* Today, we look at the relationship Jews had with Germany through the prism of the Holocaust, and believe it was nothing but painful and acrimonious. But up until the Third Reich, Jews had a fairly good relationship with Germany, certainly when compared to Russia and even France. (In fact, the Dreyfuss Affair was sparked by the charge Dreyfuss, a Jew, had given military intelligence to the German army.)
Throughout the German Empire, Jews were integrated into German life and most Jews were proud to be part of Germany. They fought in WWI bravely on behalf of the German army.
The British, from around 1917 onward, believed that Jews were loyal to the German Empire, and that Bolshevism was just a Germanic ideological weapon to destabilize and overthrow their opponents, with German support for Lenin being a case in point. They also thought the Young Turks were agents of Jewish influence (another iSteve topic!), hence the wartime alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
Part of the reason why Britain supported Zionism was to try to entice Jews to support Britain.
* We cannot today easily imagine France before WWII, which was one of the most openly anti-Semitic countries in Europe. A Holocaust historian (I know but bear with me) said that if you talked to a Jewish ghost from before WWII and was telling him about the Holocaust, the first time he’d heard about it, and had not yet mentioned who did it, he would instantly assume it had been France.
