Churchill and the Jews, 1900-1948 [2 ed.] 0714632546, 9780714632544

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CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

By the same author Strategy and Politics in the Middle East, 1954-1960: Defending the Northern Tier (forthcoming, 2004) Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945-1954 (1997) (Hebrew edition: 1998) Truman and Israel (1990) Palestine to Israel: From Mandate to Independence (1988) The Origins o f the Arab-Zionist Conflict, 1914-1948 (1987) Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948 (1982) Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, 1936-1945 (1978) The Demise o f Empire: Britain's Responses to Nationalist Movements in the Middle East, 1943-1955 (editor, with Martin Kolinsky, 1998) British Security Problems in the Middle East during the 1930s: Security Problems, 1935-1939 (editor, with Martin Kolinsky, 1992)

The History o f the Founding o f Israel, Part III, The Struggle for the State o f Israel, 1939-1948 , 12 volumes (editor, 1988) The Weizmann Letters, 2 volumes, X X , X XI, 1940-1943, 1943-1945 (editor, 1979)

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS MI CHAE L J. C OH E N Professor o f H istory Bar-llan University

SECOND, REVISED EDITION

R

Routledge Taylor &. Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in 1985 First published in paperback in 2003 by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS This edition published in 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0 X 1 4 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, N Y 10017 Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1985, 2003 Michael J. Cohen British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cohen, Michael J. Churchill and the Jews. 1. Churchill, Winston S. (Winston Spencer) 1874-1965 —Views on Zionism 2. Zionism —History I. Title 956.94*001 DA566.9.C5 ISBN 0-7146-3254-6 (cloth) ISBN 0-7146-8450-3 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

All rights reserved. No part o f this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic , mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission o f the publisher o f this book. Typeset in 10/12pt Sabon by Vitaset, Paddock Wood, Kent

FOR NATALIE AND YOSSI, ILAN AND INNA

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Foreword

viii ix

Introduction to the Second Edition

xiii

Introduction to the First Edition

xvii

Acknowlegements

xxii

Chapter One: Churchill the Man

1

Chapter Two: The Jewish Problem

11

Chapter Three: The Middle East Imbroglio, 1919-1921

58

Chapter Four: Crisis in Palestine, 1921

85

Chapter Five: The 1922 White Paper

122

Chapter Six: Churchill and Palestine, 1924-1939

149

Chapter Seven: World War Two

185

Chapter Eight: Churchill and the Holocaust

261

Epilogue: Churchill in Opposition, 1945-1948

306

Conclusion

323

Afterword to the Second Edition

331

Notes

357

Select Bibliography to the Second Edition

403

Bibliography

405

Index

409

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

facing page 1. With Joseph Dulberg, 1906

196

2. Brendan Bracken, Minister of Information, July 1941

196

3. In Jerusalem, April 1921. Above left: Nebi Samuel, James de Rothschild, Sir Ronald Storrs (profile), Nancy Samuel, Geoffrey Samuel. Front left: Hadassah Samuel, Abdullah, Sir Herbert Samuel, Winston Churchill, Mrs Churchill

197

4. Budget Day, 1929. On the way to the House of Commons with his wife and daughter

228

5.

229

With the Israeli ambassador, Eliahu Elath, 1958

Nos. 1 and 5 appear by permission of theJewish Chronicle; Nos. 2 and 4 by permission of the BBC Hulton Picture Library; No. 3 by permission of the Weizmann Archives, Jerusalem.

FOREWORD

This has not been a simple book to write. It might appear to be presumptuous to add yet another tome to the myriad already pub­ lished on Winston Churchill. However, only one single study of Churchill’s relations with the Jews has appeared so far - and that was a generation ago, written without the benefit of the archives. The writing of this book has been handicapped by the extended closure of Churchill’s private archives, for considerably longer than the usual term of thirty years. However, since the Trustees have determined on their closure to the general public until ten years after the publication of the last volume of the authorised biography, there is little point in the contemporary historian’s waiting any longer. On the other hand, there are some compensations for the student of Churchill. First and foremost, all historians will be indebted to Martin Gilbert for the monumental volumes, and companion volumes of documents, which comprise the emerging authorised biography. Their forte, as put so well in a recent study, is their emphasis on ‘source materials, superbly detailed and commented, rather than the complementary role of selection and criticism’.1 In addition, the public and private archives, as well as Churchill’s public utterances, in the Press and in the House of Commons, all provide a mine of information. Frequently, the problem has not been a dearth, but a surfeit of material with, inevitably, conflicting interpretations. Let me make it clear from the outset that I did not set out to destroy or reverse the popular image of Churchill, as patron of the Jews and of Zionism. But I did try to put out of my mind all the popular preconceptions, and to get at what I believe is the more complex truth of the matter, reducing the myth to human proportions. Since the 1960s, many critical studies of Churchill have appeared, revising the tendency to panegyric of the previous generation. I would endorse the leitmotif of these revisionist works that ‘if anything, the stature of the man is enlarged by an honest confrontation of his errors and weaknesses’.2

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CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

To understand Churchill’s life-long association with the Jews, and their National Home in Palestine, I have had to review his many, frequently ephemeral, contacts, beginning in 1904, when he became Liberal candidate for the predominantly Jewish constituency of North-West Manchester, and concluding in 1948, when he pressed the Labour Government to grant diplomatic recognition to the new State of Israel. I have tried to analyse Churchill’s views on the Jews, at the domestic level, as a minority in England; and at the inter­ national level, as a potential pawn of British imperialism. In covering a relatively long span of history, I have of necessity treated some periods more closely than others. It will be my contention that, beneath the thick layers of rhetoric, Winston Churchill was no more of a Gentile Zionist than were most of his more maligned colleagues. Indeed, there is no particular reason why he should have been, nor anything in his background which should have made him so. In a project such as this, I have received the aid of many learned colleagues. I am obliged in particular to Dr Ron Zweig, who not only read part of the manuscript, but also allowed me generous access to private papers in his possession; I am grateful also to Professors Yehuda Bauer, Roger Louis, Norman Rose, Avrom Saltman, Peter Stansky and David Vital, to Mr Richard Ollard and to Diana Reich, who all read parts of the manuscript. However, academics are a stubborn breed, who do not always recognize, much less take, good advice when given. So I myself must assume sole responsibility for what follows. All unpublished Crown copyright material from the Public Record Office appears by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. The papers of Leo Amery are quoted from by kind permission of the Rt Hon Julian Amery, M.P.

FOREWORD

All societies create myths to disguise the true nature of political leadership within them. G.D. Page

The Scientific Study o f Political Leadership London, 1977, p. 2.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION

It is now nearly 20 years since the first edition of this book appeared. It was accorded a mixed reception. My reservations about a man who was already a British icon, voted in a 2002 British national poll as ‘the greatest ever Englishman’, aroused passionate counter­ attacks. Some choice epithets have been hurled in my direction. But, ironically, some of my detractors have also, even if inadvertently, merely added further fuel to my case. In 1 9 85,1 gave a copy of this book to a colleague, one of England’s most prominent historians. He told me that he could not find any fault with my facts, but he revealed to me for the first time that during World War Two, he had worked under and come to admire Churchill. He asked me: ‘Michael, why did you have to do this to such a great man?’ I replied that I had ‘done it’ because these were the facts that I had uncovered during my research, and I had tried to present them as honestly as possible. I believed that the story needed to be told, if only because it would come out sooner or later in any case. The passage of time has naturally wrought a certain change in my own perspective. This new edition has afforded me the opportunity to check whether the research done since 1985 has uncovered any new evidence that would require me to revise or retract any of the theses that I put forward then. At least 70 full-length studies of Churchill have been published since 1985 - far too many even to begin to list here. I have perused most of them thoroughly for any new material on Churchill’s association with the Jews and Zionism. The preparation of the material for this new edition has not only been an exciting intellectual experience, but also an emotional odyssey. Today, I am more conscious of the fact that I wrote this book also because I am a Jew. (Not least because so many reviewers found it necessary to note my ethnic or national origin.) I identify fully with the view of Saul Bellow, who in 1987 wrote: ‘... the sources of the

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CHURCH ILL AND TH E JEW S

truest truths are inevitably profoundly personal’.1 However, while conscious of my own limitations, I have always strived to reach, as closely as possible, a judicious, objective, historical truth. No one who visits the Churchill family estate at Chartwell can leave without a deep sense of the man’s greatness, and the high esteem in which his contemporaries held him. As I noted in the Introduction to the first edition, I have no intention of detracting from the unique service that Churchill performed in 1940, not only for Britain, but for Western democracy as a whole. For this alone, his place in the pantheon of great British Prime Ministers and world statesmen is assured. But I was concerned to investigate his record in one particular field, that of his association with the Jews, and their national renais­ sance movement in the twentieth century - Zionism. I knew also that his relations with the Jews and Zionism had to be examined through the prism of his broader political and imperial Weltanschauung. I found that Churchill was not the consistent supporter of Zionism that he himself, and so many historians after him had maintained. Although, while a member of the Opposition, he condemned the Palestine White Paper issued in May 1939 (which consigned the Jewish community to minority status in a bi-national, Palestinian state to be founded within ten years), he did not in fact cancel or mitigate that policy while he held supreme power, from May 1940 until the war’s end. Not only that, but Churchill abandoned the Zionist cause in November 1944, for four critical years, following the assassination in Cairo of his close friend, Lord Moyne. It may be true that no one else enjoyed such a high public repu­ tation among the Zionists as did Churchill.2 And ‘Churchill with warts’ was certainly better than no Churchill at all. But this should not mislead us into believing, as is implied by some, that the Zionists were unequivocally happy with his record, particularly during World War Two. The contemporary, authentic angst of the Zionist leaders gathered in London in closed session at the war’s end is described below. The Zionists chose, for very sound, political reasons, not to publicise their true feelings (see below, pp. 307-10, 313). But from the particular viewpoint of the Jewish people, those feelings were legitimate and justified. For some reason that I am unable to fathom, not a single book published since 1985 has made reference to that closed meeting. Churchill’s record on the Holocaust is perhaps the most

INTRODUCTION TO TH E SECOND EDITION

XV

problematic, and certainly the most sensitive of all the issues dealt with here. That cataclysm wiped out fully one-third of the Jewish people - six million human beings. In 1 9 8 5 ,1 debated the issue with those historians who argued that Churchill understood, indeed was unique in his understanding of the true historical significance of the Holocaust. So far as I have been able to ascertain, this claim has not been repeated since 1980! It is now quite apparent that for the duration of the war itself, and for many years after, no-one could have even begun to comprehend the true historical significance of the Holocaust. A study by Tony Kushner, published in 1994, has concluded that ‘the recovery of the history of the Holocaust’ was a long and difficult process. British society ‘was one of the last to accept the importance of the Holocaust’; it became an issue of major interest to the British public only in the late 1980s.3 It is a moot question whether many of our intellectuals have begun to understand the significance of the Holocaust even today. Many eminent historians still relegate it to marginality. Indeed, many studies covering World War Two do not even mention the Holocaust, let alone Auschwitz (for instance, the recent biographies of Churchill by Geoffrey Best and Roy Jenkins, both published in 2001; Gerhard Weinberg’s magisterial, incomparable study of World War Two is a notable exception).4 British ‘revisionist’ historians on the right (whose books adorn the shelves of respectable British universities) continue to argue - with a total disregard for any moral considerations - that Churchill was wrong in 1940 to continue the war alone against Hitler - a decision that cost the British their Empire. They argue that Churchill could have reached an ‘honourable peace’ with Hitler - a move that would have allowed the British and the Germans to divide up the world between them.5 This myopia is all the more incredible in view of Churchill’s own comment, written after he had read the reports about the mass killings at Auschwitz - that they were ‘probably the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world’. Churchill did instruct Foreign Minister Eden to ‘get what you can out of the RAF’. However, Churchill never followed up this directive, nor did he apparently check to see if anything was being done to implement it. His sentiments about the tragic plight of the Jews may indeed have stemmed at the moment of writing from his

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CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

undeniable humanity - but without any meaningful military action to accompany them, they remained just so many words. The rescue of Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe was never a first priority for the Allies during World War Two. Naturally, the perspectives and the priorities of the Jewish people were different. Whatever the judgment of posterity on the Allied leaders during World War Two, it remains a stark, undeniable fact that they did not mount any military operation to rescue European Jewry from the jaws of the ‘Final Solution’. Nowhere was the gap between Churchill’s rhetoric and his actions potentially so significant, and fatal. By this criterion, Churchill, along with the other world leaders who offered so much potential and promise, failed the Jewish people in their most ‘tragic hour’. For some reason, Churchill has fared much better at the hands of historians than has President Roosevelt. The latter’s ‘indifference to so momentous an historical event as the systematic annihilation of European Jewry’ has been judged by David Wyman to have been ‘the worst failure of his presidency’.6If one adopts the criterion that I have - assessing statesmen by their actions, rather than by their professed good intentions - can we return a different verdict on Churchill? I would suggest that the historical significance of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ - perpetrated by one of the most cultured and civilized nations in Europe in the twentieth century - lay in its being a crude violation of all the universal ethical and moral values that the Allies declared themselves to be fighting for. As such, the Holocaust was not the private concern of the Jewish people alone - but of all those who counted themselves as members and guardians of an enlight­ ened, liberal civilization. It is apparent that Western governments have only begun to appreciate this in full over the last decade or so. The construction of Holocaust museums in some of the great cities in the West is a belated expression of this. The first Holocaust Museum to be housed in its own, purpose-made building was opened in Washington DC, in 1993 - nearly 50 years after the closing down of the last death camp. It was erected on government property, with private funds. The first permanent exhibition in the UK relating to the Holocaust, on the Bergen-Belsen camp, was established at the Imperial War Museum in London in 1991.7 This was developed later into a per­ manent Holocaust Museum, housed inside the Imperial War Museum.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION

Winston Churchill may be counted among those select few who became a legend in their own lifetime. His crowning achievement in inspiring and leading England to victory during World War Two for many years overshadowed the failures and blemishes of his earlier career - not to mention the numerous shortcomings of his wartime leadership. No one was interested in hearing about the imperfections of a man who had been right when it really mattered, who had demonstrated faith and courage when England had been on its knees. In the pantheon of Zionist heroes, few Gentiles enjoyed such a privileged position as Churchill, a reputation which the authorised biographer has since enhanced. The single study of Churchill’s record on Jewish problems, written more than a generation ago, returned the verdict: ‘Sir Winston is one of the giants of our time ... he ranks among the greatest friends the Jewish people has had ...M It will be the purpose of this study to examine, amplify, and if necessary, revise this categorical assertion. The motives which prompted Gentile support for Zionism were various and complex. In the 19th century, evangelical support for a return of the people of the Bible to the Land of the Bible seemed to enter the realm of practical politics, with the apparently imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and with it, the end of Moslem control over the Holy Land. However, it was England’s Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston, who decided to prop up the ailing Otto­ mans, rather than risk a Great Power share-out of its provincial Empire. This became known as the ‘Eastern Policy’, and lasted for nearly eighty years, until the Ottomans sided with the Germans against England and her Allies in World War One. British motives for issuing the Balfour Declaration during the war, on 2 November, 1917, are discussed in some detail below (p. 5 Iff). Suffice it to note here that the Lloyd George Cabinet decided to Support Zionism in Palestine, above all in order to further Britain’s Own short-term military interests, and her long-term strategic interests. Churchill himself was not privy to the discussions which

xviii

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEW S

preceded the issue of the Declaration, and in 1922, even went so far as to disown all responsibility for it. It would be a mistake to think that Churchill was ever a consistent, convinced supporter of Zionism. It goes without saying that he was never ideologically committed, in the same way as Herzl’s adherents were, to the renaissance of the Jewish nation in Palestine, as the unique solution to ‘the Jewish Problem’. The periods when Churchill concerned himself directly with Jewish problems were relatively brief, and were interspersed with far longer spans when he had no official contact whatever. In 1934, for example, he paid a private visit to Palestine, during the course of a Middle East tour. He stayed overnight in Jerusalem, but did not apparently meet with any Zionist representative. Churchill concerned himself with Jewish problems primarily when he perceived them as being interwoven either with his own personal political fortunes, or with Britain’s imperial interests. Churchill shared the popular view of the Jews’ wealth and influence, both at the domestic and at the international level. In 1904, Churchill left the Conservative Party, and became the Liberal prospective candidate for North-West Manchester, a constituency with a large, influential Jewish community. As his son’s biography readily con­ cedes, Churchill’s public concern with the Aliens Bills (directed primarily against Jewish immigrants from Russia), and with the socalled ‘Uganda’ scheme, were instances when, perhaps above all else, he was concerned to nurse and cultivate his Jewish constituents. At this juncture - and this was because that was the predilection of most of the leading Jews in North-West Manchester - Churchill supported the establishment of a Jewish National Home in East Africa, rather than in Zion. While we may safely assume that Churchill was an ardent believer in the imperial importance of the Suez Canal, he does not seem to have subscribed to the War Cabinet’s estimation of Palestine as a strategic buffer to its north. As Secretary of State for War, and then for the Colonies after the war, Churchill was preoccupied with securing economies and retrenchment in the Middle East. Repeat­ edly, but in vain, he urged retreat and withdrawal from the Middle Eastern mandates, Palestine and Mesopotamia. But the Balfour Declaration, though disowned by Churchill, did assume for him significance in two no less important aspects. First, Churchill was convinced that the Declaration had been instrumental

INTRODUCTION

xix

in mobilising powerful Jewish support for the Allied cause especially in the United States, whose entry into the war, Churchill believed, was secured partly by Jewish pressure. This enduring con­ viction would play a critical role in Churchill’s support for Zionism during the first years of World War Two, prior to the American entry, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, in December, 1941. Second, Churchill did for a time believe that Zionism might provide the antidote to what he believed was Jew-inspired Bolshevism. Jewish resources and energy might be channelled usefully into building up a British-oriented protectorate in Palestine, at little or no cost to the British taxpayer. But Churchill took little or no account of the rise of Arab nationalism after World War One, nor indeed, of Jewish terrorism during World War Two. The rise of Nazism during the mid- and late-1930s threatened, and eventually shattered, the political order established by the victors of World War One. The threat to the old order posed by Hitler became the dominant theme in Churchill’s life during the late 1930s, to the exclusion of all other considerations. On a moral plane, Churchill’s deepest emotions were stirred by the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Thus Hitler gave the historical ‘Jewish problem’ a new, tragic twist, which aroused in Churchill a unique, personal commit­ ment, not apparent at other junctures of his political career. How­ ever, whatever the depth of his sympathy for the Jews’ plight, that nation’s suffering took a very clear second priority during World War Two. The humanitarian sentiment so eloquently lavished on the Jewish people during that war, was rarely, if ever translated into concrete assistance. In May 1939, the Chamberlain Government issued a new White Paper on Palestine. The new policy permitted a further 75,000 Jews to enter Palestine over the next five years (and thereafter, only with Arab consent); and provided for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state after ten years - with the population ratio regulated at two Arabs to each Jew, this effectively meant that Palestine would become an independent Arab State. Churchill condemned the new policy in the House of Commons as a breach of faith, the ‘destruc­ tion’ of the Balfour Declaration. Churchill equated Chamberlain’s treatment of the Jews in Palestine with the latter’s treatment of the Czech people, and condemned each as futile appeasement. However, as with several of Churchill’s public crusades, there was more than a Suspicion of political opportunism in this particular attack; the

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Palestine White Paper provided Churchill with yet another occasion to hammer away his anti-appeasement message. Churchill had seized on the Zionist cause as early as in 1937 when, contrary to the Zionists’ own wishes, he had attacked the Peel partition plan as a betrayal of Britain’s commitments under the Mandate. As wartime Prime Minister, Churchill reminded his colleagues repeatedly that he did not consider himself bound by the 1939 policy, but adhered rather to ‘his own’ White Paper of 1922. This policy had stipulated that the Jews were in Palestine ‘as of right, and not on sufferance’, and that they might immigrate freely, subject only to the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine. Yet a solution to ‘the Jewish Problem’, in all its different aspects, was in fact deferred by Churchill until after the war. Although he took a pro-Zionist stand on several Zionist issues, especially in his support for a Jewish Division during the first two years of war, he did not in fact seriously question the administration of the 1939 policy. Notwithstanding the Jewish plight, there is no record that Churchill ever suggested waiv­ ing the 1939 limits on Jewish immigration. Although his frequent condemnations of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ would seem to indicate Churchill’s early appreciation of the historical uniqueness of the Germans’ crime, his failure to unleash some dramatic, if not widescale practical action on their behalf, stands in stark contrast to the dogged determination with which he pursued to a positive conclusion other matters of far less import. For a time, Churchill entertained St John Philby’s idea of setting up Ibn Saud as ‘boss of the bosses’ in the Arab world, conditional on Saud’s recognition of a Jewish State in a part of Palestine, to be ‘bought’ from Ibn Saud by £20 millions of Jewish money. In 1943, Churchill established, and hand-picked the members of a Cabinet Committee on Palestine. He set as their terms of reference the task of evolving a long-term solution to the Palestine question, based on the partition plan proposed first in 1937 - a plan which at that time he himself had opposed. Arab fickleness during the war had con­ firmed Churchill’s contempt for the Arabs, and pari passu, his expectations of the Jews in Palestine. However, in November, 1944, Jewish terrorists from Palestine assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State Resident in the Middle East, and close friend of Churchill (it was in Moyne’s yacht that Churchill cruised in the Mediterranean, in 1934). It is perhaps a measure of the depth of Churchill’s commitment to the

INTRODUCTION

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Zionist cause, that after Moyne’s assassination he in effect termi­ nated all further promotion of it. True, he did block the demand for wholesale reprisals against the Yishuv*. But of greater significance perhaps were his orders to the Secretary of the Cabinet, Sir Edward Bridges, to shelve further consideration of the partition plan, tabled by the Cabinet Committee, and already on the Cabinet’s agenda for its final decision. When Churchill was voted out of office in July, 1945, the 1939 White Paper was still the law of the land in Palestine, and the wartime partition plan lay gathering dust in the Whitehall archives. As early as 1919, Churchill had expressed his opinion that Palestine would provide no material benefit for the British Empire. He adhered to this view consistently, and re-iterated it during the last weeks of his war-time premiership. From the end of the war, and until Britain finally relinquished the Palestine Mandate in 1947, Churchill repeatedly urged the Labour administration to surrender Palestine unless - and this became increasingly unlikely - the Americans could be brought in to share the burden. It was, as Leo Amery put it, a policy of ‘scuttle’.2

*Yishuv - Heb., literally settlement, meaning the Jewish community in Palestine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank the conscientious staff of the Churchill Private Archives, Churchill College, Cambridge, especially Allen Packwood, its Director. I also wish to thank the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, for granting me a Visiting Fellowship for the academic year 2002-2003, during which I researched and compiled the additional material for this paperback edition. I am indebted to Professors Stuart A. Cohen (Bar-Ilan), Yoav Gelber (Haifa), Martin Kolinsky (Birmingham), Roger Lockyer (Royal Holloway), Wm Roger Louis (Texas), Peter Stansky (Stanford) and David Stevenson (LSE), who were all gracious enough to read and comment on the various drafts of the Afterword. Naturally, none of those mentioned above is in any way respon­ sible for, or would necessarily agree with, what appears below.

CHAPTER ONE

CHURCHILL THE MAN’ Churchill’s personal background, in particular the circumstances of his childhood, have been subjected to a penetrating, albeit not quite definitive psychiatric postmortem. The young Winston had to con­ tend with emotional and physical handicaps which both moulded his character and prepared him for later vicissitudes. In part, his stormy political career may be interpreted as a struggle to overcome these initial disadvantages.2 Churchill seems to have inherited from his ancestors a tendency to recurring, prolonged fits of depression. That they were frequent, is indicated by the nickname Churchill gave them - ‘the Black Dog’. The phenomenon is well-known to the world of psychiatry. The reaction of the victim, in order to avert the total paralysis and despair to which the fits reduce him, is to force himself into frenetic activity, leading to achievements beyond those which most men are capable of. In Churchill’s case, his prodigious energy was channelled into political and literary activity. His capacity for hard work was legen­ dary. The legend grew during World War Two, when, at the age of 65, he drove himself to exhaustion and acute illness. In 1940, Churchill attained ‘his first hour’, and experienced an exhilaration, perhaps even relief, that his appointment with destiny had finally arrived. But here again, his own experiences with despair proved good preparation for the desperate situation in which Britain found herself in that summer. As Anthony Storr has suggested: ‘had he been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation ... only a man who had known and faced despair within himself could carry conviction at such a moment.’3 Churchill suffered from parental neglect, the fate of so many of the offspring of the British upper classes. His mother was too

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preoccupied with the social whirl of high society, and his father Randolph too involved in politics to devote much time to Winston. His father remained something of a cool stranger, though Churchill remained devoted to an idealistic image he created for himself, somewhat different from the real father who refused to share his life with him. They talked only rarely, and when Randolph wrote to his son, it was as often as not to reprove him. Randolph’s early death (when Winston was just twenty years old), of a venereal disease which brought on insanity, was a grievous blow to the devoted son. His posthumous devotion found outlet in the learning by heart of long extracts from his father’s speeches, and in the two-volume biography he published in 1906. Once more, his later aggressiveness might be explained by this unhappy aspect of his childhood. As Anthony Storr again suggests, Churchill ‘was deprived by parental neglect of that inner source of self-esteem upon which most pre­ dominantly happy persons rely’.4 Churchill’s physical courage too was exceptional, much more than might have been expected from a man of his physique. His repeated self-exposure to physical danger was again an effort to overcome disadvantage, in this case physical. In doing so, he was consciously ‘forcing himself to go against his own inner nature’. Churchill was never a ‘natural’ public speaker. He had an imper­ fection of speech that was often painful to listen to, which he overcame gradually by prodigious effort. During his first years in Parliament, he literally learned entire speeches off by heart.5 But he proved unable to improvise when unanticipated questions or debate arose. On one occasion, he prompted the following dig from Arthur Balfour: ‘The Right Honourable Member’s artillery is very power­ ful. But it is not very mobile. It has continued firing away at a position which we have never occupied.’6 In April, 1904, in the Commons, he faltered in mid-speech, failed to recover and had to sit down amid confusion, mumbling an apology. Thereafter, though he continued to rehearse his speeches in advance, he always came equipped with notes.7 Churchill’s relentless drive and ambition, and the methods he used to further the causes he espoused, earned him almost universal animosity. Aggressive ambition in itself need not necessarily be an entirely negative quality, but in Churchill’s case, contemporaries often suspected that his adoption of, or opposition to particular causes was calculated to further his own career.8 The suspicion was

CHURCHILL TH E MAN

3

of course greatest in that party which he forsook, especially when the new recruit was rewarded with ministerial office. Churchill had a complex personality, comprising what would seem to be mutually-exclusive character-traits. In contrast to his aggressive ambition, there was his evident compassion for the under­ dog. He would not back down from a challenge, but he was charac­ teristically magnanimous to a defeated enemy. It has been suggested that the ‘alternation between aggression and compassion is charac­ teristic of persons with Churchill’s character-structure’.9 Clement Attlee, who had good reason to resent Churchill’s ‘mischief-making’ when India was evacuated in 1947, was impressed by Churchill’s ‘profound fund of humanity, benevolence, love ...’ 10 During his first spell at the Colonial Office, Churchill checked the arbitrary behaviour of the officials towards black Africans. He uncovered what he considered to be ‘shocking’ violations of elementary principles of law and justice. He insisted that these principles be ‘rigidly, punctiliously and pedantically followed’.11 Churchill was easily and often moved to tears. One close associate, Victor Cazalet, thought that he overdid it: ‘The slightest exhibi­ tion of distress or sorrow elicits from him an amount of real sympathy totally disproportionate to the demand of the occasion’.12 There can be no doubt that the plight of the Jews during the 1930s genuinely upset him. Attlee has recalled how he met Churchill one day at the Commons, and the latter told him what was being done to the Jews of Germany, ‘with tears pouring down his cheeks’. Attlee has also testified that few men in public life ‘were less prone than Churchill to paying mere lip service to a humanitarian cause’.13 However, the moot question is just how much did Prime Minister Churchill translate his professed sympathies for the Jews into meaningful action? As we shall note below, Churchill’s reaction went little further than repeated references to the Final Solution being ‘the most horrible crime ever committed in history’. All appeals to Churchill to do something about it were deflected to Foreign Secretary Eden. Lastly, in contrast to his generous warm-heartedness, there was Churchill’s indifference and insensitivity to the feelings of those closest to him. It reflected what has been called ‘an egotism that could see nothing outside the blinkers of his own imagination, which, if it was intense, was also surprisingly narrow and often superficial’.14 Lord Moran, who was arguably the most intimate

4

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

associate of Churchill’s during World War Two, felt that the latter was so taken up with his own ideas that he was simply not interested in what other people thought. It was ‘as if he had lived for years in a foreign country without picking up the language’. Churchill’s own wife, Clemmie, fearing he would shout her down in any discussion, resorted to putting anything important into writing, in notes for him.15 Churchill was never subjected to the intellectual discipline of a University education, a fact which he came to regret deeply.16During his early years, he made up for this by a prodigious industry. As one contemporary put it, Churchill had ‘the genius which consists of taking infinite pains’.17 He produced formidable, almost ‘academic’ state papers, and masterpiece orations for Parliament. By applica­ tion, he developed his own technique, ‘the combination of great flights of oratory with sudden swoops into the intimate and con­ versational’.18 But his rhetoric, to which we shall refer in the next section, could arouse impatience, suspicion, and finally derision. His historical forays have come in for much the same professional criticism as much of his spoken words. Although his prose won for him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, Professor J.H. Plumb has pronounced his work anachronistic, ‘whiggish’, gentlemen’s history. Professor Plumb believed the fault lay with Churchill’s own superficial acquaintance with society in general, that Churchill ‘lacked a sense of the deeper motives that control human society and make it change, just as he lacked an interest in the deeper human motives’. Plumb thought that Churchill possessed ‘a naivete of insight that borders on the ridiculous’, that his works revealed ‘a paucity of historical knowledge, lack of analytical power, and an ignorance of economic, social and intellectual history of staggering proportions’.19 Churchill’s lack of academic training, though compensated for by sheer industriousness, was perhaps responsible for his wild flights of fancy. His grasp of complicated issues was often superficial, and at times he was unable to distinguish the essential from the trivial. Churchill told Lord Moran that his reading had virtually ceased when he had entered politics. Churchill was not aware that the tank he himself had sponsored during the First World War was by the 1930s obsolete. Nor had he read De Gaulle’s manual on tank war­ fare, printed in 1938, the lessons of which were implemented by the Germans when invading France in 1940.20 Churchill had a tendency

CHURCHILL THE MAN

5

to oversimplify complex issues, and to improvise solutions for immediate problems, rather than plan for the future. As Lord Esher put it in 1917, in a much-quoted aphorism: ‘He [Churchill] deceives himself into the belief that he takes broad views, when his mind is fixed upon one comparatively small aspect of the question’.21 Lord Moran concluded that Churchill’s mind was open to ideas, but often closed to reason, ‘a mind not judicial in any sense, not logical, not analytical’.22 That Churchill had a brilliant, inventive brain cannot be doubted. But his was a genius that went off at tangents, that required frequent bridling. During World War Two, the cabinet was at times over-awed by the plethora of brainwaves generated by the Prime Minister. His colleagues were hard put to quash and abort a great many, to avert the inevitable catastrophes they would have caused.23 *

*

*

One commentator has suggested that ‘the pattern of rejection that Churchill experienced in his childhood and youth was to repeat itself consistently during his political life’.24 There is much to be said for this thesis. From the very outset of his political career, Churchill demon­ strated too much independence for the likes of his Conservative peers and, as noted by Rhodes James, ‘young men who lustily throw stones at their elders are not usually rewarded for their activity’.25 Churchill engaged in quite a feud with Prime Minister Balfour. The latter made him ‘the butt of a series of jokes and quips which finally exasperated the younger man’.26 Churchill took his revenge just one year after crossing the floor of the House to the Liberal benches. In a puckish display of flamboyant irreverence, Churchill baited Balfour: ‘He [Churchill] ventured to say that no Prime Minister, certainly not in recorded time, had ever before, in regard to matters of which he should be better informed than anybody, shown such a lamentable and extraordinary ignorance’.27 Even the Liberal Prime Minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, took good care to keep Churchill out of his cabinet. Churchill did obtain his first executive position when he crossed the floor of the House, as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. But it cost him the tag of being one of the most unpopular politicians in Britain. He had earned a reputation for ‘putting people’s backs up by an

6

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEW S

apparently gratuitous offensiveness of manner’.28 Even worse, many colleagues believed him to be ‘deficient in discrimination and loyalty ... [and that he] loved the limelight too much ... [and was] unduly obstinate and aggressive in argument... [and] not generally credited with acting from either conviction or loyalty’.29 More than one historian has noted the possible correlation between Churchill’s tempestuous early political career, and the fact that he was at the same time writing his father’s biography. Rhodes James has suggested that in his rebellion ‘against the tyranny of party’, and in his violent words and campaigns against his leaders, the younger Churchill was perhaps ‘intent upon re-creating his father’s career’.30 A more recent study of Lord Randolph has suggested that the converse may also be true, that the biography Churchill was writing may have been intended as ‘a vindication of the political somersaults being executed by the author at the time of writing it’. The biography and the change of political tack proceeded apace, and both reached their climax in January, 1906, in which month Churchill both published the two volumes, and won the North-West Manchester seat for the Liberal Party.31 Churchill’s relations with the Conservatives, to whose ranks he would return permanently in 1924, remained stormy throughout his political career. Between 1901 and 1904, he had been a disrespectful young rebel. Once he crossed the floor of the Commons in 1904, he spearheaded the Liberal attack on the Conservatives’ Aliens Bill. In 1915, the Conservative veto on his inclusion in the Asquith coalition cabinet was due as much (if not more) to personal animosity as to Churchill’s alleged responsibility for the Dardanelles fiasco. In 1931, Churchill once more broke with the party leadership, over constitu­ tional reform in India, and later, over the appeasement of Germany. During the war, Churchill and the Conservatives worked together in pursuit of mutual interests. But it was ‘something less than a lovematch’, and each viewed the other with wariness.32Upon his electoral defeat in 1945, Tory colleagues began to whisper that he needed a long rest. With the war over, the party leaders were no longer willing to suffer his overbearing attitudes, and many would have liked to ditch him, had they only known how. These views percolated through to Churchill, though most critics dared not speak out in front of him.33 A charitable view would interpret Churchill’s switches in

CHURCHILL THE MAN

7

allegiance as the expression of a resolute, independent spirit, who courageously refused to bow to narrow party dictates. Others, A.J.P. Taylor for instance, have claimed that Churchill regarded party ‘as an instrument for putting him into office’, rather than as an insti­ tution which it was his duty to serve.34 At least during the earlier stages of his career, Churchill did combine a hunger for office with an alarming proclivity to adopt and jettison causes rapidly. Churchill could claim few really close friends, and they came mostly from the world of politics. But Churchill drew little more satisfaction from his Liberal colleagues than he had from the Conservatives. He would be accused later of gathering round him a small coterie of admiring cronies. Even Lloyd George, his close friend and collaborator - perhaps the only figure in British politics whom Churchill really respected - repaid Churchill in poor coin. True, it was Lloyd George who brought Churchill back into the government after the Dardanelles affair. But at heart, Lloyd George mistrusted Churchill, and kept him at arm’s length from No. 10 Downing Street. When after World War One, the two discussed plans for a new coalition, Churchill remarked: ‘If you are going to include all Parties, you will have to have me in your new National Party’. Lloyd George rebuffed him: ‘Oh no’, he replied, ‘To be a party you must have at least one follower. You have none’.35 In March, 1921, their relationship was severed, when Lloyd George passed Churchill over for the vacated Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Lloyd George had feared having Churchill ‘too near to the centre of power’.36 Adding to Churchill’s unpopularity, and fuelling suspicions of unbridled ambition, were his ‘apparent inconsistency, his unpredict­ able changes of mood and opinion, his lack of stability, both personal and political’.37 Sir Isaiah Berlin, in a panegyric written during the war, has refuted the charge of inconsistency: Far from changing his opinions too often, Mr Churchill has scarcely, during a long and stormy career, altered them at all. If anyone wishes to discover his views on the large and lasting issues of our time, he need only set himself to discover what Mr Churchill has said or written on the subject at any period of his long and exceptionally articulate public life, in particular during the years before the First World War: the number of instances in which his views have in later years undergone any appreciable change will be found astonishingly small.38

Mr Berlin’s admiration is quite understandable, given the period at which it was written, as has been noted by Goronwy Rees:

8

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

written primarily for an American audience and while Churchill was still alive, it does not fall short of the hyperbole to which he was condemned when dead, but with more justification because it captures exactly the feeling of admiration, gratitude, almost reverence that Churchill inspired in Britain at the one period of his life when he performed an indispensable service to his country.39

Churchill’s political contemporaries most definitely deplored his inconsistency, and Churchill himself readily admitted that ‘changing circumstances demand different tactics’. In 1956, he told Lord Moran: ‘I’d rather be right than consistent. During a long life I have had to eat my own words many times, and I have found it a nourishing diet’.40 We can perhaps understand Mr Berlin’s statement better if we concentrate on the phrase ‘large and lasting issues’. We can readily agree with Professor Arno J. Mayer’s definition of the lasting issues to which Churchill would remain dedicated throughout his career: Churchill was an equally resolute opponent of socialism and of anti­ imperialist nationalism. Whatever his party affiliation may have been at any given moment, his purpose remained constant: to maintain Britain’s political, social and economic system at home while upholding her imperial glory in the international arena.41

Naturally, outside of these broad principles, or ideology, there existed a plethora of political issues upon which Churchill was obliged, at times, to take a stand. Churchill was a man who often worked by instinct, and, secure in the conviction of his own inner consistency, he was untroubled by the ‘charges of inconsistency which his impulses towards new enthusiasms often provoked’.42 In addition, the sudden abandonment of causes with which he had been associated closely gave rise to doubts about the depth of his original commitment. Moreover, once set on his new course, Churchill was impervious to persuasion. His self-centredness, his inability to listen to the views of others, his inability to criticize himself, made it virtually impossible to change his mind once he had made it up.43 Churchill’s exaggerated use of rhetoric also gave rise to contem­ porary criticism. People hardly knew if and when to take him seriously. One contemporary observer, Charles Masterman, wrote at the beginning of the century: ‘He sets ideas to Rhetoric as musi­ cians set theirs to music. And he can convince himself of almost every truth if it is once allowed thus to start on its wild career through his rhetorical machinery’.44 Even prior to World War One, many of

CHURCHILL TH E MAN

9

Churchill’s friends feared that this particular penchant was becom­ ing an obsession, that ‘his tendency to see first the rhetorical poten­ tialities of any policy was getting out of hand’.45 Contemporaries believed that he might be ‘carried away by the logic of his own argu­ ments, by the beauty of his own rhetoric ... that his real inclination was to conclude that a thing was right and true if it could be stated in a rhetorically effective manner ,..’.46 Pre-war impatience with Churchill’s style gave way to inter-war indifference and contempt. While staying with Churchill at Cannes, in 1923, Victor Cazalet noted in his diary: ‘Whole perorations pour forth accompanied by Latin quotations, sometimes not wholly cor­ rect, by large extracts from Shakespeare, on the most trifling excuse.’ It was but a short step from rhetoric to demagoguery. Leo Amery has noted that Churchill had a ‘retentive memory for a striking phrase’.47 Such phrases would be stored away, to be recalled and re-used on an appropriate occasion, albeit in a different context: ‘well-tried word patterns were revised to meet new situations’. Professor Hyam has traced a 41-year-long pedigree for Churchill’s famous speech of 1940: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ Churchill had used it on no fewer than five previous occasions.48 *

*

*

In the light of the above character sketch, what conclusions may be drawn about Churchill’s commitment to the Jews, or to Zionism? First, Churchill’s was not a trained intellect, and it is to be doubted seriously if he ever comprehended the socio-economic context of the ‘Jewish Problem’. Churchill certainly never shared the Zionists’ belief that that problem could be solved only by the territorial concentration of the Jewish nation in a state of their own. Churchill’s world outlook was set and crystallised by the beginning of this century. Zionism, as an ideology, and as a political project, was acceptable or not to the extent to which it fitted into Churchill’s existing thought-patterns. Churchill’s attitude to Zionism fluctuated wildly. It was quite obviously not one of those ‘large and lasting’ issues which merited his consistency However, at an early stage, Churchill became con­ vinced that the Jews, and Zionist colonisation in Palestine, could be of political and strategic use to Britain and her Empire. This had

10

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

been ‘proved’ for Churchill by the aid of American Jewry following the Balfour Declaration; in addition, he adhered for many years, until 1944, to the conviction that Jewish skills and capital might secure a British foothold in Palestine, adjacent to the Suez Canal. And last, but not least, Jewish influence was a factor which Churchill frequently felt the need to take into account; whether during the 1906 election in Manchester (and again, in 1908); or in 1914, when he alleged that the Shell Petroleum company, headed by a Jew, was conspiring against the Government; or after World War One, when he alleged that the Jews, as agents of Bolshevism, were undermining the very fabric of Western democracy. These are some of the themes that will be examined in the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

THE JEWISH PROBLEM 1. GENTILE ZIONISM

In England, Gentile interest in a Jewish return to the Holy Land dated back to the first half of the 19th century. Motivated initially by Protestant Evangelical doctrine, followed closely by strategic interest, it was fuelled later on by the search for a solution to the Jewish Problem, manifested in Czarist Russia by pogroms, and in liberal England by a flood of unwanted Jewish refugees. Lord Ashley, later the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the champion of the British poor, was also a leading advocate of the Jews’ return to the Holy Land. The various political and military upheavals in the Near East at the turn of the 19th century, and during the 1830s (which gave rise to Britain’s ‘Eastern Policy’), created in some British circles what Barbara Tuchman has described as an ‘almost proprietary feeling about Palestine’.1The Holy Land, it was believed, would soon be available for new ownership, and the idea of the ‘return of the old tenant with a new landlord’ appealed to a variety of English minds.2 Ashley’s Bible studies had filled him with a reverence for ‘God’s ancient people’, its land and its language. Convinced that events in the Near East presaged ‘the national and religious restoration of the Jews, he took the lead in combining the religious trend with well planned political steps’, maintaining that ‘the fate of the Jewish nation was irrevocably linked with the Holy Land’, and that the injustices committed against them could be repaired only by their restoration to Palestine.3 A characteristic feature of Ashley’s Zionism was its paternalism: ‘The role assigned to the Jews themselves in the historical drama of their Restoration was rather that of an object than of an acting protagonist.’4 In addition, the Evangelicals considered it essential

12

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEW S

that the Jews’ restoration to Zion be preceded by their conversion to Christianity. Later advocates of the Jewish return to their ancient homeland were concerned more with British imperial interests than with the Jews’ own spiritual fulfilment. The year 1840 was a political and strategic watershed in the Near East. It was the year of the Damascus blood Libel,* and also that in which the British intervened in Syria on behalf of the Ottomans, against Ibrahim, the son of Muhammad Ali. In the same year, the P. & O. Line inaugurated a regular steam­ ship run from England to India via Suez. It became apparent that a Jewish state in Palestine, under British protection, might usefully guard the Egyptian flank.5 In February, 1841, Col. Charles Henry Churchill was a member of the victorious allied army which entered Damascus, and so brought to an end the brief rule of Muhammad Ali in Syria. He became England’s consul in Damascus, and perhaps ‘the most far-sighted and sensible of Ashley’s successors’. The Churchill connection here is fascinating in its possible implications, although this particular Churchill was not in fact, as Mrs Tuchman and others claim, a descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough, and thus an antecedent of Winston’s. He was in fact descended from the first Duke’s brother, Gen. Charles Churchill (1654-1714).6 However, be that as it may, there is no evidence that Winston Churchill himself ever read the Colonel’s writings, or was in any sense influenced by them. Col. Churchill’s advocacy of a Jewish Return was distinct from the Evangelicals’ millenarian visions. His motives were more material than spiritual, and he wanted to transform the Jews’ own role from passive to active agents: ‘the Jewish nation itself has to be the prime mover of its restoration’.7 He lost faith in his country’s ‘Eastern Policy’, of which he himself had been such an active agent in 1841. He predicted the futility of trying to breathe new life into the Otto­ man body politic, and urged that ‘Syria and Palestine must be rescued from the “blundering and decrepit despotism” of the Turks and Egyptians and taken under European protection’.8 In June, 1841, he * In 1 8 4 0 , several of Damascus’s leading Jews were arrested by the Turks on charges of murdering a French priest in order to use his blood for ritual purposes. The Jews were tortured severely, in order to extract confessions from them. News leaked out, and their release was eventually secured, following protest meetings by Jews all over Europe and the United States, and the intervention of European statesmen, many of whom were pressed by influential Jews in their country, e.g. the Rothschilds.

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

13

wrote to Sir Moses Montefiore, a leading British Jew, urging him to approach the European Powers and request that they assume a protectorate over the Holy Land: I cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your countrymen endeavour once more to resume their existence as a people. I consider the object to be perfectly attainable. But, two things are indispensably necessary. Firstly, that the Jews will themselves take up the matter universally and unanimously. Secondly, that the European Powers will aid them in their views. It is for the Jews to make a commencement. Let the principal persons of their community place themselves at the head of the movement... Were the resources which you all possess steadily directed towards the regeneration of Syria and Palestine, there cannot be a doubt but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine ...9

However, the leaders of Anglo-Jewry were ‘too concerned in the home struggle for emancipation to look for Jewish nationhood’,10 and the Board of Deputies of British Jews resolved that it could only respond to the initiative of ‘the general body of the Jews throughout Europe’.11Col. Churchill was brought to the conclusion that the time was not yet ripe. Sir Moses Montefiore in fact travelled to Palestine several times, and was a munificent benefactor. Yet he was unable to contemplate any mass movement of Jews to the Holy Land except at the insti­ gation of the Messiah. He was in fact torn between the material attractions of his membership of the English aristocracy, and the spiritual pull of Palestine. As Chaim Bermant has commented, whim­ sically: ‘The advent of the Messiah would have solved his difficulty, but in His absence he resolved it by ... being buried in Kent with Holy soil beneath his head.’12 Col. Churchill’s ideas were taken a step further by Sir Charles Warren, who proposed ‘the formation of a Jewish chartered com­ pany in Palestine which would eventually become self-supporting and autonomous’. Sir Edward Cazalet also proposed a mass resettle­ ment of the Jews in Palestine under British protection. Sir Laurence Oliphant, well-known oriental scholar and traveller, thought such a settlement eminently practical on the east bank of the River Jordan, and even approached the Ottoman Sultan for his consent, but with­ out success.’13 But by mid-century, it was quite evident that Gentile enthusiasm for a Jewish return to Palestine was not matched by any parallel

14

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

Jewish sentiment. In 1853, Col. Churchill published a book, Mount Lebanon, the product of fifteen years residence in the Near East. Churchill now urged an English initiative: It must be clear to every English mind that if England’s oriental supremacy is to be upheld, Syria and Egypt must be made to fall more or less under her sway of influence.14

However, the Ottoman Empire did not collapse until 1918, and Britain adhered to its Eastern policy until the Turks sided with the Germans in 1914. As the Ottomans became suspicious of the first waves of Jewish immigration from Czarist Russia in the 1880s, British statesmen took care not to encourage Jewish hopes of a national home in Palestine. When Herzl approached Colonial Secretary Chamberlain, the latter proposed first El Arish, in the Sinai desert, and later, British East Africa. Perhaps the most prominent Gentile Zionist of the 20th century was Arthur James Balfour, who gave his name to the Declaration of 2 November, 1917, promising British aid to the development of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. According to Balfour’s niece and biographer, Balfour’s Zionism ‘originated in the Old Testament training of his mother and in his Scottish upbringing’.15 Balfour also developed an intellectual interest and admiration for certain aspects of Jewish philosophy, and became preoccupied with ‘the Jewish Problem’. As Leonard Stein has commented, in Balfour’s Zionism ‘there may well have been an element of sheer intellectual curi­ osity’.16As Mrs Dugdale has observed, after Balfour’s fateful meeting with the Zionist leader, Dr Chaim Weizmann, in 1906 (see below), Balfour turned to a deeper contemplation of Zionism, ‘very charac­ teristically, for relaxation, to a subject which interested him alike as a political philosopher, a student of history, and a statesman; but also as a statesman temporarily freed from responsibility’.17 Long before Balfour’s interest in modern, political Zionism, he developed a moral indignation at the way Christianity had treated the Jews. Christianity owed the Jews a debt, one ‘shamefully ill repaid’.18 Barbara Tuchman has accepted and relied on Dugdale’s analysis: In Balfour the motive was Biblical rather than imperial. If the Biblical culture of England can be said to have any meaning in England’s redemption of Palestine from the rule of Islam, it may be epitomised in Balfour. Though he was the reverse of Shaftesbury, not ardent, but a skeptic, not a religious enthusiast but a philosophical pessimist, he was nevertheless strongly

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

15

infused, like the Evangelicals and the Puritans, with the Hebraism of the Bible.19

But in our opinion, this is to over-simplify a complex problem. There can be little doubt that Weizmann impressed Balfour deeply at their first meeting in January, 1906. However, long before that, and after, Balfour devoted much thought and political activity to the search for a solution to the material aspects of ‘the Jewish Problem’. As Balfour saw it, the problem had two facets. On the one hand, he regarded the Jews as ‘the most gifted race that mankind had seen since the Greeks of the fifth century’.20 But on the other, he believed that the Jews’ natural talents were warped and distorted by their abnormal Diaspora existence. The Jews’ refusal to assimilate to their Gentile surroundings both deprived their hosts of the genetic benefits of intermarriage, and aroused anti-semitism, which had manifestly exerted a great influence on the political world in which Balfour himself functioned. Therefore, as Balfour told Harold Nicolson in 1917, ‘If we can find them an asylum, a safe home, in their native land, then the full flowering of their genius will burst forth and propagate ...\21 Thus Zionism was seen as a cure for anti-semitism, a social disease which plagued western society. Theodor Herzl himself had reached similar conclusions to Balfour. The Great Powers, unable to accom­ modate and absorb the Jews, would have a material interest in aiding the Zionists, wrote Herzl: The governments of the countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in securing a sovereign status for us ... The Jewish State is something the world needs, and consequently it will come into being.22

The ‘Jewish Problem’ in England reached acute proportions at the turn of the 19th century, with the great influx of Jewish refugees fleeing from persecution in Czarist Russia. The Jewish community, which in the 17th century had numbered between three and four thousand had by 1850 reached 35,000 souls. The community would increase tenfold between 1850 and 1939. Although the Jews never reached a significant proportion of the total population, they were ‘visible in a spatial, geographical sense’. Jewish ghettoes created social tension by exerting pressures on inadequate resources, and could be exploited ‘by those hostile to the Jewish community to add to a more generalized picture of Jewish power and influence’.23 Anti-semitic elements had been present in the debate at the time

16

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

of the Bulgarian crisis in 1875,24 during the Boer War, when many asserted that it was a war in the interests of internationally connected Jewish financiers (there was even talk of ‘an Anglo-Hebraic Empire in Africa’), and at the time of the Marconi and Indian silver scandals during the years prior to World War One.25 At the end of the 19th century, with British labour in any case beginning to suffer the effects of Britain’s industrial decline, it was felt that the spate of Jewish immigrants weakened the working classes’ bargaining power, while at the same time they helped ‘sustain grossly exploitative sectors of the economy’, in particular, the socalled ‘sweat industries’. A second wave of hostility, which arose during the years preceding the 1905 Aliens Act (see below), was in reaction to the pressures, over-crowding, and unhygenic conditions caused by the masses of destitute refugees. Well-established Jews were accused of exploiting this situation, by buying up properties, in order to evict the current tenant and replace him with their own race, whom they then proceeded to exploit. Jewish ghettoes were singled out for their dirt and squalor.26 Thus before World War One, many British anti-Semites ‘were easily reconciled to Zionist proposals which would divert Jews from Britain and provide for their settlement elsewhere’. Major Evans Gordon, who played a conspicuous role in organizing opposition to Jewish immigration into England, was himself sympathetic to establishing the Jews in Palestine, but since this seemed an impracti­ cable idea for the foreseeable future, he supported the schismatic Territorialists.27 Liberal concern to solve the anomaly of Jewish exile, however well-meaning, might quite easily cross the narrow line dividing it from anti-semitism. It was Balfour’s last administration which passed the 1905 Aliens Bill, and Balfour was himself severely criticised by the Jewish community in England for his sponsorship of it. The Jewish Establishment was particularly sensitive. They denied the existence of any Jewish Problem. It was their tragedy that their tranquil, affluent status was disturbed by the flood of their less fortunate brethren to the West at the end of the 19th century. The other side of the Gentile Zionist credo, therefore, was a quasi anti-semitism. Some Gentiles were quite aware of this, and not afraid to admit it, among themselves of course. The best example of this, perhaps, is in the following extract, written by Col. Richard Meinertzhagen to Foreign Secretary Curzon in September, 1919:

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

17

My inclination towards Jews in general is governed by an anti-semitic instinct which is invariably modified by personal contact. My views on Zionism are those of an ardent Zionist. The reasons which induced in me a fascination for Zionism are many and complex, but in the main were governed by the unsatisfactory state of the Jews in the world, the great sentimental attraction of re-establishing a race after a banishment of 2,000 years, which is not without its scientific interest, and the conviction that Jewish brains and money could, when backed by such a potent idea as Zionism, give to Palestine that impetus in industrial development which it so sorely needs after lying fallow since the beginning of the world. Neither could my mind, educated in military thought for the last 20 years, totally ignore the great strategic value to the British Empire of a strong, healthy and contented Palestine under British guidance, and the resultant gratitude of the bulk of Jewry throughout the world.28

The ambivalence of Gentile Zionism has been pinpointed long ago by Leonard Stein. In his perceptive comments on Balfour, Stein noted that those very same distinctive characteristics of the Jews which commanded Balfour’s respect, also made him ‘uncertain and uncomfortable about their place in a Gentile society’.29 Initially, the location of the Jewish homeland was considered to be secondary to the urgent need for an immediate refuge. For all of Balfour’s famili­ arity with the Bible, he, as well as Churchill, supported the abortive East African scheme. Balfour may have been converted to the spiritual uniqueness of Palestine by Weizmann, but Churchill was not. 2. THE JEWISH VOTE

(a) The Aliens Bills, 1904-1905 In 1904, and in 1905, Balfour’s administration sponsored two suc­ cessive Bills to regulate and supervise the immigration of Aliens, primarily Russian Jews, into England. The Bills based themselves on the recommendations of a Royal Commission, appointed in March, 1902, which heard many witnesses and delivered its report in August, 1903. Many had given evidence to the effect that the Jews were unable to be loyal both to their own religion and to England. The report recommended that certain classes of aliens be subjected to state controls; that those who after two years’ residence proved unable to support themselves be deported summarily; that any alien convicted of a misdemeanour in court suffer deportation.30 The 1904 Bill, which did not pass the House of Commons, would have empowered the Secretary of State, through immigration officers,

18

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

to prohibit without appeal the landing of any alien who had been convicted in a foreign country of an extradition crime in the previous five years, who was associated with prostitution, who was likely to be a charge on public funds or was without visible means of support, or finally, who was ‘of notoriously bad character’. In all these cases, the onus of proof lay with the alien, and the expenses were, in general, to be borne by the shipping company which brought him. The Act would also have empowered the Local Government Board to close to aliens any area where overcrowding could be shown to be due to alien immigration.31 The Liberal Party opposed the Bill, taking the line that it consti­ tuted an infringement of the hallowed principle of granting political asylum to victims of persecution. The Party was led from behind, by Charles Dilke and C.P. Trevelyan. The Bill was in fact ill prepared, and would have been difficult to enforce, due to the virtual impossi­ bility of defining precisely who was ‘of notoriously bad character’, or ‘without visible means of support’, or ‘likely to become a public charge’.32 After limping through two readings in the Commons, the government waited two months before committing the Bill to a Grand Committee, an unusual procedure at that time. The Committee began its consideration of the Bill on 20 June, 1904, and the government was ultimately forced to abandon the measure, after protracted Liberal obstruction, led by the recent addition to Liberal ranks, Winston Churchill. The historian of the Bill has characterized Churchill’s tactics as having been carried out with ‘that air of gleeful schoolboy naughtiness and pugnacity which so often attended Churchill’s actions’, albeit motivated by ‘expedi­ ency, political tactics, and his own humanitarianism alike’. Even so, Dr Gainer asserts that Balfour himself must bear responsibility for the failure of the first Bill: ‘Either he engineered its ambush in the Grand Committee on Law in order to avoid a clash with opposing groups of his supporters, or else he was so preoccupied with the calamity of Tariff Reform that his customary grasp of Parliamentary tactics momentarily deserted him ... his motives remain an enigma, however suggestive the available evidence’.33 A new version of the Bill was introduced into the Commons in 1905, and this time enacted into law in August, 1905, just four months prior to the fall of the Balfour administration. One study has suggested that the success of the Bill in 1905 was due to a series of Conservative by-election defeats, and their hope that the new Bill

THE JEW ISH PROBLEM

19

might drive a wedge between Liberals and Labour, by appealing to working-class prejudices against aliens.34In 1905, Liberal opposition abated, on the grounds that the new Bill had been amended to meet their previous objections. The 1905 Bill defined much more closely the ‘undesirability’ of aliens. Newly-designated immigration-ports were named, at which immigrants would be inspected. The Conservatives’ concessions, it has been suggested, were due to their fears of a ‘Jewish backlash’; there were also evidently some pangs of conscience, and murmurings from the back benches. Ironically, it would fall to the new Liberal administration, elected in January, 1906, to operate the new law.35 The debates which accompanied the proposed anti-aliens legisla­ tion in 1904 and in 1905 provide a unique opportunity to compare the respective attitudes of Balfour and Churchill, both of whom would be fighting the 1906 elections in a Manchester constituency. In 1905, Balfour admitted frankly that the proposed legislation was calculated to curb the entry of Eastern European Jews into England. As Prime Minister of the administration which sponsored both bills, it is hardly surprising that Balfour incurred the wrath of the Jewish community, and thinly veiled accusations of anti-semitism. Balfour’s record on this issue undoubtedly contributed to his electoral defeat in January, 1906, after a campaign conducted in the shadow of a fresh wave of pogroms in Odessa in December, 1905. In a speech before the Commons on 10 July, 1905, Balfour rejected accusations that his government was indifferent to the sufferings of Russian Jews. On the contrary, Balfour claimed that his administration was the only one which had offered the Jews terri­ torial asylum (i.e. in East Africa. See next section). But Balfour issued a frank warning about the detrimental effect to be anticipated in England from large-scale Jewish immigration: ... A state of things could easily be imagined in which it would not be to the advantage of the civilisation of this country that there should be an immense body of persons who, however patriotic, able, and industrious ... by their own action remained a people apart, and ... only inter-married among themselves.36

Balfour admitted that England had not nearly reached such a dangerous state of affairs, but, he added, the Commons should bear in mind that some of the undoubted evils which had fallen upon portions of the country from an alien immigration which was largely Jewish,

20

CH URCHILL AND TH E JEWS

gave those of them who ... condemned nothing more strongly than the manifestation of the anti-semitic spirit, some reason to fear that this country might be, at however great a distance, in danger of following the evil example set by some other countries.37

Such sentiments, however nobly intended in Balfour’s case, lay well in the mainstream of orthodox right-wing prejudice.38 A Jewish Chronicle editorial commented cynically that Balfour’s comments were a peculiar expression of his alleged sympathy for Russian Jewry, and not the type of declaration the Jews expected from a British Prime Minister.39 In a private letter to Frederick Milner, M.P., Balfour explained that his very admiration for ‘the special gifts of the Jewish race’ made it the more regrettable that they refused to inter-marry with the rest of the population, ‘not because I dislike the Jews, but because I admire them; and I think that their rigid separation in this respect from their fellow-countrymen is a misfortune for us’.40 It is quite evident that Balfour’s interest in Zionism was due as much to his concern for the social fabric of English society, as it was to his concern about the continued existence of the people of the Bible. In 1919, in his introduction to Nahum Sokolow’s History o f Zionism , Balfour notes the benefits that Zionism will bring to the West, as a ‘serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb’.41 We may now turn to Churchill’s record on the aliens issue. Let us state immediately that we have no reason to question the sincerity of Churchill’s typically generous, humanitarian approach to the plight of Russian Jewry during this period. The campaign against aliens offended fundamental liberal principles, and although the word ‘Jew’ was avoided like the plague, the anti-alien lobby was frequently tarred with the brush of anti-semitism. This last accusation deeply embarrassed those Liberals who felt that the safety of their seats depended upon their opposition to alien immigration, and ‘several of the affected Liberal politicians showed every sign of finding the dilemma between grass-roots demands and Liberal conscience a rather painful one’.42 But Churchill faced no such dilemma - on the contrary. Between 1904 and 1905, Manchester was one of the centres of the Jews’ campaign against anti-alien legislation. Moreover, the introduction

THE JEW ISH PROBLEM

21

of the first Bill into Parliament, on 29 March, 1904, came at a critical juncture in Churchill’s own career, just two months before he crossed the floor of the House, and took his seat on the Liberal benches, on 31 May, 1904. He was adopted as prospective Liberal candidate for the Cheetham district of Manchester, which contained not only a high proportion of Jewish voters, but also a high proportion of Manchester’s immigrant population.43 As Randolph Churchill’s biography states, Winston ‘was to make himself highly acceptable to the powerful Jewish community. It is not without significance that many of his leading supporters in Manchester were Jews.44 John Garrard has been somewhat more charitable than the official biog­ raphy, suggesting that ‘the influence of a militant Jewish vote merely intensified and stiffened an attitude and line of action which would have become apparent anyway’.45 However, Churchill did not take part in the debates in the House during the first two readings of the Aliens Bill, which took place before he crossed the floor, though he was present.46 On 30 May, 1904, the day before Churchill took up his new position in the House, he set out his views on the proposed legislation in a lengthy letter to Nathan Laski, J.R, copies of which he took care to send to the Manchester Guardian and The Times. He accused the govern­ ment of pandering to sectional prejudice, whereas he insisted that the population in general was not anti-semitic, and therefore not against aliens: ‘English working men ... do not respond in any marked degree to the anti-semitism which has darkened recent Continental history; and I for one believe that they will disavow an attempt to shut out the stranger from our land because he is poor or in trouble ...\47 Churchill heaped ridicule on the Balfour adminis­ tration, making telling use of quotations from the Royal Commission report: ... To judge by the talk there has been, one would have imagined we were being overrun by a swarming invasion and ‘ousted’ from our island through neglect of precautions which every wise foreign nation has adopted. But it now appears from the Board of Trade statistics that all the aliens in Great Britain do not amount to a 140th part of the total population, that they are increasing less than 8,000 a year on the average, and that - according to the report of the Alien Commission - Germany has twice as large and France four times as large a proportion of foreigners as we have .... The whole bill looks like an attempt on the part of the Government to gratify a small but noisy section of their own supporters and to purchase a little popularity in the constituencies by dealing harshly with a number of

22

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

unfortunate aliens who have no votes ... it will no doubt supply a variety of rhetorical phrases for the approaching election.48

On 31 May, 1904, Laski responded warmly: ‘you have won the gratitude of the whole Jewish community not alone of Manchester, but of the entire country’.49 However, Churchill’s own record on the Aliens Bill was not entirely free of rhetoric, and provided his detractors with yet another example of his alleged tendency to exploit issues to further his own career. Ironically, his comments about Conservative motives for pushing the Bill through also upset certain sections of English Jewry. Churchill’s first speech from the Opposition benches, on 8 June, 1904, was an attack on the government’s decision to send the Aliens Bill to Grand Committee, rather than discussing it from the floor of the House - on the grounds that it was not a contentious issue. In Grand Committee, he excelled himself with his frequent obstruc­ tions, and on one occasion provoked extreme indignation by speak­ ing seven times on a single amendment. On 7 July, the government was forced to announce the withdrawal of the Bill, due to lack of progress. Of the Bill’s 240 lines, a mere three had been dealt with, and even they had become smothered with amendments. When Churchill was accused of deliberate sabotage, he retorted that the government itself had never been in earnest, that the withdrawal of the measure was due not so much to his own obstruction but to the government’s desire to appease its own ‘wealthy Jewish supporters’. The remark provoked an uproar, and cries of ‘Monstrous, absolutely monstrous’, from a Jewish M.P., Sir Harry Samuel. On 15 July, 1904, the Jewish Chronicle dismissed with contempt Churchill’s conten­ tion that the ‘Government’s lukewarmness was due to weighty Jewish influences’.50 Randolph Churchill has conceded that Churchill’s comments about government ‘electioneering’ were disingenuous, since the withdrawal of the Bill in fact dealt a serious blow to the Conservative administration, by demonstrating that it had lost control over its own business.51 However, perhaps because Churchill himself was free of any antisemitic bias, he had no compunction in criticising what he continued to believe was the undue influence of wealthy English Jews on the Conservative party. What was for Balfour a serious social problem served Churchill as a political brickbat. In a private letter written

THE JEW ISH PROBLEM

23

in November, 1904, Churchill reiterated his cynical view of Con­ servative motives: They have been fooling around with it for nine years, and it is perfectly well known that the opposition of wealthy and influential Jews in their own party has always prevented, and probably always will prevent, their passing such a measure into law’.52 Churchill maintained that it might be perfectly legitimate for wealthy Jews to come to the aid of their persecuted brethren, and even for a government to yield to the pressure of influential sup­ porters. But Churchill objected to what he regarded as the political manipulations of the Conservatives: But that this same government, having yielded to these representations and having refused all these years to take effective steps to legislate against the Aliens, should now go about the country trying to excite party cheers for having introduced a Bill which was never meant to pass, is a shabby hoax which it is not likely to take in anybody.53

In any case, Churchill and the Jews had cause for mutual gratitude when the first Bill was shelved in 1904. Laski congratulated Churchill ‘on the splendid victory you have won for freedom and religious toleration’, and went on to outline the material, electoral rewards Churchill might anticipate: You will be interested to know that I have got a body of splendid workers together for you and as far as our district is concerned - victory is assured ... Doubtless also, you will have learnt that Mr Dreyfus - one of the principal supporters of Mr Balfour - will support your candidature - and he is a likely Lord Mayor - 1 know he refused the honour last year - he will prove a most valuable ally. I have over 20 years experience in elections in Manchester - and without flattery I tell you candidly - there has not been a single man able to arouse the interest that you have already done - thus I am sure of your future success.54

Churchill again played a prominent role in opposition to the Second Aliens Bill, introduced into Parliament in April, 1905. However, though he continued to attack the Conservatives’ motives, Churchill claimed that most of the amendments he had proposed the year before had now been adopted in the new Bill. Yet the new measure still contained a provision excluding aliens on grounds of poverty, and the Jewish community was not at all reconciled. A great amendment campaign, sponsored by the Jewish Chronicle, swept the country. Eventually, only one of the four amendments demanded was incorporated in the Bill which received its final reading in the Commons on 20 July, 1905.55 There was great anxiety and

24

CHURCH ILL AND TH E JEWS

disappointment within the Jewish community, in particular since the new Act left many important issues open to the interpretation of the government of the day. During the autumn of 1905, the Conservative administration gradually lost the confidence of the country - Balfour was the last British Prime Minister to surrender office due to loss of electoral support, without having first lost at the polls. Churchill made max­ imum political mileage of his public record on the aliens legislation. In a speech before his Manchester constituency in October, 1905, Churchill applied all his considerable powers of rhetoric, in con­ demning the new law: It contained absurdities which would make a deaf and blind mute roar with laughter. A poverty line was drawn for the first time, a few shillings made the difference between desirability and undesirability ... (the law) might inflict hardships upon many deserving people, who sought a refuge on our shores, and it violated that tradition of British hospitality of which this nation has been proud, and for the practice of which it has at more than one period reaped a permanent advantage.56

The election campaign in Manchester drew the attention of the entire country, due to the participation, in different wards, of both the Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, and the new recruit to the Liberals, Winston Churchill. In contrast to the vilification endured by the former, due to his sponsorship of the aliens legislation, Churchill’s prominent opposition brought in handsome electoral dividends, and earned him the aura of popular hero. On 15 December, 1905, the Jewish Chronicle commented on the fall of the Balfour government (Balfour had resigned on 4 December), and the inclusion of Churchill in the caretaker Liberal administration: Mr Winston Churchill’s splendid fight in Grand Committee against the first Aliens Bill will long linger in the recollection of those who witnessed i t .... Mr Churchill’s fight, which was largely responsible for the death of the Bill, was particularly plucky .... Mr Churchill’s inclusion in the Government is an additional guarantee, if any were needed, of the friendliness of the new Ministry in its relations with the Jews ....57

In an election speech on 7 January, 1906 (polling day was 12 January), Churchill demanded of his Jewish constituents his due reward. He claimed that his opposition to the aliens legislation had brought down upon him ‘the foulest abuse and gross insults from all parts of the country’, even charges of corruption. He committed himself in advance to working for a reduction of the naturalisation fees charged to aliens and, at the same time, declared his support for

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

25

the creation of ‘an autonomous Jewish colony in East Africa under the flag of toleration and freedom’.58 In its next issue, the Jewish Chronicle attested to the general consensus that Churchill’s victory at the polls ‘was in considerable measure due to the support of the Jews, who approved of his gallant fight against the [Aliens] Law’.59

(b) The East Africa (Uganda) Scheme, 1905-1908 In 1903, Colonial Secretary Chamberlain had offered the Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl, an unsettled plateau in the British East African Protectorate, as a site for a Jewish colony. (Frequently referred to, mistakenly, as the Uganda scheme, the territory considered in fact lay in latter-day Kenya.) The Prime Minister of the day, Arthur Balfour, had endorsed the offer. One study has suggested that Chamberlain’s motives may have been more ‘financial’ than ‘Zionist’, that Chamberlain hoped that an influx of Jewish settlers, and capital, might improve the solvency of the Protectorate, and help finance a costly railway project in Uganda. There were also strategic advan­ tages in British-sponsored white (albeit Jewish) settlers guarding the sources of the Upper Nile in Uganda, thereby securing control-indepth over Egypt. Other assertions, unsubstantiated, suggested that Chamberlain hoped by the offer to secure Jewish financing for his South African policies.60 The Chamberlain offer posed a severe challenge to the unity of the Zionist Movement, since the Russian Jews, the backbone of the Movement, refused to consider any territorial alternative to Palestine. Herzl himself died in July, 1904, at the early age of 44, broken in both body and spirit. One year later, after the Seventh Zionist Congress (22 July to 2 August, 1905), a Special Congress convened immediately, with the same delegates, and voted against and offici­ ally buried the East African scheme.61 Those Zionists who persisted with the project seceded from the Zionist mainstream, and formed the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO), under the leadership of the renowned Jewish litterateur, Israel Zangwill. The Territorialists postulated that in view of the Jews’ vulnerability and sufferings, ‘not historic attachments but present conditions should determine the proper location of the Jewish homeland’.62 But in the meantime, the project had run up against opposition from those white settlers already in the Protectorate. They launched a campaign against ‘the projected Zionist invasion’, one which ‘bore the stamp of late 19th century anti-Semitism’. Colonial and Foreign

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CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

Office officials concluded that the Chamberlain offer had been a big mistake.63 Thus the decision of the Special Zionist-Congress was received with some relief at Whitehall: ‘A troublesome and eccentric scheme could now be filed away and forgotten with a minimum of fuss and without the British Government having to do more than register the scheme’s rejection by those for whom it had originally been intended ...\64 Some officials thought the East African scheme was totally imprac­ tical, and might be effected only at an unacceptable cost in money, energy and goodwill in the Protectorate; others believed it to be ‘fantastic and impracticable to the last degree’; most significantly, still others thought, presciently, that ‘to grant a territory in which a Jewish State can be formed under the protection of the British Government’ would in fact create an ‘imperium in imperio'.65 However, the decision of the Special Congress released the Government from the unpleasant need to explain its own change of mind in public. To have withdrawn Chamberlain’s offer, having just legislated against alien (mainly Jewish) immigration, would have wreaked incalculable (and unnecessary) harm to Conservative interests among the Jewish community. There was an additional consideration, as Foreign Secretary Lansdowne minuted: ‘... we must be careful not to say anything which might lead the two factions to join hands and present a solid front.’ Therefore, Zangwill was ‘humoured’, and set conditions for the resumption of negotiations which Whitehall was convinced he would never be able to meet, namely, that ‘responsible men, adequate capital and a workable plan’ would have to be furnished first to the Government as a basis for further discussion.66 This set of circumstances was inherited by the Liberal Administration of Campbell-Bannerman, which took office at the beginning of December, 1905, prior to the elections of the next month. It was a particularly propitious situation for Winston Churchill who, at a critical stage of his political career, was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. When Churchill had first been adopted as prospective Liberal candidate for North-West Manchester, in 1904, two significant developments could not have been predicted: first, after the decision of the Special Zionist Congress against the East African scheme, in July, 1905, the powerful Committee of influential Jews in NorthWest Manchester which had fought the passage of the Aliens Bill in vain, switched their attentions and efforts to the Territorialist cause;

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

27

second, in April, 1905, the East African Protectorate was removed from the jurisdiction of the Foreign Office, and placed under that of the Colonial Office, Churchill’s new bailiwick, from December of that year! The official position of not rejecting the East African project by the Government’s own initiative thus suited Churchill’s particular electoral needs. The prominent Jews with whom the British political elite mixed had shied away from mainstream Zionism, as an ideology which laid too much stress on Jewish nationalism. As such, the realisation of Zionist goals might call into question their other, primary loyalty, as British citizens.67 However, a Territorialist solution might pose similar problems. In a letter to the Times, published on 8 December, 1905, several prominent British Jews recorded their opposition to Territorialism, and argued that the solution to the Jewish Problem was the establishment of a liberal regime in Russia.68 Yet the Territorialists did seem to offer a more immediate, practical solution, both to the Jews’, and to England’s problem. Lord Rothschild himself, the most influential Jew in England, after his initial opposition, was later reconciled to Territorialism. He even joined Zangwill’s ‘Geographical Commission’, whose task it was to investigate alternatives to Palestine. However, he seems to have preferred the United States (Galveston) to East Africa.69 Among prominent English politicians who supported the Territorialists were the Prime Minister, Balfour, the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain and, of course, Winston Churchill. Yet a caveat must be entered here. These men were all concerned primarily with England's interests, whether it be in solving the domestic immigrant problem, or in bringing solvency and security to outlying colonies in Black Africa. In Churchill’s case there was also the personal interest, in 1905, in ensuring the due progress of his own political career. Only in this context can we explain the fluctuations in and ambiguity of British attitudes to Zionism. On the eve of the 1906 elections,250 prospective candidates declared in favour of Zionism, as against a mere five who declared for Territorialism.70 Typical in its ambiguity was Balfour’s attitude. Unlike Churchill, Balfour was not constrained by a powerful, ITO-dominated Jewish constituency. On 21 February, 1906, i.e. after the elections, Balfour wrote the following letter to Zangwill: I had, when Prime Minister, several interviews on the subject of a Jewish settlement in East Africa; and, for my own part I have not altered the view

28

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

that, if such a scheme be devised by the Jewish Community generally, an effort should be made to carry it out. I ought to add that I have seen several leading members of the Jewish community, English and foreign, who look with no favour upon the move­ ment, either because they object to ‘territorialism’, or because they think the only form of territorialism consistent with Jewish history is Zionism. My

anxiety is simply to find some means by which the present dreadful state in which so large a proportion of the Jewish race find themselves in may be brought to an end.71 In other words, wherever the Jews themselves decided to re-create their own autonomous existence - provided it wasn’t England would suit Balfour. The man who convinced Balfour that nowhere but Palestine would serve the purpose was Dr Chaim Weizmann. The two men met on 9 January, 1906, just three days before polling day. The key point in their conversation came when Weizmann, referring to the territorialist scheme, asked Balfour what he would do if offered Paris instead of London? To Balfour’s reply that the English already had London, Weizmann replied, ‘that is true, but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh’. Weizmann was a revelation for Balfour. At the end of their meeting, Balfour remarked that the Jews with whom he mixed were so different. Weizmann responded: ‘Mr Balfour, you meet the wrong kind of Jews’.72 For Balfour (and for many of his successors in high office), Weiz­ mann came to personify the Zionist cause - the proud, unassimilated Jew, who wished to reincarnate ancient glories, ending the ignominy of diaspora existence. Above all, Weizmann was a Jew whom Balfour could respect. As Barbara Tuchman has noted, since Balfour himself had never experienced any challenge to his own social position, he had never been able to comprehend the anxieties in regard to Zionism of the establishment Jews with whom he normally associ­ ated.73 In Balfour’s introduction to Sokolow’s History o f Zionism, written in 1919, there is no trace of the former’s original support for territorialism: ‘... the position of the Jews is unique. For them race, religion and country are inter-related as in the case of no other race, no other religion, and no other country on earth’.74 Weizmann’s success in converting Balfour is an historical land­ mark in the progress of Gentile Zionism. During the 1906 election campaign, Balfour did not apparently make any attempt to appeal to ‘territorialist’ sentiment among Manchester Jewry, one of whom was his own agent, the influential Charles Dreyfus. Balfour duly lost

THE JEW ISH PROBLEM

29

his Manchester seat, of twenty years’ standing, and was readily found a safe alternative, in the City of London. Churchill’s record is somewhat different. This was his first election campaign since crossing the floor of the House, and winning was evidently all-important.75As noted already, the committee of promi­ nent Jews which had fought the Aliens Bill the previous summer, had now re-constituted itself as a local branch of ITO. With the echoes of the Aliens struggle receding into oblivion, Churchill vigorously adopted the Territorialist cause. He now held an additional, invalu­ able trump card. On 13 December, 1905, he had been appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, a singularly useful office from which to further, or block the East Africa scheme. However, this did not prevent Churchill approaching Weizmann too, appreciating that the immigrant Jews, of whom Weizmann was an indigenous leader, were more attracted to Palestine than to East Africa. Like the Territorialists, Weizmann readily grasped the poten­ tial of Churchill’s position at the Colonial Office, albeit in respect of Palestine, rather than East Africa: ‘an influential post at the present in the very department that is our primary concern’.76Yet Weizmann had serious misgivings about intervening in British politics, even if he did pass on the fact of Churchill’s approach to the head of the Zionist Movement, David Wolffsohn, who lived in Cologne. In contrast to the ‘native’ Manchester Jews, Territorialists, Weizmann was yet an alien immigrant, awaiting naturalisation (he had arrived in London during the summer of 1904, and from there moved to Manchester). Weizmann did finally meet Churchill, on the very eve of the elections, on 12 January, 1906. However, Weizmann did not even find their conversation significant enough to report on, and did not intervene on Churchill’s behalf.77 Orthodox Zionism enjoyed limited support among English Jewry at the time, but was more popular among the immigrant Jews from Russia. Most of the latter were aliens, without the vote or any other influence. In contrast, the ITO committees, that of Manchester at least, were composed of well-established, influential Jews. In a letter written to Israel Zangwill on the eve of the election campaign, Dr Joseph Dulberg, secretary of the Manchester ITO, referred to the opportune moment you have now, in view of Mr Winston Churchill’s position in the new Government, of exacting from him, the Secretary of State for the Colonies or the Prime Minister a definite promise of practical

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CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

help for the ITO .... Mr Winston Churchill’s chances of success at the impending general election depend to a very great extent upon the Jewish vote in his would-be constituency. For this reason he has assiduously studied the Jewish interest of this community and at great personal inconvenience once attended Jewish meetings, etc. Mr Churchill fully realises that the

Jewish vote may decide his fate - for if he is defeated at the next election it may mean to him political extinction,78 Zangwill responded quickly, with a letter intended for Dulberg to read out to a public meeting of ITO in Manchester. Dulberg forwarded it to Churchill, with a covering note, informing him that it was to be read out at an ITO meeting. Zangwill referred to Churchill’s well-known sympathy for the Jewish people, manifested by his recent appearance at public meetings to protest against the Russian pogroms. However, Zangwill continued: ‘even had he not spoken those words of sympathy with our people I should still have been assured of his sympathy with our vision of a thriving autono­ mous Jewish state under the protection of the British flag’, because Churchill was ‘possessed of that quality of political imagination which does not call visions unreal because they are not yet solid, which understands the creative force of great ideas’. Although Zangwill averred that ‘sympathy with our project is common to the best Englishmen of every party’, he referred ‘particularly to Mr Winston Churchill because whether he represents Manchester in Parliament or not, he will have such an intimate share in the work of laying down the lines of the new Colony’.79 In a period of great agitation about the alien question, the Jewish community in England had been careful not to invoke a communal, ‘Jewish’ lobby. Zangwill himself invoked the support of all Man­ chester Territorialists, ‘whether Liberals or Conservatives’. But Dulberg, who evidently regarded Churchill as a sure winner, could not resist the opportunity of soliciting such a willing victim. Thus, when Dulberg forwarded Zangwill’s letter to Churchill, he asked for a reply, to be published together with Zangwill’s own letter: I understand from Mr Zangwill that several members of the Cabinet are already in sympathy with the object of the I.T.O. and that he has drafted the scheme which has been deposited at the Colonial Office. Without of course, in any way committing yourself to this or any other scheme I should be very glad to learn that I may tell my fellow members, that you are in sympathy with the project of establishing an autonomous land of refuge under the protection of the British flag, for those Jews who are unable or unwilling to remain in the land in which they at present live, and that you would be prepared to support such a scheme in Parliament.80

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

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Churchill was in fact already on record as supporting the East African scheme. In December, 1904, on the eve of the departure of a Zionist Commission to study the prospects for colonising the area, Churchill had expressed his recognition of ‘the supreme attraction to a scattered and persecuted people of a safe and settled home under the flag of tolerance and freedom’, and his hope that ZangwilPs ‘noble vision would not be allowed to fade’.81 One year later, in December, 1905, Churchill’s ministerial respon­ sibility imposed certain inhibitions on his freedom of expression. But he was nonetheless determined not to disappoint the powerful ITO committee. His reply to Zangwill was not sent until six days later, evidently after consultations at the Colonial Office. But these had also been six valuable days of the electoral campaign lost, so Churchill did not wait for Dulberg to publish the correspondence, but himself sent both ZangwilPs letter and his own reply to the Jewish Press, local and national.82 Dulberg was very nearly censured by some of the Conservative members of Manchester ITO, who held him responsible for the publication. It was only with great difficulty that Dulberg persuaded them that Churchill, not he, had been responsible.83 Churchill’s letter was a model of rhetoric - rich in lofty sentiment, but poor in practical proposals. He explained that the delay in his reply was due to the study he had made of Colonial Office docu­ ments, which had convinced him of ‘the numerous and serious difficulties which present themselves to a scheme of establishing a self-governing Jewish colony in British East Africa, of the differences among the Jews themselves, of the doubtful suitability of the territories in question, of the rapidly extending settlements by British colonists in and about the area, and of the large issues of general state policy which the scheme affects’.84 Churchill warned that while his Minister would approach the subject ‘in a spirit of profound sympathy both for the aspirations of the Jewish race and for their recent terrible sufferings’, he would also have to bear in mind the difficulties already mentioned. At this point, Churchill attempted to disengage himself somewhat from his superior, and expressed his own agreement (most heartily) with ITO’s goals, as defined in Zangwill’s letter to The Times on 12 December, 1905. Referring to that letter, Churchill stated: I recognise the supreme attraction to a scattered and persecuted people of a safe and settled home under the flag of tolerance and freedom. Such a plan

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CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

contains a soul, and enlists in its support energies, enthusiasms, and a driving power which no scheme of individual colonization can ever command .... I do not feel that the noble vision you behold so vividly ought to be allowed to fade, and I will do what I can to preserve and fulfil it. There should be room within the world-wide limits of the British Empire, and within the generous scope of Liberal institutions, for the self-development and peculiar growth of many races, and of many traditions and of many creeds. And from an Imperial point of view it is on the varied excellence of its parts, that there is most surely to be founded the wealth, the happiness and the higher unity of the whole.85

In the meantime, one of the Conservative members of the Manchester ITO had broken Dulberg’s confidence, and had shown a copy of ZangwilPs letter to Churchill to the latter’s Conservative opponent in the elections, Mr William Joynson-Hicks. When Churchill published his letter of 1 January in the Jewish Press over the weekend of 5 -7 January, Joynson-Hicks acted. On Monday, 8 January, he sent an urgent appeal, by telegram, soliciting ZangwilPs support: ‘I am member ITO and I am fighting Winston Churchill for this city will you favour me with letter or telegram to your co­ religionists’.86 But, as we have already noted, Zangwill had no wish to become involved openly in domestic politics, a tactic which might easily boomerang should he back the losing candidate. He had intended his support for Churchill to remain covert, un-publicised. Therefore, upon receipt of the Joynson-Hicks telegram, Zangwill wrote privately to Dulberg: ‘I hesitate to tell people actually to vote for him [Churchill] as that would irritate the opposition candidate as well as our Conservative ITOites, but surely your electors can take a broad hint ?87Joynson-Hicks was treated to a polite, albeit disingen­ uous, rebuff. After expressing his delight to learn that Joynson-Hicks supported ITO’s aims, Zangwill insisted that his own letter to Dulberg had been addressed to ‘a purely Territorial meeting’, and that he, Zangwill, had been most careful not to take any party line, especially since his followers belonged to both parties. However, he reassured Joynson-Hicks: ‘By your kindly attitude towards the ITO you have neutralised any advantage your opponent may have gained by his sympathetic pronouncement, so that this particular issue has been eliminated from the election’.88 But at this point, matters got out of hand. The misguided political instincts of the well-meaning Dulberg led him astray. On 11 January, in order to ensure that Churchill did not take the Territorialists’ vote

TH E JEW ISH PROBLEM

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for granted, Dulberg showed Churchill a copy of ZangwilPs letter to Joynson-Hicks. But Churchill did not regard ZangwilPs letter as innocuous. He was enraged, and accused Zangwill of ‘doubledealing’, and of disingenuous treatment. He rushed off in a huff on his election campaign, allowing Dulberg no chance to explain.89 When the news reached Zangwill, he was aghast at the blunder of his lieutenant, and complained that ‘diplomatic work can only be done by a single agent’. On the very next day, polling day, Zangwill wrote direct to Churchill, to express his gratitude, and the hope that Churchill would ‘get the bulk of the Jewish vote as you must if there is any gratitude in my people’.90 Churchill went on to win the election by a majority of 1,241 votes. Churchill’s camp was the first to admit the contribution of the Jewish vote to his victory.91 Professor Weisbord’s verdict is magnanimous: ‘Churchill’s victory was, of course, not the victory of a political opportunist... a politician’s sincere convictions coincided with that which was politically advantageous’.92Judging by Churchill’s record in office, this must remain a debatable point. In any case, he was never really called upon to give concrete expression to the lofty sentiments voiced in his letter of 1 January, 1906. In June, 1906, Zangwill wrote privately to Churchill, and officially to Lord Elgin, the Colonial Secretary. Zangwill claimed that a new wave of pogroms in Russia had now united the Jewish community in support of the East African scheme.93Zangwill asked for a definite answer whether the government viewed favourably the development of the East African Protectorate as a Jewish colony. The officials were by now definitely against the scheme, and advised informing Zangwill immediately that the territory was no longer available. Whatever his own sentiments may have been, Churchill had to bow to the Colonial Office consensus - nor is there any evidence that he challenged it. Churchill delayed his own private reply until after the official Colonial Office reply. Both letters imparted the same message - the Colonial Office could do nothing ‘unless a definite scheme were presented... adequately supported by persons of wealth and influence in the Jewish world’. Rather than cancel Chamberlain’s offer, the government chose to place the onus on the Territorialists themselves. Churchill wrote in a similar vein: If you were able to come to us with a long list of powerful names guarantee­ ing a great sum of money, I would do my best to further your wishes, though, even then, I cannot command success. But it seems to me that nothing else

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than a definite detailed plan sustained by ample funds and personalities, would have any chance against the obstacles to which I referred.94

This was not quite the end of Churchill’s association with the East African scheme, or with ITO. A visit to East Africa in 1907 convinced him finally that local white settler opposition, and the unsuitability of the territory in question, made the scheme impractical. In January, 1908, the Zionists very nearly persuaded Churchill to adopt their programme. Rabbi Dr M. Gaster, English Zionist leader, suggested that Churchill send a message to the Annual General Conference of the English Zionist Federation, due to be held on 2 February. Gaster also suggested a draft, the key part of which ran as follows: Jerusalem must be the only ultimate goal. When it will be achieved it is vain to prophesy. But that it will some day be achieved, is one of the few certainties of the future.

