Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
By Lenni Brenner
Published by On Our Own Authority! Publishing, 2014
344 pages, paperback
In 1933 the German Zionist Federation sought Hitler's patronage: "Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews ... Boycott propaganda ... currently being carried on against Germany ... is in essence un-Zionist." Zionism became the only other legal political movement in the Nazi Reich.
That same year, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) made the Ha'avara (Transfer) Agreement, undermining the boycott against Nazi Germany. German Jewish emigrants to Palestine had to buy Nazi goods that the WZO sold in the Middle East. In 1937 the Haganah (later the Israeli army) sent an agent to Berlin. They would provide spy intelligence if the Nazis further eased the monetary regulations for emigrants to Palestine.
The Zionist-Revisionist movement (today the ruling Likud Party) set up a detachment of Mussolini's naval academy. He personally reviewed them in 1936. The wanted him to replace Britain as Zionism's patron. In 1941, the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (later Likudniks) told the Nazis they wanted a "Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich," and offered "to actively take art in the war on Germany's side." This is the sordid history documented in Lenni Brenner's Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. This updated edition features a new afterword by the author.
Praise for Zionism in the Age of the Dictators...
"[A] Highly controversial study of the Zionist record in the heyday of European fascism ... Short, crisp, and carefully documented, Mr.Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's" —Edward Mortimer, The Times (London)
"Brenner reviews the efforts of the Jewish establishment of the war years to play down, even to conceal, reports of the camps in Europe for fear of inciting anti-Semitism at home." —David Lan, London Review of Books
