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Blaming the Victims for the Crime

In League With the Nazis

Canard rating5/5

The canard

“The Zionist movement collaborated with Nazi Germany.”

Remarkable accusation: that the people Hitler spent the 1930s trying to drive out and the 1940s trying to murder were quietly on his side. Six million murdered Jews — and a Jewish Brigade that fought the Wehrmacht under the Zionist flag — would beg to differ.

The receipts

Nazi Germany murdered roughly six million Jews; Zionists were among its targets and its armed enemies — more than 1.5 million Jews fought in the Allied armies, and the Jewish Brigade fought the Wehrmacht under the Zionist flag. The 'collaboration' charge inflates a handful of real but distorted episodes — chiefly the 1933 Haavara emigration deal that helped about 60,000 Jews flee Germany, plus a fringe splinter group's rejected 1941 overture and wartime talks to ransom Jews from the SS — into a sweeping libel that post-1967 Soviet propaganda industrialized and that scholars call 'Holocaust inversion.'

  1. 1

    The claim reverses who killed whom. The Holocaust was, in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's words, 'the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.' Through the 1930s the regime 'increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate,' and from 1941 it turned to outright extermination — the 'Final Solution,' the 'deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews,' carried out from 1941 to 1945. Zionists were Jews; Jews were the targets. Casting the victims as the Nazis' partners inverts one of the most thoroughly documented crimes in modern history.

    [1][2]
  2. 2

    Zionists didn't collaborate with the Wehrmacht — they fought it, in some cases under a Zionist flag. More than 1.5 million Jews served in the Allied armies that defeated Nazi Germany. The Jewish community of Mandatory Palestine (the Yishuv) sent some 30,000 volunteers into the British forces, and the Jewish Brigade Group — which, in the USHMM's words, 'fought under the Zionist flag' — was formed in September 1944 and battled the Germans in Italy in the spring of 1945. Jews also took up arms where they could: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943 was the largest Jewish revolt of the war, and prisoners rose up inside the Treblinka (August 1943) and Sobibór (October 1943) killing centres. These are not the deeds of collaborators.

    [3][4][5][6]
  3. 3

    The charge leans hardest on the 1933 Haavara ('Transfer') Agreement — which was a rescue-by-emigration deal, not an alliance. Negotiated in 1933 between the Jewish Agency, the Zionist Federation of Germany and the Reich economics ministry, it let German Jews emigrate to Palestine while salvaging part of their property: their assets were paid into a German account, spent on exported German goods, and repaid to them in Palestine. Roughly 60,000 German Jews got out under it during the 1930s, and on the order of 100 million reichsmarks were transferred. It cut uncomfortably both ways — it channelled German exports abroad and, in Encyclopedia.com's words, the Nazis were 'pleased at the way in which Ha-avarah undercut those Jews championing a boycott of Germany' — which is exactly why it split the Zionist world (next point). But trading frozen assets for exit visas under a 'violently antisemitic' government that was 'eager to rid Germany of its Jews,' years before the genocide began, is coerced rescue, not a meeting of minds.

    [7][8][9]
  4. 4

    Far from being a Zionist plot, Haavara split the Zionist movement and was attacked from within it. The Brill Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture records that the deal 'met with strong opposition among the Jewish public from the outset' — above all from the Revisionist Zionists under Vladimir Jabotinsky, who saw it as breaking the international Jewish boycott of Nazi goods. Its lead negotiator, Haim Arlosoroff of the Jewish Agency, was assassinated in June 1933 — a killing that remains unsolved, and in which the men accused were tried and acquitted. As the historian Rainer Schulze puts it, 'any claim that Nazis and Zionists ever shared a common goal is not only cynical and disingenuous, but a distortion of clearly established historical fact.'

    [9][10][11][12]
  5. 5

    The other exhibit — the Lehi or 'Stern Gang' overture — was a fringe, rejected approach, not the movement. Lehi was a tiny splinter, with no more than a few hundred members, that broke from the Irgun in 1940 when the Irgun declared a wartime truce with Britain: Avraham Stern refused to pause his own fight against the British, while the broader Yishuv was backing Britain against the Nazis. In January 1941 a Lehi emissary met a German official in Beirut and offered that Lehi would 'actively take part in the war on Germany's side' in return for backing a Jewish state — an offer preserved in the German attaché's report later known as the 'Ankara document.' Encyclopaedia Britannica notes the group 'even invited aid from the Axis powers' — and, as the record shows, 'there was never any response' from Berlin. Mainstream Zionism disowned Lehi, and British police killed Stern in February 1942. A rejected proposal by a hunted splinter is the opposite of a movement-wide partnership.

