Challenge: Make Germany A Jewish State....

Perhaps have the pagan German kings feeling pressure to become monotheist, but not wanting to submit to their Christian rivals, becoming Jewish? The Khazars and Himyarites converted to Judaism for similar reasons.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Just, no.....on so many levels. But you're right one point. It's hard. For one: That influx of Russian and Eastern European Jews into Germany is going to raise the German anti-semetic meters to maximum, with nasty consequences for the Jews of Germany.

Agreed on massive influx. German can absorb small migrations or you can have Germany expand to gain more Jews. But neither get you a majority since Jews don't seek converts.
 
Just, no.....on so many levels. But you're right one point. It's hard. For one: That influx of Russian and Eastern European Jews into Germany is going to raise the German anti-semetic meters to maximum, with nasty consequences for the Jews of Germany.

Yup pretty implausible, just the best I could think up.
 
If Prussia is vicious enough in the ethnic cleansing you have it do in this scenario, this just might work, since a sufficiently great reduction of the Polish population (incidentally, where would the displaced go?) could indeed make it possible for a relatively small number of Jewish immigrants to tip the balance.

Second, Russia has to do some sustained Pogroms. This will be easy.

I've noticed that you have claimed multiple times that 'Russia/Poland does Pogroms' is a simple way to move very large numbers of Jews to some specific location. Even after 120 years of exposure to the Russian Empire IOTL, Jews made up about 10% of the population almost everywhere west of the Dnieper. It seems to me that this implies that achieving the movement of populations on such a scale is not 'easy'. Could you elaborate?
 

Soundgarden

Banned
OK in 1900 we have 56 million Germans and 11 million Jews (in the world. This is going to be hard. OK let's try this:

1. Early industrialization of Germany.
2. Unification or partial unification that leads (perhaps along with industrialization) to a more liberal Germany with full Jewish emancipation.
3. Lots of Jews from Eastern Europe flock to Germany (including most that went to the US IOTL) looking for jobs and whatnot. Also less Jewish conversation to Christianity.
4. Hitler analogue rises in Russia rants and raves about evil Jews, leading to more Jewish emigration from the east into Germany.
5. Make non-Jewish German birthrates lower than IOTL for some reason and keep Jewish birth rates high (lots of Orthodox groups have crazy high birth rates, should be doable).
6. Jews are especially common in the Ruhr and western Germany in general as that's where a lot of the industry and jobs are.
7. War between Russian Hitler analogue and liberal Germany.
8. Russia wins, occupying the bulk of Germany. Jews especially likely to flee west from Russian armies.
9. A rump Germany survives along the Rhine with French protection.
10. Some Germans convert to Judaism and it becomes a symbol of German resistance against the evil Russians after some especially glorious Jewish Germans die as war heroes.
11. This rump Germany gets (barely) a Jewish majority after a while.

That might work if it was 100 years earlier(what was the Prussia's stance towards Jews then?). That way, it could give time for the Jewish population(through converts and assimilation) could expand properly to past the halfway point).
 
Perhaps have the pagan German kings feeling pressure to become monotheist, but not wanting to submit to their Christian rivals, becoming Jewish? The Khazars and Himyarites converted to Judaism for similar reasons.

Without any nearby Muslims, there's no reason to "walk a middle path".

Anyway, it's impossible if we want Judaism to look anything like it does today, since so much of modern Judaism is as a result of spending so long as a prosecuted minority, and the culture of the 80% of Jews that are Ashkenazi was forged in the Rhine Valley...
 

BlondieBC

Banned
If Prussia is vicious enough in the ethnic cleansing you have it do in this scenario, this just might work, since a sufficiently great reduction of the Polish population (incidentally, where would the displaced go?) could indeed make it possible for a relatively small number of Jewish immigrants to tip the balance.

I've noticed that you have claimed multiple times that 'Russia/Poland does Pogroms' is a simple way to move very large numbers of Jews to some specific location. Even after 120 years of exposure to the Russian Empire IOTL, Jews made up about 10% of the population almost everywhere west of the Dnieper. It seems to me that this implies that achieving the movement of populations on such a scale is not 'easy'. Could you elaborate?

The Poles would likely be expelled east or killed.

There is two parts need to get a population to move. One is enough harassment or economic suffering to make the current living conditions undesirable. This what the Pogroms can do, and IMO, we at high enough levels to achieve. The second part you need is to have a better place to go, which is what OTL generally lacked. While Austria or Hungary or Germany treated Jews "well" by the standards of the day, it takes enough better to get them to move. This is what we are lacking IOTL. And it also helps if the government has a policy assisting resettlement. This is also missing IOTL. And I don't remember talking a lot about this issue outside of my ATL, which had very specific conditions which made it likely and was set in a time with massive population movements. And there are issues with the OstJews being less desirable to German than the more Germanized (Modernized is another word used) Jews. For various reasons in my ATL, the Kaiser and Hapsburgs found it convenient to ignore these issues.

