In 1938 the Nazis explored the idea of shipping Germany's Jews to Madagascar, an island off the eastern coast of Africa. The plan was never implemented since Britain controlled the seas, but Hitler toyed with the idea for years. He reasoned that "the Jews must be sent to Africa, where climatic conditions have a debilitating effect on the human organism and lower its resistance."

The scheme to ship Jews to this French colonial possession in the Indian Ocean was first dreamed up by German antisemite Paul de Lagarde in the 19th century. The plan reemerged in the 1920s within antisemitic circles in Poland. In 1937 the Polish government negotiated the possibility with France.

The Nazi plan proposed exiling four million Jews to Madagascar. French inhabitants of the island would leave, isolating the Jews from contact with white Europeans. German naval bases would be located on the island. The remainder of the land would be a Jewish reservation, with its own mayors and postal service, but with a Nazi police governor responsible to Heinrich Himmler. Envisioned in this role was Philip Bouhler, head of the Nazis' "euthanasia" program.