A 1939 Isreal - The Right of Return - & The Holocaust

A 1939 Isreal - The Right of Return - & The Holocaust
Let us handwaivuim a State of Israel in 1939. And lets assume that it passes a version of the Right of Return.
If the first couple of years of WW 2 go the same as OTL, ?What does this do to the Holocaust?

OK thinking about it I realize you won't accept Handwaivium, Assume that Israel is proclaimed in a piece of the Sinai, Ben-Gurion's Palestine Authority buys in the early 1930's.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Well a few big things. The Nazis are happy as they now have a final solution for the Jews, send them all to the desert. The Nazis still loose ww2 however National Socialism does not become vilified as much, no holocaust. Stalin becomes what everyone thinks of as hitler. Hitler become similar to Mussolini or Kaiser Wilhelm, Not what he is today. The Best outcome however is that 6 million people are still alive.
 
Well a few big things. The Nazis are happy as they now have a final solution for the Jews, send them all to the desert. The Nazis still loose ww2 however National Socialism does not become vilified as much, no holocaust. Stalin becomes what everyone thinks of as hitler. Hitler become similar to Mussolini or Kaiser Wilhelm, Not what he is today. The Best outcome however is that 6 million people are still alive.
Dunno about that either. Hitler would probably still have killed the homosexuals, Gypsies, Slavs, etc.
 
One exciting side effect: Israel gets The Bomb, around the same time as the UK. A lot of the big lights of the Manhattan Project were German and Slavic Jews who fled the Holocaust; in this time line, they all go to Israel. Also, Eastern European Jews who managed to get to the US before the war (e.g. Einstein, Teller, Szilard) may move to Israel as soon as the right of return is established - Einstein in particular was a very strong Zionist (though he conveniently never moved to Israel IOTL...:D)

Now, the Manhattan Project was large enough that it probably would have survived these losses (a lot of people say the main problem was actually enriching uranium and breeding plutonium, rather than designing the bomb), but Israel definitely reaps the benefits, and probably becomes of the the world leaders in nuclear technology. So that's cool.

Other effects: if Israel has 4-5 million extra citizens, it has no problem getting all of what's now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Concerns about an Arab majority don't exist, so a lot of the Palestinian Arabs are probably left right where they are. So that part of the Middle East conflict is gone!

In Europe, things are kinda grim: the Nazis diverted an awful lot of resourced to killing Jews, spending gas etc. for the Final Solution that would have been better spent on the war front. It's probably not that significant (let's be honest: once the US joined, it was all over), but V-E day is a few months later.
 
A few minor quibbles...

1) The viability of a state in the Sinai Penninsula would be minimal so this would be a huge and unwelcome burden on the British, one they might not be able to supply for years, let alone willing.

2) Ergo if the state is not in part/all of the current state of Israel it can not survive. If it is then an Arab revolt, in Palestine and possibly elsewhere, is a foregone conclusion. So it isn't clear how the British benefit from this.

3) As Emperor Akhito correctly notes, this doesn't stop Hitler's murderous plans for Poles, Russians, Gypsies and many more. There is also a question of why millions of Jews will leave for such a poor territory if they aren't faced with the Holocaust.

4) How exactly do they all get there, over so many international borders in time of war, and why are the Germans so generous as to provide their enemies with several hundred thousand men of military age, plus scientists, mechanics, etc?

5) Those scientists went to the US to ensure that Hitler didn't get the bomb(first) and only the US had the resources to do that, so they don't change their location. The UK took part in the Manhattan Project yet didn't get the bomb until 1951 and British resources were/are vastly superior to Israel's so it isn't clear Israel gets the bomb much sooner, if sooner.

After all, Israel purchased/received its nuclear tech from the French and since this state certainly has much closer ties to the UK, if not being an actual member of the Commonwealth, the British are likely to be both less permissive and more alert to such a development. If London doesn't want Canada or Australia having the bomb...





Minchandre, more likely this successful population removal only whets Hitler's appetite and he tries to advance his plans for other groups so that doesn't go against the allies in the end. Also the resources involved were not that vast and probably amounted to less than ten divisions, less at any one time, and almost nothing in terms of air power, artillery, tanks, etc. Further, most of the killing didn't take place until after the US was in the war.
 
Well a few big things. The Nazis are happy as they now have a final solution for the Jews, send them all to the desert.
Assume 5 Million Jews, [conservative estimate] at 1000 per ship = 5000 shiploads -divided by- 5 years [1940~1945] = 1000 ships/year.
It's a 3 week turnaround for the ships so assume 15 trips per year means minium of 60 ships, or 3 ships per day leaving Europe [Vichy France????] or 3000 refugees a day arriving in Israel.

If Israel refuses them, then Hitler gets the same Propaganda score as OTL's SS St Louis [may 1939], [Which I wanted as my trigger for declaring Independent Israel.]

But this is Ellis island sized stream of Refugees and I don't know if anybody smaller than the US could handle the strain.
1) The viability of a state in the Sinai Peninsula would be minimal so this would be a huge and unwelcome burden on the British, one they might not be able to supply for years, let alone willing.
By a piece of the Sinai, I was thinking of every thing east of the Canal zone.
part 1
part 2
part 3
 
Last edited:
Arabs

Every-1 seems to have forgotten what the Arabs will say :(

Well, an Israel in 1939 will inflame the Grand Mufti al-Husseini & every other Arab leader in Palestine- the Nazis will capitalise on this intense anti-Jewish feeling amongst the Arabs by providing em secret support (just as occurred OTL) to target both the Jews & British security forces- there will be WAR, perhaps on the scale of 1947-49 or even worse...
 
Top