A Meeting of the Minds

By Steve Rodan

July 1942, and things looked awful bleak for the Jews in the British mandate of Palestine. German Gen. Erwin Rommel had swept through North Africa and was nearing close to the Land of Israel. The Zionist leadership was in a panic. Its chief, Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion, had escaped to the United States and was not available to his colleagues.

Outwardly, the Zionist leadership tried to display an attitude of business as usual. But behind closed doors Ben-Gurion's colleagues knew that Hitler would not spare Palestine from the Final Solution. Rommel's Afrika Korps was accompanied by an SS mission led by Walther Rauff, who helped invent the mobile gas chamber that killed at least 200,000 Jews during World War II. Rauff's assignment was to find the Jews, rob them and kill as many as possible.

The problem was that Rommel, appointed by Hitler to command the Afrika Korps in February 1941, was moving so rapidly east that the SS had little time to commit genocide. By April of that year, Rommel was deep into Libya near the border with Egypt, and in September the Luftwaffe attacked Cairo. During the rest of the year, the battle see-sawed between German advances and British counter-attacks. By December, the British Eighth Army was repeatedly repulsing and defeating Rommel's troops.

The battle lines changed dramatically in 1942. Rommel launched his second offensive and recaptured positions throughout Libya. On June 28, the Afrika Korps drove hard into Egypt and captured the port of Mersa Matruh. The road to Alexandria, and from there to Palestine, seemed wide open.

Preparing genocide

By this time, the SS was preparing for the capture of Palestine and its 500,000 Jews. An SS contingent was studying genocide options from its base in Athens, Greece. Meanwhile, Rauff was rounding up Jews in Libya and throwing many of them in the desert to die. In late July, Rauff received his orders from superiors to get rid of the Jews by any means necessary.

"The SS Einsatzkommando receives its technical instructions from the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service, Reichsführer SS, and carries out its tasks on its own responsibility. It is entitled to take executive measures in the context of its mandate on its own responsibility vis-à-vis the civilian population." [1]

In Palestine, British authorities had no genuine plan to stop the Germans. Formally, the army and police revived a pre-war plan that envisioned an attack from the north. Called OP Final Fortress, the plan did not include a defense of the south, where Rommel was heading. At one point, the British sent 120 Palmach members to the south to stop Rommel. None of them was given rifles, rather large sticks. In all, the British Army recruited and armed no more than 100 Jews, members of the Palmach, to defend Palestine. Under OP Final Fortress, the Palmach members were joined by scores of Jewish police officers, allowed to keep their regulation rifles.

Nobody, especially the British, expected that a few hundred Jews could stop or even slow down Rommel's army. Bureaucrats were ordered to burn documents before leaving east, whether to Iraq or India. In July, British High Commissioner Harold MacMichael told Zionist leaders that the British would consider evacuating Egypt and Palestine should Rommel capture Alexandria, 100 kilometers east of Mersa Matruh.

Abandoned, the Jewish Agency Executive discussed a series of proposals, including surrendering to Hitler and becoming a massive ghetto. Resistance was dismissed as unrealistic. The main goal of the Zionist leadership was to escape with their lives and the millions of dollars collected during the war.

At a certain point, the British-sponsored Palmach was allowed to offer its solution. Called Plan North, Palmach chief Yitzhak Sadeh envisioned a final stand by the Jewish community at Mount Carmel outside Haifa. Sadeh, who had worked for years with British forces, proposed that all of the Jews be brought to the mountain for what would amount to mass suicide similar to that at Masada nearly 1,900 years earlier.

Plan North wasn't the work of a lone wolf. The idea of genocide was approved by the British Special Operations Executive in OP Final Fortress. [2] Sadeh's plan was undoubtedly reviewed and approved by Ben-Gurion, who ruled the Haganah and Palmach with an iron hand.

Tailormade for Hitler

Sadeh's proposal meant the end of the Jews. Plan North responded to the aims and weaknesses of German forces in Egypt. Rommel had no intention of remaining in Palestine but hoped to advance and capture the oil fields of the Middle East, whether in Iraq or Saudi Arabia. The Afrika Korps would not help in the SS plan for genocide in Palestine. Indeed, Rommel, unlike Wehrmacht commanders in Eastern Europe, could not be counted on to support the SS in rounding up and killing the Jews. Even the Arabs were not seen as having the strength to conduct the systematic extermination seen in Poland and the Soviet Union.[3]

That's where Plan North came in. Hitler would not need to build gas chambers or death camps in Palestine, a process that could take months if not longer. There would be no need for another ghetto. Under the guise of a last stand, the Palmach and Haganah would simply gather all the Jews on Mount Carmel and wait for the Axis bombers.

