200 kilometres off the coast of Mozambique lies the island nation of Madagascar. With a land area of 587,000 square kilometres, it is the fourth-largest island in the world after Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo; and the second-largest island nation after Indonesia. A French colony from 1896 to 1960, Madagascar has long been the world’s primary producer of vanilla and cloves, though today the island is primarily known as a biodiversity and eco-tourism hotspot, with 90% of its wildlife – including the famous ring-tailed lemur – being found nowhere else. But Madagascar once came close to having a much darker claim to fame: the world’s largest concentration camp. In the early days of the Second World War, the Nazis briefly considered solving the so-called “Jewish Problem” by deporting all of Europe’s Jews to the African island and forcibly holding them there under brutal conditions. While this plan was short-lived, it was instrumental in the eventual adoption of the Final Solution, which resulted in the systematic murder of nearly 6 million Jews. This is the story of the forgotten prelude to the Holocaust.

The idea of deporting or encouraging the emigration of European Jews to Africa – and Madagascar in particular – long predates the Third Reich, and was actively promoted by pro- and anti-Jewish groups alike. Among the first to suggest such a plan was German Orientalist scholar Paul de Lagarde, who detailed his proposal in his 1878 work Deutsche Schriften or “German Writings.” Indeed, de Lagarde’s ideas regarding antisemitism, anti-slavism, Social Darwinism, and territorial expansionism are considered instrumental to the development of Nazi ideology.

In 1903, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain proposed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Uganda – then the colony of British East Africa. Chamberlain’s motives for promoting this plan were threefold. First, the rising number of pogroms or anti-semitic riots in Eastern Europe – including the Kishinev Pogrom of April 19-21, 1903 – had resulted in a wave of Jewish immigration to the United Kingdom. Not only was Chamberlain genuinely concerned for the welfare of Eastern European Jews, but he sought to protect the jobs of native British workers from the sudden influx of Jewish immigrants. Second, the Uganda Railway, built between 1895 and 1901, had proven an exorbitantly expensive boondoggle, and had failed to provide the desired return on investment. The emigration of Jews to the region, it was hoped, would boost the local economy and help offset the cost of the railway. Finally, following the conclusion of the Second Boer War in 1902, the British were keen to secure Jewish support for their colonial policies in South Africa.

On August 26, 1903, Theodor Herzl, founder of the modern Zionist Movement, presented Chamberlain’s scheme at the Sixth World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. Herzl assured the gathered delegates that the scheme would not interfere with the ultimate Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and would instead provide a temporary refuge for Jews facing persecution in Eastern Europe. By a vote of 295-178, the Congress decided to send an investigatory commission to Uganda to evaluate the proposed territory for settlement. The commission, composed of British explorer Major Alfred Gibbons, Swiss orientalist Alfred Kaiser, and Zionist engineer Nachum Wilbush, arrived in Guas Ngishu in December 1904. While their final report was ambiguous regarding the suitability of Uganda for Jewish settlement, the plan faced strong opposition from both sides on ideological grounds. Many Zionists considered the plan a betrayal of the Zionist program and an unnecessary distraction from their ultimate goal of establishing a Palestinian homeland. Meanwhile, white settlers in British East Africa protested the mass immigration of Jews into the region. As a result, the British Government soon withdrew the offer, while the scheme was officially rejected by the Zionist movement at the Seventh World Congress in 1905.

Undeterred, Congress members Nahum Syrkin and Israel Zangwill formed a separate territorialist movement to explore the resettlement of Jews to Canada, Australia, Mesopotamia, or Cyrenaica (today Iraq and Libya). However, strong opposition from local residents also scuppered these projects. One resettlement plan which did see some success, however, was the Galveston Scheme, which, aided by American banker Jacob Schiff, saw some 9,300 Jews emigrate to southern Texas between 1907 and 1914.

As antisemitism grew increasingly prevalent throughout the 1920s and 30s, Paul de Lagarde’s ideas on forcibly deporting Europe’s Jews to Africa – particularly Madagascar – came back into fashion. In 1937, the Polish government, with the assistance of France, sent a task force to Madagascar to evaluate the feasibility of Jewish resettlement. The task force reported that, due to the climate and poor infrastructure, the island could only accommodate a maximum of 5,000-7,000 families. The plan was thus abandoned.

Just a year later, however, the Madagascar Plan was resurrected in – where else – Nazi Germany. Following the gradual disenfranchisement of German Jews via the Nuremberg Laws and other antisemitic policies, the Nazis’ initial “final solution” was simply to deport them elsewhere. However, few of Germany’ neighbours were willing to accept their Jews. Indeed, in a meeting on December 9, 1938, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet [“Bohn-ay”] informed German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of the French Government’s own wish to deport some 10,000 of its own Jews – preferably to Madagascar. However, the idea of overseas deportation was shelved once again following the 1939 invasion and occupation of Poland, which furnished Germany with a large neighbouring territory into which it could expel its Jewish population. Under the Nisko Plan, created by Foreign Policy Office chief Alfred Rosenberg and SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, Jews from Germany, Austria and recently-occupied Czechoslovakia and Poland would be transported to and concentrated within a 1,000 square kilometre area south of Lublin, Poland known as the Lublin Reservation. Here, it was hoped, the combination of overcrowding, poor land, and the conscription of Jews for forced labour would result in the eventual decimation and liquidation of the population. The first trainload of 2,700 Czech and Austrian Jews arrived in the Lublin Reservation on October 18, 1939. Though barracks were planned, none were completed, and the first deportees were left to fend for themselves in an open, swampy field with no water and little food. By April 1940, some 95,000 Jews had been transported to the area. Large numbers died of starvation, exposure, overwork, and diseases like Typhus brought about by the cramped, unsanitary living conditions.

