Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany

Abstract

Francis Nicosia begins his excellent book on a controversial note. Whereas previous works have tended to focus on the incompatible world views of largely liberal Jews seeking absorption and of largely illiberal Germans denying them equality, his book is intent on examining a rather more complicated connection, namely that between völkisch German nationalism and völkisch Jewish ideology. Nicosia's theme is not new. As early as 1970 George Mosse commented on the ‘influence of the volkish idea on German Jewry’. Later, Jehuda Reinharz wrote seminal pieces on the Zionist response to German antisemitism. More recently, Dina Porat and Tom Segev have examined Palestinian-Zionist policy towards the Third Reich. Even so, many of these works became involved either in quarrels about German-Jewish ‘self-deception’ or in disputes about the validity of Zionist historiography. Nicosia's work, by contrast, is indifferent to these earlier confrontations, and seeks to address the predicament of German Zionism in an old-fashioned, empathetic way.