The German-Israel Story: Money

By Steve Rodan

In the official narrative, Konrad Adenauer is described as Israel's savior. As the first chancellor of West Germany, Adenauer reached an agreement to deliver what amounted to billions of dollars in aid to the Jewish state and Holocaust survivors.

From the Israeli perspective, Adenauer was no hero. He was a mercurial man who lied through his teeth, making promises he refused to honor and harboring a deep contempt for the Israeli leadership. The German simply saw them as money-hungry.

Part of the problem was that Adenauer was correct. From 1952 until 1965, the German-Israeli relationship was based on give and take. Bonn relayed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of reparations based on Hitler's killing of six million Jews during World War II, and Jerusalem did everything to convince Jews all over the world that West Germany was a righteous member of the international community. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion agreed to introduce Hitler's favorite composer Wilhem Richard Wagner to Israeli audiences and at every turn proposed programs to encourage reconciliation.

Still, the money came slowly to the Israeli elite. And Adenauer and the rest of the German leadership kept the Jewish state at arm's length as it shoveled military aid and technology into Israel's sworn enemies -- Egypt and Syria. By the early 1960s, Adenuaer's refusal to make good on his promise to establish diplomatic relations with Israel brought dismay to the Mapai government.

"Why don't they offer this?" Prime Minister Levi Eshkol asked in March 1964. [1]

Adenauer had promised diplomatic relations with Israel since March 1960, when he held his first public meeting with Ben-Gurion, at a New York City hotel. The chancellor had repeated this several times since. But by the time Eshkol convened his Cabinet for a discussion of Bonn, Adenauer was already gone nearly a year. The new chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, showed no willingness to do what his predecessor had refused.

A basket case

Like Adenauer, Erhard saw Israel as a basket case -- a street beggar you mollify with a dollar or two. In December 1963, Erhard, said to have been an anti-Nazi, was quoted as telling a news conference that included Arab journalists that relations with Israel were not based on diplomacy, rather a commitment by Germany to give aid. Erhard, who as economics minister repeatedly warned against significant reparations, came from the Christian Democratic Union, regarded by one Israeli Cabinet minister as "bastards."

The German leader could count on the support of his nation. In a poll in the early 1950s, only 11 percent of West Germans agreed that Bonn should give money to the Jews. [2]

Some Israeli diplomats blamed their superiors for their timidity. Eliezer Shinnar, a German emigrant who from the 1950s spent 11 years in West Germany, said Israel might have obtained formal ties with Bonn back in 1952. But Ben-Gurion hesitated, fearing a backlash by the hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors and others.

"We made efforts to clarify German intentions toward us," Shinnar said. "Over the last 11 years, there was not one time we asked for diplomatic relations from the West Germans." [3]

Eshkol was in no mood to openly plead with Bonn. He remembered the storming of the Knesset by thousands opposed to reparations in January 1952, an attack that nearly toppled Ben-Gurion's coalition.

Still, to the Israeli leadership, West Germany meant a windfall. By 1964, Bonn had become the largest exporter in Europe. It held reserves of $7.5 billion, compared to $2.8 billion for Britain, the victor of World War II.

Negev and nuclear

As a result, throughout the late 1950s, Ben-Gurion relayed a stream of proposals for cooperation with West Germany. Jerusalem had established a network of allies in Africa; Israel offered to include Bonn. Cooperation in defense, intelligence, medicine, research, education, media came from the Israeli side.

Adenauer would usually respond with a nod and later dismiss the Israeli offers. He agreed to purchase Israeli guns in what Ben-Gurion touted a historic decision -- and then promptly gave them to war-torn Angola. The chancellor agreed to grant Israel $50 million each year for a decade, ostensibly to develop the Negev, but what historians have recently asserted marked a secret nuclear program.

But more than a year had passed since Adenauer's nod and the German money didn't arrive. The delays were beginning to grate on the Israeli leadership.

