The Jewish problem and solution in CP victory world

[Detlef]

I don't think only the state owned land in the Ottoman empire.

You´re right about that.
But the state owned most of the land. At least in Palestine.
IIRC there were basically two categories of landowners:
1. Landowners with a registered title-deed as proof of their private ownership (with normal inheritence and all that).
2. State land used by farmers etc who in return paid fees and taxes. Or to reward for example an official he could be given the right of use for a farm for his lifetime (after his death the land would fall back to the state).

You can see that even today in Israeli courts. The British didn´t touch this Ottoman law (system) and neither Israel. Which makes the state of Israel a large land owner today. Remember sometimes newspaper articles reporting Palestinians evicted from their homes where their families lived for generations? If they don´t have that title-deed mentioned above (category 1) the state of Israel assumes that the land falls under category 2. And is thus owned by the state.

 

[mikegold]

Roma are a good point. For my TL, I will need to look at a stateless person option like the Roma.

Now, an interesting question. Given the choice between keeping all their customs or becoming "Germanized", which would the Eastern Jews chose?

It seems like a small thing in hindsight, but a lot of the non-Jewish German issue with smaller things like the beard, they style of clothing, and learning to speak proper German, not Yiddish. If the Eastern Jews started to look on the outside more "German", I think a lot of attitudes would change in Germany. Germany seemed fine with Germanized Jews, but had some real acceptance issues with more traditional Jews.

Well, Jews moving from those countries to America, Britain, France, and Germany were largely able to adapt within a couple of generations. This is true even though in places like the Lower East side, the immigrants were immersed in their home culture more than that of the new homeland.

Your biggest problem is that Pale Orthodoxy is very, very different than German Reform Judaism. You need to frame the cultural adaptation in a way that Orthodox Jews can accept - Modern Orthodoxy comes to Anatevka, more or less. But they're never going to introduce pipe organs into the service or start calling their synagogues "temples". Trying to mandate such change by force could be disastrous for all concerned.

Sure, you'll have Chassidim and other radicals sticking to the old ways, as you do in, say, parts of Brooklyn or Antwerp to this day. But it will be a small minority, and no more objectionable than small numbers of Mennonites - a curiosity rather than a subversive threat to the state.

So I think the cultural adaptation is possible, but it will take a couple of generations and could very easily go wrong. Even if it works out, Freistaat Bialystok - to coin a phrase - will always be a very different sort of place. But it will generally be very loyal to the Reich.

 

[BlondieBC]

Your biggest problem is that Pale Orthodoxy is very, very different than German Reform Judaism. You need to frame the cultural adaptation in a way that Orthodox Jews can accept - Modern Orthodoxy comes to Anatevka, more or less. But they're never going to introduce pipe organs into the service or start calling their synagogues "temples". Trying to mandate such change by force could be disastrous for all concerned.

I don't think the German wanted to change the religious rituals. When I read the literature from the time, it seems like they wanted them to shave and wear German style clothes. The Germans would also like the Jews to be able to speak proper German in addition to Yiddish, and maybe a few other things. All the objections of the Germans appear very superficial really. There are also reference to bathing, but I am not really sure the Eastern Jews actually stank more than any other person of the time.

I have not come across any reference to the German state trying to change any religions rituals pre-1920.

 

[mikegold]

I don't think the German wanted to change the religious rituals. When I read the literature from the time, it seems like they wanted them to shave and wear German style clothes. The Germans would also like the Jews to be able to speak proper German in addition to Yiddish, and maybe a few other things. All the objections of the Germans appear very superficial really. There are also reference to bathing, but I am not really sure the Eastern Jews actually stank more than any other person of the time.

I have not come across any reference to the German state trying to change any religions rituals pre-1920.

Judaism of course has a long history of ritual bathing at various times, and of washing the hands before all meals. This is the reason that medieval European Jews got sick less than their Christian contemporaries, and as a result were often accused of causing plagues via black magic or poisoning the water supply. Eastern Jews were poor and rural and German sophisticates wealthy and urban, so that may have been what they smelled. I can't foresee any serious Ostjudisch objection to better hygiene, though.

