WeisSaul

What happens to Jews and Zionism in the world of a Central Powers victory?

Historically, when WW1 broke out, Jews sided with their respective countries, even in Russia. When the Russians started their deportations of Jews, Jews in the east began to look favorably upon the idea of a German victory.

Jewish international organizations largely were neutral, but in favor of Germany, with small pro-British minorities in the organizations including Zionist ones. The British approached the small minorities with the proposal for a state in the Palestine region, which led to the shift towards a pro-British attitude.

Meanwhile, in a CP victory, the Whites would likely win in Russia, considering that the Germans would put considerable effort into preventing communists on their eastern flank. Considering White anti-semitism, this could lead to a mass emigration west.

Ancientgeezer

A CP victory would have probably meant that Zionism would have remained a quirky backward-looking movement of eccentrics. However a White victory in Russia would surely have produced the mother-of-all-pogroms against the Jews, especially amongst the non-religious Jews associated with the Bolshviks and left SRs.
Palestine, presumably would remain in Turkish hands, so where would they go? The Americans didn't want them, neither did anyone else. Maybe the Ugandan offer would have been taken up instead.

WeisSaul

Perhaps a mass Jewish emigration to Germany and (if it survives) Austria-Hungary?

Would the Ottoman empire have even survived? Its one thing for the Germans to win following a defeat of Russia. Its another for the Turks to survive when the British and French were already in control of most of non-Anatolian Turkey.

Belisarius

The Ottoman Empire would have survived in a CP victory; Britain and France would have been forced to withdraw and the Arab revolt left to it's fate. It's one of those ironies that the British and the French were prepared to forego their territorial ambitions in the Middle East in exchange for the Ottomans changing sides as late as 1917. The Balfour Declaration would have been quietly forgotten about and the jewish populations of the various European states would have carried on as normal.

I'm inclined however, to agree with Ancientgeezer about Russia, either there would have been a massacre or a mass deportation away from the Pale of Settlement deep into Russia like the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, only probably not very autonomous.

AlpinLuke

One moment. Even after the defeat in WW I, before that a certain propaganda had diffused in Germany, the Jews weren't so persecuted and / or discriminated.

For example, Jews kept on serving in the Wermacht.

So that, I could even think that in case of a victory of the Central Powers the Yiddish community would have known a well different context.

I doubt that in a victorious Germany Nazism would have come out, at least not with that success.

Without Nazism there weren't the extreme circumstances for the racial laws and all what followed.

I even doubt that WW II would have happened in the terms we know.

About a possible Jewish migration from Russia, well they would have found a not so negative environment in Germany, so they had the opportunity to join the Yiddish community.

Ancientgeezer

The Nazis did not invent anti-semitism, in fact it was a common and acceptable platform in Europe throughout the 19th and early 20th Century and not even considered reprehensible as the French political poster below shows.
Established European Jews who had chosen the assimilationist position and become good Germans, Frenchmen, Austrians, Englishmen, etc. to divert anti-semitism were horrified at the Russian Jews with their traditional ways and insularity who began to arrive in large numbers after the Russian pogroms of the late 19th Century. It was the "oriental" ( Russian/Polish) Jews who arrived in Austria and Germany after WW1 that stoked up the post WW1 rise in antisemitism.
Russian/Polish Jewish refugees would not have been welcome in a victorious post WW1 Germany or Austria.

Koko the Monkey

Germany and Austria were both very interested in getting rid of their Jews (the Kaiser was a fairly open anti-Semite) and evidence shows that they were pursuing Zionism as a means of doing so. With the Germans victorious, there would have been no place for Jews in much of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and France. As previously mentioned, no one wanted these refugees, so where would they go? More likely than not Germany would've worked out a deal with the Ottoman Empire to send them to Palestine.

Exactly.

AlpinLuke

Absolutely, the "ideological" bases of the Nazi thought had roots in the period of the secret societies, like the notorious Thule Society [this means late 19th century].

But, I think that in case Germany won WW I, there was a good probability to see antisemitism exploding in the defeated France [at least in some regions of it], more than in the victorious Germany [without Nazism at global level, I suppose].

WeisSaul

Would this be the Kingdom of France (Action Francaise) or the Commune of France?

AlpinLuke

A part some curious phenomenons, like the historical "Prior of Sion", I would think to the French Synarchism [we can make reference to the Vichy experience as a clue of this].