Madagascar Plan

Plan to deport the Jews of Europe to Madagascar, a French island colony off the southeast coast of Africa, that was briefly brought up in the summer of 1940 as a solution to the "Jewish question." The idea of sending European Jewry to Madagascar was not new: British, Dutch, and Polish antisemites had been suggesting a similar plan since World War I. In 1937 the Polish government sent a three man commission to Madagascar to explore the possibilities of settling Jews there. In early 1938 Adolf Eichmann was asked to prepare a report on the subject of Madagascar.However, it was not until more than two years later that the idea caught on in the upper echelons of the Nazi regime. In the spring of 1940 it became obvious that the nisko and lublin plan--- which called for the Deportation of all the Jews in the annexed parts of Poland to the Generalgouverment ---was not going to work. The Germans were also about to invade Western Europe, which would potentially bring hundreds of thousands more Jews under German control. In late May, while France, which controlled Madagascar was being taken, Hitler approved the idea of sending Jews to an African colony. The Madagascar Plan became technically unfeasible later that year when the Germans lost the Battle of Britain.