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Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and Statebuilding
According to common perception, the Federal Republic of Germany supported the formation of the Israeli state for moral reasons--to atone for its Nazi past--but did not play a significant role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, the historical record does not sustain this narrative.
Daniel Marwecki's pathbreaking analysis deconstructs the myths surrounding the odd alliance between Israel and post-war democratic Germany. Thorough archival research shows how German policymakers often had disingenuous, cynical or even partly antisemitic motivations, seeking to whitewash their Nazi past by supporting the new Israeli state. This is the true context of West Germany's crucial backing of Israel in the 1950s and '60s. German economic and military support greatly contributed to Israel's early consolidation and eventual regional hegemony. This initial alliance has affected Germany's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the present day.
Marwecki reassesses German foreign policymaking and identity-shaping, and raises difficult questions about German responsibility after the Holocaust, exploring the many ways in which the genocide of European Jews and the dispossession of the Palestinians have become tragically intertwined in the Middle East's international politics. This long overdue investigation sheds new light on a major episode in the history of the modern Middle East.
Daniel Marwecki's pathbreaking analysis deconstructs the myths surrounding the odd alliance between Israel and post-war democratic Germany. Thorough archival research shows how German policymakers often had disingenuous, cynical or even partly antisemitic motivations, seeking to whitewash their Nazi past by supporting the new Israeli state. This is the true context of West Germany's crucial backing of Israel in the 1950s and '60s. German economic and military support greatly contributed to Israel's early consolidation and eventual regional hegemony. This initial alliance has affected Germany's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the present day.
Marwecki reassesses German foreign policymaking and identity-shaping, and raises difficult questions about German responsibility after the Holocaust, exploring the many ways in which the genocide of European Jews and the dispossession of the Palestinians have become tragically intertwined in the Middle East's international politics. This long overdue investigation sheds new light on a major episode in the history of the modern Middle East.
Unknown Binding
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April 23, 2026
About a week ago, a friend commented under one of my reviews and mentioned this book. I don’t think they actually suggested I read it, but I did anyway. And now I can’t remember who it was or which review they commented under to check. Anyway, that’s my way of thanking them. I’m so terrible with names. I’m the sort of person that would forget their wife’s name when introducing them. It’s like a part of my brain was removed at birth. “And this is my wife, Sweetbuns, or, at least, that’s what I call her – maybe she won’t like it nearly so much if you do, hard to say.”
This book is very interesting. Not least due to how hidden much of the relationship between Israel and Germany is and has been over the years. This is to be expected in some parts of the story – the book explains that Germany may have helped fund Israel’s nuclear program, so, hardly surprising that that isn’t something either side would boast about. All the same, that isn’t the only part of the relationship that has been hidden over the years.
It isn’t in the least bit immediately obvious that Germany would become after the Second World War Israels chief supporter in Europe. You might think that this was driven by German guilt due to the holocaust. But the book makes it clear that this didn’t really play as large a part as would otherwise seem obvious. It makes the point that it was only much later that films and documentaries and books came out that explained the depth of the German population’s complicity in the Nazi atrocities that German national guilt became embedded in its psyche. For decades following the war, most Germans knew of the holocaust, but could sidestep responsibility by assuming this was really all due to a small number of Nazis.
The reparations paid by Germany to Israel were done at least as much to ensure the FRG would be welcomed into Europe and continue to be supported by America. Up until the 1960s, Germany was the main financial and military support for Israel and it is likely that Israel would have struggled to continue to exist without that support. This included direct payments and ‘loans’ that, as the book says at one point, where effectively grants. And, as the book also says, this level of support was not extended to other victims of Nazi atrocities. And often, in the case of say communists, those victims had been the main resistance to Nazism – and yet, you would barely know that now.
What is also interesting in this is that Israelis were anything but delighted to have so soon normalised relations with Germany. That too would seem hardly surprising. The part of this book that is particularly interesting is the discussion around the massacre of Israeli Olympic team members in Munich. I was too young at the time to have followed this – but the book makes it clear that Israel did not feel Germany had done nearly enough, either during the incident or after, to either stop it or to punish those responsible. This is interesting in so many ways. Not least since both sides moderated their response to ensure ongoing, friendly relations.
