the phrase “coals to Newcastle” with “Jews to Madagascar.”
I just like the way it sounds.
Inapposite. “Carrying coals to Newcastle” is a byword for futility because coal comes from Newcastle (or at any rate, it used to).
Which reminds me of my favorite historical quote, supposedly by George V after the resignation of Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary - “No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.”
If Britain had “made peace” with Hitler, there is not telling what would have happened. The Soviet Union “made peace” with Hitler and a lotta good that did!
I’d suggest, “Lemurs to Madagascar,” but this thread started out serious and I guess we should keep it so, especially considering the topic.
If we wanted to keep this serious (but disturbing), we would note that the rest of the world did not WANT Hitler’s Jews before he started killing them. Remember, many nations put limits on Jewish immigration (including the US), keeping a lot of Jews from being able to leave Germany before it went from discrimination to ghetto to work camps to death camps.
If Hitler wanted to get rid of the Jews withOUT killing them, what could he have done? Put them on a boat to the UK? Ship them to Madagascar? How could he have chased them all out in the 30s given that many nations would not take them?
I could be wrong but my sense of it was war between Germany and the Soviets was almost a foregone conclusion. They were anathema to each other. The way I understood it is Stalin was trying to buy much needed time with the peace treaty. At the start of WWII the Soviets were in an awful position militarily and most any other way you care to mention. In the end however those two countries were likely to come to blows one way or another.
Yes, but if Hitler was allowed to keep his winnings on the continent, he could sit back, consolidate his power and build his military, and then attack Britain later. I wouldn’t trust a peace treaty with Hitler. Would you?
Oh, I know … I just like the way it sounds.
Oy, my people, such suffering we’ve had.
The government railways in New South Wales make practically all their profit by carrying coals to Newcastle, since coal is no longer mined at Newcastle, but Newcastle is probably the largest coal port in the world (by millions of tons shipped through its harbour).
(And of course, the original quote was about Newcastle upon Tyne, but Newcastle upon Hunter was named after the Tyneside city, because of the coal found there.)
With reference to the OP, there is certainly a lot written suggesting that the Holocaust could not have happened in the manner in which it did without the war evolving as it did. Antisemitism towards Western European Jews was of a different nature to that towards Eastern European Jews, who tended to be significantly less integrated. Further, the complicity of the Wehrmacht in the Holocaust has been linked, to an extent at least, to the brutality of the war on the Eastern front. Absent such experiences, it would presumably have been much harder to convince members of the Wehrmacht to participate in the mass murder of civilians.
As for Madagascar, most of what I have read suggests it was never a real plan. I also have memories of reading something, though I cannot remember what, claiming that sending malnourished, unprepared, ill-equipped refugees en masse to Madagascar would not have been significantly different in the number of deaths involved to the earlier stages of the Holocaust.
But your people are so cute, versus the Jews, among whom Sarah Silverman is an exception not the rule. 
OTOH, you do have the aye-ayes, which are creepy, not cute. Like Harvey Keitel. :eek:
As for the article, both Wilby and Baker forget that not only did Hitler want to get rid of the Jews (and Slavs, and Roma, etc) permanently, not just get them to move, but also that no countries were in a position to stop him from exterminating the Jews in Central Europe until 1945, especially after France fell. The Great Depression left every country involved as poor as church mice and unable to even start to build back their militaries until the late 30s and early 40s. We’ve been through this discussion before, but Chamberlain’s appeasement in 1938 was necessary because GB would be in no position to get into a war for another two to four years.
I must have missed that discussion.
Were the British completely unaware of the German military build up? And Germany, coming off WWI as well as the depression, was able to build a military when the others could not? And the Brits and French had no reason to be concerned that Germany was breaking its treaty as regarded its military post WWI?
I think people are forgetting that Russia was Hitler’s primary target of the war - the only reason he invaded Western Europe was to neutralize France and Britain at his back before he could start his *real * campaign. A peace treaty with Britain and the U.S. woulden’t have stopped the fighting in the Eastern Front (and the Holocaust), it would have expediated it.