The original draft remained in the Churchill private archive, and was published first in 1964, by Randolph Churchill, in the Jewish Chronicle. But Randolph did not explain why in fact Churchill deleted this part from the letter he actually sent, nor did he state that the draft was Gaster’s, and not Churchill’s own.95 Churchill’s actual message, to Alderman Jacob Moser, J.P., left the question of the Jews’ ultimate destiny wide open: Whether the wide effort of the Jewish race should be concentrated upon Palestine to the exclusion of all other temporary solutions, or whether in the meantime some other outlet of relief and place of unification should be provided for the bitter need of those who suffer from day to day, are questions on which I could scarcely presume to express an opinion.96

In the Gaster papers, there is an enigmatic apology for the deletion of the desired paragraph, stressing the centrality of Jerusalem. On 31 January, Edward Marsh, Churchill’s secretary, explained to Gaster: ‘To his great disappointment and regret, he [Churchill] finds that he must postpone the expression of the opinions set out in the last part of the draft, touching as they do on delicate subjects, until he returns to a position of greater freedom and less responsibility. He asks you to treat this as strictly personal to yourself’.97 Quite evidently, his position at the Colonial Office debarred Churchill from encouraging plans that did not square with government policy. At the same time, one cannot rule out the possibility that Churchill

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calculated that such a statement might alienate many of his Jewish supporters in North-West Manchester, who still remained Territori­ alists. Like other catch-phrases, that about a Jewish State centred on Jerusalem would be fished out of the archive at the next appropriate occasion - in 1920, when Britain had already promised to help establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.98 (c) The 1908 By-Election On 8 April, 1908, following Asquith’s succession as Prime Minister, Churchill was offered the office of President of the Board of Trade, a promotion which brought with it a seat in the cabinet. According to the constitutional practice of the time, Churchill had to resign his seat in the Commons and stand for re-election. Thus the stage was again set for a test of the Jewish vote in Manchester. This time, notwithstanding the genuine affection in which a great part of Manchester Jewry evidently held him, Churchill was defeated at the polls. His defeat caused great embarrassment to the Jewish com­ munity in general, since groups of influential Manchester Jews had once again openly lobbied for Churchill. If the East African scheme had been rejected finally at the beginning of 1908, the aliens issue remained very much at the centre of Jewish anxieties. The failure of the Liberal administration to repeal the 1905 Aliens Act, or to execute it ‘liberally’, together with further proposed legislation which it was feared would harm Jewish sectional interests, were all held against Churchill at the 1908 election.99 The Liberal administration had in fact been fortunate in the circumstances which obtained during the first years of their adminis­ tration. The anti-alien opposition within Parliament itself had been decimated at the 1906 elections, immigration figures had held steady, and overcrowding in the East End had begun to solve itself. But while the Liberals’ immigration policy ‘largely nullified the effect of the Act upon all but a small minority of those immigrants who came to England, it did little to modify those provisions which deterred many from coming at all’.100 The Jewish community believed that the Liberal administration was not doing all it could to assure fair treatment to new immigrants. In March, 1908, the Jewish Board of Deputies101 petitioned the Home Office for the institution of ‘receiving houses’ at all ports of entry, which might fairly judge the merits of each arrival. Without these,

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the Board claimed, no alien would enjoy the chance of a fair appeal to the Immigration Boards. Home Secretary Gladstone’s reply of 31 March, 1908 had admitted the desirability of such a measure, but claimed that under the current Act he lacked the necessary authority to institute such houses. He also rejected the Board’s request to abolish the naturalisation fee. The Home Secretary’s response was deemed by the Jewish community to be quite disingenuous. They believed that the operation of the current Act was entirely, even too much, left to the Home Secretary’s discretion.102 Gladstone’s reply arrived barely ten days before the Manchester by-election, placing Churchill in a somewhat delicate position before his Jewish electors. A minority in the Manchester Jewish community believed that even if Churchill himself was friendly to the Jews, they should seize this opportunity to punish the Liberals for their narrow-minded operation of the Aliens Act. But the majority not only exonerated Churchill from all responsibility,103 but thought the elections provided an opportunity to mobilise Churchill to the Jewish cause. Manchester Jewry now seized on the aliens issue, much as in 1906 they had pressed Churchill on territorialism. A letter to the Jewish Chronicle made the point quite clearly in its post mortem of the election: It cannot be denied also that the administration of the [Aliens] Act by the Liberal Government was a proper subject upon which the Jewish community of Manchester, having a Cabinet Minister by the throat, properly tried to extract promises of amendment from the Government ....104

In an election speech at Derby Hall, Manchester, on 14 April, Churchill defended the Liberal administration, claiming it had ‘practically smashed the Act’, and ‘rendered nugatory’ its worst aspects. Churchill pleaded that the Liberals would like to wipe it out completely, but it was not in their power to do so while the House of Lords, dominated by the Conservatives, retained its present powers. But Churchill did have some concrete concessions to offer. He announced that he was authorised by the government to state that ‘where it could be shown that receiving houses were necessary those houses should be set up, even if legislation was required to set them up’. The government would be prepared to improve and alter the composition of the Immigration Boards; and Churchill promised to urge a reduction in the naturalisation fees before the new cabinet at the earliest possible opportunity; he further reassured his audience

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that the new Education Act contemplated would provide for the continuation of Jewish schools. Churchill’s speech was punctuated by cheers.105 Churchill’s election-eve promises seemed a clear vindication of the employment of the Jewish lobby. Overnight, the Home Secretary’s cold rejection of Jewish demands had been reversed, apparently under Churchill’s pressure. The Jewish Chronicle editorial remarked caustically: It would appear, however, that the reply from the Home Office to the Board is now superseded. The chance of an electoral reverse has had an effect on the Home Office which the Board’s memorial, although so influentially signed, could not accomplish, we make no complaint of this. These are democratic days and votes could not be ignored, nor as a consequence could the Jewish demand. Hence the PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE has drawn a blue pencil through the HOME OFFICE reply and has conceded all the Board of Deputies has been asking for, not alone on the working of the Aliens Act, but in the question of naturalisation, on Sunday closing, and on the question of education.106

The Government’s volte face was made quite transparently with the Manchester by-election in mind. In 1908, Churchill depended on the Jewish vote even more than he had done in 1906, when his electoral success had been due, to a large degree, to Jewish support. Since 1906, the Liberals had lost five by-elections to the Con­ servatives and ‘Churchill’s majority, in a marginal constituency, was thus vulnerable in any case’.107Churchill in fact lost the election, and there was talk of a ‘Gentile backlash’.108 Some Jews undoubtedly punished Churchill for his record in office. There was a great deal of remorse within the Jewish community, especially since a deputation of powerful Manchester Jews had on their own initiative campaigned openly for Churchill. This had stirred anti-semitic sentiment in any case never far from the surface in the opposite camp. Fears of repercussions on the Jews’ status in England are well expressed in the following extract from a letter received by the Jewish Chronicle: The recent by-election in Manchester will be for ever memorable in the history of the Jews of this country on account of the determined and organised attempt on the part of certain members of the community to coerce Jewish voters to vote for Mr Churchill. A proceeding more calculated to nourish and develop a latent anti-Semitism which may exist in the country it is impossible to imagine. The foolishness and futility of the entire proceed­ ing have been shown by the result, and the harm done to the Jewish cause

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in this country have been made clear by the references in the Press to the ‘semi­ alien’ voters who had been led to play so important a role in the contest.109

The Jewish Chronicle rejected what it termed this ‘ghetto mental­ ity’, which would inhibit the Jews from fairly expressing their parti­ cular interests, just like any other interest group.110Yet the Jews were not simply another interest group, but a particularly vulnerable com­ munity, dependent in many respects upon the generosity of their hosts. Even worse, it soon appeared doubtful whether the Liberals would in fact implement Churchill’s election promises - whether due to his defeat, or due to a lack of sincerity in the first place, it was not clear. When on 4 May, 1908, the Home Secretary was asked about the implementation of Churchill’s pledges regarding the aliens, Gladstone replied that he was waiting for suggestions and information. The Jewish Chronicle commented: There is a hesitation or deliberation in these replies which is in curious contrast with the almost headlong alacrity displayed at Manchester .... We should be sorry to think that the Manchester promises were mere votecatching manoeuvres intended to save an unsafe seat. Nor would we do His Majesty’s ministers the injustice of supposing that, with the defeat of Mr Churchill, his pledges are to be relegated to oblivion ....m

When Gladstone was asked about Churchill’s pledge to secure a reduction in the naturalisation fee, he had denied any knowledge of such a pledge. The Liberal Administration did begin the establishment of receiv­ ing houses some eighteen months later, towards the end of 1909. The Port of London was included in May, 1910. But the natural­ isation fee was not reduced.112 It is almost impossible to assess the effect of the 1908 by-election on Churchill himself. On 9 May, he was returned to Parliament for the Scottish seat of Dundee, a constituency with no significant Jewish community. Yet we may presume that the wealth and influence of the Jewish community in England had left an indelible impression upon him. Even if the Jews themselves took care henceforth not to commit the community to specific causes or candidates, Churchill himself undoubtedly remembered Manchester. When he again switched parties, and constituency, in 1924, he replied with alacrity to an enquiry about his future stand on Jewish and Zionist issues. He reassured his correspondent that he would intervene in cases where ‘harshness or unfairness’ had been meted out to aliens, and

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that he adhered ‘most decidedly’ to the Balfour Declaration, regard­ less of the fact that he had been attacked by ‘the champions of the Arabs for adhering to these opinions’. Churchill sent his letter by special messenger, and went so far as to telephone to ensure that his letter had been received, and was ‘satisfactory’.113 Yet Churchill was not quite free of the bigotry towards the foreigner which was one of the hallmarks of the English upper classes. Churchill’s record on the aliens question, once freed of the exigencies imposed by a predominantly Jewish constituency, is open to a considerable degree of scepticism. When he succeeded Herbert Gladstone as Home Secretary in February, 1910, Churchill insisted that his opinion of the aliens legislation had not changed, and expressed no regrets for his opposition to the first Bill. However, in June, 1910, he ‘signified final acceptance of the coming of age of its successor when he spoke benevolently of “another and stronger infant, which has now grown to manhood, and taken its place in the legislative and administrative machinery of the country’”. A recently-published study of the Jewish vote in British politics has made the following assessment of Churchill’s record on anti­ alien legislation: In July, 1910, Churchill, no longer dependent on Jewish votes, spoke in glowing terms of the 1905 legislation which, he declared with an ominous air of finality, had ‘taken its place in the legislative and administrative machinery of the country’.114

On 3 January, 1911, there occurred the Sidney Street siege of a gang of Lett anarchists. This incident, in which the Home Secretary, Churchill, played a prominent role on the scene, together with a series of other crimes in London’s East End, brought English xeno­ phobia to a peak. It was asserted that criminality was an ethnic attribute of aliens, and there was a public outcry against the 1905 Act which, it was claimed, had proved inadequate ‘in protecting Britain against undermining criminal influences’.115 It is important to dwell upon the public hysteria against criminal aliens, since such widespread feeling could not be ignored by the politicians, especially not by the Home Secretary. There might also be a temptation, as we shall suggest in the next section, for the politician to exploit popular prejudice. Two days after the Sidney Street siege, the following ribald letter appeared in The Times, written by the ex-Member of Parliament for the South-West division of Bethnal Green:

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It was Mr Winston Churchill who took the leading part in opposing the passing of this Act [the 1905 Aliens Act]. Now, as Home Secretary, we read of the keen interest he is taking in the thrilling events of the last few days, and snapshot photographs appear in the illustrated journals showing him peeping round the corner at the efforts of the police and military to quell a disturbance of his own and his party’s making. Could anything be more ludicrous? Here we are, emigrating our best brain and muscle [sic] by the thousands and filling their places with the off-scouring of foreign nations, to undersell our own workers in the labour market.116

Even after making due allowance for the tendency of frustrated politicians to score political points by appealing to popular preju­ dice, the letter, which significantly The Times saw fit to print, did represent a wide cross-section of public opinion. It was a common belief, expressed also by the Editor of The Times, that Churchill’s predecessor, now Lord Gladstone, was the chief culprit for the current situation, since ‘He made it publicly known that any alien immigrant claiming to be a political refugee was to have the benefit of the doubt, which meant an absolute right to land, as it is obviously impossible to prove that a man is not a political refugee’.117 As during the agitation over the first Aliens Bills, from 1904 to 1905, so in 1911 too the public outcry against ‘Alien’ criminality frequently lapsed into open anti-semitism. The Times printed a leading article entitled ‘The New Ghetto’, on 16 March 1911, out­ lining in socio-demographic terms the nature of the problem created by the predominantly Jewish alien immigration: We are face to face with a new ghetto .... It has absorbed the Mint, Whitechapel, and Stepney; it stretches out to Shoreditch, to Hackney and to Stratford, and even across the river. In many streets in these districts four out of six names over the shops are Polish, German or Russian, and the remainder are often Anglicized forms of foreign names ... The overwhelming majority of the alien newcomers are Jewish, and from one-half to two-thirds of them are from Russia .... It [alien immigration] enlists the wealth, the religious zeal, and the business skill of the AngloJewish community in raising them .... But the Judaism of the people also adds to the problem. They are knit together by a common speech of varying dialects - Yiddish - and by a common racialism. The mutual helpfulness of the sons of Israel tends to make the East-End immigrants an exclusive caste. The alien Jews give employment to people of their own faith ... they live together, they gradually oust the Englishman, be he shopowner, fellowworkman, or business competitor .... A surprisingly large proportion of them never learn more than, at the most, a smattering of English. Many do not even learn that much. They

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work for Yiddish employers, read Yiddish newspapers, buy in Yiddish shops and enjoy themselves in Yiddish clubs and theatres. Public notices are posted in Yiddish for them ... there are even, quite rightly, policemen specially taught Yiddish to help them in trouble.

The Times commented that excessive attention had been drawn over the previous few months to the East End anarchists, who in fact were but an insignificant minority. A much more serious problem, in its opinion, was the fact that ‘a large part of the organ­ ized “white slave trade” is in the hands of Russian and Austrian Jews’.118 On 17 April, 1911, Churchill introduced a Bill to strengthen the law against immigrant alien criminals. The Bill concentrated more on the closer supervision of aliens already in the country than on further restrictions to prevent their entry. To some extent, although Churchill publicly deplored the anti-semitic prejudice which appeared in the public debate, his Bill did pay lip-service to that prejudice. In commenting on the new Bill, The Times quoted statistics to prove that in fact, since 1905, whereas the total volume of crime in England had increased steadily, the proportion of alien criminals had decreased inversely, from 2.22 per cent to under one per cent.119 Churchill himself admitted to the cabinet that his Bill contained ‘two naughty principles’ it made a deliberate differentiation between aliens and ordinary citizens and in certain circumstances, it permitted the deportation of an alien before he had even committed an offence. However, both Churchill’s attempts to legislate his new measures into law - each time by different parliamentary procedures - failed due to lack of time.120 3. THE ‘SHELL DEBATE’, JUNE, 1914

In June, 1914, Churchill, by now First Lord of the Admiralty, was involved in a rather unsavoury debate in the House of Commons, one which reflected little credit on him. Churchill’s personal insinu­ ations against a fellow M.R, a Jew, were considered on both sides of the House to be in singularly bad taste. The episode provided one more display of Churchill’s talent for antagonising not only political Opponents, but fellow-travellers too. The occasion of the Commons debate was the Government’s announcement, in May, 1914, that it was to buy 51 per cent of the shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) for a sum of

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£2,200,000. The purchase has frequently been termed ‘a typical Churchillian master-stroke, composed of breadth of vision and force of personality’. Research into the archives has shown that this is only partially true.121The Government’s purchase was the end-product of nearly two years’ protracted negotiations, at the outset of which the Admiralty itself rejected the approaches of APOC. Churchill’s volte face , and his decision to purchase a majority of the company’s shares, in opposition to the two other Departments concerned (the Foreign and India Office), left him in a politically vulnerable position, one from which he chose to extract himself by resort to prejudice. Churchill has deservedly been given the credit for bringing the British Fleet to a state of battle-readiness by World War One. One of the major steps in this process was the start of the conversion of the Fleet from coal-burning to oil-burning ships. But the change to oil had been determined long before Churchill arrived at the Admiralty, and an ‘Admiralty Oil Committee of 1904 had laid down the principles on which supply policy should be based’.122 The Government’s, and Churchill’s direct interest in oil supplies was spurred in August, 1912, by news that a strong rival to the D’Arcy group123 was seeking the Mesopotamian oil concession. The rival was the Turkish Petroleum Company, a combine which included Royal Dutch-Shell interests. The Managing-Director of APOC, Charles Greenway, approached the Admiralty in a state of great anxiety. Fearing that the Government might support his rivals, Greenway argued that if Dutch-Shell got the Mesopotamian con­ cessions, they would start off a price war in the Middle East market, thus force APOC to merge, and then force the price of oil up in a spiral. Churchill’s primary concern was to guarantee the Navy a secure, cheap source of long-term oil supplies. But Greenway clothed his company’s commercial interests in patriotic concern, arguing that ‘If the Anglo-Persian was in danger so also ... was the Royal Navy and, indeed, the British Empire itself’. He argued that APOC control of both the Persian and Mesopotamian oil concessions would be of immense benefit to the British Navy, ‘providing cheap oil from a purely British concern, suitably located to support imperial interests in an area vital for the Indian Empire’. On the other hand, ‘To allow for interests, ipso facto unreliable in time of national stress, to become established next door to the young Persian oil industry, could decisively weaken British naval supremacy’.124

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APOC’s argument, asserts Dr Jack, was ‘involved and exagger­ ated’, even if it did contain some validity. It ‘rested on the debatable contention that Shell was a foreign and not a British company’. Royal Dutch-Shell was indeed 60 per cent Dutch and 40 per cent British-owned. But the company was registered and domiciled in London, had a majority of British directors, and considered itself British.125 In addition, circumstance would have it that the owner of the British part of the Dutch-Shell combine was Sir Marcus Samuel, a Jew. Samuel was a notoriously controversial public figure, whose outspokenness gave rise to anti-semitic comment. Shell, and Sir Marcus himself, had become the butt of popular prejudice in January, 1913, during a strike of taxi-drivers. The strike was occasioned by yet another rise in fuel prices (between January, 1911, and June, 1913 prices doubled, from 37s.6d. to 77s.6d. a ton) and became known popularly as ‘the Marcus Samuel strike’. Of course Shell was not the only supplier of fuel, but it was the most well-known. Samuel himself was not exactly an expert in public relations, and his frequently-repeated comment that ‘the price of an article is exactly what it will fetch’ did little to endear him to those influential classes deprived of their taxi-cabs, or private motor-car. The motoring associations campaigned against Shell, there were several questions asked in the Commons, and some virulently anti-semitic articles in the Press.126 One of the most extreme attacks on Sir Marcus himself appeared in The Sporting Times which, as Chaim Bermant has put it, wrote ‘in one of its less sporting moments’: Sir Marcus Samuel is a typical Jew. He is a pronounced Jew. You could never take him for anything else. He is stout, swarthy, black-haired, blackmoustached, thick-nosed, thick-lipped, bulge-eyed - in short, he fulfills every expectation that one habitually forms of the prosperous Jew ....127

Churchill was irritated by and suspicious of Sir Marcus’s repeated warnings and predictions of continuing price rises. Evidently believing these to be self-fulfilling prophecies, Churchill denounced the increases as ‘evidence of secret price-rigging by the great oil interests’. But Churchill had got his economics wrong - the great combines were not in cartels to push prices up, rather in bitter competition.128 Given the extent of popular prejudices against Samuel, it was unfortunate that Churchill took a personal dislike to him too. When later he tried to justify the APOC deal by denigrating

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Shell, and Samuel personally, he was, at the very least, inviting the accusation that he was demagogically exploiting anti-semitic preju­ dice - and he was indeed accused of such by his fellow MPs. This is not to infer, categorically not, that Churchill was tarred with the brush of anti-semitism. But nor does it mean that Churchill was entirely above some of the popular prejudices of the day. It is quite clear that he did entertain exotic views about Jewish power, political influence, and prodigious wealth. Perhaps this was due to his father’s intimacy with the first Baron Rothschild, Nathaniel Mayer. Lord Randolph had been intimate with, and eventually almost entirely dependent upon, Rothschild. Lord Randolph had entrusted him with Cabinet secrets, had pressed the Baron’s interests in Persia, India, and Burma. The Baron was, to the discomfit of many, Lord Randolph’s closest adviser at the Treasury, and when Lord Randolph died, he owed the then prodigious sum of £66,000 to Rothschild’s bank.129 Winston’s son, Randolph, in writing the early parts of his father’s biography, has commented: ‘The Rothschildren achieved in many people’s eyes the status of minor royalty.’ Winston himself was a frequent guest at Tring, the Rothschild country seat. In 1892, when Winston failed to do as well as expected in his Sandhurst entrance exams, his father thought of asking the Baron to help Winston secure a place in business; again, in 1897, when Winston sought an appoint­ ment as a special war correspondent to report on the Graeco-Turk war, it was to the all-powerful Rothschild, ‘who knew everyone’, that Winston asked his mother to apply.130 It was perhaps Churchill’s familiarity with, and his ability to be at ease with, wealthy Jews, combined, it might be suggested, with unconscious resentment at needing their help all too often, that prompted his injudicious remarks on occasion. Undoubtedly, his proximity to the Rothschilds bequeathed him a distorted stereotype of the all-powerful, string-pulling Jew. One last example, taken from a letter of Winston’s wife, Clemmie, might also reflect on Winston’s own narrow views. The letter was written in 1931, on board the Europa, a liner carrying Clemmie to the United States. Her first meeting with American Jews apparently provided her with a rude shock: I have now had time to examine my fellow passengers - they are nearly all German American Jews of the most porcine description like Hoggenheimer who you remember remarked - ‘I’m not rude, Pm rich’. I now understand

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American anti-Semitic prejudice - I have never seen Jews like this in England.131

We have no record of Winston’s reply, but it is to be doubted that in such a close-knit marriage as theirs Clemmie would have wittingly antagonised her husband with remarks calculated to dismay him. To return to the Shell debate, there is a nice irony in Churchill’s personal hostility towards Marcus Samuel, combined as it was with his admiration for the latter’s Dutch partner, Henri Deterding. The latter was ‘a foreigner, and if anything the uncompromising business­ man’, whereas Samuel was ‘British (but Jewish) and far more pre­ pared to compromise’.132 Churchill was too much of a demagogue to forego the applause to be had from attacking someone who was not only the head of a vast combine but a Jew, and an unpopular Jew at that.133

On 11 June,1912, Churchill appointed Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher to chair a Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines. Fisher called in both Samuel and Deterding to give evidence. They advised the Admiralty to conclude long-term contracts for the supply of oil, and to con­ struct a large number of storage tanks at home for emergencies.134 Fisher accepted their recommendations, and pressed Churchill repeatedly, in vain, to negotiate contracts with Dutch-Shell. Samuel and Deterding had tried to demonstrate the political reliability of their Group and the injustice of Admiralty prejudice against them. However, despite Fisher’s personal warmth to Shell, the Commis­ sion’s conclusions rested on its ‘declared apprehension of and clear hostility to what it saw as the monopolistic proclivities of a foreign combine’. Further, none of Shell’s production areas was in Britishoccupied territory, ‘or could be subjected to considerable British influence, while many of them were vulnerable to enemy attack’.135 To cover the increased reserves recommended by the Royal Com­ mission, Churchill proposed the immediate purchase of more oil, and a series of forward contracts for future supplies. The APOC deal, involving a 20-year contract to supply oil at 30s a ton, depended on the guaranteed purchase of huge amounts by the Government of India, for use by its railways. However, the India Office refused to see ‘any imperial significance either in Shell’s obtaining the Mesopotam­ ian oil concession or in its taking over the Anglo-Persian’. When the India Office refused the required guarantee, a new idea emerged, funding via a government purchase of a majority holding in APOC, with special privileges.136

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Churchill, who had rejected APOC’s ‘imperial’ arguments in December, 1912, accepted them six months later, ‘after renewed pressure from Fisher and the findings of his Royal Commission and of the Admiralty War Staff, and against the background of constant oil price rises’.137 But Churchill’s decision placed him in a vulnerable political position. He had used unscrupulous methods, virtually threatening the Indian Government in his attempt to extract a financial guarantee. The India Office received no prior notice of the Admiralty decision to buy into APOC, and ‘were astounded at the method the Admiralty chose to give the Company financial assistance’.138 The decision to buy the APOC shares, taken in mid-1913, was not made public at the time. In a Commons debate, on 17 July, 1913, no one paid much attention to Churchill’s statement that ‘the Admiralty should become the independent owner of its own supplies of liquid fuel’, partly by buying forward (thereby avoiding the annual need to justify the naval estimates before Parliament annually), and partly because, he claimed, ‘we must become the owners, or at any rate, the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the supply of natural oil which we require’. He also dropped the first hints of his forthcoming attack against Shell. He stated that the open market had become an ‘open mockery’, and government purchase of its own ‘oilfields would make it’ independent of the oil ring and oil kings’.139 On 22 May, 1914, the government announced the purchase of a majority shareholding in APOC, for the sum of £2,200,000. The Treasury was to appoint two government directors to the Board.140 Churchill, having gone out on a limb without the India Office, the Department most closely involved geographically, must have been disturbed by the critical reactions in the Press, privately and abroad. The main concern of the domestic Press was that a large sum of public money was being invested in ‘a remote and turbulent area, difficult to protect in peace as well as in war, and likely to produce unfortunate political repercussions with Russia’ (as it indeed did). Some vested interests feared the repercussions on the domestic coal industry, while others regarded it simply as an ill-conceived financial gamble.141 The Commons debate on 17 June, 1914, revealed a besieged First Lord, whose defence of the deal aroused the wrath of even those who voted for it. Churchill side-stepped the arguments regarding the oil-fields’ strategic vulnerability. He insisted instead that he did not

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intend to rely on the Persian fields, which would supply only half the Navy’s needs. He turned the attack against Sir Marcus Samuel, who had recommended larger storage capacity at home: ‘There has never been, and there never will be, any shortage of oil for the British Navy in peace or war, provided you do not mind how much you pay for it, and provided you retain the power to protect it in transit over the high seas’.142 Churchill predicted, wrongly as it turned out, that the point of greatest vulnerability for Britain would occur at the beginning of the war, especially if it began by surprise. Typically, Churchill’s vision of British supremacy at sea belonged to the past, and took little account of new developments, such as the submarine and surface-raider which would prey on British shipping. But Churchill claimed that the major problem was not of supply during a war, but of prices in peace-time. He referred to ‘a long, steady squeeze by the oil trusts all over the world’. He focused his attack on Shell, whence, he asserted, had originated all the criticism of the government’s purchase. After referring to Shell’s monopolistic tendencies, and suggesting that if the Commons did not approve the government’s plan then Shell itself would buy up the Persian oil, Churchill stated facetiously: We have no quarrel with the ‘Shell’. We have always found them courteous, considerate, ready to oblige, anxious to serve the Admiralty, and to promote the interests of the British Navy and the British Empire - at a price. The only difficulty has been the price.143

Churchill concluded by reassuring the House that he would encourage the development of oil-fields within the Empire, as the heads of Shell desired, but, he stated, ‘there will be a difference - I cannot conceal it - we shall not run any risk of getting into the hands of these very good people’.144 Several members of the House reproved Churchill for his personal attacks on Shell, and on the absent Marcus Samuel. Typical was the comment of George Lloyd who opened the debate: I must say that many of us think, with due respect, that the personal imputation with regard to the Hon Members’ interests in oil companies comes very badly indeed from the other side.145

Lord Charles Beresford, who upbraided Churchill for his ‘criminal neglect of the Admiralty in building large numbers of vessels without having anything in the nature of a reserve of oil for them’, also

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deplored Churchill’s language, and accused him of having always sought any opportunity of annoying everybody on either side of the House.146 But the most outspoken attack on Churchill was made by Mr Watson Rutherford, who in fact voted for the purchase. He claimed he had initially been at a loss to comprehend Churchill’s attack on Shell and Samuel. Then he had deduced that Churchill, realising he would have great difficulty in mustering support for the Bill, had decided that ‘the best course of action to get them to support it was to raise the question of monopoly and to do a little Jew-baiting. In order to get Labour Members to support him, he spoke on the same lines’. Rutherford suggested that the reason for the sharp rise in oil prices was simply the phenomenal rise in demand, and not ‘because some evilly-disposed gentlemen of the Hebrew persuasion had put their heads together’.147 Churchill’s Bill in fact passed by 254 votes against 18. It was quite obvious that Churchill had misjudged his opposition, not to mention the standard of debate acceptable in the House. Sir G. Parker, who abstained, dismissed Churchill’s line of argument, and the personal sentiment he had introduced: One conclusion to which I have come, is that the First Lord’s charge that private consumers and the Government were being squeezed by trusts, has been exploded. I think that in an otherwise broadminded speech, the First Lord made a very serious mistake in allowing personal feeling to permit him to make the charges, which he made this afternoon, against men who were not here to defend themselves.148

During the debate, Churchill had been challenged several times to substantiate his charges against Shell by revealing the prices the Admiralty had paid for its oil. Churchill declined, on grounds of security. Sir Marcus Samuel took the opportunity of defending his company, and himself, at the Annual General Meeting of the com­ pany held soon after. If the Shell and Standard Oil companies con­ stituted a trust which held the government in its grip, then why, asked Sir Marcus, hadn’t the Admiralty bought a single ton of oil from Shell between 1907 and 1911? Why, Samuel continued, was it that in 1912 Shell had supplied the Admiralty with one-seventh of its oil (allegedly at a loss to Shell itself), and in 1913, less than one-eighth? The remainder had been supplied to the Admiralty by nine other companies, not one of which was in any way connected with Shell.149 Inevitably, Marcus Samuel’s biographer took a dim view of the episode:

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It was perhaps characteristic of Churchill in his early middle-age, the weakness of a very great man... that he could not see the worth of somebody like Marcus behind the bombast and the Semitic face; that he could harbour an intense dislike for him and would not hesitate to use it, however unjustly and unwisely, pandering to the Press and public opinion, for political purposes. He was soon, only too tragically soon, to be proved totally wrong but, perhaps characteristically again, he never admitted it.150

What was the verdict of the historian Marian Jack, presumably of a more detached persuasion? True, she concludes, the Navy obtained a secure, long-term source of oil at bargain prices. However, the same bargain prices could possibly have been obtained on a system of annual, advanced payments, without the risky investment in the company’s shares. But there is also a larger, imponderable question: ‘whether ownership of this undertaking forced the British government to intervene militarily to protect the installations and their output when otherwise they might have been left alone’.151 As for Churchill’s behaviour, Dr Jack is hardly less severe than Marcus Samuel’s biographer: Churchill also demonstrated a most unnecessary and unfair prejudice towards the Anglo-Persian’s commercial rival, Shell, based largely, it has been seen, on the arguments put forward by the Anglo-Persian itself... even more ludicrous was the Admiralty’s belief in the contention that Shell was unpatriotic and interested only in financially bleeding the government. In any case, the Admiralty intended and continued to purchase Shell’s oil.152

The episode may be counted among Churchill’s numerous political blunders. It was apparently his only descent to publicly expressed prejudices of this kind, based on what he mistook for the alternative danger lurking for Britain’s oil supplies, ‘the formation of a world-wide cartel’.153 Anti-semitism undoubtedly generated popular appeal and, as we shall see below, even enjoyed limited support in the Commons. But the general consensus in the House deplored cheap demagoguery, and, as Colin Holmes has observed, ‘anti-semitism was never a vehicle for political success in British society and those who drew from European experience and attempted to inject it into British political life were to be frustrated and disappointed by the results’.154 4. ZIONISM AND BOLSHEVISM, 1920

Anti-semitism has a long history in England. Many politicians have been tempted to ride its popular appeal, and very few have managed

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to stay clear of ‘the Jewish Problem’. The Protocols o f the Elders o f Zion, a document purporting to prove the existence of an inter­ national Jewish conspiratorial network, was printed in 1918, and gained wide currency. The Times, which initially had accepted the document as authentic, exposed it as a forgery in 1921. However, the myth of the Jews’ international network of influential con­ nections persisted. Ironically, similar ideas about Jewish influence in the United States and in revolutionary Russia had in 1917 prompted the British Government to issue the Balfour Declaration. The proclivity to see the Jews’ hand in everything was greater after the war, when the Jews provided a ready butt for the frustrations and anxieties arising from Britain’s post-war problems: ‘when, in short, Britain’s pre-war society and her significance as a world power, were under threat and challenge, when explanations were being sought for this state of affairs and when what could be considered as rival world influences to Britain and her Empire were the subject of hostile scrutiny’.155 The Jews had played prominent roles in the Bolshevik revolution and in communist experiments elsewhere. They figured in senior positions in certain delegations to the Versailles Peace conference and, together with their prominence in journalism and finance, gave some credence to the exaggerated claims and prophecies of the Protocols.156 English statesmen too subscribed to many of the claims made in the Protocols, even if that particular document was proved to be a fabrication. Thus in 1923, the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Devonshire, when arguing for retention by Britain of Palestine, told an Imperial Conference: There is no more subtle influence working in the world, I hope for the good, than the influence of that international people [i.e. the Jews], full of brains and character, and dominating much bigger nations in many parts of the world through the filtration of their ideas and policies.157

In England, the question of Jewish influence at the highest levels had tarnished the reputation of the Liberal Administration before the war. The alleged benefits granted by the Prime Minister to the Samuel family had been the subject of scathing public comment, in what became known as ‘the Marconi scandal’.158 In December, 1912, the National Review reported the following comments by Major Glyn (Conservative) at a public meeting: What a party, which has two members of the family in the Government,

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another brother who is a member of Parliament and another who is a member of the House of Peers and all of them are taking money out of Indian finance. The Under-Secretary of State for India is a Mr Samuel;159 the Postmaster-General is a Mr Samuel, then there is Lord Swaythling, a pretty name for one who is a Samuel - the Infant Samuel - and also a Sir Something Samuel, all of whom were created by the Radical Party. All the silver for India is financed by the House of Samuel.160

Lloyd George and his colleagues had evidently been chastened by the pre-war ‘scandals’. When the Prime Minister asked Churchill in 1918 about changes in the cabinet, in particular about the return of Herbert Samuel to the Home Office, Churchill replied: ... there is a point about the Jews which occurs to me - you must not have too many of them. Montagu represents the Indian policy of the Government and therefore counts for more than a mere administrator. After Peace is settled Balfour will probably retire and surely then Rufus [Isaacs] should be his successor at the Foreign Office. Indeed I should like to see him join the Government now as Lord Privy Seal - a close and old friend at your side. The advent of the Infant Samuel to the Home Office should be considered in the light of the two above-mentioned facts. Three Jews among only seven Liberal cabinet ministers might I fear give rise to comment.161

Churchill was evidently concerned not to lay the new cabinet open to accusations similar to those made in 1912. However, an ungener­ ous critic might perceive a tinge of cynicism in Churchill’s comments about the Samuels. During the war, the British government had committed itself to the Jews in another sense, when in November, 1917 it had issued the Balfour Declaration, promising government support for the establishment of a ‘Jewish National Home’ in Palestine. As we shall see, the Declaration would receive many post hoc explanations and ‘justifications’. However, the motives of its architects in 1917 seem to have been clear, even if not publicised. The year 1917 would be the worst year of the war for the Allies, due mainly to the attrition of the German submarine campaign. At the beginning of the year, the United States had yet to join the conflict (it did so in April), and the first Russian revolution threatened to erode the Eastern Front, leaving the Germans free to concentrate against the Western. Lloyd George, Prime Minister since December, 1916, an ‘Easterner’, determined on a further attempt to break the Central Powers by an attack in the East - this time, not another expedition against the Dardanelles, but the conquest of Ottoman Syria. But the Lloyd George government determined to reap the full

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rewards of any military conquests in the East, and specifically, to overturn that part of the Sykes-Picot partition agreement which had provided for an international administration for Palestine. Lloyd George and his colleagues decided that neither the Turks, nor the French for that matter, should be allowed within striking distance of the Suez Canal. To that end, Palestine was to become a strategic buffer, in British hands, protecting British interests. Amazingly, the key to all these military and strategical problems lay with the Jews! As we have already noted, the Gentile Zionist idea of a Jewish Return to the Holy Land appealed to both religious and imperial sentiment in England. In 1917, Britain’s imperial needs in the Middle East might be served by a British Protectorate over a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. In addition, once convinced that the Zionists enjoyed universal support among international Jewry, the government was persuaded that a declaration favouring a Jewish return to Palestine would galvanise the Jews, especially those thought to be influential in the United States, and in the revolutionary movement in Russia, to both bring the Americans into the war, and keep the Russians fighting along the Eastern Front. Also, President Wilson’s crusade in the cause of self-determination would be satisfied - the British would conquer Palestine not in the cause of old-fashioned imperial colonialism but in that of returning the People of the Bible to the Land of the Bible. Lastly, the Zionists would enable the British to claim sole proprietorship of Palestine, thus reneging elegantly on the Sykes-Picot arrangement of less than one year before. The British, not the Zionists, took the initiative in negotiating the Declaration, and the Zionists, not the British, pleaded the cause of an exclusively British Protectorate, in Paris.162 In 1917, wartime military desiderata and future imperial designs combined with long-standing British anxiety about the domestic Jewish Problem. Zionism, personified in the Balfour Declaration, was to be the all-embracing panacea. This combination of interests is reflected perfectly in a contemporary letter written by Leo Amery, then a member of the War Cabinet secretariat, who played a key role in composing the final draft of the Declaration, to Sir Edward Carson, a member of the War Cabinet. Amery sought to reassure the Jewish Establishment in England (in particular Sir Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India from July, 1917) that the proposed Declaration would not affect adversely their rights as British citizens:

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... once there is a national home for the Jewish persecuted majority, the English Jews will no longer have anything to trouble about. On the other hand an Anti-Semitism which is based, partly on the fear of being swamped by hordes of undesirable aliens from Russia, etc., and partly by an instinctive suspicion against a community which has so many international ramifi­ cations, will be much diminished when the hordes in question have got another outlet, and when the motive for internationalism among the Jews is diminished. The other point, and the one which is most important to my mind, is that the Jews alone can build up a strong civilisation in Palestine which could help that country to hold its own against German-Turkish oppression; and by enlisting their interest on our side in this country, we will gain a very great deal. It would be a fatal thing if, after the War, the interest of the Jews throughout the world were enlisted on the side of the Germans, and they looked to Berlin as their spiritual home.163

Popular Zionist folklore has it that the Balfour Declaration was a political reward given to the Zionist leader, Dr Chaim Weizmann, by Prime Minister Lloyd George, in return for the former’s contriution to the British war effort. It seems that Lloyd George himself began this particular myth, when he published his memoirs in the 1930s. However, the story was soon refuted by Dr Weizmann himself, who published his own memoirs in 1949: ‘I almost wish it had been as simple as that, and that I had never known the heart­ breaks, the drudgery and the uncertainties which preceded the Declaration. But history does not deal in Aladdin’s lamps.164 But Weizmann’s war work has a further dimension, more specifi­ cally germane to this study. For it brought Weizmann into contact once more, albeit most briefly, with Winston Churchill. In April, 1915, Weizmann was summoned to the Admiralty, where Sir Frederick Nathan, head of the powder department, explained to him the Navy’s critical shortage of acetone, a solvent used in the pro­ duction of cordite. Unless this shortage could be made good, signifi­ cant changes would need to be made to the Navy’s guns. Weizmann had developed a quicker, more economical method of producing acetone, one which would make a significant contribution to the British war effort. Shortly after the meeting with Nathan, Weizmann was interviewed by Churchill himself, then the First Lord of the Admiralty. Weizmann has left the following account: Mr Churchill, then a much younger man, was brisk, fascinating, charming and energetic. Almost his first words were: ‘Well, Dr Weizmann, we need thirty thousand tons of acetone. Can you make it?’ I was so terrified by this lordly request that I almost turned tail . . . 165

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It seems that either Churchill himself, or Weizmann in the telling, was guilty of some exaggeration. For after some experiments during the rest of 1915, the Admiralty set up a plant designed to produce some 2,000 tons of acetone per year. In view of his new work for the government, Weizmann moved down to London from Manchester. His work brought him into contact with three of the most important ministers of the time Churchill, Balfour, and Lloyd George. One may safely presume that Weizmann took the opportunity to exercise the powers of his magnetic personality in the cause of Zionism. Once again, as back in 1906, Weizmann seems to have had little effect on Churchill, who very soon was forced to resign his position at the Admiralty, in May, 1915. Churchill’s official biography does not mention the April, 1915 interview with Weizmann, and neither is there any record apparently in the Churchill archives.166 However, from the end of May, 1915, Weizmann had a new employer at the Admiralty - none other than Arthur Balfour; and from September, 1915, via an introduction to the Minister for Munitions, David Lloyd George, Weizmann was appointed Chemical Adviser to that Department. Leonard Stein has estimated that between 1915 and 1916, Weizmann had at least seven interviews with Lloyd George and, interestingly, just two with Balfour.167 We may therefore surmise that, in contrast to his Ministerial colleagues, Churchill ‘escaped’ the charms of Weizmann and, unlike Balfour in 1906, and Lloyd George in 1916, he did not succumb to the messianic appeal of Zionism. Nor did he apparently ever sub­ scribe to the ‘strategic’ arguments in justification of the Balfour Declaration. He was not in the War Cabinet at the time, and perhaps never understood their origin. In the coalition Cabinet, he would on several occasions suggest that Britain evacuate Palestine. Churchill’s preoccupation with Zionism after the war had quite different origins. He shared the widely-held belief that the Jews had instigated and led the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The British Press ran frequent articles drawing attention to the Jews’ prominent role, and during 1919, there was a long correspondence in the columns of The Times over the nature of the Jews’ contribution to the Bolshevik movement. Robert Wilton, Petrograd correspondent of The Times, sympathised with the Tsar, and from early on had accused the Jews of working in the German interest.168 Such a regular diet, taken daily with breakfast, could not have failed to influence Churchill.

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The ‘logic’ behind these assertions was explained succinctly in a short, but influential book published by Lord Eustace Percy (Balfour’s Private Secretary) in 1919, entitled The Responsibilities o f the League. In a short passage on Zionism and the Jews, Percy explained that since the Jew, alone among the nations, did not enjoy territorial sovereignty, ‘he must either pull down the pillars of the whole national state system or he must create a territorial sover­ eignty of his own’. Percy claimed that Jewish agitation lay at the roots of republican and socialist thought throughout the nineteenth century, down to the Bolshevik revolution - ‘not because the Jew cares for the positive side of radical philosophy, not because he desires to be a partaker in Gentile nationalism or Gentile democracy, but because no existing Gentile system of government is ever any­ thing but distasteful to him’. Percy endowed the Balfour Declaration with motives which had not in fact played much, if any role in 1917. He asserted that it had been an act of European statesmanship, ‘the only method of giving to these alien elements in its system the poise, the contentment and the sense of responsibility which the Western world believes it has itself derived from the modern nationalist movements’.169 Therefore, as Leonard Stein noted long ago, in the turmoil of post­ war Europe, Zionism served a novel purpose - as antidote to Jewinspired Bolshevism. ‘The events of 1917 made it natural to turn to Zionism as a stabilising force in the Jewish world, and to value it for its power, if given a chance, to provide an antidote to the destructive mania of Jews in rebellion against their lot by offering them a healthy outlet for their frustrated energies’.170 Churchill subscribed in full to these theories. It may be postulated that it was his anxieties in regard to the Jews’ role as an international revolutionary catalyst that brought him back to the ‘Jewish Problem’ after the war. He gave expression to his fears in a much-quoted article published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald cn 8 February, 1920.171 In the article, called ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’, Churchill referred to the role of ‘international and for the most part atheistical Jews, in the rise of Bolshevism’. In Churchill’s view, Zionism was ‘the Jewish answer to international Communism’. Somewhat melo­ dramatically, he described the coming struggle between Zionist and Bolshevik Jews (‘as if the Gospel of Christ and the Gospel of Anti­ christ were destined to originate among the same people’) as ‘little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people’. He called on

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Jews in every country to come forward and assume a prominent role in combating the Bolshevik conspiracy, and ‘thus vindicate the Jewish name’, and exonerate their people from the calumny of Bolshevism. In conclusion, Churchill proffered the reward of a Jewish State of three to four millions by the River Jordan. The Jewish Chronicle accused Churchill of lending the authority of a British cabinet minister and prominent British statesman to a myth which had led to the martyrdom of Jews by the thousand. He was accused further of adopting ‘the hoary tactics of hooligan antiSemites’: The SECRETARY OF WAR charges Jews with originating the gospel of Antichrist and with engineering a ‘world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization’ ... It is the gravest, as it is the most reckless and scandalous campaign in which even the most discredited politicians have ever engaged. ... It is difficult to understand the object of this tirade, with its flashy generalizations and shallow theories.172

It is to be doubted whether Churchill subscribed to the antiSemitic prejudice common at the time. However, by dabbling, in an irresponsible, amateurish fashion, in far-fetched theories which had little basis in reality, he in fact abetted, even if unwittingly, the darker forces of prejudice. The article must be considered as one of a number of his reckless, ill-considered impulses. Churchill was in fact involved with ‘the Jewish Problem’ in one other of its manifestations at that time. As Secretary of State for War (1919-1921), Churchill was the principal proponent of Western intervention in Russia, and of sending military aid to the White Russian armies. It was somewhat embarrassing to Churchill when the armies of the White General Denikin unleashed a series of pogroms between 1918 and 1921.173 However, Churchill’s appeals to Denikin to halt the persecution of the Jews were not entirely disinterested. Churchill feared that his own policy of aiding Denikin, for which he had to fight hard in the Cabinet, would be undermined by the White Russians’ anti-Semitic excesses. Churchill professed to some understanding for Denikin’s outrages: ‘There is a bitter feeling throughout Russia against the Jews, who are regarded as being the main instigators of the ruin of the Empire, and who, certainly have played a leading part in the Bolshevik atrocities’.174On the same day, Churchill appealed to Denikin himself, arguing that ‘my task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be

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received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies’.175 Churchill also feared a backlash by powerful Jewish circles in the British Estab­ lishment. In September, 1919, he had written to General Holman, Chief of the British Military Mission to South Russia from 1919 to 1920, urging him to persuade Denikin to do all he could to avoid massacres of Jews, and to issue a proclamation against anti-Semitism, since, as Churchill explained, ‘the Jews are very powerful in England, and if it could be shown that Denikin was protecting them as his army advanced, it would make my task easier’.176 The pogroms did not in fact cease, and Churchill did not institute the single measure that might have forced Denikin to firm action - the withholding of British aid. As Rabinowicz’s earlier study has concluded incisively, both in 1919, and later during World War Two, Churchill’s overriding preoccupation was first to defeat the enemy, and only afterwards to reorganize the world.177 In each case, notwithstanding Churchill’s sympathy, and his verbal appeals, the Jews had to take their chances with the other civilian populations in the war zones until allied victory was attained.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MIDDLE EAST IMBROGLIO, 1 9 1 9 - 1 9 2 1 1. THE IMPERIALIST ETHOS

It is to be doubted whether many of Churchill’s contemporaries perceived the momentous transitions in the British Empire through which they lived, and still less likely that they understood the economic, political and military processes which caused them. In an age when the real economic benefits of Empire were in decline, Churchill continued to believe, in fact until the end of World War Two, that ‘the Empire was a possession that gave to Britain a world position and prestige that she would not otherwise have enjoyed, and whose absolute retention was essential’.1As Professor Plumb has observed, he regarded the Empire as an immutable part of Britain’s destiny and mission: ‘For Churchill, the past confirmed the peculiar genius of the English race and proved its right to be rich, Imperial, and the guardian of human freedoms’.2 However, the last great, planned acquisition of colonies, the ‘scramble for Africa’, had diverted attention from an age of economic stagnation which set in for Britain between 1880 and 1914.3 The British economic system, weighted in favour of overseas trade and ‘invisible’ income from services, at the expense of domestic industry and technology, had by the end of the 19th century fallen behind German and American competition. The accretion of the African colonies had in fact proved to be ‘a poor bargain when measured against the advantage of free trade in foodstuffs and industrial goods with Europe, Argentina, Canada, and the United States’.4 Both before and after 1914, the bulk of Britain’s overseas investments

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went to these developed countries, ‘leaving the dependent tropical empire starved of investment capital’.5 In view of all this, there is no little irony in Churchill’s preoccupation with the ‘cheapness’, in money and soldiers, of running the African colonies. As we shall note below, in his mind, not even the prospect of oil riches in Persia and Mesopotamia could justify the huge expenditures in those areas after the war, or dim the merits of the African model. The British-controlled system survived until 1914 because ‘invis­ ible’ income from previously invested capital filled the gap in Britain’s trade balance. Ironically, as British industry lagged further behind, her financial services, as insurer, transporter and merchant in the international financial system became yet more indispensable.6 The 1914 war dislocated these arrangements, and the 1939-1945 war wrecked them finally. After 1945, Britain was no longer the world’s leading creditor nation - on the contrary, she had run up huge debts, much of them owed to those countries she had defended, and to former colonies, above all, to India. Even so, we must distinguish between those parts of the Empire acquired during the nineteenth century, and those acquired as a result of the partition of the Ottoman Empire during World War One. During the years prior to that war, there had been a general consensus that the age of imperial expansion had ended, ‘that further extensions to the formal empire of rule was more likely to weaken than strengthen the foundations of British world power. The task of the statesman was to defend and consolidate, not to enlarge’.7 But the Middle Eastern provinces of the Ottomans were nonetheless in British hands at the end of the war, albeit more as a result of the course of war, and the ambitions of Britain’s allies, than due to any high-level decision in London. The new territories, racked by nascent, yet turbulent nationalist movements, presented acute prob­ lems to the Lloyd George coalition, preoccupied with its own economic and political crises at home. The huge costs of the war had sapped the old confidence in Britain’s industrial and commercial superiority, and created a new sense of imperial vulnerability. The strains and stresses of war made it quite apparent that ‘the economic foundations upon which imperial expansion and imperial security had been built in the past could not sustain any further enlargement of the burden imposed on them by the structure of British world-power’.8 The result, in the Middle East, was a huge discrepancy between the vast expanse of

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new territories under British occupation, and the means with which to control them. After the war, Lloyd George faced intense domestic pressure, financial and political, to demobilise and cut down overseas spend­ ing. The Cabinet accepted, without any formal debate, Lloyd George’s principle ‘that the post-war army should be held at or below the troop strength which had prevailed before 1914’.9 Ministers dismissed the military’s estimates of troop strengths that would be required to hold on to the expanded Empire. Nor were Ministers ‘eager to present Parliament with the financial consequences of administering new territories deficient in taxable commodities’.10 From the first months of peace, the government dedicated itself to a rapid demobilisation, in order to reduce government spending and cut back on the huge debts accumulated during the war (in 1922, debt-servicing accounted for one third of gross expenditure). In addition, there was expenditure on social services which it was thought politically inexpedient to abandon in the disturbed political conditions of post-war Britain. The Coalition was sensitive also to demands by the newly-strengthened Labour opposition to reduce ‘unproductive’ overseas spending, and channel the money instead towards the eradication of unemployment.11 On the political front, the coalition was threatened also by some fifty die-hard Tories, irreconcilably opposed to any form of Home Rule for Ireland, and similarly, to any ‘excessive’ constitutional concessions to Egyptian or Indian nationalists.12 Churchill’s romanticized image of the Empire remained that which he had acquired at the turn of the century when, as a young man, he toured, reported, and on occasion fought in colonial wars in India, the Sudan and South Africa. In 1929, his colleague, Leo Amery, noted in his diary: ‘The key to Churchill is to realise he is a mid-Victorian, steeped in the politics of his father’s period, and unable to get the modern point of view’.13 Churchill had not sat in the War Cabinet when the major decisions concerning the partition of the Middle East had been taken. All idea of imperial aggrandizement or political integration was totally alien to him. After the war, he ‘regarded with satisfaction the structure of British power which had been established by the end of the nineteenth century, and was reluctant to contemplate either a renovation of that structure or the adaptation of British society for imperial reasons’.14

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Churchill’s conceptions about how the Empire should be adminis­ tered were formed, and to a great extent, fossilized, during his first stint at the Colonial Office, as Under-Secretary of State, from 1905 to 1908. As on many other issues, he was wont to refer back to his past experience, often quite out of context, when dealing with later problems. Thus his post-war comparisons between the ‘New Provinces’, as he called them, in the Middle East, and the traditional Empire, in Africa. Churchill’s attitude to the Empire was ‘England-centric’. His interest in the various corners of the Empire, for their own sakes, was in fact tangential. This fact has been obscured, perhaps, by the vast quantity of Churchillian rhetoric, especially during his Canutelike campaign against constitutional reform in India, during the 1930s. The historian of Churchill’s first term at the Colonial Office has concluded that the experience very nearly exhausted his interest in Empire. He was not a minister of cabinet rank, and once the ques­ tion of the Transvaal constitution had been determined, Churchill found Colonial Office business ‘insufficiently challenging, insuf­ ficiently matters of life and death’.15While still at the Colonial Office, Churchill began to devote much of his time and thought to domestic social problems, albeit ‘from concern about the power of the state to maintain Britain’s world position and effectiveness’.16 Ronald Hyam has concluded that no Parliamentary Secretary of State for the Colonies ‘ever managed to evolve so important or comprehensive a program of social reform’.17 After World War One, Churchill played a major role in deter­ mining Britain’s Middle Eastern policy, first as Secretary of State for War and Air (1919-1921), and then as Secretary of State for the Colonies (1921-1922). Both departments disposed of abnormally large budgets, by pre-war standards. At the War Office in particular, Churchill was concerned that his department was spending money in the implementation of policy determined by other departments. In particular, Churchill clashed with Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary from October, 1919. In view of Churchill’s experience in 1915, when his career had been shattered, and he had, unjustly, been made the sole scapegoat for the failure to take the Dardanelles, he was now particularly sensitive about being manoeuvred into similar situations Public opinion had no patience for overseas extravagances, and Churchill knew that his personal judgement was suspect. Therefore, the ‘reconstruction of his political career from the ashes of 1915 and

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the Dardanelles Commission Report appeared to depend upon great delicacy in his handling of Parliament and especially Conservative opinion’.18 When in January, 1919, a demobilisation crisis had led to Churchill replacing Milner at the War Office, he was more concerned than Milner had been ‘to protect the army and his own delicate reputation against any charge of recklessness or mismanagement... [and] more amenable, in this respect, than Milner might have been to the new mood of caution in his military advisers’.19 Churchill was guided and animated by his vigorous Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. The latter’s pre­ occupation with internal security and the Irish problem, together with his contempt for the dithering and lack of judgement of the politicians, found expression in his constant attacks on the dispersal of diminished British forces across the Middle East. During the course of 1920, as demobilisation reduced even further their ability to defend the newly-acquired, strung-out Middle Eastern territories, the War Office became desperate, and its ‘attempts to jiggle with its diminishing reserve of infantry battalions became more frenetic and Wilson’s comments on the Cabinet’s military policy more acerbic’.20 In October, 1919, Churchill wrote to Lloyd George, arguing that the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the acquisition of the ‘New Provinces’ had been a mistake, which would involve Britain ‘in immense expense for military establishments and development work far exceeding any possibility of return’. He suggested to Lloyd George that all the European Powers divest themselves of their Middle Eastern mandates, and claimed that partition would involve Britain ‘in abetting a crime against freedom, namely, the conquest of the Arabs by the Turks; (2) in deserting and, it will be alleged, betraying those Arabs who fought bravely with us in the war ...’21 Churchill’s letter was moralistic in tone, his argument somewhat forced. In view of his true views of the Arabs (see below), it is clear also that he employed a large dose of disingenuous rhetoric. Of all Britain’s Middle Eastern commitments, that in Palestine seemed to Churchill in 1919 to be the least promising of reward or benefit, and indeed, the least legitimate, from a moral stand­ point: Lastly, there are the Jews, whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience.22

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As for the anticipated imperial return, he wrote to Lloyd George the following June: T h e Palestine venture is the most difficult to withdraw from and the one which certainly will never yield any profit of a material kind’.23 But Lloyd George’s policy was determined by wider consider­ ations, and he was not to be deflected by Churchill’s uninformed, blinkered views. The core of the Prime Minister’s policy was his aspiration to create a ‘moderate, pacific and compliant Turkish state’, confined to Anatolia, reconciled to a cordon sanitaire of ‘stripling successor states’ along its southern and eastern borders. The early rise of Kemalist nationalism, in revolt against the Treaty of Sevres, was seen by Lloyd George not as ‘a healthy revival of the Turkish body politic’, but as the reincarnation of Ottoman imperialism.24 Therefore, in the view of the Prime Minister, and of Foreign Secretary Curzon, any British withdrawal from the Middle East would pave the way for a revival of the Ottoman Empire, with the consequent loss of Britain’s war gains, together with an incalculable loss of status and prestige. This applied especially to Mesopotamia, whence, in 1920, Churchill tried in vain to secure a British retreat, if not a complete withdrawal. It applied also to Palestine, perceived by the war-time cabinet (of which Churchill was not a member) as an essential strategic buffer to the Suez Canal. Further, as we have already noted, the Balfour Declaration, whether ‘moral’ or not, was regarded by its architects as an essential pillar of British policy in the Middle East, especially vis-a-vis the French and the Americans. Whether London liked it or not (and there were certainly many who did not), after the war the Balfour Declaration constituted Britain’s international licence for the legitimate occupation of Palestine. One caveat about Palestine must be entered at this point. For those ministers responsible for Middle Eastern policy after the war, Palestine was a secondary consideration, certainly when compared with Persia, Mesopotamia, or Egypt. A recent study has concluded that Palestine did not become a major problem for British policy­ makers until the major influx of Jewish immigrants from Europe in the 1930s, that Palestinian affairs were largely a local issue, and the British presence there largely dependent on strategic and political considerations elsewhere in the Near and Middle East.25 There is much to be said for this conclusion. But perhaps, for our present study, two additional comments need to be made. First, that at least

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for certain Ministers, including Lloyd George, Balfour and Curzon, a continued British presence in Palestine, guaranteed internationally by the Balfour Declaration, was almost taken for granted. Those that did not hold this view, Churchill for instance, saw no intrinsic need to adhere to the Balfour Declaration, or support Zionism at all costs. Second, in Churchill’s mind, the mandates for Palestine and Meso­ potamia seemed inextricably linked, and his demand for withdrawal applied either to both, or to neither. For this latter reason, it is most important to acquaint ourselves with the major debate over Meso­ potamia, which took place during the second half of 1920. 2. KEMALISM, AND CONTROL OF MESOPOTAMIA

The British position in the Middle East after World War One has been described as follows: ‘If 1919 was a year of unproductive groping for a policy, the first three months of 1920 proved beyond any doubt the costs of confusion’.26 All attempts to establish one central bureaucratic machine to direct policy in the area had so far failed.27 Four separate departments were involved: the Foreign, Colonial, India and War Offices. The Arabian peninsula (later Saudi Arabia) was split down the middle from north to south into separate areas of ministerial jurisdiction, with the eastern half under the India Office, and the western under the Foreign Office. After the war, each department sponsored its own candidate for the leadership of the Arab world. When the two clashed, the India Office funded Ibn Saud, while the Foreign Office sponsored his opponent, the Sherif Hussein of the Hijaz. As we have noted already, Churchill, as Secretary of State for War, had a direct interest in Middle Eastern affairs, by virtue of the huge armies maintained by War Office budgets. Churchill’s brief, to reduce garrisons and expenditure, was set back by the rebellion in Mesopotamia during the summer months of 1920. The rebellion took four months, and £40 million to subdue. As a consequence, the government faced a storm of Press and Parliamentary criticism, much of the former written, anonymously, by that renowned Arab ‘expert’, T.E. Lawrence. The India and Foreign Office were reduced to petty recrimination. As we have noted already, Lloyd George regarded the major threat to a Middle East settlement as emanating from Asia Minor, where in August, 1919, Mustapha Kemal repudiated the Sultan’s administration

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at Constantinople, and the Treaty of Sevres, which the Sultan would sign eventually in August, 1920. In June, 1920, with British sanction, Greek armies took the offensive against the Turkish Nationalists. Churchill, together with many in the British Establishment, feared that British support for the Greeks would drive the Turks into the arms of the Bolsheviks, who together would then sweep down upon the Middle East, with incalculable risk to British interests.28 Churchill pursued a consistent policy of appeasing the Kemalists, albeit from a position of strength, until the Chanak crisis in 1922, when honour and prestige dictated otherwise. For the second time in eight years, the Dardanelles provided the setting for personal political disaster.29 But the opposition of Churchill and his CIGS, Wilson, to the openended commitments involved in supporting a Greater Greece in Asia Minor, ran up against the determined combination of Lloyd George and Curzon. Many theories have been put forward for Lloyd George’s antipathy towards the Kemalists, and his support for the Greeks’ ambitions; it has been put down to ‘a Gladstonian loathing’ for Ottoman methods, to ‘a nonconformist passion to liberate oppressed Christians in Asia Minor’, and to ‘an intense admiration for the arch-exponent of Greater Greece, Venezelos’. However, in addition to the emotion and the passion, there was Lloyd George’s bitter wartime experience, in a government which had ‘felt itself first betrayed and then humiliated by the war policy of the Turks’.30 Curzon, with his unrivalled knowledge and viceregal experience of the Middle East and Asia, was preoccupied with the security of the Indian Empire. He was convinced that this depended upon ‘the destruction of Turkey as an expansionist power, and as the seat of Pan-lslamic sentiment ...’31 A rampant Pan-lslamic movement, centred in a revanchist Turkey stripped of its Middle Eastern provinces, would pose obvious threats for British rule in those of her possessions with large Moslem populations. Churchill was persuaded by his General Staff that Britain would be unable to hold on to the new territories in the Middle East, of whose worth he was in any case not convinced. He dreaded the everthreatening prospect of a Greek collapse in Asia Minor, and a sub­ sequent Kemalist assault on the weak allied forces at the Straits. However, notwithstanding some cabinet opposition to the addi­ tional military commitment involved in imposing a severe peace on the Turks, most of the Cabinet was carried along by Lloyd George, due to their common fears of a Turkish revival and, until the summer

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of 1922, by ‘the device of allotting the task of defeating Kemal in the field to Greek not British armies’ and the persisting conviction that the Greek armies possessed the military prowess and deter­ mination to complete the job.32 In this context, Britain’s continued tenure of Palestine was, for Churchill, entirely subordinate to the central goal of attaining a stable peace agreement with the Turks. Already in October, 1919, Churchill had warned Lloyd George about the gravity of the Turkish situation, and its multifarious repercussions: Venizelos and the Greece he represents (in whose future we have so great an interest) may well be ruined as a result of their immense military commitment in the Smyrna Province. The French are about to over-run Syria with hordes of Algerian troops and will soon be involved in a protracted and bloody struggle with the Arabs who are defending their native land. As this struggle proceeds, British sympathies will pronounce themselves increasingly upon the side of the Arabs ... Italian activities are further disturbing the Turkish world.

In conclusion, he suggested to Lloyd George that ‘the Greeks should quit Smyrna, the French should give up Syria, we should give up Palestine and Mesopotamia, and the Italians should give up their sphere’.33 In urging that the new acquisitions in the Middle East were indigestible, Churchill again made reference to Britain’s vast terri­ tories in Africa: As a matter of fact we have far more territory in the British Empire than we shall be able to develop for many generations. In Africa alone we have enormous estates of immense potential value which we have pitifully neglected. The need for economy is such that we ought to endeavour to concentrate our resources on developing our existing Empire instead of dissipating them in new enlargements, we can only compel the other Powers to give up their exploitation claims against Turkey by ourselves being willing to set an example.34

In estimating what was ‘intrinsic’ to the Empire, and what was not, Churchill was quite probably guided by his CIGS, Sir Henry Wilson. Writing in December, 1920, at the time of the public outcry against the cost of quelling the rebellion in Mesopotamia, the latter was quite emphatic about which countries should be retained in the Empire, and which not: The countries that do belong to us are England, Ireland, Egypt, the lower

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part of Mesopotamia, and India. The countries that do not belong to us are the plebiscite areas, Constantinople, Palestine, all Persia and the greater part of Mesopotamia ... I think that this same cry for retrenchment will take us out of Palestine, except for possibly a very small force, and will also in the course of the coming year take us out of Constantinople. Personally I am all in favour of coming out of Persia, of Mesopotamia - except the Basra and the oil-fields country - of Palestine, and of Constantinople. But I am entirely opposed to the present Cabinet plan of backing the Greeks against the Turks.35

At the beginning of 1920, Churchill had been ordered to effect drastic cuts in military expenditure in Mesopotamia.36 But by the summer, the War Office was reeling under the combined strains of ‘the crisis at the Straits, the worsening situation in Ireland ... threats of widespread industrial unrest at home ... [and] the upheavals of demobilisation and the return to a peacetime footing’.37 In regard to Mesopotamia itself, Churchill felt hamstrung by the policies dictated by other Departments. In particular, he ridiculed the India Office, whose political officers had directed the conquest of Mesopotamia, and now administered the country. Presciently, Churchill deplored the fact that some 60,000 soldiers of the Anglo-Indian army, costing some £18 millions per annum, were scattered across enormous expanses of country. However, in May, 1920, two months before the rebellion, Churchill did not so much perceive the security danger, as bemoan the wastage of manpower in holding valueless territory. This extravagance, he averred, was due to the fact that the India Office itself did not have to foot the bill: The result of this vicious system is that a score of mud villages, sandwiched in between a swampy river and a blistering desert, inhabited by a few hundred half naked native families, usually starving, are now occupied, have been occupied for many months, and are likely to remain so occupied in the future unless the policy is changed, by Anglo-Indian garrisons on a scale which in India would maintain order in wealthy provinces of millions of people. To hold these worthless villages, sums are being spent varying from £200,000 to a million pounds a year ... How long is this state of affairs to continue? It will continue as long as the department calling the tune has no responsibility for paying the piper.38

Churchill repudiated all responsibility for the situation in Meso­ potamia, and urged the immediate transfer of overall responsibility for the country to a department which had ‘real knowledge and experience of the administration and development of these wild countries ...’ Once again drawing on his own experience with

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colonial administration in Africa, Churchill opted for the Colonial Office, in preference to the Foreign Office. He asserted that the latter knew nothing of administration - nor, indeed, was it their business to know. He pointed to the precedents of the African protectorates of East Africa, Uganda and Somaliland, all administered initially by the Foreign Office in the 19th century, but handed over to the Colonial Office. Although, he admitted, development in Africa had been very slow for want of money, Churchill admired the way in which ‘these enormous regions in East Africa have been held and are being developed without a single battalion of white troops’. In contrast, he was ‘profoundly disturbed to see colossal sums of money, which invested in East or West Africa would have produced a five-fold return in a few years, being poured out in sterile military occupation of comparatively barren regions in Mesopotamia’.39 Once control was transferred to the Colonial Office, Churchill wanted full authority to arrange with them the scale of garrisons, in relation to a new scheme for aerial control of the country, dis­ cussed since the beginning of 1920. The great advantage of aerial control, he claimed, was that it obviated the need for long lines of communication.40 But the General Staff insisted that any reduction in the Middle East garrisons must also entail ‘a curtailment of responsibility’. But Churchill did not initially accept this conclusion, and challenged the strategic principles upon which the Staffs based their calculations.41 He asserted that the size of the garrison in Mesopotamia was disproportionate to the size of any enemy force likely to be brought against it. Again drawing on his African background, Churchill suggested that the concentration of a single force, with good rail and road connections, should form the nucleus of a base from which British influence might spread gradually, over ten to fifteen years if necessary. One can only surmise that it was Churchill’s ignorance of the forces of Pan-Islam, and nascent, but vigorous Pan-Arabism, that allowed him to make such wildly inappropriate comparisons between the African and Middle Eastern empires. Thus his shock was possibly the greater when in July, rebellion swept across Mesopotamia, taking the scattered British garrisons unawares, and unprepared. In the meantime, predictably, Curzon had taken umbrage at Churchill’s suggestion that the Colonial Office should become the

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supremo of the Middle East, including, he presumed, that imperial lynchpin, Egypt. Such a move, asserted Curzon, would be ‘a lethal blow ... at the pride of Egypt’, and ‘the mandated territories would utter a cry of rage if their conditions were, by even the implication of a misnomer, to be assimilated with that of the British colonies ...’ Palestine, in Curzon’s opinion, was historically an entrepot of international political, ecclesiastical and commercial interests, and as such fell naturally within Foreign Office competence. The role of the Foreign Office would be the more important in view of the Balfour Declaration, since England would have to answer to Zionist interests all over the world, and reconcile the Jews’ position in Palestine, not only with the native Arab population, but also with the French regime in Syria, and Feisal at Damascus.42These were but the opening shots in a duel between the two Ministers for ultimate control over Middle Eastern policy. The clash would reach its climax at the end of 1920, with each competing for the favour of their colleagues, and seeking ways of ‘turning ministerial prejudices to their advantage’.43 Churchill appealed to Lloyd George. In August, 1920, he wrote a further private letter to Lloyd George, asking for the establishment of a special department to coordinate policy in Palestine, Meso­ potamia and Arabia, directed to making severe cuts in expenditure.44 John Darwin has suggested that Churchill’s proposals of May, 1920, were tactical, intended to force his colleagues out into the open, and share public responsibility. As Darwin points out, Churchill did indeed insist that the Prime Minister give his personal support to the War Minister’s defence of Mesopotamian expendi­ tures, in June.45There can be little doubt that Churchill was haunted, justifiably, by his bitter experience in 1915, when the failure at Gallipoli had been pinned publicly on him alone. However, a close reading of Churchill’s memorandum leaves the unmistakable impression of Churchill’s preoccupation, however misguided, with the African colonies’ precedent. For a time, before the rebellion began, Churchill did believe that Mesopotamia could be ruled economically, and developed gradually, on the African pattern. The July rebellion demonstrated the prescience of Churchill’s strictures about the scattered garrisons in Mesopotamia, even if Churchill’s motives were other than military - he had not foreseen the plight of the isolated, out-numbered British units. The rebellion injected additional urgency into his demand that the cabinet take

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responsibility for specified political objectives in the country, and relieve the War Office of the burden of what he considered ‘an openended and embarrassing commitment’.46 In November, 1920, after a letter from the commander in Meso­ potamia, warning that there could be no troop reductions before 1921, let alone ‘the kind of economies the Cabinet had called for early in the year’, Churchill felt himself increasingly isolated in the Cabinet, and opposed to Lloyd George on two major issues: the Prime Minister’s support for the Greeks in Asia Minor, and his opposition to further British aid to the White armies opposing the Bolsheviks in Russia.47 In a letter written at the beginning of December, 1920, Churchill dropped hints that his differences with the Prime Minister might force his resignation: We seem to be becoming the most anti-Turk and the most pro-Bolshevik power in the world: whereas in my judgement we ought to be the exact opposite.

