Existence Of Israel With No Holocaust/A Much Smaller Holocaust

The point of all of this is that in the scenario absent a Holocaust, or one that is much reduced there will be just as much of Zionist drive as OTL.

Well I dunnoo...Jews had endured abuse for many centuries. The holocaust was the straw that really broke the camel's back, that really gave force to the zionist argument. What was at stake was not just admission to some university, but their lives.
 
Well I dunnoo...Jews had endured abuse for many centuries. The holocaust was the straw that really broke the camel's back, that really gave force to the zionist argument. What was at stake was not just admission to some university, but their lives.

I disagree. Zionism had been building up for decades. Even afterwards, American and British and Canadian Jews felt just as safe. The result was to make sure that there weren't many Jews in Western Europe, but they were basically all killed anyway so it's not like they strengthened Israel anyway. 1948 was not accompanied by huge waves of immigration from anywhere in the developed world; there were the DPs, of course, but they didn't come because they felt unsafe so much as because literally no country in Europe would take them, and then there were the Jews from Arab countries getting kicked out by post-Israel pogroms - but they almost all arrived after the Independence War.

I really do think that the importance of the Holocaust to the establishment of the State of Israel is grossly overstated.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I very much doubt the Soviets would've supported Israel for long. I think inevitably they would've backed the arabs simply because they were in a competition for world influence with the West and the arab world is vastly bigger and economically more important than Israel. I think it was Kosygin (or Podgorny?) who said to Johnson at Glassboro in '67 "I can't understand you Americans backing Israel. There are 100 million arabs and only three million jews." And he said this in the wake of the '67 war. Israel's military proficiency didn't alter fundamental geopolitical realities.
If the Soviets don't stand up for Israel in this TL, though, will anyone actually do this?
 
If the Soviets don't stand up for Israel in this TL, though, will anyone actually do this?

I think the US would as it did historically but there's a catch. There wasn't much US support until after '67 and by then it could've been too late.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I think the US would as it did historically but there's a catch. There wasn't much US support until after '67 and by then it could've been too late.
Wasn't a lot of the U.S. support of Israel in our TL a result of U.S. guilt towards inaction during the Holocaust, though?
 
Wasn't a lot of the U.S. support of Israel in our TL a result of U.S. guilt towards inaction during the Holocaust, though?
No, not even remotely.

US support of Israel derived from 3 sources:
-Jewish support for Israel in the US
-Evangelical Christian support for Israel in the US
-The US spent the 50s and 60s watching most of the Arab world go firmly into the Soviet camp but still resisted supporting Israel; however, after France abandoned Israel but Israel went on to show that it was militarily very powerful, the US started to support Israel in 1967 as a democratic, NATO-aligned counterweight to the Warsaw Pact-aligned "socialist" dictatorships of the Arab world.

Holocaust guilt had absolutely nothing to do with it, or else you might have seen some action in 1948 (during which time the US enforced a pretty strict arms embargo on Israel, which only really let up when Israel pivoted to the US in '67).

And, honestly, I think the last was the biggest and most important through the Cold War, though the first two started being increasingly important when the threat of Arab Socialism was revealed to be a joke.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Holocaust guilt had absolutely nothing to do with it, or else you might have seen some action in 1948 (during which time the US enforced a pretty strict arms embargo on Israel, which only really let up when Israel pivoted to the US in '67).
The U.S. did do a lot for Israel in 1947-1948, though; indeed, the U.S. was one of the first countries to recognize Israel and worked extremely hard to push through the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine (in terms of getting enough votes for it at the UN).

Also, would U.S. Jews have been as supportive of Israel without the Holocaust?
 
American Jews supported the pre-war Zionist efforts for settlement in Palestine through various means. Yes, the Zionist idea of the Jews needing their own state got a boost from the Holocaust, however this this scenario you have still had a massive resurgence in nasty antisemitism in Europe, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of murders. Jews wishing to leave the countries that have resumed crapping on them big time, to say nothing of where they were killed are still being kept out of everywhere they might go to make things better - a situation very much unlike what existed up to the early 1920s. Absent the Holocaust antisemitism in the USA has not come to be equated with support for the really stuff the Nazis did, so to the extent there was some slacking in postwar antisemitism in the 1940s, that has not happened which will make Zionism more attractive to US Jews as a philosophy and even an action.

After WWII OTL the USA did support the partition and recognized Israel. They then instituted an arms embargo which was fairly seriously enforced on "all parties". Of course since the Arab nations could get arms elsewhere, this was not a favor to Israel. When, early on in the 1948 war, things looked grim for Israel the USA lent no support other than "good luck". Until the 1967 war US support for Israel was quite limited.
 