This book is well worth reading. Like I said at the start of this review – the idea that is completely logical that Israel and Germany should have such close relations is mostly based on hindsight bias. I wonder how many people would have guessed that would be the outcome in 1948?
This book is very interesting. Not least due to how hidden much of the relationship between Israel and Germany is and has been over the years. This is to be expected in some parts of the story – the book explains that Germany may have helped fund Israel’s nuclear program, so, hardly surprising that that isn’t something either side would boast about. All the same, that isn’t the only part of the relationship that has been hidden over the years.
It isn’t in the least bit immediately obvious that Germany would become after the Second World War Israels chief supporter in Europe. You might think that this was driven by German guilt due to the holocaust. But the book makes it clear that this didn’t really play as large a part as would otherwise seem obvious. It makes the point that it was only much later that films and documentaries and books came out that explained the depth of the German population’s complicity in the Nazi atrocities that German national guilt became embedded in its psyche. For decades following the war, most Germans knew of the holocaust, but could sidestep responsibility by assuming this was really all due to a small number of Nazis.
The reparations paid by Germany to Israel were done at least as much to ensure the FRG would be welcomed into Europe and continue to be supported by America. Up until the 1960s, Germany was the main financial and military support for Israel and it is likely that Israel would have struggled to continue to exist without that support. This included direct payments and ‘loans’ that, as the book says at one point, where effectively grants. And, as the book also says, this level of support was not extended to other victims of Nazi atrocities. And often, in the case of say communists, those victims had been the main resistance to Nazism – and yet, you would barely know that now.
What is also interesting in this is that Israelis were anything but delighted to have so soon normalised relations with Germany. That too would seem hardly surprising. The part of this book that is particularly interesting is the discussion around the massacre of Israeli Olympic team members in Munich. I was too young at the time to have followed this – but the book makes it clear that Israel did not feel Germany had done nearly enough, either during the incident or after, to either stop it or to punish those responsible. This is interesting in so many ways. Not least since both sides moderated their response to ensure ongoing, friendly relations.
This book is well worth reading. Like I said at the start of this review – the idea that is completely logical that Israel and Germany should have such close relations is mostly based on hindsight bias. I wonder how many people would have guessed that would be the outcome in 1948?
January 29, 2025
Excellent research and easy writing style that would allow the non-academic to get a good grasp of the topics. Just wish it was more comprehensive and gave more context, but understand that the research was already substantial. Highly quotable.
July 13, 2026
The title of this treatise also serves as a summation of its content: The Federal Republic of Germany sought to elicit the pardon of Israel in order to attain absolution for its past crimes, whereas Israel craved a steady influx of German capital for the purpose of state-building. Furthermore, “West Germany needed Israel as proof of its unswerving commitment to the democratic camp, {whereas} the Jewish state needed West Germany to escape from its isolation in the Middle East” (p. 62). This book adequately captures the reciprocal cynicism at work: behind the public displays of reconciliation between the two countries naked self-interest was always lurking.
German politicians and diplomats were often beholden to past stereotypes of the Jews; hence Adenauer emphasised the need for reconciliation because of “the power of the Jews {...}, especially in America” (p. 15), i.e. bending one’s knees at the altar of “Jewish Power” (ibid.) was prerequisite to the Federal Republic of Germany’s inclusion among the community of the liberal democracies and transatlantic alignment. Then there were the Germans who were accustomed to the image of the Jew as an oriental phenotype; to their delight, the oriental Jew had been superseded by a higher breed; hence an internal document by the German Foreign Office took note of the following: “Of great height, often blond and blue-eyed, free and self-determined in their movements with well-defined faces, the offspring of the German Jewish immigrants represent a new type of the Jew that was unknown until now” (pp. 98-99). Perhaps the most telling example of the German enthusiasm for this new type of Jew was courtesy of the country’s foremost tabloid paper: “The declaration of victory {in the Six-Day war of 1967}, written in capital letters, was followed by an equation of Israeli general Moshe Dayan with {...} Erwin Rommel, Hitler’s general in North Africa” (p. 114). The Jew had made the transition from an oriental element into an Aryan and had thus become ‘one of us.’