The position in the Middle East disturbed Churchill especially: I deeply regret and resent being forced to ask Parlt for these appalling sums of money for new Provinces ... they [the military] disapprove of the policy against Turkey and do not care about Mesopa or Palestine; and that all the extra expense of Army Estimates arises from this evil combination.48

Just over a week later, on 13 December, Churchill asked the Cabinet to approve the evacuation of British forces from the Mosul and Baghdad vilayets, to a line covering the Basra and Persian oilfields. On his estimate, this would save over £20 millions per annum. In any case, he told the Cabinet, the General Staff no longer believed that Mesopotamia was an appropriate point from which to defend the approaches to India.49 Lord Hankey, and Sir Arnold Wilson (British Resident in the Persian Gulf), counter-argued that a British withdrawal, though effecting an immediate economy, would also mean the sacrifice of the mandate, and the oil that went with it. Wilson estimated that the extra expenditure now involved would be more than recouped from future oil revenues.50 Of course, Wilson’s prognostication was vindicated many times over. But in 1920 no one was expecting an early oil bonanza. Churchill himself must have been alert to the strategic and com­ mercial importance of the oil-fields - after all, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he had before the war been instrumental in engineering the government’s purchase of a majority of APOC’s shares. How­ ever, in his May, 1920 memorandum, Churchill had warned that the

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oil-fields, which might indeed become ‘a thoroughly good business for the British Empire if developed gradually and thriftily’, were being excessively burdened with sterile capital charges from the costs of the garrison.51 However, Churchill’s demand for evacuation was rejected for fundamental reasons other than prospective oil revenues. The larger, imperial argument was that ‘a retreat to Basra would pave the way for a Turkish reconquest of all Iraq wiping out the strategic benefits ... gained by wresting the three vilayets from Ottoman control’. Baghdad itself was a mere sixty miles from the southern border of the Mosul vilayet, with no defensible barrier in between. A Turkish army stationed in Mosul would have Britain’s client Arab state at Basra at its mercy, and, Ministers believed, it would be just a matter of time before the Turks returned by stages to the Persian Gulf, ‘in circumstances of unimaginable humiliation for their post-war imperial policy’.52 For a fleeting moment, Churchill did secure Cabinet permission, on 17 December, 1920, to issue instructions to Haldane, the army commander, to prepare plans for a withdrawal to the Basra line, once forces stationed in Persia had returned to Baghdad the next spring. The CIGS, Wilson, drew little comfort, convinced that the ministers’ motives derived from political expediency, rather than sound military considerations. He believed that the Cabinet, having for the previous two years ignored the soldiers’ advice to withdraw from Mesopotamia and Persia, had now been panicked into accepting their advice as a result of the public agitation following on the costly repression of the rebellion in Mesopotamia. He vented his spleen in his private diary: ‘Frocks were beneath contempt’.53 But the opposition in the Cabinet, headed by Curzon, and sup­ ported ably by Montagu, soon rallied and overturned the decision. However, the reaffirmation of British tenure of the Mosul and Baghdad vilayets was accompanied, finally, by a decision to transfer responsibility to a new Middle East Department, to be created in the Colonial Office.54This proposal was disputed hotly by Curzon, who argued that the mandates were tied inextricably to Egypt, Persia, Syria and Arabia.55Although Churchill agreed with Curzon in princi­ ple, he argued that Egypt should come under the jurisdiction of the new Department. The dispute over the direction of Egyptian affairs would continue for many months.56The decision to transfer control to the Colonial Office was taken in Cabinet on 31 December, 1920,

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by the unusual procedure of a vote, which went eight in favour of the Colonial Office and five for the Foreign Office. Hankey, secretary to the Cabinet, noted in his diary that if he had had the vote, he would have used it in favour of the Foreign Office, although he would have preferred ‘clearing out of both Palestine and Mesopotamia’.57 3. CHURCHILL AS COLONIAL SECRETARY

On 1 January, 1921, at a house party at the home of Sir Philip Sassoon, Lloyd George invited Churchill to accept the post of Colonial Secretary. It was not the first time that Churchill had been offered the position. After his forced departure from the Admiralty, at the time of the ill-fated Dardanelles expedition, Prime Minister Asquith had in May, 1915 offered him the Colonial Office. Churchill had turned down the offer, and then repented. Asquith had concluded that ‘the situation for Churchill has no other meaning than his own prospects’.58 Lord Milner, the Colonial Secretary in 1920, had informed Lloyd George of his intention to retire from government well before the decision to establish the new Middle East Department. Churchill was in many senses, both negative and positive, widely considered to be the natural replacement. At the War Office, he had become increasingly frustrated and embittered, due mainly to his failure to carry his Cabinet colleagues with him in his anti-Bolshevik crusade. On the other hand, his long campaign for retrenchment in the Middle East, his drive and resourcefulness, all suited him to the task of uniting the divergent interests at play.59 On 4 January, 1921, Churchill spelled out for Lloyd George his conditions for assuming the post. He demanded immediate control of the Middle East, even during his last weeks at the War Office. Specifically, he demanded immediate civilian and military control of Mesopotamia, and the chair of a new committee to frame a compre­ hensive policy for Mesopotamia, Aden and Palestine. Undaunted by Curzon’s opposition, he again proposed Colonial Office control of Egypt.60 The issue was settled on 14 February, at a Cabinet meeting which considered a report on the new Middle East Department, written by Sir James Masterton-Smith. Curzon reported back to his wife that he had a ‘rather long and worrying controversy’ with Churchill over the Middle East: ‘He [Churchill] wants to grab everything in his new

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Department and to be a sort of Asiatic Foreign Secretary. I absolutely declined to agree to this, and the Prime Minister took my side’.61 Churchill was upset and disappointed about his defeat. On the day after the cabinet meeting, he wrote to his wife: ‘Curzon will give me lots of trouble, and will have to be flattered and half-overborne. We overlap horribly. I do not think he is much good. Anyhow I have the burden on my back. We are on quite good terms personally. I shall take lots of trouble to bring him along.’ 62 Churchill assumed office formally on 13 February, 1921. Apart from his tenure of the sinecure Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for six months only, this would be his shortest term in any govern­ ment department, from February, 1921 to October, 1922. Churchill in fact knew very little about the Middle East. When Hubert Young (an India Office official who would become one of Churchill’s principal advisers at the Colonial Office) went across to brief the new Colonial Secretary, Churchill opened their conversa­ tion by stating that he had ‘a virgin mind’. Young was not at a loss: ‘I’m here to ravish it’, he replied.63 Lord Milner himself warned the High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, that Churchill was ‘too apt to make up his mind without sufficient knowledge’.64 As one historian of the period has noted, Churchill’s innocence left him prey to the already-legendary Lawrence ‘of Arabia’: Because of insufficient knowledge of the Arab world Churchill adopted a simplistic approach to the Palestine problem at the outset, transferred to the Arabs his preconceived notions about the relationship of an imperial power to its subject peoples, and relied heavily upon the advice of T.E. Lawrence.65

But even if Churchill did not know the Middle East well, he did have one overriding consideration - that of effecting economies. His officials and experts would be heeded, or ignored, to the degree they could serve this supreme goal. Churchill had a sensitive ear to public opinion, and its protests at the huge expenditures in the Middle East the year before. Thus, after just ten days in office, we find Churchill writing the following letter to Sir George Ritchie, President of the Dundee Liberal Association: The anti-Government press have been endeavouring to suggest that the creation of a Middle Eastern branch of the Colonial Office implies some great new assumption of responsibilities and expenditure, and that my object in undertaking the charge of this department will be to build a costly and vainglorious Middle Eastern Empire at the expense of the British taxpayer.

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My object is exactly the opposite ... The discharge of our task both in Palestine and Mesopotamia is now threatened by the enormous military expenditure required for the garrisons of these two countries. During the present financial year 1920-1921 the cost of the garrison in Palestine has been about eighteen million pounds, and the cost of the garrison in Mesopotamia, including the fighting to suppress the revolt, over thirty-three million.66

We may now focus on Palestine itself, and try to assess Churchill’s attitudes, as they developed over the years, to the two principal communities that would populate the Palestine mandate - the Jews and the Arabs. We have already noted Churchill’s various contacts with and references to the Jews before World War One. During the war itself Churchill was silent about the Jews and Zionism, even at the time of the Balfour Declaration. At a cabinet meeting on the future of Turkish Asia, on 19 March, 1915, Churchill spoke up against the ‘inefficient and out-of-date’ Turks and said it would be a pity if they were left in possession of their Empire. But he did not mention Palestine. Later on, he did pass a private note to the Foreign Secre­ tary, Grey: ‘Palestine might be given to Christian, Liberal, and now noble Belgium’.67But as we have noted above, after the war Churchill in fact pressed for a restoration of the Turkish Empire by the European Powers. In short, as the official biographer has noted: The future of Palestine was not a question to which Winston Churchill had applied his mind. Preoccupied with the problem of seizing the Dardanelles, he made no effort to relate his own earlier understanding of Zionism with the possibilities that now opened up for a Jewish State.68

But this is to simplify a complex issue. First, Churchill had ‘finished’ his preoccupation with the Dardanelles by mid-1915, or certainly by the end of that year. The only man in the Cabinet apparently interested in Zionism in that year was Herbert Samuel, and his suggestion of a British Protectorate in Palestine was con­ temptuously brushed aside.69 When Zionism did seem to become a strategic interest for Britain, in 1917, this did not apparently concern Churchill, who in fact only returned to the Cabinet in July of that year. However, Churchill was fully alive to one of the motives behind the Balfour Declaration - the need to mobilise the support of the allegedly all-influential American Jews. Even so, in Churchill’s view, Palestine was after the war secondary to the security of the British position in the Middle East. And

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Churchill believed there could be security only if the Turks were appeased. As opposed to this high policy goal, Palestine, and Zionism itself, did not seem to him to be worth the candle! In a letter already quoted from, written by Churchill to Lloyd George in June, 1920, Churchill described Britain’s commitment in Palestine as the most complex and the least promising. Palestine was seen by Churchill not as an imperial asset, but rather as a burden: Palestine is costing us six millions a year to hold. The Zionist Movement will cause continued friction with the Arabs. The French ensconced in Syria with 4 divisions (paid for by not paying us what they owe us) are opposed to the Zionist Movement and will try to cushion the Arabs off on to us as the real enemy.70

On occasion, in 1921, and again during the first years of World War Two, Churchill apparently considered the option of handing over Palestine to Jewish military control. This was a solution which fitted in with Churchill’s all-important desiderata that the Zionist enterprise not be allowed to become a drain on British resources. Such a solution might transform Palestine, he evidently believed, from an imperial burden, into an asset. However, the rise of terror­ ism inside the Jewish community in Palestine, which reached its first climax with the murder of Churchill’s friend, Lord Moyne, in 1944, apparently convinced Churchill that British imperial interests could not be entrusted to the Zionists.71 In July, 1945, when Churchill was caretaker Prime Minister, he returned to the same verdict he had issued first in 1919. Writing to the Colonial Office and to the Chiefs of Staff, he asked for their assessment of the political and military consequences to be antici­ pated if Britain surrendered the Palestine Mandate: I do not think that we should take the responsibility upon ourselves of managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and criticize ... I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now.72

As for the Arabs, for whose welfare Churchill had expressed such concern, his views were in fact shaped by his Arab ‘experts’, and by none more than T.E. Lawrence. Churchill seems to have been capti­ vated completely by the Lawrence legend. He regarded Lawrence’s account of the Arab Revolt (1916-1918) as ranking among ‘the greatest books ever written in the English language’.73 One Colonial

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Office official at least believed that Churchill was charmed by Lawrence’s habit of lacing his conversation with ‘a suitable amount of flattery’, in which Churchill revelled.74 Although Lawrence remained at the Colonial Office for barely a year, Churchill retained a sentimental attachment for him, and entertained him quite often at Chartwell in the 1930s. When Lawrence killed himself in a motorcycle accident in 1935, Churchill wrote a panegyrical obituary. At the funeral, Churchill was, perhaps predictably, moved to tears.75 The obituary, published later in Great Contemporaries, soars to wild flights of imagination. Lawrence is described as a super-mortal, ‘un­ trammelled by convention, moving independently of the ordinary currents of human action’. In regard to Lawrence’s role in the war, Churchill evidently has visions of a modern Napoleon: I have often wondered what would have happened to Lawrence if the Great War had continued for several more years. His fame was spreading fast and with the momentum of the fabulous throughout Asia. The earth trembled with the wrath of warring nations. Everything was in motion. No one could say what was impossible. Lawrence might have realised Napoleon’s young dream of conquering the East; he might have arrived at Constantinople in 1919 or 1920 with many of the tribes and races of Asia Minor and Arabia at his back. But the storm wind ceased as suddenly as it had arisen.76

It is extremely difficult to assess just how much of this was intended seriously, and how much was sheer rhetoric. In any event, Lawrence was quite evidently the man responsible for forming much of Churchill’s opinion of the Arabs. The typical British ‘arabist’ who served in the Middle East developed a somewhat paternalistic, if not actually contemptuous opinion of the Arabs. The only Arabs who matched up to the romantic legends of the orient were the desert beduin from the Arabian Peninsula. Lawrence thought that the Hashemites - ‘the oldest, most holy, and most powerful family of the Arabs’77- should be set up as rulers of a loose confederation of Arab States after the war, under British aegis, of course. But even Lawrence, who had fought alongside Faysal during the Arab Revolt, did not extend his admiration to the latter’s brothers. Of Ali, eldest son of Husayn, he wrote: ‘He’s a delightful boy, very self-confident, gay and imperti­ nent, but of no standing or authority. His removal to Maan, or to anywhere else, will not affect anyone’s prestige, and will cause no difficulty’.78 Lawrence thought that Abdullah, Husayn’s second eldest son, was ‘lazy, and by no means dominating’.79 In contrast,

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Lawrence thought that the Palestinian Arabs were ‘stupid ... materi­ alistic, and bankrupt’.80 The Palestinian leader, Auni Abd el Hadi, a member of the Hijazi delegation to the Peace conference in 1919, was considered by Lawrence to be ‘more a garqon de cabaret than a statesman’.81 Those British arabists who served in the Arab Bureau at Cairo during World War One thought the Palestinian Arabs were ‘levantines, of mixed race and questionable character’. In June, 1918, Gilbert Clayton, first head of the British Military Administration in Palestine, wrote to Gertrude Bell: ‘The so-called Arabs of Palestine are not to be compared with the real Arabs of the Desert or even of other civilised districts in Syria and Mesopotamia. He is purely local and takes little or no interest in matters outside his immediate surroundings’.82 Another British officer, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, who served briefly in the Middle East, including a short stint in Palestine, was exceptional in that he favoured the Jews over the Arabs. This was perhaps due to his estimate of the two races: ‘The Jew, virile, brave and determined and intelligent: the Arab decadent, stupid, dishonest and producing little beyond eccentrics influenced by the romance and silence of the desert’.83 As we have noted above, Meinertzhagen regarded Jewish skills as a better guarantee for the promotion of British interests in the area, in contrast to many of his fellow officers who warned about the risks and dangers of an Arab revolt. In July, 1921, he wrote a private letter to General Smuts: The Arab is not such a potent factor as his admirers imagine. He is a stagnant element in a backward country, his one desire being to withhold brains, money and development from a country starving for these blessings. His socalled national feeling is born of idleness and ignorance. His influence in Palestine is of the worst, corrupt, lazy and treacherous.84

With such officials advising him, there need be little surprise that Churchill himself developed a strong contempt for the Arabs. As we shall note below, Churchill fully endorsed Lawrence’s plan for setting up the Hashemites as rulers of the Middle East, but perhaps more from his perception of the family as hostage heads of clientstates, rather than from any great respect for their leadership qualities. If there was any Arab whom Churchill came to respect, it was Ibn Saud, who in 1924 defeated Husayn, and ousted him from the Arabian peninsula. Churchill did not apparently share Lawrence’s admiration for Faysal. Churchill soon lost patience with him, shortly

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after the British had set him up on the throne of Mesopotamia. Faysal quite evidently did not live up to the suppliant client role that Churchill had cast him in. After a series of complaints from Feisal regarding his royal status, Churchill suggested that the following line should be adopted by the British High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox: Six months ago we were paying his [Faysal’s] hotel bill in London, and now I am forced to read day after day 800-word messages on questions of his status and his relations with foreign powers. Has he not got some wives to keep him quiet? He seems to be in a state of perpetual ferment, and Cox is too much ready to pass it on here. Whenever Feisal starts talking about Arab aspirations, his sovereign status, and his relations with the French, etc., Cox ought to go into the financial aspect with him and show him that the country on to whose throne he has been hoisted is a monstrous burden to the British Exchequer, and that he himself is heavily subsidised. Let him learn to so develop his country that he can pay his own way, and then will be the time for him to take an interest in all these constitutional and foreign questions.85

Churchill’s draft was toned down by his officials, though the final telegram sent off to Cox did contain the stricture: ‘If he [Feisal] will show us his capacity to relieve us from our heavy expense we shall be delighted to give him satisfactory definitions about his inde­ pendence and his responsibility. All the while he takes our money he will have to take our directions’.86The Colonial Office opinion of the Arabs’ political maturity was in fact not so very different from that held of the Black Africans’. Thus, at an Imperial Conference held in June, 1921, Churchill reported on Iraq in the following patronising terms: ‘There is no doubt that these turbulent peoples are apt to get extremely bored if they are subject to a higher form of justice and more efficient administration than those to which they have for centuries been accustomed. At any rate, we have reverted perforce, and by the teaching of experience, to more primitive methods’.87 In the special circumstances pertaining in the Middle East after World War One, Churchill sought above all economy and retrench­ ment in the area: this meant appeasement of Kemalism in Anatolia; appeasement of Palestinian objections to Zionism in Palestine; and a liaison of convenience with the Hashemites in Trans-Jordan and in Mesopotamia. However, fifteen years later, with Churchill preoccu­ pied with the Nazi threat to Europe, he came to equate any conces­ sions to the Palestinian Arabs with the government’s odious policy of appeasement in Europe. In 1937, Churchill was called upon to give evidence, in camera, to the Peel Royal Commission, set up to investigate the causes of the 1936 Arab rebellion in Palestine.

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Ironically, the Commission’s proposal to terminate the British mandate and partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab States (with a strategic enclave left to the British) was regarded by Churchill as a breach of Britain’s commitment to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration. Where the majority of Zionists themselves perceived an historic opportunity to set up their own state, Churchill probably compared the ‘cession’ of territory to the Arabs in Palestine with the ‘cession’ of territories to Hitler in Europe. Churchill’s remarks about the Palestinian Arabs before the Peel Commission were particularly virulent, so much so, that he later forbade the Commission to print them, even in its confidential annexe. Churchill was questioned closely about his policy as Colonial Secretary, from 1921-1922. Sir Horace Rumbold, the Deputy Chairman of the Commission, asked him if it was not unjust to the Palestinian Arabs if too many Jews from outside were attracted to the country? Churchill replied that there would be no injustice, even when the Jewish National Home covered all of Palestine, as it eventually would. In praising the Jews’ colonising efforts, Churchill added: ‘The injustice is when those who lived in the country leave it to be desert for thousands of years.’ When Rumbold referred to the Arabs as the indigenous race of Palestine, and the Jews as foreigners who had invaded in 1918, Churchill objected; he claimed that the Arabs had come to Palestine after the Jews, and that ‘it was the “great hordes of Islam” who “smashed” Palestine up’. When Rumbold insisted that the Turks were responsible for the backward­ ness of Palestine, Churchill replied: ‘where the Arab goes it is often desert’. When Rumbold spoke of the great Arab civilization that had existed in Spain, Churchill retorted that he was glad they had been thrown out - it had been for the good of the world. Churchill had evidently been provoked by the cross-examination. When he got home, he had second thoughts, and asked the Chairman of the Commission to delete his remarks, even from the confidential material: ‘there are a few references to nationalities which would not appear to be suited to appear in the permanent record’.88 4. THE CAIRO CONFERENCE, 1921

Churchill did not waste time learning the complexities of his new imperial responsibilities. Within one month of assuming office, he was on his way to Cairo to discuss a new master-plan, designed

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to bring stability, and economy to the Middle East. Of course, Churchill had first-hand experience of the area via his responsi­ bilities as Secretary of State for War. But in fact it was T.E. Lawrence who provided him with his blueprint. Lawrence later told Professor Lewis Namier that the plan presented to the Cairo conference had been prepared in advance, ‘over dinner tables at the Ship restaurant in Whitehall’.89 The single major change that would be made to that plan in Cairo was the elevation of the Emir Abdullah to the governor­ ship of Trans-Jordan, a move necessitated by Abdullah’s arrival at Amman on 3 March, 1921, evidently intent on marching north on Damascus. The Cairo conference opened on 12 March, 1921, with the ‘most glittering assembly possible of British Middle Eastern experts’, under the chairmanship of the new Colonial Secretary. The ‘experts’, some military, and some civilian, included General Trenchard, the Chief of the Air Staff, Generals Radcliffe, Ironside, and Haldane (Commander-in-Chief, Iraq), Sir Herbert Samuel from Palestine, and the ‘arabists’ - Colonel Lawrence, and Gertrude Bell, together with a sprinkling of Colonial Office officials. One single problem dominated all others - that of securing a stable economic settlement in Mesopotamia. Indeed, it had been Churchill’s intention, originally, to convene the conference in Iraq, rather than in Cairo.90 Lawrence’s original plan had provided for Hashemite rule over the Middle Eastern territories of the former Ottoman Empire; Faysal at Damascus, Abdullah at Baghdad, and the Emir Zeid, the Sherif’s youngest son, over northern Mesopotamia. (These divisions slotted in approximately with the Sykes-Picot par­ tition of 1916.) Husayn, as king of the Hijaz, would be political and religious leader. One variant of Lawrence’s plan placed Zeid as ruler of Palestine.91 This blueprint had to be altered in 1920, when Faysal was ousted from Damascus by the French, and compensated with his brother Abdullah’s seat at Baghdad. British intentions towards Abdullah are somewhat obscure, until the latter forced his attentions on those gathered at the Cairo conference. In the autumn of 1920, Abdullah had ridden north from the Hijaz in order to avenge his brother’s defeat at the hands of the French. His transit through Trans-Jordan presented London with political and diplomatic complications. If he was allowed to invade Syria from British-controlled territory (nominally still part of the Palestine mandate)92 the French would suspect the collusion of ‘perfidious

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Albion’. But could the British do much to stop Abdullah? On 15 November, 1920, the Commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant General W Congreve, warned that local British advisers in Trans-Jordan were ‘powerless to enforce their orders or give advice to the local governments, or to maintain internal order’. Congreve had not extra troops to spare for the country, and went so far as to propose evacuation.93 The ‘solution’, contrived at the Cairo conference, and executed by Churchill at Jerusalem, would be to persuade Abdullah to remain as ruler of Trans-Jordan. The means used was the lightly-veiled threat that refusal would bring disaster down on the entire Hashemite family, whose fortunes at that time rested heavily on British support. For Lawrence, Churchill’s principal Arab expert at the Colonial Office, Faysal was a natural choice to rule the trouble-torn expanses of Mesopotamia. Lawrence had learned to respect Faysal as a desert leader, and had little but contempt for the latter’s brothers. First contacts were made by Foreign Secretary Curzon, in December, 1920, but Lawrence took over when the new Middle East Depart­ ment was set up in the new year. By 17 January, 1921, Lawrence was able to report back with satisfaction that Faysal had ‘agreed to abandon all claims of his father to Palestine’, and that ‘all questions of pledges and promises, fulfilled or broken, are set aside’.94 In a nutshell, Faysal, then living at the government’s expense in a London hotel, knew that his fortunes now depended on the British. As Lawrence informed Churchill, this situation could be made to work to the British benefit, and (music to Churchill’s ears) tended ‘towards cheapness and speed of settlement’. Churchill recommended the Hashemite plan to the opening session of the Cairo conference. Its guiding principle was what today would be called ‘linkage’ - each member of the family, dependent on Britain for his elevated position, would know also that opposition to British interests might bring not only his own downfall, but that of his brothers too: a strong argument in favour of the Sherifian policy was that it enabled His Majesty’s Government to bring pressure to bear on one Arab sphere in order to attain their own ends in another. If Feisal knew that not only his father’s subsidy and the protection of the Holy Places from Wahhabi attack, but also the position of his brother in Trans-Jordan was dependant upon his own good behaviour, he would be much easier to deal with. The same argument applied mutatis mutandis to King Hussein and Amir Abdullah.95

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To Lloyd George, Churchill telegraphed that ‘Feisal offers hope of best and cheapest solution’, and concluded: ‘I have no doubt personally Feisal offers far away best chance of saving our money’.96 Lloyd George expressed reservations about French suspicions, if Britain established the deposed Faysal in a country neighbouring upon the French mandate in Syria. He insisted that the initiative would have to come from Mesopotamia itself.97The last demand was a relatively simple matter for British officials to stage. On 16 March, the conference adopted Churchill’s proposal for replacing the army garrisons in Mesopotamia with a system of air patrols. The major advantage of the new scheme, apart from the great economy it would bring, was Imperial rather than local, for it took into account ‘the vital necessity of preparing and training an Air Force adequate to our needs in war, the importance of testing the potentialities of the Air Force, the need for giving its superior officers and staffs the experience in independent command and responsibility, and the provision of an “All Red” military and commercial route to India’.98 In London, the Cabinet approved Churchill’s plan, on 22 March. The garrison in Mesopotamia was to be reduced by a third, i.e. by 23 battalions, immediately. If all went well, a further 12 battalions would be removed in October, 1921. The reductions were condi­ tional on the successful installation of Faysal in Mesopotamia, and of Abdullah in Trans-Jordan. Some in the Cabinet feared that the elevation of the Hashemites might prompt the French to suspect a British plot to encircle them in Syria. But the CIGS insisted that the alternative in Trans-Jordan, a military occupation, would involve a ‘new, incalculable commitment’, especially in the event of an attack on Syria from Trans-Jordan.99Churchill reassured Lloyd George that Abdullah was not in fact a sine qua non for Trans-Jordan: ‘We do not expect or particularly desire, indeed, Abdullah himself to under­ take Governorship’.100Churchill maintained that the most important thing was to retain Abdullah’s goodwill to Britain, and his agreement to whoever did become Governor of Trans-Jordan. His policy remained that of ‘while preserving Arab character of area and admin­ istration to treat it as an Arab province or adjunct of Palestine’.101 Churchill would soon finalise the agreement with Abdullah, in person, at Jerusalem. Churchill himself looked back with some pride on his achieve­ ments at Cairo. The ‘Sharifian solution’, even if upset by Ibn Saud in the Arabian Peninsula shortly after, did prove remarkably resilient,

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lasting for over thirty years. In contrast to the 3S battalions stationed in Mesopotamia in 1921, by 1929, there was not a single regular unit, British or Indian, left in the whole country. Expenditure was cut from £20 millions in 1921-22 to a mere £1.5 million by 1928-29.102 Churchill had real grounds for self-satisfaction when writing this in 1929. But it is to be doubted whether he understood, or even followed closely the tide of events in the Middle East. In the House of Commons, in March, 1936, he would express similar satisfaction at the tranquil disposition of Palestine, just three weeks before the outbreak of the Arab rebellion in that country. He would certainly not have returned the same verdict in April, 1941, when Rashid Ali staged a pro-Axis coup against the greatly-outnumbered British garrison. One did not need the wisdom of hindsight to predict these events. As early as in December, 1921, the Military had inveighed against Churchill’s policy of trying to hold Iraq ‘on the cheap’: The real fact is that Winston is between a cheap and fatal tenure of Mesopotamia and a real occupation with security and peace which he can’t pay for. In short, his ‘hot air, aeroplanes and Arabs’ is leading him to disaster, and he is beginning to realise it.103

Lawrence himself, in Seven Pillars o f Wisdom, graciously allowed Churchill all the credit for the Cairo settlement. He opined that by that settlement, Britain had at last sorted out the conflicting commitments entered into during the war, albeit not without some cost to the Arabs themselves: in a few weeks, at his conference in Cairo, he [Churchill] made straight all the tangle, finding solutions fulfilling (I think) our promises in letter and spirit (where humanly possible) without sacrificing any interest of our Empire or any interest of the peoples concerned. So we were quit of the wartime Eastern adventure, with clean hands, but three years to late to earn the gratitude which peoples, if not states, can pay.104

There is no hint here that it had been none other than Lawrence himself who had evolved the Hashemite panacea to the problems of the Middle East, although implicit in this passage is the self­ justification of one whose conscience was tormented by the dupli­ citous role which he felt he had played during the war. The Cairo decisions, especially the Hashemite blueprint for Iraq and Trans-Jordan, reflected what has been called ‘the classical objectives of Victorian imperialism: the creation of a complaint local regime which would preserve Britain’s political and strategic needs

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while relieving her of the trouble and expense of ruling directly over an alien and unpredictable society’.105 In addition, the ‘Hashemite plan’ was underpinned by a system of under-the-table payments to Abdullah and Feisal, from funds earmarked for their father, Hussein. On 2 March, 1921, Churchill told the House of Commons that Hussein had received some £18,000, and that no other payments had been made to other rulers, apart from Ibn Saud. This statement was not borne out by Treasury files, opened fifty, rather than the usual thirty years later. By the end of 1921, Churchill had himself personally sanctioned the payment of nearly £12,000 to Feisal, and £5,000 to Abdullah, from funds intended for their father, who was, in effect, being cheated!106 The outward tranquility of the Middle East, during the 1920s at least, was due also to other, extraneous factors: the recession of Turkish and Bolshevik activity; the inability of any other European Power, and the unwillingness of the United States, to intervene actively in the area; and a decline in radicalism in Iraq, Palestine and Egypt, in the face of material and political appeasement. In the short term, the Cairo policy enabled Britain to maintain her paramount position in the region through client regimes, while satisfying the outcry at home for retrenchment. In the long term, the policy was flawed by its fatal under-estimation of the potential and the nature of Arab nationalism.107 Ultimately, British commitments were not reduced, and Britain herself became the target of Arab radicalism. But this was perhaps inevitable. Indeed, Britain was more successful in Mesopotamia and in Trans-Jordan, where the Hashemites were tied to British apron-strings, than in Egypt or Palestine. Even so, the British experience in the Middle East may be compared favourably with that of the French in Syria. Churchill never again devoted himself to the Middle East as an intrinsic area of British interest. The Cairo settlement, fashioned mainly by Lawrence, consisted of ‘a combination of tradition and innovation [and] was in turn subjected to inertia, enduring until it was repudiated by the major shock of World War Two, and the dissolution of the British Empire’.108

CHAPTER FOUR

CRISIS IN PALESTINE, 1921 1. THE BRITISH COMMITMENT

As we have noted above, Britain’s assumption of the Palestine mandate was a direct consequence of war-time strategy. Lord Curzon, who in fact had opposed the issue of the Declaration in 1917, became one of the major spokesmen for Palestine’s strategic importance. In December, 1918, he told a meeting of the Cabinet’s Eastern Committee: Has not the whole history of the war shown us ... that Palestine is really the strategic buffer of Egypt, and that the Canal, which is the weak side of Egypt, if it has to be defended in the future, will have to be defended - as it has been in the war - from the Palestine side? We were tempted into Palestine by our position upon the Canal and by the threat of a Turkish invasion that inevitably drew us forward upon the Canal, drew us across the Sinai Penin­ sula, and involved us in Palestine itself. Therefore, from the strategical point of view there is a close interest between Palestine and Egypt.1

This was the prevalent, though not the unanimous view of the Committee.2 Balfour did not consider that the Declaration issued over his signature of necessity bound England to assume responsi­ bility for Palestine. At the Cabinet meeting on 31 October, 1917 which authorised him to issue it, Balfour stated that he understood the words ‘national home’ to mean some form of British, American, or other protectorate. At the Peace Conference, Balfour argued repeatedly, but in vain, that the Americans should undertake the Palestine mandate.3 It should be remembered that by 1918 Balfour was seventy years old, and fatigue, illness and old age all circum­ scribed his ability to sustain lengthy controversy. After the war, his first priorities lay not in the Middle East, but in the re-establishment

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of the European balance, and in the United States, whose naval ambitions became his special preoccupation.4 In August, 1919, Balfour wrote a much-quoted memorandum, deploring the numerous, conflicting engagements into which Britain had entered due to the exigencies of war, in regard to the Middle East. He stated his conviction that Zionism was, for better or worse, ‘rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future needs, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land’. But he was concerned too about a breach of the principle of self-determination embodied in the League of Nations Covenant. The numerous British declarations of goodwill towards Arab nationalism did not square with her Zionist policy, and ‘so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate’.5 Balfour’s memorandum pointedly refrained from naming a man­ datory for Palestine. But in a private minute written six days pre­ viously, he had made his views quite clear. Robert Vansittart had minuted: ‘Not only has the mandate not been given: is it certain that we should accept it if offered? Considerations are beginning to emerge which might conceivably make it wiser for us, while support­ ing Zionism to the extent of our power, not to be the mandated power’. Balfour had replied: ‘(1) 1 am an ardent Zionist - but I agree with Mr Vansittart that if only our convenience is to be consulted I should personally like some one else to take the mandate. I do not however think this will happen’.6Two months later another Foreign Office official even suggested that a reversion to the original terms of the Sykes-Picot agreement might be preferable to exclusive British responsibility in Palestine: ‘The French now claim that they were entitled to a ‘quid pro quo’ if Great Britain receives a Mandate for Palestine, on the plea that in the Sykes-Picot Agreement it was stipu­ lated that Palestine was to be an international area. Could we not even now revert to the ‘international’ solution and throw responsi­ bility on the French? ‘But with so many British interests hanging on the ‘adjustment’ of Sykes-Picot, no reversion was now possible?7 Churchill himself is not on record, either in public, or in private, in regard either to the merits or demerits of the Balfour Declaration. From 1924 to 1928 he busied himself with the writing of his multi­ volume history of the war, and its ‘Aftermath’. But in all of the 3,000-

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odd pages, there is not a single mention of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, or his own role as Colonial Secre­ tary. His first concern, as we have noted, was to secure military economies and retrenchment in the Middle East. With these goals largely achieved at the Cairo conference, Churchill set out for Jerusalem. 2. CHURCHILL’S VISIT TO JERUSALEM, MARCH, 1921

The primary purpose of Churchill’s visit to Jerusalem was to settle Abdullah in Trans-Jordan. It will be recalled that this measure had been prompted by the threat of Abdullah marching on Damascus to avenge his brother’s defeat at the hands of the French. T.E. Lawrence later told Sir Lewis Namier that he had persuaded Churchill to ‘buy off’ Abdullah with Trans-Jordan, explaining that the alternative would have been a French rebuff, ending in a French take-over of Trans-Jordan. So much better a ‘British Abdullah in Transjordan’.8 Of course, T.E. Lawrence is not the most reliable of witnesses. He was not above embroidering the truth, as he did later for Captain Liddell Hart, who was told by Lawrence himself that with Abdullah’s arrival in Amman, he (Lawrence) had offered the following advice to Churchill: I know Abdulla: you won’t have a shot fired. L. had fetched Abdulla to Jerusalem, avoiding taking him through the city, and Churchill’s personal decision was taken after half an hour’s talk at the Mount of Olives - it was exactly contrary to the decision reached at the Cairo Conference.9

Churchill himself told the Commons fifteen years later: ‘The Emir Abdullah is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon at Jerusalem. I acted upon the advice of that very great man Colonel Lawrence, who was at my side in making the arrangements’.10 There is a good measure of embellishment in both these accounts. The minutes of the Cairo conference make it quite clear that the ‘Abdullah solution’ to Trans-Jordan was discussed at Cairo, even if Churchill was the one who ‘closed the deal’ in Jerusalem. The estab­ lishment of Abdullah in a separate Arab state in Trans-Jordan was in fact quite in line with the Sykes-Picot partition, in which Trans­ jordan would have formed the southern half of Faysal’s state, to be centred on Damascus, in the British sphere of influence. But Trans­ jordan was also part of the Palestine mandate which Britain secured

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for itself by virtue of the Balfour Declaration. As such, it was to have been opened to Jewish immigration and colonization. The Zionists were to be the first ones sacrificed in the cause of Abdullah’s desert fiefdom. One of the conditions to which Churchill agreed in his negotiations with Abdullah was that the provisions of the Balfour Declaration should not extend east of the River Jordan.11 At Cairo, the Palestine High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, had objected to Abdullah’s installation in Trans-Jordan, arguing that it would threaten the stability of both Palestine and Syria, not to mention Anglo-French relations. But Churchill’s overriding pre­ occupations was to secure a ‘pacific, cheap solution’,12 one which slotted in neatly with the grand Hashemite plan. Lawrence reassured Samuel that: it would be preferable to use Transjordan as a safety valve, by appointing a ruler on whom he could bring pressure to bear, to check anti-Zionism. The ideal would be a person who was not too powerful and who was not an inhabitant of Transjordania, but who relied upon his Majesty’s Government for the retention of his office.13

At Jerusalem, Churchill met Abdullah four times, between 27 and 30 March. Churchill stated that since Trans-Jordan was too small a unit economically and geographically to subsist on its own, it should go together with Palestine, as ‘an Arab Province under an Arab Governor responsible to the High Commissioner for Palestine’. Abdullah coun­ tered with a proposal to set himself up as a ruler of both Palestine and Trans-Jordan, in which event ‘the present difficulties between Arabs and Jews would be most easily overcome’.14 Churchill replied bluntly that this proposition was quite unac­ ceptable. Much of the conversation concerned Arab apprehensions about the early establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. But Churchill reassured Abdullah on this point: ‘This was not only not contemplated, but quite impossible. There were at present over 500,000 Moslems in Palestine and not more than 80,000 Jews. Jewish immigration would be a very slow process and the rights of the existing non-Jewish population would be strictly preserved’.15 Churchill made it quite clear to Abdullah that refusal of Britain’s munificence could have dire consequences for the entire Hashemite family, which Britain had decided to elevate over a united Middle East. The failure of this policy might bring a reversion to that policy followed by other Powers, of divide and rule.16

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At their final meeting, on 30 March, Abdullah accepted Chur­ chill’s proposal to become governor of Trans-Jordan for six months. He would receive the support of British money and troops, in return for which he had to ‘guarantee to the British “that there should be no anti-French or anti-Zionist agitation in the country”. At the end of six months, Abdullah would appoint “an Arab Governor” to administer Trans-Jordan “under the British High Commissioner”.’17 In his report back to the Cabinet, Churchill stated that Abdullah had proved ‘moderate, friendly and statesmanlike’. He explained that Abdullah’s position was invidious, since ‘he had been accepted throughout Transjordan “as a deliverer who had come up to attack the French in Syria, and to protect the Moslems of Palestine from the Zionists”.’ But now, Abdullah had definitely undertaken to be Britain’s friend.18 Apart from his four meetings with Abdullah, Churchill spent a relatively leisurely week in Jerusalem, possibly resting after his efforts at Cairo. His host the High Commissioner wrote later that Churchill had spent much of his time ‘painting the magnificent views’.19Churchill stayed in Jerusalem for just under a week. He had planned staying longer, in order to tour Jewish settlements, and Arab villages and towns.20 But while in Jerusalem, news from London convinced him that he yet had a chance to secure the vacated Chancellorship of the Exchequer, about which he had heard first when in Cairo, on 18 March. Thus on the morning of 30 March, Churchill cancelled the tour he had planned, and travelled to Tel Aviv. That afternoon, he visited the town of Tel Aviv, and the Jewish colony of Rishon LeZion. That same evening, he took the train to Egypt, whence he sailed the next morning for Europe. His later eulogies of the Jewish colonists’ work was thus based on what must have been a rushed visit to just one of them, where he spoke to the Russian speaking settlers via an interpreter, Pinhas Rutenberg.21 Palestine itself was not considered to constitute a problem at the time. There had been riots in April, 1920, under the Military occupa­ tion, but it was thought that the replacement of the hostile Military by the civil regime of Sir Herbert Samuel had placated the country. When Churchill and Samuel had passed through Gaza on their way to Jerusalem, they had been greeted by Arab cries of ‘down with the Jews’, ‘cut their throats’. But Churchill and his host were not impressed, since, conveniently, no one saw fit to translate for them. Curiously, Churchill later wrote in The Aftermath: ‘As regards

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Palestine, the [Cairo] Conference did little more than confirm the policy previously adopted and still maintained’. This is a strange statement, just seven years after the issue of the Palestine White Paper associated so closely with Churchill’s name. This brings to mind Balfour’s contemporary comment on the memoirs: ‘Winston’s bril­ liant Autobiography, disguised as a history of the universe’.22 When in Jerusalem Churchill met just once each with an Arab and Zionist delegation, separately.23 With the Arabs, Churchill adopted an arrogant, scolding tone. Perhaps he had been annoyed by the memorandum they had sent him in advance. The following passage, which the head of the Delegation read out loud to Churchill, con­ tained biting references to the Jewish character and international influence: Jews have been amongst the most active advocates of destruction in many lands, especially where their influential positions have enabled them to do more harm. It is well known that the disintegration of Russia was wholly or in great part brought about by the Jews, and a large proportion of the defeat of Germany and Austria must also be put at their door. When the star of the Central Powers was in the ascendant Jews flattered them, but the moment the scale turned in favour of the Allies, Jews withdrew their support from Germany, opened their coffers to the Allies, and received in return that most uncommon promise. The Jew, moreover, is clannish and unneighbourly, and cannot mix with those who live about him. He will enjoy the privileges and benefits of a country, but will give nothing in return. The Jew is a Jew all the world over. He amasses the wealth of a country and then leads its people, whom he has already impoverished, where he chooses. He encourages wars when selfinterest dictates, and thus uses the armies of the nations to do his bidding.24

Churchill started off by telling the Arabs that he had come to Cairo in order to sort out the Mesopotamian problem (he had refused to receive the Palestinian Arab delegation, which travelled especially to Cairo to see him). He was now in Palestine only because his close friend, Mr Samuel, had invited him. Churchill brushed aside the Arabs’ calumny of the Jews, and the demand to repudiate the Balfour Declaration. It was not in his power to repudiate that Declaration and, he added, nor would he wish to do so even if it were. As regards Jewish immigration, Churchill took the same line he might have taken fifteen years before, in explaining the benefits of white civili­ zation to the African natives: ‘We think that it will be good for the world, good for the Jews and good for the British Empire. But we also think it will be good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine, and

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we intend that it shall be good for them’. In any case, the Arabs would enjoy no right of appeal: ‘Our position is one of trust but our conquest makes it a position of right.’ Churchill also tried to reassure the Arabs that Britain was a benign ruler. Britain was ‘the greatest Moslem State in the world’ and cherished the Arabs’ friendship. The Balfour Declaration had prom­ ised the Jews a National Home in Palestine, not the transformation of Palestine into the National Home for the Jews: ‘The fact that Palestine shall contain a National Home for the Jews does not mean that it will cease to be the national home of other people, or that a Jewish Government will be set up to dominate the Arab people.’ But Churchill did not envisage ceding other parts of the Empire. With regard to the Arabs’ demand for self-government, Churchill stated: ‘All of us here today will have passed away from the earth also our children and our children’s children before it is fully achieved.’ There was a general consensus that Churchill’s blunt remarks to the Arabs were insensitive and self-defeating. On 9 April, a leading Arab, Mohamed Osman, described Churchill’s statement as ‘vindic­ tive, contemptuous and disconcerting’.25 British Military Intelligence went so far as to blame Churchill’s visit for the riots which racked Palestine just one month after his departure. The Report of Captain C.D. Brunton, of General Staff Intelligence, Middle East, stated: ‘Mr Churchill’s visit put the final touch to the picture. He upheld the Zionist cause and treated the Arab demands like those of a negligible opposition to be put off by a few polite phrases and treated like bad children’.26 There may have been some truth in Colonel Meinertzhagen’s assertion that Brunton was ‘a notorious anti-Zionist’, but it is diffi­ cult to agree entirely with his deduction that the report therefore constituted a ‘wilfully distorted view of the situation in Palestine’.27 However, it was Churchill’s decision to circulate the report to the Cabinet, much to the surprise of some of his officials. If he did so, in mid-June, 1921, it was because Churchill’s own apathy in regard to Palestine had been rudely disturbed by the May riots. Thus Churchill appended the following minute: There is no doubt that we are in a situation of increasing danger which may at any time involve us in serious military embarrassments with consequent heavy expenditure. Besides this, we shall no doubt be exposed to the bitter resentment of the Zionists for not doing more to help their cause and for

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not protecting them better. With the resources at my disposal I am doing all in my power, but I do not think things are going to get better in this part of the world, but rather worse.28

The Zionists hardly fared any better with Churchill, who received them on the same day that he saw the Arab delegation.29 He warned that the success of the Zionist enterprise would depend upon their ability to dispel Arab alarm about being dispossessed of their property and rights. Churchill referred also to Arab fears that the Zionist immigrants were importing ‘Bolshevist doctrines’ into the country. Churchill himself was convinced that the Zionists would benefit the whole Jewish people, and indeed the whole world (presumably by ridding it of Bolshevism), and would ‘bring welfare and advancement to the Arab population’. But he also warned them that they would have to labour hard to dispel Arab fears, and to earn their goodwill. Churchill warned also of the public mood in England, which demanded economies: When I go back to London, I have no doubt I shall be told that but for the Zionist Movement there would be no need to keep up such a large garrison at so great an expense, in this country. You must provide me with the means, and the Jewish community all over the world must provide me with the means of answering all adverse criticism. I wish to be able to say that a great event is taking place here, a great event in the world’s destiny. It is taking place without injury or injustice to anyone.30

Harry Sacher, one of Weizmann’s closest aides, who seems to have been present at the meeting with Churchill, was impressed not so much by Churchill’s defence of the Balfour Declaration, as by his warnings about the ‘pressure of the taxpayer, and the anti-Zionist critics in Parliament’. Sacher was anxious as to how the British would react to violent opposition by the Arabs (there had been riots at Haifa during Churchill’s stay, on 25 March; there were two Arab fatalities, ten Jews and five British police injured). Sacher doubted British determination to hold on to Palestine at all: I am still more troubled by doubts as to whether the British Government may not finish by dropping the whole thing and clearing out - for financial reasons. I really don’t know whether England today can afford such a luxury as a foreign policy, with or without mandates. Perhaps we ought to discover oil here quickly, and so rope in the Admiralty.31

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3. PALESTINE AND T H E GRAECO-TURKISH CRISIS, 1921

Within a few weeks of Churchill’s return to London from the Middle East, several clouds appeared on his horizon. There was large-scale rioting in Palestine, to which we shall refer in detail below; and, of even greater significance for Churchill, the Graeco-Turkish war in Asia Minor took on a new and dangerous turn. In Churchill’s opinion, the resolution of the first crisis was entirely dependent upon the outcome of the second. Lastly, the resolution of these crises was rendered the more difficult by the breach which opened up at a personal level between Churchill and Lloyd George. Churchill believed that Lloyd George had cheated him out of the Chancellorship, a senior position which he thought rightfully his. He thought it below his dignity as a senior minister, of several years’ standing, to have to go to Chancellor Horne, a minister of two years only, every time he wanted any money.32 He was furious with Lloyd George, and severed their previously cordial relations. He hinted several times at resignation, but never carried out his threat. How­ ever, he now took an ‘openly hostile attitude to Lloyd George both privately and in Cabinet’.33 Churchill had evidently seen the position as a last stepping-stone to the Premiership: ‘the fringe benefits of residence at 11, Downing Street, just once removed from the Prime Minister’s establishment at No. 10’. But Lloyd George read cor­ rectly, and was wary of his colleague’s political ambition: ‘A rival too near the centre of power was not to his liking. He would not have three kings in Whitehall, himself, Chamberlain and Churchill.’34 To their personal differences were added political discords. Churchill had taken the opposite view to Lloyd George on two of the major issues of foreign policy - British aid to the White Russians against the Bolsheviks, and British support of Greek ambitions in Asia Minor. In May, 1921, the Greek forces in Asia Minor ran into deep trouble, and Britain was faced with the dilemma of whether to aid the Greeks militarily, a risky venture from the purely military point of view, or force a Greek withdrawal, which might have humili­ ating political repercussions, both in Greece and in Britain. However, Lloyd George insisted on continuing British aid to the Greeks, and thus, in May, 1921, concurrent with a serious upheaval in Palestine, the Cabinet found itself faced with the potentially grave consequences of the Prime Minister’s policy in Asia Minor. On the morning of 31 May, the Cabinet considered a report that the position

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of the Greek army in the Smyrna province had deteriorated so seri­ ously that there was now every prospect of their being driven back on to the port of Smyrna itself. In that event, the Turks would be liable next to turn north, to threaten allied forces at Constantinople. The Military were unanimous in advising that the position of the small British force at the Straits was vulnerable and unsound. The CIGS, Sir Henry Wilson, advised immediate evacuation. The Cabinet held up its decision, pending further consultations. Sir Henry Wilson vented his spleen in his diary, in expressing his contempt for ‘the frocks’: ‘A more hopeless, ignorant, useless lot of men I have never seen’.35 That same afternoon, Churchill reported to the Cabinet on the unsatisfactory situation in Palestine, and warned that the policy he was now proposing for that country was predicated on the assumption that there would be no Turkish aggression.36As we shall shortly see, Churchill in fact did not wait upon further events in Asia Minor in order to urge a British evacuation from the Middle East. A Cabinet Committee set up to consider the position vis-a-vis the Turks (which included both Lloyd George and Churchill) noted on 1 June the ‘marked and serious deterioration’ brought about in the Middle East by the rise of Mustapha Kemal, who two years before had been an ‘almost negligible factor’. The Committee appreciated that a Kemalist occupation of Constantinople would constitute a great moral blow for Britain. Such a blow would be unacceptable, except ‘as the purchase-price of peace with Turkey’. In that event, it would be almost impossible to continue in Mesopotamia and Palestine.37 At a meeting held at the Foreign Office that same day, in order to discuss the future of Britain’s Middle Eastern Mandates, Churchill apparently expressed his anxiety ‘to get out of Mesopo­ tamia and Palestine’.38 The Greek Premier Venizelos was invited to Chequers, for talks with Lloyd George. Venizelos agreed to press his government to begin negotiations for a cessation of hostilities. But he warned that if these proved unsuccessful, the Greeks would not be able to maintain themselves in Asia Minor for more than a further six months - unless allied support were forthcoming. Venizelos warned Lloyd George that if Kemal turned down the Greeks’ conditions, the only altern­ ative to British backing would be a humiliating succession of with­ drawals, and surrender to Kemal, not only by the Greeks, but by the British too, ‘involving not only being driven out of Constantinople, but eventually also from Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine’.39

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Political and military disarray in Asia Minor and in Palestine prompted Churchill to make one last attempt to persuade Lloyd George to cut British losses in the former, and scuttle the latter. On 2 June, 1921, he wrote to the Prime Minister, pleading that it was still not too late to pull back from what he described as a steady and rapid drift ‘towards what will in fact be a defeat of England by Turkey’. Churchill urged Lloyd George to issue an ultimatum to the Greeks, to the effect that continued British support would be made contingent on a Greek withdrawal to the Smyrna coast, and ulti­ mately, on a Greek withdrawal from Asia Minor. He also urged substantive negotiations between Britain and the Kemalists, after Britain had reinforced Constantinople ‘with every available man and ship’, in order to be able to negotiate from a position of strength.40 In addition to the crisis in Asia Minor, the Colonial Office was anxious about the protracted failure of the League of Nations to ratify the Middle Eastern mandates. The main stumbling-block was the United States.41 When the civil regime of Sir Herbert Samuel had been set up in July, 1920, it had not been imagined that there would be such a long-drawn-out period of uncertainty (until July, 1922) pending international recognition of British rule. In Palestine itself, the delay created political disorder, for so long as the Mandate failed to achieve legal ratification, the Arab population believed it had a chance of subverting it, together with the Balfour Declaration which the British were committed to enforce. The High Commissioner was concerned also that pending ratification, he would be unable to raise public loans with which to finance his programme of public works and development. Samuel shared the concern of his colleagues in London that until the situation in the Middle East was stabilised, by reaching terms with Kemal Pasha, there could be no tranquillity or progress in Palestine. (Many Arabs might well prefer, rather than British sponsorship of the Zionists, a return of Turkish rule to the area.) At this juncture, Samuel seems to have fully shared Churchill’s desperate mood, even if he did not reach the latter’s drastic conclusions. On 4 July, 1921, Samuel addressed the following plea to the Colonial Secretary: If only something could be got settled somewhere, there would be a greater chance of stability in Palestine. But the Mandate, Egypt, Mustapha Kemal, Trans-Jordania - all undecided questions; how can we hope that the Palestinians will give up political controversy and pursue the paths of tran­ quillity? And the greatest of these is the Mandate. I am at work on the outline

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of a constitution; but the promulgation of a constitution will not be a substitute for regularising the international position of the country. Our capital resources are very nearly at an end, and without a loan, which is itself dependent upon the Mandate, we are brought to a standstill on the eco­ nomic side. It is this which gives me most pre-occupation.42

But Churchill had acted already, spurred on by the crisis at the beginning of June in Asia Minor. Without apparently consulting any of his officials at the Colonial Office, or Samuel himself, he had in his private letter to Lloyd George of 2 June suggested the following: I now learn that the League of Nations wish to postpone the Mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia until the Americans are satisfied, i.e. indefinite postponement. I ought to warn you that if this course is followed and if at the same time the Turkish situation degenerates in a disastrous manner, it will be impossible for us to maintain our position either in Palestine or in Mesopotamia, and the only wise and safe course would be to take advantage

o f the postponement o f the Mandates and resign them both and quit the two countries at the earliest possible moment, as the expense to which we shall be put will be wholly unwarrantable.43

Churchill’s reference to American procrastination evidently prompted Lloyd George to come up with his own brainwave. On 9 June, during the meeting at Chequers of the Cabinet committee on Constantinople, he proposed that Britain offer both the Middle Eastern mandates to the United States.44 This was quite evidently a ploy, intended to call the Americans’ bluff, and thus deter them from further challenging Britain’s rights to the mandates.45 However, Churchill seized on the Prime Minister’s proposal as a drowning man would a lifebelt, and wrote to him a further personal letter that very same evening. Churchill flattered Lloyd George by telling him how much he had been ‘taken’ by the Prime Minister’s proposal, and asked permission to raise it in Cabinet, so that he (Churchill) might be authorised to announce it publicly during his speech on the Colonial Office estimates, scheduled for the House of Commons the following Tuesday, 14 June, 1921.46 Lloyd George hastily poured cold water on Churchill’s impetu­ osity, in a brusque letter addressed impersonally to ‘My Dear Colonial Secretary’.47 Lloyd George instructed that no such public statement would be made without prior consultation with the United States Government; any attempt to shunt the mandates on to the Americans in this fashion would inevitably be rejected by the latter,

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and would ‘suggest that we regard these mandates as useless burdens, to be unloaded on any other power which would take them from us’. Worse still, a statement such as Churchill proposed would ignite an even greater public and Press agitation to get the Government ‘to abandon such burdensome possessions’.48 The tones of irony and ridicule in Lloyd George’s argument were quite evidently aimed at Churchill himself. Lloyd George was well acquainted with Churchill’s attitude to the Middle Eastern mandates. But the Prime Minister had himself planned the conquest of the Middle East when he had first assumed his present office, in December, 1916. He did not share the Colonial Secretary’s antipathy for the ‘New Provinces’. Neither Churchill’s policy of scuttle, nor his diplomatic style held much appeal for the Prime Minister. The Foreign Secretary, Curzon, who had received a copy of Churchill’s letter, weighed in with his own veto of Churchill’s flippant proposal.49 Churchill quickly back-tracked, appreciating that he had miscalculated the mood of Lloyd George. The combination of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary was too much for him, and Churchill wrote to Curzon: ‘On reflection I agree with what you and he [Lloyd George] say. My desire to relieve this country from those formidable Middle Eastern bur­ dens led me to put it forward as a suggestion, but I do not press it any longer at this stage’.50 In the Cabinet, three days later, it was suggested that should the United States continue to question Britain’s right to the Middle Eastern mandates, Britain should offer to cede them both to her.51 4. THE MAY RIOTS - INITIAL REACTIONS

The crisis in Asia Minor was still simmering when Churchill had returned to England from the Middle East in the second week of April, 1921. He sought Cabinet confirmation of the new policy adumbrated at Cairo and Jerusalem. Discussion centred around the new desert air route from Palestine (Lydda) to Iraq. The Cabinet finally approved the scheme on 19 April.52 Palestine was not on the Cabinet agenda. In April, Churchill appointed Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen as his Military Adviser at the Colonial Office. Meinertzhagen criticised Samuel’s appointment of Amin el-Husayni as the Mufti of Jerusalem,

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and termed the separation of Transjordan from Palestine ‘a betrayal of Britain’s pledge to the Jews’.53Meinertzhagen told Churchill bluntly that he found the Colonial Office Middle East Department ‘almost 100 per cent hebraphobe’ (sic), and suggested that Abdullah’s regime might be set a seven year time-limit. Churchill agreed to consider the latter proposal but, as he had warned Meinertzhagen, the issue was in fact already settled. Meinertzhagen himself agreed later that he had been mistaken, that although Transjordan had been included in the Palestine mandate, it had not been a part of the territory allotted to the Jewish National Home, the eastern boundary of which was the Jordan River. Meinertzhagen’s account is not to be fully relied upon, yet neither can it be completely dismissed. Dr Wasserstein has described him as ‘an enfant terrible ... a violent and prejudiced partisan ... a lone operator ... almost unique among senior officials in Palestine, in being a fierce proponent of Zionism’.54 Meinertzhagen had been Political Officer attached to the military regime in Palestine from 1919 to 1920. He had been forced by General Allenby to return to London, after he had placed responsibility for the April, 1920 riots upon the Military. He therefore arrived at the Colonial Office biased against the military authorities at Jerusalem and Cairo, whom he accused of sabotaging the National Home policy. It must be empha­ sised that this was a minority view in 1921, although Churchill himself would develop similar ideas during World War Two, inspired perhaps by his experiences at the Colonial Office in 1921. So due allowance should be made for Meinertzhagen’s description of the officials: ‘the worst offender being Shuckburgh, who is head of the Middle East Department. Hubert Young and little Lawrence do their utmost to conceal their dislike and mistrust of the Jews but both strongly support the official pro-Arab policy of Whitehall and frown on the equally official policy based on the Balfour Declaration. The latter is the only policy I recognize.’55 The deceptive tranquillity of Palestine was shattered on 1 May, 1921, when fighting on the Tel Aviv-Jaffa border between Jewish Communists and Socialists, during a May Day Parade, developed into Arab-Jewish riots. Arabs began to attack Jewish shops in Jaffa, and the Arab police joined in against the Jews. General street fight­ ing and looting ensued. The Arab crowds focussed their wrath against the hostel for Jewish immigrants in Jaffa, and it was here that the great majority of Jewish fatalities occurred. Violence spread

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throughout the country during the following week, during which, according to British Intelligence reports, some 40 Jews and 18 Arabs were killed (Jewish estimates claimed 47 Jewish fatalities, 45 of which occurred at the immigrant hostel).56 Churchill’s initial response was to bring down the full force of the law upon the heads of the guilty. But he was at the same time alarmed that Samuel’s request to hold up troop withdrawals from Palestine might affect his overall plan for economies in the Middle East. On 4 May, Samuel asked General Congreve, the Commander-in-Chief, Egypt, not to remove from Palestine those units scheduled to leave, and requested also that warships be despatched to Jaffa and Haifa, as a demonstration, and a precaution against further outbreaks. As Secretary of State for War, and then Colonial Secretary, Churchill had planned the reduction of the Palestine garrison from 25,000 to 7,000 troops. Of these, a considerable proportion would be, owing to financial considerations, Indian cavalry.57 Upon receipt of Samuel’s telegram, on 4 May, he replied by tele­ gram on the same day: ‘Kindly telegraph number and strength of units you propose to retain at once and also for how long in your opinion they will be required. Will not a considerable addition to expense of garrison be thus involved?’58 On 12 May, Churchill tele­ graphed once more, to express concern at the ‘requests for reinforce­ ments which must add greatly to the expense already so heavy’, and stipulated that any additional military expenditure would have to be borne by local revenue.59 Whatever Churchill’s first impulses may have been, it was quite clear that economic exigencies would limit the measures he could afford to implement in suppression of a rebellious colonial popula­ tion. On 14 May, Hubert Young informed the Zionist representative in London, Mr S. Landman, that Samuel’s messages had made it quite clear that the Arabs had mounted the disturbances in order to show the British taxpayer that the policy of the Jewish National Home would require the use of considerable force. The government, continued Young, was resolved not to allow its rule to be shaken by acts of violence. But at the same time, Young warned that a ‘firm’ policy might lead to the necessity for additional troops in Palestine, which ‘would have a bad effect on the “Tax-payer”.’60 But perhaps the most significant act during that week of riots was the suspension of Jewish immigration, by Sir Herbert Samuel, on the sixth day of the riots.61 Jewish immigration lay at the very heart of

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the National Home policy, and its suspension at the height of the Arab riots seemed, and was in fact, a concession to Arab violence. The Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv, was so incensed at the suspension, that the Zionist Commission,62 and the Vaad Leumi (the National Council of Palestinian Jews) considered resigning ert masse. There was also talk of organising illegal immigration, and mounting a campaign to pressure Britain into giving up the Mandate.63 In effect, immigration had been a problematic issue from the start. Although granted a generous immigration quota by Sir Herbert Samuel, the Zionists were unable to raise the funds needed to finance large-scale immigration. The Zionist Organization in London was even constrained to appeal to the Foreign Office that it instruct its consular officers at European ports of exit to withhold immigration visas from prospective Jewish immigrants.64Thus, given the Zionists’ own economic straits, Samuel had evidently thought that the May riots provided him with a golden opportunity to kill two birds with a single stone - to ease the Zionists’ own economic difficulties while at the same time appeasing Arab nationalism. But Samuel displayed singularly naive political judgement. What­ ever restrictions the Zionists might have been prepared to accept, even urged upon the British in private, they could not publicly accept that immigration should be mortgaged to Arab goodwill. Their previously cordial relations with Samuel were severed for ever. As for the Arabs, it could hardly be expected that they would not congratulate themselves on the suspension mid-way through the riots, or that they would settle for merely a temporary suspension. The suspension of immigration, as we have noted, was not an auto­ matic step taken at the outset of the riots. On the contrary, Samuel had believed initially that the outburst was local, confined only to the Jaffa area. He had imposed martial law only at the army’s insistence, and even then had restricted it to the Jaffa area. He had a preference for demonstrative actions, such as the visit of warships, or air patrols. It was only when he appreciated that the violence was spreading to other areas that he apparently lost his nerve. On 6 May, a large crowd of Arabs gathered at Ramleh for the Nebi Salih festival. Fearing further disorders, he instructed the District Governor of Ramleh, by telephone, to announce to the crowd the temporary suspension of immigration. All disorders in fact ceased by 9 May. But on 13 May, when Samuel was informed by the Military Governor of Jaffa that the situation was deteriorating, he issued further

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instructions that same night to all District Governors, directing them to publish a fresh statement, confirming the suspension of Jewish immigration (which had of course already been in effect for several days).65 Samuel and the Colonial Office were concerned also about the character of the new immigrants, most of whom came from Eastern Europe. Many were considered to be tainted by the ‘pernicious doctrines of Bolshevism’. As one historian of this period has noted, ‘The Judeo-Bolshevik bogey was an obstinately recurrent theme in British thinking about Palestine throughout the mandatory period’.66 This bogey was also perhaps responsible for the fact that many British colonial administrators, Churchill included, deceived them­ selves into thinking that Arab opposition to Zionism was rooted in their irrational fears of Jewish influence, rather than in opposition to Jewish nationalism. On 8 May, Samuel informed London of his decision to suspend Jewish immigration - one that was evidently considered to be an administrative measure within the High Commissioner’s compe­ tence, rather than a question of principle to be decided in the Colonial Office. Samuel stressed the Arabs’ fears of the Zionists’ ‘importation into their country of the least desirable elements of Eastern Europe’, even if, as Samuel himself admitted, their checks had discovered that a mere two per cent of the new immigrants had in fact proved to be Bolshevists. Samuel informed London of his intention to deport ‘all the immigrants who clearly belong to the revolutionary organisation previously referred to’, and of the con­ tinued, temporary suspension of Jewish immigration until two conditions were met: first, that the enterprises in which the new immigrants were to be employed should already be in production; and second, that the government itself should assume a stricter control over the selection of candidates for immigration.67 Churchill endorsed Samuel’s proposals with enthusiasm: Communist elements and tendencies among the Jewish immigrants will prove a very real and serious danger which it would be imprudent to under­ rate even at this stage. I hope you will endeavour at once to purge the Jewish colonies and newcomers of communist elements and without hesitation or delay have all those who are guilty of subversive agitation expelled from the country. Even those leaders of the Zionist movement on the spot whose opinions might otherwise be coloured by family ties with Russia will Surely recognise the vital importance of such action to their cause.68

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The Zionist representative in London, Mr Landman, certainly displayed the expected degree of understanding. When interviewed by Young, on 14 May, he expressed his hope that the Zionists would not suffer on account of a few Communists, but agreed that ‘it would be best to deport or otherwise deal with them in Palestine itself’ 69 (the inference was that, just as the Zionists had asked the British to curtail immigration, rather than ask their own people not to come, so they now preferred the British to take steps against Jews of dubious political ideology, rather than act against them themselves). Churchill remained somewhat obsessed with the ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’ bogey. In March, 1922, in a speech before the Commons on Middle East policy, he reported that Jewish immigration had been ‘most strictly watched and controlled’, and that ‘every effort has been made to secure only good citizens who will build up the country’. He concluded: ‘We cannot have a country inundated by Bolshevist riffraff, who would seek to subvert institutions in Palestine as they have done with success in the land from which they came’.70 5. CONCESSIONS TO THE ARABS

On 14 May, 1921, Churchill telegraphed his retroactive approval of Samuel’s suspension of Jewish immigration.71 In addition, Churchill referred to Samuel’s proposal for ‘the early establishment of repre­ sentative institutions’, on which the High Commissioner had in fact been working prior to the May riots.72 The Colonial Office, and perhaps Churchill above all, was determined not to be frightened out of its Zionist policy by the Arabs’ violence - as Churchill put it to Samuel on 14 May. Churchill’s backing for the suspension of immigration was due both to economic fears and to anxiety about Bolshevik infiltration. However, the concession of an elected council was such an important measure, claimed Churchill, that it would require further consideration, and could not be approved out of hand. In addition, Churchill possibly saw no point in drafting a new constitution for Palestine until the mandate was ratified by the League of Nations. Churchill’s biographer has painted a portrait of admirable Churchillian firmness, and determination not to be cowed by threats: ‘Churchill’s telegram left Samuel in no doubt that the Middle East Department regarded the Arabs as the principal culprits’.73 Yet he did not dismiss the idea of constitutional concessions, he merely

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questioned Samuel’s timing. He believed that they had to ‘make concessions on their merits and not under duress’,74 that ‘to make such a concession under pressure is to rob it of half its value’.75 On 12 May, Samuel pressed for the institution of an Advisory Council, as well as municipalities, on an elective basis.76 At the Colonial Office, Sir John Shuckburgh favoured adhering to the terms of Churchill’s telegram of 14 May, whereas Lawrence favoured granting the proposed concession immediately.77 An interim com­ promise was arrived at. Samuel was instructed to state that the government was considering steps to be taken for ‘the closer associ­ ation of the people of Palestine with the administration under the Mandate’, and that the Colonial Secretary was giving his ‘closest attention to the question of ensuring a free and authoritative expres­ sion of popular opinion’. In the meantime, Samuel was prohibited from using the words ‘elected’ or ‘representative’.78 On 31 May, Churchill reported to the Cabinet on the situation in Palestine. It will be recalled that this meeting took place on the same day, in the morning, as that of a second Cabinet meeting called to consider the deterioration in the Greeks’ position in Asia Minor (above, pp. 93-4). Churchill expressed his admiration for the Jewish colonies, which ‘had created a standard of living far superior to that of the indigenous Arabs’. But, he added, his admiration was tinged with anxiety about the general situation in Palestine, which was less satisfactory than that in Mesopotamia, ‘owing to suspicions of Zion­ ism among local inhabitants’. Once again, he predicated Britain’s continued tenure of the Middle Eastern mandates upon there being ‘no Turkish aggression’.79 Samuel was due to make a public statement on 3 June, on the occasion of the King’s Birthday. He desperately wanted to be able to inform the Arab population of some significant political concession, so as to avert further disorders. On the same day that Churchill reported on the situation to the Cabinet, 31 May, Samuel informed the Colonial Office that his advisers in Jerusalem were not satisfied with his speech, as presently drafted. Samuel requested permission to announce the establishment of a Christian-Moslem Committee, to carry out for the Arabs those functions carried out for the Jewish community by the Vaad Leumi.80 But Churchill’s officials blocked this particular initiative. Gerard Clauson minuted bluntly: ‘it looks too much like a policy of funk’. Young admitted that it would be a great mistake to crystallise the

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communal distinction between Jews and Arabs by recognising a Moslem-Christian body of any kind. Lawrence pointed out that the Jewish bodies were not a part of the official administration, and suggested the Arabs might be better advised to concentrate on the official councils. Shuckburgh acceded to the general consensus, ‘with some reluctance’, and Churchill initialled Shuckburgh’s decision. Churchill telegraphed to Samuel on 2 June, in the sense of Young’s minute, and suggested that Young confine himself to a vague promise for the future, ‘pending consideration by His Majesty’s Government of question of ensuring full authoritative expression of public opinion you will always as in the past give fullest weight to views and requests of all responsible persons or bodies speaking on behalf of all sections of community’.81 Whatever the officials in London or in Jerusalem may have thought, Churchill was on that very day suggesting to Lloyd George that they take advantage of the delay in the ratification of the mandates in order to quit both Palestine and Iraq (above, pp. 94-5)! We may gauge further Churchill’s mood at that time by his remarks at a private luncheon with Thomas Marlowe, editor of the Daily Mail, on 30 May, 1921. Churchill said that so far as he was concerned, the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia were ‘inheritances’, and he, Churchill, had not initiated any of the liabilities there: ‘Meso­ potamia and Palestine are twin babies in his care but he is not the father. He is reducing costs as drastically as possible’. When asked by Marlowe what was his objection to ‘clearing out of Mesopotamia altogether’, Churchill replied ‘that it was only because it would be disgraceful to do so. We have undertaken liabilities, turned out the Turks, and we cannot turn our backs on it all. All we can do is to reduce the cost of our liabilities to the lowest possible point’.82 Samuel’s speech in Palestine on 3 June, the ‘King’s Birthday speech’, was something of a turning-point in the history of the Palestine Mandate. It tried to explain to both communities in Palestine the meaning of the ambiguous Balfour Declaration. As such, it contained many of the key elements of the 1922 White Paper, which would determine British policy in Palestine until 1939. A few key passages are worth quoting here. Samuel emphasised that his government would ‘never agree to a Jewish Government being set up to rule over the Moslem and Christian majority’, and interpreted the government’s policy towards Zionism as follows:

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They mean that the Jews, a people scattered throughout the world, but whose hearts are always turned to Palestine, should be enabled to found here their home, and that some among them, within the limits which are fixed by the numbers and interests of the present population, should come to Palestine in order to help by their resources and efforts to develop the country to the advantage of all its inhabitants.83

Samuel reassured the Arabs that the conditions pertaining in Palestine would not permit ‘anything in the nature of mass immi­ gration’, and that the political views of the new immigrants were being carefully scrutinised. That very small proportion who were ‘tainted with the pernicious doctrines of Bolshevism, doctrines which carry with them the economic ruin of all classes in any country they enter’, had been arrested, and those of them not liable to criminal prosecution were to be expelled from Palestine forthwith. On the question of constitutional advance, Samuel adhered to the limits dictated by London. After promising that ‘the question of securing a free and authoritative expression of popular opinion’ was receiving the closest attention in London, Samuel announced his intention meanwhile ‘to take immediate steps with a view to ensuring closer consultation on administrative matters of importance between the Government and responsible persons who speak on behalf of all sections of the population’, and to ‘re-establish the system of election in the Municipalities’.84 Samuel did not in fact offer concrete concessions to the Arabs, as his advisers had pressed him to do. Moreover, during the course of his speech, he had also announced the renewal of Jewish immigra­ tion, albeit on a scale limited by the new conditions he had set. Yet his speech still came as a nasty shock to the Zionists, who again considered such desperate steps as mass resignations, boycotting the administration, and cutting off all contact with Samuel.85The speech was regarded by the Zionists as a blatant measure of appeasement, at the expense of the National Home policy. Samuel was quite evidently under the influence of his advisers, many of whom were remnants from the Military Administration, which had become well known for its pro-Arab sympathies. Yet any action against Samuel himself was likely to be self-defeating. There was no point in trying to have Samuel dismissed, since quite clearly the Zionists could hardly expect better treatment from a new, non-Jewish High Com­ missioner It was clear that the remedy, if any, lay in higher quarters, in London.

