The Transfer Agreement Read Online Free Page A

preconceived notions and stare at the situation through the eyes of those who lived through it. And yet, after all the researching and reading and writing, my intense inner attachment to the Zionist concept and Jewish nationalism and the State of Israel only deepened. That’s because I had finally made sense of it. And anyone who does will understand Zionism for what it is: a national movement, with the rights and wrongs, the ethics and expediencies, found in any other national movement.
    The Jews were the first to recognize the Hitler threat, and the first to react to that threat. The fact they were foiled by their own disunity merely puts them in the company of all mankind. Who did not confront the Hitler menace with indecision? Who did not seal pacts of expediency with the Third Reich? The Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, and the Supreme Moslem Council all endorsed the Hitler regime. The United States, England, France, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Japan, Ireland, Poland, and dozens of other nations all signed friendship and trade treaties and knowingly contributed to German economic and military recovery. The international banking and commercial community—no less than the Zionists—saw Germany as indispensable to its salvation. The Zionists were indeed in the company of all mankind—with this exception: The Jews were the only ones with a gun to their heads.
    Hitler was not unique; he was organized. But among Hitler’s enemies, none were organized—except the Zionists. The world recognized the Hitler threat and hoped it would not arrive. The Zionists recognized the Hitler threat and always expected it. The events of the Hitler era and the Transfer Agreement were ultimately determined by those factors.
    My belief in the Jewish people, in American Jewish organizations, in Zionism, and in the State of Israel and its founding mothers and fathers was never shaken. Those who sense outrage or anger in my words are hearing but the echo of their agony.
    Edwin Black
Chicago
February 27, 1984





1. The Powers That Were
----
    S HOCK WAVES rumbled through the world on January 30, I933. The leader of a band of political hooligans had suddenly become chief of a European state. Before January 30, I933, the repressive ideology of the National Socialist German Workers Party-NSDAP-had been resisted by the German government. That would all change now.
    Hitler had become chancellor of Germany-a shock, but no surprise. The November I932 general elections were held amid public hysteria over Germany's economic depression. Despite expensive emergency makework programs, more than 5 million people were still unemployed on election eve. In some areas the jobless rate was 75 percent. More than I7 million persons—about a third of the entire population—were dependent upon a welfare stipend equivalent to a few dollars per family per month. Such families knew hungry nights once or twice weekly. Destitute people slept in the streets. The memory of closed or defaulted banks was fresh. The Nazis blamed the Jews and sought voter support through street violence against Jewish members of Germany's urban middle class.
    But the November I932 election was indecisive. Hitler's party received only a third of the vote, about I2 million ballots. Then a coalition government was blocked by Hitler's refusal to share power with the Socialists, who controlled 20 percent of the vote, and the Communists, who controlled I7 percent. Finally, in exasperation, on January 30, I933, President Paul von Hindenburg exercised his emergency powers, appointing Herr Adolf Hitler interim chancellor.
    The Nazis had promised that upon assuming power they would rebuild Germany's economy, dismantle its democracy, destroy German Jewry, and establish Aryans as the master race—in that order. Yet many Western leaders saw only the economic value of Nazism. Hitler seemed the only alternative to a Communist state, a man who might rebuild the German economy