Development of Zionism and a Jewish state following a Central Powers victory?

Would we still see the establishment of a Jewish state in a world where the Central Powers are victorious in WWI?

If so, would it still be located where modern-day Israel is located, or is there a chance that a different (geo)political environment might necessitate/lead to such a state being located elsewhere?

If not, why not?
 
Zionism was underway in Palestine well before the first World War so I suspect that in terms of Herzl's grassroots Zionism it would probably continue to focus on Palestine rather than somewhere else. Without the Herzl Zionism, no power had any interest in setting up a Jewish state just because they could. A Central Powers victory would lead to the Ottoman's retaining control over the Levant in the short-run. It is unlikely that the Ottoman's would willingly allow an independent Jewish state to emerge as it would undermine their control of Syria and Arabia. Austria-Hungary would support the Ottomans in keeping their Empire together less Jewish nationalism inspire nationalist movements from the Czechs, Bosniaks, Croatians etc. Ironically, Germany would be the only Central power Empire that would be potentially supportive of a Jewish state. If still within the Ottoman Empire the Jews might find favouritism from the Turks above the Arabs - rather the funny Europeans than the rebellious Arabs - but this depends too much on the day to day minutiae of what happens in Palestine post WWI. If too many Jews start arriving the Ottomans may restrict immigration.

Germany might be tempted to have open support if it considers the strong Germanic nature a Jewish state might retain via the German Jews and the Yiddish culture - even though OTL Early Zionists resented the importation of Yiddish into the Levant preferring a purely Hebrew Jewish state.

Of the defeated powers I can see Britain and France notionally supporting Zionism as a way to undermine the Ottomans but I doubt if either of them would care that much about what happens in the Middle-East colonies. Britain is unlikely to keep Egypt losing it either to the Turks or more likely to independence and even if the British keep the gulf-states they're too far from Palestine to have the British risk them for the Jews. Maybe as in OTL, the British and French care enough about the Suez to keep interest in the area and the potential for the Zionists to be a chess-piece in an effort to re-enter that area of influence, but I doubt it. So I can't see that much interest from the defeated powers in supporting the Zionists.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
We will not see the establishment of a Zionist state since it is not in the Ottomans government's interest.

The Ottomans allowed some Jewish immigration. Like all empires, there is a benefit to a small ethnic minority dependent upon the empire for protection. The benefit is even greater if this minority brings skills or capital to the empire. So in a post war environment we will see continued but smallish Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. If a group of Jews wants to developed an unused asset (farm land, mine, railroad, etc) and as a part of the deal XXX Jewish settlers are given land, maybe even some sacred sights, the Ottomans would seriously consider the deal. Just keep in mind the Ottomans are not going to offend general Muslim sensitivities and allow Jews to worship at the Temple site in a way that offends the majority. So the type of projects the Ottomans might consider include,

- adding modern port facilities to a city.
- modern factory to meet local needs and improve balance of trade. Something such as oil refinery or train factory.
- expanding mining at existing mine such as Ma'an.
- building small dams and expanding land in production.
- building railroads, and running them. The nice thing about RR is that they often avoid city centers, so it is easy to add the Jewish quarter just outside the old city.
- oil projects, but this would require Jews living outside of the traditional Jewish homeland.

The other type of settlement considered will be where there is ethnic strife. The question is would the Jews be interested. On the RR on the east bank of the Jordan heading down towards Mecca, there was constant trouble with the locals sabotaging the RR often by stealing the wood. The Ottomans finally built the RR only using metal to stop this. The Ottomans would be delighted to have Jewish villages run the RR, and the friction with the locals would be a minor benefit.

So we have this dilemma. Besides some symbolic settlement, the Ottomans are most interested in settling Jews on unused land that has little religious significance to the Muslims. There is a real shortage of land that is religiously important to Jews, unimportant to Muslims, unused, and easily converted to profitable use. So I have spent a few paragraphs say. It will be small trickle of immigrants mostly to second tier religious areas where the Ottoman government is effectively bribe by development loans/capital.
 
Young Lochinvar brings up the counter to my favorite point of bad history, which is that Zionism was well underway by the time of the Balfour Declaration. It should also be noted that the Balfour Declaration did essentially nothing anyway, as it was quickly followed by the Churchill White Paper (of 1922), which completely back-pedaled on the idea of a Jewish state (though it did guarantee the right of Jews already present in Palestine to remain). The British also established strict immigration quotas on Jews.