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Furthermore, Samuel’s speech had only announced interim meas­ ures. Samuel had been disappointed at being reined in by Churchill, but he was shortly reassured: I am certainly in no way opposed to the step by step establishment of elective institutions or to any measures which you may take to secure effective and constant representation of non-Jewish opinion. I am willing at any time to receive from you proposals on this subject. / was not o fth e o pinion however

that the morrow o f the Jaffa riots was the best moment for making such a concession. As soon as disorder has been suppressed and there is even a short lull in the agitation the opportunity should be seized.86

On 5 June, the Zionist leader, Nahum Sokolow visited the Colonial Office to protest against Samuel’s speech. Churchill rebut­ ted his protest, and insisted that henceforth immigrants would have to have jobs waiting for them. Churchill insisted also that the main reason for Arab disquiet was not Jewish immigration, but Zionist propaganda to the effect that the country was soon to become Jewish.87 Churchill’s concern about Palestine was increased further by welltaken warnings from the Military. On 5 June, General Congreve telegraphed from Cairo the following warning to Samuel, which was duly passed on to London. Congreve was evidently dissatisfied with the extent of the concessions announced by the High Commissioner on 3 June. Congreve told Samuel that since the May disturbances he had received no intimation that the High Commissioner hoped for any change in the political situation, and he feared that ‘unless some change is made we may be confronted with a situation beyond our power to cope with’. Straying somewhat from the realm of his own authority, the General cited two principal causes for Arab discontent: first, Jewish immigration; and second, Arab distrust of the British administration which, rightly or wrongly, they believed to be tainted with pro-Jewish sympathies. Persistence with the Balfour Declar­ ation, warned Congreve, would sooner or later reduce the whole country to a state of insurrection, which ‘would inevitably result in wholesale murder and destruction of Jewish villages’. In this event, Congreve warned, ‘I must make it quite clear to you that the forces at my disposal in Palestine are not sufficient in case of organised insurrection’.88 No one at the Colonial Office questioned Congreve’s grave prog­ nostication. The General was bursting through an open door. Clauson minuted: ‘This is a very serious report. Of the three alternatives

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offered... we have in effect accepted the first [i.e. a change in policy]. Only the future can tell whether it will succeed’.89 Lawrence too expressed his agreement with Congreve’s assess­ ment, and the hope that ‘our political reforms may cure it’. Only the maverick Meinertzhagen expressed dissent: ‘The report is alarming, as the Military henceforth disclaim responsibility, which now rests with Sir H. Samuel and with us’.90 The general’s dire warning arrived at the Colonial Office where it had already been agreed, in principle, to make constitutional concessions to the Arabs. Only the details remained to be settled. The British in Palestine were faced with two apparently irreconcil­ able commitments: the first, to fulfil the Balfour pledge to set up the Jewish National Home; and the second, ‘to carry out the traditional British policy of introducing a representative element into the administration as quickly as circumstances permit’.91 Sir John Shuckburgh feared that the Zionists wanted the British to ‘impose’ their national home on Palestine by autocratic methods and abandon all talk of popular representation until they became a majority in the country. Shuckburgh recoiled from this prospect, and insisted that there must be some way of reconciling the two obli­ gations, even if it did prove ‘a difficult and delicate task’ and incurred resistance from both sides. Churchill initialled his concurrence.92 Meinertzhagen took an unabashed pro-Zionist stance. Any genu­ inely representative body in Palestine would inevitably oppose the Zionist policy which the government was pledged to support. There­ fore, for as long as the Arabs opposed Zionism, the British must rule directly, and representation be deferred until later, when it would have to be ‘based on the principle of the acceptance of Zionism’.93 Meinertzhagen’s views were motivated by what he considered to be the British interest. He believed in Zionism as the solution to the Jewish dispersion, in the Jews’ ability to establish in the British interest ‘a strong Imperial strategic point in Palestine’, whereas by contrast, he was convinced of ‘the stagnating effect of Arab influ­ ence’, which he thought would become ‘a source of weakness to the Empire’.94 Churchill did not share Meinertzhagen’s confidence about the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Their differences are reflected in the several caustic references to Churchill to be found in Meinertz­ hagen’s diary. Churchill’s inclinations at that time, as we have seen, were to surrender the mandate, and release Britain from the

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commitments it involved. These sentiments were echoed by one of Churchill’s senior advisers, Major Hubert Young. Young was convinced that the two obligations, to Jews and Arabs, were incompatible. Britain was therefore left with the choice between two distasteful alternatives; either ‘the abandonment of the Zionist policy in any­ thing like the form the Jews hope and expect to see it; or stifling the local aspirations to an extent which is repellent to our traditions, with possibly military and financial commitments beyond our means’. Young’s conclusion was that ‘if local opinion is incurably anti-Zionist we should throw over not only our Zionist policy but also the Mandate’. The only ray of hope Young saw was that the silent majority on each side might agree to a compromise, ruled out for the moment by the extremists on each side.95 There was an element of cant in these professions of concern for the constitutional progress of a backward province of the former Ottoman Empire. Colonial Office officials were never so prompt and agitated by the fate of the natives in other parts of the Empire. On the other hand, it was precisely the melange of Jewish and Arab nationalisms in Palestine which had produced such an explosive situation. Without Zionism, there would not have been the same urgent need for constitutional progress. In his speech in the Commons on 14 June on the Colonial Office vote, Churchill would refer to the constitutional dilemma, without proffering any solution: The difficulty about this promise of a national home for the Jew in Palestine is that it conflicts with our regular policy of consulting the wishes of the people in the mandated territories and of giving them representative institutions as soon as they are fit for them, which institution, in this case they would use to veto any further Jewish immigration.96

The Colonial Office was therefore reduced to offering various ‘compromise’ proposals, which in fact satisfied neither community - either a genuinely representative assembly possessing only advisory powers, or a legislative assembly dominated by a majority of nomi­ nated British members.97 Neither formula proved sufficiently attrac­ tive to win over the Arabs. On 15 June, Churchill instructed Shuckburgh: ‘I am strongly in favour of the introduction of representative institutions in Palestine, and I consider it impossible to deny them to that country while little backward places like Trans-Jordan are given them ... But of course the instrument of Government creating the elective institutions must

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provide for the execution of our pledge to the Zionists ... immi­ gration must be ultra vires ...V 8 Churchill was again being pressed by Samuel for some gesture, this time to the Palestinian Arab delegation which was about to leave for talks in London. On 21 June, Churchill informed Samuel that the Arabs would be granted repre­ sentative institutions, but no representative body would be allowed to interfere with those measures designed to give effect to the Jewish National Home policy." The debate was not yet concluded. It would be continued with the Arab delegation in London, and with the Zionists, who were alarmed at Samuel’s speech on 3 June. But first let us turn to Churchill’s public statements on Palestine and the Middle East, during the two debates on the Colonial Office vote on 14 June and 14 July, 1921. They present quite a contrast with his privately-expressed opinions at the time, whether to Lloyd George, or to his colleagues in the Colonial Office. 6. THE COLONIAL OFFICE VOTE, JUNE-JULY, 1921

The major part of Churchill’s speech on 14 June dealt with the position in Iraq. Churchill gave a long historical disquisition on the origins of British commitments in the Middle East, arising from her pledges to Arabs and Jews, and from her military successes. Repeat­ edly, Churchill stressed the moral obligations incumbent upon Britain, which ‘could not repudiate lightheartedly’ her undertakings. Again, when referring to the admirable achievements of the Jewish colonists of Rishon LeZion, he stated: ‘We cannot possibly agree to allow the Jewish colonies to be wrecked, or all future immigration to be stopped, without definitely accepting the position that the word of Britain no longer counts throughout the East and the Middle East’. But for all of Churchill’s concern about Britain’s moral duty, he insisted also that her obligation could not be an unlimited one: I agree that a point might be reached when we should have to declare that we had failed, and that we were not justified in demanding further sacrifices from the British taxpayer ... That would be a very humiliating and melancholy confession to have to make, and after giving most careful and, I think, quite unprejudiced consideration to the whole subject, I do not think it would be true to say at the present time either that we had failed or that our resources did not enable us to discharge our obligations.100

And in conclusion, Churchill returned to the theme he had

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developed so consistently: ‘The Middle East settlement, and all the economies arising from it, depended in the last resort upon a peaceful and lasting settlement with Turkey’. Churchill’s speech has been described by his biographer as ‘a personal triumph’.101 Indeed, this was the phrase used by Lord Winterton in the ensuing debate. There can be little doubt that the House of Commons was impressed by Churchill’s masterly perform­ ance, and that his Cabinet colleagues - Chamberlain, Curzon and Lloyd George - were relieved that the thorny question of the Middle East mandates, the subject of much public criticism, had been reasonably well negotiated. One may also surmise that Curzon and Lloyd George were relieved that Churchill had managed to put over government policy in the Middle East so competently, notwith­ standing his own private doubts.102 But the speech was not in fact the undiluted triumph the biography would have us believe. It may be said that the Harmsworth family spearheaded the attack on Churchill, both in the Commons and in the Press. In the Commons, the main debate on the Colonial Office vote was adjourned for one month, but not before Mr Esmond Harmsworth (nephew of Lord Northcliffe, the proprietor of The Times) had roundly castigated Churchill’s Palestine policy. Harmsworth’s short speech, which did not apparently provoke any protest in the House, gave expression to an element of rank prejudice not at all uncommon at that time: I do not pretend to be either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist... I say that it is a mistake that the taxpayers of this country should be asked to pay for a national loan to the Jews. The Jews are a very wealthy class, and should pay for their own national home if they want it. I have never yet met one who would go and live there, but, if they want their national home, after all, they are the richest nation in the world, and let them pay for it. As representing a portion of the British tax-payers, I do protest most strongly that any money of theirs should be thrown away in Palestine to provide for that home.103

His attack was continued the next day by his uncle’s newspaper,

The Times, albeit from an entirely different angle. The editor of The Times had seen through Churchill’s outwardly calm performance, down to the inner uncertainty. Not only was Churchill’s policy predicated on many imponderables, but in addition, claimed The Times, a weakness and lack of determination had characterised the administration in Palestine, in the wake of the May riots:

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His [Churchill’s] whole argument is too hypothetical to admit of summary acceptance or rejection, and his assurances are qualified by so many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that they fail, at first sight, to carry conviction. Upon the question of Palestine many of his statements were sound, some less sound, and others, in our view, erroneous. We doubt, in particular, whether he has really understood the meaning of the Zionist movement or the nature of the difficulties that have been created in Palestine, or the consequences of Sir Herbert Samuel’s failure to deal energetically with them.104

The attack on Sir Herbert Samuel was carried further the next day by The Times, arguing that it was the administration’s weakness, rather than the danger of Kemalism, that was the cause of British troubles: Mr Churchill, perhaps a little perversely, finds the Palestine problem more difficult than that of Mesopotamia, apparently because if he were to apply there the solution of native self-government, the Arabs would use the gift to prohibit Jewish immigration. Mr Churchill has a just admiration of the work already done by Jewish colonists, and evidently he looks to Jewish brains and Jewish capital as the only possible nucleus of a Palestinian nation. We wish that Mr Churchill had carried his analysis of the present diffi­ culties a little further, for if he had, he might have discovered that one of the chief obstacles to peace is a fixed scepticism amongst many of the agents of the Government in Palestine about Zionism and the Jewish national home; and Sir Herbert Samuel, in prohibiting Jewish immigration after the Jaffa riots, may have been the unwilling victim of his agents. The embargo on immigration (now removed) was a profound mistake in policy.105

The Conservative Party, members of the Lloyd George coalition, were convinced that the attacks on the government’s policy in Palestine were part and parcel of a widespread anti-semitic senti­ ment. When the Conservatives lost two by-elections on 7 and 8 June, George Younger, chairman of the party, explained to Austen Chamberlain that the defeats had been caused by ‘the strong antisemitic feeling which is very prominent at the present time. Far too many Jews have been placed in prominent positions by the present Government ... The Palestine stunt was very cleverly utilised by Rothermere and his friends ...V 06 Whatever Churchill’s private feelings at this time, he was nothing if not sensitive to the public criticism, from whatever motive, that the Palestine mandate was provoking. It is interesting to remark that when the debate on the Colonial Office vote resumed on 14 July, Churchill did not so much as even mention the word Palestine in his speech.

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The predominant theme of the main debate on 14 July was anxiety about the uncertain future, and the indefinite commitment in the Middle East, an impression left by Churchill’s opening speech. The members’ primary concern was the risk to the taxpayer’s money. The Right Honourable Herbert Asquith, in opening the debate, referred somewhat sceptically to Churchill’s forecast of a reduction in expen­ diture: ‘that prospect depends upon a number of the most shifting, shadowy, nebulous and unsubstantial hypotheses that have ever been presented to the House’.107 Sir John D. Rees (Conservative) praised Samuel’s policy and claimed the Arabs had a better right than the Jews to Palestine. He added the facetious comment: ‘I could never make out what is the interest of the British taxpayer in Mr Jabotinsky of Jerusalem.’108 Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Churchill’s Conser­ vative opponent in 1906) referred to the possible clash between Britain’s pledges to the Arabs and to the Jews, but, he concluded: ‘I am, however, pleading this afternoon as an English taxpayer.’109 The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Edward Wood (later Lord Halifax) presented a general survey of the colonial Empire. Churchill made a short speech, with no reference or reply to the criti­ cisms of his Middle Eastern and Palestine policies. Churchill confined himself to a picturesque analogy between the traditional Empire in Africa, and the ‘new provinces’ in the Middle East. The comparison presents a rare glimpse into Churchill’s imperial Weltanschauung: In the Middle East you have arid countries. In East Africa you have dripping countries. There is the greatest difficulty to get anything to grow in the one place, and the greatest difficulty to prevent things smothering and choking you by their hurried growth in the other. In the African colonies you have a docile, tractable population, who only require to be well and wisely treated to develop great economic capacity and utility; whereas the regions of the Middle East are unduly stocked with peppery, pugnacious, proud politicians and theologians, who happen to be at the same time extremely well armed and extremely hard up.110 7. CHURCHILL CHECKED BY BALFOUR AND LLOYD GEORGE, JULY, 1921

On 4 July, the Zionist leader, Dr Chaim Weizmann, arrived back in London after a long visit to the United States. Weizmann had fol­ lowed events in Palestine, but had preferred to maintain silence until he could appraise the situation at first hand in London. Weizmann interpreted Samuel’s 3 June speech as an abrogration of the Balfour

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pledge. As he told a sympathetic Meinertzhagen, that speech had apparently ruled out any possibility of the Jews one day reaching a majority in Palestine and setting up a Jewish State. Meinertzhagen shared Weizmann’s concern. He believed that in the absence of a clear lead from the Ministers concerned, the officials were sabo­ taging high policy: Sir Herbert Samuel has been weak ... The Arab is fast learning that he can intimidate a British Administration. Samuel has not been able to stand up to the solid block of anti-Zionist feeling among his military advisers and civil subordinates. Our main trouble is the apathy of our big men towards Zionism. Winston Churchill really does not care or know much about it. Balfour knows, and talks a lot of platitudes but his academic brain is unable to act in a practical way. Lloyd George has sporadic outbursts of keenness but fails to appreciate the value to us of Zionism or its moral advantages.111

Two days after their meeting, Weizmann was received by Balfour, on 7 July. Balfour undertook to arrange a high-level meeting to sort matters out, with Churchill, Lloyd George and himself.112 This was a most unusual procedure, and something of a diplomatic coup for Weizmann. In effect, he was mobilising the Prime Minister, and Balfour the elder statesman - the architects of the Balfour Declara­ tion - against the Colonial Office interpretation of that declaration. Churchill’s public declarations of good intent had not convinced Weizmann. The latter had lost faith in the Colonial Secretary and in the officials he presided over, and therefore turned to higher author­ ities. It is to be wondered why Balfour, and then Lloyd George, agreed to such a procedure - for Balfour himself was not without his own second thoughts. Weizmann was convinced that Balfour’s obliging attitude was due to the Government’s desire to arrive at a solution in Palestine satisfactory to the Zionists, before Balfour embarked that autumn for the Washington conference on Naval Disarmament. The British again felt the need, as they had in 1917, of the support of American Jewry.113 Weizmann’s conviction was reinforced at the end of November, 1921, when he was about to depart on a further trip to the United States. On the eve of his departure he was called in by Churchill, and urged ‘to go to the U.S.A. and press there for the withdrawal of American objections to the passage of the Palestine Mandate’.114 Weizmann was also invited over by Churchill in July. At first, Weizmann rebuffed the Colonial Secretary, arguing that he,

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Weizmann, knew what to expect, and ‘academic declarations of sympathy’ were no good. Churchill called back a second time, and this time Weizmann acceded. The two met sometime during the second week in July, for what Weizmann described later as ‘a very long argument ... which lasted one hour and a half’.115 Weizmann blamed Churchill for manoeuvring the Zionist Movement into a vicious circle: ‘On the one hand, they complain about Zionism being a burden on the British tax-payer, and when we desire to lighten this burden by developing Palestine and so increasing the wealth and productiveness of the country, they refuse to let us go on with our work because they are fearing an Arab outburst’. Evidently unable to conciliate Weizmann on his own, Churchill conceded Weizmann’s demand for the high-level conference. The meeting took place at Balfour’s house, on 22 July, 1921. Present were Lloyd George, Balfour, Churchill, Sir Maurice Hankey and Weizmann. At the meeting, described in several sources, but not usually assessed correctly, Churchill in fact found himself in a minor­ ity of one. He was forced to bow, albeit reluctantly, to the firm line taken by his seniors in the cabinet. Weizmann opened the debate by going to what he considered to be the root of the problem - Samuel’s speech of 3 June.116 He asked pointedly, and rhetorically, what had the government meant when it had issued the Balfour Declaration back in 1917? Churchill tried to uphold Samuel’s interpretation. But Weizmann countered that Samuel’s speech had constituted a ‘negation of the Balfour Declara­ tion’. When asked by Churchill to explain why, Weizmann replied that the Balfour Declaration had ‘meant an ultimate Jewish majority’ whereas Samuel’s speech, in ruling out mass immigration, ‘would never permit such a majority to eventuate’. Churchill alone dissented from Weizmann’s interpretation. Both Lloyd George and Balfour reaffirmed that they had always under­ stood and meant the eventual possibility of a Jewish State.117 Chur­ chill was evidently ‘astonished’ at his colleagues’ interpretation.118 Weizmann pushed home his offensive. Once more referring to Samuel’s speech, he asked why was the Colonial Office now contem­ plating self-government for Palestine? Churchill replied, somewhat disingenuously, that this was along the lines being adopted also in Mesopotamia and in Trans-Jordan. Weizmann retorted forcefully: If you will tell me that you are giving representative government to Mesopotamia] and T[rans-Jordan] because you are convinced in your

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conscience that those countries are ripe for it, then of course I shall under­ stand why Palestine must have it; but I fear that it is more a case of camou­ flaging over a retreat from those countries and an abandonment of the same to their own fate. The ‘representative’ character of the Governments of M. & T. under Arab chiefs is a mere farce.119

Lloyd George and Balfour both agreed at once, whereupon Chur­ chill remarked sulkily that in that case the whole issue of Palestine would have to be brought before the Cabinet. But Weizmann did not forego so easily the tactical advantage which the smaller forum afforded him. He now baited Churchill: ‘Why don’t you give repre­ sentative government to Egypt? You are an enemy of the Milner report? Is it because you don’t want to abandon Egypt, and you really don’t care what happens to Palestine? If so, you must tell me that; we are entitled to know it, because it is impossible for us to go on playing hide and seek or being played with.’ At this point, Lloyd George intervened: ‘You would like to know whether H.M.G. will carry out its pledges to the Jews?’ Weizmann replied in the affirma­ tive. At some point near the close of the conversation, Lloyd George turned to Churchill and instructed him bluntly: ‘You mustn’t give representative government to Palestine’. Churchill began to expound on the subjective difficulties in Palestine itself, where nine-tenths of the British officials, he claimed, were opposed to the Zionist policy. Once again, Lloyd George interjected that this had to be changed. With that, the conversation trailed off on to relatively minor points. (Weizmann referred to Jewish gun-running, for the protection of Jewish settlements; Churchill interjected: ‘We won’t mind it, but don’t speak of it’.120) Weizmann was urged to make greater propaganda efforts to win over the Arabs. The meeting had proved something of a triumph for Weizmann, and something of a humiliation for Churchill, who had been out­ manoeuvred. But would the ephemeral sympathies of Lloyd George and Balfour suffice to counteract the determined actions of those charged with the every-day administration of Palestine? Weizmann evidently doubted it, and, for all of his temporary upper hand, he came away from the meeting depressed.121 In his letter to Deedes, written nine days later, Weizmann warned that he would most probably resign his position at the head of the Zionist Movement, at the next Congress. He complained: ‘Of the Balfour Declaration, nothing is left but mere lip-service’. As for Churchill’s performance,

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Weizmann was little short of disgusted: ‘We were able to get little truth out of Churchill. He supported the officials’ views and every­ thing said by Samuel, whom he quoted constantly’.122 Weizmann’s only cause for consolation was the evident effect of Balfour’s and Lloyd George’s intervention upon the Colonial Office. Having been put on notice that the Cabinet remained committed to the Balfour Declaration policy, various ‘senior men’ from the Colonial Office began to court Weizmann, in an attempt to reach some compromise agreement.123 8. THE WEIZMANN-YOUNG COMPROMISE, AUGUST, 1921

The Colonial Office was undoubtedly chastened by the firm stand taken by Lloyd George and Balfour on 22 July. All ideas of dropping the Zionist commitment would have to be shelved, and some amends would have to be made for Samuel’s ‘weakness’, which had been criticised in the Commons, in the Press, and by the Prime Minister himself. Major Young was charged with drawing up proposals that would meet the new situation. His general premise was: It is assumed that His Majesty’s Government have no intention of departing from the Zionist policy. The problem which we have to work out now is one of tactics, not strategy. The general strategic idea being the gradual immigration of Jews into Palestine until that country becomes a predomi­ nantly Jewish State.124

Young admitted that Samuel had wavered, because of pressures, not only from the Arabs, but also from the anti-Zionist officials surrounding him, and he had been ‘led to take action which was not altogether justified by the necessities of the case’. However, the Arabs could not be told frankly what the Government really intended (as Churchill had told the Arabs in Jerusalem) without risking further disturbances which it would be unable to subdue. Therefore, concluded Young, the problem was one of ‘tactics, not strategy’. His solution was to try to remove from Palestine those influential elements hostile to Zionism, and to offer both Jews and Arabs inducements that would keep them happy for the time being. On 2 August, Young met with Weizmann, and secured the Zionist leader’s agreement to a ‘package deal’ - six pro-Zionist measures, in return for Zionist agreement to the constitutional concessions to the Arabs:

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The six pro-Zionist measures are in some respects an advance on Dr Weiz­ mann’s own suggestions, but in return for this we have secured his agreement to the establishment of the Advisory Council on an elected basis.125

The six pro-Zionist measures of Young’s ‘package deal’ were: (1) the separation of Palestine from the Military Command in Egypt; (2) the removal of all anti-Zionist officials, however highly placed, from the Palestine administration; (3) the establishment of a purely Jewish reserve to the newly-constituted police and gendarmerie; (4) the immediate grant of the Rutenberg concession (a hydro-electric project, using the waters of the river Jordan, for the electrification of Palestine); (5) punishment of Arab villages indicted for participation in the May disturbances; and (6) Colonial Office agreement to accept Zionist recommendations in regard to immigrant visas, coupled with more effective supervision by the Administration. The two pro-Arab measures were (1) the establishment of the elected Advisory Council, and (2) the strict curtailment of Jewish immigration to those who could be readily absorbed economically. Meinertzhagen objected to the elected Council. If it was prohi­ bited from dealing with questions connected with the Zionist policy, the Council would be reduced to ‘ludicrous impotence’, since every issue in Palestine was now connected with Zionism. If this measure was intended ‘as a sop to the Arabs’, it would prove to be ‘transparent and useless’, and would simply provide the anti-Zionists with another weapon.126 But since Weizmann himself had already agreed to the package, Meinertzhagen was proving more Zionist than the Zionists themselves. Shuckburgh supported Young, and gave instruc­ tions for his draft to be drawn up as an eight-point Cabinet memoandum. When approved in Cabinet, the new policy would be forwarded to High Commissioner Samuel, who would then have the option either to carry it out, or not.127 Churchill circulated the memorandum to Cabinet members on 11 August. The debate, scheduled originally for 13 August, was in fact delayed until the 18th of the month. Once more, there was a stark contrast between Churchill’s public commitment and the anxieties he expressed in private. In his own covering note to the Cabinet, Churchill made quite clear his own reservations, and insisted that the policy now proposed would be the responsibility of the full Cabinet. The implication was, without needing to be stated clearly, that Churchill was bowing to ‘force majeure’, to pressures from ‘higher quarters’:

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The whole country is in ferment. The Zionist policy is profoundly unpopular with all except the Zionists. Both Arabs and Jews are armed and arming, ready to spring at each other’s throats. In the interests of the Zionist policy, all elective institutions have so far been refused to the Arabs, and they naturally contrast their treatment with that of their fellows in Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, Dr Weizmann and the Zionists are extremely discontented at the progress made, at the lukewarm attitude of British officials, at the chilling disapprobation of the military, and at the alleged weakness of Sir Herbert Samuel.

If the picture Churchill painted was gloomy, it was perhaps also designed to convince his colleagues of the need for constitutional advance in Palestine - notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s specific veto of just a few weeks before. Churchill warned also that the imperial garrison in Palestine would more than likely have to be increased, rather than reduced; and the additional costs of the garrison, together with expenditure on ‘works and land’, some £3,319,000, was undoubtedly ‘almost wholly due to our Zionist policy’. Thus, the proposals he presented to the Cabinet (Churchill hardly referred to the measures Young put forward), were by way of a ‘faute de mieux’, and the entire cabinet would have to accept responsibility, either for this policy, or any alternative: It seems to me that the whole situation should be reviewed by the Cabinet. I have done and am doing my best to give effect to the pledge given to the Zionists by Mr Balfour on behalf of the War Cabinet and by the Prime Minister at the San Remo conference. I am prepared to continue in this course, if it is the settled resolve o f the Cabinet.128

Churchill’s whole attitude to Palestine, like Samuel’s, had under­ gone a drastic transformation after the May riots. His anxiety and doubts had penetrated his public speeches in the Commons, in June and July. Now, when he first met the Arab delegation in London, his tone was remarkably different from that adopted the previous March, in Jerusalem. Churchill met the delegation on 12 August, the day after he had circulated Young’s memorandum to the Cabinet, and one day before the scheduled Cabinet debate.129The delegation, headed by Musa Kazim el Husseini, was obviously not prepared to compromise in the sense of Young’s proposals. The Delegation’s Secretary, Shibly al-Jamal, read out a memorandum which demanded, among other items, the establishment of ‘a National Government, responsible to a Parliament ‘elected by those natives of Palestine who lived in the country before the war’ ... [and] the abolition of the

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principle of the creation of a National Home for the Jews of Palestine’.130 Churchill’s reply lacked any hint of the arrogance he had displayed the previous March. He now portrayed himself as the humble agent of Imperial Policy: I have no power or authority to alter the fundamental basis of the policy which has been proclaimed, and therefore I cannot re-open in discussion the question of whether the Balfour Declaration should stand or not stand.

That matter is binding on me as well as on you ...131 Churchill did not repeat the snub he had uttered in Jerusalem, i.e. that he would not wish to alter the Balfour Declaration, even if he could. But he did reject the Arabs’ demand for a National Govern­ ment which, ‘in a very short time ... would practically bring Jewish immigration] to a standstill.’ He also denied that Britain had ever promised them self-government: ‘No. When was that promised? Never. We promised you should not be turned off your land.’ When Shibly al-Jemal referred to article 22 of the League Charter, which spoke of the consent of the governed, Young replied rather lamely that this referred to the choice of Mandatory.132 With their own discussion at an impasse, Churchill pleaded with the Arabs to see Dr Weizmann, to try to arrive at some agreement by themselves. Henceforth, having lost all conviction that the govern­ ment might find a prescription agreeable to both sides, Churchill would ding to the chimera that the Arabs and Jews should sort matters out by themselves. He now promised the Arabs that if they made a genuine effort to reach agreement with the Zionists, and some hope of a settlement emerged, then he, Churchill, would arrange for them to be received by the Prime Minister. But on 18 August, the Arabs replied that they could not negotiate with Dr Weizmann, who insisted that any agreement must conform to the Balfour Declaration.133 The Arabs’ negative response arrived on the day that the Cabinet met to discuss Palestine. No mention was made of the 22 July meeting at Balfour’s house, nor of Churchill’s meeting with the Arab delegation. Churchill once more expressed his concern about the situation in Palestine, where disturbances might erupt once more, if the Moslem-Christian delegation now in London returned ‘without having secured the withdrawal of Balfour’s pledge’.134 Two courses, equally drastic, were laid before the Cabinet.

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The first was to refer the mandate back to the League of Nations, set up an Arab National Government, and slow down or halt Jewish immigration; the second was to pursue the current Zionist policy with greater vigour, and encourage the Jews to arm, so that eventu­ ally the British garrison might be evacuated, once the Jews were able to defend themselves. The Cabinet minutes do not specify the author of these proposals, so we can only make an informed guess, on the basis of circum­ stantial evidence. The discussion on Palestine centred on the Colonial Secretary’s background paper (CP 3213), and followed on Churchill’s last report to the Cabinet, on 31 May. The usual practice is for the Minister under whose jurisdiction the subject under discussion lies to present his colleagues with a background paper, and then to expand on it in the Cabinet. Although the two courses do not appear in the Cabinet memorandum, it is hardly likely that anyone else but Churchill, would have elaborated on such radical policy proposals in the Colonial Office sphere of responsibility. Finally, the alternatives are readily recognizable as the type of ideas Churchill had been considering for many months. A caveat needs to be entered here against that option which, at first sight, might seem to be pro-Zionist, i.e., the proposal to arm the Jews to a state when they would be able to care for themselves, allowing the British garrison to be withdrawn. Given the demo­ graphic balance in Palestine at the time - about seven Arabs to every Jew the withdrawal of British protection was not simply utopian, but would have been quite irresponsible. It would take a further 25 years before the Yishuv in Palestine became self-sufficient, militarily. Of course, quite irrespective of the military problem, there was the moral engagement undertaken under the Balfour Declaration. How­ ever much the Zionists may have protested against the British Administration, none seriously considered changing the Mandatory Power. It had been Herzl’s dream to obtain Great Power sponsorship for a Jewish renaissance in Palestine. Had Britain withdrawn its aegis in 1921, Zionism would have sustained irreparable, and possibly fateful damage. The proposals were the product of despair and, needless to say, the Cabinet adopted neither. Churchill did not even refer to Young’s proposals, which presumably should have formed the basis of the Cabinet’s discussions. A proposal by Dr Weizmann - to hand over to the Zionists full control over Jewish immigration, on the understanding

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that its volume would be determined by the funds available - was turned down by the Cabinet. But during the discussion the Cabinet reiterated and endorsed Lloyd George’s contention that the honour of the government was tied up with the Balfour Declaration, and there could be no retreat from it without serious damage to its prestige ‘in the eyes of the Jews of the world’. H.A.L. Fisher noted in his diary: T h e PM indulges in a fancy sketch of the huge popu­ lation of Palestine in ancient times. The Arabs must not be too much pampered. The Jews are the people for cultivating the soil’.135 The aimless, quasi-academic debate which followed was perhaps typical of the Lloyd George Administration’s dithering over Near Eastern questions in general. On the one hand, the view was expressed that the inconsistencies involved in pursuing a pro-Zionist policy, while at the same time respecting the rights of the Arab population, ‘must be to estrange both Arabs and Jews, while involv­ ing us in futile military expenditure’. Against this, it was maintained ‘that the Arabs have no prescriptive right to a country which they had failed to develop to the best advantage’. No decisions were in fact taken, on the grounds of Balfour’s absence from the meeting. Ultimately, Weizmann’s forebodings proved justified. Balfour and Lloyd George, not to mention Churchill himself, would turn to other, more pressing matters. Palestine’s problems became the pre­ rogative of the Colonial Office officials, and above all, of the High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel. The Jewish factor in the United States, especially in view of the Washington conference and of the need for American acquiescence in the British-dominated status quo in the Middle East, remained a potent factor. As we have noted, specific mention of this was made in Cabinet, on 18 August. Britain’s honour was something to be guarded, not just in Jewish eyes, but also before the international community which had granted her the Middle Eastern mandates. Britain’s position was also tied up inextricably with her strategic interests in the area. In October, 1923, Foreign Secretary Curzon told an Imperial conference that there could now be no retreat: We cannot now recede. If we did the French would step in and then be on the threshold of Egypt and on the outskirts of the Canal. Besides Palestine needed ports, electricity, and the Jews of America were rich and would sub­ sidize such development. We must be fair and firm with the Arabs showing no invidious preference to the Zionists.136

CHAPTER FIVE

THE 1922 WHITE PAPER

1. CHURCHILL ABDICATES RESPONSIBILITY

The policy-making process in regard to Palestine was effectively in a position of stalemate. The Cabinet on 18 August had failed to endorse Young’s eight-point programme, and Churchill did not press it home. Some of the recommendations were implemented during the winter months, as much through inertia as any other cause. Churchill himself was in something of a dilemma. The changes pro­ posed by Samuel’s administration, and endorsed by his department and himself, had been effectively sterilised in higher quarters. Churchill himself came to appreciate the supreme importance to Britain of Jewish support in the United States. In addition, Jewish skills and capital in Palestine did seem to present an efficient, eco­ nomical way of turning Palestine into a self-supporting, Britishoriented imperial outpost. But on the other hand, the Arabs proved more intractable and belligerent than Churchill had at first estimated. With a delegation now in London, it was feared that their return to Palestine, empty-handed, might spark off new riots, which would place the army in an embarrassing position, and, just as bad, increase costs. Churchill’s solution was to busy himself with other, ‘higher’ matters of policy. From October, 1921, and for most of the winter, Churchill devoted himself to the intensive negotiations for an Irish Treaty.1 The officials were left to keep both Arabs and Zionists ‘in play’. The pro-Zionist Meinertzhagen despaired of his Minister: ‘Winston does not care two pins, and does not want to be bothered about it. He is reconciled to a policy of drift. He is too wrapped up in Home Politics.’2

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When in mid-November, 1921, Meinertzhagen proposed that the government issue a declaration that would define clearly ‘Zionism and the functions of the Zionist Commission’, Churchill rejected out of hand what he called ‘a stupid proposition’. Churchill’s only contribution to the ongoing debate on policy was the repetition of his unrealistic demand that the Arabs and the Zionists arrive at a compromise on their own.3 Churchill had shied away from an issue over which he had been denied freedom of action by his superiors in the Cabinet. He had been neither reconciled to nor persuaded of the wisdom of the Balfour pledge. His mood may be gauged from the following passage from a private letter he wrote to Balfour on 10 October, 1921: ... we are committed in Palestine to the Zionist policy against which ninetenths of the population and an equal proportion of the British officers are marshalled. Again here in Palestine I shall simply have to carry on as well as I can in harmony with the Mandate and allow events to tell their own tale. We obviously cannot keep these turbulent countries year after year in suspense at our charge because the League of Nations is unable to come to any decision in regard to them.4

Twice, during the month of November, Churchill was scheduled to address a joint meeting of Zionists and Arabs, in order to make a clear statement of government policy. Each time he backed out at the last moment. The second meeting was held nonetheless, under the chairmanship of Sir John Shuckburgh (Assistant Under-Secretary of State, head of the Middle East Department) and it proved a total failure.5 Both Arabs and Zionists were puzzled by Churchill’s behaviour. On the morning of 29 November each side received notice that Churchill would be unable to attend, on grounds of ill­ ness. Weizmann learned subsequently that the Colonial Secretary’s illness had in fact been ‘diplomatic’. Weizmann suspected that the amendments to the Colonial Office statement, which Weizmann himself had suggested to Churchill at their meeting on 28 November, had brought about Churchill’s change of mind. The Arab Delegation refused at the meeting to go into any detail, on the grounds that they had been promised a statement of policy. Weizmann concluded that the meeting was doomed in advance, having been prepared so poorly: ‘If anything, this meeting was rather humiliating for us. I must acknowledge that the Arabs are exceedingly well coached by their British advisers.’6 On the other hand, the Colonial Officials thought that

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Weizmann’s attitude to the Arabs, while conciliatory, was unfortun­ ate, condescending: His attitude was of the nature of a conqueror handing to a beaten foe the terms of peace. Also, I think he despises the members of the Delegation as not worthy of protagonists - that it is a little derogatory to him to expect him to meet them on the same ground.7

While some allowance must be made for the official’s bias, there was quite evidently some substance in it. After all, Weizmann’s prejudices were not so far removed from those held by Churchill himself, together with many ‘Arab experts’ at Whitehall.8 One cannot escape the conclusion that during these winter months Churchill abdicated his ministerial responsibility for Palestine, and confined himself to his fundamental goal of reducing the British garrison of, and military expenditure in, that country. Even the biography notes that the Zionists ‘were depressed by Churchill’s apparent neglect’. In November, 1921, the wife of one of the Zionist leaders wrote to her husband: ‘Dr W[eizmann] never knows where he has Churchill’.9 In Palestine itself, there was no transfer of anti-Zionist officials, as called for by Young’s eight-point plan. On the contrary, certain officials and officers who had served under the Military regime in Palestine were now openly and obviously acting as advisers to the Arab Delegation in London. Meinertzhagen went so far as to claim that the Arabs, being unable ‘to voice the views of the People of Palestine’, were ‘instead voicing the view of the handful of exPalestine officials in London’.10 Of particular notoriety was a public luncheon organised for the Arab Delegation at the Hotel Cecil on 15 November, 1921, by Lord Sydenham of Coombe. Among the prominent figures who attended the luncheon were Lord Raglan, who had just vacated an impor­ tant political position in Trans-Jordan; General Palin, late G.O.C. of Palestine; General Costello, late Commandant of the defunct Palestine Defence Force; Colonel Waters-Taylor, late Chief of Staff to the Chief Administrator, Palestine; and Colonel Gabriel, late financial adviser to the Samuel Administration. As Meinertzhagen commented: It is idle to plead that these officials were ignorant of the political significance of the luncheon party, or that their presence constituted anything less than active opposition to the Government’s policy.11

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Weizmann protested immediately to Shuckburgh. The ‘Sydenham lunch’ was an open scandal, the Arabs had not even bothered to reply to Weizmann’s invitation to talks, and all efforts at reaching a compromise must be doomed for so long as the Arabs knew that the majority of officials in the Palestine Administration were opposed to the Mandate.12 The Colonial Office itself knew quite well that some of the material presented to them by the Arab Delegation was in fact drafted by ex-officials of the Military Administration. At least one memo­ randum was recognised as partly the work of Captain Gladstone, late Deputy Military Governor of Bethlehem.13 But the Colonial Office heads felt powerless to act, believing that any reaction would prove counter-productive. Shuckburgh conceded that the presence of officers and officials at what was ‘in effect, a meeting to protest against the policy of His Majesty’s Government’, was ‘unfortunate’, and could not ‘fail to produce an undesirable impression’. But, he concluded, somewhat lamely, ‘there was nothing criminal in accept­ ing an invitation to lunch’. Churchill did not intervene in any way. On the contrary, it seems most likely that he cancelled his meeting with the Arabs and Jews, scheduled for 16 November, due to the ‘Sydenham lunch’ the previous day.14No attempt was made by Churchill to check the drift towards the Arabs’ position which occurred that winter. 2. COLONIAL OFFICE DRIFT

In the absence of any clear general directive from above, the of ficials began to implement those points in the Young memorandum which either they saw fit, or were constrained, to. On 21 September, 1921, an agreement was signed between the Crown Agents for the Colonies, and Pinhas Rutenberg, granting the latter the concession to provide electricity for the whole of Palestine and Trans-Jordan. The ratification of the concession was held up for some time because the High Commissioner, Samuel, opposed its grant without prior Arab consent. But by the first week in September, in view of the Arab Delegation’s refusal either to acquiesce in the Balfour Declaration, or to negotiate some compromise with the Zionists, the Colonial Office concluded that further negotiations with the Arabs would be pointless. The concession was issued with­ out any attempt to obtain the Arabs’ assent.15

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However, as with most of the measures implemented that winter, there was also a clear British interest involved. The Rutenberg con­ cession would provoke severe public criticism the following spring, and indeed, some inside the Colonial Office itself questioned the wisdom or propriety of granting a monopoly for the electrification of an entire colony to a single person, a foreign Jew, with a dubious background at that.16 The British interest in the Rutenberg con­ cession, Shuckburgh explained, was at one and the same time to divert the Zionists away from harmful propaganda campaigns to more constructive effort in Palestine itself; and to demonstrate to one and all, including the Arabs, the economic benefits to be derived from Zionist colonization: The Rutenberg concession has always been regarded as the more practical example of the policy of setting up the National Home for the Jews. It is so regarded by the Zionists themselves. We are always trying to divert the attention of the Zionists from political to industrial activities, and preaching to them from the text that their best chance of reconciling the Arabs to the Zionist policy is to show them the practical advantages accruing from Zionist enterprise.17

In September, 1921, Churchill also discovered a way to dispense with British troops in Palestine. On 3 September, he wrote to Lloyd George: ‘Palestine simply cannot afford to pay for troops on the War Office scale’, and that the need to keep British troops, at a cost of £VA millions a year, was not giving the Colonial Office ‘a fair chance to carry out our pledges’. Churchill believed that if the Cabinet would allow him to get rid of the British troops altogether, he could save as much as £1 million in Palestine, just in barracks and base facilities, quite apart from the actual cost of the troops themselves. Churchill suggested instead a local gendarmerie ‘such as the Cape Mounted Rifles or the Canadian Police’.18 Churchill’s original inclination, at the end of August, had been to replace British troops with Indian levies.19 The ‘local gendarmerie’ idea would have involved arming the local population, an idea which, as we have noted above, Churchill had raised in Cabinet on 18 August. However, by the end of September, Churchill had been provided with the means to dispense with British troops, without the concurrent need to arm the Jewish settlers. At the beginning of the month, General Tudor, commander of the somewhat notorious ‘Black and Tans’, had offered the services of his men in Palestine, in the anticipated event of an Irish Peace.

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On 3 October, Colonel Meinertzhagen reported on his talks with General Tudor. The General hoped to raise 2,000 troops for Palestine, ‘at a cost “considerably lower than our estimate of £800,000”, thus saving over a million pounds on the original Gendarmerie proposal’.20By November, Churchill was ready to lay a memorandum before the Cabinet in which he anticipated the eventual withdrawal of all British troops from Palestine, and a considerable reduction in the current War Office estimate of £3 millions for the coming year.21 Military command would be transferred from Cairo to Jerusalem (as proposed in the Young memorandum), and the Air Ministry would assume command of all regular military forces in Palestine, as agent of the High Commissioner.22 The new ‘White Gendarmerie’ would have the status of a civil force, under the direct command of the High Commissioner. Meinertzhagen commented in his diary: ‘Winston is inclined to pay more attention to reconstituting the Palestine Garrison than to remedying the political situation.’23 For once, we have Churchill’s own confirmation of Meinertzhagen’s assessment. On 12 November, Churchill wrote to Archibald Sinclair, his private secretary: ‘Do please realise that everything else that happens in the Middle East is secondary to the reduction in expense’.24 The decision to separate Palestine from the Military Command in Cairo (also proposed by Young, in August) was effected only after a politically scandalous circular had been distributed by General Congreve to officers serving Palestine, on 29 October, 1921. The circular included the following passage: Whilst the Army officially is supposed to have no politics, it is recognized that there are certain problems such as those of Ireland and Palestine, in which the sympathies of the Army are on the one side or the other. In the case of Palestine these sympathies are obviously with the Arabs, who have hitherto appeared to the disinterested observer to have been the victims of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British Government... [which]

would never give any support to the more grasping policy o f the Zionist extremists, which aims at the establishment o f a Jewish Palestine in which Arabs would be merely tolerated . In other words, the British Government has no objections to Palestine being for the Jews what Great Britain is to the rest of the Empire, but they would certainly not countenance a policy which made Palestine for the Jews what England is for the Englishman.25

On 1 December, when the episode was discussed at the Colonial Office, Shuckburgh admitted that it was unfortunately the case that the Army in Palestine was largely anti-Zionist, and would probably

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remain so, whatever was said to it. He therefore advised against any sanctions, doubting their utility: ‘I agree that its tone leaves some­ thing to be desired, but greatly doubt advantages making heavy weather with the War Office over it’.26As usual, Churchill endorsed Shuckburgh’s decision. Eight days later, he minuted: ‘No action required. I will take this to the Cabinet when the Palestine proposals are discussed’.27 But this was not quite the end of the matter. A copy of Congreve’s letter found its way into Zionist hands, and they passed it on, among others, to Sir Alfred Mond (Minister of Health, 1921-22), an ardent Zionist supporter.28 On 15 December, Mond protested to Churchill that the General’s circular was ‘one of the most extremely improper documents ever issued by the Military authorities’ and the definition of the government’s policy in that document ‘entirely at variance with the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate’. Mond claimed that the General’s circular put the Yishuv at grave risk, and it would henceforth be ‘useless to disguise the fact that the British Army, including General Congreve are violently anti-Semitic’. Mond’s own sources indicated that there was a great reluctance on the Army’s part ‘to support the Civil Government in suppressing riots and in protecting the Jews of Palestine’. He concluded that any agreement with the Arabs - ‘this very astute and grasping people’ - was ‘quite impossible so long as they are under the impression that they have only to go on agitating and killing a few Jews, with the apparent sympathy of the British Army, in order to defeat the whole policy which the British Government has entered into’.29 The belief that Arab intransigence during this period was encour­ aged by their confidence in the sympathies of British officials and officers, was a current theme in Zionist circles. It also gained credence in higher government circles, and in some quarters of the Colonial Office itself. On 16 December, the day after he wrote his letter to Churchill, Mond was received by Lloyd George, who agreed that Samuel was ‘weak’. When Mond told him about Congreve’s circular, the Prime Minister agreed with him that it was now desir­ able to separate the Palestine garrison from the Egyptian command30 (neither seems to have wondered why this had not been implemented already, according to the Young memorandum of the previous August). But the Colonial Office was not inclined to take up the issue with Congreve himself. Since in any case he was to be removed

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from contact with Palestine, the principle at stake was ignored. Shuckburgh, who was shown Mond’s letter to Churchill, dismissed it with the comment that it was ‘hysterical’, and just a ‘part of the general offensive which the Jews have been conducting all along the line during the past week’.31 Churchill’s, and his officials’ reluctance to take any disciplinary action stemmed also from a general drift away from the Zionists’ position. As we shall note below, even those officials who had been sympathetic were turning against the Zionists. There was also great resentment that the Department had been checked by Balfour and Lloyd George from implementing the constitutional changes discussed the previous June. When Mond met Churchill to discuss his letter, he found the Colonial Secretary ‘rather pessimistic’. Churchill had just heard from the usually sympathetic Sir Wyndham Deedes (Chief Secretary of the Palestine Administration) ‘that the situation in Palestine was very difficult, that the Government had lost the confidence of the Arab population and that it was urgently necessary to come to some arrangement with the Arabs’.32 The Congreve episode illustrates the nature of Colonial Office drift through that winter. The General’s circular went unanswered by official circles, leaving the local population in Palestine to assume that it represented official policy. At most, the circular prompted the Colonial Office to implement belatedly a decision made four months before. No comment of Churchill’s on the contents of the circular is available, although we may assume that the episode left an indel­ ible impression on him. During World War Two, when the Middle East Command, especially that of Wavell, objected to Churchill’s pro-Zionist measures, the Prime Minister resorted repeatedly to the taunt that the Army was tainted with anti-semitism. One might almost speculate that General Wavell would twenty years later pay for the sins of General Congreve. As we have already noted, during this period, two key officials who had until now been sympathetic to the Zionist cause each became converted to the Arab case - either through conviction of its justness, or through concern about British interests. They were Major Hubert Young at the Colonial Office, and Sir Wyndham Deedes, in Jerusalem. In October, 1921, Major Young visited Palestine, and saw the country at first hand. His experiences, and his conversations with Herbert Samuel, convinced Young of the need to placate the Arabs.

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The grant of the Rutenberg concession, reported Young, had heightened Arab suspicions that the Government would not adhere to Samuel’s 3 June definition of the Balfour Declaration. What was needed, he wrote to Shuckburgh on 7 October, was ‘some public action which will show the people of Palestine not only that His Majesty’s Government is determined that its policy shall follow the lines which they themselves approve, but that the Zionists have been told so, and warned that unless they conform both in appear­ ance and reality they cannot expect the continued support of His Majesty’s Government’.33 Young referred also to ‘extremist’ Zionist claims to a Jewish State, which ‘clearly demand some contradiction or modification’. Young proposed that an of ficial letter be written to Dr Weizmann, remind­ ing him ‘that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is as defined in the High Commissioner’s speech on the 3 June, and endorsed by the Secretary of State in the House of Commons on the 14 June’. He suggested that unless the Zionist Organization itself took steps to reassure all hostile critics that it endorsed the Government’s own definition of the Balfour Declaration, the Government would have to ‘seriously consider the question whether the Organization remains a suitable Body for this purpose’. Specifically, Young suggested that the government should consider the modification, or removal of article 4 of the draft Mandate.34 Sir John Shuckburgh noted that Young’s proposals amounted to the issue of an ultimatum to the Zionists.35 Meinertzhagen reacted with some distress at Young’s conversion from his pro-Zionist views, and surmised that he had ‘obviously been influenced by the local atmosphere and the Arab bogey’. Meinertzhagen surmised correctly that Weizmann would never agree to give up voluntarily what he considered to be Zionist rights, adding that it would be unreasonable to demand ‘certain surrender and suicide ... So long as the Balfour Declaration stands we must not ask the Zionists themselves to abandon it’.36 On 14 October, Samuel wrote direct to Churchill, complementing Young’s letter to Shuckburgh of the previous week. Samuel put forward a series of proposals which he claimed might lessen the tension in Palestine, and facilitate what he recognised as the ‘urgent ... necessity for a reduction in the numbers of the garrison’.37Samuel agreed that the Arabs, on their part, should cease ‘to demand the cancellation of the [Balfour] Declaration, or the stoppage of

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immigration’. In return for this ‘concession’ from the Arabs, the Zionists should agree to announce ‘that their purpose is not the establishment of a State in which Jews would enjoy the position of political privilege, but a Commonwealth built upon a democratic foundation’. Samuel suggested that the Zionist announcement should also include a retraction of the much-bandied-about statement of Weizmann’s to the Peace Conference, to the effect that the Zionists aimed at making Palestine ‘as Jewish as England is English’; 38 an undertaking to restrict Jewish labour immigration ‘to numbers who can find employment upon new enterprises; and an absolute guaran­ tee to the Arab population regarding their Holy Places, and security of property’. Churchill, Shuckburgh, Meinertzhagen and Clauson discussed Samuel’s proposals with Weizmann himself. But Weizmann rejected any idea of renouncing the ultimate prospect of a Jewish State.39The Zionist leader was evidently still relying on the assurances he had heard from Balfour and Lloyd George the previous July. Churchill had not apparently told his officials of the contents of that meeting. As we shall see below, when Weizmann finally told Shuckburgh, in November, the latter would receive a rude shock, and react with animosity against the proverbial Zionist influence in higher quarters. Sir John Shuckburgh did pin-point a major lacuna in Samuel’s argument - the Arabs, no less than the Zionists, were not about to renounce any of their most cherished goals (i.e. opposition to the Balfour Declaration).40 But Samuel’s proposals assumed new signi­ ficance when a fresh wave of violence struck Palestine on 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The Colonial Office dared not display the hesitation and weakness which had incurred such public criticism after the May Riots: ‘To waver now, in the face of renewed Arab violence’, argued Shuckburgh, ‘would be absolutely fatal’. Shuckburgh submitted that they should now recognize the fact that their policy satisfied neither side, even if they themselves were satisfied that they were acting in the interests of both. Thus Shuck­ burgh deprecated Samuel’s proposal to extract public statements from each side. Neither was there any point in any new government statement for, presuming they intended no radical change of policy, there was nothing they could usefully say, except to repeat ‘what has been said with so little practical effect in the past’. Lastly, whatever they decided in the Colonial Office it would

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probably be aborted in ‘higher quarters’, if it proved unamenable to the Zionists. Shuckburgh learned from Weizmann about Lloyd George’s and Balfour’s reassurances on 22 July.41 Their interpreta­ tion of the Balfour Declaration was in clear conflict with Samuel’s ‘Birthday Speech’, and Churchill’s confirmation of this in the Commons on 14 June. Shuckburgh despaired: I do not know what may have been the original intention, but it was certainly the object of Sir H. Samuel and the Secretary of State to make it clear that a Jewish State was just what we did not mean. It is clearly useless for us to endeavour to lead Dr Weizmann in one direction, and to reconcile him to a more limited view of the Balfour pledge, if he is told quite a different story by the head of the Government. Nothing but confusion can result if His Majesty’s Government do not speak with a single voice.42

Shuckburgh therefore argued that ‘the time has come to leave off arguing and announce plainly and authoritatively what we propose to do. Being orientals they will understand an order, and if once they realise that we mean business may be expected to acquiesce’. There­ fore, instead of the statements from each side urged by Samuel, Shuckburgh proposed that Churchill himself lay down the law to each side. The officials’ desire to ‘cut Zionism down to size’ might be accomplished at a joint meeting of Arabs and Zionists to be addres­ sed by the Colonial Secretary: ‘We should make plain to the Zionists in the presence of the Arabs the limitations which we attach to the conception of a Jewish National Home and should disavow before both parties the more extravagant claims of the Zionist extremists.’ But as we have noted already, Churchill first agreed, but on two occasions backed out of the meeting scheduled for him by Shuck­ burgh. Churchill was perhaps also wary of the Cabinet veto on any curtailment of Zionism, and ruled out any further statements for the time being.43 In addition, as we have also noted, with Weizmann expected to leave shortly for the United States, now was not the time to annoy the Zionists. The second incidence of a key official turning against the Zionists was that of Sir Wyndham Deedes, the Chief Secretary of the Civil Administration. Deedes was an intimate friend of Dr Weizmann’s, and kept up a regular correspondence with him. He was possessed of a ‘religiously inspired predisposition in favour of Zionism’.44 Deedes had opposed Samuel’s ‘soft’ policy after the May riots, but following the fresh outbreak in November, he became converted to Samuel’s view that the Zionist venture could succeed only if the

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Arabs were conciliated, and that the onus for that rested with the Zionists themselves, as much as it did with Britain. On 22 November, Deedes wrote Shuckburgh a ‘private and secret’ letter, urging the abolition of article four of the Mandate, according official recognition to a Jewish Agency to take care of Jewish interests in Palestine. The ‘agency’ which had been fulfilling for the Jews the function of ‘advising and co-operating with the Administration’ was the Zionist Commission. Deedes’ change of heart was due largely to his own frustrations from his dealings with that Commission which, he felt, did not regard itself as subordinate to British officials. In Deedes’ opinion, the Arabs could draw but one conclusion from the Commission’s behaviour: ‘That H.M.G. was bound hand and foot to the Zionists, that the statement of 3 June was mere dust thrown in their eyes, and that all Legislation here was, and would continue to be inspired by Zionist interests.’ The remedy, in Deedes’ opinion, was to abolish ‘the anomalous position assigned to the Zionist Organization in the Mandate’.45 On 26 November, 1921, Deedes wrote a private letter to Weiz­ mann himself. He complained that the Zionists had not agreed to the content of Samuel’s 3 June speech, thus placing themselves in opposition to Government policy.46 Weizmann blamed the current impasse in Palestine entirely on the hostility of British officials and officers: ‘That British Generals and political officers should counte­ nance the most vulgar anti-Semitic Propaganda is something fairly new in the annals of British history’. Deedes had not disclosed to Weizmann the essence of his latest proposal to Shuckburgh. But Weizmann had noticed ‘a certain change both in the tone and contents’ of Deedes’ letter. In a ‘PS.’, Weizmann wrote that he had just heard that Richmond (a notoriously pro-Arab official, who resigned in protest at government policy in 1924) was then in London, pressing for the elimination of article 4. Weizmann expressed his incredulity ‘that he claims to have your support for this suggestion’.47 Strong Zionist pressure in London prevented the Colonial Office from acceding to the pressure mounting from Palestine.48 On 29 December, 1921, Churchill rejected the idea of abrogating article 4, or depriving the Zionist Organization of the special status accorded it thereby. Churchill argued that the ‘Zionists here would never accept such a proposal unless under compulsion. They would regard it as a negation of the whole policy of the Balfour Declaration’. But Churchill did agree that the constitution of the Zionist Commission

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in Palestine left much to be desired, and invited ‘any criticisms you may have to make on local Zionist commission and any suggestions for its improvement’.49 Thus Churchill may have agreed with Deedes’ diagnosis of the problem, if not with the remedy proposed. Churchill knew, as Deedes did not, the degree of support enjoyed by the Zionists in ‘higher quarters’. Churchill dared not provoke Weizmann into another showdown such as that of the previous July. Lastly, as we have noted already, Churchill himself was cognizant of the value of Jewish influence in the United States, in regard both to the Washington Conference, and to American obstruction of the ratiication of the Middle Eastern mandates. 3. THE PALESTINE ORDER-IN-COUNCIL

But the Arab Delegation remained in London, mainly because the Colonial Office feared the consequences in Palestine if the Arabs were allowed to return empty-handed. Whatever piecemeal amend­ ments Churchill might suggest in regard to the status of Zionist institutions in Palestine, there remained the problem of legislating a constitution for the Mandate, preferably along the lines of Samuel’s speech of 3 June last. On 17 December, 1921, Sir John Shuckburgh laid down the general lines of a Palestine Order-in-Council. The proposals were based upon Samuel’s speech, and upon Shuckburgh’s own draft of November, prepared for, but not used by, Churchill. The draft, in the pre­ paration of which Churchill played no role whatsoever, would form the basis of the 1922, the so-called ‘Churchill’, White Paper. Shuckburgh’s draft contained four basic principles: (1) British policy in Palestine would continue to be based upon the Balfour Declaration; (2) the rights of the present inhabitants would be protected; (3) Jewish immigration would be permitted up to the economic absorptive capacity of the country; and (4) a Legislative Council would be established.50 The document was sent to the Zionists at the beginning of February,51 and handed to the Arabs by Churchill himself on 4 February, 1922.52 In spite of Churchill’s injunction to keep the document secret, the Arabs apparently leaked its contents to the Press. Shuckburgh regarded the leak as a breach of the rules of the diplomatic game: ‘It appears that the Arab Delegation has been guilty of an act of

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treachery such as renders it impossible for us to treat them any longer with the consideration we have shown them in the past’.53 Shuckburgh had learned, from ‘a private source’, that the Editor of the Morning Post had obtained a copy of the draft constitution. He drew the conclusion that the anti-Zionist Editor must have received the document from the Arabs, since he was ‘about the last person in the world that the Zionists would be likely to communicate with’. This assumption was confirmed by a telephone call from the Colonial Office. The Department persuaded the paper not to print the information without prior government consent. Shuckburgh did not think there was much harm to be done in publishing the details, but did not think the government’s ‘chief critic’ should be allowed a scoop.54 Therefore, evidently on 6 February, the Colonial Office informed The Times of the new draft constitution, which printed a brief comment the next day. Referring to the limited competence of the proposed Legislative Council, the paper commented: ‘but the Constitution as drafted is really a first step in the direction of repre­ sentative government’. The Morning Post commented only on 10 February, in a brief column headed - ‘Government of Palestine. Draft Orders in Council. Crown Colony Model’. It took a further twelve days for the Post to make the following scathing comment, under the heading: ‘The Palestine Constitution. Absolute Autocracy. League of Nations Flouted’ - . . . it is impossible to believe in ignorance - the false statement that it provides for an Arab majority controlling the government of the country ... any hopes it holds out of selfgoverning rights are illusory’.55 However, the Arab Delegation denied having leaked the informa­ tion, and the Morning Post also made an official denial. Shuckburgh felt there was no choice but to lift the ban on the Arabs, although he advised that the Department should ‘not be too gracious about it or allow them to suppose that we are quite satisfied with their explanations’.56 On 21 February, the Arab Delegation sent a long, well-argued rejection of the draft constitution. Their main objections were to the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration in the Mandate, and to the ‘excessive’ powers given to the High Commissioner. Such powers, they alleged, were suited more to ‘a colony of the lowest order’, than to the ‘class A’ designation given to the Palestine Mandate by the League of Nations. Under the proposed constitution, the High

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Commissioner would command 14 of the Council’s 27 possible votes.57In addition, the High Commissioner was empowered to pro­ rogue or dissolve the Council at will, or to veto any measure passed by it; any ten members constituted a quorum, making it possible for the government to legislate with the ten official members alone, ‘in which case the power of the Legislative Council becomes a mere shadow and not a reality’. The Delegation’s letter was considered by a Colonial Office ‘Group Council’, on 28 February. In effect, the Colonial Office had long since given up any hope of persuading the Arabs to com­ promise: ‘Experience has shown we never get anywhere with them, and after hours of discussion they merely fall back on their original position, from which nothing can dislodge them’. But there were now two other, tactical considerations. First, the Arabs enjoyed considerable sympathy in the British Press, and the Colonial Office had to wage a public relations campaign, in order to secure Parlia­ mentary support for its policy in Palestine. Seeing that the Arabs had already published a summary of their reaction to the proposed constitution, the Department would have to ‘have a good answer to show the world’. The other consideration, which we shall discuss below, was the old fear of dangerous repercussions in Palestine, should the Delegation be allowed to return empty-handed - this was especially risky on the eve of the tense period which preceded the Nebi Musa festival, at around Easter time. (The first anti-Zionist riots had taken place at the time of Neba Musa in April, 1920.) In 1921, the central feature of the public campaign against the government’s policy in the Middle East had been its exorbitant cost to the tax-payer, and the lack of certainty about the extent of the British commitment. From February, 1922, Press attacks on the government’s policy in Palestine, not devoid of anti-semitic over­ tones, dwelt on the excessive privileges being granted to the Zionists. British industrialists resented the monopoly granted to Rutenberg, without fair tender, they claimed. But perhaps most prominent were Press attacks on the alleged Bolshevik character of the Jewish settlers. Lord Northcliffe, the press baron, visited Palestine from 6 to 13 February, 1922. His paper, The Times, printed a series of reports on his visit, and on his press conference in Cairo, on his way back.58 On 8 February The Times reported that Northcliffe had told the colonists of Rishon LeZion (the colony Churchill had visited the year before) ‘that the recent importation of undesirable Jews, Bolshevists and

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others, was the partial cause of the regrettable troubles with the Arabs’. Northcliffe held a press conference in Cairo on 14 February, which was reported in The Times the next day under the heading: ‘Palestine Dangers. Arrogance of Extremists. “A Second Ireland’” . Northcliffe referred to himself as ‘an old supporter of Zionist ideals’, who was now ‘profoundly disappointed and deeply impressed by the unhappy state of the formerly peaceful Palestine’. Northcliffe blamed the public declarations of Zionist ‘extremists’, in Palestine and abroad, for the ‘natural apprehension [and] alarm’ felt by the ‘overwhelming Moslem and Christian majority’. He proposed a ‘complete and public investigation of the affairs of Palestine’, and warned that unless greater respect was shown for the rights of the native population ‘the country runs the risk of becoming a second Ireland’.59 Two days later, The Times editorial took up Northcliffe’s theme about curbing Zionist extremists. In its revealing analysis of the fer­ ment in Palestine, laced with racial overtones, the editorial reflected in a microcosm the complexity and ambiguity of Gentile feeling towards the Jews, and to Zionism: We have strongly supported the Zionist ideal, which seemed to us to afford an opportunity of releasing the Jews from the ambiguous and anomalous position that they occupy in many countries, and of enabling them to recover a natural equilibrium by a progressive affirmation of their natural individuality ... Yet it is a task of the utmost difficulty and delicacy to import into modern Palestine, with its quiet, easy-going Moslem and Christian population, the dreamers of the ghettoes of Eastern Europe. They come with the marks of bitter racial and party conflict upon them. They come with the disturbing, often with the revolutionary, ideas and habits that they have imbibed during these later years of storm ... they condemn and criticise, often unjustly and unfairly, with a peculiarly irritating asperity, everything that conflicts with their preconceived ideal ... Lord Northcliffe rightly appeals to the numerous moderate Zionists throughout the world to restrain the extremists, whose activities are endangering the realisation of the ideal.60

Much of the public debate was moved by anti-semitic sentiment, as was clearly recognized at the time. In the Commons debate on Palestine on 4 July, 1922, William Ormsby-Gore (later Colonial Secretary from 1936 to 1938) referred to and protested against the prejudice which marked the public debate: Then there is what I call quite frankly the anti-Semitic party, that is to say those who are convinced that the Jews are at the bottom of all the trouble

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all over the world ... it is the rich Jews who are all blood-suckers and the poor Jews all Bolshevists - they have the particular Hebrew mania, and they have fastened on Palestine with a view to paying off those medieval scores.61

Upon Northcliffe’s return, he invited Weizmann to lunch at his home in Carlton Gardens. After the meal, Weizmann was pitted in debate against Leo Maxse (‘the ardent defender of English interests everywhere’). Each was given five minutes to state their case, as to whether Zionism was in the British interest, or not. Northcliffe’s secretary was given a stop-watch, and told to call ‘Stop!’ at the end of each speaker’s allotted time. According to Weizmann’s account, Northcliffe himself monopolised the debate, and he, Weizmann, shortly made his excuses and withdrew.62 Northcliffe’s Press con­ tinued its campaign, and an anxious Weizmann turned yet again to Balfour. On 21 February, Weizmann discussed the Northcliffe attacks with Balfour. The latter promised to make a public statement in favour of Zionism, and to work for the early approval of the Mandate by the League of Nations, at its next session on 25 April, 1922. In reference to the Mandate in Palestine, Balfour stated: ‘It is my child, and I won’t let it remain on the doorstep’.63 Two days later, on 23 February, another of the Northcliffe papers, the Daily Mail, published a report on Palestine headlined: ‘Palestine waste and Bolsheviks. Incessant arms smuggling. Lord Northcliffe’s remedy: stop the immigration’.64 Not only the Zionists, but the Colonial Office too was perturbed by the change of tack adopted by the Northcliffe press. Shuckburgh believed that the owner was motivated more by antagonism to the government than by any desire to improve conditions in Palestine. Churchill reassured his officials that ‘no difficulty need be appre­ hended in Palestine’. The Duke of Sutherland (Colonial Office spokesman in the Lords, 1921-22) advised against any official re­ action, since the articles had not directly criticised the Palestine Administration - they had in fact been quite complimentary to the High Commissioner.65 The main line taken by the articles had been criticism of the Zionists’ behaviour - and many in the Colonial Office would in fact find much there to agree with! However, the spate of public criticism made it imperative to issue a public answer to the Arabs, in a clear statement of government policy. On 21 February Shuckburgh consoled Weizmann, and

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informed him that Churchill would make ‘a big speech’ on Palestine, during the debate on the Middle East Estimates.66 On 1 March, 1922, a reply to the Arab Delegation was sent. The letter, drafted by Shuckburgh, carried Churchill’s signature.67 It expressed regret that the government had as yet failed to convince the Arabs that it had ‘no intention of repudiating its obligations to the Jewish people, and furthermore, could not regard the Delegation as representing the people of Palestine, certainly not the Jewish part of it’. The government regarded itself as being bound by the Balfour Declaration, which was ‘antecedent to the Covenant of the League of Nations’. Consequently, it could not allow a constitutional situ­ ation to develop in Palestine that would render it unable to fulfil that pledge. With regard to Arab fears about ‘a flood of alien immigration’, Shuckburgh repeated Samuel’s interpretation of the Balfour Decla­ ration (of 3 June), to the effect that from those Jews scattered throughout the world, ‘some amongst them, within the limits fixed by the numbers and interests of the present population, should come to Palestine ...’. (The letter did not include the well-known phrase about the Jews being in Palestine ‘as of right and not on sufferance’, as claimed in the biography.68) The letter did reiterate the govern­ ment’s determination that all matters of immigration policy ‘should be reserved from discussion by the Legislative Council and decided by the High Commissioner in Council, after reference to His Majesty’s Government’. However, Churchill’s letter did concede that the question of immigration was of such vital importance to all sections of the population that there was a case for setting up a standing immigration board, representative of all classes, in order to advise the High Commissioner as to the views of all the inhabitants. In the event of irreconcilable differences ‘the points at issue would be referred to His Majesty’s Government for decision’. However, notwithstanding official adherence to the Balfour Declaration, the situation in Palestine dictated modification of that policy. At the beginning of March, 1922, Samuel once more urged a restriction of Jewish immigration, due to the large number of unemployed immigrants accumulating, and the poor prospects for additional employment becoming available in the near future. Shuckburgh thought that they had no alternative but to endorse Samuel’s proposal, and to instruct British Consuls in European ports to suspend the issue of visas for labour immigrants. The Colonial

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Office decision was made in full awareness that they were falling into the same position they had the previous May - that of appearing to be giving way to Arab pressure. The Arab Delegation had just asked the government to suspend Jewish immigration pending a political settlement. Shuckburgh feared that the Arabs might ‘now boast that they have bullied us into doing what they want’. As usual, Churchill rubber-stamped Shuckburgh’s advice, which was to confirm Samuel’s decision.69 On 9 March, Churchill had told the Commons that he had decided to go to the utmost possible lengths to give the Arabs representative institutions, without getting into a position where he could not fulfil those pledges to which the government was committed by its Zionist policy: ‘I am bound to retain in the hands of the Imperial Govern­ ment the power to carry out those pledges’, he concluded.70 How­ ever, just five days later, admittedly for sound economic reasons, Churchill took a decision which was in distinct breach of that pledge. Once more, there was a discrepancy between his public declarations and his private actions, as noted this time by his biographer: ‘In spite of his public declaration supporting the Balfour Declaration, he had accepted Samuel’s policy of restricting immigration’.71 The Zionists themselves were only too aware of the economic troubles in Palestine. They could agree to restrictions in their immi­ gration, provided the fact was not endorsed by a public government declaration that would inevitably take on political connotations. Dr Weizmann had in fact told Eric Mills, the immigration expert, that he would never agree to a suspension of immigration ‘save for economic reasons’. Weizmann hoped that in the event of economic troubles, immigration ‘could always be regulated to zero if necessary without suspension’.72 In effect, when immigration had been re­ newed the previous June, the Zionists had proved unable to take in and absorb any significantly greater immigration than hitherto. In addition, the political circumstances in spring 1922 were signifi­ cantly different from those of the previous May. On the one hand, the Zionists’ entire future was now hanging on a thread, pending the ratification of the British Mandate in Palestine. On the other hand, there had not been any disturbances in Palestine with which to link the restrictions in immigration, and the Arabs chose not to exploit their victory in public. Colonial Office support for Samuel’s decision was influenced undoubtedly by a statistical study compiled by Eric Mills at the end

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of February. On the basis of Mill’s calculations, it would take at least fifty years for the Jews to reach a majority in Palestine. Major Young regarded the study as a scientific endorsement of departmental policy: If experience justifies these figures, it is quite clear that for at least so years there is only one interpretation that can be placed on the Balfour Decla­ ration, namely the interpretation given to it by Sir Herbert Samuel on the 3rd June and endorsed by the Secretary of State in the House of Commons on 14th June.

Churchill initialled his agreement one week thereafter, on 1 March, the day his reply was sent off to the Arabs.73 It seems quite clear that Churchill sincerely agreed with Samuel’s gradualist policy for Palestine - in regard both to Jewish immigration, and to consti­ tutional development - notwithstanding the pressures exerted from higher up. Here is one further illustration, among many, that Chur­ chill had become a prisoner of high policy, the Balfour Declaration, which he executed with great reluctance, against the opinion of the experts and officials administrating Palestine. In the meantime, the Arabs had on 16 March replied to Churchill’s letter of 1 March. As anticipated, the correspondence was not bringing the two sides any closer. Shuckburgh minuted cynically: Their reply carries us no further. It is in fact a repetition of their old demand for a recission [sic] of the Balfour Declaration. They have in fact not moved an inch forward since their arrival in England last August, and I haven’t the least hope any amount of argument will move them from this position.

But whatever the prospects for reaching agreement through further contacts, there was an extraneous, tactical reason for not breaking off negotiations just yet: ‘Easter is upon us and with it the season of domestic ferment in Palestine. Deedes, in recent private letters has dwelt on the importance of keeping the Delegation in play at any rate until after Easter’.74 Mills informed Deedes in a private letter that although the situation was ‘hopeless’, it had been decided to send a further, argumentative reply, in order to detain the Arabs in England until the ‘nervy’ season in Palestine was over. After that, the government would have nothing further to do with them, and in all probability would send them away.75 In his despatches of 9 March, Samuel had urged a public statement

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of policy, and had forwarded a draft constitution, which would ultimately form the basis of the June White Paper. Shuckburgh disagreed initially. Since the Press campaign had subsided, he saw no need now to publish any statement, or, as had been suggested, the government’s correspondence with the Arabs. In Shuckburgh’s view, Samuel’s constitutional plan added nothing of consequence to statements already published on behalf of the Government. Shuck­ burgh feared that the plan would provoke a Zionist outcry against the further ‘whittling away’ of the Balfour Declaration. On the other hand, the plan would not conciliate the Arabs: ‘it seems to me just the kind of “trimming” document that never satisfies anybody or achieves any definite result’. Shuckburgh objected in particular to Samuel’s revival of the ‘old tag’ about Zionist intentions to make ‘Palestine as Jewish as England is English’. As usual, Shuckburgh’s veto was confirmed by Churchill.76 But at the end of April, Samuel was recalled to London. In a round of talks with Shuckburgh (and with Zionists and Arabs), he suc­ ceeded in persuading the Colonial Office to publish his constitu­ tional plan as a White Paper, including a government reputation of the tag about making Palestine as Jewish as England was English. Shuckburgh obtained Churchill’s assent. He reminded the Colonial Secretary that Samuel’s statement was similar to that proposed by Shuckburgh himself the previous November (when in fact it had been rejected by Churchill). Until now, Churchill had held back, due to fears of a Zionist outcry, which would bring down upon his head the wrath of Lloyd George and Balfour. But now, on the eve of the League ratification of the Mandate, the government had an almost unique opportunity of bending the Zionists to its will. In view of the long drawn-out public campaigns against the government’s policy in Palestine, and in view of their continued failure to secure Arab assent to the Balfour Declaration, and together with the protracted delays in the League ratification of the Mandate, the Zionists must realise now that the least additional problem might cause the government to throw in its hand in Palestine completely.77 Churchill was re­ assured by Shuckburgh that the Zionists this time would take the government’s statement of policy quietly: ‘they are beginning to realise that they must modify their ambitions ... the patience of His Majesty’s Government is not inexhaustible ... by claiming too much they run the serious risk of losing everything’. As for the Arabs, argued Shuckburgh, although they would not be

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satisfied, they might just be glad of the chance to return to Palestine not empty-handed. After their ten month stay in England, they would doubtless be glad to get home, if only for financial reasons. On 24 May, Shuckburgh asked for Churchill’s early approval of the statement of policy, since Samuel was anxious to return as soon as possible to Palestine. On 27 May, Churchill granted his approval, and the statement of policy, together with the government’s cor­ respondence with the Zionists and the Arabs, was published as a White Paper on 3 June.78 The decisive influence, therefore, was High Commissioner Samuel’s, exercised at first hand in London, during May, 1922. Churchill had confirmed the draft White Paper, once agreed on by Shuckburgh and Samuel, with no comments or amendments.79 By the end of May, 1922, two important milestones had been passed; first, the so-called ‘nervy’ season in Palestine had been traversed without incident; second, by May, 1922, the Americans had with­ drawn their objections to the ratification of the Mandate (it was approved by the League of Nations in July, 1922). Churchill himself played no part in the drafting of the various constitutional proposals. It seems that his interest was determined by the ‘larger’ issues American support at the League of Nations, and Cabinet support at the national level. These twin parameters determined the extent to which Churchill would allow the Colonial Office to limit the Zionists’ privileged status in Palestine. The Zionists, as Shuckburgh had predicted, dared not protest against the new policy statement, especially when it was put to them that their rejection might sabotage the League ratification of the Mandate the next month. After Shuckburgh showed Weizmann a draft of the White Paper, he wrote to Samuel: ‘He was on the whole in good spirits, and is taking his basin of gruel with a better grace than I expected’.80 The Arabs, in contrast, had an interest in defeating government policy and aborting the League ratification of the Mandate. Unlike the Zionists, the Arabs never committed themselves to abide by government policy. Neither, as Samuel and Young had naively pre­ dicted, did the Zionists’ public commitment to the new policy satisfy the Arabs. The 1922 White Paper was rejected by the 5 th Congress of the Palestinian Arabs, at Nablus, in August, 1922. Thus, as one historian has noted, ‘the life of the Palestine Constitution was as short as its period of gestation had been long’.81

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4. CHURCHILL’S DEFENCE OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

On 21 June, 1922, the House of Lords passed a motion by 60 votes against 29, to the effect that ‘the Palestine Mandate was “inacceptable to this House”, because it was “opposed to the sentiments and wishes of the great majority of the people of Palestine”.’ The Colonial Office warned Churchill that unless the House of Com­ mons ‘signally overruled’ the Lords’ vote, they might expect further troubles from the Arabs in Palestine.82 Churchill therefore turned the annual Commons debate on the Colonial Office vote, on 4 July, into an issue of confidence. In a long speech, Churchill did not bother once to explain the new policy as adumbrated in the White Paper published one month before. His speech, like all of his public declarations since the previous July, revealed a preoccupation with Britain’s wartime pledges, rather than any understanding of, or belief in the Zionist ideal. Churchill dwelt almost exclusively with two issues: first, the Rutenberg concession,83 and second, the government’s pledge to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration. Public interest in the Rutenberg concession had been awakened at the end of May, 1922, when Rutenberg, in New York, gave two inter­ views to The Times, about the hydro-electric project.84 Rutenberg recounted in full the various aspects of the concession, and gave assurances about the close supervision to be exercised by the Mandatory. The articles provoked letters of protest. On 29 May, The Times published a letter by William Joynson-Hicks, under the heading ‘complete monopoly’. His letter ended cynically: Now we see what we conquered Palestine for; now we know what soldiers died for, and what our taxpayers are now spending £300,000 a year for; and a suggestion that any man exploiting Palestine should purchase his goods in Britain is a flagrant violation of the whole principle of mandates. If this is so, the sooner we get rid of the mandates the better.85 The matter cannot stand where it is. No wonder the Arabs are sullen to the verge of revolt. If the House of Commons has any spirit at all, it must insist on a full discussion of the whole matter.86

On that same day, CIGS Wilson wrote to General Congreve: ‘Your Mr Rutenberg and his Palestine monopoly has created quite a stir’87 Further letters in The Times supported the line taken by JoynsonHicks. On 30 May, the Duke of Westminster wrote that the

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concession ‘would hand over to the absolute discretion of one man the future of a land which for ages has been the object of passionate attachment for the adherents of the great religions of the world the Jewish, the Christian and the Moslem’.88 Finally, on 31 May, the Times editorial, headed ‘Rutenberg Monopoly’, questioned the very propriety of the concession: The disquieting feature of the Rutenberg scheme is that by it a monopoly is created on behalf of interests that are not British. Since Great Britain is responsible for the political control of Palestine, why has a step been taken which signifies the transference to other hands of such a large share in the economic control of the country? From all accounts of the scheme that have yet been made public it is clear that the British administration in Palestine is placing itself in the very ambiguous position of transferring to others the essence of power while retaining an embarrassing responsibility.89

In the Commons debate, on 4 July, Churchill complained that the Rutenberg concession had been laid before Parliament and the public over six months ago, and had not been criticised in any way until the recent Press agitation. During the debate, many had impugned the character of Rutenberg himself, hinting at his revolutionary background. Churchill rejected charges that Rutenberg was a Bolshevik, claiming that he had in fact been turned out of Russia by the Bolsheviks.90 However, it was clear that the Rutenberg conces­ sion was just a single aspect of a wider issue - British support for the Jewish National Home. The second, and perhaps major theme of Churchill’s speech, was the defence of Britain’s pledge to the Zionists. He proceeded to take to task those Members who had supported the Balfour Declaration in 1917, but who now, he alleged, were reneging on their word: You have no right to say this kind of thing as individuals; you have no right to support public declarations made in the name of your country in the crisis and heat of the War, and then afterwards, when all is cold and prosaic, to turn around and attack the Minister or the Department which is faithfully and laboriously endeavouring to translate those perfervid enthusiasms into the sober, concrete facts of the day-to-day administration ... I appeal to the House of Commons not to alter its opinion on the general question, but to stand faithfully to the undertakings which have been given in the name of Britain, and interpret in an honourable and earnest way the promise that Britain will do her best to fulfil her undertakings to the Zionists.91

Churchill proceeded to quote no fewer than twelve current members of the House who in 1917 had supported the Balfour

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Declaration, but opposed its implementation now. It was they, not he, who were responsible for that policy, and they must accept the responsibility now. Churchill emphasised that he himself had not been a party to the issue of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and now, he was acting from duty. He asked rhetorically: We really must know where we are. Who led us along this path, who impelled us along it? I remained quite silent I am not in the ‘Black Book\ I accepted service on the lines laid down for me. Now, when I am endeav­ ouring to carry it out, it is from this quarter that I am assailed.92

Churchill succeeded in obtaining an overwhelming vote of confi­ dence, of 292 to 35 votes. By his own assertion, Churchill had not shared responsibility for the Balfour Declaration policy. Neither did he have Balfour’s deeper intellectual appreciation of the problems and ideals embraced by Zionism. Even Balfour, for all his publicly-professed sympathies for the Zionist solution to the Jewish Problem, recoiled after the war from direct British responsibility. How much more so did Churchill. Incredible as it may seem, Churchill’s desire to jettison the Palestine Mandate was thwarted by Lloyd George and Balfour in 1921, as much due to inertia as to anything else. The motives of 1917 had by 1921 become idees fixes. The Balfour Declaration had served the British as an escape-exit from the Sykes-Picot agreement, which had provided for an international administration in Palestine. It also gave the British a strategic foothold in Palestine, which they could not claim except under the pretext of sponsoring the Jewish renaissance. And as Curzon told an imperial conference in 1923, if the British withdrew from Palestine, they would soon find the French on the northern approaches to the Suez Canal. A further idee fixe, as we have seen, was the British respect for Jewish influence in the United States - a force which might turn against the British should they renege on the Balfour Declaration. Whatever Churchill’s own misgivings about the Balfour Decla­ ration, he does seem to have been impressed by its role in securing for Britain the support of the United States, or more specifically, by the Zionists’ ability to mobilise that support. In addition, as we have noted, Zionism might provide the antidote to Bolshevism - though Churchill may have had second thoughts after the riots in May, 1921, and after Northcliffe’s Press campaign in 1922. Also, the Jewish colonies, those that Churchill managed to see briefly, undoubtedly

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impressed him. Jewish capital and skills could provide the key to developing an imperial outpost at a minimum cost to the British tax­ payer. However, all this was subordinate to the supremely important goal of attaining peace with Turkey and stability in the Near and Middle East. It is in the Graeco-Turkish conflict that we must seek the key to the confusion and vacillation in Churchill’s Palestine policy. As one Israeli historian has commented, even the anti-Zionist Curzon caused less harm to the Zionist cause than Churchill did Curzon’s opposition was calculated, up to defined limits.93 Curzon actively opposed the issue of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, but later became reconciled. It seems doubtful if Churchill as Colonial Secretary really did. There remained a significant gap between Chur­ chill’s public and private positions. The official biography concludes its section on Palestine for this period: While publicly he had often emerged as their champion, in the daily adminis­ tration of his department he had allowed decisions to be reached, often by others, which were to their disadvantage.94

Under Churchill’s reign at the Colonial Office, Jewish immi­ gration was suspended twice, each time with his post hoc approval; anti-Zionist officials in the Palestine Administration continued to influence, and to a large degree determined Samuel’s volte face after the May, 1921 riots. None were removed from office, as Young’s package deal with Weizmann had provided for. Churchill’s public reaffirmations of the Zionist policy were made without conviction, due to force majeure, rather than to ideological commitment. Churchill abdicated his Ministerial responsibility for Palestine from the autumn of 1921. Pressures from his officials to make a clear statement of policy were rejected during the winter, either from pure inertia, or due to fears about negative reactions in the United States, whose cooperation was needed, both at the Washington Disarmament Conference, and in the ratification of the Middle Eastern mandates. Once the Washington conference was concluded, and American assent to the mandates secured, Churchill and the Colonial Office were ready for a policy statement, even at the risk of a Zionist outcry. However, that risk was minimal, given the great economic and political crises the Zionists found themselves in at the beginning of 1922. A public attack on the Rutenberg concession, during May, 1922,

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and the need to counter an adverse vote in the Lords, provided Churchill with the occasion on which to read the Commons a lesson on the moral propriety of keeping promises made during the heat of war. But even then, Churchill did not attempt to explain or justify the new policy he had signed his name to just one month before. The so-called ‘Churchill White Paper’ of 1922, of which he as Prime Minister would later claim such proud parentage, was in fact the creation of Sir John Shuckburgh and Sir Herbert Samuel.95 Colonial Secretary Churchill, the Minister responsible, was little more than a sleeping-partner. In October, 1922, the Lloyd George Coalition was brought down by a Conservative revolt, and Churchill was out of a job, leaving the Colonial Office for good. He has described the episode, in his history of the Second World War, at a sufficient distance to permit some humour, not to mention self-indulgence: At the crucial moment I was prostrated by a severe operation for appendicitis, and in the morning when I recovered consciousness I learned that the Lloyd George Government had resigned, and that I had lost not only my appendix but my office as Secretary of State for the Dominions and Colonies, in which I conceived myself to have had some Parliamentary and administrative success.96

But let us leave the last word on Churchill as Colonial Secretary to Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a partisan, yet honest observer, from close quarters. Meinertzhagen’s comment not only summarises Churchill’s style at the Colonial Office, but also provides hints of his future modus operandu At the end of October, 1922, Meinertzhagen made the following entry in his private .diary: So Winston is gone. For many reasons I am sorry. He has a brilliant brain and is as quick as lightning. He acts almost entirely by instinct and is usually right though easily led astray by some enthusiast. He was a hard master to serve, working like a Trojan himself and expecting equally hard work from his staff.97

CHAPTER SIX

CHURCHILL AND PALESTINE, 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 3 9 1. AT THE EXCHEQUER, 1928

With the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition in October, 1922, Winston Churchill lost both his seat in the Cabinet, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, and his seat in Parliament, as member for Dundee. At the next General Election, held in October, 1924, Churchill left the Liberal Party, and stood for the London suburb of Epping, as an independent ‘Constitutionalist’ candidate, with the full support of the Conservatives. To the surprise of many, after his victory at the polls, Churchill was rewarded by Prime Minister Baldwin with one of the most senior offices in the Cabinet - one which he had coveted in 1921 - the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. He was to keep this post for the next five years. For much of this period at the Exchequer, Churchill was engaged also in the writing of his multi-volume history of World War One, which included ‘The Aftermath’, from 1918 to 1922. It is a matter for incredulity, and speculation, that nowhere in all of these 3,000 pages does Churchill so much as mention the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish National Home, or even the White Paper of 1922, of which he would later claim such proud parentage. Indeed, Palestine is dismissed (together with Trans-Jordan) in one single paragraph, which states blandly that the momentous Cairo Conference of March 1921 had no need to alter policy in Palestine.1While formally correct, this assertion, in view of the Arab riots of May, 1921, and * I am most grateful to Dr Pinhas Ofer for bringing to my attention some of the documents used in this section.