Far from being a spontaneous coming together of perpetrator and victim, the reconciliation in question was a carefully choreographed theatre, as illustrated by the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The Federal Republic of Germany feared that a show trial would pose “a threat to its reputation” (p. 94) and implicate members of the state apparatus with ties to National Socialism (p. 96). In order to avoid causing offence to a vital economic benefactor who might tighten the purse strings on Israel as a consequence, David Ben-Gurion intervened directly with the prosecutor to ascertain that a rigorous demarcation between ‘good Germany’ (the Federal Republic) and ‘evil Germany’ (National Socialism) was observed (p. 98). All the while this demarcation was upheld, the prosecutor was at pains to hyphenate Arab opposition to Zionism with National Socialism, to the point that the Arabs became co-conspirators of the latter in both the planning and implementation of the Final Solution (p. 97). While the Arabs became co-conspirators of the National Socialists, the Germans became co-sufferers who shared in the martyrdom of the Jews as dual victims of National Socialism: “‘One should not forget’, the chancellor {Adenauer stated during a press conference in 1961}, that ‘National Socialist Germans had perpetrated against Germans exactly the same crimes as Eichmann had perpetrated against Jews’ {...}. Furthermore, the chancellor claimed that the percentage of committed National Socialists had been relatively low and that most people ‘joyfully helped fellow Jewish citizens whenever they could’” (p. 95).
What were the ethical implications of this theatre of reconciliation as far as Israel was concerned? One way of looking at this transaction would be to posit it as a matter of do ut des, i.e. “whitewashing for statebuilding, or, specifically, of dissociating West Germany from the Third Reich in exchange for financial and military support {for Israel}” (p. 93). Another way of looking at it, according to this reviewer, would be to posit it as an act that paradoxically serves as both pardon and retribution: the reconciliation contained in the pardon is also the expression of a power relation, i.e. the party conferring the pardon is assuming the moral high ground and expressing its privilege in carrying out an act that is utterly gratuitous in that it may also be withheld, whereas for the pardoned party such an act constitutes both absolution and humiliation. Hence there were those in Israel who viewed reconciliation as the subclause of something far more substantial, i.e. the elicitation of both atonement and reparations from the Germans was indicative of a new political reality: this was “the first time in history that those who persecute Jews would be made to pay for their crimes, and that those who stole and murdered should not be allowed to also benefit from their crimes” (p. 40).
The reasons as to why this book has not received full marks are the following:
§1 This is a typical work of history; it is geared towards the construction of a compelling narrative, but it is lacking in the kind of analysis that one could expect from someone – Domenico Losurdo being a case in point – who is firmly grounded in both history and philosophy
§2 One is occasionally left with the impression that the author is engaging in self-censorship due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter; he exercises restraint where he could have allowed himself to be far more critical.
§3 The author, who apparently would like to be viewed as a progressive of sorts, invokes T.W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt as if the two were moral authorities. As Domenico Losurdo has shown in his study of Western Marxism, the two thinkers in question were compromised by stances both reactionary and sectarian.
§4 The author is in “no doubt” as to the reality of the “worrying levels of antisemitism in the Arab world” (p. 224); thus he inadvertently adheres to the perspective of those among his countrymen who project the faults of their nation onto the Arabs. This is the kind of proviso that appears to have been introduced in the name of impartiality and with a view to deflecting anticipated accusations from the usual suspects (cf. §2); in the author’s defence it could be stated that his subsequent denunciation of anti-Semitism among Europeans – he references the attempted terrorist assault on a synagogue in Halle in order to illustrate his point (p. 226) – is far more scathing, whereas his “no doubt” as to the reality of anti-Semitism in the Arab world is qualified by sociohistorical factors. Even so, this is a recourse to apodictic certitude for which there is no justification. It could be argued that what the author perceives as anti-Semitism admits of being viewed as anticolonialism, i.e. the Jewish identity of the colonisers is incidental to the Palestinian opposition to an entity that was imposed on them. That the author refrains from weighing the pros and cons and invokes the “no doubt” in their stead is suggestive of intellectual laziness – or worse: disingenuity.