In WW1 IOTL, Armenians, Greeks, Turks, Jews, and Germans were resettle by the war or the interwar years. So lets look at some examples. While WW2 certainly got more Jews to move than the preceding decades, there was a lot of movement before to places like Israel and the USA. IMO, a lot of the Zionist movement is driven by repression and economic issues in eastern Europe. If one keeps the pressure the same or higher, and cuts of the escape valves of Israel and USA, then we can see movements to Germany, Austria or whoever is simply the least worse choice. The Greeks are another good example. They had been under Ottomans rule for decades, but then things got enough worse for them to be expelled after Greece had been an independent nation for 90 years. I think one can look at the Greeks to see how once one cross a tipping point, one goes rapidly from Chronic mistreatment and occassional massacres to mass explusion. Same for the Germans forced/encourage to leave Poland in the interwar years OTL. And we can also look at the Greeks that move to Egypt under the Ottomans to show how minor difference in treatment from one area to another can occur, even within the same "country".

Or one can look at the Magyarization process to show how low to moderate level discrimination combined with encouraging immigration can move population over time. It was basic classic discrimination with allow easy immigration can change the ethnic population over time. Now I don't think you can create a majority Jewish Germany with a modern POD. But you can create a majority Jewish substate in Germany, if it is in the best interest of the German leader of the day.
 
I don't remember talking a lot about this issue outside of my ATL, which had very specific conditions which made it likely and was set in a time with massive population movements. And there are issues with the OstJews being less desirable to German than the more Germanized (Modernized is another word used) Jews. For various reasons in my ATL, the Kaiser and Hapsburgs found it convenient to ignore these issues.

Hmm. In this case I apologize – I might have mistaken you with some other poster who used similar arguments to prove slightly different things then your speculation here. I quite agree with you that when a government has the means and will to perform large-scale ethnic cleansing, it can depopulate territories it controls and channel immigration there more easily.

In WW1 IOTL, Armenians, Greeks, Turks, Jews, and Germans were resettle by the war or the interwar years….

My point about Russia concerned massive, large-scale emigration. Russian Jews largely stayed where they were for 150 years, if the Russians had really wanted them gone that very badly it would probably have been enough time to do something about it. To tip the balance in a mostly depopulated region, the trickle which departed IOTL should be enough.
 
BTW, there were branches of Judaism that seperated from one another as time went on(Conservative and Reform from Orthodox). I figure why not have a branch that promotoes proselytizing and go from there.

That's not that easy. Islam and Christianity were proselytizing religions because they believed in an afterlife in which everyone who wasn't of their religion would go to hell (I'm a little simplifying this, I know, but it doesn't really matter in this context). Judaism doesn't even have an afterlife, and besides the religion itself, in Jewish thought, is meant for the Chosen People - i.e it's an ethnic religion, which is why it is so hard to convert to Judaism even today. So gentiles aren't ever supposed to be Jewish anyway, unlike other monotheistic religions in which they have to be to save their souls.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
My point about Russia concerned massive, large-scale emigration. Russian Jews largely stayed where they were for 150 years, if the Russians had really wanted them gone that very badly it would probably have been enough time to do something about it. To tip the balance in a mostly depopulated region, the trickle which departed IOTL should be enough.

There may be a gap in my understanding of 1790 to 1940, but I don't see Germany(Prussia) or Austria as "welcoming to new Jews". They generally treated their Jews better than Russia, but there are a few issues with immigration to either state. Jews in Germany were partially germanized for lack of a better word. They spoke Yiddish, adopted more German dress, and had good literacy rates. The Jews in the east are a lot more likely to use Russian, Ruthenian or Polish as their language compared to Yiddish. The illiteracy rate was probably over 75%. And the clothing was not "modern German", but more Jewish. Longer beards, less likely to wear business suits, etc. Austria (A-H) had similar issues. The Jews would have used non-Slavic languages as their language of trade (German, Yiddish, Hungarian). The would have come from much smaller towns compared to Austrian cities. Galicia which would have been the easiest place to move culturally was a consistent net exporter of people due to poor economic prospects. It had one of the highest immigration rates in Europe. I don't really enough pull to get large Jewish migration. IMO, there are periods with enough push (pogroms) but not enough pull of a better place to go. Now handwavium, give Galicia some huge economic boom like we see in the Ruhr, and we likely get massive Jewish economic migration along with various Slavic groups.

While any simple rule has issue, immigration seems to come in three scenarios.

1) Ethnic Cleansing by state.
2) Huge economic booms (Gold rush California, USA in late 1800's)
3) Moderate harassment or poor economy at home combined with good conditions in new country. (Italians to Argentina, Germans to USA, freemen moving to Australia)

Russia never quite did outright ethnic cleansing of Jews, OstJews were not in the right place to take advantage of booms like the California gold rush, and there never was a good enough push/pull dynamic to get them to move.
 
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