"There, they would meet and prepare the plan as a last resort for the moment when the Germans would invade and cross the lines of Egypt," recalled Michael Retner, the son of Yohanan Retner, who drafted the plan with Sadeh. "They planned to concentrate the entire Jewish population on the Carmel ridge and defend themselves on the Carmel ridge." [4]

Sadeh's plan, also called the Carmel Plan, depended on the Luftwaffe and its French and Italian allies. From 1940, the Axis had repeatedly bombed coastal cities in Palestine. The assignment was first given to the Italian Air Force, and in a series of attacks more than 200 civilians were killed in Haifa and Tel Aviv. On Sept. 9, 1940, Italian bombers killed 137 people in Tel Aviv, which the British refused to defend with anti-aircraft artillery. [5]

But by the summer of 1942, there was little likelihood that Germany and Italy could sustain an air campaign over Palestine. The Eastern Front was taking up nearly every available asset amid the stubborn resistance of the Red Army. But by gathering all of the Jews on Mount Carmel, Hermann Goering could free up his air fleet for one or two days until there were no more Jews left.

Multiple channels

The Palmach plan required coordination with the Reich. That was no problem: Throughout the war, the Zionists maintained several channels of communications with Berlin -- whether in Switzerland, Istanbul or Rome. In 1941, the leader of a breakaway Haganah faction called Lehi submitted a plan for German cooperation against Britain. That plan was relayed through German diplomats in Beirut. [6]

In the end, Rommel failed to advance past El Alamein. In July and August 1942, his troops, short of fuel and other supplies, were repulsed by the British Eighth Army and soon the Allies gained the offensive. The British reconsolidated control in Palestine and soon sought to disarm the Haganah and Palmach.

More plans

Despite Rommel's defeat, Goering never forgot Palestine. His Luftwaffe, supported by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, examined a proposal for air strikes on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in November 1943. The plan was eventually rejected by Goering as impractical. After World War II, the Zionists helped Rauff escape Europe for South America.

Sadeh's plan remains one of the mysteries of Zionist-German cooperation. What did the Germans offer in exchange for Plan North? How far up in the German chain of command did the plan reach? Did the British, who protected Hitler's favorite Arab son, Haj Amin Al Husseini, know of the planned Zionist annihilation of the Jews of Palestine?

On Tel Aviv's Rothschild Street stands the archive of the Haganah, where secrets have been kept for nearly a century. [7] In Berlin, the Germans have not released any information regarding coordination with the Palmach in 1942. The British have been mum as well. Still, the Zionist plan marked the worst design yet against Jews during the early years of World War II. In 1944, less than two years later, the Zionist cooperation with Hitler in Hungary would result in the largest single extermination campaign of the war.

Notes

1. Wehrmacht High Command to Rauff, July 1942. Cited in "Almost a Holocaust in Palestine." Taz Archive. Klaus Hillenbrand. May 20, 2006. Almost a Holocaust in Palestine - taz.de]

2. "History of the Palestine Police during the British Mandate OP Final Fortress." (britishpalestinepolice.org.uk)

3. Britain's Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives, 1917-1948. Michael J Cohen. Page 422. Routledge. 2014

4. "Secrets of the Bunkers on the Carmel, Part 1, The Last Fortress of Palestine." Ron Levy. [עושים היסטוריה] 268: סודם של הבונקרים על הכרמל, חלק א': 'המבצר האחרון בפלשתינה' (osimhistoria.com)

5. "Planning the Holocaust in the Middle East: Nazi Designs to Bomb Jewish Cities in Palestine." Samuel Miner. Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 27, No. 3/4, Fall 2016

6. "Zionist militias sought to enlist Nazi aid in Palestine." The Cradle. June 26, 2023. The article cites the release of classified documents by the Israel State Archives. Zionist militias sought to enlist Nazi aid in Palestine: Report (thecradle.co)

7. On its website, the Haganah did not acknowledge the suicide element of the plan at Carmel. irgon-haagana.co.il/Info/hi_show.aspx?Id=48173

Below: A toast to a victory that never was: Rommel and his officers in 1942.