§5 The author takes the German party AfD to task for wanting to link the BDS movement to “eliminatory Nazi antisemitism in particular” rather than to “antisemitism in general” (p. 226); does the author thereby imply that the BDS movement ought to be subsumed under the latter category? If this be the case, then countries such as Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and Spain, where the BDS movement enjoys considerable support, are dens of anti-Semites. He proceeds to add that Germans might have subconscious reasons for avoiding the BDS movement altogether, but whether the author himself considers the movement anti-Semitic or not remains unclear. Some might refer to this lack of clarity as ‘strategic ambiguity’, whereas others might consider ‘intellectual cowardice’ an apter designation (cf. §2).
§6 A deplorable lack of self-awareness comes to the fore as the author addresses Günter Grass’s recourse to artistic licence as a means of lambasting both the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel in his poem »Was gesagt werden muss«. The author decries “Grass’ heavyhanded, moralistic poem, which is difficult to read without an acute sense of embarrassment”, but he appears blissfully oblivious to his own heavy-handedness and moralising fury as he wields the sledgehammer at Grass’s polemical stanzas. Indeed, “the acute sense of embarrassment” that the author claims to have felt as he read Grass’s poem is likely to evoke a fair amount of »Fremdschämen« (second-hand embarrassment) on the part of the reader who recognises the author’s own pusillanimity in refraining from reproducing Grass’s poem; instead he acts as judge, jury, and executioner, whereas the accused is not afforded the opportunity to mount a defence. Not only is the author’s demeanour insulting to the reader; it is also provocatively patronising in the sense that the reader is excluded from forming an autonomous opinion on what is viewed as an in-house debate that an outsider could not possibly comprehend and must therefore defer to the authority of the insider. Behind the German claims to being in possession of esoteric insights regarding »Deutschtum« (Germanness) that elude the non-German on innate grounds, superficiality of thought, shoddy analyses, and hypocritical double standards are often to be found.
§7 The final objections pertain to style and any shortcomings in this regard must be attributed to the editors rather than the author. An instance of colloquialism, “it ultimately turned out in Israel’s favour too” (p. 181), was noted and a woefully common Americanism occurs on multiple occasions: “{w}ith regards to” (pp. 114, 180, 215, and 233) utilises the plural form, whereas ‘with regard to’ in the singular is the sole idiomatically correct option from a lexical point of view.
In conclusion: this is a decent book that could have been so much better if it had been written by a non-German. It contains no esoteric insights and it occasionally descends into facile moralisation evoking “an acute sense of embarrassment” in the reader.
German politicians and diplomats were often beholden to past stereotypes of the Jews; hence Adenauer emphasised the need for reconciliation because of “the power of the Jews {...}, especially in America” (p. 15), i.e. bending one’s knees at the altar of “Jewish Power” (ibid.) was prerequisite to the Federal Republic of Germany’s inclusion among the community of the liberal democracies and transatlantic alignment. Then there were the Germans who were accustomed to the image of the Jew as an oriental phenotype; to their delight, the oriental Jew had been superseded by a higher breed; hence an internal document by the German Foreign Office took note of the following: “Of great height, often blond and blue-eyed, free and self-determined in their movements with well-defined faces, the offspring of the German Jewish immigrants represent a new type of the Jew that was unknown until now” (pp. 98-99). Perhaps the most telling example of the German enthusiasm for this new type of Jew was courtesy of the country’s foremost tabloid paper: “The declaration of victory {in the Six-Day war of 1967}, written in capital letters, was followed by an equation of Israeli general Moshe Dayan with {...} Erwin Rommel, Hitler’s general in North Africa” (p. 114). The Jew had made the transition from an oriental element into an Aryan and had thus become ‘one of us.’