Taking the scenario of no Holocaust:
Israel will almost certainly still exist, but might be smaller if a lot of Jews feel safe in the diaspora.

Taking the scenario of a much smaller Holocaust (c. 500,000 people die):
Israel still exists. It might be bigger, as 6 million more Ashkenazi Jews are still alive and lots of these people will make aliyah. Judea and Samaria and the Sinai might end up under Israeli contol and have a Jewish majority. The Yiddish language might be more prominent ITTL; the large number of Jews still residing in eastern Europe might mean that a Yiddish-speaking Jewish state is formed in Europe, in addition to the Hebrew-speaking Jewish state in Israel. Here's a map of the Jews in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Juden_1881.JPG
 
-The US spent the 50s and 60s watching most of the Arab world go firmly into the Soviet camp but still resisted supporting Israel; however, after France abandoned Israel but Israel went on to show that it was militarily very powerful, the US started to support Israel in 1967 as a democratic, NATO-aligned counterweight to the Warsaw Pact-aligned "socialist" dictatorships of the Arab world.

Israel had already demonstrated its military prowess in 1956 and even in '48. But I wonder: if the US, seeking to eliminate Soviet Mideast influence, could've approached the Egyptians, Syrians and others, told them the war shows Soviet gear is no good but the US will rearm them and teach new doctrines in exchange for ousting the Soviets. Of course US political realities would've made that tough but the US had yet to openly align with Israel at the time and replacing Soviet influence might've compensated for the unpopularity of backing the arabs.
Btw there were some US arms sales to Israel before '67 like HAWKs in '62 and Skyhawks in '66.
 
Taking the scenario of no Holocaust:
Israel will almost certainly still exist, but might be smaller if a lot of Jews feel safe in the diaspora.

If its population were 50% less that might be fatal. Even if the arabs couldn't actually drive the jews into the sea, the psychological toll of an even more precarious existence would probably cause too many to emigrate and the state would disappear.

Judea and Samaria and the Sinai might end up under Israeli contol and have a Jewish majority.

The first two are worth keeping but Sinai is mostly worthless desert not worth an endless struggle with Egypt.


The Yiddish language might be more prominent ITTL; the large number of Jews still residing in eastern Europe might mean that a Yiddish-speaking Jewish state is formed in Europe, in addition to the Hebrew-speaking Jewish state in Israel.

I very much doubt the Poles or Soviets would've allowed that.
 
Israel had already demonstrated its military prowess in 1956 and even in '48. But I wonder: if the US, seeking to eliminate Soviet Mideast influence, could've approached the Egyptians, Syrians and others, told them the war shows Soviet gear is no good but the US will rearm them and teach new doctrines in exchange for ousting the Soviets. Of course US political realities would've made that tough but the US had yet to openly align with Israel at the time and replacing Soviet influence might've compensated for the unpopularity of backing the arabs.
Btw there were some US arms sales to Israel before '67 like HAWKs in '62 and Skyhawks in '66.

Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in this time period had ideologically Socialist governments (at least in theory). Getting them onboard the Freedom (tm) Train would require, at the least, CIA backed coups, which is expensive. With an oil-rich but relatively weak Saudi Arabia and a friendly Iran, the US doesn't need anything from countries that are demonstrably militarily incompetent. Israel was a cheaper, easier, and more immediate option.

I very much doubt the Poles or Soviets would've allowed that.

I dunno, maybe the Soviets push harder for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, though I doubt it. The Poles definitely not, though; they already had some pretty antisemitic laws and policies in the Interbellum; without the Holocaust, they might well start supporting mass migration to Israel.

The first two are worth keeping but Sinai is mostly worthless desert not worth an endless struggle with Egypt.

The Sinai is useful as a buffer. Israel considered Egypt its greatest threat in the early years, and controlling Sinai adds 250km to the distance between Egypt and Tel Aviv (let alone Ashkelon). If we still get a large Arab population in Gaza, controlling Sinai allows Israel to isolate them from potential Egyptian rabble-rousing and arms. Plus the Sinai has a little oil and gas (not much, but enough to make Israel significantly less dependent on imports for energy). Plus it now puts the British Canal Zone as a buffer between Israel and Egypt, a la 1956's goal.
 
The Yiddish language might be more prominent ITTL; the large number of Jews still residing in eastern Europe might mean that a Yiddish-speaking Jewish state is formed in Europe, in addition to the Hebrew-speaking Jewish state in Israel.
I very much doubt the Poles or Soviets would've allowed that.

