Snip:
Newly declassified Israeli files reveal pre-state Zionist militias contacted Nazi Germany officials for help in establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as World War II raged.
[…]
“According to the information, there is a man who contacted the Germans. This man is known; his name is S,” he added. “S” was Avraham “Yair” Stern, leader of Lehi, the pre-state underground Zionist militia also known as the Stern Gang.
[…]
“With the outbreak of World War II … there is no better time for a war of independence than during wartime. Britain’s forces are tied down … and it would be possible to overcome them,” Stern argued.
“The Jews are a party in the war and therefore cannot be neutral. Britain betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other hand, Germany has no special interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to cleanse Europe of Jews, nothing is simpler than transferring them to their own state,” he added.
Zionists partnering with Nazis/Antisemites have been well known. I don’t know that the Stern Gang in particular directly reaching out was as well known. But Jabotinsky working with antisemitic Polish fascists was known at the time. And even at the Eichmann trial there was a really awkward point where Eichmann explained that he got a job in the SS because he was so enamored with Zionism that he learned to read Yiddish to read Zionist newspapers, so his proposition to the SS was that he was an antisemitic Christian Aryan that knew the “language of the Jews”. Also similarly, more documents were released last year revealing about how much Eichmann traveled to the British Mandate of Palestine to meet with the Haganah to discuss the logistics on how the Third Reich could smuggle weapons to them.