Jewishness with out the holocaust

But wouldn't the Jews in any potential Israel see a lot less support in this world?

Israel may still be created, but I think unlike OTL it might also end up being destroyed without too many people caring if they were seen as being upstarts who only caused trouble for the region.

It's like some have said, there's been no cultural shock to actively turn people away from anti-semitism.
 
First of all, it really depends on what the POD is for a "no-Holocaust" world. I'll assume for the sake of discussion that a certain Austrian corporal dies c. 1916, and things butterfly away from there (with Weimar Germany collapsing under the strain of depression and consecutive governments hostile or else indifferent to democracy, and a reactionary, military government assuming power in the early 1930s)...

Obviously, with no WWII, the old "heartland" of East European Jewry will not face total physical annihilation; among other things, the Yiddish language remains widely spoken as a secular everyday tongue, and many Hasidic dynasties that were wiped out IOTL continue to flourish. However, as others have pointed out, the Jews in Poland, in Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, ect. will still have to contend with the rise of authoritarian, right-wing governments that are hostile to minority rights--especially to the rights of a minority that's widely hated by most of the population, and has no "elder brother" state to act in their interests.

In the case of Poland specifically, I can see the Jews there facing increasing economic and social discrimination, from "ghetto benches" at Polish universities to state-sanctioned boycotts of Jewish businesses. Most people forget that even before World War II in OTL, Polish Jewry faced widespread pauperization due to a well-heeled campaign, centered in the Polish Catholic Church, to get Poles to stop frequenting Jewish shops.

(If Poland in this ATL gets into a losing war with the German junta over Danzig, then there's potential for widespread violence against the Jewish community. Nothing as bad as Jedwabne IOTL, but horrific nonetheless.)

The Jews of Europe will also have a number of political divisions, especially pronounced in Eastern Europe: assimilationists, Bundists (in Poland), Communists, Zionists, and the Orthodox/Hasidic communities. If Jews in Poland or Hungary or Romania face widespread violence, I could see the rise of Jewish self-defence groups (both Bundist and Zionist; don't forget, it was a Hungarian Jew who invented Krav Maga IOTL).

I expect that in the USSR, Stalin will do his best to obliterate any trace of Jewish cultural autonomy...as IOTL, I expect few Jews, barring official action, will willingly immigrate to the "Jewish Autonomous Oblast."

In Western Europe, most Jews there will continue to face the problems posed by the calls for assimilation by their community leaders. Most Jews will belong to the middle class in the West, and will vote for traditional liberal parties. I could see a number of Jews in France or Germany or the Netherlands attracted to something akin to the religious philosophy of Martin Buber or Franz Rosenweig: increased spirituality, if not outright attraction or romanticizing Jewish Orthodox traditions. Of course, many Jews in the West will probably continue, without the horrors of OTL, to view Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe with a mixture of paternalism and contempt.

As for the prospects of a State of Israel, I believe that a Jewish state is still likely to emerge: after a certain point in the 1930s, some form of Jewish nation is probably inevitable, especially if the British don't issue something as draconian as the OTL 1939 White Paper (and with no Second World War to worry London, there probably won't be the same obsessive drive to appease Arab demands to halt Jewish immigration into the Palestinian Mandate that there was IOTL). While the Yishuv won't be getting a huge wave of German immigrants, there probably will be a couple of big "Aliyahs"--of Jews fleeing economic destitution and outright violence from the big communities of Eastern Europe. With Western European countries and the USA maintaining high immigration quotas, then Palestine will look very inviting for desperate Jewish refugees.

The final borders of any Jewish state are hard to guess. An ATL Israel might wind up with borders similar to those proposed by the Peel Commission IOTL, or larger with a better equipped and more numerous army than the IDF of OTL 1948 (a fair number of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe will probably have some kind of military experience).

In this ATL Israel, I could see there being a far sharper divide between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi communities than IOTL. IOTL, Mizrahi Jews made up the majority of the State's Jewish population from about the 1960s onward. Here, with Jews continuing to arrive from Eastern Europe, this ATL Israel will have a far larger Ashkenazi community--with Yiddish emerging as a major language within the State. There will be a far larger Haredi community as well, though as IOTL, they won't be anywhere close to the majority of an ATL Israel.

(Speaking of Sephardic Jews, with no Holocaust, then the ancient Ladino-speaking communities in the Balkans won't face destruction; Ladino will be far more widely spoken than IOTL). The Sephardic/Mizrahi communities in North Africa and the Middle East will face, as IOTL, the rise of Arab nationalism and, sadly, the threats from certain quarters of state-sanctioned violence and economic destitution--especially in places like Iraq or Egypt. Besides those who move to any ATL Israel, I expect places like France or Spain to have far larger Sephardic communities than IOTL (I believe that IOTL, Spain passed a law that allows Sephardic Jews to apply for citizenship).

In the United States, the Jewish community will probably have a lot of the same issues and divisions as IOTL, although with the 1924 restrictions effective outlawing of Jewish immigration the overall numbers will remain static for a while, until those racist quotas are repealed. As in the case of Western European communities, I could see many Jews, especially younger Jews by the 1960s or so, turning against the rigorously staid and assimilationist world of their elders. As IOTL, I expect widespread Jewish participation in any civil rights movement...identification with any ATL Israel will probably be a major force in the American Jewish community, albeit slower to develop than in our world.

