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The Political Interest Of Madagascar

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Madagascar has always been of great political interest to many countries and governments. It seems a suitable island that is out of the way, but it is in the centre of everything at the same time. People are very unsuspecting of it, and it was the same in World War 2 as well...
The Germans and the rest of the Axis had very good reasons for wanting to control Madagascar. The first is that they were going to use this remote island as a place to deport some of the remaining 10,000 Jewish refugees still in France that had not been able to find a home in South Africa or Brazil. The French were not the only ones suffering though; the Polish and the Germans really need to get the Jews out as well. However like many of the other Nazi ideologies, it was not a new one. A lot of British, Polish and Dutch anti-Semites had been considering the idea to move the Jews there since as early as 1878.
Luckily for Nazis, Madagascar was under the control and within the empire of Vichy France (the part of France that had surrendered to Hitler), and according to the surrender terms, France had to let the Germans into Madagascar as well. It was going to be easy. Not only would it get rid of the Jews, but it would also help the Axis financially as the Jews were currently surviving on charity. In May 1936, there was a new French administration voted in, and there was serious talk of the Jews being moved there, and they even went as far as to investigate the island to check if it was liable for that

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