ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS

BRENNER : ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS
Jewish bourgeoisie merely thanked them for the gesture and assured the Americans
that they would be contacted if things got worse. Wise wanted to try for a statement
from President Hoover but even that
[35] was too radical for the American Jewish Committee, and Wise dropped the
matter. Wise and Nahum Goldmann did organise a World Jewish Conference in
Geneva in the summer of 1932, but Goldmann, extremely committed, was unwilling
to work with assimilationists. 64 Zionism was a minority movement in Jewry at that
time; the conference did little more than preach to the converted, and only a
minority of the converted at that, since neither Weizmann nor Nahum Sokolow, who
had succeeded him as President of the WZO, attended. Nothing came of the meeting
and indeed neither Wise nor Goldmann appreciated the full seriousness of the
situation. Goldmann, always a believer in the influence of the Great Powers, told the
l932 ZVfD convention that Britain and France, and Russia, would never let Hitler
come to power. 65 Stephen Wise retreated even further into that world where
perhaps things would not be 'as bad as we dreaded'. On hearing of Hitler's coming
to power, he felt the only real danger lay in Hitler's failing to keep his other
promises. Then 'he may finally decide that he must yield to his fellow Nazis in the
matter of anti-Semitism'. 66
'Liberalism is the Enemy; It is also the Enemy for Nazism'
Given that the German Zionists agreed with two fundamental elements in Nazi
ideology—that the Jews would never be part of the German volk and, therefore,
they did not belong on German soil — it was inevitable that some Zionists would
believe an accommodation possible. If Wise could delude himself that Hitler was the
moderate in the Nazis, ranks, why could not others talk themselves into believing
that there were elements in the NSDAP who might restrain Hitler? Stephen Poppel
has touched on this debate within the ZVfD:
Some Zionists thought that there might be respectable and moderate elements
within the Nazi movement who would serve to restrain it from within… These
elements might serve as suitable negotiating partners for reaching some kind of
German-Jewish accommodation. There was serious division over this possibility, with
Weltsch [editor of the Rundschau] , for example, arguing in its behalf and
Blumenfeld sharply opposing it. 67
Nor was Robert Weltsch alone. Gustav Krojanker, an editor at the Judischer
Verlag, the oldest Zionist publishing house in Europe, also saw the two movements'
common roots in volkist irrationalism, and drew
64 Ibid., p. 175.
65 Walter Laqueur, History of Zionism, p. 499.
66 Shafir, 'American Jewish Leaders and the Emerging Nazi Threat', p. 181.
67 Poppel, Zionism in Germany, p. 161.
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