    [13][14][15]
  6. 6

    The hardest case isn't a splinter group at all — it's Rezső Kasztner, a Hungarian Labor Zionist who in 1944 negotiated face to face with Eichmann's SS as it deported Hungarian Jewry to Auschwitz. But that was ransom under extortion, not partnership: the talks sought to halt the deportations, and the 'Kasztner train' carried 1,686 Jews out to safety in 1944. A 1955 Israeli court's finding that Kasztner had 'sold his soul to the devil' was largely overturned by Israel's Supreme Court in January 1958 — by then Kasztner had been assassinated, in 1957. Bargaining with the murderers to buy back their hostages is the opposite of an alliance.

    [20][21]
  7. 7

    The blanket 'Zionism equals Nazism' charge is itself a documented propaganda product. Soviet state 'anti-Zionist' campaigning, which intensified after 1967, industrialized the smear: the KGB-supervised Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public issued a 1985 brochure literally titled 'Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism,' translated and pushed abroad — recycling Haavara and the Lehi overture stripped of all context. The same handful of episodes was repackaged for Western readers in Lenni Brenner's 1983 book 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators' — the text behind the modern 'Hitler was a Zionist' line — which the researcher Paul Bogdanor documents as a manipulation of the record rather than scholarship. Researchers call the technique 'Holocaust inversion': as the ADL describes it, a 'victim-blaming narrative, turning Jews — the primary targets of the Holocaust — into collaborators and perpetrators,' which the scholar Lesley Klaff calls 'a form of soft-core Holocaust denial.'

    [16][19][17][18]