Ehh, true, but from a strategic perspective it would make sense to create a Jewish puppet state in Eastern Europe. OTL's northeastern quarter of Poland was about 20% Jewish pre-Holocaust; the Soviets could just chop off a bit of this area for a Jewish state, and compensate the Poles for this loss of land by giving them more land in the west. Here's a map I made of the general idea (probably a bit generous to the Soviet bloc)

polandcanintonorthsea.png


It seems like the most sensible thing for them to do. They'd carry out a population transfer: all Jews currently in the Soviet bloc moved into this state, and all non-Jews moved out of it.

The Soviets have two options. Create a loyal communist Jewish state that can't escape from Soviet influence, or encourage 6 million Jews to emigrate to the much-more-distant-and-less-likely-to-be-loyal Israel. Logically they have to choose the first option.

That being said, they might not be logical. I don't know how much antisemitism there was in the USSR at this time, and it's perfectly reasonable that the Soviets might ruin the opportunity of having Jews on their side as a result of nothing more than simple prejudice.
 
The Soviets don't have to do either. OTL they USSR did not allow Jewish (or any) emigration. Especially once the USSR was courting the Arabs allowing Jews out, who might very well end up in Israel no matter where they went to initially, was not happening. You didn't see many leave until towards the end of the USSR. The postwar Poles will not want to give up one square inch of their land to the Jews (they didn't even want to given back property to Jews who survived the camps), and the Soviets have zero love for the Jews - how many in the USSR were willing to turn Jews over the to Nazis and a fair number of partisan bands were as dangerous for the Jews as the Nazis.

ITTL the Jewish state has no levers to force the USSR to let the Jews go. Even before the USSR was the friend to the Arabs, the USSR had severe restrictions on emigration - not just because the emigres might have useful skills, or might once outside the USSR be used to plot against it, but because if folks were allowed to leave freely and there were significant emigrants, it would work against the theme of the "paradise" for the worker that was the USSR. The ITTL Jewish state can't force the USSR to let the Jews go, and certainly nobody else in the world is going to risk a conflict with the USSR to let the Jews go.
 
Ehh, true, but from a strategic perspective it would make sense to create a Jewish puppet state in Eastern Europe. OTL's northeastern quarter of Poland was about 20% Jewish pre-Holocaust; the Soviets could just chop off a bit of this area for a Jewish state, and compensate the Poles for this loss of land by giving them more land in the west. Here's a map I made of the general idea (probably a bit generous to the Soviet bloc)

It seems like the most sensible thing for them to do. They'd carry out a population transfer: all Jews currently in the Soviet bloc moved into this state, and all non-Jews moved out of it.

The Soviets have two options. Create a loyal communist Jewish state that can't escape from Soviet influence, or encourage 6 million Jews to emigrate to the much-more-distant-and-less-likely-to-be-loyal Israel. Logically they have to choose the first option.

What's that weird buffer state that appears to be following the Elbe for most of its length?

Also, that state, with all of the Eastern bloc Jews in it, is a little bit genocide-y. It's smaller even than Israel, unless I miss my mark, and I think it's much less suitable for agriculture (shorter growing season certainly, though probably better water resources). Plus, Israel's population had repeated large influxes but also grew more gradually than just becoming 6 million one day (Israel OTL passed 6 million at about the 2000). And...why does the USSR want a buffer state with Poland?

I've always wondered if a larger Jewish Autonomous Oblast, with access to the sea and maybe some better resources, wouldn't have attracted more immigration. Say, give it Khabarovski Krai or something.

That being said, they might not be logical. I don't know how much antisemitism there was in the USSR at this time, and it's perfectly reasonable that the Soviets might ruin the opportunity of having Jews on their side as a result of nothing more than simple prejudice.

Antisemitism in the USSR is complicated in those days, since so much of the country hated Jews but so much of the Party leadership was Jewish until Stalin's purges in the early 50s. After Stalin's death, it was pretty clear, but in the period we're talking about here...honestly, it could go either way; especially if Stalin decides that his solution to the "Jewish problem" is to deport them all (done "properly", a Soviet Jewish oblast could end up being basically a giant ghetto)
 
What's that weird buffer state that appears to be following the Elbe for most of its length?
The blue one? East Germany. In hindsight, it is a bit of a weird shape for a country. That can be changed if necessary.

I basically just put all mostly-German areas that are under Soviet military rule and on the western bank of the Elbe into one communist German state.

Why the Elbe? I think I read once that some Polish nationalists wanted Poland to have its western border on the Elbe.

Also, that state, with all of the Eastern bloc Jews in it, is a little bit genocide-y. It's smaller even than Israel, unless I miss my mark, and I think it's much less suitable for agriculture (shorter growing season certainly, though probably better water resources). Plus, Israel's population had repeated large influxes but also grew more gradually than just becoming 6 million one day (Israel OTL passed 6 million at about the 2000).
That state is 50,000 km^2; Israel is only 20,000 km^2...

