Germany Had a Grand Settlement Project. It Collapsed Overnight

Germans returning home from the east in 1945. To this day there are communities in Germany itself that preserve the memory of the cities and villages they left, and are eager to return to them. Credit: The German Federal Archives

Visitors to Eastern Europe – for example, to Wroclaw in Poland, Liberec in the Czech Republic, Chernivtsi in Ukraine or Kaliningrad in Russia – will encounter many streets, buildings and monuments with German names, despite the fact that the languages spoken there are Slavic. In the past, these cities themselves bore German names and the majority of their inhabitants spoke German, including a large proportion of the Jews who lived there.

Wroclaw was Breslau, the capital of Silesia; Liberec was known as Reichenberg, the capital of the Sudetenland; Chernivtsi was Czernowitz, the capital of Bukovina; and Kaliningrad was Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia. Germans lived and flourished in these places for many centuries. They were born and died there, and could probably not imagine a future in which the cities would be emptied of their German inhabitants.

But one day it happened. Immediately after the end of World War II, in the wake of the defeat of the Nazis, the vast majority of the German population was expelled from Eastern Europe and fled into East and West Germany. About half a million Germans were expelled from Breslau and 200,000 from Königsberg. The Sudetens (i.e., the Czech Germans) evacuated Sudetenland, and the Germans of Bukovina also left.

As they fled, many of them were killed. The others became embittered refugees in Germany. To this day, there are communities in Germany itself that preserve the memory of the cities and villages they left, and are eager to return to them. Occasionally, they embark on journeys to abandoned German cemeteries, located today in locales bearing Slavic names.

The Israeli settlement project is by its very nature a colonial enterprise. But in contrast to the accepted narrative in academia today, the relevant model for comparison is not colonial settlement in America, Africa, or Australia. The principal reason that the comparison today between Israel and, for example, Algeria or South Africa is so popular is that researchers of colonialism in the West are better acquainted with French and English colonialism than with other, less fashionable, instances of the phenomenon.

But German settlement in Eastern Europe – the Ostsiedlung – is even more relevant. I don't necessarily mean the Nazi occupation of the 1940s – that was the last, murderous phase of the project. I'm referring to the settlement by ethnic Germans in the east, which began centuries ago.

Unlike British or French colonialism in foreign lands, when it came to these German settlements, the distinction between the motherland and its colonies was sometimes blurred. The Germans in Königsberg or in Breslau could be considered indigenous no less than the Germans in Munich or in Berlin. They considered Danzig or Marienburg, today in Poland, their homeland. Königsberg was the city of Immanuel Kant; philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder lived in Riga. They were clearly German.

The German settlers did not have to cross a sea – they simply gradually moved eastward. Since the 19th century, at the latest, this expansion gained the backing and support of the Prussian and German state, which urged its citizens to settle in the east and fought the sale of German lands to Slavs.

For its part, the Zionist settlement project is also a movement of land-based expansion to the east. That movement started with the inception of Zionism in the late 19th century, and continues today. In the end, it might lead to a similar result. When I witness the arrogance and the air of lordship displayed by the settler-pogromists in the West Bank, I find it hard not to recall the end of the German settlement project.

Dubious calculation

Comparisons have been drawn between present-day Israel and the Third Reich in World War II, but I would tend to compare the present moment to an ersatz version of the Second Reich in World War I. Unlike Nazi Germany, the Germany of 1914 was not a totalitarian state and was not exclusively responsible for the outbreak of the war. If imperial Germany had triumphed then, the result would not have been the destruction of civilization.

It was not by chance that the preference of many Jewish intellectuals and leaders was for Germany to win the war. But as in present-day Israel, that country was then awash in nationalism, militarism, a feeling of messianic supremacy and victimization.

Descriptions of the atmosphere in Germany in 1914 sound alarmingly familiar. When World War I broke out, the Germans considered themselves to be doing battle against the "Asiatic barbarism" of the Russians. At the same time, they were affronted by the West's attitude toward them. Educated Germans who, for example, would typically vacation in Paris or London felt cut off from the world.

In his novel "Doctor Faustus," Thomas Mann vividly described the prevalent frame of mind among the German bourgeoisie at the invasion of Belgium in World War I, a combination of victimization and messianism. "Attack and defense were the same, in our case: together they made up the feeling of providence, a calling, a great hour, a sacred necessity. The peoples beyond our borders might consider us disturbers of the peace if they chose, enemies of life and not to be borne with; but we had the means to knock the world on the head until it changed its mind and came not only to admire but to love us."

Like Israelis today, the Germans on the eve of the Great War considered themselves to be isolated and threatened – with considerable justification. Their country was trapped between the vast Russian empire and France, its historical rival. Like the Israelis, they adopted an aggressive approach in order to extricate themselves from that predicament. Contingency plans for a multi-front war were prepared over many years, and when the time came they pulled them out and were certain they would remove the threat.

That was a dubious strategic calculation, interwoven with megalomaniacal fantasies of annexation and expansion. During the initial stage of World War I, when the German army quickly spread westward and eastward, many Germans thought that Belgium was part of the Reich's "natural borders," and that in any future arrangement it would become part of Germany.

All of this ended in defeat, surrender and reparations; in economic and political crises that continued for decades; and in another world war and national suicide. And then, when the Red Army finally advanced on Berlin, the Germans fled from all the regions the Russians had conquered. One day the same will happen to the settlers who are today terrorizing the Jordan Valley, Southern Mount Hebron, the Etzion Bloc and the rest of the territories. Some sufficiently powerful force will advance from the east and catch Israel in its weakness. The settlement project will fold up hastily, just like the Germans' project did in the east.

To what lines will Israel flee? That will likely be determined by the balance of forces and the outcome of a future war. Not by international law, not by academics or by rulings handed down by international courts. A possible forced withdrawal might halt at the 1967 Green Line, or go further. One way or the other, it won't be a pleasant sight. Just ask the Germans in the east.