Far from being a spontaneous coming together of perpetrator and victim, the reconciliation in question was a carefully choreographed theatre, as illustrated by the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The Federal Republic of Germany feared that a show trial would pose “a threat to its reputation” (p. 94) and implicate members of the state apparatus with ties to National Socialism (p. 96). In order to avoid causing offence to a vital economic benefactor who might tighten the purse strings on Israel as a consequence, David Ben-Gurion intervened directly with the prosecutor to ascertain that a rigorous demarcation between ‘good Germany’ (the Federal Republic) and ‘evil Germany’ (National Socialism) was observed (p. 98). All the while this demarcation was upheld, the prosecutor was at pains to hyphenate Arab opposition to Zionism with National Socialism, to the point that the Arabs became co-conspirators of the latter in both the planning and implementation of the Final Solution (p. 97). While the Arabs became co-conspirators of the National Socialists, the Germans became co-sufferers who shared in the martyrdom of the Jews as dual victims of National Socialism: “‘One should not forget’, the chancellor {Adenauer stated during a press conference in 1961}, that ‘National Socialist Germans had perpetrated against Germans exactly the same crimes as Eichmann had perpetrated against Jews’ {...}. Furthermore, the chancellor claimed that the percentage of committed National Socialists had been relatively low and that most people ‘joyfully helped fellow Jewish citizens whenever they could’” (p. 95).
What were the ethical implications of this theatre of reconciliation as far as Israel was concerned? One way of looking at this transaction would be to posit it as a matter of do ut des, i.e. “whitewashing for statebuilding, or, specifically, of dissociating West Germany from the Third Reich in exchange for financial and military support {for Israel}” (p. 93). Another way of looking at it, according to this reviewer, would be to posit it as an act that paradoxically serves as both pardon and retribution: the reconciliation contained in the pardon is also the expression of a power relation, i.e. the party conferring the pardon is assuming the moral high ground and expressing its privilege in carrying out an act that is utterly gratuitous in that it may also be withheld, whereas for the pardoned party such an act constitutes both absolution and humiliation. Hence there were those in Israel who viewed reconciliation as the subclause of something far more substantial, i.e. the elicitation of both atonement and reparations from the Germans was indicative of a new political reality: this was “the first time in history that those who persecute Jews would be made to pay for their crimes, and that those who stole and murdered should not be allowed to also benefit from their crimes” (p. 40).
The reasons as to why this book has not received full marks are the following:
§1 This is a typical work of history; it is geared towards the construction of a compelling narrative, but it is lacking in the kind of analysis that one could expect from someone – Domenico Losurdo being a case in point – who is firmly grounded in both history and philosophy
§2 One is occasionally left with the impression that the author is engaging in self-censorship due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter; he exercises restraint where he could have allowed himself to be far more critical.
§3 The author, who apparently would like to be viewed as a progressive of sorts, invokes T.W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt as if the two were moral authorities. As Domenico Losurdo has shown in his study of Western Marxism, the two thinkers in question were compromised by stances both reactionary and sectarian.
§4 The author is in “no doubt” as to the reality of the “worrying levels of antisemitism in the Arab world” (p. 224); thus he inadvertently adheres to the perspective of those among his countrymen who project the faults of their nation onto the Arabs. This is the kind of proviso that appears to have been introduced in the name of impartiality and with a view to deflecting anticipated accusations from the usual suspects (cf. §2); in the author’s defence it could be stated that his subsequent denunciation of anti-Semitism among Europeans – he references the attempted terrorist assault on a synagogue in Halle in order to illustrate his point (p. 226) – is far more scathing, whereas his “no doubt” as to the reality of anti-Semitism in the Arab world is qualified by sociohistorical factors. Even so, this is a recourse to apodictic certitude for which there is no justification. It could be argued that what the author perceives as anti-Semitism admits of being viewed as anticolonialism, i.e. the Jewish identity of the colonisers is incidental to the Palestinian opposition to an entity that was imposed on them. That the author refrains from weighing the pros and cons and invokes the “no doubt” in their stead is suggestive of intellectual laziness – or worse: disingenuity.
