A History of Zionism (31 page)

Like Ahad Ha’am, Klatzkin did not bother to point to political alternatives. The apostle of radical Zionism and rejection of the diaspora by no means approved of the activities of political Zionism. He had grave doubts about Britain and the effects of the Balfour Declaration. But if he saw any alternative way of building the national home he kept the secret to himself. Perhaps he saw himself in the role of a consultant physician who was essentially a diagnostician. The telling phrases about the crippling effects of the diaspora were written not in Jerusalem, but in Murnau, a pleasant little village in Bavaria, Klatzkin’s retreat, and in Heidelberg. Klatzkin did not settle in Palestine, and he was to die in Switzerland. The unity of theory and practice cannot be found in his life, nor in that of most of the other ideologists and leaders of Zionism of that generation. For that reason, if for no other, there was always an element of unreality in the passionate debates that went on for so many years about a spiritual centre, the rejection of the diaspora, and the mission – if any – of a regenerated Jewish people. The debates usually revealed a profound disregard for realities, and the real world, not surprisingly, retaliated by ignoring the philosophers.

Zionism in the First World War

When the First World War broke out, two of the members of the Zionist executive, then located at 8 Sächsische Strasse, Berlin, were German citizens, three were Russians, and one (Levin) a Russian who had just acquired Austrian citizenship. World Zionism, needless to say, was no more prepared than any other international organisation to function in wartime. That the world movement was to stay out of the conflict and remain neutral went without saying, but this was easier said than done. For the Zionist leaders throughout Europe, with the obvious exception of Russia, felt it their duty to support their respective fatherlands to the best of their ability. This conflict of loyalties apart, there was the question of protecting Palestinian Jewry. Above all, there was the issue of the postwar settlement. Some Zionist leaders realised early on that what their movement had failed to attain in time of peace it might well achieve during or after a war which was bound to lead to a re-examination of many unresolved international issues.

German Zionists shared the general patriotic enthusiasm of August 1914. Their federation announced that it expected all its young members to volunteer for military service. Germany was fighting for truth, law, freedom and world civilisation against darkest tyranny, bloodiest cruelty, and blackest reaction, as represented by tsarist despotism. By allying themselves with Russia, France and Britain had become its accessories in crime. Franz Oppenheimer said that for Germany the war ‘was holy, just self-defence’, and Ludwig Strauss wrote that the national Jews were no worse patriots than national Germans. ‘We do know that our interest is exclusively on the side of Germany’, ran an editorial in the official Zionist weekly; Germany was strong and would liberate the oppressed.
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Zionist publications wholeheartedly supported the war effort. It would be invidious to single out any Zionist leader for special mention because almost all were equally affected, at least during the first months of the war.
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In Austria, Hugo Zuckermann, a Zionist, wrote a popular war poem in which he said that death on the field of battle held no terror for him if only before dying he could see the Austrian banner waving in the wind over Belgrade. Zuckermann was killed soon after. Elias Auerbach, the Zionist physician who had settled in Haifa, decided immediately on the outbreak of war to return to Germany to do his duty in the army medical corps.

The patriotic enthusiasm of the German and Austrian Zionists seems in retrospect singularly misguided, but it is only fair to add that the war against Russia was equally popular in eastern Europe and the United States, the two biggest Jewish concentrations. Upon receiving the news about Russian defeats Morris Rosenfeld, the most popular Yiddish writer of the day, wrote a poem which ended with the words: ‘Hurrah for Germany! Long live the kaiser!’ Tsarist Russia was the country of pogroms, of Kishinev and Homel, of institutionalised oppression. The fact that after the outbreak of war the persecution of Jews in western Russia became even more intense, and that hundreds of thousands of them had been deported, did not make that country any more popular. Most leaders of Russian and Polish Jewry believed in the inevitability of a German victory. For them, as Weizmann wrote, the west ended at the Rhine. They knew Germany, spoke German, and were greatly impressed by German achievements.
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And they were influenced by the painful history of the Jews in Russia. A Russian victory would perpetuate and perhaps intensify the persecution of east European Jewry, whereas the defeat of Russia was bound to open the gates to their liberation.