"You must talk to the old man if the promise still exists," Ben-Gurion, referring to Adenauer, wrote in a cable to Shinnar in May 1961. [4]

Two years later, Ben-Gurion was still reminding Adenauer of the $500 million. Even when out of office, Adenauer wouldn't budge. [5]

Ben-Gurion's lust for German money placed Israel in strategic danger. He was briefed on the scores of German scientists and other ex-Nazis who were developing the missile and non-conventional capabilities of the Arabs, particularly Egypt and Syria. The prime minister was urged repeatedly to raise this with Adenauer.

A scared leader

But Ben-Gurion refused, scared that Adenauer would erupt and halt reparations. The Israeli's fear even extended to asking the chancellor to help release three Mossad agents arrested after they had threatened a German scientist based in Egypt. Ben-Gurion's decision prompted the resignation of Mossad chief Isser Harel. In June 1963, a month after the 87-year-old Adenauer left office, Ben-Gurion, now bereft of political allies, resigned as well.

Eventually, Erhard brought West German relations with Israel out in the open. In 1965, after days of stormy meetings, Bonn agreed to establish diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Israel received 630 million Deutschmarks, about $160 million, under the purported nuclear deal. In exchange, Israel shared intelligence with Bonn and transferred captured Soviet weapons. In the 21st Century, scientific and research cooperation between a unified Germany and Israel were said to have been closer than that between Jerusalem and the United States. [6]

For Ben-Gurion the price was the erasure of the Holocaust. In April 1967, he was formally invited to attend the state funeral of Adenauer. Although out of power for nearly four years, Ben-Gurion was treated as a statesman. When he meet Erhard's successor, Kurt-George Kiesinger, an openly former Nazi, the Israeli didn't hesitate.

To Eshkol and his colleagues, Ben-Gurion's smile, handshake and warm words didn't surprise. But in Bonn, the sight of of a Jewish leader, the first visit by a current or former Israeli premier, getting chummy with a Nazi raised eyebrows. [7] More than a year later, Beate Klarsfeld, a gentile who spent a lifetime hunting for German war criminals, would climb onto the stage of the CDU congress in West Berlin, and, shouting "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi," slap Kiesinger in the face.

German historian Michael Borchard was also not surprised by Ben-Gurion's behavior. He saw Ben-Gurion and Adenauer as two people of the same mind.

"It is a double stroke of luck that the difficult time after the great German crime against humanity, the Shoah, found two actors who complemented each other ideally and who, in addition to purely interest-based politics, have an ability that still represents a 'guiding star' for the relationship today," Borchard wrote in 2020, "the ability to empathize." [8]

Notes:

1. Briefing by Eliezer [Felix] Shinnar, head of Israeli delegation, March 15, 1964. Israel National Archives. https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b0717068001c167/File/0b07170684fd9593/Item/0907170684fd961a

2. The first meeting of Konrad Adenauer and David Ben-Gurion at the Hotel Waldorf Astoria in New York. Michael Borchard. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Jan. 29, 2020. https://www.kas.de/en/web/geschichte-der-cdu/calendar-detail/-/content/das-erste-treffen-von-konrad-adenauer-und-david-ben-gurion-im-hotel-waldorf-astoria-in-new-york

3. Briefing by Shinnar,March 15, 1964.

4. Ben-Gurion to Shinnar, May 16, 1961. Israel National Archives.

5. The first meeting of Konrad Adenauer and David Ben-Gurion at the Hotel Waldorf Astoria in New York. Michael Borchard.

6. Germany and Israel: A rocky road to friendship. Lisa Hanel. DW. March 13, 2020.https://www.dw.com/en/germany-and-israel-a-rocky-road-to-friendship/a-52765871

7. Ben-Gurion Meets with Chancellor Kiesinger; Talks with Johnson. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. April 27, 1967.

8. The first meeting of Konrad Adenauer and David Ben-Gurion at the Hotel Waldorf Astoria in New York. Michael Borchard.

Below: The one who wasn't scared: Beate Klarsfeld, who slapped a Nazi chancellor in the face in 1968.