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the sweeping revision of policy which followed, represents an omission of significant proportions. From 1924 to 1929, Churchill’s ministerial responsibilities at the Treasury were naturally his major preoccupation. Britain was in the throes of a post-war industrial depression, whose most serious symptom at home was mass unemployment. Churchill’s decision to return to the Gold Standard in 1925 in fact led to an overvaluation of the pound sterling, which in turn crippled British exports and hampered Britain’s trade recovery. During the spring of 1927, Chur­ chill began working on a new plan for economic recovery, based on an idea of Harold Macmillan’s. Churchill proposed to relieve industry and agriculture of much of their local rates, thereby boost­ ing production, and reviving the economy. The money lost from rates was to be recovered by reductions in government spending, and by the introduction of new taxes, on petrol, for example.2 Churchill’s plan aroused the hostility of many of his colleagues in the Cabinet, either because he planned to cut into their departmental budgets, or because they feared that the new measures would prove unpopular with the electorate. Churchill himself pressed on regard­ less. He relied on the support of the Prime Minister: Unhappily the Treasury has to defend a good many positions wh cannot be reconciled with generosity or gentlemanlike largesse. As an Ex-Ch of the Exch you know the seamy side.3

One of Churchill’s chief adversaries inside the Cabinet was Leo Amery, the Colonial Secretary. Amery rebelled against the Treasury’s interference in his imperial planning. He argued with Churchill’s embargo on overseas lending to the Empire, notwithstanding its justification in the avoidance of a high bank rate. But on this issue, Amery succumbed in the end to the persuasive powers of Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England (1920-1944).4 In July, 1927, Amery undertook an extended tour of the Empire and the Dominions, which took in South Africa, Australasia and Canada. He did not return to England until February, 1928, over six months later. He returned enthusiastic, eager to embark upon new imperial projects, only to discover, to his chagrin, that his own position inside the Cabinet had weakened, and that the Treasury now possessed a veto over all overseas expenditure.5 One of the key issues on which Churchill and Amery would clash was Palestine. But Churchill’s position in the Cabinet was secure, and such was

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Amery’s resentment of the senior Minister’s fiscal policies that in 1929 he confided to his diary the conviction that only electoral defeat ‘would free the Party from that incubus at the Treasury, Winston Churchill’.6 On the eve of the 1929 General Elections, Amery suggested to Baldwin that the departure of Churchill from the Treasury would greatly improve the Party’s chances at the polls: I am sure for instance that an announcement that Neville (Chamberlain) was going to the Exchequer would be worth twenty or thirty seats at least. I don’t want to be disloyal or unfriendly to Winston but the fact remains that he is a handicap rather than an asset in the eyes of the public.7

The Treasury’s parsimony towards the Empire had direct and prejudicial effect upon the Jewish National Home in Palestine. Not only did the Treasury refuse to consider any British financial commit­ ment to the Zionist enterprise, but in 1927, Churchill went so far as

to insist that Palestine pay one half o f the administrative costs o f the desert Emirate o f Trans-Jordan. This was, to say the least, a narrow interpretation of Britain’s promise of 1917, to ‘facilitate’ the establish­ ment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. Amery bowed to the dictates of the senior department on this point, because, perhaps, he had other, higher priorities, or because of his own inferior status in the Cabinet. However, the Treasury’s policy was not acceptable to the British High Commissioner in Palestine, Field Marshal Sir Herbert Plumer (1925-1928). The episode to be discussed below provides us with the rare, if not unique spectacle of a senior British official actually threatening to resign his position, in protest at what he considered to be unfair (to the Jews) imperial practice! Of course, there was an additional irony in the situation. For it had been none other than Churchill himself who, as Colonial Secretary eight years earlier, had on Lawrence’s advice sliced off the east bank of the River Jordan from the Palestine Mandate. This was a stroke in which Churchill would continue to take considerable public pride, and which he boasted of frequently in Parliament. In March, 1936, for instance, during the debate on the Legislative Council scheme proposed for Palestine, he informed the House of Commons that ‘the Emir Abdulla is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon at Jerusalem. I acted upon the advice of that very great man Colonel Lawrence, who was at my side in making the arrangements’.8

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But Churchill omitted to tell the House that, from the outset, Trans-Jordan had had to be supported by a British subsidy, which proved to be a most unwelcome drain on the British Exchequer. Nor did he tell his audience in 1936 that he himself had eased the problem by raking off and diverting revenue from a source close at hand from the taxes culled from the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. For Churchill, this was merely the application of what has been called recently the classical objectives of Victorian imperialism: the creation of a compliant local regime which would preserve Britain’s political and strategic interests while relieving her of the trouble and expense of ruling directly over an alien and unpredictable society.9

The doctrines adopted by Churchill at the Exchequer are entirely consistent with the policies he had pressed from the War and the Colonial Office at the end of the war. They illustrate his strong conviction that the Palestine Mandate - one of the non-essential ‘New Provinces’ - had to be self-supporting, so as not to impose any burdens on the British taxpayer. Britain’s continued tenure of the Mandate had been premised on the assumption that Jewish capital would, at the very least, make Palestine self-sufficient. In fact, Palestine’s healthy budget surplus exceeded Whitehall’s rosiest dreams. As was freely admitted at the Colonial Office, the greater part of the Palestine Government’s revenues were derived from the Jewish sector - both from taxation, and from donations sent by Jews overseas. So in 1927, it had seemed quite natural, to Churchill at least, that with the British economy ailing, the subsidy needed to keep Trans-Jordan afloat should be met in part from the budgetary surplus of its neighbour, Palestine. Churchill took a cold, banker’s view of the Mandate in Palestine, as may be seen clearly from the following admonition he dealt out to Amery in April, 1927: There is no excuse whatever for Palestine being a burden on the Exchequer of this country. It is quite capable of paying its own way in every respect as most Gown Colonies. I cannot understand why the idea of keeping Palestine in a dole-fed condition at the expense of our taxpayer attracts you. I should have strained every nerve to secure solvency and independence at the earliest possible moment. There is no credit, whatever, in making one country swim at the expense of the other. The credit is to make it self-supporting. At the present moment the policies of which you are the advocate are costing us considerably more than 2d on the Income Tax and I hope the return is adequate and will be judged adequate in retrospect.10

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a. The Trans-Jordan Frontier Force. In 1926, High Commissioner Plumer established the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, as part of a re­ organisation of regional security, in Palestine and Trans-Jordan. Plumer anticipated that the Force would be needed more for patrolling the desert expanses of Trans-Jordan than in Palestine, where relative tranquillity had prevailed since 1921. But Plumer still regarded the Force as ‘an Imperial unit, a mounted regiment for service in both countries which, in the military sense and from the standpoint of mandatory obligation, cannot be separated’. On this assumption, Plumer proposed that Palestine and Trans-Jordan each pay one half of the cost of the new Force. Since it was quite apparent that Trans-Jordan would be unable to pay its share for some years to come, Plumer applied for a grant-in-aid from the British Govern­ ment, on the grounds that ‘it would be quite unjust on the Palestine taxpayers to call on them to pay for the security of Trans-Jordan by requiring them to meet the cost of the Frontier Force’.11 But the Treasury, to whom Plumer’s request was forwarded, took an entirely different view. In fact, quite contrary to what Churchill had written to Amery the previous April, the Palestine budget was in healthy accumulated surplus - to the tune of £VA millions - at the time when Churchill was having great difficulty in balancing the budget at home. In March, 1927, Churchill and Amery had agreed that one half of Trans-Jordan’s administrative costs would be met from Palestine’s budget. Now, the Treasury changed Plumer’s plan in two respects; first, it insisted that Palestine bear two-thirds, and Trans-Jordan one-third of the costs, instead of half each, as suggested by Plumer; and second, applying the agreement of March, 1927, the Treasury insisted that Palestine pay one-half of Trans-Jordan’s third - i.e. that Palestine in fact pay %ths of the cost of the Force, and Trans-Jordan %th. Plumer and Colonial Office gave way to Treasury pressure, and agreed that the respective proportions to be borne by Palestine and Trans-Jordan should be two-thirds and one-third. But Plumer drew the line at Palestine being made to meet one half of Trans-Jordan’s administrative costs, and especially at being made to bear half the cost of Trans-Jordan’s security needs. However, when pressed by the Colonial Office, the Treasury refused to budge from its equation that Palestine pay for %ths of the Force, and one half of the civil grant-in-aid. The Colonial Office warned that as a condition of such a subsidy, the Palestine taxpayer might demand the right to supervise

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the finances of ‘the independent government of Trans-Jordan’, an intrusion which might excite popular feeling in both countries. Eventually, a compromise was worked out between Churchill and the Colonial Office. The Chancellor waived his demand that Palestine pay half of Trans-Jordan’s grant-in-aid, on the condition that Palestine meet %ths of the cost of the Frontier Force, indefinitely; that in financial year 1927-1928, Palestine pay a further £31,000 towards the cost of stationing British troops in Trans-Jordan; and that in 1928-1929, Palestine pay the differential between the cost of stationing British forces in Trans-Jordan and in England. Amery assumed this burden for Palestine on the somewhat dubi­ ous grounds that forces stationed in Trans-Jordan would be available also for the defence of Palestine, and that it was irrelevant where those forces happened to be stationed for most of the time. Thus he regarded the payment as an insurance premium against disorder in either territory. Of course, this did not explain or justify the fact that one of the two countries concerned was being singled out to bear the lion’s share of their common defence. The ‘justification’ for that was purely and simply financial - since Palestine’s revenue was in the order of ten times that of Trans-Jordan’s, Amery argued, the five-toone ratio in their security charges was ‘fair’. In addition, the officials took little or no account of the economic anomaly which prevailed in Palestine at the time; on the one hand, a budgetary surplus, derived primarily from taxation of Jewish capital; and on the other, a deep economic recession, with large-scale unemployment among the Jewish community. With the collapse of an urban property boom, at the end of 1926, wide-scale distress and unemployment among the Jewish community led to a net emigration from Palestine. At the Treasury, in London, there seemed to reign a supreme indifference to the social and economic distress of the local community, and an exclusive preoccupation with the imperial benefit being derived from this particular colony.12 Apparently, no one at Whitehall deemed it proper to re-invest some of the country’s budgetary surplus in that community from which the money had originated. But again, the High Commissioner did not go along with the Treasury-Colonial Office compromise. Plumer did not go so far as to propose that the government provide employment for out-ofwork Jews - he believed that the solution to Palestine’s economic crisis was the re-emigration of the unemployed!13But he did fear that

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the current budgetary surplus would not last, and that future eco­ nomic reverses might affect Palestine’s ability to bear Trans-Jordan’s expenses. He argued also that by virtue of the different terms of each country’s Mandate, neither Palestine nor Trans-Jordan could be held responsible for the other’s security. Ultimately, Plumer believed, the home government must assume responsibility for both. He pointed out to London the home truth that Palestine’s own security forces, her police, could maintain order in Palestine quite adequately, and that it was in Trans-Jordan rather than in Palestine that the Force was needed. Not only did Plumer reject the Treasury’s allocation of the costs of the Force, but he demanded that by the end of 1928 Palestine should be relieved completely of its share. If London agreed to relieve Palestine of all further responsibility for the Force, then in return, Plumer might be prepared to increase Palestine’s contribu­ tion to ‘general defence costs’ by £19,000. Sir John Shuckburgh, head of the Middle East Department at the Colonial Office since its establishment in February, 1921, calculated that in hard cash terms Plumer’s proposal left a gap of £119,000 between him and the Treasury. (The Force’s budget was estimated for the current year at £166,709, and Palestine was being asked to pay 5Aths of that, i.e. £138,000.)14 When he received the details of the Treasury’s agreement with the Colonial Office, binding Palestine indefinitely to support the major burden of the Frontier Force, Plumer wrote to Under-Secretary of State, William Ormsby-Gore (the Colonial Secretary, Amery, was still abroad on his imperial tour), to offer his resignation, on the grounds that he would be unable, on such terms, to continue acting as ‘trustee for the rights of the people of Palestine’. He argued that to impose on the taxpayers of Palestine the burden of the cost of the Trans­ jordan Force would be unjust. I am certain that the people themselves will so regard it. I cannot acquiesce in a policy which I believe to be unjust, and have therefore no alternative but to ask the Government to appoint some one to take my place.15

In Amery’s absence, Ormsby-Gore took the unusual step of appealing over the Treasury’s head, direct to the Prime Minister, on the grounds that the domestic political consequences of the High Commissioner’s resignation could be serious. Ormsby-Gore sent a copy of his letter to the Treasury, but Churchill refused to reverse

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his decision, and thus informed Baldwin.16 The final decision was shelved for over a month, pending Amery’s return. After settling back in at the Colonial Office, Amery appealed to Churchill, on 1 March, urging him to waive at least the payment of £30,000 for defence costs in 1928-1929, which the two men had agreed already that Palestine should pay. Amery argued his case not from an economic, or moral point of view, but from purely political expediency. A crisis now in Palestine, he suggested, might be exploit­ ed by the government’s opponents, especially since they were about to decide on the Baghdad-Haifa railway/pipeline project, which again was to be funded partially from the Palestine budget.17 Churchill did not reply for two weeks. He gave scant consider­ ation either to the moral issue raised by Plumer, or to the political dangers anticipated by Amery. It was the imminence of the Budget, upon which Churchill was feverishly at work, which determined his negative response. He told Amery that he could not now waive the £30,000 charge on Palestine, which was already included in his budget, and since he had completed his estimates, he could not now agree to a supplementary estimate in that amount.18 There is a nice irony in the fact that when Churchill did present his Budget to the House of Commons, on 24 April, 1928, he was able to announce that he had been fortunate in receiving two unanticipated ‘windfalls’; income from death duties had provided £9 millions more than expected, and ‘the Kenya and Palestine admin­ istrations had repaid loans totalling £4% millions’.19 Churchill did not tell the House how much the two colonies had each repaid, but one may presume safely that the £30,000 insisted upon by Churchill in his exchange with Amery was but a small fraction of the revenue actually received from Palestine that year. Churchill refused to take seriously Plumer’s threat of resignation, and dismissed the dangers of protest against Palestine’s participation in the Baghdad-Haifa scheme.20 Amery bowed to force tnajeure, and switched his powers of persuasion to the weaker party, to the High Commissioner. Given the intractability of the Treasury, Amery warned Plumer that by his resignation, the latter would in fact cause great harm to the cause he presumably espoused. In evident reference to the Press and Parlia­ mentary attacks directed against the Government’s policy in Palestine, Amery appealed to Plumer to close ranks, and to prevent their internal dissensions becoming public property:

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The Beaverbrook-Rothermere Press would joyfully seize the occasion for a renewed general attack on the whole Mandate and urge us to clear out of Palestine altogether. Weizmann’s Jewish opponents everywhere would loudly proclaim that their disbelief in British fair play had been clearly vindicated, and his hand would be disastrously weakened, with the result that Palestine would lose far more than the amount now at issue. Arab agitation would naturally fasten upon your resignation to make trouble in general, and more particularly to put out that all this military expenditure imposed on Palestine is only in order to force Zionism on an Arab world struggling to be free and united. You have done such a splendid Imperial service in Palestine ... I do most earnestly implore you not to let your very natural dissatisfaction and disappointment prompt you into doing something at this moment which can only harm every cause for which we both care in Palestine itself and elsewhere, and add greatly to my own difficulties in the continuous struggle I have to wage to secure any kind of consideration for Imperial interests at this time of financial stress at home.21

It is quite clear from the above that Amery too regarded Chur­ chill’s demands on Palestine to be inequitable to Jewish interests there. He insinuated as much in his appeal to Plumer, which was argued on purely tactical grounds. Amery made one last attempt to secure some ‘douceur’ from Churchill, with which to reconcile Plumer. He pleaded that the Treasury should remit the differential in the cost of stationing troops in Trans-Jordan. But Churchill rejected the appeal, almost with contempt. He did not believe that now, in May, 1928, just three months prior to the natural termination of his term in Palestine, Plumer would take the drastic step of resignation ‘over so small a dispute’. The High Commissioner had first issued his threat in January, 1928, and Whitehall’s apprehensions had decreased with the passage of time.22 Churchill’s prognosis proved to be correct, even if Plumer’s term of three years was less than that of other High Commissioners.23 In fact, Plumer had in any case bowed to Amery’s appeal, even before Churchill’s final negative. Plumer agreed to stay until August, 1928, so as not to ‘make increasingly difficult the solution of the complex problem connected with the administration of Palestine ... (or) prejudice seriously the development of the country and Imperial interests generally’.24 When he finally left Palestine, there were no official receptions, and it was explained that he was leaving prematurely on grounds of ill health.25

b. The Zionist Loan . It was against the background of the Treasury’s

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swingeing fiscal policies in regard to Palestine (of which the Zion­ ists were blissfully ignorant) that in February, 1928 Dr Chaim Weizmann applied to the British Government to underwrite a £2 million loan, to be negotiated under the aegis of the League of Nations. The money was to be used to relieve the economic recession in Palestine, specifically, to finance the settlement of some 3,000 Jewish colonists.26 The discussion of the projected loan during 1928, both at Whitehall, and inside the Cabinet itself, provides a rare glimpse of the British government’s own perception of the commitment which it had given just over a decade before to the Zionists. Specifically, it provides some gauge to the fidelity shown by three of the men most intimately concerned with its issue and early implementation Balfour, Churchill and Amery. Zionist demands on the British Exchequer provided an acid test of each man’s commitment.27 The Zionists’ request was considered initially by the Whitehall officials, at the Colonial Office and at the Treasury. Their views, their prejudices, and their verdict, would ultimately determine their Ministers’ decisions. At the Colonial Office there was a degree of sympathy for the Zionist case. Whereas the Zionists themselves were considered to be partly responsible for the economic crisis in Palestine, it was admitted that the government too must shoulder its share of the blame, ‘owing to lack of a well-considered fiscal policy, and their failure to supply land for colonisation or to revise internal taxation’. The High Commissioner himself had advised Whitehall that Palestine’s budget surplus derived solely from Jewish capital. Much of that capital originated in loans, or contributions from abroad, which were given purely on the strength of Jewish influence and activity. In some contrast to Plumer’s views, the Colonial Office concluded that it would be in the interest both of the Zionists and of the government itself for Jewish immigration to continue, since such immigration would increase the government’s revenues proportionately.28 Nonetheless, Colonial Office sympathies did not extend to acced­ ing to the Zionists’ request for a loan. T.I.K. Lloyd, of the Depart­ ment’s Middle East section, doubted whether the Treasury would accept the Zionists’ proffered securities - contributions from abroad - as collateral. It did not help the Zionists’ cause that they had just failed to raise private loans on the open market. Why should the Treasury consider the Zionists’ request seriously ‘when two of the

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big banks in this country have declined to loan £400,000 to the Zionist Organization on the same security’.29 Lloyd suggested that, ‘human nature being what it is’, the Zionists’ donations would dry up once the grant of the £2 million loan became known. In that event, the Zionists, already in deep financial straits, would find it difficult even to meet the interest payments on the loan. If the Zionists defaulted on their repayments, then not only the Govern­ ment, but the Mandatory administration itself would come under fire; there would come a demand for a scrutiny of Palestine’s finan­ cial administration, and perhaps even the demand that the Mandatory pass on to the international debtors those taxes which fell specifically on the Jews and their colonies. The Mandatory might be requested even to relieve the Jews of the present expenditure on their own social services. Given the anomalies of the British administration in Palestine - the fact that Britain financed the services it provided to the Arabs of Palestine (not to mention a part of those of Trans-Jordan), from taxes derived primarily from the Jews, and that very little, if any, of the said income was channelled back into services for the Jewish community - any prospect whatsoever of international scrutiny assumed night­ mare proportions. It was this aspect which aroused most concern at the Colonial Office. Lloyd concluded: I can imagine no better lever than an internationally guaranteed loan for the Z[ionist] Organisation] to use in exercising pressure on H.M.G. and on the Palestine Government to obtain concessions and privileges which have not yet been given to them.

Churchill’s principal Private Secretary, P.J. Grigg, advised that the loan would not receive ratification from the League, which dealt only with ‘urgent and exceptional cases’, and whose loans constituted ‘part of general schemes for the financial and monetary recon­ struction of countries, likely without League support, to fall to pieces’. In addition, warned Grigg, the French would regard the loan as ‘a cloak for extending British influence’.30 It is worth noting that at this stage it was the Colonial Office, presumably fearful of inter­ national criticism of its regime in Palestine, which Questioned the financial risks involved in underwriting the Zionist loan. The Treasury presumably preferred not to draw attention to its imperial parsimony, and was content to rest its case on the rejection it anticipated from the League of Nations. Once again, as in July, 1921, Weizmann asked Balfour to call a

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meeting of the principal Ministers concerned, to settle the issue, if possible, in the private salon, rather than in the Cabinet. The move was typical of Weizmann’s 19th century diplomatic style, which aspired to supra-constitutional influence through personal charm and persuasion.31 The discussion centred, not on the merits of the Zionist cause per se> but on the potential damage to Anglo-American relations that might be wreaked by anti-British propaganda engaged in by American Jews. Both Balfour and Amery were preoccupied with this aspect the latter had encountered it during his recent visit to Canada. Weizmann agreed that Jewish complaints that the government was not doing enough for the Jewish National Home were exaggerated. First, the American Jews who contributed to their cause observed the obvious fact that whereas the Yishuv itself suffered economic distress, the Palestine Government enjoyed a budget surplus of £VA million (the figure was not refuted by either Amery or Churchill); second, they saw that whereas both Palestine and Iraq had been charged for the costs of the British Military administrations (OETA) which had ruled the area after the last war, Iraq had been relieved of her share of the debt, while Palestine remained burdened with the sum of £300,000. Balfour and Amery both conceded that there was a good deal of truth in Weizmann’s argument. According to Weizmann’s record of the meeting, Churchill contri­ buted very little to the conversation. He dismissed Weizmann’s complaint about Palestine’s share of the post-war debt with the remark that the issue ‘might be adjusted’. In fact, as noted already, Churchill refused adamantly all requests to deduct any sums from Palestine’s payments to the British Exchequer. When Balfour com­ mented that Palestine was becoming ‘a most important place in the Empire’, Churchill agreed, adding that it was more important even than Iraq. Weizmann interjected that if Palestine was so important, then why was it being penalised and over-burdened financially? But Churchill did agree, apparently, together with Balfour and Amery, to support the Zionist loan in Cabinet. In view of Churchill’s stringent economies, and his ban on overseas lending, Amery was surprised at how forthcoming Churchill had been.32 Shuckburgh regretted that Churchill had, allegedly, adopted an ‘exceedingly encouraging tone’, and had led Weizmann into believing that there was a real prospect of the loan going through. Not for the first, nor

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for the last time, Shuckburgh regretted that Churchill had not been more cautious in his language.33 It is difficult, if not impossible to explain Churchill’s attitude. His agreement to support the loan ran contrary to the advice of his own officials with which, for once, he was in full agreement. It may be suggested that the warnings about adverse repercussions in the United States - always a high priority with Churchill - for the moment superseded financial considerations. At their meeting on 16 February, Weizmann himself admitted to Shuckburgh that the prin­ cipal reason he was now seeking government approval was in order to raise money on this basis in the United States. Weizmann wanted to be able at least to tell the Americans that the negotiations for the loan were making progress, and that it had been submitted for the government’s decision.34Churchill, and others, may have decided to humour Weizmann, and thus for the time being head off further trouble from the direction of American Jewry, knowing full well that the loan had in any case no chance of securing Cabinet approval. Whatever the case, Churchill did not in fact keep his word, as will be shown below. The Cabinet discussed the loan two weeks later, on 13 March, 1928. The central document before the Ministers was a long memo­ randum supporting the loan, written by Balfour, then Lord President of the Council. It is significant that the main champion of the Zionist cause in 1928 was an elderly statesman, holding a sinecure cabinet office, with no direct responsibility for the administration of Palestine. Due to a technical mistake, the Colonial Office memo­ randum was not ready in time for this Cabinet meeting, although Amery did speak up in favour of the loan. Neither the Treasury nor the Foreign Office, which both took a direct interest in the issue, was ready yet with any printed comment. Free from the restraints of Ministerial responsibility, Balfour’s memorandum represented an indictment of the government’s record in Palestine. Specifically, it raised grave doubts about the manner in which it had carried out its commitment to the Jewish people. In a sense, this document, possibly Balfour’s last pronouncement on Zionism, stands as a fitting, if pathetic epitaph to a statesman who, nearing the end of a long life, had come to regard the Declaration issued above his signature in 1917 as one of his finest achievements.35 Balfour had fallen critically ill since the February meeting with

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Weizmann, and was unable therefore to attend the Cabinet meeting. He would recover sufficiently to attend again in June, 1928, but he died in March, 1930, aged 82. His memorandum asserted that any impartial examination of the government’s record would reveal a lack of generosity: ‘Far from being the spoilt child of the mandatory system Palestine has been its Cinderella’.36 Picking up Weizmann’s point, Balfour pointed out to the Cabinet that whereas Iraq had been relieved of its share of the post-war occupation debt, Palestine, ‘a country far smaller and poorer’, had been required to reimburse its share, and was in fact the only country that had been a part of the former Ottoman Empire that was required to bear any share of the Ottoman debt. Balfour reminded his colleagues of the unique nature of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, which alone of all Britain’s colonial possessions lacked neither capital nor settlers. Yet neither of those assets derived from England - the funds were raised as a result of Jewish idealism; and Jewish immigrants came out of a combination of idealism and misery. Balfour dismissed the frequently voiced criticism that the Zionist enterprise had harmed Arab interests: ‘the economic development of Palestine has manifestly conferred immense benefits on every section of the community and has deprived them of nothing ... the main financial burden involved in the transformation of Palestine has been borne by the Jews, and largely by the Jews who are not Palestinian citizens.’ However, sensing perhaps that ‘sentimental’ reasons alone would not move his colleagues, Balfour closed his argument on the theme of Palestine’s contribution to Britain’s imperial interests: It must be a gain to the whole Empire that any one of its constituent parts should succeed in reaching this great development. Its effects may be indirect. They may do nothing, for instance, to relieve the British taxpayer. But indirectly, both morally and materially, its effects must be beneficial. Palestine ... lies at the very place where the Power primarily responsible for the security of the Suez Canal would wish to place it. A mandated territory on the Asiatic side of the great waterway, prosperous, contented and quite impervious to Egyptian intrigue must add strength to the Empire at a point where additional strength may in the interests of the Empire and the world, be most desirable. This was not the consideration which influenced most British Zionists in 1917.lt certainly did not influence me; but the trend of events since then has brought it into prominence, and the idealists - be they Jew or Gentile are serving the interests of peace and commerce in a way which perhaps they never contemplated.

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Therefore, Balfour concluded, although the security requested by the Zionists might not be approved by a banker, or a chartered accountant, the Cabinet should consider their request primarily from the statesman’s point of view, and approve it. The impact of Balfour’s memorandum upon the Cabinet seems to have been minimal. Balfour’s illness robbed the Zionists of their most powerful advocate. Yet, even had Balfour been present, it is to be doubted if the elder statesman could have countered the combined opposition of both the Treasury and the Foreign Office. The fact that the Cabinet’s final rejection of the Zionists’ request was delayed until June, was due to the Cabinet’s desire not to upset the critically-ill Balfour with the bad news.37 Although Amery put up a brief struggle against the two senior Departments, he soon suc­ cumbed to force majeure. At the Cabinet of 13 March, Amery endorsed the general line taken by Balfour’s memorandum, albeit with reservations on the latter’s indictment of the administration’s record in Palestine. (In fact, Colonial Office officials had been forced to concede the fact that of all the territories detached from the former Ottoman Empire, Palestine alone had not defaulted on its repayments of the Ottoman debt. The Palestine Government had made two payments in 1925, but then, observing that other governments in the area had defaulted, it too had stopped.38) One of Amery’s main considerations was the danger of adverse repercussions across the Atlantic. He reminded the Cabinet that Weizmann was due to leave for the United States the next week, and therefore the matter was now urgent. Churchill was present at the Cabinet meeting, but there is no official record of his views, either way. The main opposition to the Zionist loan came from Austen Chamberlain, the Foreign Secretary. He argued first, that the League of Nations did not usually guarantee loans, and second, that once the government asked for the League’s approval, that would inevitably involve that body’s interference in Palestine’s finances. It may be safely assumed that no one in the Cabinet, least of all Amery himself, wanted such outside interfer­ ence. However, in the absence of any definite proposal from the Colonial Office, and due to the indisposition of Balfour, the Cabinet postponed its decision. The debate was resumed, and in effect the issue was closed, on 4 April, 1928. Amery was isolated in his support of the projected loan. In his memorandum to the Cabinet, he advised that a major

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part of the League’s guarantee would fall in fact on England, which should assume responsibility for not less than £750,000 to £1 million of the £2 millions being raised by the Zionists.39 Both the Treasury and the Foreign Office, in separate memoranda, opposed the project. Chamberlain circulated a note written by Sir Otto Niemeyer, British banker, and Chairman of the League’s Financial Committee. Niemeyer doubted whether the League would agree to underwrite the loan, quite irrespective of the merits of the Zionist case, or their creditworthiness. The League had dealt always with governments, rather than private bodies; and it had always dedicated funds towards the reconstruction of countries, and refused them for routine development.40 The Treasury’s, i.e. Churchill’s, memorandum also leaned heavily on the professional advice tendered by Niemeyer. It believed that the latter had demonstrated conclusively that ‘there is no prospect of an application by the Zionist Organization for a guarantee under the aegis of the League of Nations meeting with any success’.41 The Treasury vetoed the alternative of a purely British-guaranteed loan. It pointed out that with a reputed steady income of £700,000 per annum, it was ‘absurd’ for the Zionist Organization to claim that it could not raise the £2 million loan privately, without the back­ ing either of the League or of the British Government. (It is difficult to believe that Churchill and the Treasury were not aware, as the Colonial Office was, of Weizmann’s difficulties in raising a loan privately - cf. note 29.) In defence of its own record, and rebutting Balfour’s charges, the Treasury reminded the Cabinet of the Government’s ‘generous record’ in Palestine, in that it had guaranteed a £4lA million loan to Palestine just the year before. However, Churchill omitted to explain to the Cabinet how that loan had been expended - £1 million had been used to reimburse the Government for the railways and other assets it had taken over from the Military administration (OETA); some £500,000 had been used to purchase the Jaffa-Jerusalem rail­ way back from the French; and the remainder was earmarked for the construction of Haifa harbour (a strategic asset to Britain herself), scheduled to begin in 1930.42 Finally, the Treasury warned against the potentially negative fiscal consequences of the Zionist loan: To give her a further guarantee now, for the benefit of a particular section

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of the community, and for the vague purposes indicated in the promoter’s memorandum, is certain to provoke vigorous criticism, to which it would be difficult to find an answer without encouraging the belief that the govern­ ment was again about to embark on a general policy of guaranteed loans for development and other purposes.43

At the moment of truth, when the British commitment to Zionism involved some form of financial risk, the Government failed to live up to the most minimal of expectations. The extent of its ‘generosity’, as Churchill had termed it, had been to raise a loan in Palestine in 1927, in order to repay itself the debts inherited from Ottoman times, and to construct the new harbour at Haifa, for imperial, rather than for Jewish purposes. A short, perfunctory discussion in the Cabinet on 4 April revealed a general consensus in support of Sir Otto Niemeyer, that there was no prospect of securing League support for the Zionist loan.44 Conveniently, this expert opinion saved the government the need to consider and reject the loan on its own merits. Dr Weizmann, then on a fund-raising tour of the United States, was briefed on the Cabinet debate by Blanche Dugdale, who enjoyed the confidences of those high up in government circles: In his [Balfour’s] absence your affair has gone badly. The discussion got into the wrong groove - and of course the technical advisers were all against it - as we knew they would be. I have reason to think that A[mery] did his best to counteract their arguments, but single-handed I suppose he was not enough. I fancy the other person who was present at your lunch party [i.e. Churchill - MJC] cannot have extended himself. We must remember of course that just at this time of the year he has tremendous decisions on his mind ... Not that I consider this a sufficient excuse - I feel very indignant about i t ... as the week went on, it became clear that the omens were bad ... I remained of the opinion that the affair had got so messed up that nobody but my uncle could possibly put it right ... yesterday there was a short discussion ... and it was very nearly turned down altogether. It was rescued from that fate, according to promise, but, as things stand, its prospects are considered hopeless ... I think we may take it as certain that the question will not be on the Agenda again until my uncle is there ... you and I know that he will not readily allow the pledges you were given in conversation to be forgotten. We must just trust him ...45

Mrs Dugdale’s information was exact. If anything, she had under­ estimated the gravity of the situation, and spared Churchill’s blushes. But Amery was furious with Churchill, whom he evidently regarded as having committed himself, at the private meeting with Balfour, the previous February. He confided to his private diary:

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also the proposed Zionist loan for which Balfour and Winston in their enthusiasm had let me in but which obviously Winston has now ratted on and Austen turned down on Foreign Office grounds. However, they were postponed in order to spare poor old Balfour a shock while he is ill.46

After the Cabinet meeting, Amery asked Shuckburgh to write Weizmann a ‘demi-official’ letter, ‘to prepare him as gently as pos­ sible for the failure of his project’. Shuckburgh himself, with some annoyance, minuted that Weizmann had not kept his word to remain silent until he first received government confirmation, and appar­ ently had been raising ‘false hopes’ among American Jews.47 Shuckburgh carried out Amery’s instruction and wrote to Weiz­ mann the same day, to inform him that the League had been sounded out in regard to the loan, but had responded unfavourably. This line did not silence Weizmann. On the contrary, the latter argued that the government’s tactics had been wrong, that the League itself could not be expected to take the initiative, but would react favourably only if guided by a firm government decision, not vice versa. Weizmann asked Shuckburgh to delay the final Cabinet decision until his own return to London in May. In the meantime, Weizmann had been discussing an additional scheme, which he hoped would allay the government’s doubts about the Zionists’ collateral. He proposed now that the Jewish Agency set up a Colonisation Corporation, with an initial capital of 3 -4 million dollars. The Corporation might guarantee part of the proposed loan, and the Government in London would then be asked to raise a loan of six million dollars.48 This was evidently a desperate effort on Weizmann’s part to save the project, once he had received Mrs Dugdale’s bad news. He realised that the Ministers in London required some concrete inducement to persuade them to change their mind. On 17 April, he wrote to Mrs Dugdale: I am afraid that Winston has not lived up to his promise, and I wonder whether Amery has been supporting our case with the vigour that was required.49

By 20 June, Balfour had recovered sufficiently to attend the Cabinet, and the Zionist loan was placed on the agenda for final decision. Balfour duly spoke up in favour of the project, although the Cabinet minutes provide no details of his speech. Likewise, the various views put forward remain anonymous. But the greater part of the debate went against the Zionists. Opposition to the loan

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focussed first on the wider issue of imperial priorities, and next on doubts as to the financial soundness of the Jewish National Home. It was agreed that the Government should not commit itself in any way to the Zionists before deciding first on the pipeline/railway project from Iraq to the Mediterranean. The view was expressed also that the Cabinet had no details of the projects towards which the proposed loan was to be devoted, nor of the success of the Zionists’ earlier development schemes.50 But the Cabinet was sensitive also to the risks of adverse reactions in the United States if the Government failed to retain the Zionists’ sympathies. Therefore, it was decided not to disclose the fact that the loan had already been rejected, nor indeed, to reveal the motives behind the government’s reticence. Amery was instructed to inform Weizmann that ‘the Cabinet see very grave difficulties in supporting the proposals of the Zionist Organization, and that, without finally rejecting them, they could not at present offer them any encourage­ ment’. Amery was instructed at the same time to reaffirm the govern­ ment’s eagerness ‘to do all they could towards the support and development of Palestine’ - a totally disingenuous sentiment which, as Balfour’s earlier memorandum had established, did not represent the true facts of the case. It was Balfour himself who first broke the news to Weizmann.51 Faithful to the spirit of the Cabinet conclusions in regard to tactics, Balfour told Weizmann that the Cabinet had been sympathetic, and mentioned by name those who had supported the loan - Amery, Churchill, Birkenhead and himself. He reported that the financial objections had been swept aside, and it had been agreed that the loan was ‘a political one’. However, as Weizmann reported back to his Executive, if there had indeed been so much sympathy and support in the Cabinet, then why had the decision been so negative? Weiz­ mann himself was unable to resolve the paradox. Balfour explained that the only objections had derived from reasons of foreign policy, and that it had been decided to defer the issue for the present. He advised Weizmann to take up the issue again in September at Geneva (i.e. the League headquarters). Lastly, Balfour cautioned Weizmann that the alternative contemplated by the Zionists, a purely British loan, would almost certainly not secure Parliamentary approval. Churchill’s own role at the Cabinet of 20 June presents us with something of a paradox. He is not mentioned by name in the Cabinet minutes, although we have Balfour’s evidence that he in fact reversed

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the negative position he had taken at the earlier meeting, on 4 April. In addition, we have Amery’s evidence that, ‘to his surprise’, Chur­ chill now supported the loan. Amery surmised that Churchill’s change of tack might have been the result of further meetings* with Weizmann, since the latter’s return to London at the end of May.52 The Weizmann Letters contain no record of any such meetings. But Weizmann may indeed have sold the idea to Churchill, on the basis of his new scheme to raise capital initially via a new Jewish Agency Colonisation Corporation; in addition, if Weizmann and Churchill did meet, Weizmann could be relied upon to make maximum use of his American trump card. Alternatively, Churchill’s support, which in any case was not pressed vigorously enough to feature in the official protocol, may have been simply a display of courtesy for the benefit of Balfour, at whose house Churchill had first agreed to the loan, the previous February. Whatever the case, as Amery noted in his diary that day, ‘the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet were definitely against and it was turned down’.53 Until further documentation emerges, it will be difficult to explain Churchill’s behaviour. Of course, given Churchill’s record on other issues, there may not exist any ‘rational’ explanation. Quite clearly, opposition to the loan would have been the policy dictated by his known record as Colonial Secretary and Chancellor. The Treasury’s memorandum to the Cabinet, presented by Churchill himself on 4 April, was a lucid expression of that policy, one of self-sufficiency, at the very minimum. As seen from the vantage-point of No. 11 Downing Street, Chur­ chill would have had three very strong motives for not underwriting the loan requested by the Zionists: first, since the Treasury had imposed a veto on all overseas lending, and on Leo Amery’s other imperial projects; second, because the Treasury, no less than the Colonial Office, could ill afford to risk the international scrutiny of the Palestine Administration which such a loan was likely to encour­ age; and last, because before the Treasury would agree to commit any funds whatever to investment in Palestine, it would need to be satisfied that imperial projects such as the construction of Haifa harbour and the Baghdad-Haifa project were adequately subscribed. * As this book was going to press, I was informed by the archivist of the Weizmann archives that Weizmann’s private diary does record an appointment with Churchill, for 19 June 1928. However, there is no evidence, apparently, of the substance of their meeting, if the appointment was kept. I am grateful to Nehama Chalom for this information.

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2. IN OPPOSITION: THE DEBATE ON PARTITION, 1937

At the General Elections held in May, 1929, the Labour Party gained more seats than the Conservatives - 287, against 261; the Liberals won 59 seats. The Labour Party formed a minority government, and Churchill went into Opposition, for just over ten years. During this long period of political wilderness, much of it spent in opposition to his own party’s policies, Churchill was preoccupied with two major issues - the questions of constitutional reform in India, and of the threat posed to the balance of power in Europe by Nazi Germany. Churchill had not pursued any consistent interest in the Indian sub-Continent, and had not returned there since his service as a soldier at the turn of the century. He took for granted the perma­ nence of the British Raj, and was not prepared to contemplate any measure that might relax absolute British control. As one authority has commented: Churchill accordingly set out his campaign with a depressing lack of practical knowledge of the complexities of the India question, fortified with romanticized recollections of the 1890s, and determined that Britain’s imperial sway in the Indian sub-continent must be firmly retained.

By an excessive use of alarmist rhetoric during his campaign against the India Bill of 1935, Churchill alienated even the younger radicals in the Conservative Party. The catch-phrases he employed during the India controversy were trotted out again, and therefore discounted, during his campaign against the appeasement of Nazi Germany, in the later 1930s.54The House of Commons grew impatient, and even hostile. Churchill had metaphorically cried wolf too many times, and perhaps had only himself to blame for the fact that he became the political pariah of the 1930s. The frustration, bitterness, and heart­ break of one who had climbed so close to the pinnacle of power, only to be cast down, may well be imagined. Thus Churchill en­ meshed himself in a largely self-provoked vicious circle - the ideas he espoused were considered anachronistic, or misplaced, and at times, as during the Abdication crisis, he was suspected of political opportunism. At the same time, the very isolation of his position, and the sense of rejection he felt perhaps contributed to the extrem­ ism of his position. In this context, it is quite clear that Churchill’s position in regard to Zionism during this period was a product of his own political fortunes. Zionism provided a useful political issue with which to

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grind more important political axes. In pursuing oppositionist policies, Churchill might reverse or blithely ignore the parsimonious policies he himself had adopted in the Middle East during the 1920s. For most of this period, until the summer of 1937, when the British government decided to partition Palestine, Churchill took little interest in the fortunes of the Zionists. When racial riots swept Palestine in August, 1929, Churchill commented on the event pri­ marily for the repercussions which he erroneously believed the issue would have on Egypt. In the middle of a two-month tour of Canada and the United States, he wrote to his wife: This Palestine butchery is only a foretaste of the universal misery which will envelop Egypt when the British troops are withdrawn.’55 Churchill apparently overlooked the fact that he himself, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, had pared down the British garrison in Palestine, as he had British armed forces in general. In a public speech in Vancouver, Churchill depicted the riots in Palestine as an omen of what would occur across the Empire if and when the Government responded to local nationalist sentiment: The lamentable occurrences [in Palestine] are a bloody foretaste of what would happen in Egypt and India if the protecting and controlling hand of Great Britain were withdrawn. No doubt the harsh dismissal of Lord Lloyd and the proposal to clear the British garrison out of Cairo and Alexandria were interpreted by the Arabs of Palestine as a sign of weakness, and that the time was ripe to strike.56

Two official commissions of enquiry were sent to Palestine to investi­ gate the cause of the riots, and on 21 October, 1930, the Government published a new White Paper on Palestine. The Government had found that the riots were precipitated by the Arabs’ fears of a Jewish takeover of the country, and attacked the existing policy (formed by Churchill in 1922) of regulating Jewish immigration solely accord­ ing to the economic absorptive capacity of the country. It stipulated that Jewish immigration would have to be suspended whenever it produced any detrimental effect on the Arab economy - ignoring the opinion of its own experts that the capital brought in by the Jews in fact created extra employment and economic prosperity. The 1930 White Paper revived the 1922 proposal to establish a Legis­ lative Council, which the Arabs had already boycotted once, in 1923. All the surviving members of the 1917 government that had issued the Balfour Declaration were now in opposition. The new White Paper provided them with a golden opportunity to attack the Labour

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minority government. In a letter to The Times, Austen Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin and Leo Amery claimed that the new policy was contrary to the spirit of the Mandate, and of the Balfour Declaration, and would undermine the faith of world Jewry in Britain’s sincerity.57 During the Commons debate on 18 November, 1930, a large section of the Labour Party joined the Opposition, and Passfield, the Colonial Secretary, gave in without a fight.58 The Prime Minister invited the Zionists to discuss with a Cabinet sub-committee future policy in Palestine, and on 13 February, 1931, the Prime Minister read into the Commons’ protocol a statement which reaffirmed Britain’s commitment to the Zionists. The Labour government’s volte face was a singular diplomatic coup for the Zionists, which owed much to the government’s political vulnerability. Churchill did not play any active role in this pro-Zionist cam­ paign.59 However, the Labour government’s vacillations did provide material for Churchill’s productive and lucrative pen.60 In an article printed first in the Zionist Record of New York, and subsequently syndicated throughout the world, Churchill wrote of the Balfour Declaration’s dual commitment to Arabs and Jews: The two obligations are, indeed, of equal weight, but they are different in character. The first obligation is positive and creative, the second obli­ gation is safeguarding and conciliatory. Our mandatory obligations to the Jews throughout the world, who helped us, and towards the Palestinian Arabs, who were conscript soldiers of our Turkish enemy, are both binding.61

The British Ambassador in Washington, a veteran who had served under several governments, was distressed by what he regarded as Churchill’s political exploitation of the Government’s troubles. Pre­ dictably, his first concern was the potentially harmful repercussions on Anglo-American relations: Of course there is nothing to be done about it and I merely wish in a purely futile manner to register rage. It makes my blood boil when I see politicians making Imperial affairs into a party question in the syndicated press of Mr Hearst. The effect of this article can only be to induce Jews in America who might wish to take a moderate view, to refrain from doing so. They will expect a purely Zionist policy from the Conservatives when they come into office again and will hamper any move towards settlement till then, and then the chickens will come home to roost with Mr Winston Churchill.62

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In October, 1934, Churchill paid a brief visit to Palestine, during the course of a month-long cruise through the Eastern Mediterranean, as guest on the yacht Rosaura, owned by Lord Moyne.63 Churchill reached Beirut on 6 October, and from there he drove inland, visiting Palmyra and Damascus. On 9 October, he drove on to Nazareth, where he stayed overnight, and from there to Jerusalem, where he was re-united with Lord Moyne. His party stayed at the King David hotel for one night, and left the next day for Jericho, whence they flew on to the ruins at Petra, and from there, across the Sinai desert to Cairo.64 So far as may be ascertained from the available documentation, Churchill stayed in Palestine for less than 48 hours, and kept entirely clear of local politics. There is no record of any meeting with Zionist leaders. He did strike up an acquaintance, and later a short corres­ pondence with the High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope. But their contacts were confined to administrative, and agricultural matters.65 Churchill referred to this visit briefly, during a Commons debate some 18 months later: ‘When I travelled through the country a little more than a year ago I was enormously impressed with the order and smoothness with which the administration was being conducted’.66 It is a reflection of Churchill’s superficial understanding of the political position in Palestine, and no little irony, that within one month of his speech, Palestine was swept by the most serious Arab rebellion of the whole mandatory period. During the latter half of the 1930s, British politicians were naturally preoccupied with the aggressive policies of Germany and Italy. In 1937, the British Cabinet decided upon a new Five-Year Defence Plan to rebuild the Armed Forces to a level that would meet the needs of imperial and home defence. The plan had been written by Neville Chamberlain, in his capacity as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was ratified by a Cabinet presided over by him as Prime Minister. One of the key facets of the new plan, the reconditioning of the Fleet, meant that the Navy would actually decline in strength during 19381939, before reaching its full complement in 1941.67 The definition and delimitation of Britain’s strategic objectives had far-reaching consequences in the Middle East. In July, 1936, Britain dropped the sanctions campaign which it had instituted at Geneva in retaliation for Italy’s attack on Abyssinia. The Arab world

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regarded the British climb-down as a sign of weakness. Partly in order to recoup lost prestige, the government decided in September 1936 on a show of strength in Palestine, to cow and suppress the Arab Rebellion. The Rebellion was subdued, temporarily. But the Palestinians had achieved a major strategical goal - they had secured the intervention of neighbouring Arab States in their affairs. Hence­ forth, British policy in Palestine would become increasingly a factor of British interests in the Arab world in general. It was against this backcloth that in 1937 the Peel Commission, sent out to Palestine to investigate the causes of the rebellion, reported that the Mandate was no longer viable, and recommended the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish States, save for certain strategic enclaves that would remain under British con­ trol. Despite widespread opposition within the Zionist camp, the moderate mainstream, including both Weizmann and Ben-Gurion, reconciled itself to a mini-state in just a part of Palestine, appreciating the historic opportunity which sovereignty offered. For Churchill, the problems of Palestine were entirely subordinate to the wider problems posed by the Fascist Powers, and to his own political position, in opposition to the Chamberlain government’s policy of appeasement. In this context, Churchill attacked the govern­ ment for its decision to partition Palestine, accusing it of reneging on Britain’s commitments under the Balfour Declaration. Hence­ forth, Churchill would identify Chamberlain’s policies in Europe and in Palestine - in both cases, it was appeasement, of the Germans and of the Arabs respectively. However, Churchill’s negation of partition had more sophisticated roots and, as will be noted below, derived from reasoning not so alien from Chamberlain’s. On 8 June, 1937, the Zionist leaders were invited to a private dinner party with various members of the Opposition. The principal guest of the evening, organised by the Liberal Leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, was Winston Churchill.68 Weizmann stated the Zionist case for partition, recounting the deterioration in Palestine. Pointing to Churchill and to Amery, he stated that there were two ex-Colonial Secretaries in the room, and neither had been able to curb the Palestine Administration. Churchill interjected, and, with more reason than Weizmann perhaps realized, he stated: ‘Yes, we are all guilty men. You know you are our master - and yours and yours [pointing to the other M.Ps in the room] and what you say goes. If you ask us to fight we shall fight like tigers.’

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Weizmann stated that once a Royal Commission had declared the Mandate to be unworkable, it had in effect become so. He argued for partition, faute de mieux, and stated that the Zionists’ major demand was an immigration of 50-60,000 per annum (a record of 62,000 Jewish immigrants was attained in 1935), and approved, defensible borders. At that point, Churchill took over, and began to monopolise the conversation. He was, according to Victor Cazalet, somewhat the worse for the alcohol he had consumed. Churchill was in fact quite resolutely and irreconcilably against partition, whatever the Zionists themselves may have desired. The Balfour Declaration now took on a new sanctity in Churchill’s public declarations, and British commit­ ments a gravity not evident when Churchill himself had wielded executive power, at the Colonial Office, and at the Treasury. He drew an analogy between the German reoccupation of the Rhineland (in March, 1936) and the plan to partition Palestine. In the former case, the Government had acquiesced in a forceful violation of the Versailles Treaty; in the latter, it had succumbed to Arab violence and violated the Balfour Declaration. Churchill’s emotions welled up, and he called the Chamberlain administration ‘a lot of lily-livered rabbits... The Jewish State would not materialise... the Arabs would immediately start trouble and the Government would run away again ... of course, if Dr [Weizmann] told him to shut up when the time came, he would shut up; he would stay at home, but he would be heartbroken about i t ...’ Churchill’s own enigmatic proposal was to ‘persevere, persevere, persevere’. The Labour leader, Clement Attlee, who was never particularly inspired by the Zionist deal,69 stated bluntly what Churchill had merely insinuated. He was shocked at the idea of partition - it was a concession to violence, a confession of failure, and a triumph for fascism. Josiah Wedgwood and Archibald Sinclair concurred. Of all the politicians present, only Leo Amery favoured partition. Amery had wanted, after World War One, to secure the British position in Egypt by the establishment in Palestine of a pro-British group. He developed an enthusiasm for ‘the regeneration of the whole Middle East through Jewish energy’, and had believed that the Arabs would give up Palestine, in return for the attainment of their pan-Arab aspirations across the Arab world.70 Now, in 1937, Amery believed that the Jews would make an enormous success of their state, and partition would prove easier than changing the Administration.

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Churchill had the last word. He did not agree with Amery. In evident reference to the situation in Europe, and in the Middle East, he stated that the question of Palestine had become acute only when the British were down and everyone thought they could trample on them. Partition, Churchill insisted, was a ‘mirage’ - the Jews should hang on, their time would come. If the government was made to feel that they had to humour the Jews, they might make some conces­ sions. Otherwise, they would surely let them down once more. On this inconclusive note the meeting ended. Weizmann came away from the meeting encouraged, impressed by Churchill’s vigorous defence of the Mandate, and undoubtedly by Churchill’s adoption of the Zionist cause, as part and parcel of his anti-appeasement campaign. But Weizmann was not reading the domestic political map correctly. ‘Baffy’ Dugdale, who was well placed to comprehend the vagaries of English politics,71 harboured none of Weizmann’s illusions. Presciently, she suspected that the Zionists were about to become cannon fodder in the first political skirmish waged by the Opposition against Chamberlain’s recentlyformed government. After hearing Weizmann’s euphoric account of the meeting, she confided to her diary: Winston seemed to have inveighed against Partition. Winston in his most brilliant style, but very drunk, fulminated against H.M.G. and in favour of Zionism for three hours. Chaim [Weizmann] oddly impressed by this per­ formance, and anxious to exploit it in some undefined way. I pointed out that these people were in no sense a team - they knew little or nothing about

the subject - and that Partition must not be made the cat's paw of English politics, as might easily happen in the present undefined state of personal relationships following on changes in personnel... We saw Victor, who more than confirmed my impressions of Winston’s state, and wild talk. Victor did not think anything useful could come of this dinner ...72

When the House of Commons debated the Peel Report, on 21 July, 193 7,73 Churchill went back on his promise not to oppose partition. He took no active part in the debate, but lobbied behind the scenes, and collaborated with Lloyd George to secure an amendment that would have the Report referred first to the League of Nations, ‘with a view to enabling H.M.G., after adequate enquiry, to present to Parliament a definite scheme taking into full account all the recommendations of the Command Paper’ (Cmd. 5513). Mrs Dugdale, always the astute political observer, appreciated that the Commons decision was a bitter setback for the Zionists:

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It also means a great deal more delay, and God knows what the terms may be at the end - or what may have happened in respect of immigration in the meantime - nor what the Jews will now do in Zurich [i.e. at the Zionist Congress]. In my view, it makes acceptance of the principle of partition very much less likely. In fact, from the Jewish point of view, I look on last night’s performance as a disaster - although it does great honour to Parliament and its sense of responsibility.74

It was not too difficult to deduce that with the international situation deteriorating rapidly, any delay could well prove fatal to the Zionists’ aspirations. As put succinctly by one historian, ‘the Zionists needed expeditious action; their friends gave them another inquiry’.75 Chamberlain could have easily passed the Peel Partition plan by virtue of his huge Parliamentary majority. But instead, he had intervened personally with the Colonial Secretary, Ormsby-Gore, and ordered him not to make a party issue of Palestine. It seems likely that Chamberlain was too preoccupied with problems of defence, and European diplomacy, and too wary of anticipated Arab oppo­ sition, to be willing to contemplate drastic political changes in Palestine. As Churchill told a Jewish friend at the end of July, the Government were ‘by no means anxious to be committed too far in the direction of the Royal Commission’s proposals when they had so little time for study and reflection’.76 As mentioned already, Churchill’s objections to partition were not so different from those of the Government. Initially, the Zionists had thought that his objections were purely imperial, that the division of Palestine into two unstable states would not serve British interests to the north of the Canal.77However, at a dinner at Chartwell, Chur­ chill’s country home, at the end of July, he revealed to Henry Melchett his real apprehensions. What Churchill feared most was that a British decision to partition Palestine now would drive the Arabs into the arms of the Italians: He [Churchill] takes the view that the most important thing for us [the Zionists] is to see that Great Britain is not defeated in the Mediterranean ... He thinks our real danger in such an event would be the support which Italy might give the Arabs, and even if we could stand up to the Arabs, we certainly could not stand up to the Arabs and the Italians together.78

Churchill was opposed irreconcilably to partition, in any shape or form. He was preoccupied above all with the serious state of AngloItalian relations in the Mediterranean, and feared that if the British

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forget that from his point of view what he needs is a good situ­ ation from which to attack from a Parliamentary point of view, and that it does not necessarily follow that this is the best tactic for ourselves.’ However, as we have indicated already, Churchill’s opposition to Partition rested also on his conviction that it would not serve British interests. His views were most likely influenced or reinforced by those of Field Marshal Jan Smuts, the South African general and statesman with whom Churchill shared a rich relationship and com­ mon imperial outlook. Smuts’ views on partition, expressed in a private letter to Leo Amery written in August, 1937, would have undoubtedly been endorsed by Churchill himself: Personally I have very grave misgivings about the whole policy of partition ... The Jews will be in a small enclave in a big hostile Arab world, and will no longer have the Mandatory Power to stand up for them ... all over the world the Jews will look upon the British Empire as having let them down. What is going to be the strategic implication of partition?... in regard to the defence of the Suez Canal, etcetera? We made up our minds during the war that the defence of the Suez Canal lies not in the desert, but in Palestine itself. Now we are constituting an independent Arab power in Palestine and all the areas bordering on the Suez Canal. What is the effect going to be on Imperial communications? Or are we abandoning the idea of the Mediter­ ranean route as a vital link of the Empire?82

Churchill took some pride in the role he played in aborting Partition in 1937. During the debate on the 1939 White Paper, in May of that year, he vaunted his achievement: The House persuaded them not to force us into an incontinent acceptance of their partition plan, and within a few months, though they did not thank us for it, they had themselves abandoned and discarded it as precipitately as they had adopted it.83

Churchill did not change his mind about Partition until the summer of 1943, when it was Leo Amery who renewed the discussion. It took a world war, and a tragedy of unprecedented dimensions for the Jewish People, to persuade Churchill that the Zionists could not wait ‘a century or two’. Even then, it should be remembered that Chur­ chill’s support for the partitioning of Palestine lasted little more than a year, until the assassination of his close friend, Lord Moyne, in November, 1944.

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3. THE 1939 WHITE PAPER

On 9 November, 1938, the eve of the Crystallnacht pogrom in Germany,84 the Woodhead Commission, sent out to Palestine earlier in the year to investigate the feasibility of partition, reported back that no viable scheme to set up Jewish and Arab States had been discovered. The government was relieved of the need to impose a Jewish State on an unwilling Arab world.85 On the very next day, Churchill lunched with Amery and Weizmann. Churchill was quite evidently relieved at the demise of partition, and described to Weizmann a new proposal - the limitation of Jewish immigration to the extent of the annual increment in the Arab population, plus an amount of about 10,000 immigrants per annum. According to Amery, Weizmann ‘jumped’ at the idea, and said that he would be more than satisfied with that. Reverting back to ideas he had placed before the Cabinet in August, 1921, Churchill suggested that ‘if the Arabs refused to accept that, then we should wash our hands of them, bring in all the Jews we could, arm them, and liberate the British troops now in Palestine’.86The idea of arming the Zionists, to relieve the British of the imperial burden of policing Palestine, remained a constant theme in Churchill’s political lexicon. On the basis of his meeting with Weizmann, and calculating with the aid of population statistics and projections provided by the latter, Churchill announced his plan before the House of Commons, on 24 November, during the debate on the Woodhead Report.87 Until now, Churchill’s speech has been ignored by all the historians of the period, including myself! Inevitably, Churchill linked the Government’s policy in Europe with that it was following in Palestine, as he detected there the same ‘decrepitude of the will power’ which he saw ‘in other greater and graver fields at this moment’.88 But Churchill himself distinguished between the Jews’ sufferings under the Nazis, and Palestine’s capacity to solve their problem. Less than two weeks after Crystallnacht, Churchill insisted that the root of the trouble in Palestine was excessive Jewish immigration, and the solution was not partition, but a reduction in that influx, which the Arabs believed, with some justification, was jeopardising their numerical majority. If he were an Arab, Churchill told the House, he too would be alarmed: They [the Arabs] wonder whether a halt is ever going to be called to it, and they fear that it is going to be their fate in the land of their birth to be dominated by this energetic, new-coming people, dominated economically, politically, completely.89

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Referring to ‘his own’ White Paper of 1922, Churchill stated that it was obvious that the ‘economic absorptive capacity’ formula was to be conditioned by and ‘interpreted in regard to the general political situation of the country’.90 Finally, he proposed that the Government ‘fix the immigration of the Jews into Palestine for 10 years at a certain figure which at the end of the 10 year period will not have decisively altered the balance of the population as between Arab and Jew’. According to the figures supplied by Weizmann, the Arab population was expected to increase by 20-35,000 a year. Thus, adding on 10,000, Churchill proposed an annual maximum of 30-35,000 Jewish immigrants per annum.91This was approximately half the number which had entered Palestine in 1935, a record year, and half the figure which Weizmann himself had spoken of at Sinclair’s house in June, 1937. But perhaps of greater significance was the principle embodied in the proposal, a principle which would form the nucleus of the notorious 1939 White Paper - that of ‘freezing’ the size of the Jewish population of Palestine at its current ratio to the Arab. Churchill told the Commons, as he had told Weizmann and Amery, that if the Arabs turned down his proposal, all limits on Jewish immigration should then be removed, and British policy in Palestine would have to base itself on Jewish strength in the country.92 Little attention was paid to Churchill’s brainchild by other par­ ticipants in the debate. The next day, The Times devoted very little space to what it headlined ‘Mr Churchill’s Ten-Year Plan’, and expressed doubts whether Arab anxieties would be assuaged by it.93 The Jewish Chronicle was less sanguine in its reaction, and com­ mented that Churchill’s proposals ‘might well be regarded as a welcome success by many even of those who find themselves in the Mufti’s camp’.94 On 17 May, 1939, the British government published a new White Paper on Palestine, the first major change in policy since 1922. The new document, which relied heavily on its 1922 precedent, featured three major proposals: Palestine would become an independent State within ten years, in treaty relations with Britain, and as soon as peaceful conditions were restored to Palestine, Palestinians were to be appointed as heads of Departments; second, 75,000 more Jewish immigrants were to be allowed into Palestine over the next five years, according to the economic absorptive capacity of the country, and after that, no further immigration without Arab

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consent; and third, purchases of land by Jews were to be severely restricted, primarily to consolidate holdings where Jewish settle­ ments already predominated. The new policy was quite blatantly an attempt to secure the friendship of the Arab world, on the eve of World War Two. The origins of the new policy may be traced back, perhaps, to the establishment in March, 1938 of a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, appointed to consider economic measures with which to appease the Arab States and Turkey. The Committee, chaired by the ubiquitous Shuckburgh, reported back in January, 1939, on the eve of the St James’ conference on Palestine. The report insisted on the supreme importance of settling the Palestine question in the Arabs’ favour: We feel it necessary to point out at the outset... the strong feeling which exists in all Arab States in connection with British policy in Palestine ... We assume that, immediately on the outbreak of war, the necessary measures would be taken ... in order to bring about a complete appeasement of Arab opinion in Palestine and in neighbouring countries... if we fail thus to retain Arab goodwill at the outset of a war, no other measures which we can recommend will serve to influence the Arab States in favour of this country.95

After the failure of the St James’ conference, the Cabinet had been called upon to give its approval to the new policy to be announced unilaterally by the government. The need to appease the Arab world was balanced against the danger that the powerful Jewish commun­ ity of the United States might retaliate against British interests. But it was felt generally that unlike in the previous world war, in this one, with the allies fighting against the Fascist Powers on the Continent, the Jews now would have no choice but to support the British cause. The dangers to be anticipated in the Arab world, as Chamberlain himself told the Cabinet, were more immediate and serious: if it was necessary to face an outbreak of anti-British feeling in the United States ... it was better that this should happen at a time like the present, rather than at a time of acute international crisis.96

There is a nice irony in the fact that on the day after Chamberlain made this speech, the Czechs deposed the Slovakian Government, and within the week, the German Army had marched into Prague, turning Bohemia into a German Protectorate, and thereby shattering the Munich agreement of the previous September. Although Churchill himself had been the first to speak in public

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of placing a political limit on Jewish immigration into Palestine, he saw in the new policy a classical instrument of appeasement, and as such, it presented him with a golden opportunity to heap further discredit upon the Chamberlain government. Initially, Churchill had not even planned to join in the debate, and did so only after being roused to anger on the first day. On the second day of the debate, 23 May, 1939, Weizmann received a sudden invitation to lunch, ostensibly to advise Churchill on the lines of his speech. But when Weizmann arrived, he found that Churchill already had his speech planned, and written out on cards, and wished merely to ‘rehearse’ it for the Zionist leader. The latter did suggest some minor amend­ ments, but thought it best not to tamper too much with a work whose ‘architecture was so perfect’.97 Weizmann described it later as one of the greatest speeches of Churchill’s career. Undoubtedly, from the Zionists’ point of view, it was edifying to have the betrayal of their cause linked so closely to the shameful betrayal of the Sudetens, and other victims of the Nazi regime. Churchill’s biographer, Martin Gilbert, has described it accurately as ‘an attack against what he believed was the betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and a shameful act of appeasement’.98 The Zionists and their supporters would make excellent propaganda use of the speech in later years. However, a more penetrating exami­ nation will reveal other, more sophisticated motives on Churchill’s part. Inevitably, Churchill regarded the new policy document as part and parcel of the Chamberlain government’s proclivity to renege on solemn undertakings, or moral commitments. He maintained that this policy would not in fact bring the relief that its authors deluded themselves into thinking: I could not stand by and see solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside for reasons of administrative convenience or - and it will be a vain hope - for the sake of a quiet life ... I was from the beginning a sincere advocate of the Balfour Declaration, and I have made repeated public statements to that effect... Can we - and this is the question - strengthen ourselves by this repudiation? ... The triumphant Arabs have rejected i t ... The despairing Jews will resist it. What will the world think about it? What will our friends say? What will be the opinion of the United States of America? Shall we not lose more - and this is a question to be considered maturely - in the growing support and sympathy of the United States than we shall gain in local administrative convenience, if gain at all indeed we do?

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What will our potential enemies think? Will they not be encouraged by our confessions of recoil? Will they not be tempted to say: They’re on the run again. This is another Munich,’ and be the more stimulated in their aggression ... ... We urge that the reputation for fidelity of execution, strict execution, of public contracts, is a shield and buckler which the British Empire, how­ ever it may arm, cannot dispense with and cannot desire to dispense with. Never was the need for fidelity and firmness more urgent than now . .."

In view of Churchill’s own somewhat-chequered record on Zionism, his appeal that Britain honour its obligations to the Zionists must strain the credulity of the historian. Of course, all is credible in politics, and no one was more prepared than Weizmann to forget past contretemps when Churchill offered himself as champion of the Zionist cause. As for Churchill himself, his ‘amnesia’ was not so abnormal in the rough and tumble of party politics, especially when the cause now espoused provided a useful instrument with which to attack the Government on larger issues. Moreover, a closer examination of Churchill’s speech, and a weeding out of the rhetoric, will reveal that he in fact agreed with one of the key principles embodied in the new policy. It was a principle which he himself had adopted publicly in the House of Commons, the previous November. What, therefore, did constitute the betrayal of the Balfour Declaration, in Churchill’s opinion? It was not the limitation of Jewish immigration, but the Arab veto on further immigration after five years, on which he commented: ‘Now, there is the breach; there is the violation of the pledge; there is the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration; there is the end of the vision, of the hope, of the dream’.100 Leo Amery was one of the few who read between the lines of Churchill’s speech. Although he thought that Churchill’s had been one of the best speeches of the debate, Amery had his reservations, since Churchill had ‘confined himself almost exclusively to rubbing in the one point that the complete stoppage of immigration was a breach of our pledges’.101 Retrospective confirmation of Churchill’s position is provided by a hitherto unpublished private letter, written by the Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, to Prime Minister Chamberlain, in January, 1940, during the course of a fierce Cabinet debate over the implementation of the 1939 White Paper. MacDonald revealed to the Prime Minister that it had indeed been the veto which had sent Churchill into the opposition lobby in May, 1939:

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I doubt whether, in his heart of hearts, he disagrees with the land policy; he certainly regards it as consistent with the Mandate, for he told me in the lobby that he would have supported us if it hadn’t been for the Arab ‘veto’ on immigration after five years.102

As Churchill himself had told Lord Melchett in July, 1937, the Zionists might have to accept temporary setbacks - slowing down their immigration, and land-purchases - in times of British tribu­ lation. However, to hand over to the Arabs the ultimate control of further immigration after five years, that was the breach!

CHAPTER SEVEN

WORLD WAR TWO I do not intend adding to the already lengthy list of standard texts and monographs on the history of the Palestine Mandate during World War Two. It was during this period that Churchill earned his reputation as lone champion of the Zionist cause. The most cursory research in the British documents will expose an almost neurotic fear common to most officials, that Churchill was about to wreck British interests in the Arab world by his support of the Zionists. Those historians anxious to explain why all Churchill’s efforts produced such meagre results will all too readily point the accusing finger at the malevolent, grinding wheels of the Whitehall bureaucracy, always on the alert to subvert Churchill’s good intentions. But can we simply take for granted Churchill’s undiluted commit­ ment to the Zionist, or Jewish cause? If Churchill was, as is univer­ sally agreed, one of the most powerful Prime Ministers in English history, then how did the officials, and the Ministers (mostly his own appointees, none of whom he dismissed for their views on Palestine) manage to circumvent, or dupe him for over five years, on this single issue? Why didn’t Churchill abrogate, or modify the 1939 White Paper, which he so vigorously condemned in Parliament - not even after the nature of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ was appreciated, and the Middle East had been liberated? Why, after all the bitter struggles in Cabinet, did Churchill suddenly abandon the Zionist cause in November, 1944? And lastly, why did he not do more to save those Jews who just might have been rescued from the Nazis’ clutches? The single most fundamental reason, banal as it may be, was that Churchill, like many other Western statesmen who at times adopted the Zionist cause, was never ideologically committed, much less dedicated politically to the Zionist cause. He never understood, or tried to study the meaning and message of Zionism for the scattered

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Jewish people. Second, as I have tried to establish, Churchill had never wanted Palestine as a part of the British empire. When in 1921 he had submitted to dictates from above, it had been on condition that Jewish capital and resources would establish Palestine as a self-supporting, loyal strategic base to the north of the Canal. Com­ plementing his awe of the Jews, was his utter contempt for the Arabs. In 1939, with the outbreak of World War Two, Churchill perceived three very material motives for supporting the Zionist cause. First, he was convinced that in order to win the war, Britain must this time secure the entry of the United States earlier than had been the case in the last war; in this connection, the Jews of the United States were expected to play much the same role as they had at the time of the Balfour Declaration. Second, his old idea that the Jews of Palestine should be armed, in order to relieve the British garrison there, became an urgent issue once Britain faced invasion by Germany. And last, from 1943 on, Churchill conceded that the Jewish people’s sufferings under the Nazi occupation of Europe had earned them the right to a state of their own. 1. ZIONISM AND THE AMERICAN CONNECTION

I have already made frequent reference to the importance attributed by British statesmen to the alleged influence of American Jewry in the highest quarters in Washington. Like most persistent myths, this one has a degree of truth in it. There arose almost a tradition of grey eminences, Presidential advisers who held no official position, but enjoyed great influence with successive Presidents - eminent Jews such as Judges Brandeis, Frankfurter and Rosenman, or Ben Cohen, and Bernard Baruch. It was not always appreciated in Whitehall that these establishment Jews did not necessarily subscribe to the Zionist programme. However, on the eve of and during World War Two, as the position of European Jewry gradually deteriorated, American Jews could be relied upon to rally to their European brethren. Any hint that Britain was not doing all it possibly could to rescue them would be certain to arouse anti-British sentiment in the United States. The process whereby the Americans graduated from aiding the allied war effort, to full-scale belligerency, in December, 1941, was slow, gradual, and frequently bitter. Until the American entry, Jewish influence was naturally at its highest premium, as a solid force

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countering neutralist forces in the United States. From the very start of the war, Churchill himself was actively engaged in the process of involving the Americans in the British war effort. Not only did he regard American aid as the decisive factor in the coming conflict, but he also looked forward to a post-war hegemony of the Englishspeaking peoples, whose history he had nearly finished writing.1 In September, 1939, President Roosevelt sent two personal mes­ sages to members of the British War Cabinet, one to Prime Minister Chamberlain, the other to Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty (Roosevelt himself had been assistant secretary of the navy during World War One). Thus began the so-called ‘secret correspondence’ between Roosevelt and Churchill, which, though approved by the British Cabinet at least, was kept secret from the British and American public, owing to the well-placed fears that Roosevelt was infringing American Neutrality Laws.2 Until 1938, Churchill had been regarded widely in the United States as a has-been, a man whose politics bordered on the eccentric. His rigidly conservative ideology and his antiquated imperialism were the antithesis of Roosevelt’s ‘experimentalism and pragmatism’. However, from September, 1938, Roosevelt’s reservations about Churchill were overshadowed by his identification with the latter’s views of Hitler. Roosevelt’s support for Churchill’s line also bol­ stered his position within the British Cabinet, and signified the President’s determination, ‘within the limits and restraints imposed on him by the Neutrality Act and the isolationist mood of the American people’, to support those forces in England determined to oppose German aggression.3 According to Joseph Lash, ‘Churchill had studied Roosevelt’s mind, and his lengthy messages to the President had been acts of courtship as well as expressions of policy’. Churchill determined that nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of his friendship with Roosevelt, upon which so much depended.4 Their relationship flourished by correspondence, and if anything, it suffered once they began to meet regularly. Roosevelt did not keep Churchill’s late hours, and at times found his long monologues tedious.5 One of Roosevelt’s advisers, Sam Rosenman, later quoted the President as remarking: ‘Winston has developed a tendency to make long speeches which are repetitions of long speeches which he has made before’.6 During the first stages of the war, Churchill was concerned, at all

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costs, with keeping British forces in the conflict until the Americans joined in. In June, 1940, Churchill, who had been the strongest advocate in the War Cabinet of military aid to France, stubbornly resisted all pressure, by General Smuts among others,7 to commit what remained of Britain’s air force to a last-ditch effort to save France, pleading that ‘it was essential to keep intact the weapon and instrument on which United States intervention depended’.8 Churchill was convinced that the decisive battle with Hitler would come when he tried to subdue Britain, and that the attack on Britain would bring the United States into the war, at least, after the Presidential election, in November, 1940. Sir Ian Jacob has suggested that throughout the year following the fall of France, when Britain stood alone against the Axis, it was the support of President Roosevelt which sustained him.9 But long before the American declaration of war, Churchill secured substantial military aid from Roosevelt and the Congress. In August, 1940, the British Cabinet agreed to the ‘destroyers-forbases’ deal. In return for fifty American destroyers, British agreed to lease to the Americans several British bases (in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and British Guiana). The American destroyers provided an urgently needed reinforce­ ment to the depleted British Fleet. But they were also regarded by Churchill as a clear signal to the Germans of American support for the British side - ‘the sale of destroyers to a belligerent power was not a neutral act’.’10 Churchill pressed negotiations to a successful conclusion in September, despite severe misgivings within his own Cabinet, on the part of Eden, among others.11 Of vital importance too, was the Lend-Lease Bill, first announced by Roosevelt at a Press Conference on 17 December, 1940, and confirmed by Congress after two months of debate, on 8 March, 1941. The Bill, which replaced the cash-and-carry trade practised between the two countries, allowed Britain to receive goods and pay for them later. Churchill called it the ‘third climacteric’ of the war.12 The passage of the Bill, a full seven months before the American entry, was the most substantial aid to Britain short of belligerency. In August, 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met for the first time, at Argentia, a Newfoundland base just leased to the Americans under the ‘destroyers-for-bases’ deal. The result of their discussions was the Atlantic Charter, a statement of their joint war aims, designed to align British policy with Roosevelt’s oft-repeated ‘four freedoms’,

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and to counter the attacks by isolationist elements among the American public on Britain, which was depicted as ‘snob-ridden, caste-ruled, and imperialistic’.13 The third article of the Charter stated that the two countries respected ‘the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live: and they wish to see sovereign rights and selfgovernment restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’. But where Roosevelt was referring also to the traditional colonial Empires, Churchill referred only to those European peoples enslaved by the Germans.14 On the first anniversary of the Charter, with the Americans already in the war, these differences came home to roost. When the President announced his intention of com­ memorating the event by public broadcast, Churchill warned him that the Middle East, and indeed the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, would have to be specifically excluded. Churchill would be unable, ‘without mature consideration, to give it a wider interpretation than was agreed between us at the time ... Here in the Middle East the Arabs might claim by majority that they could expel the Jews from Palestine, or at any rate forbid all further immigration. I am strongly wedded to the Zionist policy, of which I was one of the authors’.15 Of course, Churchill had repeatedly committed himself, both in private and in public, to rejecting the 1939 White Paper after the war, and redeeming the British promise to the Zionists. But one cannot escape the speculation that, just as in 1917 the Balfour Declaration had justified in American eyes a British foothold in Palestine, so in 1942 the Jewish National Home, which Roosevelt too paid lip-service to, was employed by Churchill to justify a con­ tinued British presence in the area, Atlantic Charter or not. In the summer of 1941, there was some disappointment that Churchill had not returned from Argentia with a full-blown American declaration of war. As Churchill explained to his Cabinet, Roosevelt had to watch his step with an isolationist Congress which, if asked to declare for war or peace, would debate the issue for three months. However, notwithstanding continuing differences over the future disposition of the British colonial Empire, the Atlantic Charter did mark the final demarcation between the Western democracies and the Axis Powers. Roosevelt had undertaken to become ‘more and more provocative’. It was now but a question of time before the Americans joined in as full belligerents. As summarised by Joseph Lash, the Charter

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associated the United States with the postwar settlement and thus carried the unspoken implication of American armed intervention to ensure the aims laid down in the charter, including ‘the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny’.16

It is in this context that one must assess Churchill’s extreme sensi­ tivity in regard to anything related to the Zionists or the Jews, during the first years of the war, prior to the signing of the Atlantic Charter. Almost immediately following his appointment as First Lord at the Admiralty, he was involved in a bitter dispute with his Cabinet colleagues, following an enquiry by leading American Jews, who feared the government intended curtailing Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. On 15 November, 1939, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) sent identical telegrams to Chamberlain, MacDonald, Halifax and to Churchill, expressing concern at the Government’s intention to proceed with the 1939 White Paper, despite the war situation. The telegrams, signed by Judge Louis Brandeis, among others, urged the government not to implement the new policy, which would merely ‘intensify conflict in Palestine and aggravate position of world Jewry’.17 On 24 November, Lord Lothian, the British Ambassador in Washington, received a delegation from ZOA, who referred to ‘apparently well authenticated’ rumours that even the White Paper immigration restrictions were to be cut down, and that restrictions on land sales were about to be enforced. The delegation referred also to an ‘informal promise’ that of the 75,000 immigration certificates promised in the White Paper, the 25,000 set aside for refugees would be allowed in to Palestine during the first twelve months. Lothian stalled, claiming ignorance. But, while expressing his doubts whether the Zionists’ information was accurate, he misguidedly tried to explain the strategic importance of retaining for Britain the goodwill of the Arab and Moslem world. Lothian appealed to London for any further information that would dispel the Americans’ suspicions. Jewish influence, he explained, was a powerful factor in the United States and, except for the Palestine White Paper, it was friendly to Britain, and ‘of course vehemently antiHitler’. He warned that American Jews were ‘in a restless state’, due to the deteriorating position in Europe, and it was important for him to be in a position to reassure them about the Government’s intentions in Palestine, if possible, before the arrival of Dr Weizmann, three weeks hence.18

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Lothian’s appeal fell on unsympathetic ears at the Foreign Office. The government did intend curtailing Jewish immigration to less than the White Paper figures, not out of vindictiveness, but to offset illegal immigration, and thus keep the total number of entries safely below the White Paper figures. In regard to the 25,000 ‘refugee’ certificates, it was true that they were supposed to be allowed in above the annual ‘labour’ quota of 10,000, but their entry too was subject to ‘adequate provision for their maintenance being ensured’, a convenient formula which provided the officials with an instru­ ment for restricting their entry too.19 Lacy Bagallay, head of the Eastern Department at the Foreign Office, drafted the reply to Lothian, on the theme that, notwith­ standing the importance of American Jewry, the government could not possibly yield on the White Paper now. Therefore, the only policy was ‘to be absolutely frank with the Jews’. His superior, Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Under-Secretary, commented that Bagallay’s draft was ‘a terrific telegram, but perhaps we cannot be too explicit’.20 The draft reply to Lothian was printed over Halifax’s signature, as a Cabinet memorandum.21 The paper explained the bald fact that the government would be retroactively suspending the immigration schedule for the half year following 1 October, 1939, in order to deduct illegal entries. It was denied that any undertaking had been given to admit 25,000 refugees into Palestine during the first year, and it was indeed the intention to implement shortly the Land Regulations provided for in the 1939 White Paper. The larger part of the memorandum, however, dealt with the question of political expediency. The Whitehall officials regarded the White Paper as the last chance for Britain to demonstrate its good faith towards the Arabs, to prove that this time they were not about to retreat, as they had done in the past, in the face of Zionist protests. The alleged influence of American Jewry had to be weighed in the scales against British interests in the Arab world. As for the Jews, Bagallay stated, somewhat disingenuously, that whereas the Government realise to the full the value of Jewish support, especially in the United States of America ... they would not like to feel that this support was being given for any other reason but that the Jews concerned share the ideals for which the Allies are fighting, and realise that it is in the interest of the Jews of the world that the Allies should win. There must be no misunderstanding as to

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the possibility of rewards, whether in the form of further immigration into Palestine or otherwise ... The unhappy misunderstandings which arose out of the last war must be avoided at all costs ...