There were exceptions, such as Weizmann and Ahad Ha’am, Jabotinsky and Rutenberg. Nordau, too, warned against a one-sided pro-German orientation, despite the fact that the French had given him every reason to feel aggrieved; having lived in Paris for decades, he was deported to Spain as an enemy national and remained there throughout the war. But the greater part of the world Zionist movement was pro-German, even though it became more reserved after the first flush of excitement. Historical sympathies and antipathies quite apart, a strong case could be made for the importance of Berlin to Zionists. Effective political and economic aid to the hard-pressed Palestinian Jewish community could be extended only from the German capital during the first three years of the war. During this time the German armies advanced far into western Russia and the bulk of Polish and Lithuanian Jewry came under German rule. Whichever way one looked at it, Berlin was the pivot as far as Zionist politics were concerned.

A few days after the outbreak of war Dr Bodenheimer, a former president of the German Zionist Federation and still one of its leading members, approached the German Foreign Ministry and suggested the establishment of a German ‘Committee for the Liberation of Russian Jewry’. Set up in August 1914, this body later on changed its name to the somewhat less provocative ‘Committee for the East’. The committee was dominated at first by the Zionists – Professor Oppenheimer was its chairman, Motzkin and Hantke took part in its work, and Sokolow wrote the editorial for the first issue of its Hebrew-language journal
Kol hamevaser.
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Its aim was to promote the aspirations of east European Jewry towards national freedom and autonomy, and the underlying expectation was that Germany would, in the course of the war, occupy western Russia, where most of the Jews lived. This was done with the blessing of the German authorities, who had a somewhat exaggerated notion of the extent of Zionist influence in the east, one of their advisers comparing the internal discipline of the Zionists to that of the Jesuits.
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These ‘Jewish operations’ were part of a general scheme to revolutionise the oppressed minorities of the tsarist empire. But German military rule did not altogether fulfil the expectations of east European Jewry, which had been called upon to rise against Russian oppression. The demand for political and cultural autonomy was largely ignored because it clashed with the aims of the Polish and Baltic national movements. The Poles in particular became more and more openly antisemitic during the war, and at its end engaged in widespread pogroms. The tsarist anti-Jewish legislation was abolished only in the northern section (
Ober-Ost
) of the occupied territory. The constitution of the committee changed during the war and representatives of non-Zionist German Jews were co-opted.

The existence of the committee became a bone of contention among the world Zionist leaders and forced them to reconsider their orientation as between the two camps. Bodenheimer at first had the support of the executive, although his activities were in clear violation of Zionist neutrality. The critics of the one-sided pro-German orientation argued that, all other considerations apart, such close cooperation with German political warfare jeopardised millions of east European Jews, for the activities of the committee, needless to say, remained no secret, and served as a justification for the anti-Jewish measures taken by the Russian government in 1914-15. Bodenheimer was compelled by his colleagues to resign as chairman of the Jewish National Fund.

To keep the world movement neutral, a meeting of the Larger Action Committee in Copenhagen in December 1914 (the first after the outbreak of war) decided to open a clearing-house there under Motzkin, and later under Victor Jacobson, to maintain contact with Zionist organisations in both camps, and as far as possible to coordinate their efforts. Weizmann’s demand that the executive, still located in Berlin under the management of Warburg and Hantke, should cease to function and that the conduct of Zionist affairs should be transferred to America during the war was rejected, on the ground that it might endanger the position of Palestinian Jewry. As a compromise it was decided to transfer Sokolow from Berlin to London and to send Chlenov on a mission to America and Britain, from where he returned to his native Russia.
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The dispersal of the members of the executive was inevitable, given the necessity to pursue political activities in several capitals at one and the same time, but it paralysed the executive. Who was now authorised to take decisions or even make declarations on its behalf? It was understood that the Berlin members had the authority to speak for the whole body, but they were a minority and disagreements were bound to arise sooner or later. It was also decided that the executive could not be party to any negotiations with the government of any country at war with Turkey. Weizmann, who was as pro-British as the German Zionists were pro-German, was not in sympathy with this resolution. Two months earlier he had written to Shmaryahu Levin that ‘as soon as the situation is somewhat cleared up, we could talk plainly to England and France with regard to the abnormal situation of the Jews. … It is in the interest of peoples now fighting for the small nationalities to secure for the Jewish nation the right of existence. Now is the time when the peoples of Great Britain, France and America will understand us. … The moral force of our claims will prove irresistible; the political conditions will be favourable to the realisation of our ideal.’
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Unknown to Weizmann, his optimism was shared by Herbert Samuel, an influential politician of whom it had not even been known that he sympathised with Zionist aspirations. Samuel was a member of Asquith’s Liberal cabinet, and he submitted a memorandum to his colleagues in which he argued the case for a national home for the Jews in Palestine. While this bore no fruit – Asquith was totally uninterested – it was a first step in preparing the ground for the dramatic developments of 1917.