However, the Nazis were soon forced to abandon the Nisko Plan – largely for pragmatic reasons. The trains used to transport deportees to the reservation were needed elsewhere for military purposes, while Hans Frank, head of the General Government in German-occupied Poland, opposed the further influx of Jews into his district, claiming it had become “too crowded.” At the same time, the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum or “Living Space” which had underpinned the invasion of Poland was proving to be economically flawed, as the ethnic Germans resettled to areas cleared of native Poles and Jews found themselves with little to do. Finally, the deportation of Jews to Lublin was attracting international condemnation, prompting the Nazis to seek a less conspicuous method of resolving the “Jewish Question.”

Following the Nazi invasion of France and the Low Countries on May 10, 1940, the idea of deporting Europe’s Jews to Madagascar was resurrected once again. On June 3, 1940, Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, sent a memorandum to his superior, diplomat Martin Luther, proposing the deportation of all Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe to foreign territory. He initially considered Palestine as a destination, but quickly rejected this idea for fear of a strong Jewish state being established in the Middle East. Instead, he proposed Madagascar, the use of which could be added to the peace terms once France capitulated. The memorandum read, in part:

“The approaching victory gives Germany the possibility, and in my view also the duty, of solving the Jewish question in Europe. The desirable solution is: all Jews out of Europe.

… In the Peace Treaty France must make the island of Madagascar available for the solution of the Jewish question, and to resettle and compensate the approximately 25,000 French citizens living there. The island will be transferred to Germany under a mandate. Diégo Suarez Bay and the port of Antsirane, which are [sea-] strategically important, will become German naval bases…

In addition to these naval bases, suitable areas of the country will be excluded from the Jewish territory (Judenterritorium) for the construction of air bases. That part of the island not required for military purposes will be placed under the administration of a German Police Governor, who will be under the administration of the Reichsführer SS. Apart from this, the Jews will have their own administration in this territory: their own mayors, police, postal and railroad administration, etc. The Jews will be jointly liable for the value of the island. For this purpose their former European financial assets will be transferred for use to a European bank to be established for this purpose. Insofar as the assets are not sufficient to pay for the land which they will receive, and for the purchase of necessary commodities in Europe for the development of the island, the Jews will be able to receive bank credits from the same bank.

As Madagascar will only be a Mandate, the Jews living there will not acquire German citizenship. On the other hand, the Jews deported to Madagascar will lose their citizenship of European countries from the date of deportation. Instead, they will become residents of the Mandate of Madagascar.

…Use can be made for propaganda purposes of the generosity shown by Germany in permitting cultural, economic, administrative and legal self-administration to the Jews; it can be emphasized at the same time that our German sense of responsibility towards the world forbids us to make the gift of a sovereign state to a race which has had no independent state for thousands of years: this would still require the test of history.”

Indeed, plans to this effect were already being made in other government departments. At the time, Hitler and his generals were preparing for Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of the Soviet Union – which could potentially bring millions more Jews and other “undesirables” under German jurisdiction. As such a large mass of people could not be practically interned in Poland or anywhere else in mainland Europe, deportation overseas appeared a preferable solution In a May 1940 memorandum, Concerning the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler declared:

“[I hope to see] the term ‘Jew’… completely eliminated through the massive immigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony”.

Luther discussed Rademacher’s proposal with Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, whereupon it came to the attention of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office or RSHA. In January 1939 Heydrich had been appointed by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring to oversee the deportation of all Jews from German-occupied territory; he thus insisted that the implementation of Rademacher’s plan fell under his jurisdiction. Thus, on August 15, 1940, Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann released a memorandum titled RSHA: Madagaskar Projekt, outlining the details of the scheme. Heydrich’s plan called for the resettlement of a million Jews every year over a period of four years, with the entire island of Madagascar converted into a giant ghetto and police state administered by the SS. Hitler immediately approved the proposal.

But while France surrendered unconditionally on June 22, 1940, the Madagascar Plan could not immediately be implemented since the British Royal Navy controlled all the sea routes out of mainland Europe. Hitler hoped that after defeating the Royal Air Force and invading Britain in Operation Sea Lion, the British merchant fleet could be commandeered to transport Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. But following the Luftwaffe’s defeat in the Battle of Britain in September 1940, the Royal Navy remained in control of the seas, and the Nazis were forced to shelve the Madagascar Plan once again. Two years later in May 1942, the Allies invaded Madagascar and placed the island under Free French control, denying its use to the Germans. By this time, however, the Nazi program to make Europe Judenfrei or “free of Jews” had taken a far darker turn. At a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on January 20, 1942, a delegation of German officials including Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann hammered out the details of the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Problem”: the systematic murder of all European Jews in purpose-built death camps. While today the Madagascar Plan is an obscure footnote in the history of the holocaust, it played an important psychological role in convincing the Nazis that the “Jewish problem” could not be solved via internment or deportation. The only solution, they concluded, was extermination.

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