Sources

  1. [1]Introduction to the Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM) (2024)Backs the six-million figure (verbatim: 'the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators') and that the regime 'increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate' through the 1930s before deciding on mass murder from 1941.
  2. [2]"Final Solution": Overview. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM) (2024)Verbatim: the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question' was 'the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews ... from 1941 to 1945.' Anchors the genocide firmly after the 1933-39 emigration era.
  3. [3]Jewish Soldiers in World War II — Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv UniversityAcademic source: 'During World War II more than 1.5 million Jews participated in the fight against Nazi Germany as soldiers in the armies of the nations in which they lived.'
  4. [4]Jewish Brigade Group. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM)Backs that 'some 30,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine served with the British forces' and that the Jewish Brigade Group, 'which fought under the Zionist flag,' was established in September 1944 and 'fought against the Germans in Italy from March 1945 until the end of the war in May 1945.'
  5. [5]Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM)Backs the 19 April 1943 uprising as 'the largest uprising by Jews during World War II and the first significant urban revolt against German occupation in Europe.'
  6. [6]Jewish Uprisings in Ghettos and Camps, 1941-1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM)Backs the armed revolts inside the killing centres: Treblinka (2 August 1943) and Sobibór (14 October 1943), plus underground movements in roughly 100 ghettos.
  7. [7]Refugees. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM)Backs that the Haavara Agreement 'facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine,' that 'over 60,000 German Jews immigrated to Palestine during the 1930s, most under the terms of the Haavara (Transfer) Agreement,' and the German currency-export-ban context.
  8. [8]Ha-avarah Agreement — Encyclopedia.comBacks ~60,000 emigrants and 'some 100 million reichsmarks' transferred, the blocked-account-to-German-goods mechanism, and that the 'violently antisemitic' Hitler government was 'eager to rid Germany of its Jews' and pleased the deal undercut the anti-Nazi boycott.
  9. [9]Haʿavarah Agreement — Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (Brill)Academic encyclopedia: dates the agreement to summer 1933 (Jewish Agency, Zionist Federation of Germany, Reich economics ministry), describes the escrow-and-German-goods mechanism, and states it 'met with strong opposition among the Jewish public from the outset.'
  10. [10]Haavara Agreement — WikipediaCorroboration: signing on 25 August 1933, the Anglo-Palestine Bank as banking instrument, the export tallies (~77.8m RM to end-1937, ~105m RM total), and the Revisionist/Jabotinsky opposition. Tertiary; load-bearing facts also anchored on USHMM and Brill.
  11. [11]Assassination of Haim Arlosoroff — WikipediaCorroboration: Arlosoroff, head of the Jewish Agency's political department, 'spearheaded' the transfer negotiations and was assassinated on 16 June 1933; 'the case has never been definitively solved.' Presented as context for the intra-Zionist conflict, not as proven causation.
  12. [12]Labour antisemitism row: there was nothing Zionist about Hitler's plans for the Jews. Rainer Schulze, Professor of Modern European History, University of Essex — The Conversation (2016)Academic historian, verbatim: 'The Haavara Agreement does not mean the Nazis were ever Zionists ... Any claim that Nazis and Zionists ever shared a common goal is not only cynical and disingenuous, but a distortion of clearly established historical fact.'
  13. [13]Stern Gang | Jewish Resistance, Irgun & Terrorism — Encyclopaedia BritannicaLehi 'founded in 1940 by Avraham Stern (1907-42) after a split in the right-wing underground movement Irgun Zvai Leumi' and 'even invited aid from the Axis powers.' Britannica bot-blocks automated fetchers (HTTP 403); wording confirmed via search/cache.
  14. [14]Lehi (militant group) — WikipediaBacks the 11 January 1941 'Ankara document' offer to 'actively take part in the war on Germany's side,' that Lehi 'never had more than a few hundred members,' and that 'there was never any response' from Germany. Tertiary; corroborated by Britannica.
  15. [15]Avraham Stern — WikipediaBacks that Stern split from the Irgun 'when the latter adopted the Haganah's policy of supporting the British in their fight against the Nazis,' the January 1941 overture, and that he was killed by British police in February 1942. Tertiary; corroborated by Britannica.
  16. [16]From the Archives: Soviet Anti-Zionism and Contemporary Left Antisemitism. Izabella Tabarovsky — Fathom (BICOM) (2019)Documents the post-1967 Soviet anti-Zionist campaign (hundreds of books, thousands of articles) and the KGB-supervised Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public's 1985 brochure 'Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism,' translated and distributed abroad by Novosti. Accessible repost of Tabarovsky's 2019 essay (the original Fathom/Tablet page bot-blocks fetchers).
  17. [17]Contemporary Anti-Zionism's Connections to Soviet Propaganda — Anti-Defamation League (2023)States the alleged 'Zionist-Nazi collaboration' was 'a major theme of Soviet propaganda in the 1970s and 80s' and describes the trope as a 'victim-blaming narrative, turning Jews – the primary targets of the Holocaust – into collaborators and perpetrators.'
  18. [18]Holocaust Inversion and Contemporary Antisemitism. Lesley Klaff — Fathom (BICOM), via Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (2014)Scholarly account of 'Holocaust inversion' as an 'inversion of reality' in which Jews/Israelis are portrayed as 'new Nazis' — 'a form of soft-core Holocaust denial.' Cited via the open-access Sheffield Hallam repository record.
  19. [19]An Antisemitic Hoax: Lenni Brenner on Zionist 'Collaboration' With the Nazis. Paul Bogdanor — Fathom (BICOM) (2016)Detailed critique documenting that Lenni Brenner's 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators' (1983) — the text behind the modern 'Hitler was a Zionist' claim — rests on factual manipulation rather than scholarship. Advocacy journal; bot-blocks fetchers (HTTP 403), title and thesis confirmed via search.
  20. [20]Rudolf (Rezső) Kasztner. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM)Backs that Kasztner, a Hungarian Labor Zionist on Budapest's Relief and Rescue Committee, negotiated with Wisliceny and Eichmann from April 1944 to suspend the deportations; that the 'Kasztner train' left Budapest on 30 June 1944 carrying 1,686 people to safety; and that 'the Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment in January 1958' (Kasztner was assassinated in 1957).
  21. [21]Rezső Kasztner — WikipediaCorroboration: Judge Benjamin Halevi's 1955 finding that Kasztner had 'sold his soul to the devil'; the 1957 assassination; and the 1958 Supreme Court reversal of most of the lower-court judgment. Tertiary; load-bearing facts anchored on USHMM.

More canards to send

A Culvert, Not a Conspiracy

71 Kids, Zero Synagogues

“So they found 71 little girls in the sewers under a synagogue, and nobody is talking about it?”

See the receipts
Mistaking a Lobby for a Leash

The Puppet Keeps Saying No

“Israel and AIPAC control the United States — American foreign policy is dictated by a foreign lobby, not decided by Americans.”

See the receipts
Red Herring

Like a Red Rag to a Bull

“Bulls are enraged by the colour red — that's why matadors wave a red cape.”

See the receipts

This page debunks a false claim using sourced evidence. The target is the claim — never any person or community. Sources are linked above so you can verify every point yourself.