The beard is tougher, since it's an interpretation of a biblical commandment (as are sideburns/sidecurls). However, modern religious Jews do shave. It is certain razors that are generally perceived as objectionable, not the practice of going cleanshaven in particular.

Another issue is that there is a very strong tradition in Orthodox Judaism of setting oneself apart, maintaining distinct cultural traditions specifically to avoid absorption by the mainstream. Exactly how idea that would develop in a German Bialystok is hard to predict.

 

[Malice]

One of the most common mistaken beliefs, often perpetrated by historians like Daniel Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners, is that the German strain of anti-Semitism was somehow much worse than that of anywhere else in Europe after the First World War. In reality, anti-Semitism was much more virulent in France, Poland and Russia than it was in Germany. Even in Austria, where Hitler was born and raised, was more violently anti-Semitism. That anti-Semitism became much worse after 1917 because of the perception that the Communists that launched the Russian Revolution were mostly Jews. After the First World War the perception the Jews were behind the Communists was a widely held view in Europe.

The unrest that swept through Europe after the war would've happened regardless of who won because people in the defeated countries would've been looking for scapegoats to blame for their defeat and in eastern Europe and France the Jews would've provided the convenient scapegoats.

If the Central Powers had won the violence against the Jews would have been confined to pogroms in areas where such violence was standard. As for the Jewish state it would never have come about because the Balfour Agreement would've been rendered null and void if the Central Powers had won. It's also worth bearing in mind that Zionism was an ideology the vast majority of Jews did not subscribe to and which they regarded as fanciful at best.

If the Central Powers had won the war Oswiecim (German: Auschwitz) would've remained an obscure town in Austria (it was in the Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia), Warsaw would have one of the world's largest and most vibrant Jewish communities, Ottoman officials would've had their hands full dealing with clashes between extremist Jews and Arabs in Palestine and German technological and scientific prowess would've kept it the dominant European power as there would've been no purges of Jews in the scientific community nor the removal of "Jewish physics" from the German curriculum.

 

[hairysamarian]

First of all.... Why would there be a "Jewish Problem" just because CP won?

The first question that came to my mind as well, and it's asked before I can even open the thread. Spoil-sport!

The "Jewish Problem," as something which was perceived as requiring action, was really a product of Nazi propaganda. Without it, it would have remained in the world of anti-semitic publications and popular prejudice. And before anyone says it, I realize that the Nazis did not invent anti-semitism, but without them it would never have become what it did.

 

[RousseauX]

Two of Germany's top men are Jews - A Ballin, the shipping magnate who presumably won't kill himself if the CP win, and Walter Rathenau who served as a financial advisor of the highest order.

An interesting point is that anti-Semitism is capable of occurring even with a well-assimilated Jewish population. In fact, in OTL it was the worst in the one country with the best assimlated Jewish population which had the worst anti-semitism because anti-semitism can be as much a backlash against assimilation as it is an attack on perceived outsider.

This could occur even with a victorious Germany and even with Jewish politicians in power. We know this because Leon Blum, who was prime minister of France was a Jew and it didn't stop the right from being intensely anti-Semitic. And indeed the ones who ended up sending Jews to the death camps under Vichy weren't even home-grown French Fascists but rather authoritarian conservatives who shouted "Better Hitler than Blum" before the war. Anti-semitism was something which had intense appeal to the right during the interbellum period across all of Europe and something I don't see going away with a CP victory.

There might not be death camps, but if right wing conservatives up in power sometime in the 1930s, they might still emigrant in large numbers.

 

[Mikestone8]

Wild thought. By mid-1918 the Habsburgs had got themselves into a mess in Galicia, having alienated the Poles there without winning the Ukrainians.

Is it remotely conceivable that they might cut the Gordian knot by expelling both groups and resettling the Province with Polish and Russian Jews? If these were willing to play ball with the government (and where else could they go politically?) it could make the Austrian half of the Monarchy easier to govern.

 

[Hörnla]

Wild thought. By mid-1918 the Habsburgs had got themselves into a mess in Galicia, having alienated the Poles there without winning the Ukrainians.

Is it remotely conceivable that they might cut the Gordian knot by expelling both groups and resettling the Province with Polish and Russian Jews? If these were willing to play ball with the government (and where else could they go politically?) it could make the Austrian half of the Monarchy easier to govern.

Remotely yes, otherwise in my humble opinion not. For several reasons:

- doing this sort of things is wildly opposite to the core philosophy of the Habsburg monarchy. Acknowledging ethnic solutions of any kind to such a degree, however handy it were, would do more good than harm by shaking any remaining loyalties to this very special entity everywhere.
- the Habsburg administration is rather used to nationalities being alienated. It is on the plate and has to be solved somehow in a Grand solution past-1918.
- What? Turning the Jews, key loyalists to the monarchy ("the only actual Staatsvolk the monarchy has", as one quotation put it), into another nationality? I wouldn't do that.
- And actually you would have strange bedfellows from established assimilated Jews to Anti-Semites opposing the admittance of millions of Eastern European Jews into the monarchy (and giving the mechanics of urbanization, a lot of them into Vienna, Budapest and Prague).

 

[I Blame Communism]

I Blame Communism, what selective history?

Russia's record towards the Jews is quite clear and the reason so many Jews chose to leave Russia in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

England's record towards the Jews is clear and the reason so many Jews chose to leave England in the 13th century.

Spain's records towards the onywey onywey that's selective history. Objects in the rear mirror are closer than they appear and nation-state history is blafflum, in short. Take a bit of Russian history where there's a fair bit of violent anti-semitism and assume, based on it, that this is something inherent to those crazy Russians. Don't analyse the development of anti-semitism in Russia and the ways in which it was like or unlike anti-semitism in other countries. Don't, in short, try Complicated History.

The version you gave is very simplistic, because to take a very obvious example the 19th and 20th centuries were also the period in which large numbers of Jews entered 'Russia' (that is to say Great Russia) where they had not lived before.

Obviously Russia saw more violent anti-semitism than other European countries at this particular time, because of its social conditions as a peasant country wracked by dramatic economic transformation. Nobody denies that; I addressed it specifically in my other post.

But the line we so often hear - 'Russians (and Poles) are just naturally anti-semitic, not like the Germans' is incredibly annoying and patronising and involves no attempt to engage with the different social conditions in these countries.

(The other question this raises is what this implies about Britain's record towards the Irish etcetera.)

 

[eschaton]

One really out there thought...

One of Germany's war aims was to annex fairly sizable portions (although not the entirety, IIRC) of Belgian Wallonia. The area is rather inconveniently full of francophones. If they expelled the walloons, and settled Jews in Eastern Europe there, it might make a certain sort of sense. Wallonia is rich enough that any population during this time period ought to do rather well, but still small enough that the resulting statelet wouldn't pose any threat to Germany. There would also be an aggravated group of refugees in France, which would likely keep France virulently anti-semetic, stopping any attempts by Britain to woo the Jewish state (should it be nominally independent) so long as a Franco-British alliance remains in force.

 

[BlondieBC]

If the Central Powers had won the war Oswiecim (German: Auschwitz) would've remained an obscure town in Austria (it was in the Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia), Warsaw would have one of the world's largest and most vibrant Jewish communities, Ottoman officials would've had their hands full dealing with clashes between extremist Jews and Arabs in Palestine and German technological and scientific prowess would've kept it the dominant European power as there would've been no purges of Jews in the scientific community nor the removal of "Jewish physics" from the German curriculum.

Warsaw may be the largest Jewish community, but the Poles were anti-Jewish, so the Poles could have easily expelled the Jews. The largest Jewish city is probably in the lands lost by Russia in the war.

The Ottomans would have been fine. Jews were only 11% of the population of the Palestine/Jordan area, and many were Jews that had lived under the Ottomans for centuries. The Ottomans simply would have crushed any Jewish revolt, and if needed expelled or killed all the revolting Jews. Since the Jews would know what the Ottomans did to the Armenians for revolt, and in this ATL, how they also dealt harshly with revolting arabs, they Jews most likely don't cause any major problems.

I agree Germany would be the leader in science, but I see this more because they won the war, and the extra Jewish scientist would have only been the icing on the cake. Winning the war is the cake.

 

[BlondieBC]

The first question that came to my mind as well, and it's asked before I can even open the thread. Spoil-sport!

The "Jewish Problem," as something which was perceived as requiring action, was really a product of Nazi propaganda. Without it, it would have remained in the world of anti-semitic publications and popular prejudice. And before anyone says it, I realize that the Nazis did not invent anti-semitism, but without them it would never have become what it did.

Your history is wrong, because it is limited. While the extermination of the Jews required Nazism or some other dramatic change in an ATL, the Jewish problem existed before WW1. In a CP win, the Jewish issue would be between Poles, Russians, and Jews. The Russians likely do a pogrom, as was their habit. The Poles want to create a Polish state, and want to claim as large an area as possible. The Jews were seen as an barrier to this goal, and were a problem. Before WW1, Poles were the main people who saw a "Jewish Problem", and this is the the exact term they used.

Hitler was the only person who tried to kill all the Jews in a systematic manner, but many Eastern Europeans leaders had killed Jews over the years, but they would only kill part of the Jews, normally a small minority of the population.

 

[BlondieBC]

Wild thought. By mid-1918 the Habsburgs had got themselves into a mess in Galicia, having alienated the Poles there without winning the Ukrainians.

Is it remotely conceivable that they might cut the Gordian knot by expelling both groups and resettling the Province with Polish and Russian Jews? If these were willing to play ball with the government (and where else could they go politically?) it could make the Austrian half of the Monarchy easier to govern.

It is a bit hard to see them expelling citizens in mass, it would be a move of desperation.

However, I can see a Jewish dominated A-H. Say Poland is created out of the Congress of Poland, minus some German cut of land. A-H retains all their land. I can easily see Poland and Russia treating Jews poorly, and the majority of the Polish Jews moving to A-H. I can also see Poland encouraging Poles to move into the empty Jewish land and buildings. These events happened to some extent in WW1, but they were not being organized by the Great Powers. So net/net, end of 1929, I can see northern most A-H having a majority of Jews, and a small Poland being ethnically pure. But the Poles are much more likely to be the ethnic cleaners.

If Germany chose the option of treating Yiddish a German dialect and using Jews as an excuse to annex what the Poles see as Poland, this scenario becomes probable.

 

[BlondieBC]

One really out there thought...

One of Germany's war aims was to annex fairly sizable portions (although not the entirety, IIRC) of Belgian Wallonia. The area is rather inconveniently full of francophones. If they expelled the walloons, and settled Jews in Eastern Europe there, it might make a certain sort of sense. Wallonia is rich enough that any population during this time period ought to do rather well, but still small enough that the resulting statelet wouldn't pose any threat to Germany. There would also be an aggravated group of refugees in France, which would likely keep France virulently anti-semetic, stopping any attempts by Britain to woo the Jewish state (should it be nominally independent) so long as a Franco-British alliance remains in force.

I can see the Germans thinking about expelling part of Belgium's population, but the USA would go crazy over this, as would the English population. Even with the Kaiser, I think calmer heads would prevail, and this idea would never even see official public discussion. Sure, I can see German officials talking in private how it would be nice if France would take the French speakers in Belgium, but actually doing it is hard for me to see. Even with somewhere like Posen, they did not expel all the Poles, the same with the French in A-L. So the more likely situation is some subtle, but constant encouragement for French speakers to leave. Also, if at peace with the UK, taking this action might bring the UK back into the war, and would at least give an American President a case for war that he could take to the Public and Congress. The likely minimum cost to Germany for this action would be a permanent trade embargo with the British Empire, the USA, and the rest of North and South America.

Also, I don't think Germany would want a Jewish state there. A Jewish client state of Germany makes sense, but I can't find any reference to it actually being considered either by A-H or Germany. If Germany was going to create a Jewish state, the easy way is to create the state between Poland and Russia. It means Poland is smaller, and isolated from Slavic powers, and the Jews have a lot of incentive to maintain a powerful army to defend against Russia.

 

[Max Sinister]

If Germany wins in 1918 there's going to be extensive anti-semitism.

I don't know... so if Germany loses, there's gonna be antisemitism, and if they win, the result is the same? While I can't scientifically refute this, you should elaborate this.

With the partial exception of Galicia, I tend to agree. Jews were full citizens of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.

But Galicia was a part of A-H...

 

[I Blame Communism]

I don't know... so if Germany loses, there's gonna be antisemitism, and if they win, the result is the same? While I can't scientifically refute this, you should elaborate this.

I thought I did, but I'll recapitulate:

In 1914 Germany was a country that for all its tremendous achievement was unable either to fully dissolve old divisions of society or to face up to new ones. But the outbreak of war created a profound sense- interpreted differently by everyone, of course - of unity and renewal. This included confessional unity and the repression of anti-semitic (anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant) media: the government had no wish to alienate Jews who would join up or buy war-bonds, or Jewish civil organisations that would do organisational and propaganda work.

But as the war dragged on with massive sacrifices of lives and in people's standards of living and victory always out of sight, all sorts of divisions re-appeared: social, political, confessional, economic.

In order to paper over the cracks - and the Jews are such versatile scapegoats: one man blames his poverty on Jewish profiteers, another the strikes on Jewish socialists - the military command from 1916 on ended the restrictions on anti-semitism and indeed tacitly encouraged virulent anti-semitism from right-wing nationalist groups, flooding the press.

In short: German anti-semitism was a manifestation of pressures in society (like anti-semitism in the ex-Russian Empire but with a different society and different pressures); and this was a society which, whatever happened, had been profoundly pressured.

It wasn't just Germany (and Austria); I've mentioned Russia, but in Britain, where the political and social reasons for such explicit anti-semitism were less present, the anti-German rioting had more than a whiff of the same stuff.

But the idea that victory would solve all social problems seems very misconceived to me. It didn't solve the social problems of the victorious Entente. And here's a wee thought experiment: what sort of reception do you reckon I'd get for suggesting that, if Russia had won the war in the east, there would be no anti-semitism among the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe?

 

[Perkeo]

There had been Jews all over Europe for almost two thousand years and there had been antisemitism all over Europe for almost two thousand years. I see no immediate necessity for a change of either, even if the CP's DON'T win.

There never was a "Jewish" problem, just an "I need a scapegoat" problem - and unfortunately when a scapegoat is needed, people all to often tend to pick the Jews.

 

[robertp6165]

the jewish problem existed well before the first world war. my sugestion is one soloution for it in a CP victory world. If the CP win and Palestaine is still under the ottomans there would be no jewish state over there. Now, the new nations of Poland and Ukraine will have a big problem of traditonal anti-semetism as might nationalist govarments who will rise i France, Russia (if it doesn't go red), Italy (who might also go red) and even victorios Germany, A-H, and the ottomans, who started to be very anti-zionist in that time. Now, the jews will want to go to the US who might close her door for them, but Germany will want an ally in eastern europe who will acept her as his lord, and they would find the the jews perfect for this matter, so Germany may want to reward them for their loyalty with a state of their own.

The problem with your idea is that while, yes, anti-Semitism has always existed in Europe, the Nazi regime of OTL not only was anti-Semitic, but considered a conspiracy of Jewish Communists and Socialist to have been "the cause" of German defeat in World War One. Therefore Jews were portrayed not only in the normal anti-Semitic terms of being an undesirable group, but in terms of being a grave threat to the security of the German people...and indeed, to the entire world. Hitler thought he was doing the world a favor by exterminating the Jews...that's part of the reason why the idea of deporting them to Palestine or Madagascar was given up and replaced by the plan to exterminate.

In a world where the Central Powers won, there's not going to be a "Jewish conspiracy theory" to explain a German defeat which didn't happen...and therefore, no motive to want to deport the Jews to a new "homeland" in Belarus.

Will there be anti-Semitism? Of course there will be. But without the catalyst of German defeat in the First World War, there won't be the sort of extreme anti-Semitism which might cause a mass deportation, or worse, to occur as it did in OTL.

 

[eliphas8]

There wouldnt be one probably, Germany was actually one of the less anti-semitic nations OTL and it was only after they lost WWI that things changed. Had they won they would probably continue the gradual integration into German society they had already been going through.