During the early phases of the war, however, Berlin remained the centre of Zionist political activities. It was the task of the executive located there to safeguard the interests of east European Jewry as large sections of it passed under German rule, and to protect the Zionist settlements in Palestine.
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It was Weizmann’s historical achievement that, in the event, Britain’s victory became also a Zionist triumph. His efforts were crowned with success precisely because he held no official position in the world Zionist movement. It is easy to imagine how Turkey, forever suspicious of Zionist activities, would have reacted if the executive had followed Weizmann’s line and shown itself in 1914 in favour of an Allied victory.

Official German attitude to Zionism was distant but not altogether unfriendly. Herzl’s attempts to gain the support of the Kaiser had been unsuccessful, and up to 1914 Germany took no steps to intervene on behalf of the Zionist movement. With the outbreak of war the attitude became somewhat more positive. The German leaders did not want to antagonise the Zionists because of their influence among east European Jewry and in the United States. Bethmann Hollweg, the chancellor, and Wangenheim, the German ambassador in Constantinople, tried on various occasions to impress Talaat, then minister of the interior at the Porte, to refrain from actions which would provoke world Jewry. Between 1914 and 1917 German diplomatic representatives frequently interceded, albeit only informally, with the Turkish authorities on behalf of Palestinian Jewry.
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Most of these interventions concerned Djemal Pasha, the Turkish commander in Palestine, who was determined to deport all Jews of Russian nationality, i.e. the majority of the Jewish population.

He made the first attempt in December 1914, shortly after Turkey’s entry into the war, and it was successfully thwarted, but not in time to save six hundred Jews who had already been deported. There were further sporadic arrests and other forms of chicanery, and it was not until March 1915 that the central authorities succeeded in persuading their representative in Jerusalem to leave the Jews in peace. Eventually Djemal took notice, at least for a time. Then, after a few months, he began to reassert himself and compelled Ruppin, head of the Palestine Office and a German national, to move from Jaffa to the Turkish capital. But by and large the years 1915-16 were relatively quiet years for Palestinian Jewry, owing mainly to the activities of the German Zionist representatives in Constantinople and the support they had in Berlin.

The executive was less successful in realising its more ambitious schemes. It gained the support of several influential publicists who wrote in the German press about the increasing importance of Zionism as a factor in world politics. In November 1915, on Zionist prodding, a confidential instruction was sent to all German consular representatives in the Ottoman empire to the effect that the German imperial government was well disposed towards Jewish aspirations in Palestine.
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But it proved impossible to induce Berlin to make an official declaration in support of Zionism, despite the fact that a non-committal statement was recommended not only by Jewish circles but also by various German diplomats.
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A pro-Palestine committee consisting of well-known public figures was set up in 1917 to influence public opinion and to exert pressure on the German government. At the same time the news about the contacts between Dr Weizmann and British statesmen, and the increasing measure of favourable attention paid to Zionism in British and French publications, were brought to the attention of the German government. But Berlin was not willing to bring even greater pressure on its Turkish allies, and would probably have failed if the attempt had been made.