75 years ago: Germany proposes Madagascar as a Jewish homeland

Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them. Deuteronomy 1:7-8

Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be. Deuteronomy 11:24

Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.
From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. Joshua 1:3-4

And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. Isaiah 11:12

For, lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it...
... Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.
For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet I will not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished...
Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I will bring again the captivity of Jacob's tents, and have mercy on his dwellingplaces; and the city shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall remain after the manner thereof. Jeremiah 30:3, 10-11, 18

For there shall be a day, that the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God.
For thus saith the Lord; Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations: publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel.
Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither.
They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock...
...If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.
Jeremiah 31:6-10, 36

On July 3, 1940, Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Nazi government of Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, proposed a plan to make Madagascar the "Jewish homeland." German military forces were days away from winning the Battle of France, and Mr. Rademacher's proposal called for Madagascar--then a French colony--to be handed over to Germany as part of the French surrender terms.

When German forces failed to defeat the Royal Air Force the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, and the invasion of the British isles was postponed, the British merchant marine was unavailable to Germany for the purposes of transporting Jews, resulting in the postponement of the Madagascar plan. The Nazis then favoured a plan to deport Jews to Siberia via Poland, but when the German invasion of the Soviet Union bogged down at the end of 1941, Mr. Hitler chose to begin exterminating Jews immediately rather than merely deporting them.

The Nazis weren't the first to establishing a Jewish homeland. In the spring of 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte laid siege to the city of Acre (now Akko in present-day Israel) that was being defended by Ottoman and British forces, but after breaching the wall, found that a second wall had been constructed, and withdrew his French forces to Egypt. Napoleon reportedly intended to continue to Jerusalem and rebuild Solomon's Temple, but as Hal Lindsey pointed out, this would have upset the entire prophetic timetable if he's been able to pull it off.

The Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1903 voted in favour of sending an "investigatory commission" to examine Uganda as a temporary refuge for Russian Jews who were in danger.

Napoleon apparently had the idea to restore the Jews to the right place, but his timing was off. In the case of the proposals to settle Jews in Uganda and Madagascar, the lands in question weren't those prophesied in the Bible. God predicted that the Jews would be restored to their biblical homeland, and He arranged circumstances to make sure that this came to pass, and in accord with the entire prophetice timetable of Scripture.