Anyway, just my two cents.
 
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I agree with several others that if you want to stop Israel you have to go earlier than 1933. By then Jews were already a majority in some parts of the Mandate and the underlying reasons (poverty, immigration quotas in the West, anti-semitism, Zionism) for continued migration aren't going to be altered. As others have said instead of waves you are going to see a more "natural" stream rather than the OTL 1933-1939 Flood, '39-'45 Drought, '45-'50 Flood etc.

As for the wider political effect I think Israel will be less dominant in Jewish thinking, with more Jews around and without the destruction of so many communities (even if they shrink due to emigration Eastern European communities aren't going to completely disappear like OTL without genocide) Israel will matter much less though it will obviously still be very important.
 
Is this implying that Nietzsche was a quasi-Fascist or that quasi-Fascists tend to misread Nietzsche?

Nietzsche had no political position beyond a dislike of the concerns of ordinary people and a love of various dictatorial military heroes, however this was coupled with a vicious dislike of the state. But, it would be ahistorical to deny his influence on Fascists, and on quasi-Fascists.
 
The strengthening of Anti-Semitism is possible, at least on local levels. For such people as the KKK. After WWII anti-semites had to watch their words to avoid being labelled "Nazi" as the world at large was still in a state of horror and shock at what was found in the camps.

There is less sympathy for the Jews, but in OTL, they didn't get a true "clean break" in America until the civil rights movement came along.

The KKK, in its second incarnation, was organized as a fraternal order for Protestant white men in 1915, and garnered support from President Woodrow Wilson. That Klan "went bad" in the twenties and internal scandals, along with association with the Third Rich, drove it to bankruptcy in 1944. It was the remnants of that Klan that is remembered as the cross-burners in the fifties and sixties. Without the big bad Nazis, the KKK might remain an intact fraternal order, capable of reform. Would that help minorities or hurt them? I'm not sure.

I am sure that the absence of the German military build up, WW2 and the Holocaust would accelerate the consumer economy in the developed world. Television and the German tape recorder would come on the scene in the early forties and there would be no interruption in automobile production. The consumer economy that made racial/ethnic discrimination intolerable in the sixties would come earlier, to the benefit of many.

The Bomb? Even without Fermi and the Manhattan Project, the first use of atomic explosives might be on a construction project. The world would learn the dangers of radiation exposure, but the stigma as a weapon of war would not be in the forefront.
 
Something related (careful, difficult topic!): Tatjana from my stories for the Chaos TL is based on a real woman I happen to know, who's Jewish, lesbian and an outspoken feminist.

Now I'm wondering: Is this related? Jewish feminists being fed up with patriarchy because this system didn't prevent the holocaust?
 
Mark E.,

The first Klan started out as something benign and turned evil. The Second Klan was a violent hate group from the beginning.
 
In the case of Poland specifically, I can see the Jews there facing increasing economic and social discrimination, from "ghetto benches" at Polish universities to state-sanctioned boycotts of Jewish businesses. Most people forget that even before World War II in OTL, Polish Jewry faced widespread pauperization due to a well-heeled campaign, centered in the Polish Catholic Church, to get Poles to stop frequenting Jewish shops.

Even the post-WWII Polish communist regime attempted (and almost completely succeeded) in the late 1960's in forcing the few Jewish people left in Poland to leave. Also, Cdl. Josef Glemp openly preached anti-Semitism and was not censured by his brother Polish bishops or the Vatican in the least. (Okay, so some Catholics raised objections. Still, Glemp did not have to answer for his statements.)

ASIDE: What I find terribly bizarre/unsettling about Polish culture today is a renewed interest in Jewish culture ... among Poles. Why? I'd say that Poles should own up to their crimes before having an appreciation for the people they despised, killed, and expelled. Perhaps this nascent interest in Jewish culture reflects the fact that Jewish culture was always an important part of Poland, despite the often anti-Semitic actions and attitudes of many Poles.
 
Mark E.,

The first Klan started out as something benign and turned evil. The Second Klan was a violent hate group from the beginning.

Where it originated, that may have been the case, but Klan membership jumped to 6 million in 1924 as chapters as far north as Canada attracted members in the wake of Catholic and Jewish immigration from Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, etc. Membership fell to 30,000 by 1930 as the Klan's commitment to violence became understood. Given the numbers, it appears there was a brief period when a majority of the members were treating the organization as a fraternal order, given the function of such groups at the time.

The key to my post, though, was that if a POD that butterflies away the Holocaust also eliminates or short-cuts WWII, you will likely accelerate modernization in the developed world by 10, 15 or even 20 years in some places. The Third World, including Islamic countries, will not see such an improvement.

The world's larger Jewish presence will not have the benefit of the post-Holocaust sympathy. They will have a presence in the business-deployment sector. The world will have the benefit of millions of minds that were not executed.

Consider business without WWII. If the government had not re-tooled Ford Motor Company for war production, that company could have "rusted away," according to Lee Iacocca. Henry Ford's authoritarian and anti-Semitic style would have stifled development.

As civil rights proceed, do more American Blacks join campaigns with Jews and fewer join the Black Muslims?

In any case, the modern world is one with a very different balance between Western development, Islam and Judism. And different conflicts among militants.
 
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