This means that the Haavara agreement was little to do with the Third Reich whose involvement was incidental and that had the government of Germany in 1933 been that of the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum) or the Social Democratic Party (SPD) then they would have been presented with the same offer and may well have also agreed to it as the Third Reich did.

Of course, the Haavara Agreement came into existence first and foremost because the regime deemed it to be in its political and economic interest; but the initiative for such an arrangement came from the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, which enlisted the support of the World Zionist Organization; the German Consul General in Jerusalem, Heinreich Wolff; and ultimately the German government itself. It was a Zionist, that is, a Jewish, idea and initiative, not a Nazi one.

Francis R. Nicosia (American historian) “Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany”, 2008 Karl’s Substack, The Myth and the Reality of the Haavara Agreement