Madagascar Plan

The Madagascar Plan was a plan to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar which was proposed by the Nazi German government. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.

The idea of re-settling Polish Jews in Madagascar was investigated by the Polish government in 1937, but the task force sent to evaluate the island's potential determined that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could be accommodated, or even as few as 500 families by some estimates. Because efforts by the Nazis to encourage the emigration of the Jewish population of Germany before World War II were only partially successful, the idea of deporting Jews to Madagascar was revived by the Nazi government in 1940.

Rademacher recommended on 3 June 1940 that Madagascar should be made available as a destination for the Jews of Europe. With Adolf Hitler's approval, Adolf Eichmann under the SS. They assumed that many Jews would succumb to its harsh conditions should the plan be implemented. The plan was not viable when proposed due to the British naval blockade. It was postponed after the Nazis lost the Battle of Britain in September 1940, and it was permanently shelved in 1942 with the commencement of the Final Solution, the policy of systematic genocide of Jews, towards which it had functioned as an important psychological step.

Origins

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, there were a number of resettlement plans for European Jews that were precursors to the Madagascar Plan. Paul de Lagarde, an Orientalist scholar, first suggested evacuating the European Jews to Madagascar in his 1878 work ''Deutsche Schriften'' ("German Writings"). Members of the Zionist movement in 1904–1905 seriously debated the British Uganda Programme, by which Russian Jews, who were in immediate danger from ongoing pogroms, would be settled in the East Africa Protectorate (modern-day Kenya), which was part of the British Empire at the time. The plan was later rejected as unworkable by the Zionist Congress. Adherents of territorialism split off from the main Zionist movement and continued to search for a location where Jews might settle and create a state, or at least an autonomous area. The idea of Jewish resettlement in Madagascar was promoted by British antisemites Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese, and others. With the cooperation of the French, the Polish government commissioned a task force in 1937 to examine the possibility of settling Polish Jews on the island. The head of the commission, , felt the island could accommodate 5,000 to 7,000 families, but Jewish members of the group estimated that, because of the climate and poor infrastructure, only 500 or even fewer families could safely be accommodated.

In Nazi Germany

Racism and antisemitism were basic tenets of the Nazi Party and the Nazi government. Discrimination and violent attacks against Jews began immediately after the seizure of power in 1933. Violence and economic pressure were used by the Nazis to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country. By 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Argentina, the United Kingdom, and other countries, as well as the British Mandate of Palestine.

The Nazi leadership seized on the idea of deporting the remaining German Jews overseas. Barren, unproductive lands were viewed as appropriate destinations as this would prevent the deportees from flourishing in their new location. In his May 1940 memorandum to Hitler, ''Concerning the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East'', ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler declared that he hoped to see "the term 'Jew'  ..completely eliminated through the massive immigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony".

Planning begins

Initial discussions began to take place in 1938 among Nazi ideologues such as Julius Streicher, Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Ten per cent of Jews under German jurisdiction by that date were Polish nationals. Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Germany, expressed his country's reluctance to take them back, and the Polish government decreed that Polish passport holders would not be permitted to return except under specific conditions. When Ribbentrop raised the matter with French foreign minister Georges Bonnet in December of that year, Bonnet expressed French reluctance to receive more German Jews and inquired if measures could be taken to prevent their arrival. France itself was contemplating how to deport some 10,000 Jews and considered whether Madagascar might be an appropriate destination. Planning for German deportations to Madagascar formally began in 1940. Franz Rademacher, recently appointed head of the Jewish Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, forwarded on 3 June to his superior, the diplomat Martin Luther, a memorandum on the fate of the Jews. Rademacher said: "The desirable solution is: all Jews out of Europe". He briefly considered Palestine as a destination, but deemed it unsuitable, as he considered it undesirable that a strong Jewish state should be created in the Middle East. In addition, Palestine was under British control at the time. Rademacher recommended that the French colony of Madagascar should be made available as a destination for the Jews of Europe as one of the terms of the surrender of France, which the Germans had invaded on 10 May 1940. The resettled Jews, noted Rademacher, could be used as hostages to ensure "future good behaviour of their racial comrades in America". The plan was developed by Referat D III of the ''Abteilung Deutschland''.

Luther broached the subject with Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, who was simultaneously developing a similar scheme. By 18 June, Hitler and Ribbentrop spoke of the Plan with Italian leader Benito Mussolini as a possibility that could be pursued after the defeat of France. Once he learned of the plan, SS-''Obergruppenführer'' Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), insisted that Ribbentrop relinquish any future responsibility for the Plan to that office. As Heydrich had been appointed by Göring in January 1939 to oversee Jewish evacuation from German-occupied territory, the Jewish question was hence under his purview. Adolf Eichmann

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