Nazis expel Jews/Roma etc. to other countries and don't exterminate them

Hi!

I read somewhere that Hitler originally hadn't been sold on killing all of the Jews, Roma, etc. His first plan was to get them out of Germany, and he supposedly asked other countries to take them in. It was only after the other countries turned down the refugees (remember "Exodus" and so forth) that the stage was set for the Holocaust.

So consider the following option: for each ethnic group, a country offers to take in the refugees. I was thinking of having the Jews go to the United States or to Palestine, for instance.

Yes, I know that there were plans to send them to Madagascar or Uganda or wherever it was. However, we know that fell through. Besides, one would have expected the refugees to leave for a destination with a closer culture to Europe (Britain or the US). They probably wouldn't have wanted to go to Africa.

I could see the Dutch taking them in. However, things could get dicey if the Second World War breaks out as in OTL and Germany winds up taking over the Netherlands.

The net result is that central Europe finds itself with few Jews as in OTL after the war...but there's a significantly larger and more diverse Jewish community in the US or Palestine.

Who knows, if all the Jews wind up in the US perhaps the modern State of Israel would be butterflied away as the US becomes the Jewish homeland.

What would the ramifications of this be? All we need is one country for each persecuted people.

Thanks in advance,

ACG
 

NomadicSky

Banned
I think the people of the US felt extreme shame once they found out about the camps.

There was no reason the US couldn't let in the Jews of Europe.

That being said I believe the Japanese were willing to take them, they had planned to use them to resettle Asia along with the Japanese. Fugio Plan or something like that.
 
I think the people of the US felt extreme shame once they found out about the camps.

There was no reason the US couldn't let in the Jews of Europe.

That being said I believe the Japanese were willing to take them, they had planned to use them to resettle Asia along with the Japanese. Fugio Plan or something like that.

The Fugu Plan is what you're thinking of. If it had been implemented, it's possible that 10,000 to 600,000 could have been saved.

There was also the plan IOTL to open Alaska for Jewish refugees, before it was killed in the House. You could always borrow the POD from The Yiddish Policeman's Union to get that to work.

IIRC, the Dominican Republic was the only nation at one of the refugee conferences who expressed a willingness to take in a large number of Jewish refugees (up to 100,000 I believe).

Another direction to go in (as another poster put it on another thread like this) would be for larger outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence to break out in Central and Eastern Europe after WWI. The could be enough to inspire a larger number of refugees to emigrate to the Mandate of Palestine, or points west...
 
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What about South Africa? They took some Jews out of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, but not too many because of the concerns of the National Party. How about having Jan Smuts use his balls and take as many as South Africa could accept? Many of these people were intelligent, too.
 

NomadicSky

Banned
South Africa really could have used them, they would have been a huge boost to the white population there, at least used to keep South West Africa, South African.
 

Hendryk

Banned
In OTL, the refuge of last resort for European Jews fleeing the Nazis turned out to be Shanghai, which, because of its sui generis status, did not require residents to have valid visas. I'm not sure how many more refugees the city could have taken in, however, especially since after 1937 the French and International Concessions were surrounded by Japanese occupation forces (and by 1942 both places were taken over outright by the Japanese).
 
There was also a British plan to settle large numbers in Rhodesia, Not sure about Roma. I think multiple countries would take the bulk of refugees with US and UK etc being most popular choices if there willing.
 
There may not have been an explicit 'expulsion policy' of thirties Nazi Germany, but as the anti-semitic policies of the government grew ever more hostile, and where public abuse and vandalism was encouraged; it became implicit.
Jews, therefore went to where there would feel safe and feel at home i.e. this meant a democratic country, where there were already a Jewish community, and where the language wasn't a problem.
It's quite likely that, many thought the situation was a temporary one, and that one day there would return - to see the rest of their family.
Either way many would have settled in countries near to Germany - Holland, France etc. Unfortunately they then got caught up in the Nazi system when these countries were over-run.
To encourage a more adventurous emigration, it might help if a country had mad pro-jewish comments during the Berlin Olympic games.
 
South Africa really could have used them, they would have been a huge boost to the white population there, at least used to keep South West Africa, South African.

That's where I was going with that, too. The original plan was to integrate Bechuanaland and South West Africa into SA, but the Malan government was so despicable to London that it never happened. If even half the Jews of Europe that were killed by the Nazis just got sent to SA, that number would double the white population of South Africa, and leave Jews the largest group of whites in Africa. Smuts would probably go for it just to kick the National Party (and its Nazi-sympathizing leaders) in the nuts, though it would likely result in major growth in SA.
 

General Zod

Banned
That's where I was going with that, too. The original plan was to integrate Bechuanaland and South West Africa into SA, but the Malan government was so despicable to London that it never happened. If even half the Jews of Europe that were killed by the Nazis just got sent to SA, that number would double the white population of South Africa, and leave Jews the largest group of whites in Africa. Smuts would probably go for it just to kick the National Party (and its Nazi-sympathizing leaders) in the nuts, though it would likely result in major growth in SA.

You could have the white settlers of South Rhodesia voting to join South Africa in 1924 (it was a very close call). Extra british voters most likely keep the Malan party (another close call) out of power, and make London willing to integrate Bechuanaland and South West Africa in the Dominion, too. That gives SA all the empty space they can ever need to easily integrate a handful million Jewish settlers.
 
Other possible destinations for European Jews would be the Italian colonies in Africa - Libya, Eritrea, Somaliland, and (after 1935) Ethiopia.

Italy did not have the same level of antisemitism as Nazi Germany - they implemented those laws largely at the behest of Germany, and early Italian fascism had Jewish supporters. Italy would also have had a similar desire as South Africa for "white" settlers in their territories.

Actually, Africa in general would be a good destination for large numbers of settlers - a large group of potentially sympathetic immigrants to the colonies is much more appealing to the big powers than putting them up in the home territories, and many of the few states with a semi-independent foreign policy (such as South Africa) would see Jewish refugees as being more of an asset then a liability. Thus, most of the European states would take Jews into Africa (and possibly into India and Southeast Asia); the US would take them into Alaska and the Pacific territories; the Japanese would (and OTL did, to a limited degree) encourage them to settle in Manchukuo and China; the Soviets would send them on to Siberia and the Far East (possibly an earlier-than-OTL Birobidzan settlement?). The effects of this "Second Exodus" would be interesting, to say the least...
 
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