No one in the Cabinet apparently saw fit to comment on the two different sets of values which the Foreign Office applied to Jews and Arabs. The difference between the two peoples, in British eyes, was that the Jews in any case had no choice but to side with the Allies, whereas the Arabs, as they frequently reminded the British, did. In regard to the Jewish tragedy in Europe, Lothian was to be instructed to tell the American Zionists that while the government ‘have naturally every sympathy with all the victims of Nazi cruelty, and are doing their utmost through the various refugee organizations to assist them in their misfortune ... Palestine could not, in any circum­ stances, afford a refuge for any but a small percentage of the Jewish victims’. For Lothian’s own consumption, Bagallay sermonised that ‘it is wholly unreasonable of the Zionists to expect that even if no question of breaking faith were involved, His Majesty’s Government should, for this small percentage, prejudice their whole position in the Middle East’. Finally, Lothian was instructed to disavow any idea that the British were seeking to appease the Arabs (an idea admitted by Chamberlain himself the previous summer): ‘I do not wish it, how­ ever, to be thought that the White Paper policy was originally adopted, or is now being followed, because of the danger, serious though it may be, to which any other policy might expose His Majesty’s Government in the Middle East. The White Paper is based primarily and fundamentally on the conviction of His Majesty’s Government that it represents a just settlement between the conflicting claims of Arabs and Jews in Palestine’. Bagallay could not resist one last snide comment on the Jews: ‘The American Zionists are in reality upset, not because His Majesty’s Government propose to change their policy, but because they refuse to do so’. Chamberlain did not think it necessary to discuss the reply to Lothian in the Cabinet, since, in his opinion, no change of policy was involved. He therefore asked that all members of the Cabinet receive a copy of the draft reply, which, unless any objections were received within 48 hours, would then be despatched. On 24 December, no objections having been raised, the telegram was sent off to Lothian, still in time to reach Washington before Weizmann’s arrival.22 Owing to other preoccupations, Churchill had not reacted. But

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on Christmas Day, he informed the Foreign Office that ‘by some mischance’ he had not managed to register his reservations against the Foreign Office instructions to Lothian, and asked that the latter now be instructed not to act upon them, pending a further communication.23 What had prompted Churchill’s last-minute intervention? Churchill had established informal working relations with the Zionists at the beginning of the war. He met Weizmann on 19 September, gave his full support for the Zionists’ plan to set up a Jewish Army, and appointed Brendan Bracken as his liaison.24 Weizmann believed that Bracken, a man of some eccentricity,25 was the only one of Churchill’s intimate circle who was well disposed to the Zionist cause.26 But Bracken’s role was somewhat more sophi­ sticated. His task was to reassure the Zionists that Churchill was looking after their cause in the Cabinet, and to pre-empt any com­ plaints against the British which Weizmann might be provoked to voice in the United States. Bracken pursued his role with mixed feelings. He complained of being ‘badgered by the indefatigable Dr Weizmann’, and in August, 1940, when Prime Minister Churchill was prodding Whitehall to agree to the Jewish Army scheme, Bracken confessed to War Secretary Eden: I dare say the Jews hunt you as hard as they hunt the P.M. They are constantly complaining that they are not given sufficient opportunity of participating in this War. It is very hard to please them, and the more we try, the more suspicious do we make the Arabs.27

By the end of November, 1939, the Zionists in London were becoming increasingly concerned that MacDonald’s rigid implemen­ tation of the White Paper was continuing apace, undisturbed by any pro-Zionist opposition within the Cabinet. They determined to initiate a personal campaign against the Colonial Secretary, on the grounds of the ‘illegality and inhumanity’ of his interpretation of the 1939 White Paper.28 Weizmann pressed Bracken that before his, Weizmann’s, departure for the United States, he wished to settle ‘two or three minor - but very important questions ...’29 On 1 December, Weizmann met with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and apparently in complete ignorance of the corres­ pondence with Lord Lothian, he tried to invoke Halifax’s aid against MacDonald. The Labour Opposition was also mobilised, to

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warn Chamberlain that further measures under the White Paper, i.e. promulgation of the Land restrictions, would provoke a Parlia­ mentary debate.30 Finally, Weizmann met with Bracken himself, on 4 December, 1939. Upon learning of the Zionists’ campaign against the Govern­ ment’s Palestine policy, Churchill had taken affront, and passed on a message via Bracken: Look here, does not Dr Weizmann trust me? Tell him I am on the watch with regard to his affairs, and that I should resign from the War Cabinet if it did anything contrary to the Mandate. Tell him to trust me.31

Bracken explained that Churchill was ‘terribly worn’ and not sleep­ ing. He doubted if he would hold out under the strains of his present office. It was arranged that Weizmann himself should meet with Churchill two weeks later, when Weizmann would bring background briefs on the questions of the Jewish Army, and the proposed land legislation. Nothing was said either of the Lothian communication, or of the intention to suspend Jewish immigration into Palestine for six months.32 Churchill and Weizmann met at the Admiralty on 17 December, 1939. Churchill was cordial, and full of optimism about the war, telling Weizmann: ‘we’ve got them beat’. Weizmann turned the con­ versation to Zionist affairs: ‘You have stood at the cradle of the enterprise, I hope you will see it through’. He added that after the war, the Zionists would want to build up a state of 3 -4 million Jews in Palestine. According to Weizmann, Churchill replied: ‘Yes, indeed, I quite agree with that’. Churchill displayed great interest in Weizmann’s visit to the United States, and asked him to appoint someone to keep in touch during his absence.33 Weizmann departed for the United States on 20 December, and Churchill became totally absorbed in his duties at the Admiralty. When he did finally come across the Foreign Office instructions to Lothian amongst his correspondence, he dealt with them as a matter of the utmost urgency, in view of the fact that Weizmann was already five days out of Southampton, and would shortly be making his first public appearance in the United States. On the very same day that he entered his caveat, he submitted his own memorandum to the Cabinet, entitled appropriately enough ‘The American Zionist Organization and His Majesty’s Government’s Policy in Palestine’.34 The memorandum reflected Churchill’s major preoccupation with

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his own efforts, via his secret correspondence with Roosevelt, to secure naval Intelligence, and the importance of retaining the good­ will of American Jewry. Churchill was concerned exclusively with expediency, that is the British war interest, and not at all with the merits or demerits of the Zionist cause. He warned that the impending elections in the United States were bound to produce an even harder line towards Great Britain, and that ‘the movement to interpret neutrality in the strictest manner has gathered unexpected strength’. He stated that in at least one instance, American ships had disclosed the position of a British ship off the American coast to the enemy. He suggested that the war might continue in an indeterminate fashion for a long time, with ‘no sense of an imminent catastrophe to the Western democracies, and yet no prospect of an early victory’. In that event, President Roosevelt might fail to rally his people to Britain’s aid, even to the extent of ‘financial assistance in dollars’. He derided the ‘lofty line’ adopted by the Foreign Office, osten­ sibly judging the issue solely on merit. Churchill’s sense of history asserted itself, as he perceived parallels between Britain’s plight in the First World War, and now: ... it was not for light or sentimental reasons that Lord Balfour and the Government of 1917 made the promises to the Zionists which have been the cause of so much subsequent discussion. The influence of American Jewry was rated then as a factor of the highest importance, and we did not feel ourselves in such a strong position as to be able to treat it with indifference. Now, in the advent of a Presidential election, and when the future is full of measureless uncertainties, I should have thought it was more necessary, even than in November, 1917, to conciliate American Jewry and enlist their aid in combatting isolationist and indeed anti-British tendencies in the United States.

Churchill recalled his recent meeting with Dr Weizmann, and the latter’s self-imposed mission to rally American opinion to the British cause. However, he warned, ‘the line indicated in the draft telegram may well make his task impossible; and he will find himself con­ fronted with the active resentment of American Jewry. Their anger may become public and be readily exploited by all unfavourable elements in the United States ...’ Churchill referred also to domestic political divisions provoked by the White Paper: ‘it is hardly possible to find a topic more calculated to divide British opinion and to enable those elements who supported

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the war, but do not like the Government, to come together, and to make a powerful case that our war effort is being hampered by undue insistence upon the views of the pre-War Cabinet’. Therefore, Churchill asked for a revision of the instructions to Lord Lothian, stating that the Government was not prepared to change the White Paper’s provisions now, but that the future of Palestine would be one of those questions which must await the peace settlement at the end of the war, and that in the meantime ‘nothing would be done to prejudice the final form which that settlement would take’. This was the line to which Churchill would adhere consistently throughout the war - the 1939 White Paper was a caretaker policy for the duration of the war, and the final dis­ position of Palestine would be determined at the peace table. He remained preoccupied with that feature of the White Paper which had aroused his hostility in May, 1939 - the Arab veto on immigration: The one thing he [Lothian] ought not to say is that with the world in flux and the life of every European nation and the British Empire hanging in the balance, the sole, fixed, immutable inexorable fact was that Jewish immigra­ tion into Palestine would come to an end after five years in accordance with the White Paper.

Preoccupied with British public relations in the United States, Chur­ chill did not so much as refer to the problem which had prompted the American Zionists’ intervention the previous month - the sixmonth suspension of the White Paper immigration schedule. The controversy was discussed in the Cabinet on 27 December, 1939. MacDonald adroitly switched the main debate on to the impending Land legislation. He claimed that the immigration regu­ lations had been in operation for nine months already and, in his view, Jewish opinion, in Palestine and elsewhere, was already recon­ ciled. MacDonald suggested that further discussion be delayed for a further two weeks, when he would be in a position to present the Cabinet with the new Land Regulations.35 When Chamberlain enquired about the instructions to Lothian, MacDonald replied that the Ambassador might give assurances that the rumours about immigration were incorrect, and that since the Land legislation was in preparation, further instructions would be sent when it was ready. Churchill had succeeded in raising the Zionist interest to Cabinet level. However, the First Lord was hopelessly out-manoeuvred by

3. In Jerusalem, April 1921: Above left: Nebi Samuel, James de Rothschild, Sir Ronald Storrs {profile), Nancy Samuel, Geoffrey Samuel, Front left: Hadassah Samuel, Abdullah, Sir Herbert Samuel, Winston Churchill, Mrs Churchill

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the all-powerful combination of MacDonald, Halifax and Chamberlain himself. Churchill took immediate steps to reassure the Zionists, and Weizmann in particular, that he had triumphed over MacDonald. This move, quite obviously premature, was either the product of a certain naivete, or, which is more likely, a tactic designed at all costs to placate Weizmann for the duration of his American trip. On the afternoon of 28 December, ‘Baffy’ Dugdale received an unexpected telephone call from Bracken, asking if the Zionist office in London was still able to intercept Weizmann, before he was due to speak in New York? When ‘Baffy’ replied in the affirmative, Bracken stated that ‘it was very important that Chaim should know as soon as possible that the whole of our affairs had changed for the better’. He [Bracken] then said that ‘the little rabbit [i.e. MacDonald], you know who’ was ‘finished’ (or words to that effect). Winston had spent five hours talking to him. Mrs Dugdale deduced that ‘Winston has taken a strong line, and that MacDonald will not be able in future to have his own way’.36 Four days later, Bracken met with Lewis Namier (a naturalised Polish Jew, whose studies of the members of the English Parliament inaugurated a new school of English history), who during the war acted as one of Weizmann’s advisers. Bracken told him that ‘M.M.[acDonald] had had a thorough “trimming”, but that we must not crow over him - nothing must be known about his defeat ... Now no important legislation or administrative act is to be taken in Palestine without the War Cabinet. M.M. had finished by admitting the wisdom of what Winston had said’.37 To say the very least, this was a distortion of the facts. The Foreign and Colonial Office officials did not suffer Churchill’s attack passively, but countered him on his own chosen ground that of expediency. The debate which ensued is illustrative of the general consensus in the official British mind in regard to the Jews. On 29 December, Bagallay conceded, in an internal departmental minute, that the attitude of American Jews might indeed be all that Churchill had made it out to be. However, he disputed whether Lothian’s reply, of itself, was likely to turn them against Britain, or if in fact the views of American Jews might ever constitute a decisive fact in American politics. He rejected the analogy drawn by Churchill with 1917, and claimed that Jewish influence now was not what it had been in the past - in fact, too much pro-Allied propaganda by

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American Jewry might even prove an embarrassment (presumably, by ‘confirming’ German propaganda that the war was provoked by the Jews!). Bagallay admitted that he might be straining a point but, he added, ‘surely it is also going too far to suggest any comparison between the position today, and that which obtained in November, 1917’. The fact was, concluded Bagallay, that the American Jews, just as much as the British Government, had to consider their own expediency. And since the British represented the sole hope of sur­ vival for millions of their fellow-Jews in Europe, they could not turn against Britain, however much they might resent her Palestine policy.38 Bagallay complained that Churchill had completely ignored the Arab side of the question, and if the Arab world was pro-Allies for the present, this was due largely to the 1939 White Paper.39 He agreed that it would be deplorable to do anything that might divide the country, but insisted, presciently, that no future government ‘whatever its composition or sympathies’ would be able to do more for the Jews than was done in the current policy. Arab opposition could not be ‘smothered indefinitely’, and last May had been ‘the first time in 20 years that anyone had told Parliament square where the Balfour Declaration, as previously interpreted, was leading’. Bagallay’s colleague, Scott, agreed that Churchill had exaggerated the potential of American Jewry to damage British interests. Not only would it be against their own national interest to do so, but in any case they had to watch their step, for fear of anti-semitic reper­ cussions at home, where they were ‘widely associated in American minds with Russia, at present the bete-noire of the American people’.40 Cadogan found Bagallay’s arguments ‘very convincing’, and R.A. Butler, the Under-Secretary of State, found his draft memorandum an ‘excellent piece of work’. It was duly printed as a Cabinet paper, over the signature of Halifax.41 At the Colonial Office, the veteran Shuckburgh, a Churchillappointee from 1921, added his experienced opinion. He doubted ‘whether the influence of the American Jews over the American Government or over general opinion is really as potent as the Zionists and their supporters would have us believe’. Shuckburgh was unable to recall a single instance when the American government had intervened officially on behalf of the Zionist movement. He agreed that if anything, ‘Jewish stock in the United States is on the decline’. He concluded:

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I doubt whether we need be unduly alarmed over the American bugbear. In any case we ought not to allow it to deflect us from the policy which we have deliberately adopted on the Palestine question.42

The debate resumed in the Cabinet on 16 January, 1940.43 Churchill adhered to the arguments he had put forward in his Christmas day memorandum. He suggested that sufficient grounds for a reversal of policy had been provided by the finding of the League’s Mandates Commission, the previous July, that the 1939 White Paper was not consistent with the League’s own interpretation of the Mandate. His main fear, as before, was of adverse repercussions in the United States. Halifax deprecated any divergence from the White Paper that would create dangerous misunderstandings, and a state of uncertainty which would prove disastrous for British interests in the Arab world. He suggested a change of tack - they should avoid any impression of ‘wobbling’, and at the same time adopt the most dis­ creet language in any pronouncements, and where possible, apply the new policy ‘moderately’. MacDonald reassured the Cabinet that the Land legislation was the only initiative planned for the immediate future. Lord Chatfield, Minister for the Coordination of Defence, stressed ‘the great strategical importance of not disturbing the present position of tranquillity in the Middle East’. Churchill retaliated that it was more important still to guarantee friendly opinion in the United States, ‘in readiness for the time when our exchange difficulties would become acute’. Chamberlain undertook to settle the issue out of Cabinet. Mac­ Donald wrote a private letter to Chamberlain that same day (see above, pp. 183-4), referring to Churchill’s fundamental disagree­ ment with the Arab veto on immigration, and suggesting therefore that they concentrate on the Land question, which would ‘avoid Winston being put in a position where he had to define any attitude on the immigration question, which is the matter on which he disagrees with us most’.44 Thus the telegram to Lothian might deal exclusively with ‘a reasoned explanation of our land proposals’, and likewise, the debate in the Commons which MacDonald feared that Labour would insist upon, could be restricted similarly. A compromise of sorts was arrived at between Churchill, Mac­ Donald and Halifax. But to call it a ‘package deal’, as some have,45 is to suggest a stronger bargaining hand and superior status than that in fact possessed by Churchill in Chamberlain’s Cabinet. Chamberlain regarded Churchill as ‘an adult child’, and there was no meeting of

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minds between the two men. Churchill’s frequent overtures to the Prime Minister were ignored, and the latter thought that the First Lord ‘talked much ... and irrelevantly in Cabinet, gave gratuitous, and unnecessary advice, and bombarded him with letters which were written for his memoirs’.46 Churchill’s achievement, if such it was, lay in the modification he secured to the tone of the instructions sent to Lothian, in order to minimise any adverse reactions in the United States. Lothian’s brief now concentrated almost exclusively on and justified the new Land Regulations. The Foreign Office explained that ‘whilst we have not withdrawn from the policy stated in the White Paper we are anxious not to arouse fresh controversies by a public assertion of our position which might be considered provocative’.47 But on the ‘debit’ side, there was the promulgation of the White Paper’s Land Regulations at the end of February, 1940, and Churchill’s acquiescence in the suspension of Jewish immigration, and indeed, in the demographic principles underlying the 1939 policy. The Zionists’ own acquiescence in the suspension of the legal immigration schedule may be attributed, in part, to Britain’s inability to curb, or cope adequately with, illegal immigration. For instance, in January, 1940, the S.S. Hilda, with 730 Jewish refugees on board, was brought into Haifa harbour by the British Navy. However, the Palestine Administration failed to have legislation enacted which would have permitted them to take punitive action against the new arrivals. Therefore, MacDonald had no choice but to allow the ‘illegal’ arrivals to land, much to the surprise of the Zionists.48 During the early part of 1940, the Zionists were concerned pri­ marily with the new Land Regulations. On this issue, as Bracken admitted to the Zionists, Churchill was defeated in the Cabinet. At its next meeting, on 12 February, 1940, the Cabinet ‘warmly approved’ the terms of the revised telegram to Lothian, which in fact had already been endorsed by the three Ministers concerned.49 In return, Churchill agreed not to press his opposition to the Land Regulations, provided that his dissension was recorded in the minutes. Churchill argued the Zionists’ case for the record, having been briefed by them beforehand. There is a rich irony in this particular speech, given Chancellor Churchill’s parsimony towards the Jewish National Home during the 1920s. He told his colleagues that the Government could take little credit for the great agricultural improvements that had occurred in Palestine. Those were the product

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of Jewish endeavour, though they had brought benefit to both Jews and Arabs. The new Land Regulations, Churchill argued, would halt all further agricultural progress, and most probably provoke a slump in land values, from which the Arabs too would suffer.50 MacDonald argued that the new controls were ‘justifiable alike on merits and on grounds of expediency’. All previous commissions of enquiry had agreed that unless land sales to the Jews were restricted, a class of landless Arabs would be created. Chamberlain sided with the Colonial Office, commenting that ‘the consensus of opinion among the Commissions and Committees which had visited Palestine was very striking ... [and] proved very clearly that there were economic as well as political reasons for the Secretary of State’s land policy’. Churchill returned to the question of expediency, and the adverse repercussions to be anticipated in the United States: ‘what was the urgency in taking these steps? Our action would cause a great outcry in American Jewry’. But finally, he expressed his gratitude to his colleagues for meeting him on the wider issues raised by the message from the American Zionists, and contented himself with having his views recorded in the Cabinet minutes. Chamberlain had secured an agreement between the three Mini­ sters concerned by 4 February. The Cabinet on 12 February was a mere formality, which allowed Churchill to place the Zionist case on the record. The ‘wider’ or most important issue on which the Cabinet met Churchill was the need to soften any possible impact of the Government’s policy across the Atlantic. On the day after the meeting, Bracken told the Zionists: ‘Winston has been defeated by MacDonald in Cabinet on the White Paper, and the restriction will shortly be promulgated’. Mrs Dugdale recorded that ‘it was a great blow’.51 However, the impression created by Bracken that Churchill had fought and lost a battle over the Land Regulations was entirely false. Churchill’s battle had focused on one aspect, on Britain’s public relations in the United States. In that respect, Churchill achieved his goal. As noted already, Churchill in fact agreed that land sales to the Jews might have to be restricted at times, and had told the Zionists as much, as early as in July, 1937. MacDonald would pay a heavy price for his tenacious defence of the White Paper, which in Churchill’s mind became inextricably identified with the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain Govern­ ment. When Churchill became Prime Minister, in May, 1940, he

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moved MacDonald from the Colonial Office to the innocuous Ministry of Health. Six months later, he ‘exiled’ MacDonald to the High Commission in Canada.52 One Minister who observed these changes from a close-up vantage point attributed Churchill’s treat­ ment of MacDonald to a personal vendetta, aroused over the Palestine question: Once a man in public life had taken up a position concerning a major issue which Winston, the sole judge, thought was against the interests or dignity of Great Britain, or was wrong or niggardly or cowardly or a hedge, that man was excluded from his esteem for ever... For example, he never forgave Malcolm MacDonald for his White Paper on Palestine which ran counter to his strongly held Zionist tendencies.53

On the day after the Cabinet meeting, on 14 February, 1940, Mrs Dugdale met with Walter Elliott, who told her of the Cabinet pro­ ceedings. She learned of the careful instructions sent to Lothian on how to break the news to Weizmann. From this she deduced just how much the Cabinet was worried about negative repercussions in the United States, and began to think that it was time to play the American trump-card. She even considered having Weizmann cut short his tour, and announce the reason why.54When Weizmann was apprised of the Cabinet’s decision, by Dugdale, he sent an urgent telegram to Churchill, urging the latter to press the Prime Minister to hold up the proposed legislation until his, Weizmann’s return. He reported that sentiment in the United States was in general friendly to the Allies, but ‘highly sensitive’. He feared that the new legislation would have ‘the most deplorable reactions’, not just in Jewish circles. But Weizmann’s appeal had no effect, although circulated by Churchill in Cabinet. The Land Regulations were published on 28 February, 1940.55 The new Regulations were greeted in Palestine by three days of violent demonstrations. In London, the House of Commons debated them on 6 March, in reply to a Motion of Censure put by Philip Noel-Baker (Labour) and Archibald Sinclair (Liberal).56 MacDonald made what was generally regarded as a masterful defence of the new regulations. The Times reported the next day that his speech had been greeted by ‘such a round of applause as is rarely given to a difficult Ministerial statement’.57 Even Leo Amery, who spoke up against the new measures, conceded that the Colonial Secretary had made ‘a most matterly and dexterous speech’. In a private letter to Weizmann, written after the debate, Amery stated that the applause

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won by MacDonald reflected ‘the enormous sense of relief with which many members felt he had somehow or other provided a bridge over which their messy consciences could walk into the Government lobby’. He confessed that he himself had been ‘too bored and dis­ pirited to do more than register a protest and express the hope that this was not the final chapter’. He also advised Weizmann that this should be taken as the last word of the Commons on the White Paper, and no good could be expected from any renewed agitation.58 The government had survived the Motion of Censure by a com­ fortable majority of 163, compared with the majority of 89 on the 1939 White Paper. Churchill absented himself from the debate, and from the voting, although he was present in the House that day. Churchill had allowed himself ‘to be overridden’ on Palestine59 or, as observed by Professor Rose, he had been unwilling to press his opposition to the point of a Cabinet split, and the comparative ease with which his challenge had been rebuffed provided an ominous portent of things to come.60 2. ARMING THE JEWS

On 29 August, 1939, Dr Weizmann wrote to Prime Minister Chamberlain to offer the services of the Jewish people in the Allied war effort. The British, neurotically anxious not to repeat the mistakes of the last war, balked at any scheme which might lay them open to future political claims at the Peace Conference. They saw political strings and future hazards attached to the Zionists’ offers. Weizmann’s letter included the hope that the differences which had arisen between the Zionists and the British over the White Paper might give way now to ‘the greater and more pressing necessities of the time’.61 The idea of training a Jewish Army in Palestine ran entirely counter to the spirit of the White Paper. The reaction of the Arabs might be predicted all too easily. However, it was not only the Arabs who feared a Jewish coup de main in Palestine. The British too feared that a Jewish army would rebel against any future political settlement not to the Zionists’ liking. The set British reply to Jewish offers, there­ fore, was that all those Jews who wished to fight in the Allied ranks had more than enough opportunity to do so, in established British units.62 Churchill took a different view. He did not take lightly the Yishuv's need for self-defence forces, against either the Arabs, or

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enemy invasion. He could well imagine the international odium that would attach to Britain, especially in the United States, if the British left the Jews of Palestine unarmed and defenceless against either local Arab violence, or Axis invasion. There was also, inevitably, the imperial factor. At the outbreak of the war, there were eleven British battalions locked up in Palestine, which Churchill insisted had to be brought home, for the defence of the mother country. As he had done in 1921, so now in 1939, Churchill wanted to arm the Jews so as to relieve local British forces of the defence of Palestine. At their very first wartime meeting, in September, 1939, Churchill told Weizmann of his great interest in the Jewish Army project. On 14 October, Victor Cazalet, a close friend, gave Churchill a memo­ randum on the subject prepared for the Zionists by Orde Wingate.63 Wingate’s somewhat grandiose conception was for a Jewish Army of 20,000, to be trained by 1,000 Jewish officers. Perhaps the plan’s main appeal for Churchill was its prognosis that within four months the Jewish Force would be able to assume responsibility for internal security in Palestine. In addition, Wingate proposed the establish­ ment of a Jewish commando unit to fight in the Western desert. Just three days later, Churchill raised the scheme in Cabinet, albeit not in the form proposed by Wingate.64 He deprecated the use of regular British battalions on internal security duties in Palestine, and suggested that they might be released, if better use was made of that military potential already available in the country. But Churchill himself vitiated the Zionists’ national inspirations, by proposing that mixed Palestinian units be set up, of Jews and Arabs, thereby enabling each community to keep an eye on the other. Churchill’s main interest was to release the British battalions, and this proposal was calculated to pre-empt the officials’ objections that they were arming the Jews against the Arabs. Predictably, MacDonald warned that they should do nothing to arouse Arab apprehensions that the government was arming the Jews in order to take over the country. But MacDonald was instructed to investigate the scheme, together with the War Office, with a view to replacing the British garrison in Palestine with local forces. Bracken warned that it would take the entire War Cabinet to overcome Colonial Office opposition.65 Colonial Office and War Office officials duly met to discuss Churchill’s proposal, in view of ‘the possibility of heavy demands for British reinforcements on the Western Front next Spring’.66 Weighty arguments, both military and

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political, were raised against Churchill’s initiative. Colonel Fisher of the War Office claimed that the arming of any local forces in Palestine could be done only at the expense of British units then being fitted out. Major Mallaby objected to entrusting internal security to any indigenous force. If, in the event of an emergency, the bulk of British troops had to leave Palestine, it would be preferable, in his opinion, simply to relinquish control over Arab rural districts, and concen­ trate whatever British troops were left on guarding such strategically key points as Haifa, the railway, and possibly Jerusalem. Mallaby stated that of the eleven infantry battalions then in Palestine, three belonged to the Middle East Reserve, and could be withdrawn at any time. In an extreme emergency, they might remove an additional two battalions, leaving six, as well as two additional cavalry regiments that was the minimum force required to hold the strategic points referred to. The use of coloured African or Indian troops in Palestine was ruled out on political grounds. Colonial Office officials dwelt on the political objections. Harold Downie, first secretary in the Middle East Department, argued that the use of a Jewish Force to put down Arab disorder in Palestine ‘would set Palestine and surrounding Arab countries ablaze’. With respect to Churchill’s idea of balancing Jewish recruits with Arabs, Downie stated that their experience indicated that Arab forces could not be relied upon. Shuckburgh, who was also present, dwelt on a further fear, that the Jews were pressing for their Force in order to be in a position at the end of the war ‘to dictate their terms’ in regard to the ultimate political disposition of Palestine. The Arabs them­ selves were keenly alert to this possibility. They were complaining already that the government was not implementing the White Paper in full, and that the Jewish lobby in London always managed to abort concessions made to them. The officials agreed that Palestinians should not be employed on internal security. If and when the government decided to enlarge the strategic reserve in the Middle East, an opportunity might then arise for utilising local manpower. In the meantime, Palestinians were being offered service in coastal defences, particularly in anti-aircraft units around Haifa. The issue was raised in Cabinet again on 12 February, 1940, at the same meeting at which the Land Regulations were finally approved.67 MacDonald argued that after years of civil strife in Palestine, the situation there was so volatile, that the withdrawal of the British

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garrison would ignite immediate conflict between Jews and Arabs, requiring the immediate return of the garrison. He suggested that as the security situation cleared up, they might release the Palestine garrison, unit by unit, to play its part in the war. A step in the right direction was the ongoing construction of fortified police posts (Tegart forts), which it was estimated would be completed within another eight months. Churchill brushed aside these arguments and, with typical con­ tempt for the Arabs, argued that the Jews were the only friends they had in Palestine: ... the sound policy for Great Britain at the beginning of the war would have been to build up, as soon as possible, a strong Jewish armed force in Palestine. In this way we should have been able to use elsewhere the large and costly British cavalry force, which was now to replace the eleven infantry battalions hitherto locked up in Palestine. It was an extraordinary position that at a time when the war was probably entering its most dangerous phase, we should station in Palestine a garrison one-quarter of the size of our garrison in India - and this for the purpose of forcing through a policy which, in his judgement, was unpopular in Palestine and Great Britain alike.

Oliver Stanley, Secretary of State for War, supported Churchill’s plea that the garrison should be withdrawn from Palestine as soon as pos­ sible. Yet at the same time he ruled out the creation of either Jewish or Arab military units. Lord Halifax pointed out that Churchill’s proposal raised a fundamental issue - were they to allow the Jews and Arabs to arm, and then leave them to fight it out alone? Such a course of events could only bring discredit to the Mandatory. He objected to Churchill’s presentation of the plan, ‘as if the issue was confined to Palestine alone’, whereas, Halifax maintained, ‘the prob­ lem was far wider, with repercussions extending throughout the Moslem world’. Chamberlain supported MacDonald, as he had done on questions concerning Palestine, since the latter’s appoint­ ment as Colonial Secretary in May, 1938. They could not allow only the Jews to arm. When he asked about the level of Jewish armament, MacDonald replied that all Jewish settlements had sufficient arms for self-defence. The Cabinet concluded that ‘it was not practicable to substitute a Palestinian armed force for the British garrison in Palestine’, and asked MacDonald to try to reduce the period contemplated for the reconstitution of the Police Force, so as to release the garrison troops earlier than planned.

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On 10 May, 1940, following a crisis of confidence in the Chamberlain government, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of England. His policy as wartime Premier is summed up aptly in the following dictum: ‘Everything for the war, whether controversial or not, and nothing controversial that is not bona fide needed for the war’.68 Soon after Churchill’s appointment, a series of military dis­ asters befell allied forces on the continent. The net result was that the French concluded an armistice with the Germans, and the Italians, sensing their opportunity, opened up another front against the British, in the Middle East. With Italian forces outnumbering the British (by ten divisions to two in the Western Desert), Britain’s hold in the region, first in Egypt, and second, in Palestine, became extremely vulnerable. As Churchill prepared for the anticipated invasion of Britain, the Jews of Palestine waited for the front to reach their country (Tel Aviv and Haifa were bombed by Italian planes in September, 1940). Now the British need for the battalions of the Palestine garrison, and the Jews’ need of self-defence, became acute. Churchill’s first confrontation was with his Chiefs of Staff, who now opposed the return of the troops from Palestine. There has been much historical debate on the question of Churchill’s relations with his military advisers. On the one hand, Captain Roskill has concluded that in 1940, Churchill’s ‘domination of the war-making machinery became as complete as his domination of the Admiralty had been at the beginning’.69 Others have noted a certain reticence, following Churchill’s experience after the Dardanelles campaign. Field Marshal Alan Brooke, Churchill’s CIGS for most of the war, has testified that Churchill never overruled the advice of his service chiefs, if and when they stood up to him, unanimously.70 Captain Liddell Hart has noted the ‘astonishing frequency’ with which Churchill failed to get his views accepted by the Chiefs of Staff, even when he was clearly right, and suggests this was because Churchill had been made the scapegoat for the Dardanelles debacle in 1915.71 Palestine was quite clearly an issue on which Churchill would not pursue any controversial line, or clash for any length of time with the Chiefs of Staff. But with German advances in the Low Countries in early May, Churchill pressed the Chiefs of Staff to treat the return of the eleven battalions from Palestine as a matter of the first priority:

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I cannot feel that we have enough trustworthy troops in England, in view of the large numbers that may be landed from air-carriers preceded by parachutists ... the transports which brought the Australians to Suez should bring home 8 battalions of Regular infantry from Palestine, properly convoyed, even at some risk, by whatever route is thought best. I hope it will be possible to use the Mediterranean.72

The Chiefs of Staff opposed the transfer, not on political, but on purely strategical grounds. The Palestine garrison constituted the only reserve of properly trained and equipped troops in the Middle East. If they were now moved out precipitately, it would have a grave effect on Britain’s allies in the area, particularly on Turkey. Their allies would lose faith in Britain’s ability to hold on to the region, and Italy would be encouraged correspondingly. The Mediterranean route was thought to be too risky, and the alternative, round the Cape, would mean that the troops in any case would not arrive home in time to help in the anticipated crisis. If large numbers of troops were moved around during the coming weeks, the result would be that they would not be available for fighting anywhere. Finally, exclusive concern with the defence of the British Isles could prove disastrous, since the loss of Britain’s imperial assets, in the Middle East and in the Far East, would ultimately destroy the ability of the island to stand up against Germany.73 Characteristically, Churchill was preoccupied with one single issue, the defence of the mother country, and he lectured the Chiefs of Staff: It is no use talking about a strategic reserve for the Middle East when we are in our present position at home. Even if these troops go round by the Cape, they could be here in six weeks.74

The issue was discussed briefly but inconclusively at the Cabinet on 29 May, where Churchill still insisted that eight of the eleven battalions be returned home. But now the High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, insisted that if the battalions were removed, the recently-arrived Australians should take their place, or an equivalent force be brought to Palestine.75 The successful evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk during the first week of June changed the situation and, despite the lamentable circumstances, provided an injection of addi­ tional forces for home defence. However, with the collapse of France, the danger and imminence of a possible German invasion increased. On 6 June, Churchill sent to Anthony Eden, then Secretary of State for War, a sharp note, complaining that General Wavell,

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Chief in Command, Middle East Forces, was taking a provincial, Middle Eastern view, in objecting to the return of the battalions back to England: ‘Here we have to think of building up a good army in order to make up, as far as possible, for the lamentable failure to support the French by an adequate B.E.F. during the first year of the war’.76 However, the Italian declaration of war, on 10 June, finally per­ suaded Churchill, who now agreed with his Chiefs of Staff that the battalions would need to be transferred to Egypt, to fulfil their appointed duty as Middle East Reserve, in defence of the Canal. This may have settled the question of where to employ the Palestine garrison, but it did not by any means solve the Jews’ defence require­ ments in Palestine. With the fall of the Chamberlain government in May, 1940, and the accession to power of Churchill, the Zionists expected a drastic change for the better in their fortunes. Within two days of entering No. 10 Downing Street, Churchill received a new blueprint for a Jewish Army, written by Zeev Jabotinsky, the Revisionist leader.77 Churchill passed it on to his own appointee at the Colonial Office, Lord Lloyd.78Churchill could hardly have expected Lloyd to support the Zionists, and indeed, his views coincided with the Colonial Office permanent officials. In his reply to Churchill, Lloyd main­ tained that both Jews and Arabs in Palestine already had enough opportunity for contributing to the war effort, by enlisting in British units. His reply also reflected what was becoming an obsession at Whitehall, a fixation with the Zionists’ ulterior motives: it is clear that proposals of this kind, whether emanating from the New Zionists or from the Zionists, have as their prime object the recognition of the Jewish people as a nation, with a standing in the War Councils of the Allies and ultimately in the discussion of the terms of peace. In both cases the conversion of Palestine into a Jewish State as a reward for Jewish military assistance is the objective.79

There was an almost sublime indifference to the dangers now facing the Yishuv following the Italian entry into the war. On 14 June, 1940, Weizmann wrote to Lloyd requesting his authority to launch a campaign in England and in the United States to mobilise all possible financial and military aid for the Jews of Palestine. As he pointed out to Lloyd, the Jews, unlike the British, would not be able to evacuate Palestine if invaded:

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The British forces in Palestine may be required elsewhere... Delay may mean the annihilation of the half-million Jews in Palestine, and the destruction of all our work ... If we have to go down, we are untitled to go down fighting, and the Mandatory Power is in duty bound to grant us this elementary human right.80

In fact, Weizmann was closer to the truth than he could have possibly feared - in June, 1940, the British had indeed made initial contingency plans to evacuate Palestine.81 Yet Colonial Office and War Office policy in Palestine was to disarm the local populations. The disarming of the Arabs had begun in 1938, during the latter stages of the Arab revolt. In May, 1940, the Colonial Office, without informing Churchill, had decided to disarm the Jews. However, following the events of the summer, this decision was reversed in July.82 When Churchill passed Weizmann’s appeal to Lloyd, the latter replied, disingenuously, that the War Office was holding up the mobilisation of Jews, and he advised Weizmann to have the Jews join regular units of the British army.83 But in a private letter to Churchill, Lloyd warned of the grave repercussions in the Arab and Moslem world, should Jewish units be set up: ... the arming of the Jewish community in Palestine under British auspices would undoubtedly be interpreted by Arab and Moslem opinion, not only in the Middle East but in India, as a step towards the subjection of Palestine to Jewish domination.84

But Churchill was not convinced. First, he still expected to fill the vacuum in Palestine (after the troops left to defend the Canal) with Jewish troops. And second, there was as always the American angle. Following the French defeat, and the line up of Axis powers against the British, many in the United States concluded that it was futile for Britain to continue alone, and it was best to reach the best terms obtainable from the Germans. As early as on 7 June, Bracken had tele­ phoned to Weizmann, to pass on Churchill’s request that he leave for the United States as soon as possible, ‘to use such influence as I possess in spurring Jewish public opinion to throw its whole weight into helping the Allies in the War’. In his written response, four days later, Weizmann asked for some concrete concession to take with him: My only thought is how to equip myself to do it most effectively. I must, so to speak, go armed. The weapons I need are some proofs that Jewish effort when made, will not be spurned, as it has been hitherto. There is no question

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of bargaining, either for present or future rewards ... If I am to appeal to them [the Jewish community in the United States] in my capacity as a Jewish leader, I must be able to prove that a change in the attitude towards Jewish effort has taken place since the change of Government in Britain.85

Bracken’s initial response was to withdraw the government’s request.86As noted already, he was becoming somewhat peeved with the Zionists. But Churchill himself pressed the issue, and in early July indicated that he personally would receive Weizmann before the latter’s departure. Weizmann told his colleagues that when he saw Churchill, he would ask him to say something about the future Jewish State - After all, everybody else was carving up the world’. Ben Gurion had reservations about Weizmann travelling to the United States ‘as an unofficial Ambassador of Great Britain to the Jews in the United States’. If Weizmann was going as a Zionist leader, that was fine, but if as a British envoy, then it would be a fatal mistake to go without first having secured the right of the Jews in Palestine to have an Army.87 There was apparently some confusion in government quarters between the Zionist demand to mobilise for self-defence in Palestine itself, and Weizmann’s offer to mobilise the resources of American Jewry. On 18 July, for instance, Weizmann told Lord Halifax that if 20,000-25,000 Jews could be recruited in Palestine, ‘it would be a powerful rallying point for many times that number of recruits from the United States’.88 The Colonial Office acceded to Churchill’s demands with regard to mobilisation in Palestine, provided it was on a basis of parity between Arabs and Jews, and that ‘nothing in the nature of a Jewish army should be created for service in Palestine’.89At the end of July, 1940, the Cabinet’s Committee on Military Policy in the Middle East authorised the mobilisation of six Palestinian companies, three Jewish and three Arab, to serve in the East Kent Regiment, the so-called ‘Palestine Buffs’. The Zionists regarded the new scheme as inadequate, and Ben Gurion thought the Government had let the Zionists down, ‘leaving them to be destroyed by invaders and Arabs’.90 On 6 August, 1940, Weizmann made a further direct appeal to Churchill, pleading the right of the Jews in Palestine to self-defence, and asking that Jews outside Palestine be allowed to form Jewish units to serve with the British army.91 Churchill passed the letter on to Lord Lloyd, who by now was resentful of Weizmann going above his head, direct to the Prime Minister. On 12 August, 1940, Churchill

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wrote directly to General Wavell, to complain that he was not making sufficient use of the large Jewish forces in Palestine. He urged that the Jewish colonists be armed sufficiently, so that if necessary, the whole of Palestine might be left, for a short time, to a token British force.92 But Bracken himself, Churchill’s liaison with the Zionists, agreed now with the Colonial Office that it would be politically and mili­ tarily suicidal to raise a Jewish Army in Palestine, and claimed that most non-Zionist Jews agreed that in doing so they would provoke a large-scale Arab rebellion. On 15 August, he was able to inform Eden: as we are short of everything except trouble, Weizmann has been told by Lloyd that his grandiose scheme cannot be accepted. I understand that a modest compromise is being formulated.93

Weizmann lobbied other Ministers. He approached Hugh Dalton who, in his capacity as Minister for Economic Warfare, was inter­ ested directly in relations with the United States. Weizmann impressed Dalton with his need to receive something concrete prior to his departure for the United States, scheduled for 19 September. Dalton pressed Eden, explaining that his own locus standi in the matter, apart from having known Weizmann personally for several years, was ‘in connection with our propaganda abroad, on which this pro­ ject has some bearing’.94 Weizmann lobbied Halifax too, who also appealed to Eden. Copies were sent to Churchill, who minuted: ‘Please let me know what you can do.’95 Eden too recognized the potential benefits in the United States, and wrote to Churchill that, although he did not have any clear idea what exactly Weizmann hoped to achieve there, ‘it is clearly desirable that he should not go to America with any idea in his mind that we here are unsympathetic to any useful effort he can make’.96 By the summer of 1940, the priorities of the Chamberlain govern­ ment had quite evidently been reversed by Churchill’s. Now it seemed more important to secure the sympathy of the Americans than that of the Arabs. The opinions of Halifax, Dalton and Eden outweighed those of the Colonial Secretary, Lloyd, and of General Wavell, both of whom were concerned primarily with adverse re­ actions by the Arabs. On 3 September, 1940, Weizmann was received by Churchill, and the latter agreed to the formation of a Jewish Division, presumably to be comprised of those Jews in Palestine who

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mobilised in excess of the Arabs, together with volunteers from the United States. Weizmann proposed the immediate mobilisation of a cadre of Palestinian Jewish officers, who would then train a Jewish Division of 10,000; in addition, Weizmann again raised the plan for a ‘Jewish Desert Unit’, to be commanded by Orde Wingate.97 It was quite characteristic of Churchill that he acceded to Weiz­ mann’s proposals, without first consulting a single member of the Departments directly concerned - not one of them was present. It was also in form to make promises lightly, which he was later either unable or unwilling to carry through. Predictably, the officials entrusted with the day-to-day administration of the Middle East took offence at Weizmann’s access to higher quarters, derived, so they believed, from his alleged influence in the United States. When the Colonial Office learned of Churchill’s meeting with Weizmann, its resentment was tinged with sheer incredulity, especially since they had received the news via Dr Weizmann himself: We may leave it to the War Office to comment on the procedure employed by Dr Weizmann which is not likely to commend itself to anyone in that Department. It may be noted that we have only Dr Weizmann’s version of the Prime Minister’s attitude.98

Eden received Weizmann on 9 September, and expressed his surprise that he had not been informed previously about the negotiations for a Jewish Army - was that due to his reputation as an anti-Zionist? Eden understood that it was intended to form one Jewish and one Arab battalion of Buffs in Palestine, and to begin with the training of cadres for a Jewish Division. But he informed Weizmann that the Army did not have enough instructors and equipment for the pro­ posed Desert Force.99 By 13 September, the Departments concerned had all agreed to the Division scheme of 10,000 Jews - 3,000-4,000 were to come from Palestine, and the remainder from the United States. Weizmann believed that the recent bombings of Tel Aviv by the Italians had acted as a catalyst.100 On 10 October, 1940, the British Cabinet approved Weizmann’s scheme. At Colonial Office insistence, certain conditions of recruit­ ment were laid down; each recruit would have to provide a guaran­ tee that he would be accepted back in his country of origin, and no commitment would be given as to the theatre of the Division’s employment, meaning, in fact, that the Division would not be allowed to fight in Palestine. In addition, Weizmann was sworn to

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secrecy about the new scheme until after the Presidential elections in the United States, to avoid the Division becoming bandied about in the election campaign.101 Bowing to force majeure, the Whitehall officials determined that if the Zionists were going to get their Division, the Arabs must receive some counter-concession. No one suggested mobilising an Arab Division! The obvious solution, Whitehall believed, was to implement the constitutional proposals of the 1939 White Paper - pressed upon the Government by Nuri Said, and ruled out by Churchill the previous summer. However, the Patria disaster on 25 November, 1940102 created an emotional tidal wave in the Zionists’ favour, and the Colonial Office withdrew, reluctantly. The experienced Shuckburgh decided that the atmosphere at Cabinet level would not be conducive to what Churchill would regard as a further blow against the Zionist interest. After a frantic Zionist lobby in London, the Patria survivors had been allowed to stay on in Palestine, as an exceptional act of mercy, thereby revoking the High Commissioner’s original deportation order. Shuckburgh evidently feared the influence of ‘the Elders of Zion’ in the highest quarters: That would be all very well if we were carrying out our Palestine policy under normal conditions and with a normal expectation of support from the Cabinet, on whose behalf we are acting. Unfortunately, such conditions do not exist. Even if the Palestine Jews swallowed the decision without much ado, there are certain to be remonstrances from Dr Weizmann which will reach the ears of the Prime Minister and his ‘Zionist’ colleagues. They will probably say that, having been beaten over the ‘Patria’, the ‘Jew-baiting’ Colonial Office is now trying to get its own back by stopping the normal course of legal immigration ... Procrastination is the coward’s expedient, but I cannot help feeling that on the present occasion it is probably the course least open to objection.103

In the meantime, the Zionists had been ironing out the technical details of the Jewish Division scheme at the War Office. On 31 December, 1940, a commander for the Force, Brigadier General L.A. Hawes, was announced.104 But Weizmann became impatient, as the weeks elapsed since the American election, duly won by President Roosevelt. On 9 December, 1940, Weizmann wrote a long report on his trip to the United States.105 He discerned a general apathy, due partly to a natural reaction after the Elections, and partly to the holiday season. German propaganda was taking effect, arguing that American aid to the British would only provoke the Germans to yet

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more ruthless and determined action. The Vichy regime was claim­ ing that their tragedy was Britain’s doing, and that the war was already lost. Also, Allied spending in the United States had produced a wave of prosperity, and the country was indulging itself in con­ sumer luxuries, deflecting resources from industry, to goods ‘which have nothing to do with aeroplanes or war weapons’. In all this gloomy picture, Weizmann depicted American Jewry as playing a special role, as ‘the natural allies of Great Britain against Hitler’. The Jews understood the need to destroy Nazism, and would be ready to give everything for victory. Weizmann estimated that he could enlist tens of thousands of volunteers. But the British authorities created the impression that they did not wish to create obligations to the Jews who, therefore, feel that they are not wanted; moreover, they feel that they are not wanted because the British feel that they have got them anyhow, so that there is no need to give them any encouragement ... they are closely connected with industry, trade and political life in America. Many of them play prominent parts in various walks of life. They are by nature dynamic, and would certainly be a great accession of strength to our position in America.

Some weeks later, Weizmann reported that John Martin, ‘now, happily, the Prime Minister’s favourite secretary’, had informed him that Churchill had read his letter with great interest, and shown it to many others, including the people at the Ministry of Infor­ mation.106 Indeed, it now provoked inter-Departmental discussion about Weizmann’s special status, and the alleged importance for the British cause of American Jewry. Denied the means of offering the Arabs a counter-concession, the Colonial and Foreign Offices now determined to work for the cancellation of the Division scheme. At the end of December, 1940, certain Ministerial changes had been effected, due to the death of Lord Lothian, the Ambassador at Washington. Lord Halifax had taken Lothian’s place, and Eden was moved to the Foreign Office. The latter was to take a different view of the Division scheme from his new office, where he naturally fell in with the pro-Arab school that he had been so familiar with since his first incumbency (1935-1938). The Department now expressed ‘fundamental objections’, because the scheme was to be ‘operated by Dr Weizmann and his little clique of Palestine Zionists and by them alone’, and for that reason, even if the Division did serve abroad, the Palestine Arabs would still believe that the scheme was designed to

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further Jewish interests in Palestine, ‘presumably at the expense of Arab interests’. Charles Baxter, Bagallay’s successor as head of the Eastern Department, went so far as to suggest that the Division scheme, as currently contemplated, would even create trouble for Britain in the United States; there would be protests that the Jews were not being allowed to fight in Palestine, and ultimately, the Americans would not understand why the British did not reward the Jews for their services with suitable political concessions after the war.107 When the draft announcement of the Scheme, as prepared jointly by the Foreign, Colonial and War Offices, was sent to Weizmann, it provoked his vigorous protest. He complained that his offer had been made in his capacity as President of the Jewish Agency, and should be accepted as such. He also demanded that the Government give him a specific guarantee that the Force would be used in the Middle East.108 He took up his grievances with Foreign Secretary Eden, on 24 January, 1941. Eden refused to give any undertaking in regard to the theatre of war in which the Division would be used, and likewise, refused to waive the condition that recruits bring guaran­ tees that they would return to their countries of origin. Weizmann deprecated suspicions about ulterior motives and stated, in the heat of the moment, that the Zionists had no intention of using back doors after the war - it was not the 10,000 of the Jewish Division who would clamour for Palestine after the war, but at least two millions. Eden simply shrugged in despair.109 On 5 February, 1941, Lord Lloyd died suddenly. As the officials took stock of the situation, they had to take into account the deterio­ ration in British military fortunes in the Middle East. Following Wavell’s great victory over the Italians in December, the Germans brought over to North Africa General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps, to bolster up the Italians. With a fresh military crisis in the offing, the value of the Arabs’ neutrality increased, and proportionately, Weizmann’s promises of American aid receded. At the War Office, the VC.I.G.S. General Haining (who had been G.O.C. Palestine from 1938 to 1939), now assumed a crucial role in having the Division scheme postponed. When informed by Shuck­ burgh that Weizmann was now pressing hard, since he was ‘anxious to get away to America but will not go until the announcement about the Jewish contingent has actually been published’, Haining replied, with a mixture of derision and acerbity:

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As our friend the Doctor first stated that he was going to America last August, I am not particularly concerned as to whether he takes up his passage on the 26th February or not, for I feel sure he will have no compunction in throwing it up if the announcement has not been made. I am equally convinced that he will not go to America until the announcement has been made public.110

On the eve of General Rommers anticipated offensive in the Western desert, the propaganda factor in the Middle East assumed first priority. Professor Rushbrook-Williams, Director of Middle East propaganda at the Ministry of Information, asserted that no matter how the announcement on the Division was worded, the Arabs would believe that it was intended to hand Palestine over to Jewish domination. He explained that just recently, Axis propaganda had begun to concentrate on the alleged influence of the Jews over the British government. Rushbrook-Williams asked for a delay in the announce­ ment, for at least a week to ten days, during which his agents might manage to ‘prepare the ground’.111 But it was General Haining who conceived the decisive stroke which finally broke down Churchill’s resistance. On 24 February, 1941, Haining cabled to General Wavell, and invited the latter’s comment on the Jewish contingent, which was now about to be decided finally. Wavell’s strongly-worded opposition left little room for doubt or manoeuvre: It is vitally important that for next six months at least I should be free as possible from commitments and anxieties in Palestine, Iraq and Syria. All these countries are at present target of intense Axis propaganda of which principal weapon is our alleged favouring of Jews at expense of Arabs ... If this Jewish contingent is to be raised at all, I consider it is essential that para 10 of Palestine White Paper should be implemented first and that raising of contingent should be dependent on Jewish acceptance and implemen­ tation of this. If any of the contingents are to be raised in Palestine they must be trained outside Middle East. In no circumstances must contingent be sent to Middle East ... It would however be much best not to raise contingent at all especially in view of general shortage of equipment.112

A meeting of the Departments concerned was called at Whitehall on the day after Wavell’s telegram was received. Wavell’s message was read out to those present. Lord Moyne, the new Colonial Secretary, who had had barely one month to get acquainted with his office, concurred entirely with Wavell. He suggested three alternative

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options, all of which were forwarded to Churchill for his decision. First, if they did go ahead with the Division, it was recommended that they announce simultaneously the Government’s intention to proceed with the constitutional scheme; second, it was proposed to cut out all recruiting in Palestine itself, and announce that the Division was not destined for service in the Middle East; or third, they might postpone the whole scheme for six months, ‘in the hope that by then the Middle East situation may be less critical’.113 In the meantime, Weizmann had again been trying to have Bracken arrange a personal meeting with Churchill, prior to his departure for the United States, now re-scheduled for mid-March. He wrote a ‘strictly personal and confidential’ letter, stating that Churchill was reluctant to see him, and was trying to refer him to his personal assistant, Desmond Morton (1940-1946), but that this was ‘not at all the same thing’.114 But Weizmann got no further than Morton, whom he saw on 25 February, 1941. Morton reported back to Churchill that Weizmann was labouring under a ‘basic misunderstanding’ in regard to the Division scheme, and could not understand why it had not yet been announced. He warned that Eden and Captain Margesson (Eden’s replacement at the War Office) did not take the same views as their predecessors in office. Morton cautioned: ‘it seems to me that the principles of the declaration in question in so far as they may be agreed by the Government may differ greatly from what Dr Weizmann believes he will get’.115 Churchill could have taken the issue to the Cabinet, where he could have attempted to browbeat the Departments concerned. However, he was faced with a formidable united front, backed up by the Commander of Forces, Middle East, who was facing an immi­ nent attack by Rommel. During his first, uncertain year in office, and yet to taste a major victory, Churchill dared not overrule his civilian and military experts. He bowed, therefore, to the general consensus, albeit with little grace, and a great deal of spleen. His private letter to Lord Moyne was one of the few on Palestine that Churchill took care to publish in his War Memoirs: General Wavell, like most British military officers, is strongly pro-Arab. At the time of the licences to the shipwrecked illegal immigrants being permitted, he sent a telegram no less strong than this, predicting widespread disaster in the Arab world, together with the loss of the Baghdad-Basra-

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Haifa route... I overruled the General... all went well and not a dog barked.* It follows that I am not in the least convinced by all this stuff. The Arabs, under the impression of recent victories, would not make any trouble now. However, in view of the ‘Lustre’ policy (the allied expedition to Greece) I do not wish General Wavell worried by lengthy arguments about matters of no military consequence to the immediate situation. Therefore, Dr Weizmann should be told that the Jewish Army project must be put off for six months, but may be reconsidered again in four months. The sole reason given should be lack of equipment.116

Churchill’s insistence that ‘lack of equipment’ be the sole pretext proffered the Zionists (ironically, Wavell’s idea) was quite evidently due to his fear of repercussions in the United States. Lord Moyne wrote to Weizmann of the postponement of the scheme, and dis­ ingenuously explained that it was ‘in no sense a reversal of the previous decision in favour of your proposal’.117 Churchill did not in fact press the Division scheme again. By the time it came up for reconsideration, and was finally cancelled, in October, 1941, Anglo-American relations had changed drastically, for the better. But in March, 1941, Churchill found it necessary, in view of the delay in the scheme, to attempt to reconcile Weizmann. A few days before his departure for the United States, Weizmann made a last appeal, in person, to Desmond Morton, one of Churchill’s principal assistants. Morton described Weizmann’s mood as being ‘in great distress at his plans having been rejected by the Govern­ ment’. But Weizmann’s visit had been anticipated, and Morton had received appropriate instructions from Churchill, as he informed the Colonial Office: Naturally I took the line of Lord Moyne’s letter to Weizmann, but he was openly incredulous. He pleaded for five minutes with the Prime Minister, but, acting under the latter’s direction, I held out no immediate hope of that.118

But Churchill evidently had second thoughts, and agreed to receive Weizmann, just four days later, on the very day of his departure for the United States, on 15 March, 1941. According to Weizmann’s account of the meeting, Churchill stated that they had no need of a long conversation, since their thoughts were 99 per cent identical. He added that whenever he saw Weizmann it gave him a ‘twist in his * Reference to the Patria, on which see below, pp. 279ff.

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heart’. He explained that he had to postpone the Jewish Force, as many other matters, but he would not let Weizmann down.119 Weizmann stayed in the United States for just over four months, returning in July. Since Churchill had told him that he might discuss the scheme again in four months, Weizmann approached the War Office on his return. But they had told Weizmann to deal with the Colonial Office first, to settle the political problems involved. In a private letter to Moyne, the War Secretary, David Margesson, laid out concisely the Government’s position: The ostensible reason for delay was the shortage of equipment, but the true reason was based upon political considerations, and it seems to me that the political dangers now are certainly no less than they were last March. The arrival of the Free French in Syria, and the apparent desire of General de Gaulle to take a large measure of control there, are new factors compli­ cating the Arab situation. If we were now to give the appearance of arming Jews in bulk, I feel that we should land ourselves in a very pretty mess ... As to procedure, equipment is still short enough to justify a repetition of our earlier excuse, and as we adopted that line at the beginning we had better stick it.120

When Weizmann approached Moyne, the latter, after consulting Churchill, replied that the Division scheme would have to be left ‘in cold storage for the present’, once again, due to shortage of equip­ ment, now more acute still, since the Russians had joined the Allies, in June.121 Weizmann now sensed that each Department was trying to fob him off with excuses, and asked therefore for a definite answer, whether positive or negative.122 On 10 September, 1941, he wrote one last, impassioned appeal to Churchill. He dwelled on two familiar themes - the influence of American Jewry, and the continuation of the discredited policy of appeasement in the Middle East, long after it had passed from the world in Europe: Tortured by Hitler as no nation has ever been in modern times, and adver­ tised by him as his foremost enemy, we are refused by those who fight him the chance of seeing our name and our flag appear among those arrayed against him. I know that this exclusion is not in your own intentions or spirit. It is the work of people who were responsible for the Munich policy in Europe and for the White Paper in Palestine. We were sacrificed in order to win over the Mufti of Jerusalem and his friends who were serving Hitler in the Middle

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East, whereas the only thing which can square the Arabs is British strength in the Middle East, as has been clearly shown in Iraq. But are the Jews so utterly unimportant as the treatment meted out to them suggests? I have spent four months in America, travelling up and down the country, and closely watching the American scene. Forces over there are finely balanced; the position is uncertain. There is only one big ethnic group which is willing to stand, to a man, for Great Britain, and a policy of ‘allout-aid’ for her; the five million American Jews ... It has been repeatedly acknowledged by British statesmen that it was the Jews who, in the last war, effectively helped to tip the scales in America in favour of Great Britain. They are keen to do it - and may do it - again. But you are dealing with human beings, with flesh and blood, and the most elementary feeling of self-respect sets limits to service, however willing, if the response is nothing but rebuffs and humiliations. American Jewry waits for a word - a call - from His Majesty’s Government. The formation of a Jewish fighting force would be that signal.123

There is no record of any reply from Churchill, though he did cir­ culate Weizmann’s letter to the Cabinet. (On 19 September, ‘Baffy’ Dugdale noted in her diary that Churchill had ‘practically refused’ to answer Weizmann’s letter.)124 As usual, the officials and Ministers concerned were angered by Weizmann’s tactics in going above their heads direct to the Prime Minister. Eden minuted: ‘It is no doubt my fault, but this letter makes me feel less eager to help Dr Weizmann than I was before.’125 At the Foreign Office, H.M. Eyres accused Weizmann of ‘opening his mouth wider than before’, and claimed that instead of speaking of a contingent of 10,000 Jews to serve in the British Army, he was now speaking of ‘our flag’, i.e. of a separate, Jewish Army. As for the government’s policy in the Middle East, Eyres countered that the Jews seemed to forget that their National Home lay at the root of all Britain’s troubles with the Arabs, and that for many years past, British forces had protected the Jews against them. But even worse, Axis propaganda was now ‘dinning into the Arabs that we are tied to the Jewish chariot, and every concession we make to the Jews merely confirms the Arab belief in the truth of these broadcasts’. Eyres contrived even to blame the Jews for the Rashid Ali coup, the previous April - had it not been for British poli­ cies in Palestine, he averred, it would have probably been unnecessary to make a show of strength in Iraq. In regard to the Americans, Eyres was not sure that Weizmann’s remarks would be so welcome to Jews over there, as they were now particularly sensitive to the accusation that they were trying to drag the United States into the war on the Allied side.126

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Predictably, the most scorching comment came from the longsuffering Shuckburgh: Dr Weizmann’s letter to the P.M. is a typical production. I do not wish to enlarge upon it knowing, as I do, that I am regarded as prejudiced; but the whole thing seems to me to be put from a wholly imaginary angle. Dr Weizmann takes the ground that he is making us a generous offer, which we are brutally rejecting. The plain fact is that he is placing a pistol at our heads and is furious because we do not at once surrender. It is he, and not we, who wants this ‘Jewish Army’, and the reasons for which he wants it are political and not military. So far as we are concerned, we were told by the War Office last Spring that they would regard the Jewish contingents as an embarrass­ ment and not a help. I have no reason to suppose that they have since changed their minds. If we really want these reinforcements from the mili­ tary point of view, by all means let us have them. If we do not, and if Dr Weizmann is merely pressing his point with a view to making political capital for the Zionists, then it seems to me not merely unreasonable, but wholly outrageous that we should be pestered with such a matter in such times as the present.127

Shuckburgh’s note represents an extreme example of the intro­ spective bureaucrat, who had spent too many years at the same desk. His plaints, bordering on a persecution complex, read the stranger when one recalls that at that time, the community of nearly half a million Jews in Palestine remained under the very tangible threat of German invasion. Even so, the ‘political’ Departments, the Colonial and Foreign Offices, had to concede that the situation in the Middle East, for the present, was much brighter than it had been the previous February. Yet this did not mean that the Arabs could be expected to greet the creation of a Jewish Division with equanimity. Eyres proposed that the final decision should be taken by the War Office, solely on its military merits.128This view was confirmed by Nevile Butler, the head of the American Department at the Foreign Office. In his opinion, those individual American Jews who were helping the British cause would continue to do so whether Britain agreed to the Division scheme or not. Likewise, those poorer Jews who had voted for Roosevelt the previous November would continue to support him and his policy. It was true that there was a considerable section of more prosperous Jews that was highly sensitive to, even alarmed by, the prospect of being branded as warmongers. There was ‘just enough in Hitler’s cry that America is run by a Judeo plutocracy to make the Administration anxious that American Jews, as Jews,

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should not be leading a war party’. Therefore, Butler concluded, it would definitely be a mistake to snub the Jews gratuitously, but their feelings should not be a primary consideration on the Jewish Division issue.129 At the War Office, General Haining was already persuaded that the military disadvantages of a Jewish Force outweighed by far the advantages. He did not assess very highly the Jews’ martial qualities, whereas the very creation of the Force would impose upon the British immense additional security obligations in Palestine, as well as in Iraq. Whereas Haining did not consider himself competent to comment on the political arguments, he nonetheless deprecated the suggestion that American Jewry needed further incentive to support the British. Haining quite clearly belonged to that class of official who, as Weizmann observed, thought they already had the Jews ‘in their pocket’: their only hope of survival, except as a persecuted race, lies in the defeat of Germany. If they are not prepared to go out for that, the formation of a Jewish Force of 10,000 men is unlikely to influence them.130

At a dinner given by Victor Cazalet at the Dorchester on 9 October, Walter Elliott (now Director of Public Relations at the War Office) stated that the Division scheme involved ‘very high politics’ regard­ ing the Middle East, and the balance of forces was such that it had immobilised the War Cabinet, in which the Zionists’ friends were yet in the majority. Elliott believed that Jewish opinion in the United States might just ‘tip the balance’.131 The final decision on the Jewish Division scheme was taken in Cabinet on 13 October, 1941. After the most perfunctory of dis­ cussions, the project was cancelled. In a telegram sent to the High Commissioner of Palestine the next day, Lord Moyne communicated the decision: You will appreciate what a relief it is to Ministers that a final decision on the main project for the creation of Jewish contingents should at last, after two years of discussion and negotiation, have been taken, and I feel sure that the news will be most welcome to you.132

How can one explain Churchill’s deafening silence in October, when a project on which he had pressed so forcefully for so long was elimi­ nated? It seems quite clear that he still favoured the mobilisation of a Jewish Army in Palestine, for several reasons. A clue to his think­ ing at the time is provided in the following minute written by

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J.M . Martin, his ‘favourite secretary’, on the eve of the Cabinet decision: it is a pity that no means should be found of making use of the offer of Jewish man-power. Dr Weizmann is first and last a Zionist, and his primary interest in the ‘Jewish Army’ ... is frankly political ... ... it seems unfortunate to present the appearance of cold-shouldering Jewish support, which is of course naturally with us in the war against Hitler and, if encouraged, should provide all sorts of indirect aid, particularly in America, even if Jewish influence there is not what Dr Weizmann would like us to believe.133

To some degree, the men at No. 10 Downing Street were persuaded that the Zionists had political motives in raising a Jewish Army. The main bone of contention between Churchill and Whitehall, since the beginning of the war, had been the extent of the risk to British interests in the United States if London alienated the Zionists. This single theme dominates every debate on Zionism within the govern­ ment since the beginning of the war, and until the summer of 1941. After that date, there is a certain change in Churchill’s attitude. Put simply, since the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill by Congress, and the signing of the Atlantic Charter (March and August, 1941, respec­ tively), Churchill had secured virtually all he needed from the Americans, short of the final declaration of war. His need of the Zionists’ influence in the United States had declined correspondingly. With the temporary improvement of British military fortunes in the Middle East, in the summer of 1941, there was less strain on British forces in the area, and less urgency in arming the Jews of Palestine. Why did the Zionists, specifically Weizmann, not protest more vigorously at the Government’s failure to go through with the prom­ ised Jewish Division? Again, quite simply, Weizmann’s American ‘trump-card’ was one that might be brandished, yet ultimately, it could never actually be played. Churchill was virtually the last friend the Zionists had among the British elite, and there could be no way better calculated to alienate him than to allow Zionism to provoke a rift between the British and the Americans. Thus, in 1942, Weiz­ mann found himself explaining to his American colleagues why he had to ‘nurse’ Churchill with care: Here in the United States, it is difficult for me to use ‘strong’ language. As a British subject I have to be exceedingly careful not to contribute to the strain in Anglo-American relations ... chiefly for one reason: We have one great friend in England, the Prime Minister. Just as you would be extremely

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careful not to alienate the sympathies of the President, I find myself, especially on foreign soil, in an extremely delicate position. I must be doubly careful not to do anything which might possibly make Mr Churchill’s task more difficult.134

Some final remarks need to be made about the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group, in September, 1944. By 1944, Britain’s mili­ tary position was entirely transformed from that which had pertained in 1941. Churchill no longer had need of Jewish units to relieve the British garrison in Palestine. Nor was there any further danger of Axis conquest of the Middle East. Now, the Zionists were themselves demanding the right to fight against Hitler on the soil of Europe a factor which ‘solved’ the problem of Arab opposition to a Jewish Force in the Middle East. Nonetheless, opposition at Whitehall was strong. This time, Churchill’s triumph, and the establishment of the Jewish Brigade, presents us with an example of Churchill’s executive authority, even on an issue that was not essential to the war effort, when he chose to use it. Churchill regarded the idea of the Jews getting back at their arch­ persecutor as a moral issue. It appealed to his elemental sense of ‘fair play’. In October, 1943, he had told Weizmann, in a characteristic flight of rhetoric: He [Churchill] would hand over Hitler to the Jews ... he intended asking for a Jewish Force, with a Jewish Flag, which would march across Europe with the armies of the United Nations, straight to Berlin.135

Churchill’s inclination to see the Jewish Brigade as the Jews’ moral right was fuelled by uneasy feelings that he and his Government had not done all they might have to help rescue the Jews from Nazioccupied Europe’136 (on this, see below, pp. 286 ff.). He also felt that the new proposal - a Brigade is one-third of the size of a Division need not arouse the same objections that the 1941 scheme had. When the Brigade was first discussed in Cabinet, on 3 July, 1944, Churchill dwelt on the symbolic value of the scheme, as a gesture to compensate the Jews, and urged that: in view of the sufferings which the Jewish people were at present enduring there was a strong case for sympathetic consideration of projects in relation to them. He accepted the objections to a Jewish division, but felt that we should not refuse to examine the possibility of a brigade group.137

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The conditions of service devised by the War Office were calculated to provoke the Zionists’ rejection; first, that the Brigade would have to serve anywhere that the military authorities chose to station it - the intention being to locate it in the Far East, against the Japanese, rather than in Europe, against the Germans; and second, that it be prohibited from displaying a national flag. Churchill himself saved the Zionists the bother of lobbying, as he now made it quite clear to the Secretary of State for War, P.J. Grigg (his old acquaintance from the Treasury) that he intended having his way this time. The ‘American’ aspect of the matter was still high up in his scale of priorities: I like the idea of the Jews trying to get at the murderers of their fellowcountrymen in Central Europe, and I think it would give a great deal of satisfaction in the United States ... I believe it is the wish of the Jews themselves to fight the Germans anywhere. It is with the Germans they have their quarrel. There is no need to put the conditions in such a form as to imply that the War Office in its infinite wisdom might wish to send the Jews to fight the Japanese and that otherwise there would be no use in having the Brigade Group.138

In regard to the second condition imposed by the War Office, Churchill adjured: ‘Remember the object of this is to give pleasure and an expression to rightful sentiments, and that it certainly will be welcomed widely in the United States ... I cannot conceive why this martyred race ... should be denied the satisfaction of having a Flag.’ Churchill’s ‘American’ argument provoked a riposte from the Foreign Office. Had the Americans wished, they too could have set up Jewish military units long ago - they had not, and were unlikely to do so in the future. On the contrary, most Americans would regret such a step, as calculated to increase nationalist feelings among American Jews. In regard to the anticipated ‘propaganda value’, any announcement about a Jewish Brigade now might even act as a boom­ erang - the Americans might ask why it had not been done long ago ?139 But Churchill remained adamant, insisting that the announcement about the Jewish Brigade would help President Roosevelt get re­ elected! On 18 September, the Cabinet approved the announcement, Churchill having first secured Roosevelt’s approval.140 Professor Gelber has suggested two reasons why the Brigade was approved in 1944, whereas the Division was rejected in 1941. First, the 1944 scheme focussed in Europe, away from the Middle East, and inevi­ table Arab objections; and second, the formation of the Brigade signified the belated recognition, and a token admission of some

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responsibility for the unique suffering experienced by the Jews of Europe.141 Finally, during the summer of 1944, Churchill was still contemplating the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine after the war, a project for which he sought Roosevelt’s full cooperation - in this respect, the Jewish Brigade might well serve as the nucleus of the new State’s armed forces. 3. POLITICAL SOLUTIONS

(a) The Philby Plan In 1937, Churchill had opposed partition, almost instinctively. Not only was it likely to alienate the Arabs and, in 1937, to drive them into the embrace of the Italians; but in the longer view, partition would divide ‘tiny’ Palestine into two unstable statelets, which would not guard, but rather jeopardise British interests on the northern flank of the Canal. Churchill’s inherent contempt for the Arabs dur­ ing the 1930s was compounded with a hostility deriving from their pro-Axis tendencies. The perceived need to appease them, and the pro-German coup in Iraq in the spring of 1941, more than confirmed Churchill’s preconceptions. Significantly, one of Rashid Ali’s principal lieutenants was Haj Amin el-Husayani, Mufti of Jerusalem, ex-officio leader of the Palestinian Arabs. After the collapse of the Rashid Ali revolt, the Mufti fled to Berlin, and spent the rest of the war in the service of Adolf Hitler. Both had their ‘Jewish Problem’, and both had similar ideas as to its solution. The corollary of Churchill’s antipathy towards the Arabs, especially in view of their ‘ingratitude’ for what Britain, and he personally, had done for them after the First World War, was his belief that British victories in the Middle East should this time lead to a Jewish State in all of Palestine. One of the means whereby this was to be achieved, to which Churchill perhaps gave the most serious thought during the first half of the war, was the so-called ‘Philby Plan’. This involved elevating King Ibn Saud to grand overlord of the Arabs, in return for which (and for a huge Jewish ‘loan’) the former was expected to hand over Palestine to the Jews. An aura of romance and mystique still surrounds the self-styled Harry St John ‘Abdullah’ Philby, notwithstanding the recent bio­ graphy, by Elizabeth Monroe.142 Philby had a somewhat chequered career in the Middle East, mainly in Saudi Arabia, where he secured the agency for the import of Ford motor cars, and in 1930, converted

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to Islam. He was, by his own account, Ibn Saud’s close friend for over thirty years, ‘with all the privilege of a friend to disagree’. Yet Ibn Saud treated Philby with extreme caution, as befitting an eccentric. Saud once told the British Ambassador at Jidda that he believed Philby to be mentally deranged, and ordered his authorities to keep him under close surveillance, and informed him that if he indulged in any anti-British talk he was to be imprisoned.143 (Of course, one must make allowance for Saud’s tendency to tell his auditor what he wished to hear.) Philby was banished several times from Saudi Arabia, and finally, for good, in 1955. Philby *s extreme criticism of British policy in the Middle East, and in Palestine in particular, was naturally a factor which contributed to his popularity in the desert kingdom. Philby had never admitted that the Jews possessed any moral or legal claim to Palestine. After 1939, his plan to hand the country over to the Jews, in return for Saud’s overlordship of the Arabs, owed more to his conviction that the Arabs must bow to force majeure in Palestine, while at the same time lining the pockets of his Saudi master. In his autobiography, Philby rationalised: it has always been obvious to me that, when a powerful majority of individuals or nations is determined to ride roughshod over the law in favour of a deliberately conceived act of aggression or injustice, it behoves an injured party to act circumspectly and with consummate diplomatic skill to mitigate the consequences to itself of the contemplated wrong.144

The outbreak of World War Two found Philby in London, during one of his periodic exiles from Saudi Arabia. His application to the government as an Arabist was turned down on the grounds of instability and suspect loyalty. His candidature was not helped by consular reports from Jidda that Philby had been telling Ibn Saud that Britain could not win the war, and that Hitler was ‘un homme tres fin’.145According to Miss Monroe, Philby next busied himself with the Palestine issue, in order to secure Jewish finances for Ibn Saud, who during the war had lost his primary source of income, from the pilgrimage. Philby himself would insist that the Jewish ‘loan’ was to be used solely for the resettlement of Palestine’s Arabs elsewhere.146 Whatever the case, Philby’s plan took on a dynamic life of its own when at the end of September, 1939 he chanced to meet Lewis Namier at the Athenaeum Club. At this, and at a subsequent meet­ ing, with Weizmann and Shertok also, Philby claimed to have secured

4. Budget Day, 1929. On the way to the House of Commons with his wife and daughter.

6. With the Israeli ambassador, Eliahu Elath, 1958

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the Zionists’ agreement to his plan, which was deceptively simple: the Jews would receive the whole of Palestine west of the River Jordan, and the Palestinian Arabs would be re-settled elsewhere. The Jews would set up a fund of £20 million to this end. The plan was to be sponsored by Great Britain and the United States, who would persuade the rest of the Arab world to accept Ibn Saud’s overlordship.147 Namier was the most fervent advocate of the scheme in the Zionist camp, and was the last to relinquish hope, as late as in 1943. Namier believed that Ibn Saud was the only really independent Arab, and as such, the only one capable of imposing on the Arab world a scheme that would hand over all of Palestine to the Jews.148 Namier, whose understanding of English and European history was greater than that of the Middle East, trusted Philby’s expertise, and believed that the latter had accepted the fact that Palestine had already become irrevocably Jewish, and therefore rationalised the inevitable: ‘If at the cost of giving up Palestine the Arabs would get complete independence and as much unity as they could achieve, plus financial help, it would be a good bargain for them.’149 Moshe Shertok, the Jewish Agency’s Political Secretary, was less sanguine about Ibn Saud’s views, although he accepted the core of Philby’s plan, a Jewish Palestine in exchange for Arab independence elsewhere.150 Dr Weiz­ mann, who believed that history was repeating itself for the Jews, saw in the Philby Plan the reincarnation of his own aborted agree­ ment with the Emir Faysal, in January, 1919.151 Philby returned to Saudi Arabia in November, 1939, and com­ municated his plan to Ibn Saud in January, 1940. Ibn Saud was apparently reticent, and insisted that Philby keep his idea confiden­ tial, until the two Great Powers approached him first. Saud obviously feared accusations of treason against the Arab cause. But reticence was not a quality of Philby’s character, and foolishly, he spoke of his plan to some of the King’s Syrian and Palestinian entourage, who proceeded immediately to drum up opposition, and provoked Ibn Saud into a rage. This, and other matters, prompted the expul­ sion of Philby, who was not allowed to return until after the end of the war.152 Philby regarded Churchill as ‘the principal champion of Zionism in the Cabinet’, and relied on the Jews’ powers of persuasion to secure Great Power sponsorship for his plan. Philby had expected Weizmann to speak to Churchill of his plan directly after their

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meeting at the Athenaeum. But Weizmann did not raise the matter with Churchill at all during the winter of 193 9 -4 0 .153Weizmann was evidently more concerned to raise the Jewish Division, and head off the Land Regulations; as during the First World War, Weizmann believed that the Jews’ political reward would be handed out at the Peace conference; and lastly, Churchill himself was as yet the incum­ bent of a relatively junior, however important militarily, Cabinet position. But Weizmann did speak of Philby’s plan to officials at the American State Department, in February, 1940. State Department files do not record any response from the Americans, though one may safely presume that the officials regarded the plan with a good measure of circumspection, if not actual derision.154 There was a certain disposition at the Colonial Office to see in the various schemes of Arab Federation some way out of the Palestine impasse. It was postulated that the Palestinian Arabs might object less to a Jewish state in a part of Palestine, if they themselves were incor­ porated within a larger Arab unit. Successive Colonial Secretaries, MacDonald, and Lords Lloyd and Moyne, all toyed with this idea, for a time. When Lloyd mentioned to Weizmann the possibility of a federal solution, in July, 1940, the latter seized upon the idea, and took it up further with Lord Halifax, adding the details of the Philby plan. Halifax in turn mentioned the idea to Churchill. However, the permanent officials in both Departments turned their Ministers off the idea. First, it was stipulated that internal rivalries within the Arab world were impossible of solution, and it would be foolish for London to promote Ibn Saud over his rivals; second, in 1940, the Colonial Office especially, believing that in the 1939 White Paper it had found the optimal solution, had no wish to open up once more the Palestinian Pandora’s box.155 It was apparently Churchill himself who first broached with Weiz­ mann the idea of elevating Ibn Saud over the Arab world, at the two men’s meeting in March, 1941, on the eve of Weizmann’s second wartime visit to the United States. The idea, conjured up ad hoc by Churchill, was undoubtedly intended as something of a sweetener, in view of the bad news about the postponement of the Division scheme. At the end of their conversation, on Weizmann’s account, Churchill told him that Ibn Saud was the man the Jews had to reach an agreement with after the war; ‘He, the P.M., would use his good offices. I. [bn] S.[aud] would be made Lord of the Arab countries, the

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“Boss of the Bosses”, as he put it’. In return, Churchill stated, Ibn Saud would have to reach an agreement with Weizmann in regard to Palestine. Churchill even suggested that Weizmann raise the matter with Roosevelt, though he gave no indication that he knew of the Philby plan, or indeed, of the £20 million price tag attached.156 Churchill’s plans for a political reshuffle in the Middle East crystallised and assumed immediacy during the spring of 1941, when British arms in the Western Desert, in Iraq, and in Greece - all under General WavelPs command - faced their greatest challenge. Churchill believed that the help given to the Germans by Vichy Syria during the Rashid Ali revolt rendered forfeit French claims in the Levant. The British became convinced that the Germans intended using Syria as a springboard for the conquest of the Middle East, a fear which provoked a pre-emptive conquest by the British and Free French Forces in June, 1941. Following the British decision to bomb Syrian airfields in May, 1941,157 Churchill wrote a short memorandum to the CIGS, proposing that Britain terminate the French mandate over Syria, grant that country its independence, and form a federation of Arab states under Ibn Saud, provided the latter reached some settle­ ment with the Jews.158 The next day, Churchill elaborated on this theme, in a private note to Eden. He urged the Foreign Secretary to devise a comprehensive ‘Arab Policy’ for the Middle East. In his view, the future of Syria would now depend upon the conduct of the French mandatory - if it cooperated with invading British forces, Britain might refrain from raising the thorny problem of the lapse of the Mandate. But if the French opposed (as in fact turned out to be the case) then Britain should declare the Mandate as lapsed, and proclaim an independent sovereign Arab state in Syria, in permanent alliance with Britain and Turkey.159 That left Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine. After the Rashid Ali revolt, the Iraqis, naturally, were in disgrace. In Trans-Jordan, Churchill’s own appointee, the Emir Abdullah, was too obviously a dependent on British beneficence to command general respect, and not a figure whom Churchill now regarded as an appropriate candi­ date to head an Arab Federation. Of all the Arab leaders, Ibn Saud alone commanded unique esteem in the West. He fitted the romantic image of the proud, independent, desert Arab. He had proved him­ self during the 1920s, when he had ousted the Hashemite line from the Arabian Peninsula, and established Saudi Arabia. Professor Elie Kedourie has recently confessed his failure to comprehend why ‘Ibn

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Saud came to be held in great awe in British official circles, his views accorded great respect, and his position in the Arab world believed to be very strong, even permanent’.160 But Churchill (and, as we shall see below, colleagues such as Amery and Smuts) did regard Ibn Saud, perhaps faute de mieux, as the chief candidate, if any, for the headship of the Arab world. Thus, on 19 May, 1941, Churchill informed Eden that he had been thinking ‘for some time past’ of raising Ibn Saud to ‘a general overlordship’ of the area. The new political order might consist of ‘an Arab King in Syria and an Arab Caliph or other suitable title over Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Transjordania’. Churchill expected Ibn Saud to agree to the establish­ ment of a Jewish state in Palestine, which ‘might form an independent federal unit in the Arab Caliphate’.161 The Foreign Office could not be expected to agree to the Philby plan. The officials were convinced of the Arabs’ irreconcilable hosti­ lity to Zionism, regarded by them as an alien import, and a threat to Muslim society. Ibn Saud himself was known to be virulently antiJewish, a sentiment which he believed he shared with the Christian world. In October, 1937, the Saudi ruler told the retiring British Political Agent in Kuwait, Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: ‘Our hatred for the Jews dates from God’s condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa [Jesus Christ], and their subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet. It is beyond our understanding how your Government, representing the first Christian power in the world today, can wish to assist and reward these very same Jews who maltreated your Isa ...’ Further on in the conversation, Ibn Saud told Dickson ‘that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty’.162

Therefore, in reply to Churchill’s note, Eden presented a memo­ randum to the Cabinet, asking that for the present, during the current crises, Palestine be left aside from their considerations. Their immediate goal must be to appease Arab opinion, on the eve of the imminent military operations: I am not now asking for a reconsideration of the Palestine problem. I merely recall the fact that this question is unhappily a part, and a vitally important part of the Arab problem. I should welcome, in due course, a decision to take the next steps to give effect to the Palestine White Paper, but I do not ask for this now. In present conditions it could have no decisive effect in satisfying Arab opinion. The Germans could always offer more.163

On 29 May, 1941, Eden delivered his well known speech at the

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Mansion House, London, in which he committed his Government to giving its support to any scheme of Arab unity which commanded the general approval of the Arab world. It is necessary to emphasise that this did not signify a British initiative, as was generally thought, but rather a British signal to the Arabs that they would view with sympathy any Arab initiative, which enjoyed a general consensus. As such, it was purely a propaganda device, on the eve of the British invasion of Vichy Syria.164 The Foreign Office regarded the project to instal Ibn Saud as head of the Arab world as too problematic, if not plainly anachronistic, to justify serious consideration. Churchill may have indulged in daydreams, of doing now for the Wahhabis what in 1921 he had done for the Hashemites - but Churchill knew little if anything of subsequent developments in the Arab world and hardly took into account the post-1921 national and dynastic rivalries among the Arabs. In May, 1941, the Foreign Office believed that any scheme for Arab unity was doomed to failure, due to ‘dynastic rivalries between Ibn Saud and the Hashemites’.165 In any case, events took their own course, as the British and the Free French conquered Syria in June, 1941. When, in Churchill’s view, the French did not fulfil their promises to make political concessions to the Syrians, Churchill tried to revive his ideas in Cabinet. At the end of August, he suggested a break with the French, and some form of a general settlement with the Arabs that would involve Palestine. But his proposal was deferred in Cabinet, and Churchill did not press the matter.166 In September, 1941, Leo Amery became directly involved in the scheme to promote Ibn Saud. Amery had a seminal influence over Churchill in regard to Zionism, even if the two men differed in many respects, both in politics, and on the personal level.167 In 1940, Amery had believed the Palestine White Paper to be an immutable political fact, except for one circumstance: if the Arabs of Palestine, or the Arabs generally, go wrong and rise in arms against us. In that case there is obviously only one policy and that is to arm the Jews who are there as quickly as we can and invite as many as are willing to come and occupy the country. In that case the Arabs of Palestine must be regarded as having forfeited all claims upon our consideration . .. 168

These views bear a remarkable similarity to Churchill’s, not coinci­ dentally, and, following the universal pro-Axis sentiments of the Arab world during the crisis of spring, 1941, Amery, like Churchill, thought the time ripe for ‘re-colouring’ the Middle Eastern map.