§5 The author takes the German party AfD to task for wanting to link the BDS movement to “eliminatory Nazi antisemitism in particular” rather than to “antisemitism in general” (p. 226); does the author thereby imply that the BDS movement ought to be subsumed under the latter category? If this be the case, then countries such as Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and Spain, where the BDS movement enjoys considerable support, are dens of anti-Semites. He proceeds to add that Germans might have subconscious reasons for avoiding the BDS movement altogether, but whether the author himself considers the movement anti-Semitic or not remains unclear. Some might refer to this lack of clarity as ‘strategic ambiguity’, whereas others might consider ‘intellectual cowardice’ an apter designation (cf. §2).
§6 A deplorable lack of self-awareness comes to the fore as the author addresses Günter Grass’s recourse to artistic licence as a means of lambasting both the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel in his poem »Was gesagt werden muss«. The author decries “Grass’ heavyhanded, moralistic poem, which is difficult to read without an acute sense of embarrassment”, but he appears blissfully oblivious to his own heavy-handedness and moralising fury as he wields the sledgehammer at Grass’s polemical stanzas. Indeed, “the acute sense of embarrassment” that the author claims to have felt as he read Grass’s poem is likely to evoke a fair amount of »Fremdschämen« (second-hand embarrassment) on the part of the reader who recognises the author’s own pusillanimity in refraining from reproducing Grass’s poem; instead he acts as judge, jury, and executioner, whereas the accused is not afforded the opportunity to mount a defence. Not only is the author’s demeanour insulting to the reader; it is also provocatively patronising in the sense that the reader is excluded from forming an autonomous opinion on what is viewed as an in-house debate that an outsider could not possibly comprehend and must therefore defer to the authority of the insider. Behind the German claims to being in possession of esoteric insights regarding »Deutschtum« (Germanness) that elude the non-German on innate grounds, superficiality of thought, shoddy analyses, and hypocritical double standards are often to be found.
§7 The final objections pertain to style and any shortcomings in this regard must be attributed to the editors rather than the author. An instance of colloquialism, “it ultimately turned out in Israel’s favour too” (p. 181), was noted and a woefully common Americanism occurs on multiple occasions: “{w}ith regards to” (pp. 114, 180, 215, and 233) utilises the plural form, whereas ‘with regard to’ in the singular is the sole idiomatically correct option from a lexical point of view.
In conclusion: this is a decent book that could have been so much better if it had been written by a non-German. It contains no esoteric insights and it occasionally descends into facile moralisation evoking “an acute sense of embarrassment” in the reader.
November 10, 2025
Want to learn why Germany's politics is so weird when it comes to Israel, and feel frustration and anger along all 238 pages?
It will not make you feel hopeful, and mind you, it was published in 2020. It's only downhill from there.
I wanted to understand Germany's side. And the book delivered. I understand Germany's actions better now. It's your regular whitewashing, profiteering and racism of different flavors. Germany is less weird for me now, or weirdly logical. I am less angry about Germany, but I'm also less hopeful. Germany is like that by design, it can't help it. German ruling class worked hard to make it this way. Can it change? Search what Ai Weiwei thinks about Germany to get an answer for this one.
There is plenty on Israel as well, and I will leave it at that.
The book is good. Easy to read, author does not mince words, full of sources and quotes, no not skip the notes. Plenty of ammo for X debates. Zero hope.
10 out of 10, probably.
It will not make you feel hopeful, and mind you, it was published in 2020. It's only downhill from there.
I wanted to understand Germany's side. And the book delivered. I understand Germany's actions better now. It's your regular whitewashing, profiteering and racism of different flavors. Germany is less weird for me now, or weirdly logical. I am less angry about Germany, but I'm also less hopeful. Germany is like that by design, it can't help it. German ruling class worked hard to make it this way. Can it change? Search what Ai Weiwei thinks about Germany to get an answer for this one.
There is plenty on Israel as well, and I will leave it at that.
The book is good. Easy to read, author does not mince words, full of sources and quotes, no not skip the notes. Plenty of ammo for X debates. Zero hope.
10 out of 10, probably.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews