1938-40 - The Madagascar Plan

How the Madagascar Plan started

• The idea of removing Europe’s Jews to the island Madagascar was first promoted by French anti-Semites in the late 1930s

• However at this time was a wild idea with little / no prospect of becoming reality

• However Germany’s rapid conquest of France in May-June 1940 changed this

• The foreign ministry’s department for Internal German Affairs proposed that Madagascar should be taken away from France to become a German mandate

• Vichy, France would be responsible for resettlng the French population there of 25,000 to make room for Jews in Madagascar

Nazis plan for sending Jews to Madagascar

• The Nazis planned to send 4 million Jews to Madagascar

• In the first phase - farmers, construction workers and artisans up to the age of 45 would be sent out to get the island ready to receive the influx of Jews

• Remaining Jewish property in Europe would finance initial costs

• Living conditions of Madagascar were intended to be harsh, leading in the long term to the elimination of Jews by ‘natural wastage’

Natural wastage meaning

• The action or process of losing or destroying something by using it carelessly or extravagantly

Problems with Adolf Eichmann’s schemes towards Jews

• Eichmann had been working on schemes for mass emigration of Jews to Palestine

• However there were practical problems about Palestine, which was a small territory under British rule and not far from Europe

• Madagascar was far away, offered infinitely more space and there were no serious political problems that the Plan needed working around

How the Madagascar Plan failed

• The Madagascar Plan seemed viable in the late summer / early autumn of 1940

• Germany’s failure to end the war with Britain meant that the British Royal Navy would be able to disrupt the mass transportation of Jews by sea to Madagascar

• By October 1940, Hitler was already planning for Operation Barbarossa

• Maagascar Plan was shelved in favour of the plan to send Europe’s Jews deep into Siberia once the conquest fo the USSR was complete

What did the Madagascar Plan show

• What the plan actually showed about Nazi intentions towards the Jews in 1940 is debatable

• On one hand - it proves that the decision to exterminate all Jews had not been made at this point

• As all kinds of different plans were under consideration - ‘Final solution’ was not yet clear

• On the other hand - the driving force behind the Plan was the determination to remove the Jews from Europe to somewhere where they’d slowly die off through harsh conditions

• The Plan could be regarded as proof that the long-term goal of sending the Jews to die somewhere far away was fixed, but the location was not.