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Another seminal influence on Churchill’s imperial thinking, as noted already, was the South African leader, Jan Smuts. Following the political and military changes in the Middle East during the summer of 1941, Smuts corresponded with Amery and, apparently of his own initiative, arrived at quite similar ideas about a solution to the Palestine problem within the frame of a general reshuffle in the area: The way we have dealt with Palestine and the Jews is no particular credit to British statesmanship. Isn’t the way out to deal with this question in con­ junction with the new situation in the Arab world? We have promised independence to Syria and Lebanon, we have guaranteed independence to Iraq, Eden has expressed his sympathy with Arab unity. Why not now put Palestine into this pot and brew something new and get out of impracticable White Papers and the like? Why not put Palestine into an Arab confederation on condition that it [the confederation] be open to Jewish immigration and equal rights in land holding and otherwise. The Arabs would surely be prepared to give a good quid pro quo for a large Arab State or federation and the Jews would get a refuge from the persecutions of mad Europe.169

At the beginning of September, 1941, Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India, brought down to Chequers an Indian statesman, Firoz Khan Noon.170 Over lunch, Churchill asked Khan Noon to make contact with Weizmann, to try to settle the ‘Moslem-Zionist deadlock’. A few days after, Khan Noon reported back to Amery that he had met Weizmann, and the two had arrived at a solution. It was the by-now-familiar scheme to place Ibn Saud at the head of an Arab federation - if the other Arab leaders did not accept the ‘suzerainty of the King of Mecca’, then Khan Noon suggested that ‘the kingships of Iraq and Transjordan could be abolished’. Before his promotion, Ibn Saud would have to sign a treaty with the Jews, guaranteeing them an autonomous state in Palestine.171 Significantly, Weizmann had not apparently seen fit to mention the Philby plan, which included the £20 million Jewish loan. Many Zionists were reluctant about entrusting the Saudi leader with such a large sum, and in any case, why volunteer the money, when Churchill himself was apparently promoting the idea, with no price-tag attached? In his own report of the alleged ‘Moslem-Zionist’ agreement, Amery told Churchill that by far the best solution would be to assemble all the Arab states under one single framework, and that Ibn Saud was much more of a statesman than any other Arab. But Amery was in complete agreement with the Foreign Office prognosis as to the Saudi leader’s prospects of success. Amery had his doubts

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whether ‘your Levantine effendis of Baghdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem’ would submit to ‘the overlordship of what they regard as a mere “Beduin”’.172In addition, as he told Weizmann, though not Churchill, Amery had his doubts about the stability of Saudi Arabia, and whether it would continue to exist should Ibn Saud himself disappear. Amery also expressed reservations in regard to ‘the strong feelings of the supporters of Abdullah and of the young King in Iraq’.173 Yet, notwithstanding all his reservations, Amery was convinced that ‘some sort of an Arab federation with a Jewish sub-division of Palestine as a unit in it’ was the only feasible solution, and that it had entered the realm of political reality since the liberation of Syria. But it is important to note also that Amery did not subscribe to the Philby conception, as endorsed by both Churchill and the Zionists. Since 1937, Amery was consistent in his advocacy of partition, and envis­ aged the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine to the proposed Arab federation. The Jewish state too was to be incorporated in the Arab federation, so that any Arabs remaining in it, might, for federal purposes, still constitute a part of the larger Arab unit.174 Undoubtedly, Churchill saw in Amery’s initiative an opportunity to revive the ideas he had put to Eden the previous May. Since Oliver Lyttelton, the Minister of State Resident in the Middle East, was then on a visit to London, Churchill asked the Ministers concerned to discuss once again the federation idea, describing it as ‘full of interest and indeed the best I can think o f’.175 Churchill was quite evidently still thinking of giving the Jews all, and not a part, of Western Palestine. Eden, Amery, Moyne and Lyttelton met on 26 September, 1941. They all agreed that the federation scheme held out prospects for a solution to the Palestine problem, but saw very great practical difficulties in the way of even a limited federation, even of Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine and Trans-Jordan (these states had in fact com­ prised Ottoman Syria, until 1918). There were difficulties in regard to Syria and the Lebanon, which both lay in the French sphere of interest. Lastly, any scheme along the lines suggested by Khan Noon was considered quite impracticable, since the British could not impose one Arab suzerain upon another, nor could Britain employ force to create a federation.176 Five days later, Amery wrote a private letter to Churchill, setting out his own conviction that partition was the only solution in

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Palestine. Amery’s central theme, well taken by Churchill, was that Britain must extricate itself from the thankless role of arbitrator between Jewish and Arab interests in Palestine - with the former talking in terms of settling millions, and the latter claiming the right to stop all immigration beyond the White Paper figures. The ‘only one real workable solution’, suggested Amery, was to give the Jews a definite part of Palestine as their own state, with full responsibility for settling, and ultimately for defending it. Amery believed that the Arabs ‘in spite of Lawrence’s performances - were essentially poor fighters, and that in the long term, the Jews of Palestine, if left to themselves, could very soon annex the whole of Palestine’. But Amery definitely ruled out the Philby conception. He told Churchill that, in the long term, the ideal policy might well have been to give the whole of Palestine to the Jews, and ‘find the money’ to transfer the Arabs of Palestine to Trans-Jordan and Syria. But Amery now ruled out ‘so extreme a policy, in view of our many Moslem interests’. It could only be done, if at all, mused Amery, ‘by handing over our mandate to Roosevelt and telling him to get on with it!’ Amery proposed a limited solution to the Palestine problem, based upon the Peel plan of 1937 - though he thought that Peel had been too generous to the Jews! The predominantly-Arab Galilee, he believed, should go to the Arabs. In common with all British statesmen, Churchill included, Amery never believed that Palestine, on its own, could provide the sole, or even principal solution to the Jewish Problem: As for the Jews who cannot find room in Palestine under whatever policy we adopt, they will just have to manage somehow. I don’t believe there is any room in Europe or in the Colonial World where they could be settled on a large scale. I don’t believe they would go and the people concerned would kick against their going in numbers, just as much as the Arabs have done.177

The only geographical alternative to Palestine, Amery suggested, was Cyrenaica - an idea which Churchill himself would take to in 1943. (During the 1930s, various ‘territorial’ schemes had been toyed with; in 1938, Ernest Bevin had written to Australian labour leaders, to suggest the establishment of Jewish settlements in Western Australia; other territories contemplated by Whitehall officials ranged from Kenya, Northern Rhodesia and British Guiana, to the ‘obscure recesses of South America, Africa and Australasia’; at one point, the Germans contemplated deporting all the Jews in Europe to the island of Madagascar.178)

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On 3 November, 1941, Philby himself finally reached No. 10 Downing Street, where he was received by J.M . Martin, Churchill’s secretary. Philby maintained that the Arab world would readily accept a ‘Wahhabi’ solution, that is all but Abdullah, though ‘his opposition could be overcome’. Philby told Martin that Ibn Saud had already agreed to the plan, on condition that he received a subven­ tion of ‘several million pounds’, to be used ‘in part’ for the transfer of Palestine’s Arabs elsewhere. Martin himself was sceptical, because of Philby’s reputation, and because he had not been in Saudi Arabia since the previous February. Lord Moyne, now Colonial Secretary, also took the negative view of Philby’s offer.179 The caveats of Martin and Moyne brought an end, for the time being at least, to plans for Ibn Saud’s future. Churchill stipulated that ‘all this talk is premature’, and again, reiterated his stock cliche: ‘I remain wedded to the Balfour Declaration as implemented by me’. In any case, Churchill concluded, they should drop the Philby idea for the present, and ‘get on with the war’.180 On the day after Churchill gave instructions to drop the federation idea for the present, Amery replied to Smuts’ letter on the subject (above, p. 234). He wrote that only the federation scheme would enable the Jews to bring into Palestine as many immigrants as they wished, and allow the Arabs to keep them out of areas they wished. He advised Smuts that the idea was ‘very much in Winston’s mind, though it would do no harm your keeping him reminded of your views on the subject... ’ However, Amery’s views of Palestine’s capa­ city to solve the Jewish problem remained very remote from those entertained by the Zionists themselves: The real question of course is whether anything on that scale will really solve the Jewish problem in Europe ... The heroic answer, I imagine, would be to give them the whole of Palestine and Trans-Jordan and spend a hundred millions or whatever might be necessary to re-settle the displaced Arabs in the rest of the Arab world ... but I doubt the exhausted nations at the end of this war would be prepared for anything so drastic ... it seems to me that, whatever the precise solution, it will be based on one part of the Jews becoming a national state in Palestine, small or large, and the rest eventually being assimilated and disappearing . .. 181

Churchill in fact seems to have broached the Ibn Saud scheme, unofficially, when he visited the United States in 1942. He apparently mentioned the scheme to Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, a fact related to Weizmann by Field Marshal Dill, head of the British Staff Mission to Washington.182

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There the issue apparently rested for over a year, until Weizmann again took the initiative, in January, 1943. At a further meeting at the American State Department, he invoked Churchill’s authority, stating that the Prime Minister ‘had a plan for an agreement with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, similar to that drawn up by Weizmann and the Emir Feisal in 1919’. In reply to a query by Wallace Murray, head of the Near Eastern Department, Weizmann stated that he himself was ready to pursue negotiations with Ibn Saud, if he first received the support of Britain and the United States. On 26 January, 1943, Weizmann met with Sumner Welles, Under-Secretary of State, who agreed to mention the Ibn Saud scheme to the President himself. Weizmann conveyed the essence of both meetings to Lord Halifax, British Ambassador in Washington, who of course cabled the news back to the Foreign Office.183 The Ambassador’s report provoked consternation back at the Foreign Office: ‘On the one hand, the policy of His Majesty’s Government approved by Parliament - the White Paper. On the other, Dr Weizmann is discussing with the State Department another policy, described apparently by the State Department themselves as “Mr Churchill’s idea’”. The Foreign Office recommended informing the Americans that what the Prime Minister had told Weizmann off the record could not be accepted even as an unofficial proposal of the British government. Eden himself asked Churchill what he had really said to Weizmann about the Ibn Saud scheme? Churchill did not deny that he had encouraged Weizmann to pursue the scheme with the Americans, as a possible alternative to continuing with the White Paper. However, in March, 1943, at the time of the discussion provoked by Weizmann’s initiative, Churchill still regarded it as premature: Dr Weizmann has no authority to speak in my name. At the same time I expressed these views to him when we met some time ago, and you have often heard them from me yourself. The great difficulty is the age of Ibn Saud. I regard all discussions on these points as premature at present and only liable to cause dissension.184

As usual, Churchill took great care that his compliance should not be regarded as acquiescence in Foreign Office policy to Palestine: ‘As you know, I am irrevocably opposed to the White Paper which, as I have testified in the House, I regard as a breach of a solemn under­ taking to which I was a party.’185 In Washington, Weizmann at last secured an audience with the

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President, on 11 June, 1943. Roosevelt told the Zionist leader that during a long talk he had just had with Churchill on Palestine, the latter had ‘sold him’ the idea of calling together all the Arabs, for a joint meeting with himself and the President.186 Roosevelt and Churchill would tell the Arabs that they ‘had done very badly in the war; while they were just sitting, the Allies were pouring out blood’. Roosevelt told Weizmann that he believed the Arabs were ‘purchas­ able’. Sumner Welles, also present at their meeting, made the practi­ cal suggestion that Roosevelt send an emissary to Ibn Saud, to prepare for the projected conference, provided Churchill agreed. Among possible candidates mentioned were Philby himself, and Lieutenant Colonel Harold B. Hoskins, a senior officer of the American Uni­ versity at Beirut, who since 1941 had been attached to the State Department. President Roosevelt entertained some rather wild ideas about the Middle East, as did many of his fellow-statesmen. Their fanciful notions derived from a mix of sheer ignorance and romantic cari­ catures. In December, 1942, Roosevelt apparently toyed with the following plan, in a conversation with Henry Morgenthau Jr.: First, I would call Palestine a religious country. Then I would leave Jerusalem the way it is and have it run by the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, the Protestants, and the Jews - have a joint committee run i t ... I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine ... I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part of the Middle E ast... Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish family ... But I don’t want to bring in more than they can economically support ... It would be an independent nation just like any other nation ... Naturally, if there are 90 per cent Jews, the Jews would dominate the government ... There are lots of places to which you could move the Arabs. All you have to do is drill a well because there is this large underground water supply, and we can move the Arabs to places where they can really live.187

Colonel Hoskins was the man chosen by Roosevelt as his emissary to Ibn Saud. Hoskins had already toured the Middle East during the winter of 1942-1943. His report on that visit, which had reached both Roosevelt and Churchill, had concluded that ‘unless preventive measures are taken, fighting may break out in Palestine between Zionists and Arabs before the end of the war, possibly even this Spring, and lead in turn to Arab-Jew clashes in other parts of the Near East’. To avert this, Hoskins had in January, 1943 suggested a joint Allied Declaration on Palestine, warning against any attempt by either party to impose by force a solution to its liking.188 While

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passing through London, Hoskins had told the Zionists, and British officials, that a Jewish state could be established in Palestine only by military force.189 For this reason, Weizmann deprecated the fact that in the summer of 1943 Roosevelt appointed this same envoy to approach Ibn Saud. In August, 1943, Hoskins reported back that Ibn Saud was unwilling to take any initiative, realising that ‘despite his position of leadership in the Arab world, he cannot, without prior consultation, speak for Palestine, much less “deliver” Palestine to the Jews, even if he were willing for even an instant to consider such a proposal’. Not only that, but Ibn Saud had taken personal affront, claiming that Weizmann’s offer of a bribe of £20 million had ‘impugned his character and his motives’. According to Hoskins, Philby too was discredited, because of his role in the episode, and banned per­ manently from the Saudi kingdom.190 In London, Philby vigorously denied Hoskins’ version. According to him, the American envoy had been outwitted by the Saudi king, ‘the astutest politician of the Middle East’.191 Philby claimed that when he met Hoskins in London, in November, 1943, the latter had modified his story, and withdrew his claim that Ibn Saud had banned him (Philby) from Saudi Arabia.192 Namier was convinced by Philby that there was yet life and hope in the scheme, provided that one of the Great Powers took the initiative, and provided the scheme was not divulged prematurely.193 The Hoskins report reflected badly both on Weizmann and on Sumner Welles. One historian has even suggested that the failure of the Ibn Saud project contributed to Welles’ resignation, in December, 1943. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and the NEA officials reacted with an ‘I-told-you-so relief and angry embarrassment that such a predictable blunder had been set in motion in the first place’. Henceforth, the Department tried to compensate Ibn Saud with a policy of ‘greater apology and munificence’ than hitherto.194 Roosevelt himself was hardly less incensed than the State Depart­ ment, since Ibn Saud had been given to believe, by Philby, pre­ sumably, that the President himself was involved. The President expressed ‘surprise and irritation that his own name as guarantor of the payment had been in any way brought into this matter’, thus making him a party to the impugning of Ibn Saud’s dignity, in proffering a Jewish bribe.195 Yet even now, Weizmann did not relinquish the project, convinced

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by Philby that Hoskins had sabotaged it deliberately. In December, 1943, he wrote to retiring Under-Secretary Welles a long recapitula­ tion of the affair, and suggested that ‘if the original scheme was offered to Ibn Saud on behalf of the President and Mr Churchill, it would be accepted’. Weizmann was convinced that the scheme would serve the interests of the Great Powers, and give to both sides to the conflict a fair deal, it being conceived on big lines, large enough to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of Arabs and Jews, and the strategic and economic interests of the United States and Brtain ... If the world supports the Jews in their demand for Palestine west of the Jordan, let the Arabs concede it as a quid pro quo for fulfilment of their claims everywhere else.196

In his Memoirs, Weizmann infers that the entire scheme fell through due to the machinations of the Arabist, Colonel Hoskins. Philby himself blamed Churchill and Roosevelt who, he claimed, ‘were unable to make up their minds to try an unorthodox solution of an entirely intractable problem’, and were therefore reduced ‘to playing the orthodox political game of trying to get as much as possible for the Jews after the war without committing themselves to any quid pro quo for the Arabs’.197 But quite clearly, the whole scheme was an ill-conceived anachro­ nism, owing much of its life to Philby’s misguided ambition. He had never received any concrete commitment from Ibn Saud, and there is no reason to suppose that the latter could have imposed himself on the rest of the Arab world. The Middle East reality after World War Two was substantially different from that pertaining after the First, and no Arab leader could have retained, yet alone improved his position by handing over Palestine to the Zionists. At the begin­ ning of the war, Ibn Saud’s impecuniosity may have tempted him to play Philby along, in the hope of obtaining some of that legendary Jewish wealth. However, as noted by Miss Monroe, once he began obtaining revenues from the American oil companies, there was never any chance of his agreeing to Philby’s idea.198 Churchill’s attitude, like that of Weizmann himself, owed much to his fossilized, World War One conceptions of the Middle East. His contempt for the Arabs, imbibed from T.E. Lawrence, had been more than confirmed by their record during the 1930s, and during the years of crisis for British arms in the Middle East. But even when one makes allowance for entrenched views, reinforced by a sublime

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ignorance, or indifference to indigenous passions, one cannot but register incredulity at the cavalier fashion in which Churchill tried out the Ibn Saud conception, first with Weizmann, in March, 1941, and then two months later with Eden. The latter chose wisely not to argue the point with a powerful Prime Minister, whose views on the Middle East were notoriously eccentric. But Churchill had predicated the scheme on Roosevelt’s support, and appreciated its fragility, depending as it did on the mortality of one man, Ibn Saud. Churchill chose not to insist on this point - perhaps because even his most pro-Zionist colleague, Leo Amery, took a more realistic view, and ruled out the Ibn Saud ‘overlordship’. It was Amery who pressed on Churchill the solution of partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab States, and it was to this panacea, which need not depend on political reshuffles in the Arab world, which Churchill now turned.

(b) The Return to Partition, 1943-1944 During the spring of 1943, there took place within the British government a comprehensive debate on Britain’s future policy in Palestine. The immediate catalyst was, as so often, a letter from Weiz­ mann to Churchill, accusing Ministers of seizing every opportunity of asserting that the 1939 White Paper was Britain’s ‘firmly estab­ lished policy’.199 Churchill himself did not intend re-opening the Palestine question, but when he circulated Weizmann’s letter, together with his own customary tirade against the White Paper, he prompted vigorous reactions from his Cabinet colleagues, who were in any case now also moved by other considerations. The Foreign Office was concerned particularly that Zionist propaganda in the United States might provoke a rift between the two countries. Weizmann’s letter came shortly after Hoskins’ first report, which predicted a general conflagration in Palestine, unless Britain and the United States joined forces to restrain the ‘extremists’ on both sides. In addition, the military authorities in Cairo took the opportunity to warn London about Zionist political ambitions and, employing inflated estimates of Jewish military capacity, suggested that the Jews would, if necessary, establish their state by force of arms. The Military’s exaggeration of the Jews’ potential would in fact achieve exactly the opposite result of that intended. The debate which ensued went to the heart of the Palestine issue, and illustrated the chasm separating Churchill from most of his

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colleagues. Their differences centred on Palestine’s place in Britain’s imperial establishment, rather than on Zionism’s role in the solution of the Jewish problem. Ranged with Churchill, there were Amery and Smuts, and advisers such as Lord Cherwell, and J.M . Martin. Against him, there was a consensus of virtually every Minister, official, and military officer who had ever come into contact with the Palestine problem. In his letter, Weizmann had added a new theme, one which caught Churchill at his most vulnerable - Britain’s inaction in the face of the mass murder of European Jewry, which was by now common knowledge. Weizmann now insisted that Palestine, constituted as a Jewish state, was the only place where persecuted Jews might find a secure refuge. He appealed for some hint that the White Paper (‘an application to Palestine of the unhappy principle of appeasement’) would be abandoned, and challenged Churchill: ‘The slaughter of European Jewry can only be redeemed by establishing Palestine as a Jewish country.’200 Churchill reminded his colleagues that the White Paper ‘runs until it is superseded’, and requested from his colleagues an appro­ priate reply for Weizmann. At the same time, evidently moved by Weizmann’s appeal on behalf of European Jewry, though not apparently convinced by him in regard to Palestine’s role, Churchill asked the Colonial Secretary to consider ‘at the same time the use of Eritrea and possibly Tripolitania as additional Jewish national homes’.201 Viscount Cranborne, the Lord Privy Seal (Colonial Secretary, February-November, 1942) retorted that Weizmann was under a ‘complete misapprehension’ in regard to recent statements on Palestine, which had merely reiterated the necessity of not altering the status quo in Palestine for as long as the war lasted. Cranborne insisted that any new announcement would have an ‘immediate and deplorable’ effect upon the Arabs, and would jeopardise Britain’s position in the Middle East.202 The Colonial Secretary, Oliver Stanley, was a senior member of the Conservative Party, and considered by some as a possible suc­ cessor to Churchill as Prime Minister.203 At the Board of Trade in the Chamberlain Cabinet, Stanley had voted for the 1939 White Paper, something he would not have done, he objected to Churchill, had he believed it to be what the latter had called ‘a gross breach of faith’. Like Cranborne, Stanley too recognized that the White Paper was

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‘highly controversial’, and might be subject to revision after the war. But the government’s primary consideration now, he insisted, must be to win the war, and avoid anything that might provoke serious disorders in the Middle East. Stanley gave notice that he intended warning the Cabinet of the dangers to be expected when the White Paper’s five-year immigration period expired, in March, 1944.204 Churchill quite evidently recoiled from the replies of the two Ministers, especially that from Stanley. Instead of circulating Weiz­ mann’s letter to the Cabinet, he circulated a reprint of his own Commons speech against the White Paper of May, 1939. Taking his cue from Stanley, Churchill focussed on that aspect of the White Paper which had most aroused his antagonism, the Arab veto on immigration: ‘I cannot in any circumstances contemplate an absolute cessation of immigration into Palestine at the discretion of the Arab majority.’205 Almost routinely, he also reminded his colleagues that he remained ‘an unchanging supporter of the Balfour Declaration modified as it was by the Colonial Office White Paper which I drafted in 1922’. For the duration of the war at least, Churchill would content himself with the abolition of the Arab veto. Fortunately for the advocates of the White Paper, the Colonial Office had since 1939 adopted a policy of careful rationing of the 75,000 immigration certificates, so that by the spring of 1943, there still remained nearly half the full quota, over 32,000, after four of the five years prescribed had elapsed. The full 75,000 would not be exhausted until December, 1945. Few Ministers could deny the moral argument against shutting the doors of Palestine in the face of refugees from Nazi Europe. This placed some Ministers in a dilemma, since neither could they contemplate any radical change in the White Paper, for fear of Arab reactions. Thus, due to a careful ‘nursing’ of immigration certificates, immigration might continue beyond the five-year White Paper period, without exceeding the White Paper quota. Viscount Cranborne agreed with Churchill that it would be ‘against the spirit and letter of the Mandate’ to leave Jewish immi­ gration to the discretion of the Arabs: If Jewish immigration is not brought to an end, wide sections of Arab opinion are likely to charge Great Britain with a breach of faith. On the other hand, it is surely impossible, especially in view of the unhappy situation of the Jews in Europe, to close one of their main channels of escape during the war ...

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His Majesty’s Government must seek to freeze the situation as it exists at present, so that Jewish immigration may be able to continue at the permitted rate beyond the five years covered by the White Paper, until such time as conditions permit of a proper examination of a long-term solution of the Palestine problem.206

However, it must be remembered that the government, and Churchill himself in 1938, was concerned to freeze the current ratio of Jews to Arabs in Palestine. This would have been achieved had the White Paper’s 75,000 Jewish immigrants entered Palestine by March, 1944. Therefore, even if the Arab veto was ‘lifted’, the drawing out of the 75,000 quota until December, 1945, for two and a half extra years, would in fact mean that the proportion of Jews to Arabs would decline.207 Churchill gave a clear hint as to his views on Palestine’s future disposition. He took an ostrich-like position, premised on the sup­ position that the Arabs had forfeited all claim on British munificence: We have certainly treated the Arabs very well, having installed King Feisal and his descendants upon the Throne of Iraq and maintained them there; having maintained the Emir Abdullah in Transjordania and having asserted the rights of self-government for the Arabs and other inhabitants of Syria. With the exception of Ibn Saud and the Emir Abdullah, both of whom have been good and faithful followers, the Arabs have been virtually o f no use to us in the present war. They have taken no part in the fighting, except in so far as they were involved in the Iraq rebellion against us. They have created no new claims upon the Allies, should we be victorious.208

Churchill’s latest comment provoked a sharp reaction at the Foreign Office, where a reply to Churchill’s reference to the White Paper was under preparation. After questioning, with a cynical disingenuous­ ness, whether in fact the Jews had done much fighting, Sir Maurice Peterson asked rhetorically: The question is ... not whether we owe the Arabs a debt of gratitude, but whether we have important interests centring in the Arab world. The answer must be emphatically that we have; and in particular our oil interests ...209

With alarming reports arriving both from the Middle East and from the United States about the powder-keg situation in Palestine, the Foreign Office now determined to take up the cudgels against Churchill - in contrast to the attitude it adopted in May, 1941, when military crisis in the Middle East made it imperative to avoid con­ troversy. The officials also betrayed clearly their resentment, tinged with anti-semitic sentiment, and blamed the all-pervading influence

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of the Jews in higher quarters for Churchill’s ‘eccentric’ views on Palestine. Thus Sir Maurice Peterson concluded: I venture to suspect the Prime Minister of hankering once more after Palestine as a Jewish State. If we are to give the Zionists Eritrea or any other African territory it ought surely to be as a Jewish State, to which the National Home in Palestine may be affiliated. Only thus will we be able to silence the wealthy Jews in America who pay for this agitation without any intention of sacrificing their American citizenship: and only thus will we be able to

get some o f the Jews out o f this country, in which there are now far too many.210

The Foreign Office now determined to act on Hoskins’ report, warning of the inflammable situation in Palestine, and suggesting that the British and American Governments issue a joint statement ‘that would rule out in advance any Allied military support for the extreme positions of either Zionist or Arab nationalists’.211Although both the High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, and the Minister of State at Cairo, Richard Casey, had accused Hoskins of exaggeration, his warning was not dismissed out of hand. The Foreign Office was concerned primarily with the deleterious effects in the Middle East of the American Zionists’ activities. Mem­ bers of the Administration, including the Secretaries of State for War and the Navy (Henry Stimson, and Colonel Frank Knox), had lent their names to full-page advertisements favouring a Jewish Army, and many prominent Congressmen were pressing for free immigra­ tion into Palestine. This public agitation was causing consternation in the Arab world, where many now argued ‘that there was little point in supporting the Allies if victory was to result in Palestine being handed over to the Jews’.212 In February, 1943, Ambassador Halifax had informed London that the State Department was considering a joint Anglo-American declaration, designed to dampen down Zionist agitation. But at that juncture, the Foreign Office had felt unable to sanction British parti­ cipation, for fear of Churchill’s inevitable objection.213 However, by the time Churchill circulated his memoranda, in April, 1943, Hoskins’ report had percolated through the Whitehall bureaucracy, and by May, Eden thought the time ripe ‘to exploit the warning that President Roosevelt’s Administration had received from their own agent, Colonel Hoskins’, in order to issue their own to the effect that Zionist propaganda was ‘creating a serious handi­ cap to the war effort’. Eden reprinted Halifax’s proposal of 9 March,

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which had suggested, in less than diplomatic terms, what the Americans should do: The proper course is for the Administration to speak severely to Zionist leaders here in private, and to tell them to keep their mouths shut if they do not wish to endanger the security of the Jewish settlements in Palestine, and indeed the standing of the Jews in the United States itself. The Administration should also try to discourage prominent men from signing proclamations about a Jewish Army, which they do all too easily without thinking of the effect that their signatures have in the Near East.214

But Eden preferred the American Administration to deal with its own Jews, rather than both countries issue a joint warning - unless such a public declaration became absolutely essential. In May, 1943, Hoskins’ warning had been backed up by that of another Presidential envoy to the Middle East, General Patrick Hurley.215 On 4 June, 1943, Wallace Murray called on Halifax, with an official proposal that the two countries issue a joint statement, postponing any decision on Palestine until after the war.216 The key line of the American draft ran: ‘no decision altering the basic situation of Palestine should be reached without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews’.217 Pressed by the embassy in Washington, the Foreign Office brought the American proposal before the Cabinet on 2 July, where the Foreign Office addition was approved, as follows: ‘they wish to make it clear that they have no intention of permitting or acquiescing in forcible changes of any kind in the status of Palestine or the administration of the country’.218 The proposed joint declaration, warning against any attempt at a coup de force in Palestine, was in fact aborted by the Zionist lobby in Washington in August, 1943.219 But the episode marks an impor­ tant stage in the exegesis of the Palestine problem. It marks British realisation that unless the United States, with its influential Jewish community, could be associated responsibly in the formulation of policy, the Palestine problem would become intractable, with Britain hamstrung between the conflicting forces generated by the Arab world, on one side, and by her Atlantic ally on the other. Churchill, with his strong American orientation, saw this as clearly as anyone, and perhaps earlier. In July, 1943, he agreed to the Allied Declara­ tion, which would have reaffirmed the status quo in Palestine, i.e. the White Paper regime, at least until the end of the war.

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Another key issue which permeated the debate on Palestine in spring, 1943, was the alleged threat of a coup by the Jews’ illegal army in the country. This was the theme which preoccupied both the Colonial Secretary and the Minister of State at Cairo. The gist of their argument was that the Zionists not only presented a political embarrassment to the British in the Middle East, but posed a con­ crete military threat in Palestine. They now possessed ‘two powerful and well-armed clandestine Jewish military organizations’, and might well resort to force, if the government failed to meet their demands, as defined by the Biltmore Resolution of May, 1942 (that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth, controlling its own immigration, and with its own army).220 British Intelligence sources competed in their wild exaggerations of the Zionists’ military potential. Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, referred to 80,000 men in the Hagana, and a further 6 -8,000 in the Irgun Zwai Leumi (IZL). The Middle East War Council estimated 80,000 in all the ‘secret Jewish forces’, with a further 41,000 trained soldiers serving with British formations. Oliver Lyttelton, Minister of State at Cairo from 1941-42, and then Minister of Production, claimed that the Hagana could call on 100,000 trained men and women. The figures sent from Cairo were deliberately inflated, so as to impress the Cabinet with the threat posed by the Zionists. In fact, internal Intelligence estimates ranged from a June, 1942 figure of 30,000, of whom only 50 -7 0 per cent actually had arms, to a September, 1943 figure of 45-50,000, of whom about 65 per cent were supposed to be armed. The Hagana's own figures for 1944, by which time it had grown considerably, were 37,000, with one rifle for every third man!221 In an attempt to besmirch the Zionists, the Military authorities at Cairo compared the Zionists’ clandestine preparations with those of the Nazis in the 1930s: The principal clanger lies in an endeavour on the part of the Jews, who are rapidly producing a highly organized military machine on Nazi lines, to seize the moment which is most favourable to themselves for the prosecution by force of their policy of establishing an exclusively Jewish State in Palestine.222

But the views of the Military did not succeed in discrediting the Zionists - on the contrary. They served merely to convince Churchill further that the Jews were capable of establishing a state of their own, and of defending it, while at the same time defending British

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interests to the north of the Canal. Churchill in fact became more amenable to considering a long-term political solution, something which until now he had resigned himself to deferring until after the war. The memorandum which possibly influenced Churchill most, or reflected best his own line of thinking, was that written by Professor F.A. Lindemann, Lord Cherwell. The ‘Prof’ enjoyed a unique influence over Churchill, not by virtue of his position in the Cabinet, where he sat as Postmaster-General, from 1942, but due to his intellectual capacities (or his ability to explain to Churchill esoteric problems in simple terms), and to his personal courage, always a highly respected quality in Churchill’s eyes.223 One of Churchill’s secretaries, John Colville, remembered that Churchill was always referring to Cherwell’s ‘beautiful brain’, and revered him almost as a prophet.224 The uncanny similarity between Cherwell’s memor­ andum and views expressed later on by Churchill himself, indicates that the two men had discussed the matter in private. Cherwell thought it futile to attempt to contain or suppress the Jewish Underground Forces in Palestine with British reinforcements brought in especially for that purpose (the MEWC estimated that it would take three Divisions), in order to impose on Palestine a policy that had already been condemned by the majority of the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission in July, 1939. He concluded: Either we must give up the whole idea of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine, or we must carry through some form of partition, giving them their own state, in which they can do what they like and accept as many immigrants as they like.225

Like Churchill (and Amery before him), Cherwell too believed that the dimensions of the problem might be reduced if the Jews were also allotted a territory elsewhere, ‘either in Eritrea or Tripolitania, as you suggest, or possibly in Madagascar ... since the Jews would probably be satisfied with a smaller National Home in Palestine if a larger area elsewhere were in prospect’. Amery too pressed the ‘annexes’ idea on Churchill, and believed, naively, that the Zionists would accept the idea, ‘provided you can make it clear to the Jews they aren’t suggested as alternatives to Palestine, but just overflows or branch establishments of the Jewish National Home’.226On 2 July, 1943, following the Cabinet’s decision that day to pursue the idea further, Amery wrote to Churchill: ‘after they [the Zionists] have

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been told what area they are going to get in Palestine, they would, I believe, welcome the idea of additional dependencies in places like Tripoli or Cyrenaica’.227 When Churchill visited the United States in June, 1943, he dis­ cussed the possible transfer of Italy’s North African colonies to the Jews, with President Roosevelt. The President had himself at one stage considered the establishment of Jewish colonies in ‘the transAndean portions of Colombia in South America’.228 Roosevelt now expressed great interest in Churchill’s idea, and handed him a 21page report on conditions in the recently-captured areas of North Africa. Churchill passed the report on to Eden, and asked him to explore the potential of these areas as ‘satellite colonies for the Jews, to take the strain off the National Home for the Jews in Palestine’. Eden informed Churchill that the option of using Cyrenaica for refugees had been considered already, in January, in respect of Greek refugees. At the time, the C. in C. Middle East had rejected the idea, on the grounds that the import of refugees would antagonize the local Arab population. This problem, advised Eden, would apply even more with the Zionists. Ironically, it was Eden himself who tried to persuade Churchill, with little apparent success, that the Zionists themselves would strongly oppose any alternative to Palestine.229 At the Cabinet meeting on 2 July, 1943, Eden did not dismiss the scheme out of hand, but stated that the Foreign Office had it under its consideration. The propensity of the Foreign Office to pursue Churchill’s idea stemmed from a quite different motive, as explained by A.W.G. Randall, head of the Refugee Department. Any possible alternative to Palestine, as a refuge for homeless Jews, was calculated to take the wind out of the Zionists’ sails - ‘other Jews - in the United States - would probably welcome the idea of any place of refuge for those whose return to their homes proved impossible’.230 Arnold Toynbee, attached at the time to the Research Department of the Foreign Office, regarded the North African territories as a ‘definite possibility, though one fraught with economic and political hazards’.231 The trouble was that ‘a Jewish colony in Tripolitania ... would, even if it caused a reduction of immigration into Palestine, be an additional bone of contention between Great Britain and the Arab peoples ...’ 232 The economic potential was so low, and the political hazards so high (between 84 and 89 per cent of the people in Tripoli and Cyrenaica were Arabic-speaking Moslems) that in 1944 the idea

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was allowed to sink into oblivion, along with the scheme for parti­ tioning Palestine. As put nicely by Lord Hood, already in July, 1943, the official presiding over the issue, the Foreign Office feared that ‘if we were to sponsor the scheme we should land ourselves with two further Palestines without even obliging the Zionists’.233 Cherwell’s memorandum concluded with a summary of the Palestine problem which was undoubtedly close to that of Churchill. Two complementary developments had occurred during the war the discrediting of the Arabs, and the consolidation of the Zionists’ claims on the government, by virtue of their sufferings under the Nazis, and due to their powerful backing in the United States: On the whole I am inclined to think that too much attention is paid to the Levantine Semites who have annexed the romantic appellation of ‘Arabs’, and too little to the influence of Jewry, reinforced as it is by worldwide sympathy with them in their afflictions. After the last war Arabia (as big as Western Europe) was conquered by us from the Turks and handed over to the Arabs; it seems strange that one corner of it, the size of Wales, is grudged to the Jews.234

Finally, there was the influence of Jan Smuts. He telegraphed to Churchill in July, 1943, to express his conviction that ‘Jewish suffer­ ings and massacres make their reasonable requirements a first charge on Allied statesmanship’. This charge, Smuts believed, should ‘take precedence over efforts to placate Arabs or the like’. Churchill minuted on the telegram that this expressed his own views exactly.235 At a luncheon with Weizmann later that year, Smuts reassured Weiz­ mann that the Zionists would get their state: ‘on the map Palestine looked small - but the essence of humanity was in Palestine. It was inconceivable to him that what the Jews were doing in Palestine should be thwarted’.236 He told Weizmann that he had talked with everyone, and had made the point that ‘the British would never get such protection for the Suez as they would get from a strong Jewish Palestine’.237

The Cabinet meeting on Palestine of 2 July, 1943 has been noted hitherto primarily for the fact that it decided to establish a Cabinet Committee on Palestine, to work out a long-term solution. However, as indicated by the debate described above, the Government’s origi­ nal intention had been to deal with the immediate problems posed by Palestine - the alleged military threat posed by the Zionists, and

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the damage being done by Zionist propaganda in the United States. Few of the participants in the pre-Cabinet debate, least of all Churchill, had any intention of already seeking a post-war successor to the White Paper policy. It was the Labour leader, Clement Attlee (Deputy Prime Minister), who raised the idea of appointing a Cabinet Committee ‘to consider and report on the Palestine problem and the interconnected Jewish and Arab problems’, as a first step to discussing the issue with the United States. Attlee himself worried about the reports from the Middle East, and feared that the Zionist Movement had ‘fallen under the control of reckless fanatics’. Attlee was merely expressing the general consensus, when he stated emphatically: ‘No one but a visionary imagines that Palestine can absorb all the Jews, even if they were willing to go. Millions will desire and be obliged to live in Gentile lands in Europe, America, and other continents’.238 Attlee shared the frustration and animosity towards the Jews which was common to many officials. At the beginning of June, 1943, in a private conversation with Rabbi Irving Miller of the World Jewish Congress, he said that ‘he was tired of all this talk about priority for Jewish suffering’, and urged the Jews to begin thinking ‘in terms of the limits to what Palestine could do’.239 It was Leo Amery who was instrumental in persuading Churchill of the practicality of partition, both before and during the Cabinet meeting on 2 July, 1943. When Churchill circulated his memor­ andum at the end of April, warning that the White Paper would not run after the war, Amery had responded with a private letter, agree­ ing that action on a large scale was needed, since the Jewish problem that would face the world after this war would dwarf that left over by the previous. However, Amery disagreed with Churchill’s central point - he did not believe that British interests in the Arab and Moslem world would permit the government to go back on the White Paper, to the extent of re-opening Palestine to unlimited Jewish immigration. He advocated piecemeal solutions, therefore; on the one hand, the establishment of ‘annexes’ in North Africa, and on the other, the establishment of a Jewish state in a part of Palestine, which would become part of a ‘loose Syria-Transjordan Federation’: It seems to me that we are driven to the alternative, little as you liked it at the time, of a partition that would give the Jews a definite area in which they would be responsible for immigration up to the limit of whatever that area, however small, could support ...24°

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The official protocol does not reflect the mood, nor even the author of each view raised at the Cabinet meeting on 2 July, 1943. Indeed, on this particular occasion the minutes circulated were so innocuous that Churchill upbraided the Cabinet secretary, Sir Edward Bridges, for not emphasising sufficiently his own views. He ordered the secretary to circulate an amended version that would record his own determination to redeem the government’s pledges to Zionists at the end of the war, and to state specifically that the extension of the White Paper five-year immigration limit should not be used later to argue that immigration might be stopped once the 75,000 certificates had been exhausted.241 Fortunately, Leo Amery made a short note of the meeting in his private diary that day. The discussion was opened by Richard Casey, who dwelt upon the theme that the Jews had gone ‘extremist and terrorist’ (Amery’s phrase), and were determined to set up a Jewish state with the arms they had been hoarding in secret. Casey proposed that they hold close by to Palestine ‘a sufficient number of troops to ensure that any outbreak of violence in Palestine could be quickly sup­ pressed’. He suggested also that all known arms caches be seized.242 Casey was supported by Stanley, the Colonial Secretary. However, according to Amery, Churchill himself soon took over, ‘dominating and overriding all faint murmurings of dissent with an all-out assertion of the Jewish case as regards Palestine and in its broader aspects, brushing the Palestine-Arab case on one side as wholly irrelevant and trivial.243 Churchill insisted that the Jews were not to be disarmed for the present, and that any reversal of this deci­ sion would have to receive Cabinet sanction first. He insisted also that their first step had to be ‘to get America with us in however ineffective a declaration: secondly to let in the balance of the 75,000 Jews under the White Paper after March next: thirdly to let in “illegal” immigrants who might escape the German terror subject to the above total \244 When the discussion turned to policy for the long term, Churchill contented himself with reiterating his stock view that the White Paper constituted a breach of Britain’s solemn undertakings under the Balfour Declaration, and that ‘at the proper time’ (i.e. after the war), it would be their ‘duty to show that we were not prepared to be driven off solemn undertakings which we had given’. It was Attlee who, while agreeing that ‘it would be inexpedient to re-open at this

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stage public controversy about Palestine’, pressed for the immediate consideration of their long-term policy, so that when the war ended they would be ready to implement definite measures. The Cabinet minutes do not state who revived the idea of parti­ tion, suggesting that the new Committee take this scheme as their point of departure. But Amery recorded in his diary that the initiative had been his, and that, to his delight, Churchill had agreed, ‘contrary to the line he had taken at the time of the Peel Commission debate, where he had helped to kill that prospect’.245 When Churchill exerted his prerogative, and hand-picked the new Committee, he insisted, overriding vigorous objections from the Foreign Office, that Leo Amery be a member. It was clear that Amery was appointed, not because of his Ministerial position, as Secretary of State for India (in which capacity, in representing the interests of 100 million Moslems, he might have been expected to take an antiZionist view), but because of his long association with partition, and his role as Churchill’s watchdog on the Committee. When Eden dared to object at Amery’s appointment, Churchill dismissed him cynically: ‘it is quite true that he has my way of thinking on this point, which is no doubt to be deplored, but he has great knowledge and mental energy’. Eden relieved his feelings within the Foreign Office: ‘It is a comfort to reflect that Mr Amery has never been right on any subject that I can recollect from Palestine to the League of Nations’. In any case, Eden was reassured that the Committee’s recommendations would have to come before and be approved by the full Cabinet.246 Whereas Churchill instructed the Committee to adopt the Peel Report as its terms of reference,247 he did not seem to have any clear idea in his own mind about any specific plan. Confusion reigned among Churchill’s immediate circle. On 22 July, three weeks after the Cabinet’s decision, Brendan Bracken told Weizmann about the establishment of the new Committee, but insisted that parti­ tion would not be ‘on the tapis’. This conflicted with other reports received by Weizmann, specifically from Amery.248 After much pleading, with Martin and with Bracken, Weizmann finally secured an invitation to lunch with Churchill, on 26 October, 1943. Also present were the Attlees, and Churchill’s son Randolph. When Churchill mentioned partition, both Weizmann, and Randolph Churchill demurred.249 Weizmann himself still hoped for the realization of the Ibn Saud-Philby scheme, and as recently as

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14 October had urged Smuts to accompany him to a meeting with Churchill, to advocate this solution.250The Prime Minister’s belated conversion to partition was evidently something of a disappointing revelation to Weizmann. Churchill explained: ‘He had originally opposed partition, but now the Government had to replace the White Paper; he had not meant partition in the literal sense. He then hinted at possibilities of the Negev and Transjordan.’ A hint as to what exactly Churchill had meant, in referring to the Negev and Trans-Jordan, was provided several weeks later by Duncan Sandys, Churchill’s son-in-law, and at the time, a junior Minister at the Ministry of Supply. He told Weizmann that ‘they had come to the conclusion that the best course would be to set up a Jewish State and buy the Arabs out. The idea was that the British and the Jews should buy land in Trans-Jordan, and make it attractive to Arab settlers’. When Sandys suggested next that partition was an alternative, Weizmann dismissed the idea, arguing that such a solution could not be final, and would leave both sides dissatisfied. When Weizmann expressed his surprise that Churchill was now considering the idea, after having been so strongly against, Sandys did not respond.251 Weizmann concluded that Churchill’s position now was that ‘half a loaf was better than none’.252 In January, 1944, the full Cabinet approved the partition of Palestine, as devised by the Cabinet Committee, against the dis­ senting voice of the Foreign Office representative, Richard Law.253 Churchill himself described the plan as ‘a very fine piece of work’. He agreed with Lord Moyne’s thesis that the partition must be done as part of a general reorganization of the Middle East, which would involve the re-establishment of ‘Greater Syria’ (which would inc­ lude Syria, Trans-Jordan, and the Arab areas of Palestine and the Lebanon).254 Churchill agreed that no action be taken to implement the scheme until after the defeat of Hitler and, as in the case of the Jewish Division, that no announcements should be made until after the Presidential elections in the United States, due in November, 1944. He minuted to the Cabinet secretary: ‘You must not do anything to affect American politics until after the election.’ Churchill played with the idea of showing Roosevelt ‘a short epitome’ of the Report, but decided against, since the President ‘would certainly show it to a number of Jews, and secrecy could not be guaranteed’.255 Briefed well by Amery, Churchill brushed aside the protests of the

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Chiefs of Staff. The latter argued that the Jews would rebel against the inadequate borders offered them. Amery conceded that the Jews might protest on grounds of inadequacy, but since there were prac­ tically no Jews outside that area to revolt against being handed over to the Arabs, the danger would be minimal. Only if they persisted with the White Paper would the Jews revolt.256 Churchill reminded Lord Ismay, his Chief of Staff, that in July, 1943, Field Marshal Wavell himself had told the Cabinet that the Jews, if left to them­ selves in Palestine, would defeat the Arabs. Therefore, since the opposition to partition would come from the Arabs, and that could be overcome by the Jews, ‘there cannot be any great danger in our joining with the Jews to enforce the kind of proposals about partition which are set forth’. Churchill proceeded on the assumption, entirely unfounded, that the Zionists would accept the Cabinet’s plan: ‘obviously, we shall not proceed with any plan of partition if the Jews do not support’.257 As in 1937, the Foreign Office did not reconcile itself to the Cabinet decision to partition Palestine and, during the breathingspace afforded prior to implementation, lobbied its various ambas­ sadors and generals in the Middle East. Eden explained the Cabinet’s return to what was basically the Peel Plan (minus Arab Galilee) as being due, first, to political changes effected in the Cabinet by Churchill, and second, to changes wrought by the war - i.e. the Jews’ tragedy. Predictably, the Middle East ambassadors warned of dire consequences for Britain, should she attempt to set up a Jewish state in Palestine.258 But Foreign Office warnings went unheeded by the Cabinet Com­ mittee, even if they did result in further border rectifications (to the detriment of the Zionists), and the deletion of Moyne’s Greater Syrian scheme, owing to anticipated French objections.259 During the summer of 1944, Eden tried to promote an American scheme of Trusteeship for Palestine, favoured by Roosevelt since 1943, and transmitted in 1944 by the ubiquitous Colonel Hoskins.260 Eden argued that if Britain embarked on their own on a policy of partition, they ran the grave risk of alienating the Arabs, and losing to the Americans their hegemony in the Middle East. He argued, therefore, that they should seize upon the trusteeship plan, for which they were reasonably assured of receiving American support - a plan which in fact would have left Palestine under a British High Commissioner.261 But Eden’s proposal was rejected by Colonial Secretary Stanley.

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He argued that trusteeship was neither practicable, nor an acceptable alternative to partition; it would leave Britain with the ultimate responsibility for Palestine, yet still saddled with the embarrassing commitment to control immigration.262 The American factor now began to assume a different dimension for Churchill too. During the first years of war, Churchill had felt the need to mollify the Jewish lobby in the United States, to secure their earliest possible entry into the war. During the latter stages of the war, Churchill grew to resent the more anti-British campaigns waged by American Jewry. Notwithstanding Weizmann’s efforts to avert friction, Zionist activity in the United States was exacerbating Anglo-American relations, and Churchill’s own name was becoming an object of some derision. In a talk with Lord Melchett, in April, 1944, Churchill complained about his lonely crusade in the Cabinet on behalf of the Zionists. He referred specifically to newspaper advertisements in the United States, and commented: ‘the rich Jews were creating difficulties between America and Great Britain, and were dragging his name into the mud. This could not go on’.263 At his last wartime meeting with Weizmann, on 4 November, 1944, Churchill complained almost obsessively about interference from across the Atlantic: ‘America must give active support and not merely criticism.’ At one point, Churchill admitted that he had a committee, with ‘all their friends’, planning partition. But when Weizmann tried to show Churchill the map of Palestine, in order to argue against partition, Churchill refused to look at it. He made it quite clear to Weizmann that any scheme endorsed by him would be the most favourable the Zionists could possibly hope to get, and that it would need to be pushed through against considerable opposition.264 On 6 November, 1944, Lord Moyne, the Minister of State Resi­ dent in the Middle East, and Churchill’s close personal friend, was assassinated in Cairo by Jewish terrorists.265 This single act, coming on top of the united opinion of all his colleagues, shattered the fragile structure of Churchill’s illusions in regard to Palestine. Since 1921, Churchill had looked to the Jews to set up a pro-British bastion in Palestine, as a ‘cheap’ solution to Britain’s imperial posture in this area. Since 1943, Churchill’s support for partition - which he had opposed until then primarily because of the military vulnerability of two small states with awkward borders - had rested, ironically, upon the inflated reports of the ‘experts’ of the Jews’ military strength in

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There was definitely a strong personal element in Churchill’s alienation from the Zionists. Six months later, Martin admitted to Ben Gurion that it had been impossible to broach the Palestine question for months after Moyne’s death, and stated that people were returning from Palestine, reporting on ‘the Jewish totalitarian regime’ there. Ben Gurion countered that whereas he could under­ stand Churchill’s anger at losing a friend, he did not think it really fair on the Jewish people. He reminded Martin that Churchill had not taken any reprisals against the Greeks, following an attempt upon his life during a recent visit there! Martin reassured Ben Gurion that Churchill remained sympathetic, and hoped to settle their affairs before he left office.273 By the close of 1944, when Churchill was preoccupied with defending Greece against a take-over by Stalin, the Middle East was becoming an irritant of secondary importance. He was particularly impatient with his Chiefs of Staff when they informed him that internal security in the area could be guaranteed only at the expense of operations against the Germans and the Italians. He deprecated the idea of British troops becoming caught in the cross-fire of the various civil wars in the Middle East, and insisted that Britain concentrate solely on the presentation of its own vital interests: As long as we keep our troops well concentrated, a certain amount of local faction fighting can be tolerated and we can march in strength against the evil-doers. I am therefore not admitting the need of great reinforcements. Suppose a lot of Arabs kill a lot of Jews or a lot of Jews kill a lot of Arabs, or a lot of Syrians kill a lot of French or vice versa, this is probably because they have a great desire to vent their spite upon each other. Our attitude should be one of concentration and reserve. We really cannot undertake to stop all these bloodthirsty people slaying each other if that is their idea of democracy and the New World. The great thing is to hold on to the impor­ tant strategic places and utter wise words in sonorous tones. I should like to think it very likely that there would be civil wars in these countries unless they are stopped by a series of decrees from the three victorious Great Powers. We are getting uncommonly little out o f our Middle East encum­

brances and paying an undue price for that little.274

These choice words of wisdom were addressed to Lord Ismay, Churchill’s Chief of Staff, and signed off with the remark: ‘The above obiter dicta are not to go beyond you.’ Amidst all this turmoil, Churchill regarded the Jewish people as a gifted, but politically precocious people. Like Balfour, Churchill compared the Jews’ talents with those of the ancient Greeks:

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The Greeks rival the Jews in being the most politically-minded race in the world. No matter how forlorn the circumstances or how grave the peril to their country, they are always divided into many parties, with many leaders who fight among themselves with desperate vigour. It has been well said that wherever there are three Jews it will be found that there are two Prime Ministers and one leader of the Opposition ... Centuries of foreign rule and indescribable, endless oppression leave them still living, active communities and forces in the modern world, quarrelling among themselves with insatiable vivacity. Personally I have always been on the side of both, and believed in their invincible power to survive internal strife and the world tides threatening their extinction.275

Of course, these last words were written after the Jews had proved their ability to survive, against the combined forces of the Arab world, and the diplomatic manoeuvres of the Western Allies. In 1945, Churchill ruled out any further British aid to the Zionist cause. In the spring, he refused to re-open the debate on partition, when approached by the Colonial Office.276 One may safely conjecture that the disaffection of Smuts too had a critical influence. Smuts was won over by the military consensus, and advised Churchill in April, 1945 that ‘Partition is strategically dangerous, economically and geo­ graphically most difficult, and ... racial and political tangles will remain and perhaps become worse’.277 The most that Smuts could suggest was that Britain itself should retain the whole of Palestine under Mandate, in order to safeguard her vital interests in the area. But Churchill had never really shared Smuts’ conviction as to the imperial centrality of Palestine. After a spate of warnings from Washington that Britain’s White Paper policy was being blamed for the failure to rescue more Jews from Nazi Europe, Churchill threw out what was probably his last concrete proposal on Palestine, as Prime Minister: ... I do not think we should take the responsibility upon ourselves of managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and criticise ... I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now ...278

Since 1921, the wheel had turned full circle.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHURCHILL AND THE HOLOCAUST 1. THE TERRIBLE SECRET’

"When I turned on the Jew, no one came to his rescue. No one. France, England, Russia, even Jew-ridden America did nothing. They were glad that the exterminators had come. Oh they did not say so openly, I allow you that. But secretly they rejoiced. * George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal o f A.H. London, 1981, p. 124

Thus spoke ‘A.H.’ (Adolf Hitler), in the short novel of George Steiner, which in 1982 enjoyed a somewhat notorious run on the London stage. Steiner touched on a most sensitive facet of the col­ lective psyche of the liberal West. Just how much did the West know of Hitler’s plans for the Jews, when did they discover, and what did they do to thwart them, or rescue Jews from his clutches? For some decades after the War, the Holocaust was either neg­ lected as a subject worthy of serious historical research, or distorted, or obliterated deliberately in the interest of different national or political ideologies. Recent studies have referred to ‘the historio­ graphical mystery of why the Holocaust was belittled or overlooked in the history books’.1Jewish historians were too emotionally invol­ ved for objective analysis, and a generation had to pass before they could begin to distance themselves emotionally and cease ‘mourning the loss of their past’. Over the last decade, a new generation of historians, working in the archives of the Western Powers, has begun to point an accusing finger at the Western Powers. In a pioneering classic, Bernard Wasserstein has indicted the British Government as an indirect accomplice

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of the Nazi policy of genocide against the Jews. He points out that it was not until August, 1941 that the Germans prohibited the migration of Jews from territories occupied by the Germans, and not until 23 October, 1941 that Himmler banned all further Jewish emigration from the Reich. During 1940, the Germans in fact actively encouraged, and at times aided the flight of Jewish refugees from Europe. The fact that these critical two years at the beginning of the war were not seized upon in order to effectuate a mass exit of European Jews was due, Wasserstein agrees, primarily ‘to the extreme reluctance of all countries to admit them’. However, since, in Wasserstein’s opinion, Palestine and the United States were the only countries which could have taken in significant numbers of Jews, and since the United States was not yet at war, then England, in restricting Jewish immigration into Palestine, and by making deliberate efforts to ‘seal the escape routes used by Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe’, must bear the major share of the blame for the fact that so few Jews were able to make good their escape while still allowed to: From mid-1941 the escape routes from south-east Europe were effectively barred by the Germans and their allies to all save a handful of intrepid or fortunate refugees. The British Government thus found itself superseded by the Germans from 1941 as the major agency preventing Jewish escape from Europe to Palestine.2

Naturally enough, some British historians have rushed in to salvage national dignity and honour. It has been pointed out, quite correctly, that in 1941 British policy-makers possessed no confirmed informa­ tion indicating that the Germans planned genocide, and indeed would not obtain such information until the summer of 1942. Thus it is a somewhat misplaced judgement to indict the British for com­ plicity in a crime which they could not be expected to have imagined was about to be committed. Professor Wasserstein has been accused of emotional involvement, of implying that it was the British who by their policy of sealing off the escape routes ‘somehow forced upon the Nazi leadership’ their policy of ‘extermination not emigration’.3 The rationale behind Foreign Office policy in 1940 was (and remained in 1980) that ‘the facts and practices of international law and politics ... dictated that the Jews in Europe, while they remained in Europe, were not only the nationals of their own countries but like all other occupied civilians - simply had to take their chances under Nazism until the war ended with an Allied victory’.4

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Here, perhaps, lies the key to the guilt of the Western allies. The Jews were not to be distinguished from other nationalities, and not to be accorded any ‘privileged’ claim to Western military resources. Tragically, bureaucratic blindness thus overlooked the special, unique treatment being meted out to the Jewish nation. Even before the war, the Germans had incarcerated their political opponents in concentration camps. But it was only at the end of 1941 that they began to construct special ‘death camps’, in which the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem was to be effected. The concentration camp inmates were liberated by the Allies - the death camps left practically no survivors. Other nationalities could hope to survive the German occupation, the Jews could not. For instance, Auschwitz I was a concentration camp which housed 405,000 inmates, mostly Jews. Of these, some 340,000 died, through privation, illness, and sheer exhaustion. Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, was set up as a death camp, and over two million Jews were murdered in its gas chambers and crematoria.5 How much, and when did the West learn of the Germans’ inten­ tions and operation? From 1939 to 1941, there was no indication that from the end of 1941, the Germans would begin the mass execution of European Jewry, at first during the invasion of Russia, and later, with German efficiency, in death camps. The persecution of German and Austrian Jews before the war, however deplorable, could not have been considered logically to be the prelude to geno­ cide. But British Intelligence monitored German atrocities from the beginning. The German SS Enigma code, used for administrative matters, was broken by British Intelligence in December, 1940, and decrypts provided them with extensive information about ‘the extent to which atrocities were being carried out in Russia as calcu­ lated acts of policy’. Weekly summaries of SS operations behind the Russian lines were sent each week to the Prime Minister. One cannot ascertain which details Churchill paid most attention to, but he was known as an avid reader of Intelligence reports.6 From the spring of 1942 until February, 1943 British Intelligence monitored the unusually heavy traffic along the railway lines to Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and seven other concentration camps. It was calcu­ lated that the German columns of figures indicated (a) the number of camp inmates at the start of the previous day, (b) new arrivals, (c) departures by any means, and (d) the number at the end of the previous day. Column (c) was interpreted to mean fatalities.7

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News of the SS atrocities on the Russian front, carried out by special Einsatzgruppen, leaked via neutral journalists, Polish Intelli­ gence, and Hungarian and Italian soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front.8 Even after the expulsion of American journalists from Germany in December, 1941, there still remained enough neutral journalists to report out what was going on there. By the end of 1942, to quote Professor Laqueur, ‘no intelligence service in Europe could possibly help hearing about the “final solution” ... for the simple reason that it was common knowledge on the continent’.9 In June, 1942, London’s Daily Telegraph was the first newspaper to distinguish between the persecution of the Jews, and systematic special treatment being meted out to them. Other press articles and radio broadcasts followed.10 Once it had been established that the knowledge was in fact available to the West, much was written subsequently about the psychological barriers to fully comprehending the significance of the dry facts. The enormity of the crime in progress allegedly caused people to recoil from full confrontation: ‘psychological pressures militated against rational analysis and created an atmosphere in which wishful thinking seemed to offer an antidote to utter despair’. There was also, possibly, an inherent inability on the part of the liberal democracies to comprehend the nature of a political regime so different from theirs.11 In Western capitals, the gap between knowledge of the Nazis’ crimes, and any readiness to divert to the slightest degree their war resources, or to alter priorities, was literally fatal. So when information came in, it was given low priority, if not actually hushed up. Many officials claimed that the stories were untrue, or at the least, exaggerated: ‘the statistics of murder were either disbelieved or dismissed from consciousness’.12 In December, 1942, the Western Allies broadcast warnings to the Germans, promising retribution for their crimes against the Jews. But the warning was not followed by any Allied change of priorities. It was claimed that too much publicity would inevitably generate pressure to mount special rescue operations, which would be ‘detri­ mental to the war effort’. A.W.G. Randall, head of the Foreign Office Refugee department, minuted in February, 1943: The Jewish disaster is only part of the vast human problem of Europe under Nazi control; other parts are starving children, the deliberate extinction of the Polish and Czech intelligentsia, forced labour and spiritual perversion of youth.13

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The British Ministry of Information opposed special mention of the Jews, claiming that such a campaign would have little propaganda value, and it would be believed that a people singled out for such treatment were probably a bad lot! The Ministry believed also that a public fed between the wars on exaggerated atrocity stories from World War One was now ‘contra-suggestible’. Ironically, it was feared also that such propaganda would increase domestic anti­ semitism, by making the home public more conscious of their own animosities towards their Jewish neighbours.14 In December, 1942, Richard Law, Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, sent the following reply to a Jewish appeal to establish a separate relief organization for the Jews: The Jews have without doubt suffered enormously by Hitler’s deliberate policy, but other people have suffered as well, and to segregate the Jews as a racial problem in Europe would surely play into the hands of antiSemitism.15

And finally, the hypothetical question has to be asked - if the Allies had shown some readiness to divert part of their war effort to rescu­ ing Jews, could they in fact have taken any meaningful action to stop, or even slow down the pace of the execution of the ‘Final Solution’? The official Foreign Office conscience, even from the perspective of 1980, is sublimely quiet. It is now claimed that by the time that the Allies fully appreciated the facts, it had become their policy to effect the rescue of all European civilians, including the Jews, who were nationals of various countries. Furthermore, it was held that the defeat of the Nazis would again make Europe a viable domicile for its various Jewish communities - ‘it was not the objective of the Allied policy makers to get the Jews out of Europe, even though they were aware of the process of the Final Solution’, or, as put nicely by an official in May, 1943, ‘we cannot give any assurance that we propose to collaborate in the German policy of a “Judenrein” Europe’.16 Worthy as these liberal sentiments may be, they ignored, and continue to ignore, the unique essence of the Holocaust. No one seemed to concern himself particularly with just how many Jews would in fact be left after the war, to enjoy the pleasures of a Hitler free Europe. The Jews alone had been singled out for genocide. Other civilian populations were oppressed and persecuted, but they did not find themselves in the same life-and-death situation as did the Jews of Europe.

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It would seem that by 1942, when the facts of the Jews’ plight were known, it was already too late to save the vast majority of those Jews caught, or fated to be caught in the Nazis’ net. The ‘official’ inquest suggests that the Germans’ close control over Europe, and the ‘intensity and haste of the execution of the Nazi Final Solution’, ruled out any significant relief, and ‘there was little beyond words of comfort that the Allies could offer Jewish resistance in eastern Europe’.17 But it is all too easy to excuse inaction, on the grounds that it would not have helped in any case. Had rescue attempts been allotted a higher priority, there were various options open, and it cannot be stated definitely now that none could have succeeded. If moral judgements are in order, then the Allies were morally obliged at least to have made the effort. If more information about the fate of the Jews had been broadcast during the first half of the war, more might have tried to escape while they yet could; had the Allies’ threats of retribution been more explicit, many of the Jews of Nazi-satellite countries might have been saved (the case of the Horthy regime in Hungary, to be detailed below, is a case in point). Finally, many Jews would have been saved from death in the notorious Auschwitz camp, had the Allies bombed its installations, and the railway lines that carried its victims to death there. Once the tide of war had turned in the Allies’ favour, from the early part of 1943, but especially during 1944, such missions became operationally feasible. Considering that this single camp had a capacity for putting to death some 6,000 human beings per day, then even an interruption of a single day in its operations would have been ‘worthwhile’. In the opinion of Walter Laqueur, such a bombing mission could have been carried out ‘without deflecting any major resources from the general war effort’. The advancing Russian armies were not so far away from Auschwitz by the summer of 1944, and the Germans no longer had the manpower to round up escapees.18 Recent evidence has established beyond a doubt that, contrary to what the Jews were told at the time, the Allies did possess the logistical and technical capacity to perform such a mission. What do we know now of Churchill’s own record in regard to the Holocaust? On 1 August, 1946, during a Commons debate on Palestine, he made the following reference to the Jewish tragedy: I must say that I had no idea, when the war came to an end, of the horrible

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massacres which had occurred, the millions and millions that have been slaughtered. That dawned on us gradually after the war was over.19

The question of Churchiirs familiarity with Intelligence information on the operation of the death camps must remain a moot point. But what is certain is that by July, 1944 at the very latest, Churchill was supplied by the Zionists with very precise details of the murderous capacity of Auschwitz. When informed, via Eden, Churchill penned his much-quoted comment, referring to the Final Solution as ‘the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world’. But Churchill did not have to rely on infor­ mation supplied by the Jewish Agency. On 8 July, 1944, The Times published an item on Auschwitz, derived from data issued by the Polish Ministry of Information the previous day. It was claimed that since the second half of 1942, the Germans had murdered more than two million Polish Jews, in three death camps built for that purpose - Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Treblinka and Rawa Ruska, near Lvov. On 15 May, 1944, the Germans had transported 62 railway carriages filled with Jewish children aged two to eight to Auschwitz. Every day since, six railway trains loaded with adult Jews had been despatched. Most of these Jews had ‘been put to death in the gas chambers of that dreaded concentration camp’.20 The two most thorough studies of the British government’s policy towards European Jewry during this period, by Bernard Wasserstein and Martin Gilbert, are united in exculpating Churchill from all guilt or responsibility. Their exoneration is the more remarkable for its contrast with their utter condemnation of the government which he headed. It is claimed that it was the narrow-minded officials who ‘got the better of Churchill on this particular issue’, and that Churchill, ‘with his broader imagination, was almost alone in his grasp of the magnitude of the disaster’, and that in contrast, ‘the narrower hori­ zons of the official mind rarely stretched to encompass the vastness of the horror which had overtaken the Jews of Europe’. It is suggested further that Churchill, ‘the most pugnacious Prime Minister was obliged to tread warily’ when faced with the unanimous opinion of the Whitehall bureaucracy, ‘a dangerous creature when aroused’, which was determined to prevent a mass flight of Jews from Europe.21 Churchill is singled out as ‘the one man who did understand the enormity of the crimes’.22 But these accounts pose problems and contradictions. If Churchill did indeed understand the unique historical significance of the

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Jewish tragedy, then why did he, admittedly one of the most power­ ful Prime Ministers in British history, not brush aside the opposition of the officials, and indeed of fellow-Ministers, as he did on so many other issues? Was it because the Jewish tragedy did not figure so high on Churchill’s list of priorities? Undoubtedly, his strong sense of humanity was moved by news of the Jews’ sufferings. But one is forced to the conclusion that this was an emotional and ephemeral reaction. And how should one interpret his August, 1946 denial of knowledge of the slaughter? Was this a post factum confession that he had not in fact comprehended the information given him in July, 1944? If so, then his reply to Eden was merely empty rhetoric, and cannot serve to exculpate him. If he had in fact comprehended in 1944, then his speech of 1946 would perhaps reflect an uneasy cons­ cience, shared by many others, that during the war the Allies, though knowing full well the scale of the Final Solution, had not raised a finger to help. However much Churchill may have been moved by the plight of the Jews, he was not willing, in fact, to deal with the problem personally on any regular basis. Brendan Bracken was given to under­ stand that he should not bring news of the Holocaust to Churchill, and Anthony Eden was given full authority to determine the govern­ ment’s policy in this respect.23 Churchill never questioned Foreign Office decisions, which were guided by the following principles: no aid to the Jews, if that meant breaking the strict economic blockade which Britain imposed on the continent; no negotiations with the Germans on anything that might be represented as leading to an early or separate peace; and no large-scale movement of refugees out of Europe. The Department feared that the Germans would try to burden the British with a flood of Jews into Palestine, thus exerting pressure on Allied supply lines; or, if refugees were taken into Britain itself, or into the Colonial Empire, she would be burdened with feeding the extra population.24 The Jews too were given to understand that Churchill was not to be approached about the fate of their brethren in Europe - incredibly, Weizmann never dwelt on the subject, or appealed directly for rescue attempts, during the course of his several wartime meetings with Churchill. On 17 December, 1942, Anthony Eden made a statement before the House of Commons, deploring the Germans’ ‘bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination’ towards the Jews of Europe. Eden affirmed the ‘solemn resolution’ of the United Nations that

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those responsible for these crimes would not escape retribution, and promised that the Allies would ‘press on with practical measures to this end’. Eden’s statement was followed by the rare spectacle of the House rising in silent homage.25 The Government was in fact taken aback by the wide public response to the declaration, which received extensive Press and radio coverage. It had been aware all along that ‘a declaration unaccom­ panied by any concrete action ... might have a hollow ring’.26 An internal minute noted five days later: How can we say that ‘we have every sympathy and willingness to play our part’ when we refuse to take any positive steps of our own to help these wretched creatures? Why should anyone else do anything if we refuse?27

On the eve of Eden’s declaration, Churchill had been asked by James de Rothschild to receive a deputation of leading British Jews. His letter stated: ‘I can imagine what the Prime Minister feels about the unspeakable torments through which the Jews in Europe are going at the present time, and I hope that he will agree to receive us’. The appeal was passed on to the Foreign Office by Churchill’s secretary, Martin, who added the following instructions: As you will see, Mr Churchill has referred this to the Foreign Secretary. No acknowledgement is being sent from here and I should be grateful if you could ensure that in any communication to the Board of Deputies [of British Jews] it is made clear that Mr Eden is handling the matter at Mr Churchill’s request.28

Very shortly after the Eden statement, there arose a concrete oppor­ tunity for the government to translate pious words into practical good deeds. At the end of December, the British Embassy at Ankara informed London that there was a prospect of getting out as many as 70,000 Jews from Romania. The Refugee Department resigned itself to facing up to the ‘frightful prospect’, in view of Eden’s recent statement, although they derived some consolation from the thought that there could ‘hardly be enough shipping in Romania to carry 70,000 persons except over a period of years’.29 The question assumed a new dimension when on 13 February, 1943 the New York Times published an item attributing to the Romanian Government an offer to transfer to any refuge selected by the Allies the 70,000 Romanian Jews deported previously to Transnistria. According to the report, the Romanians had volunteered the shipping, and indicated that Palestine would be the most convenient

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refuge. Dr Weizmann, then in New York, appealed personally to Lord Halifax to press his government to take up the offer.30 The Foreign Office response to Halifax was an unequivocal nega­ tive, reiterating the twin hallowed principles - no deals with the enemy, and no diversion of military resources for ‘Jewish causes’. The Romanian offer, if serious, was clearly a piece of blackmail which, if successful, would open up an endless process on the part of Germany and her satellites in South-Eastern Europe of unloading, at a given price, all their unwanted nationals on overseas countries ... to admit the method of blackmail and slave-purchase would mean serious prejudice to the successful prosecution of the war. The blunt truth is that the whole complex of human problems raised by the present German domination of Europe, of which the Jewish question is an important but by no means the only aspect, can only be dealt with completely by an Allied victory, and any step calculated to prejudice this is not in the interest of the Jews in Europe.31

On the specific question of admitting Jewish refugees into Palestine, the Department insisted that Britain had gone as far as it could, with the arrangements announced on 3 February, whereby 4,000 children from Bulgaria, and a further 500 from Hungary and Romania, were to be allowed into Palestine. The 29,000 immigration certificates still remaining from the White Paper quote of 75,000 were to be reserved until the White Paper deadline of March, 1944, for juveniles from enemy countries. When asked by R.W. Sorensen in the House of Commons if he could not waive the White Paper limit, the Colonial Secretary replied that it was imperative to adhere to it, ‘from the point of view of stability in the Middle East at the present time’.32 One member of the Commons particularly active on behalf of Jewish refugees was Miss Eleanor Rathbone, a Gentile, and foundermember of the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror. She was a staunch admirer of Churchill, and her defence against an attack made upon him by Aneurin Bevan had even earned her a personal letter of thanks. In March, 1943, she called up her credit, to ask the Prime Minister for an interview of ‘a few minutes’, to discuss ‘the problem of rescue measures for the victims of Nazi Massacres’. She emphasised that his personal intervention was necessary, in order to break the bureaucratic stalemate: I don’t underrate the enormous difficulties in the way of substantial rescue measures. But I am convinced that there are some things that could and should be done and would rescue a good many thousands, without the

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slightest damage to the war effort. Also that these things will not be done unless there is both a changed spirit and an improved administrative machinery, such as only you could bring about.