And it has a present-day population of about 6 million as far as I can tell.

I thought it was big enough, but maybe it should be a bit bigger. I dunno.
And...why does the USSR want a buffer state with Poland?
They don't. It just happens to be an easy place to put a Jewish state given the large number of Jews there.

And it's surrounded by Soviet puppets so has little chance of falling out of Soviet influence.

Incidentally, Warsaw is a border town on my map. I thought about putting it in the Jewish state, but then decided that the Polish people probably wouldn't be too happy about that....!
I've always wondered if a larger Jewish Autonomous Oblast, with access to the sea and maybe some better resources, wouldn't have attracted more immigration. Say, give it Khabarovski Krai or something.
Reasonable idea, but it means carting millions of people across Siberia to an undeveloped swamp. I hardly think that Jewish leaders would support this.

My proposal involves the Jews staying much closer to where they are, in a developed region which already has a large Jewish population.
Antisemitism in the USSR is complicated in those days, since so much of the country hated Jews but so much of the Party leadership was Jewish until Stalin's purges in the early 50s. After Stalin's death, it was pretty clear, but in the period we're talking about here...honestly, it could go either way; especially if Stalin decides that his solution to the "Jewish problem" is to deport them all (done "properly", a Soviet Jewish oblast could end up being basically a giant ghetto)
Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks. In which case, my proposal is realistic!

But I didn't think of it as a giant ghetto-cum-autonomous-oblast. I thought of it as more of a nominally independent state akin to Poland or Czechoslovakia.
 
That state is 50,000 km^2; Israel is only 20,000 km^2...

And it has a present-day population of about 6 million as far as I can tell.

I thought it was big enough, but maybe it should be a bit bigger. I dunno.

I guess I misestimated the size, then.

They don't. It just happens to be an easy place to put a Jewish state given the large number of Jews there.

And it's surrounded by Soviet puppets so has little chance of falling out of Soviet influence.

Incidentally, Warsaw is a border town on my map. I thought about putting it in the Jewish state, but then decided that the Polish people probably wouldn't be too happy about that....!

In that case, you could also consider doing one further south, perhaps solving the Lviv problem (is it Polish or Ukrainian?) by making it the capital of the Jewish state; before the Holocaust it had an enormous Jewish population; depending which census you believe, Jews may have been the plurality. Bessarabia (mostly Moldova these days) also had a large Jewish population; possible the highest in general at the time (as a percent). A state stretching from Lviv to Odessa would probably be 20%+ Jewish before the population transfers, though that's huge and would probably involve a less Jewish state or more population transfers. Of course, the idea of a "national republic" that's not 100% that nationality might appeal to the Soviets.

At any rate, a Jewish thingy in Bessarabia provides a buffer with Romania, which was much less close to Moscow.

And, of course, there's always Crimea, which Stalin actually considered turning into a Jewish SSR (some Zionist Socialists actually got side-tracked there and I think even established a couple kibbutzim).

Reasonable idea, but it means carting millions of people across Siberia to an undeveloped swamp. I hardly think that Jewish leaders would support this.

My proposal involves the Jews staying much closer to where they are, in a developed region which already has a large Jewish population.

Meh. I think the international Zionists would actually support it (though of course the USSR only cares about them somewhat, though they might send a flood of donations like for Zionist settlements in Palestine and then Israel). Plus, it wouldn't involve displacing several million angry Poles, Lithuanians, and Belarusans. I'm sure that Poland would love accepting a flood of refugees, and Lithuania, already quite restive, isn't gonna be thrilled.

If Stalin tells them to get on a train to the ass-end of Siberia, they're going to get on that train. OTL the USSR transferred far more than five and a half million people to all kinds of shitty places.

Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks. In which case, my proposal is realistic!

But I didn't think of it as a giant ghetto-cum-autonomous-oblast. I thought of it as more of a nominally independent state akin to Poland or Czechoslovakia.

I said that it could become a giant ghetto. It doesn't need to be. Though I do consider an SSR more likely than an independent republic because - why not? Poland and Czechoslovakia were already countries when the USSR dragged them into their sphere. This is more like the Belarusan SSR, a new "state" built on a patch of depopulated land.

Considering the exemplary performance of Jews in all kinds of science and engineering throughout the history of the Soviet Union, there's no compelling reason why the Jewish SSR/Yiddish Republic couldn't end up just as prosperous as the Soviet average, or even better. Or much worse, if Moscow decides to drain them.
 
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