The Madagascar Plan (German: Madagaskarplan) was a plan proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.
The idea of re-settling Polish Jews to Madagascar was investigated by the French Third Republic and the Second Polish Republic in 1937, but the task force sent to evaluate the island's potential determined that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could be accommodated, or even as few as 500 families by some estimates. As the efforts by the Nazis to encourage the emigration of the Jewish population of Germany before World War II were only partially successful, the idea of deporting Jews to Madagascar was revived by the Nazi government in 1940.
Rademacher recommended on 3 June 1940 that Madagascar should be made available as a destination for the Jews of Europe. With...
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