This is by contrast to the Ottomans, who spent the years from 1878 to 1917 doing all of nothing in Palestine - though that action in 1917 was to expel the Zionists from Tel Aviv, presumably due to the volunteering of many Zionists with the British in the Jewish Legion. It is thus possible that the Ottomans would continue to more-or-less ignore the Zionists, after that action, or that they would go further and try to end the Zionist endeavor (or anything in between). At a guess, the nations of the world will sit by idly as long as the Ottomans don't start openly mass-murdering (though even then, considering the Armenians...)

It's a real question, though, whether the Ottomans will continue governing the region. First off, I can imagine any number of scenarios in which Germany and A-H "win" in Europe but the Ottomans still "lose". OTL, the British and their Arab allies (and the Jewish Legion!) beat the Ottomans pretty squarely, especially with their thrusts from Egypt into Palestine. It's seems feasible-ish to me for the British to still control most of what would become Mandatory Palestine, even if the Entente loses in Europe (though obviously the lands might be returned in a peace treaty). Even if the British don't win, the genie of Arab nationalism will have been let out of the bottle. Even in the event of an Ottoman victory, Arab nationalist uprisings could well see much of Syria (including modern Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and West Bank and Gaza) become independent of Istanbul; likely under the leadership of Faisal al-Hashemi (otl King Faisal I of Iraq). Though OTL, Versailles would make him somewhat bitter and angry towards Zionism, he was fairly pro- in the period before, seeing Zionists as a way to bring capital and knowledge into the region to help with modernizations (somewhat like BlondieBC suggests, though I doubt that anything like an intentional system of Jewish enclaves would ever have been considered). OTL sees the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement in 1919. So King Faisal I of Syria might be magnanimous and grant the Zionists great leeway in Palestine (OTL he didn't much care about the natives; it's possible that this might change in the event of his rising through popular uprising, but it's somewhat unlikely in my opinion, since the region was somewhat of a backwater). On the other hand, he might not be, especially if he ends up governing only a small region.

Vis. Germany and Austria-Hungary...Kaiser Wilhelm met with Theodore Herzl in Palestine on his trip there, and was sort of vaguely supportive, and I don't know anything about the A-H position, aside from the fact that by 1918 they had lost large amounts of Jews (to emigration, mostly to the US) and were fairly okay with that. I'd expect the two nations to be faintly pro-Zionism, but not enough to pressure Istanbul if that's what it came down to.
 
In total I think Zionism may take a hit, European Jews were getting on just fine in Germany before ww1 and a Germany dominant in Europe could well see increased immigration into Germany.
 
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Today, we forget just how controversial Zionism was among Jews before WWII. There were strong religious objections to it- and a large group of Jews today still reject it Most of the early Zionist leaders were not religious at all but saw Jews as an ethnic group.

The movement is likely to go nowhere in a CP victory
 
Young Lochinvar brings up the counter to my favorite point of bad history, which is that Zionism was well underway by the time of the Balfour Declaration. It should also be noted that the Balfour Declaration did essentially nothing anyway, as it was quickly followed by the Churchill White Paper (of 1922), which completely back-pedaled on the idea of a Jewish state (though it did guarantee the right of Jews already present in Palestine to remain). The British also established strict immigration quotas on Jews.

This is by contrast to the Ottomans, who spent the years from 1878 to 1917 doing all of nothing in Palestine - though that action in 1917 was to expel the Zionists from Tel Aviv, presumably due to the volunteering of many Zionists with the British in the Jewish Legion. It is thus possible that the Ottomans would continue to more-or-less ignore the Zionists, after that action, or that they would go further and try to end the Zionist endeavor (or anything in between). At a guess, the nations of the world will sit by idly as long as the Ottomans don't start openly mass-murdering (though even then, considering the Armenians...)

It's a real question, though, whether the Ottomans will continue governing the region. First off, I can imagine any number of scenarios in which Germany and A-H "win" in Europe but the Ottomans still "lose". OTL, the British and their Arab allies (and the Jewish Legion!) beat the Ottomans pretty squarely, especially with their thrusts from Egypt into Palestine. It's seems feasible-ish to me for the British to still control most of what would become Mandatory Palestine, even if the Entente loses in Europe (though obviously the lands might be returned in a peace treaty). Even if the British don't win, the genie of Arab nationalism will have been let out of the bottle. Even in the event of an Ottoman victory, Arab nationalist uprisings could well see much of Syria (including modern Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and West Bank and Gaza) become independent of Istanbul; likely under the leadership of Faisal al-Hashemi (otl King Faisal I of Iraq). Though OTL, Versailles would make him somewhat bitter and angry towards Zionism, he was fairly pro- in the period before, seeing Zionists as a way to bring capital and knowledge into the region to help with modernizations (somewhat like BlondieBC suggests, though I doubt that anything like an intentional system of Jewish enclaves would ever have been considered). OTL sees the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement in 1919. So King Faisal I of Syria might be magnanimous and grant the Zionists great leeway in Palestine (OTL he didn't much care about the natives; it's possible that this might change in the event of his rising through popular uprising, but it's somewhat unlikely in my opinion, since the region was somewhat of a backwater). On the other hand, he might not be, especially if he ends up governing only a small region.

Vis. Germany and Austria-Hungary...Kaiser Wilhelm met with Theodore Herzl in Palestine on his trip there, and was sort of vaguely supportive, and I don't know anything about the A-H position, aside from the fact that by 1918 they had lost large amounts of Jews (to emigration, mostly to the US) and were fairly okay with that. I'd expect the two nations to be faintly pro-Zionism, but not enough to pressure Istanbul if that's what it came down to.
Arab nationalism was, is and will always be a complete joke, if the French and British arent pulling the Arabs behind them in open war against the Ottomans there's no way for the Turks to lose the Levant.
 
The Ottomans would most probably not allow any further Jewish nation building in Palestine as it was detrimental to the pan-Islamist ideology of the Sultan. If the Entente still manages to knock out the Ottos and partition the Porte before losing in the West, then we would see a development more similar to OTL, but without the mass immigration we saw in the immediate aftermath of the Shoah.
 
How about a really way out one.

By early 1918, Austria Hungary had managed to thoroughly alienate the Poles of Galicia by favouring the Ukrainians, w/o really winning the Ukrainians either.

WI (in the event of a late CP victory) they try to "cut the Gordian knot" by expelling both groups into Ukraine and the former Russian Poland, and resettling the province with Polish and Ukrainian Jews? So we get a sort of "Carpatho-Israel" under the Habsburg crown. I don't suppose the Jews would be very keen, but if Palestine is not on offer, the Polish and Ukrainian regimes are anti-Semitic, and the US is shutting the door on east European immigrants whether Jewish or other, might they see it as the best of a bad set of options?
 
Having pondered the same thing in my own thinking on a stalemated Great War I can bring up the some challenges to be overcome. And to be fair I am neither Jewish nor a master of the history of Zionism. I think Zionism will be a compelling idea but I do not think in this scenario it can attract more than a minority and spur more than endless discussion.

First, if you want anything looking like a Jewish homeland, one needs to get the British in control of the Levant, they were the only ones supportive and as has been said were just barely so once the emigration took up speed and the complexity unfolded. How do we integrate these people? They are not going to become Ottomans or Jordanians or Palestinians, they are driven to create a new homeland, that alone sets them on a collision course with everyone. But if they lose the Arabs and are not in Iraq one wonders if they double down on the "Jews" rather than the Arabs to get into the game. Or chuck them aside to patch things up with the Ottomans?

If you merely want a trickle of Zionists then I suspect a victorious OE might still be amenable, but I doubt it ever lets things develop towards autonomy. But as has been observed, the Ottomans might be very chilly over yet another non-Islamic minority, its intolerance ramped up during the war to what we can safely say was extreme, and given how the British and French were ready to carve them up, we may see the OE generally shift quite frosty towards any Jewish populace generally and hostile to Zionists specifically. Now one might counter that the OE was more secular and if it endured might move to a better multi-ethnic culture, especially if oil wealth fuels development and all of the Empire gets a share.

Second you need to fuel Zionism itself, even in an unsettled Europe post-war and a British Palestine the floodgates did not open. Anti-Semitism amped up in the wake of defeat and the disintegration of "state," or in places where a new state is being born around nationalism. One sees it acutely in Poland, Ukraine, and ultimately Germany. One saw it in France with the Dreyfus Affair, etc., one finds it in the background of Europe, but to me it appears that in Germany the Jewish war veterans had likely altered course on anti-Semitism in its society. This should make the German Jewish population rather disinclined to want to move and as I think they would be less supportive of Zionism. If anything, this likely wealthier and larger population will gain influence and standing in Germany overtime, it may get influential enough that another generation or two further along it gets romantic about "Israel", and likely has more connections as Germany remains a partner in the rebuilding and then building of the modern OE, so that this group takes up the cause. But by then it might look more like a string of beach resorts and tourism than a struggle for "homeland."

Now there may be more Jewish immigration to Germany, from Poland or Ukraine, if Germany loses its grip in those places and they go through similar violent struggles to become independent or absorbed back into "Russia," then it might cause unease in Germany, and you have the USA likely restricting its own immigration, all things to consider. The challenge for me is to imagine a modern Europe with a much bigger Jewish populace, no history of holocaust (but still progroms), in light of a likely general shift towards social democracy and secularism. I am not certain that Zionism endures against that evolution.
 
How about a really way out one.

By early 1918, Austria Hungary had managed to thoroughly alienate the Poles of Galicia by favouring the Ukrainians, w/o really winning the Ukrainians either.

WI (in the event of a late CP victory) they try to "cut the Gordian knot" by expelling both groups into Ukraine and the former Russian Poland, and resettling the province with Polish and Ukrainian Jews? So we get a sort of "Carpatho-Israel" under the Habsburg crown. I don't suppose the Jews would be very keen, but if Palestine is not on offer, the Polish and Ukrainian regimes are anti-Semitic, and the US is shutting the door on east European immigrants whether Jewish or other, might they see it as the best of a bad set of options?
That would be expelling 15 million or so people out of the most productive agricultural land of the empire, and the only place with a usable quantity of oil. No way they'd do that, the monarchy did not really care where Jews settled in A-H anyway, there would be no reason to start caring about it.
 
That would be expelling 15 million or so people out of the most productive agricultural land of the empire, and the only place with a usable quantity of oil. No way they'd do that, the monarchy did not really care where Jews settled in A-H anyway, there would be no reason to start caring about it.


Where do you get that figure from? As I understand it Galicia's 1910 population was about 7,000,000, 11% Jewish and the rest about equally divided between Poles and Ukrainians. Also, by 1918 much of the population had been displaced as a result of the war.

Re the economic resources, I quite agree; but if the Jewish province remained part of Austria, these would not be lost.

I didn't see them as wanting Jews per se, but possibly wishing to get rid of disaffected Poles etc. However, I quite agree it's a low probability.
 

Insider

Banned
That would be expelling 15 million or so people out of the most productive agricultural land of the empire, and the only place with a usable quantity of oil. No way they'd do that, the monarchy did not really care where Jews settled in A-H anyway, there would be no reason to start caring about it.
By the standards of age they were caring. Monarchy was a beacon of tolerance, especially in comparison to Russian Empire.

We also have to consider each situation. An early Central Powers victory, however unlikely, wouldn't cause much change. The Ottomans would most likely welcome immigrants, from the rest of the world equally, as from now CP controlled Ukraine and Poland, where anti-semitism would be politically useful tool to divide and control population. That is if losers are brought to the table in 1915, 1916, and maybe early 1917. 1916 and 1917 are moment when Turks started to be bothered by Jewish cooperation with Entente, and in mid of 1917 they broke a Jewish spy ring on their territory which caused a shift in attitude. From this point actually the situation of the first settlers in Palestine deteriorated to the point they welcomed Entente as their saviours. So past 1917, we may still see the Jewish State, just not in the middle east. Somebody would dust of Uganda Plan? Or any other colony would become a heaven for them, like proverbial Madagascar? Or maybe we would see a Jewish State as a part of USA, when most of emigrates would prefer the its allure, over the heavy handed government relocation schemes.
 
Where do you get that figure from? As I understand it Galicia's 1910 population was about 7,000,000, 11% Jewish and the rest about equally divided between Poles and Ukrainians. Also, by 1918 much of the population had been displaced as a result of the war.

Re the economic resources, I quite agree; but if the Jewish province remained part of Austria, these would not be lost.

I didn't see them as wanting Jews per se, but possibly wishing to get rid of disaffected Poles etc. However, I quite agree it's a low probability.
According to Wiki 8 million or so, slightly off the mark on my part o_O though that does not really change anything. There was also the idea to get rid of the Poles by giving Western Galicia to the new Polish state with a Hapsburg king, again it changes nothing because everything stays in the family.

By the standards of age they were caring. Monarchy was a beacon of tolerance, especially in comparison to Russian Empire.

We also have to consider each situation. An early Central Powers victory, however unlikely, wouldn't cause much change. The Ottomans would most likely welcome immigrants, from the rest of the world equally, as from now CP controlled Ukraine and Poland, where anti-semitism would be politically useful tool to divide and control population. That is if losers are brought to the table in 1915, 1916, and maybe early 1917. 1916 and 1917 are moment when Turks started to be bothered by Jewish cooperation with Entente, and in mid of 1917 they broke a Jewish spy ring on their territory which caused a shift in attitude. From this point actually the situation of the first settlers in Palestine deteriorated to the point they welcomed Entente as their saviours. So past 1917, we may still see the Jewish State, just not in the middle east. Somebody would dust of Uganda Plan? Or any other colony would become a heaven for them, like proverbial Madagascar? Or maybe we would see a Jewish State as a part of USA, when most of emigrates would prefer the its allure, over the heavy handed government relocation schemes.
Setting up Israel in Galicia seems like too much effort for no gain at all.
 
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