But Miss Rathbone was soon to be disillusioned. Whether due to preoccupation with more ‘urgent’ matters, or perhaps unease at his own Government’s policy, Churchill shied off a possible confronta­ tion, and instructed his staff: ‘I cannot do this, so get me out of it with the utmost civility’.33 Miss Rathbone became something of a bete noire for the Foreign Office officials, who resented her misguided, even if well-meaning ‘illusions’ about the Jews’ position in Europe: She is the impatient idealist who cannot bear to think that there is not a ready solution for a particular human problem on which she feels so passionately. But she really must not claim a monopoly or imply that Ministers and Government officials are too busy or too indifferent to deal with the practical problems of which she knows so very little.34

The Allied declaration of December, 1942 was followed by a month of intensive radio broadcasts on the Jewish Question in Europe. They provided some moral succour to the Nazis’ future victims, ‘in offering them the knowledge that their sufferings were known to those outside and that their fate was a matter of concern to others’. It gave some, but all-too-brief relief to the Jews of Poland, whose mass murder was in process. However, as put eloquently by Professor Wasserstein: the relief and solidarity was soon transformed into bitter disillusion and accusations of betrayal, when it became plain to the survivors of the Warsaw ghetto in the winter of 1942-3 that the encouragement held out by such broadcasts was as insubstantial as the ether through which they were transmitted.35

On 19 December, 1942, Churchill had received a personal appeal on behalf of Polish Jewry, from Samuel Zygielbojm, the Jewish Bundist deputy to the Polish National Council in London. Zygielbojm informed Churchill that hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews were perishing, and that of a total of three-and-a-half million Polish Jews, barely one-and-a-quarter million still survived. He begged Churchill ‘to find the means to save those few Polish Jews who still may have survived’. There is no record of any reply from Churchill, and no Allied intervention was mounted to stop the slaughter.36 On 12 May, 1943, Zygielbojm committed suicide, in protest at Allied inaction

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and hypocrisy. In a note written shortly before his death, he indicted the Allies: The responsibility for this crime - the assassination of the Jewish population - rests above all on the murderers themselves, but falls indirectly upon the whole human race, on the Allies and their governments, who have so far taken no firm steps to put a stop to these crimes ...37

One further, of many episodes may be noted here. In February, 1944, Churchill received a ‘pressing appeal’ from the Polish Ambassador in London, Count Raczynski, urging the British Government to protest at German outrages against the remnant of Polish Jewry. As was his usual practice, Churchill referred the appeal to Eden. But this time, since the Polish Government-in-Exile was involved, he minuted: ‘I ought either to keep out of this thing, or make some vigorous public protest. A mere acknowledgement would be rather unsuitable’. Eden brought the matter before the Cabinet’s Committee on Refugees,38 which decided that the repetition of public warnings had devalued their utility, and no further protests were likely to help - though warnings to German satellites might still be effective. Eden sent a formal acknowledgement to the Polish Ambassador. Churchill affirmed Eden’s action.39 Churchill’s apparent indifference, and his refusal to intervene personally on the Jewish refugee problem, did not go unnoticed at the time. Various leading British Jews appealed to him, in vain, to dissociate himself from official policy. At the very least, they sought a public expression of his reputed sympathy for the Jews. All appeals were referred to the Foreign Office, and all replies came from them. For example, in January, 1943, shortly after Eden’s statement, Eva, the Marchioness of Reading, President of the British Section of the World Jewish Congress, wrote what Churchill later called ‘one of the many moving appeals recently addressed to the Government’. Her letter, like Miss Rathbone’s, deplored the bureaucracy’s obtuse­ ness to the ‘horrible plight of the Jews at the mercy of the Nazis’, and laid down a challenge: I have said to myself what can I do, who can help? And the answer is clearly, only Mr Churchill can help and I can at least write and beg him to do so. In other days I would have come in sackcloth and ashes to plead for my people; it is in that spirit that I write. Some can still be saved, if the iron fetters of red-tape are burst asunder ... I learn with amazement that His Majesty’s representatives in Turkey withhold certificates for Palestine and threaten deportation to those who have escaped, because they are ‘illegal’. England

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cannot merely sink to such hypocrisy that our members of Parliament stand to show sympathy to the Jewish dead and meanwhile her officials are condemning these same Jews to die? You cannot know o f such things. I do not believe you would tolerate them. There are still some 40,000 certificates for Palestine under the White Paper regulations. Mr Churchill will you not say they are to be used now, for any who can escape, man woman or child? Is it possible, is it really possible to refuse sanctuary in the holy land?40

Churchill was abroad when the letter arrived. But routinely, Lady Reading’s appeal was referred to the Foreign Office, for a suitable reply. The Department referred her to a speech made by Attlee, on 19 January, 1943, who had explained, enigmatically, that any public discussion of the problem might prejudice secret negotiations then in process with other countries.41 The Foreign Office now stressed the great practical difficulties in arranging for an exodus of European Jewry, even if permission was obtained to do so. It was claimed that possible lines of escape passed through ‘war areas where our requirements are predominantly military, and which must therefore in the interests of our final victory receive precedence’. The Foreign Office reply, sent above Churchill’s signature, reassured Lady Reading that the Palestine government would continue to admit Jewish refu­ gees ‘up to the White Paper limit’, and referred to the scheme to allow in Jewish children from Bulgaria. In conclusion, he cautioned that progress must be slow, due to ‘transport difficulties’.42 Churchill’s Jewish friends clearly became embarrassed by the treatment meted out to the Jewish refugees by his government. One of these, inevitably, was Lord Melchett. In May, 1944, he wrote the following troubled note to Churchill: There is one psychological factor which I think ought not to be overlooked ... That is the feeling of frustration and exasperation which this policy has caused - coming as it does from a Government over which Mr Churchill presides. His wholehearted championship of our cause in the past has made our people turn to him as a saviour, and it has been extremely difficult even for an intelligent population to understand how some of these acts could be carried out by a Government under his leadership, unless it be either that the information was kept from him or that it was put forward in some perverted form.43 2. THE REFUGEES, AND ‘ILLEGAL’ IMMIGRATION INTO PALESTINE

The guiding principles of British policy towards Jewish refugees during the war were: ‘no retreat from the immigration provisions of the Palestine White Paper; no admission of refugees from Nazi

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Europe to Britain; and no entry of significant numbers to the Colo­ nial Empire’.44 In October, 1939, the British Cabinet’s Committee on Refugees established two operative principles, that would guide her policy towards Jewish refugees for the course of the war: (1) no cooperation with the Germans to effect the emigration of German Jews; and (2) in order to prevent the ‘flooding’ of Palestine in excess of the White Paper’s 75,000, no acceptance of Jewish refugees from enemy-occupied territories. In mid-1940, when the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States, they too came under the latter category, even if the Soviet Union was not Britain’s enemy.45 Officials became neurotically obsessed with alleged Jewish plots to undermine British policy in Palestine. A joint Foreign/Colonial Office memorandum dated January, 1940 referred to an ‘organized invasion of Palestine for political motives, which exploits the facts of the refugee problem and unscrupulously uses the humanitarian appeal of the latter to justify itself’. The document concluded that unless the Government displayed ‘the honesty of its intentions’ by strictly enforcing the immigration restrictions of the White Paper, the prospects for a settlement in Palestine would be wrecked, an Arab rebellion would probably erupt, and British relations with the entire Arab world would be jeopardized. A good deal of reference was made to Nazi connivance in the Jewish traffic, but there was not so much as a single hint that the Jews had genuine reasons for flight.46 At the same time, it should be noted that the ‘illegal’ traffic pro­ voked dissension within the Zionist camp itself. Some saw it as a Zionist duty, and an issue for humanitarian considerations alone. Others opposed the traffic, objecting that it prevented the orderly selection of ‘suitable’ candidates, at a time of heavy unemployment in Palestine, and exacerbated the Zionists’ relations with the British, at a time when the leaders hoped for a ‘freezing’ of the White Paper, as a reward for Jewish cooperation in the war effort. During the first years of the war, with escape routes yet open, and illegal traffic at its zenith, the Government twice suspended the issue of the legal immigration schedule, from September, 1939 to March, 1940, and from October, 1940 to March, 1941. During the first twelve months of the White Paper regime, 10,529 legal, and 15,489 illegal immigrants entered Palestine - this was over half the total of all Jewish and 80 per cent of all illegal immigrants who would enter Palestine during the five years provided by the White Paper until March, 1944. By May, 1943, with less than one year to run of the

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five-year period, nearly half the total schedule (32,000) remained unused. Some officials were actually embarrassed at their own handi­ work, reflecting as it did how little Britain had done to facilitate the rescue of European Jews. Thus during the course of 1943, Colonial Office inflexibility was relaxed, for several reasons: because it had led to two major tragedies, involving huge loss of life (The Patria tragedy, in November, 1940, and the Struma tragedy in February, 1942); because Britain needed to demonstrate to the world its ‘liberality’ towards the Jews, as news of the Final Solution became general knowledge, and the British Government issued official warnings to the Nazis; because, due to Colonial Office policy, the government had plenty of certificates still in hand, after four years of illiberal allocations; and perhaps above all, because by 1943, with Europe effectively sealed off by the Germans, no large-scale Jewish escapes from Europe needed to be apprehended.47 Thus there was little practical significance in the Colonial Office decision of June, 1943, to lift the ban on emigration from enemy-occupied territory. Yet even now, the Department insisted that no public announcement be made, so as not to provoke any flood via Turkey, the only exit channel still open. On 2 July, 1943, the five-year official deadline for Jewish immi­ gration was officially abandoned. But the decision was kept quiet. The Zionists were told, in confidence, one week later. The House of Commons was informed the following November.48 The Turkish Government was not informed officially until January, 1944, due to a fear of provoking them into a more ‘liberal’ policy in regard to the transit of Jewish refugees.49 In March, 1944, at the end of the White Paper’s five years, there still remained 20,000 of the official 75,000 allocation - a tribute to the officials’ tenacity of purpose. The 1939 quota would not be exhausted until December, 1945. This was the immigration policy of the government over which, for the greater part of the war, Winston Churchill presided. Churchill never did concern himself, directly, or regularly, with the plight of the Jews during the war. His two major, well-known interventions on their behalf, both in 1940, arose from specific incidents that aroused his emotions and offended his elemental sense of justice and humanity. As Clement Attlee has commented: ‘You only had to bring home to him an instance of cruelty and injustice, and he would res­ pond to it. When his feelings were moved, he acted’.50Yet Churchill’s easily-moved emotions were not usually allowed to prevail over

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more mundane policy considerations. They never provoked, in the case of the Jews, the slightest divergence from war-time priorities. Neither did Churchill always regard Palestine as the panacea to Jewish suffering, as the Zionists did. As noted already, on 24 November, 1938, barely two weeks after the Crystallnacht pogrom, Churchill specifically ruled out Palestine as a primary refuge for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, and expressed his understanding and sympathy for Arab objections to excessive Jewish immigration. There need be no doubt that Churchill, like many others, was moved by news of outrages against the Jews. Attlee has recorded how, before the war, Churchill told him of events in Germany, all the time with tears running down his cheeks. But Churchill’s inter­ ventions in the realm of official refugee policy never went so far as to challenge the principles of the White Paper. In the words of Professor Laqueur, ‘Churchill showed more interest in the Jewish tragedy than Roosevelt and also more compassion but even he was not willing to devote much thought to the subject’.51 There was both strength and weakness in Churchill’s modus operandi. He had a tendency to seize upon any issue, great or small, worry the life out of his colleagues and the Officials, for a time, and then, just as suddenly, he would drop the matter and pass on to other preoccupations. One who worked very close to Churchill, for most of the war, was the Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke. The following passage, taken from his diaries, is worth quoting at length: His mind, interested in everything pertaining to the human lot, cast a search­ light into every cranny of the nation’s life. Nothing came amiss to it and no-one could predict - least of all the Ministers, bureaucrats and Service chiefs upon whose activities it turned - when and where it would light. Two days after Pearl Harbour and on the day that the Prince o f Wales and Repulse were lost, and when the entire British and American position in the Pacific was crumbling, this amazing Prime Minister dictated, inter alia , three searching minutes to ensure that sweet-rationing should not be introduced unnecessarily, that timber-felling companies should not be allowed to denude woodlands without consideration for the appearance of the country­ side, and that young women in the A.T.S., serving with A.A. batteries, should not be roughly treated and should receive every kind of minor compliment and ornament for good service.52

The publication of the Alanbrooke diaries after the war was regarded by some, including Churchill himself, as a betrayal of their close collaboration during the war. But Lord Moran, for instance, has assessed them as ‘the first serious contribution by a contemporary to

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the task of fitting him [Churchill] into his niche in history’.53 This character trait has been noted also by those who may be counted among Churchill’s most devoted staff. The following is the assess­ ment of John Colville, Assistant Private Secretary from 1940 to 1941, and again, from 1943 to 1954: he always found time for the trivialities too ... Nobody complained that he neglected the vital for the insignificant, but there were those who lamented his preoccupation with detail in matters great as well as small ... His decisions were often unpredictable, because his mind did not operate in predetermined grooves, but a sudden whim or unexpected judgement caught his family or staff unawares no less frequently than the Cabinet or the Defence Committee.54

It is in this context, I would suggest, that one must judge Churchill’s two incursions into the Colonial Office domain in 1940, on the subject of the flight of Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine. The story has already been recounted, so just a brief review will be given here. Churchill’s first involvement, in his capacity as First Lord of the Admiralty, was with the Colonial Office policy of interception of illegal immigrants at sea. When diplomatic contacts failed to dis­ suade European Governments from allowing out Jews via their ports, the Colonial Office requested that the Navy’s Contraband Control Service be employed to intercept the ships, on the pretext of searching for contraband. If and when Jewish immigrants were found on board, without legal visas, punitive fines could be imposed on the captains and the owners of the ships, in the hope that this might deter future traffic. The Colonial Office pursued this tactic, in spite of legal advice that such interception on the high seas would be in contravention of international law.55 On 30 December, 1939, at the request of the Colonial Office, the Admiralty instructed the Commander-in-Chief British Naval Forces in the Mediterranean, to intercept an illegal immigrant vessel, and conduct it to Haifa, ‘giving as reason for this diversion [the] necessity of examining cargo for enemy exports or if no cargo for enemy agents’.56 Apparently, the Admiralty order was despatched without Churchill’s knowledge. When he discovered the telegram, Churchill went to the unusual length of informing the Colonial Secretary that it had been sent off without his knowledge, and that he, Churchill, had taken ‘suitable action in the Department concerned’. Churchill agreed to carry out the order in that particular case (the S.S. Rudnitcbar)

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but warned that the Admiralty would not be able to employ its ships on such missions as a regular practice. Lastly, he asked MacDonald how he proposed treating ‘these wretched people’ when they had been rounded up, and what would be their fate?57 MacDonald explained that the intention was to confiscate the ships engaged in this trade, and imprison their captains and officers, as the only effective deterrent. As for the passengers themselves, the Government would try to persuade the Bulgarian Government, which had cleared the ship at Varna, to take them back on the first Bulgarian steamer available. If that did not prove possible, the people would be interned for quarantine and investigation, and then released for settlement in Palestine.58 Churchill did not challenge MacDonald’s intention to try first to have the refugees returned to Bulgaria. The officials were ultra-sensitive to Churchill’s reputation as a friend of the Zionists. At times, this led them to see imaginary skele­ tons and to over-react. Thus, on 25 January, 1940, after Churchill had in fact agreed to further intercepts of ships carrying refugees, if in the course of regular contraband patrols, Sir John Shuckburgh treated Churchill’s response with some scepticism: He probably does not realize, or only partially realizes, that these particular measures are directed, not against his Jewish friends, but against a gang of mercenary Levantines whose object is to exploit the miserable refugees for their own pecuniary benefit.59

Shuckburgh’s professed concern about the venal side of the traffic was little short of humbug. On 1 February, 1940, in another internal minute, he disclosed his real anxiety: The Jews are all out to defeat the White Paper policy ... obvious means is to pour in illegals into the country as rapidly as possible ... Every Arab, in and out of Palestine, will be convinced that once again we have surrendered to Jewish pressure and have gone back on pledges solemnly given.60

Churchill was concerned about two aspects only, in this order; first, that the Navy’s limited resources should not be squandered in chas­ ing wretched refugees around the Mediterranean; and second, that the narrow-minded officials should not be allowed to indulge their vindictiveness against the Jews. But Churchill did accept the need to limit and control Jewish immigration into Palestine. He did agree to the interception of further ships, even after the Rudnitchar had evaded capture (the S.S. Hilda was intercepted and towed into Haifa

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harbour in January, 1940). All this was on the condition that the interceptions were made ‘in the ordinary course of contraband examination’.61 MacDonald hoped that the seizure of two or three ships would prove an effective deterrent, and bring a halt to the illegal traffic. He also hinted at evidence that the Germans themselves were stimu­ lating the traffic (true), and that enemy agents were being infiltrated into the Middle East in this fashion (never proved).62 In February, 1940, MacDonald asked Churchill to issue standing orders to the Navy in the Mediterranean to intercept and divert to Haifa for examination all ships suspected of carrying illegal immigrants.63 Harold Downie, head of the Colonial Office Middle East Depart­ ment, had been assured by Admiralty officials that the ‘security argument’, i.e. the risk of infiltration of enemy agents, would per­ suade Churchill to issue the standing orders. But the Colonial Office tactic proved self-defeating. The official Admiralty reply dismissed this argument, and the risk as not ‘likely to be serious enough in case of ships carrying Jewish refugees from persecution to Jewish settle­ ments in Palestine’.64 The personal touch of Churchill himself was detected in the Admiralty reply: the view which the Admiralty expresses is a curious one in the circumstances. It is in no sense borne out by the facts, and its tone implies a sympathetic concern for ‘persecuted refugees’ which one cannot help feeling is out of place in an official expression of opinion from a Service Department. The reply was probably referred to the First Lord personally, and I cannot help feeling that further correspondence would not carry the matter any further.65

The efforts by the Colonial Office to mobilise the Navy’s contraband service in the campaign against illegal immigration into Palestine was abandoned just a few days before Churchill left the Admiralty, to become Prime Minister.

The second episode in which Churchill, now Prime Minister, was involved was that of the Patria disaster in November, 1940. Churchill intervened at first to ensure that the intercepted refugees, once detained, would receive humane treatment in the internment camps to which they were to be deported; and later, after the Patria had been blown up, and after Churchill had been lobbied, he intervened to reverse the deportation order against the survivors of the tragedy, as an exceptional humane gesture.66

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In September, 1940, on the eve of the German advance on the Balkans, British Intelligence reported that thousands of Jewish refugees were assembling in south-east Europe, apparently with the intention of sailing for Palestine. There was evidence that the Germans were actively encouraging the exodus of Jews from Europe, and that both the S.S. and the Gestapo were involved, motivated by ideological and pecuniary interests. On 25 November, 1940, the Colonial Office passed on to the Foreign Office and to Churchill a report from the British Passport Control office at Athens on the refugees that had recently arrived in Palestine on three ships, the S.S. Pacific, Milos and Atlantic, some 3,600 all told. These refugees had been brought down the Danube to the Romanian Black Sea port of Tulcea, on ‘four German river boats luxuriously fitted with all comforts’, and from there tran­ shipped to the three ships that carried them to Palestine. The latter had been purchased with money raised by the American Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr. Two German Jews had been involved at the German end, the Storfer brothers, one of whom, Haim, was alleged to be ‘a personal friend of Hitler and ... an agent of the Gestapo’.67 The British presumed that apart from ideological and financial motives, the Germans must be exploiting this traffic to infiltrate their agents into the Middle East. But this claim boomeranged back on the Colonial Office, since they were unable ever to substantiate their claims when asked to. However, the claim cannot be dismissed so lightly as some have done, and at the time, it was a risk that had to be taken into account. Indeed, it was a risk that the Zionists themselves regarded as quite high. Moreover, in November, 1940, Weizmann himself feared that any contretemps over the three refugee ships might jeopardise the Division scheme which, he hoped, was about to reach its consummation. The Jewish Agency itself had no idea who had arranged the transports, and was convinced that the Gestapo was involved. Weizmann was shown a copy of British Intelligence reports, and convinced. ‘Baffy’ Dugdale recorded Weizmann’s impressions: ‘He thinks that the Gestapo are organizing a vast casting out of Jews from the Romanian ports. This of course altered the situation.’68 Weizmann feared the political repercussions of being linked up to the Nazis in any way. He told his London colleagues that he had heard ‘that the Gestapo was prepared to finance the departure of

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Jewish emigrants. This would cause a great deal of trouble by destroy­ ing confidence, and embarrassing them, and the British Government, in Palestine. It would also destroy their immigration schedules’.69 Weizmann proposed that they send their own agent along with the refugees, to ‘help weed out the Fifth Columnists’. At a later meeting, after the Patria disaster, Weizmann told his colleagues that the Colonial Office had now discovered the organizer of the transports, a Gestapo agent named Schroffel. The latter had approached the Jewish community in Vienna, offering to take out all the Jews of Austria, under Gestapo auspices, if the Jews provided the finance.70 It was against this complex, somewhat sinister backcloth that the Patria tragedy moved towards its climax. Faced with the arrival of the refugees on the three ships, and with no real hope of securing their repatriation, the Colonial Office secured the assent of the Governor of Mauritius to take in some 4,000.71 On 13 November, 1940, Lord Lloyd informed Churchill of his intention to deport some 1,760 refugees immediately to Mauritius, on the usual grounds - that they came from enemy, or enemy-occupied territory; that the Axis was involved, and might introduce enemy agents in this fashion; and that the arrival of large numbers of refugees would embarrass the government vis-a-vis the Arabs. As Lloyd confessed, his early warning was designed to pre-empt anticipated Zionist protests at the deportations.72 Churchill gave his assent the next day, over the telephone, ‘pro­ vided the refugees were not repatriated to the torments they had escaped in Europe, and provided they were treated decently in Mauritius’.73 Lloyd was disingenuous in one respect - he did not inform Churchill that the High Commissioner in Palestine had announced that the deportees to Mauritius would never be allowed into Palestine, not even after the war. Churchill had warned his colleagues several times that while he was prepared to let the White Paper run for the course of the war, he expected to revise it afterwards. The Colonial Office instructions concerning the construction of the camps at Mauritius, including the use of barbed wire and armed guards, attracted the attention of the vigilant Martin. Churchill had not objected to the deportations, but now he recoiled from the idea of Britain placing Jewish refugees in concentration camps on Mauritius. Once again, he dismissed the security risk out of hand:

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I have never contemplated the Jewish refugees being interned in Mauritius in a camp surrounded by barbed wire and guards. It is very unlikely that these refugees would include enemy agents, and I should expect that the Jewish authorities themselves, as Weizmann can assure you, would be most efficient and vigilant purgers in this respect.74

With no apparent logic, or consistency, Churchill suggested that those immigrants now in Palestine should be allowed to remain, and that deportations to Mauritius should be confined to future arrivals. The key to his reasoning lay perhaps with the Zionists themselves. The latter in fact agreed to the diversion of refugee ships to Mauritius, as being preferable to their being sent back to Nazi-controlled Europe - provided the diversion was executed before the ships reached Palestine. The Zionists could not agree to the deportations of refugees from Palestine, after they had already effected a success­ ful landing.75 But in the meantime, events in Palestine took their own course. The High Commissioner had been authorised by Lord Lloyd to announce the deportation of the new arrivals, and their permanent exclusion from Palestine, on 20 November, the very day that in London Churchill wrote to Lloyd withdrawing his previous assent. Lloyd telegraphed immediately to Palestine, but MacMichael, the High Commissioner, had already spoken. Lloyd told Churchill that to reverse the publicised decision now could be interpreted only as ‘a surrender to Jewish agitation’, and as such would not only encourage ‘more and more shiploads ... to descend upon us’, but also produce a ‘deplorable political effect in the Middle East’. Lloyd reassured Churchill that the refugees would be treated decently, and that the Governor of Mauritius had been instructed already to treat them ‘as detainees and not under prison regulations’.76 Churchill concurred, and agreed that since the action had been announced already, it should be carried out, while stipulating that ‘the condi­ tions in Mauritius must not involve these people being caged-up for the duration of the war’.77 The S.S. Pacific and Milos had arrived in Haifa at the beginning of November, 1940. The passengers were kept aboard, pending the arrival of the third ship, when all were to be deported. Tensions and tempers mounted, and on 20 November, the day of MacMichael’s announcement, there was a general strike. On 24 November, the third ship, the S.S. Atlantic, finally put into Haifa harbour, with 1,783 refugees on board. Preparations were made for their transfer

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to the Patria, a liner confiscated from the French. But before the transfer was completed, an explosive device was smuggled aboard by the Hagana, designed to disable the ship. It was detonated by a refugee on board on 25 November, 1940. The amount of explosive was too great for the hull of the ship, and it capsized quickly, taking down with it some 252 refugees, and twelve British policemen. It was generally believed at the time that the disaster was an act of suicidal desperation on the part of the refugees. As noted above, the emotional tidal wave generated by the tragedy made it impossible for the Foreign and Colonial Offices to introduce the White Paper constitutional legislation. The immediate consequence for the refu­ gees themselves was the reversal of the deportation order in respect of the survivors of the Patria explosion. The passengers on the Atlantic were eventually deported to Mauritius. The Patria disaster was announced to the Cabinet at 5.00 p.m. on the same day.78 But the Cabinet did not reverse the deportation order until its meeting two days later, as the result of intensive Zionist lobbying. Inevitably, pressure from the United States was most instrumental. On the day of the decisive Cabinet meeting, Lord Lothian tele­ graphed from Washington, reporting that a delegation of American Jewish leaders had called at the Embassy and appealed to him to allow the Patria survivors to remain in Palestine, as a special act of clemency.79 Lothian stated that if the government wanted American Zionists to cooperate in mobilising a “worthwhile response” to the Jewish Division scheme, it would be advisable to try to erase the impression that these and subsequent deportees were to be excluded forever from Palestine. The political leverage employed by the Zionists in higher quarters aroused the ire of the long-suffering Shuckburgh, as usual: It does seem to be important that Lord Lothian should be made to understand the true position. The whole suggestion underlying his telegram seems to be that we are in a position of supplicants for the favour of the American Jews and are consequently bound to humour them in every possible way. That is a complete travesty of the position ...80

Weizmann met Lord Halifax on the morning of the Cabinet meeting, and made the appeal on behalf of the Patria survivors. According to “Baffy” Dugdale, it was Weizmann’s appeal which led to the Cabinet’s intervention, that same evening.81 At the Cabinet meeting, there was a general feeling of remorse following the tragedy, and a

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consensus that the wording of MacMichaePs statement had been unfortunate. But Lord Lloyd, while himself taking exception to MacMichael’s statement, defended the deportation policy, and the need to intern the Jewish refugees under conditions of strict sur­ veillance, because of the risk of infiltration by hostile agents. Lloyd warned the Cabinet that illegal immigration had increased since the German occupation of Romania, and that nearly half the White Paper quota had already been exhausted, after 18 months of the contemplated five years. He reassured the Cabinet that the refugees would be treated decently, in “a humane fashion”, but argued against making an exception of the Patria survivors. Such an act of mercy would deprive the government’s policy of its deterrent value, and would all too likely encourage further acts of sabotage in the future. But Lloyd was overruled in the Cabinet. The anonymity of the protocol makes it impossible now to know who led the opposition. However, it should be emphasised that the Cabinet’s decision was a compromise. If a single exception was made in this particular case and this was undoubtedly due, in part, to feared negative reper­ cussions in the United States - then MacMichael’s harsh statement was allowed to stand, and all future illegal entrants were to continue to be deported, to Mauritius, or elsewhere.82 The act of clemency was applied only to the passengers of the Milos and Pacific, who had been loaded already on to the Patria. The passengers on board the Atlantic, which had arrived later, were duly deported to Mauritius, amid scenes of great violence. The Patria tragedy brought home to the British government the potentially disastrous, in both human and political terms, con­ sequences of the White Paper immigration regulations. Churchill, the veteran politician, and humanitarian, was keenly sensitive to both aspects. Thus his famous outburst against General Wavell, when the latter presumed to protest against the Cabinet’s decision. Wavell warned that the decision to allow the Patria refugees to remain on in Palestine, would have disastrous military repercussions through­ out the Middle East, and that unless the decision was reversed he would have to withdraw his recommendation (of 26 November) to open a supply route from Haifa to Basra via Iraq and Trans-Jordan. His telegram to Eden was strongly endorsed by Sir Miles Lampson, the pro-Arab Ambassador at Cairo.83 Churchill convened the Cabinet on 2 December, 1940, and had it

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dismiss Wavell’s appeal out of hand. Yet at the same time, the Cabinet reconfirmed the policy of deportation, and authorised the High Commissioner to explain, when announcing the government’s act of clemency, that the ‘position remains unchanged as regards all other illegal immigrants, and the intention remains to send them overseas as soon as the necessary shipping is available’.84 Next, Churchill took the unusual step of writing a personal letter to General Wavell, to explain the Cabinet’s decision. In so doing, he undoubtedly gave vent to his spleen, and turned the issue into a personal confrontation: Personally I hold it would be an act of inhumanity unworthy of the British name to force them to re-embark. On the other hand Cabinet agreed that future consignments of illegal immigrants should be sent to Mauritius pro­ vided that tolerable conditions can be arranged for them there ... I wonder whether the effect on the Arab world will be as bad as you suggest. If their attachment to our cause is so slender as to be determined by a mere act of charity of this kind it is clear that our policy of conciliating them has not borne much fruit so far. What I think would influence them much more would be any kind of military success. I therefore suggest that you should reconsider your statement about the Basra-Baghdad-Haifa road when we see which way the compass points. I am sorry you should be worrying your­ self with such matters at this particular time, and I hope at least you will believe that the views I have expressed are not dictated by fear of violence.85

On the next day, Wavell cabled back personally to Churchill, giving his assent, and expressing the hope that his apprehension about the Arabs proved to be unfounded.86 One week later, he opened up his offensive in the Western desert, and went on to win a spectacular victory over vastly superior Italian forces. There was undoubtedly an element of personal animosity in Churchill’s relations with Wavell, and the Patria incident was to some extent a convenient outlet. Wavell was an introverted man, not the type Churchill took to easily, as Eden has recorded: ‘Churchill never understood Wavell and Wavell never encouraged Churchill to do so’. Churchill had referred to Wavell as ‘a good average Colonel’, who might make ‘a good chairman of a Tory association’. He had wanted to change him at the Middle East command in the summer of 1940, but had been unable to find a good alternative.87 In addition to Churchill’s contempt for Wavell’s martial qualities, he saw in Wavell the stereotype of the British officer, who once he reached the Middle East, became pro-Arab and anti-Jew. The officials’ neuroses about Churchill’s support for the Zionists were thus reciprocated by

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Churchill’s own neuroses about the anti-semitic tendencies at White­ hall and in military circles. There was in fact an element of truth on both counts, with each side regularly nurturing the preconcep­ tions of the other. Thus, for instance, when the military protested in 1942 against further Zionist appeals for a Jewish Force in Palestine, Churchill responded typically: The strength of opinion in the United States is very great, and we shall suffer in many ways there by indulging the British Military authorities’ and Colonial Office officials’ bias in favour of the Arabs and against the Jews. It may be necessary to make an example of these anti-Semitic officers and others in high places. If three or four of them were recalled and dismissed, and the reasons given, it would have a very salutary effect.88 3. THE ALLIES AND AUSCHWITZ, 1944

The Jewish community of Hungary (estimated at 800,000) was the last in Europe to fall victim to the Nazis. Hungary effectively became a German satellite in 1943. The regime of Admiral Horthy promul­ gated anti-Jewish discriminatory legislation, but withstood German pressure to yield up Hungarian Jewry.89 In March, 1944, with the German armies retreating westwards before the Soviet advance in Eastern Europe, Hitler took additional measures to guarantee against defections among his satellites. Horthy was summoned to Salzburg, and bullied by Hitler into dismissing Premier Kallay, and into accept­ ing a German commander and German S.S. and police forces in Hungary. Upon his return, he found his country occupied by eleven German divisions. The German occupation reduced the Hungarians’ ability to withstand German designs against the Jews, and in April, 1944 the first of many trainloads of Hungarian Jews departed for the death camp at Auschwitz. By May, the mass deportation and liquidation of Hungarian Jews was under way. With Germany clearly losing the war, dissensions appeared within and between the various hierarchies. Certain elements sought to save themselves by driving a wedge between the Allies, securing a separate peace with Britain and the United States, thereby allowing the German armies to concentrate exclusively on the Soviets in the East. This was the backcloth to the notorious ‘blood for trucks’ offer proposed by Gestapo agents in Hungary in the spring of 1944. On 19 May, 1944 Joel Brand, a member of the Hungarian Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee, brought to the West an offer from Adolf Eichmann to release all surviving Hungarian Jews, and possibly those

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still alive in neighbouring countries, in return for Allied aid of non­ military hardware (10,000 trucks) - to be used only in the East - and food provisions (soap, coffee, tea, cocoa).90 The deal proposed by the S.S. through the agency of Joel Brand was in conflict with the most sanctified of the principles guiding the Allies’ war policy. It involved dealing with the enemy prior to its total surrender, and from the outset, was regarded as establishing a dangerous precedent for the future extortion of ‘blood-money’, to save the European victims of the Nazis; and as a sinister attempt to weaken or split the Allies on the eve of inevitable German defeat. Finally, but most significantly, the British feared that any mass migra­ tion of European Jews would in part make its way to Palestine, thereby overwhelming the White Paper immigration limits, and undermining the British position in the Middle East. This last fear seems to have dominated the reaction of many officials to the prospect of rescuing any remnants of European Jewry still alive. This was obviously the principal concern of Charles Baxter, head of the Foreign Office Eastern Department: We do not, of course, wish to impede the escape of Jews from Hitler’s clutches, but we must always bear in mind the fundamental facts of the Palestine immigration problem; namely, that the outstanding balance of 27,S00 places for Jewish immigrants must if possible be made to last for the whole of the remaining period of the war against Germany. Eastern Department must ask Refugee Department, who handle refugee questions for the whole Foreign Office, not to dissociate themselves from the needs of other departments ... If H.M. Government’s policy is wrongly handled on the refugee questions, if too many undesirables are admitted to strengthen the Hagana, or if Palestine is suddenly flooded by a spate of Jews, as the Jewish Agency desire, we shall almost certainly have to cope with Arab disturbances over the whole Middle East... This would be intolerable in the year of the Second Front. Nothing could serve the German purpose better and we must not get into the position of being unable to refuse an uncontrolled flood of immigrants if German policy changes, much as we wish to pursue a humanitarian policy.91

Resentment at the ‘inconvenience’ caused by European Jewry spilled over at times into ill-disguised anti-semitic prejudice. Thus in March, 1944, when the Hungarian problem first became acute, R.M.A. Hankey, Baxter’s colleague at the Foreign Office, had agreed to the provision of visas for Hungarian refugees by British consuls in Turkey, ‘provided the avalanche (or trickle, as the case may be) is diverted from Palestine into a sorting place well away from Palestine

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(e.g. Aleppo or Cyprus) so that our relations in the M.E. area are not upset by the complete rabble who may descend upon us. Security considerations should also be borne in mind, as any crook who can buy a visa may land on us’.92 The Brand mission raised to a peak Foreign Office hysteria that Palestine was about to be overrun by a flood of Jewish refugees. Yet from the outset the Brand offer was never considered seriously, for reasons of high policy. The Cabinet’s Committee on Refugees decided on 31 May against any negotiation with the Nazis, and concluded that any release of Hungarian Jews now might ‘lead to an offer to unload an even greater number of Jews on our hands’.93 But the matter had to be treated with some circumspection, since the Americans too were involved, and had received independent reports from their own consul at Istanbul. As the Foreign Office brief for the Cabinet Committee stated: the only reason why, at the outset, H.M. Government did not dismiss the Gestapo proposals with contempt was that the U.S. Government, particu­ larly in election year, is desperately anxious to show that nothing, however fantastic, has been neglected which might lead to the rescue of Jews.94

President Roosevelt’s policy in regard to the Holocaust has been termed the ‘politics of gestures’, which involved public relations demonstrations, like the Evian and Bermuda conferences (1938, 1943), that in advance were deprived of all authority to do anything meaningful for the refugees whose plight they discussed. In addition, there were grandiose rescue schemes which ‘usually amounted to tucking away a highly urbanised Jewish minority in some tropical equatorial rain forest or desert ...’95 But the State Department, like its British counterpart, ruled out any direct negotiations with the Germans ‘for other than United Nations nationals’, which, it was feared, might ‘derogate from established principle of unconditional surrender’.96 However, in January, 1944, at the personal instigation of Henry Morgenthau Jr., Roosevelt had set up the War Refugee Board, to work for ‘the immediate rescue and relief of the Jews of Europe’ and other victims of German persecution.97 The British had viewed the new Board with some cynicism, especially since Morgenthau, a Jew, virtually controlled its activities, and enjoyed direct access to the President, effectively overriding all other government agencies in determining American refugee policies. The British were not so far

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off the mark in suspecting that the whole operation had been mounted by the President as a political sop to the Jews in election year. Sir Herbert Emerson, British Director of the Inter-Governmental Committee of Refugees (1939-1947), returned in May, 1944 from a visit to Washington with the assessment that the Refugee Board was set up partly due to ‘creditable humanitarian impulses’, but in fact owed its existence to ‘a conviction that it was a way to win New York State for the Democrats’.98 However, both British and American apprehensions were eased by the Soviets, to whom the Brand/Eichmann offer was commu­ nicated. On 18 June, the Soviets rejected any negotiations with the Germans, and thus effectively put an end to this particular initiative, even if the option was strung out for a few weeks longer.99 In its representations to both the British and American Govern­ ments, the Jewish Agency urged that Brand be allowed to return to Budapest, if only to string out tactical negotiations, during which further deportations to the camps (then estimated at 12,000 per day) might be held up. At the end of June Moshe Shertok arrived in London and took charge of contacts with the British government.100 The Foreign Office, by now acutely apprehensive that they might be charged with insensitivity towards the fate of the Jews, did in fact wish to keep channels open to the Germans, not via Brand, but via the neutral Swiss. After their meeting with Shertok, the Foreign Office advised Halifax in Washington that the Eichmann offer was ‘not serious and, especially as coming through such insignificant or suspect channels, should on its merits have been contemptuously ignored’. However, the instructions continued, ‘we have to keep it in play in the hope of staving off disaster and see whether something acceptable might not emerge’.101 The offer, it was asserted, was designed ‘to extract material concessions of war-material from Allied Governments’, to split the British and Americans from the Soviets, and to provoke a rejection which might serve as a ‘justification for extreme measures against Jews’. Their choice now appeared to lie between doing nothing, in the expectation that a further German offer would arrive, and sending Brand back with a message that the Allies were willing to discuss any scheme for alleviating the plight of the Jews, and would convey their views further via a Protecting Power. But in a further telegram sent the same day, the Foreign Office informed Halifax that they had rejected Shertok’s proposal to

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‘dangle a carrot’ before the Germans. When Shertok was informed that there would be no direct contact with the Germans, he had retorted that the American War Refugee Board was constitutionally permitted to deal directly. The Foreign Office officials displayed surprise, and asked Halifax to check this up. They insisted that any direct contact ‘would ruin Soviet confidence in the Allies unless they had been asked and agreed’. Shertok concurred in the British prog­ nosis, but still searched desperately for some device that might delay the deportations to Auschwitz.102 It was at this point that Churchill himself became involved. At the end of June, 1944, there arrived on Churchill’s desk a Jewish Agency report on the workings of the gas-chambers in the Nazi death camps.103He minuted to Eden: ‘Foreign Secretary, what can be done? What can be said?’ Professor Bauer has suggested that it was this appeal that prompted Eden’s telegram to Washington, enquiring if the Americans were prepared to negotiate indirectly. However, the files seem to indicate clearly that what Churchill had in mind was yet another Allied public warning of retribution. The Foreign Office explained to Churchill that too many such declarations had been made already, and any more would only ‘inflate the currency’.’104 Churchill received copies of the two telegrams sent to Washington on 1 July, 1944. Eden explained that although their policy was no direct negotiations with the Germans, they ‘could not entirely dis­ regard Jewish interest in the matter’, and it was therefore thought desirable to lay before the Americans all possible options, and await their reaction. Churchill concurred in Eden’s action, but cautioned that not only would there not be any negotiation with the enemy, but any approach whatever would need to receive the prior sanction of the Cabinet.’105 As it so happened, the Americans did agree to ‘dangle a carrot’, and on 9 July, suggested that Brand be allowed to return, to tell the Germans that the Allies would convey their views through a Protecting Power. The Americans suggested also that both govern­ ments consider arrangements for accommodating all Jews allowed to leave German-controlled territories, in Allied or neutral countries. These steps were, naturally, predicated on prior Soviet assent.106 As noted already, on this occasion, Churchill himself took a more intransigent line than the Foreign Office in regard to negotiations with the Germans, even if on behalf of doomed Hungarian Jewry. Upon receipt of the American reply, Churchill enquired of his own

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staff if ‘there was any question of negotiating with the enemy about the release of Jews from Hungary’. He was informed that contacts via a Protecting Power ‘amounts to indirect negotiations with the enemy’. Nonetheless, his staff explained, in mitigation, it is quite usual to negotiate with the enemy through a protecting power, and this is done when, for example, we wish to arrange an exchange of prisoners of war. It has even been done in other instances with the object of getting Jews out of German hands.

However, the brief concluded, ‘the Foreign Office do not feel strongly enough about the approach through the Protecting Power, and have mainly been keeping the ball in play because of the dangers of a point-blank refusal, and the continued clamour o f Jews in London V07 It was on the basis of this brief that Churchill laid down his personal veto on any form of negotiation to save Hungarian Jewry. In the first, frequently-quoted part of his directive, he dwelt at length on the nature of the Germans’ crimes, and Allied deter­ mination to exact retribution: There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilized men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved.108

But any retribution was to be exacted after the war, following the Germans’ full and unconditional surrender. Churchill’s mind was preoccupied with a vengeance which would be of little consolation to those about to be drawn into the Nazis’ net. In conclusion to the above minute, Churchill instructed Eden to desist from any further moves to negotiate with the Germans: I cannot therefore feel that this is the kind of ordinary case which is put through the Protecting Power, as, for instance, the lack of feeding or sanitary conditions in some particular prisoners’ camp. There should therefore in my

opinion be no negotiations o f any kind on this subject.™9

With specific reference to the Brand mission, Churchill commented: ‘The project which has been put forward through a very doubtful channel seems itself also to be of the most nondescript character. I would not take it seriously’. Upon receiving Churchill’s directive, Eden summoned a further

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meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Refugees. In the interim, he had received a new piece of key information, which now discredited the Brand mission completely. It should be emphasised that this was information which Churchill himself still did not know of. British Intelligence now reported that Brand’s mission was merely a smoke­ screen, to cover the principal object, which was a Gestapo initiative to start up separate peace talks with Britain and the United States, with the object of spoiling their relations with the Soviets. Brand’s travelling companion, ‘Bandi’ Grosz, was in fact a multiple agent, who had lived for many years on the fringes of the European under­ world. He carried separate instructions from both the Hungarian and German secret services.110 The Cabinet Committee on Refugees met on 13 July, 1944. Sup­ plied with the new intelligence, and armed with Churchill’s own veto, it decided to ‘totally ignore the combined Brandt[sic]-Gestapo approach’. Eden urged the need for caution in their reply to the Americans, and warned of ‘the differences of opinion we shall prob­ ably encounter in Washington, where electoral necessities and the War Refugee Board backed by Mr Morgenthau dictate a willingness to play with any scheme, however objectionable, which can be rep­ resented as rescuing European Jews’. Churchill endorsed the line taken by Eden (‘I entirely agree’), and the draft he had prepared for the Americans.111 The Committee feared that a flat rejection of the Brand plan might provoke the Americans to make a public statement, justifying their own action. The British side wished to avoid any publicity, unless forced to by the Germans or the Jews. Thus it was decided that if the Americans reacted strongly to the British volte face , Churchill himself might be mobilised to explain the matter to Roosevelt. The Foreign Office reply focused almost exclusively on the new intelli­ gence, and suggested that if Brand were sent back to Budapest, it ‘would inevitably be interpreted as a response to the Gestapo’.112 On the very day the Foreign Office telegram was sent to Washing­ ton, the Brand mission was leaked to the Press. The New York Herald Tribune condemned it as a form of ‘low extortion’. The next day, 19 July, the London Times ran the story under the heading ‘Monstrous offer’ and insisted that the Allies would not fall for the German ruse of provoking a rift between the Western allies and the Soviets. The Zionists now reconciled themselves to the fact that Brand’s mission was aborted.113

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From the evidence in the British files, it appears that Churchill was motivated by a single-minded determination not to negotiate with the Germans, either directly or indirectly, at least not on the Jews’ behalf. He did not apparently subscribe to Foreign Office fears of Palestine being flooded by an influx of Jewish refugees. Certainly, Eden never raised this aspect with him. However, this author did come across one piece of tantalising evidence that would suggest that Churchill too was cognizant and even apprehensive of possible nega­ tive repercussions in the Arab world. At the beginning of August, 1944, Henry Morgenthau Jr. visited London, primarily in order to discuss his plan for ‘pastorialising’ Germany after the war.114 During his visit Morgenthau discussed with Churchill the position in Hungary. Eden was also present, and Morgenthau found them both ‘quite sensitive about the reaction of the Arabs’. According to Morgenthau’s diary entry for that day, Churchill stated that he was against lifting the White Paper immi­ gration quota in order to get the Hungarian Jews out, because he had promised the Arabs that while the war was on he would allow the quota to stand.115 Historians differ in their assessments of the Brand affair. Professor Bauer indicts the Allies for not going along with the Eichmann offer, if only to hold up, for however many days, the deportations to Auschwitz. ‘The process of negotiation itself, without any concrete result, might have saved lives’; therefore, he concludes, ‘The real conclusion is that Brand did not fail. It was the West that failed.’116 Professor Wasserstein emphasises the Allies’ natural preoccupation with maintaining a united front to defeat the Germans, and avoiding what was evidently a German trap: ‘At the time when the “second front” so long demanded by the Russians was at last being opened on the beaches of Normandy, such a manoeuvre would have been in the logic of the German position’.117 However, there was also a ‘subsidiary anxiety’ influencing British decisions, one that was not entirely absent from Churchill’s own calculations. That was the con­ cern to avoid any large-scale movement of refugees out of Europe, an operation that would inevitably have created great, perhaps insuperable pressures to open up the gates of Palestine to unlimited Jewish immigration.

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However, if Churchill imposed his personal veto on the Brand mission, he did not dismiss out of hand another proposal to try to save some of the potential victims of Auschwitz - a proposal made at the same time by the Jewish Agency, to bomb the plant used for the killings inside the camp, and the railway lines leading to it. This episode has aroused much controversy, especially since it has now been established that, contrary to the Allies’ arguments against the Brand mission, their reasons for rejecting the Jews’ pleas to bomb Auschwitz were entirely disingenuous. Contrary to what they told the Jews at the time, the Allies did have the resources, the technical know-how, and the logistical organization to carry out such a mission.118 On 6 July, 1944, Eden told Churchill of an appeal he had just received from Dr Weizmann, that the Government ‘should do something to mitigate the appalling slaughter of Jews in Hungary’. Detailed information about the murders at Auschwitz had been leaking out since April, 1944, supplied by escapees, the Swedish Government, and the Czech Government-in-Exile.119Now Weizmann reported mistakenly that 60,000 Jews were being gassed and burned to death each day at Birkenau (the death camp at Auschwitz II). Eden told Churchill that this figure might well be an exaggeration. But on the next day, Eden forwarded an additional report to Churchill, des­ cribing the four crematoria at the camp, with a gassing and burning capacity of 12,000 each day. Some 40,000 Hungarian Jews had already been deported and killed there. Over the past one year and a half, some one-and-a-half million Jews had been done to death in the camp.120 In his first note, of 6 July, 1944, Eden also forwarded Weizmann’s proposals to bomb the camps and the railway lines leading to them. Eden himself was in favour of bombing Auschwitz. He also favoured a further Zionist proposal that Marshal Stalin, whose armies were now advancing on Hungary, should issue a stern warning to the Horthy Government against its collaboration with the Nazi regime. On the day he received Eden’s second report, Churchill replied: Is there any reason to raise these matters in the Cabinet? You and I are in entire agreement. Get anything out of the Air Force you can and invoke me if necessary. Certainly appeal to Stalin. On no account have the slightest negotiations, direct or indirect, with the Huns. By all means bring it up if you wish to, but I do not think it necessary.121

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On the same day, 7 July, Eden forwarded Weizmann’s information to the Secretary of State for Air, Archibald Sinclair, and asked him, invoking the Prime Minister’s authority, to examine the feasibility of the proposals to bomb the camps and their railway lines.122 Sinclair’s response arrived one week later, on 15 July. He advised that bombing the railway lines was out of the question, since it would require too great a concentration of bomber forces, and the distance to Silesia from the bomber-bases in Italy ruled this out; likewise, bombing the plant was out of the question, since the distance was too great for a night attack. Sinclair suggested that the Americans might be able to carry out the mission, by daylight, though this would be a ‘costly and hazardous operation’, and, even if the plant was destroyed, Sinclair expressed his doubts whether this would help the victims. Sinclair did make one positive suggestion, to drop weapons from the air, to facilitate a break-out by the inmates (a similar opera­ tion had been mounted in France). He suggested that they put the whole question to the Americans, and reply to the Zionists after they received the American reply.’123 Eden’s reaction was mixed. On the one hand, he deprecated what he regarded as reticence on the part of the Minister: ‘He wasn’t asked his opinion of this; he was asked to act... A characteristically unhelp­ ful letter’. On the other hand, in view of Sinclair’s closeness to the Prime Minister, and his known support for the Zionists, Eden seized upon the former’s objections in order to divert from the Foreign Office the expected tirade when Churchill was informed that the mission against Auschwitz could not be carried out. Eden suggested therefore that they ‘pass the buck to this ardent Zionist in due course, i.e. tell Weizmann that we have approached Sir A. Sinclair and suggest that he may like to see him’.124 However, for all his apparent indignation at Sinclair’s unhelpful attitude, Eden himself did not pursue the matter any further. He was, as Professor Wasserstein has noted, ‘greatly preoccupied with the severe crisis in relations with the U.S.S.R. as a result of the Warsaw Rising and the Soviet refusal to grant landing rights to British or American supply planes, [and] assigned the task of dealing with the Jewish Agency bombing pro­ posals to the Minister of State, Richard Law’.125 Neither Eden nor any of his Foreign Office staff saw fit to explore further Sinclair’s proposal to drop arms to the camp inmates - even though just two weeks later special air forces were organized to drop supplies to the Polish Home Army revolt in Warsaw. The bombing proposals were

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referred to the mercies of the American War Department which, unknown to Sinclair, had in fact rejected them already, eleven days earlier.126 Churchill’s approval of the bombing of Auschwitz has been applauded by the historians, while blame for the fact that the opera­ tion was not carried out has been laid at the door of the officials. It has been claimed that although Churchill ordered Eden to ‘get what he could out of the Royal Air Force’, the Prime Minister was not always the final arbiter in the formulation of Allied policy, ‘and in many cases, not least among them the bombing of Auschwitz, other voices and other considerations prevailed’. It has been claimed also that Foreign Office officials deliberately withheld topographical data on the camps supplied by the Jewish Agency, and ‘decided to block further action’. ‘The result’, Wasserstein concludes, ‘was a striking testimony to the ability of the British civil service to overturn mini­ sterial decisions: although it had secured the explicit backing of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, the scheme was rejected. Churchill was abroad at the end of August and does not appear to have been told of the decision’.127 It would seem to me that the facts of the episode were rather more complex, and that neither Eden or Churchill was as blameless as indicated. Three questions have to be answered. First, was there in fact any deliberate sabotage by the officials, working behind their Ministers’ backs? Second, were there really insuperable technical difficulties, or was either Churchill or Eden duped into believing there were? And last, but not at all least, was Churchill hoodwinked, or out-manoeuvred in this matter - or, by way of corollary, did he make any attempt to follow up his first directive to have the RAF mount the operation? J.P. Fox has made the pertinent point that the decision to abandon the bombing mission was in fact political, and not military, or technical: ‘From the beginning the Air Ministry raised technical difficulties, but the political consideration was whether or not the Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz had been stopped and whether this changed the whole situation about the request to bomb Auschwitz’.128 This is a key point. Admiral Horthy did in fact order the deporta­ tions to be stopped on 8 July - although the news reached the Foreign Office only on 18 July, 1944. The news was published by the Asso­ ciated Press the next day.129 In some Jewish circles, it was believed

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that the halt might have been due either to transportation difficulties or, possibly, to the deterrent effect of Western (primarily Swedish) protests.130 As Martin Gilbert himself concedes, with this news it became apparent, both to the Jews and to the British Government, ‘that the fate of the Jews of Hungary now no longer depended upon negotiations with the Gestapo, or the bombing of the camps or railway lines, but on the goodwill of the Hungarian Government. This goodwill appeared, at first sight, to be a positive factor’.131 Notwithstanding these assessments, one caveat has to be inserted. Even if this were proved to have put a final stop to the deportations to Auschwitz from Hungary, the death camp did not cease to exact its toll of Jews transported from other European countries. Auschwitz was captured by the Red Army in January, 1945. Barely three thousand of its inmates were left behind alive; the rest were deported elsewhere. Even so, no decision was taken yet by London to cancel the bombing project. The Foreign Office allowed the issue to sink into bureaucratic oblivion, until pressed into action, ironically, by the Air Ministry. At the beginning of August, two weeks after the news that the deportations had ceased, the Air Staff pressed the Foreign Office to obtain more precise details about the location of Auschwitz.132 Polish Intelligence was approached, without result, and then an approach direct to the Polish Government-in-Exile was suggested. However, the official dealing with the matter now raised a ‘political’ reservation. He questioned whether there was any point in pro­ ceeding with the project, since the ‘political situation’, i.e. the deportations, had changed radically since Eden’s request one month before: ‘there seems to be a reasonable chance that the Hungarian Government have stopped them and are following a new policy’. The Air Staff were only too glad to seize upon the Foreign Office reservations, since they had gone into the matter in the first place only out of deference to Eden’s request of their Secretary of State. They told the Foreign Office officials that they would be ‘grateful’ if the latter could release them from the whole business, by having their Secretary of State send an official letter explaining that the bombing project need no longer be pursued.133 The Foreign Office realised that they would first have to check with the Jewish Agency, to see if its request still stood, and in addition, they had to be cautious, in view of Eden’s and Churchill’s personal involvement: ‘We cannot however let this die without the

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Secretary of State’s approval as it arose out of a minute from him to the P.M., which the P.M. approved’.134 An official letter arrived from Air Commodore G.W.P. Grant of the Air Ministry on 13 August, 1944. It complained to the Foreign Office that nothing further had been heard from them since the phone-call of 5 August, and pressed again for ‘photographic cover of the camps and installations in the Birkenau area’. It also made it quite clear that only a fresh, explicit directive from Eden would allow the Air Ministry to lower the priority of the project, ‘which is now of the very highest’. As one Foreign Office official noted two days later, the ball was now in their court.135 To say that the Air Ministry’s letter reflected ‘impatience with the Foreign Office’s indecisive and dilatory attitude136 is only part of the truth. It suggests an enthusiasm for the project at the Air Ministry which had never existed. At the beginning of August, the Air Staff wanted either to obtain better photographic Intelligence - on the basis of which they could take their final operational decision; or, and probably preferable to them, to receive official permission from the Foreign Office to drop the project.137 On 15 August, Roger Allen of the Foreign Office drafted a reply for the Air Ministry, holding up all further planning for the mission. But on the next day, the Jewish Agency replied in the affirmative to the Foreign Office query if they still favoured the bombing of Ausch­ witz. Ivor Linton, of the London office, pointed out what should have been obvious: ‘There are still many Jews in the hands of the Germans who can be sent to these camps to their doom’. It will be recalled that Eden himself had told Churchill, at the beginning of July, that Auschwitz had already put to death over one-and-a-half million Jews from all over Europe. Linton added extra logic to the mission - given the Germans’ dwindling resources, and their general retreat, it would be most difficult for them to reconstruct new plant to replace that destroyed. Following Linton’s letter, Allen’s draft was altered, and the Air Ministry was informed that the bombing mission was under reconsideration.138 The predicament of the Foreign Office was made yet more acute when on 18 August, in response to their own request, Linton secured topographical plans of the camp from the Polish Ministry of the Interior.139It is quite true that at this point the Foreign Office officials held up the project further, by not forwarding the plans of the camp to the Air Ministry.140 However, it was not just the detailed lay-out

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of the camps which was preventing the Air Staff from approving the mission. Perhaps even more, it was the allegedly great distance of the camp from Allied air bases which, it would be claimed, was beyond the range of their planes. It was on this last ground that both the British and the Americans would rule out the mission. The Air Ministry and Foreign Office each seemed to be trying to manoeuvre its counterpart into taking upon itself the responsibility for cancelling the project. Edward Walker, an official at the Refugee Department, referred to the ‘anomalous position’ whereby Sinclair’s initial reply of 15 July had detailed many technical problems and expressed great scepticism as to the practicability of the scheme; and next, on 13 August, the Air Staff had made practically a volte face , pressing for information, on the grounds that the project had now been given the highest priority.141 However, it was appreciated by some that the Foreign Office could not shift responsibility on to the Air Ministry, asking them to abort the mission on the grounds of absence of topographical information - especially since some of that information had now been obtained from the Jewish Agency. There­ fore, it was appreciated that the Foreign Office would have to take responsibility, on political grounds: ‘If the political situation has changed and we no longer wish on political grounds to proceed with this project, it is up to us to tell the Air Ministry so in a form that will have the effect of revoking the Secretary of State’s previous communication to Sir Archibald Sinclair’.142 But others did not see why, in view of Sinclair’s own sceptical response, the Air Ministry itself could not be saddled with the responsibility.143 Finally, it was decided to abort the mission on both political and technical grounds. On 1 September, 1944, Richard Law informed Sinclair that the Foreign Office did not intend to pursue the bombing project any further, owing to reports that the deportations from Hungary had been halted, and also to the technical difficulties raised by the Air Ministry itself. On 6 September, the Air Ministry advised Lieutenant General C. Spaatz of the United States Air Force, with whom it had been in contact over the project, that the British did not intend proceeding any further.144 The disingenuous fashion in which the officials handled the whole episode, and in particular, the fact that the Foreign Office did not hand over the topographical information supplied by the Jewish Agency (and ignored the latter’s request to proceed with the project, to save other, non-Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz), did not pass

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without subsequent comment within the Foreign Office itself, and has since been subjected, rightly, to stern criticism. On 21 September, the newly-appointed head of the Refugee Department, Paul Mason, surveyed the file on the proposal to bomb Auschwitz, now bulging with two months’ correspondence. Mason confessed that he was ‘not quite happy’ with what he found, particularly with the fact that the topographical information had not been forwarded. Mason was not at all confident that the Jewish Agency information (which did not in fact look to him to be all that good) would have necessarily caused the Air Ministry to alter its negative attitude. But the implication was that the Department should have passed on whatever information it had received. Even so, Mason concluded that if anyone should bomb Auschwitz - and the Jewish Agency was still pressing in this direction - then it should be the Red Air Force, whose bases were much closer.145 At the very least, the Foreign Office decision not to pass on the topographical information did not make the Air Ministry’s task any easier. However, it must be remembered that the major objection raised by the Air Staff, and by USAAF, was the logistical problem of precision-bombing targets with planes that would have to fly to the very limits of their range. The American record is, if anything, worse than the British. Topographical information on the camps had been supplied to Washington by early July! On 14 August, while the British Air Ministry and Foreign Office were yet bandying the ques­ tion back and forth, the American War Department wrote that the bombing of Auschwitz ‘would be possible only by the diversion of airpower from “decisive operations elsewhere’”.146 It is here, in the logistical arguments, that the key to the Allies’ rejection of the scheme lies. As usual, there was a critical lack of Allied will to divert resources, even if to save Jewish victims of ‘the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world’. There is a tragic irony in the fact that not only was Auschwitz in range of Allied (especially American) bombers, but it lay in fact within a key target area of Allied strategic bombing, in Upper Silesia. This area, with its synthetic oil and rubber installa­ tions, became a top priority target on the eve of and during the Normandy landings. The blanket bombing of targets in this area during the summer of 1944 is considered generally to have been one of the decisive factors in Germany’s defeat. From 8 May, 1944, American bombers based on Foggia, N. Italy,

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began systematic daylight raids on German oil depots and industrial plant in Upper Silesia. One of the key targets was the huge Blechhammer oil-refining complex, just forty-seven miles from Auschwitz, approved as a feasible target by the American Air Force as early as the beginning of May! Between 7 July and 10 November, 1944, fleets of from 102 to 357 heavy bombers of the Fifteenth U.S. Air Force hit Blechhammer, among other targets, on no fewer than ten occa­ sions. The industrial part of Auschwitz town, where the I.G. Farben plants were sited, lay less than five miles to the east of the gas chambers. These plants were in fact bombed twice, on 20 August, and again on 13 September, 1944. On the second occasion, the death camp itself was bombed, by mistake! As Professor Wyman has concluded, from a close study of USAAF records, the Auschwitz area was in fact ‘a hotbed of United States bombing activity from August 7 to August 29V 47 On 2 June, British bombers began the so-called ‘Frantic Shuttle’, the strategic bombing of the same area in Upper Silesia, operating out of bases in either Britain or N. Italy. Allied planes flew several times over the railway lines leading to Auschwitz, and on two occa­ sions, 26 June and 25 August, American planes took photographs. The Frantic Shuttle was cancelled during the month of July, after planes had been caught and bombed on the ground, while refuelling at the Russian base at Poltava. However, it was renewed in August, and on 6 August, Allied planes bombed Trzebinia, just thirteen miles away from the death camp at Auschwitz.148 Could not some of these hundreds of planes have been diverted to bomb Auschwitz? Were they all, every last plane, dedicated to the strategic bombings? The answer is no. The Western Alliance, and Churchill in particular, had a special interest in another drama taking place in Eastern Europe - the revolt of the Polish Home Army in Warsaw, which began on 1 August, 1944. The Polish revolt against the Germans began in the evident anticipation of an imminent Soviet conquest. But the Soviet advance stopped suddenly, just ten miles from Warsaw, permitting the Germans to annihilate the poorlysupplied Poles. It was suspected, with good reason, that the Soviets deliberately allowed the Germans to liquidate the Home Army, a nonCommunist, pro-Western force, linked to the Polish Governmentin-exile in London, a force that could be relied on after the war to resist Stalin’s plans for taking over Poland. The British government, Churchill in particular, made every effort

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to support the Polish revolt; The government ordered that missions be flown to drop supplies to the Poles, despite RAF warnings that the losses would be prohibitive. In view of the objections of the Allied air forces to bombing Auschwitz, on the grounds of logistical diffi­ culties, and the risks involved, it is worth noting just what risks those Allied governments were willing to take to try to save a potentially pro-Western, yet doomed regime in Warsaw. RAF and volunteer Polish units flew some twenty-two night operations from Italy to Warsaw between 8 August and 20 September, 1944. Of the 181 bombers sent out, 31 did not return. To quote Professor Wyman again: ‘To deliver 288 (or fewer) containers to a military force known to be defeated, 107 heavy bombers were tied up for nine consecutive days’. The USAAF also flew missions from Britain. On 18 September, it dropped 1,284 containers of arms and supplies on Warsaw - just 288 of these reached the Poles, the rest fell to the Germans.149 In the United States, with its large Polish population, the missions to Warsaw demonstrated humanitarian concern for the tragic fate of a devastated ally (albeit on the eve of the Presidential elections). In Britain, especially at No. 10 Downing Street, there was a funda­ mental political concern to ensure the survival of a pro-Western regime in Poland after the war. Whatever the actual cost-effectiveness of the Warsaw missions, they did demonstrate not only the Allies’ logistic ability to reach long-range targets in Eastern Europe, but their readiness to do so against the most narrow of odds, and for the most meagre of results. The crucial obstacle to the Allied bombing of Auschwitz, there­ fore, was not technical, or logistical - it was quite simply the unwillingness of the Allies to alter their order of priorities. In regard to the Americans, the Fifteenth Air Force demonstrated, from early May, 1944, that it had both the range and the ability to strike targets in the Auschwitz area. Furthermore, neither the Normandy landings (6 June, 1944) nor the consequent Allied drive across France drew on the resources of the Fifteenth Air Force. The invasion of southern France, in August, drew but briefly on a small proportion of its planes.150A similar verdict may be returned on Britain. During much of August and September, both American and British planes were made available to bring aid to the Polish revolt in Warsaw. And finally, what of Churchill’s role? In Professor Wasserstein’s opinion, the failure to bomb Auschwitz provides ‘a notable illustra­

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tion of the capacity of Whitehall to thwart the will even of the most powerful Prime Minister in British history’.151 However, the reader of Wasserstein’s categorical indictment will search his book in vain to discover what Churchill was actually doing between 7 July, 1944 - when he received Eden’s reports on Auschwitz, and sent the direc­ tive to ‘get what he could’ from the RAF - and the end of August, 1944, when the Foreign Office told the Air Ministry to drop the entire project. We are informed that Churchill was abroad at the end of August, and ‘does not appear to have been told of the decision’.152 But is this really a satisfactory explanation? If Churchill really was so unique in comprehending the ‘historical significance’ of the Holocaust, then why did he not do more about it? Apart from his single directive to Eden, on 7 July, 1944, no additional evidence has been presented to indicate that Churchill even so much as gaf'e a second thought to the problem. If the project was indeed so close to his heart, and thoughts, could Churchill not have asked Eden, or Sinclair, what in fact had been done about his directive? Churchill was not only a powerful Prime Minister, but, as noted already, he was a meddling one, capable of devoting himself to the most insigni­ ficant of trivialities.153 A hint is given, perhaps, by another of Churchill’s immediate staff. Lord Normanbrook, a member of the Cabinet Secretariat from 1941 to 1946, has likened Churchill’s stream of personal minutes to ‘the beam of a searchlight ceaselessly swinging round and penetrating into the remote recesses of the administration - so that everyone, however humble his rank or function, felt that one day the beam might rest on him and light up what he was doing’.154 As Attlee has recalled, whoever ‘fell under the searchlight’ would thenceforward be precipitated into a state of suspense, not knowing when, if at all, Churchill would in fact return to that particular issue. It may be hypothesised that this is precisely what happened with the Auschwitz bombing project. The Foreign Office was certainly wary lest they scrap a proposal which Churchill had lent his stamp to. But equally, by the end of August, 1944, nearly two months after the lone directive from Eden, the officials may have logically concluded that the period of ‘danger’, when Churchill might return to the issue, had passed. There will inevitably be those who maintain that during the summer of 1944, with the long-awaited opening of the Second Front, Churchill was otherwise preoccupied with matters of higher

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policy. However, one of the most diligent, if a jaded, observer, Sir Alexander Cadogan, has noted that Churchill’s talent for wasting the Cabinet’s time did not decline during the summer of 1944. On 27 June, Cadogan noted that the Prime Minister ‘monologued for hours’; and again, on 3 August, Cadogan lamented to his private diary: ‘. .. It’s terrible that we have a P.M. who simply cannot conduct business. Its all hot air.’155 But Churchill was directly and actively preoccupied with one aspect of the war in August 1944 which had no direct relevance to the major military operations of that period. Churchill took a keen personal interest in the flying missions designed to bring aid to the Polish Home Revolt in Warsaw. Churchill asked Sinclair to appeal to the Americans to fly missions from their bases in Northern Italy. When the Americans replied that their planes could undertake the mission only if allowed by the Russians to refuel at Russian bases before the return leg, Churchill appealed directly to Stalin. When the Russians refused, he asked Roosevelt to join him in a joint appeal. When Eden told Churchill of the Russian refusal, on 24 August, Churchill replied the next day that he had already suggested to the American ambassador in London, John Winant, that the American planes should ‘gate-crash’ the Russian bases, as the Russians would ‘never dare not to receive them if they came’. Churchill was infuri­ ated with Roosevelt when the latter refused on 27 August to make a joint appeal, through fear of offending their ‘gallant Soviet allies’.156 By juxtaposing the Auschwitz and Warsaw missions, we may observe that at the very time the officials were considering the safest way to abort the Auschwitz mission, and the Air Ministry was still pleading ‘technical difficulties’, not only were Allied planes actually flying over the Auschwitz area, on their way to Warsaw, but Churchill himself was actively concerned about, and dealing personally with the revolt in Warsaw. Not only that, but Churchill’s files contain maps showing the flight paths of the missions to Warsaw, flight paths that passed 'just to the west o f Cracow, virtually over Auschwitz

itself9.157 It would be appropriate to leave the last word on the subject to Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer. Somewhat at odds with his verdict that Churchill was almost alone in appreciating the historical significance of the Holocaust, is his conclusion that during the summer of 1944 ‘it was the agony of Warsaw, not the agony of the Jews, that had come to dominate the telegraphic exchanges of the

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Allied leaders’.158 In a pre-publication serialization of his book on Auschwitz, Gilbert refers to Churchill’s appeals to Stalin to help save the Polish Home Army, and concludes: But both appeals - two of many - do show the extent to which a matter considered of importance could be tackled at the highest level. This was a level which the Hungarian deportations, the Brand proposals and the bombing of Auschwitz never reached.159

EPILOGUE: CHURCHILL IN OPPOSITION, 1945-1948 There is a glaring anomaly in Churchill’s war-time record in regard to the Jews - a stark contrast between his aggressive expressions of sympathy for the Jews, and the absence, almost, of any practical measures on their behalf. Churchill himself never attempted to explain the anomaly, except to take credit, in Parliament and in his memoirs, for his support of the Jewish Fighting Force. As noted recently by A.J.P. Taylor, in a rare comment on Churchill’s reputed sympathy for the Jews, words were not translated into the coinage of action: Only Churchill continued to show sympathy with the Jews until the murder of Lord Moyne, and there is nothing more striking in the story than the total failure of the supposedly all-powerful prime minister to enforce his will on numerous occasions.1

Two questions need to be asked. First, what did Churchill himself feel about his failure to help out the Jews more during the war? And second, how did he manage to escape any criticism from the Jews themselves, and retain unscathed his reputation as their champion? There is cumulative evidence that Churchill developed an uneasy conscience towards the Zionists, to Weizmann in particular. At his meetings with the Zionist leader, he habitually gave vent to feelings of remorse. At their meeting in March, 1941, just after the Jewish Division scheme had been postponed for the first time, Churchill pulled the Ibn Saud scheme out of a hat, and told Weizmann that they had no need for long talks, since their thoughts were ‘99% the same’. He added that each time he saw Weizmann, ‘it gave him a twist in his heart’.2 In June, 1943, when both Weizmann and Churchill were visiting the United States, the former failed to secure a meeting with the Prime Minister. When asked by Roosevelt, routinely, if he had managed to see the British leader, Weizmann replied: ‘Mr Churchill doesn’t like to see me because he has very little to tell me’.3Upon his return to London, in July, 1943, Weizmann complained to Bracken

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at Churchill’s refusal to receive him - ‘the mere fact of an inter­ view would give comfort to the Jews, who were being driven to desperation’.4 Bracken advised Weizmann to appeal direct to the Prime Minister for an interview. When this failed too, Weizmann wrote to Bracken: I have tried to see the Prime Minister, but without success. My failure has been taken by Jewry as a sign that he, whose personal sympathies are well known, had nothing to say which could relieve our anxiety.5

At their last war-time meeting, on 4 November, 1944, Churchill had promised Weizmann a ‘generous’ partition of Palestine, once the war with Germany was over.6 As noted already, two days after that meeting, Lord Moyne was assassinated in Cairo by Jewish terrorists, and Churchill severed his connections with the Zionists forthwith, giving the Cabinet secretary orders to remove from the Cabinet’s agenda the partition plan tabled by the Cabinet Committee on Palestine. Unaware of all this, Weizmann returned to London from Palestine in March, 1945, and with the war in Europe obviously drawing to its close, tried to secure an interview with Churchill. But Churchill was inaccessible.7 He would never receive Weizmann again. Weizmann entered hospital, for the first of a series of operations to his eyes, which would leave him partially blind. During his first hospitalisation, the war in Europe came to an end (7-8 May, 1945). In Weizmann’s absence, his colleagues in London debated whether to threaten their leader’s resignation, in view of Churchill’s failure to keep his promise to deal with the Palestine question once Germany was defeated.8 This first debate was inconclusive, and was resumed on 23 May, 1945, the day after Weizmann left hospital. The Zionists were in agreement that Churchill’s government had betrayed the Zionist cause, and even worse - it had tricked them into silence, by making promises it had never had any intention of keeping. Opinions differed only as to the form their public campaign should take. Rabbi Fishman, of the Mizrahi, favoured a public confrontation with Churchill: ... they should tell the Cabinet and particularly the Prime Minister that preaching to them was not enough; the P.M. had done nothing for them during his period of office ... No people had been fooled as the Jewish people had been fooled by the British Government. He would have to say that in America.9

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Both ‘Baffy’ Dugdale and Ben-Gurion shared Fishman’s senti­ ments, but urged caution. They simply could not afford to alienate Churchill further, since he was yet a potential source of future salvation. But Berl Locker, a Palestinian labour representative who had worked in London for many years, agreed with Fishman: Was it polite, or fair, to receive three communications from the President of the Jewish Agency and not to say a word, just to leave them without any answer? There must be a reason for it, and the reason was not that Mr Churchill was busy - he was always busy ... By being passive they would not keep their people quiet. Dr Weizmann was going to see Colonel Stanley that afternoon. Colonel Stanley must be made to understand and to convey to the P.M. that they were not prepared to wait behind doors or go cap in hand and not be given any answer. Something must happen to show the Jews they were not off the map ...

On 25 May, Weizmann met with J.M . Martin, and again appealed for some positive move on the part of Churchill. He explained that he had maintained his position at the head of his people by con­ vincing them that they could rely on Churchill’s goodwill, which was supposed to manifest itself at the end of the war. However, develop­ ments in Palestine were now running out of his control. Weizmann warned that if he failed now to fulfil the hopes he had held out, he would have no alternative but to resign his position. On 22 May, Weizmann had signed a Jewish Agency memorandum addressed to Churchill, demanding a clear statement by the Allies that they intended to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, as ‘an independent member of the British Commonwealth’, in which the Zionists pro­ posed to settle one million Jews. In his conversation with Martin on the 25th, Weizmann agreed that the memorandum had put their demands in their most uncompromising form, but he made it clear that if Churchill suggested partition, then he, Weizmann, would be prepared to discuss such a plan. Martin pointed out that since they had received the Zionist memorandum, a general election had been announced, and the government could not be expected to settle the Palestine problem before that. Weizmann acceded, without convic­ tion. He feared that in the meantime the situation in Palestine would deteriorate yet further. He insisted that his own personal position would be more tolerable if the Prime Minister were able to give some assurance now that Palestine would be one of the first problems to which the new government would turn its attention (evidently in the conviction that Churchill would retain power).10

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Churchill still refused to receive Weizmann, and on 9 June, 1945, he finally replied to the Zionists’ previous communications, dashing all hope of any quick solution to the Palestine problem, which would not be dealt with ‘until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace table’.11 Churchill’s reply provoked consternation in Zionist headquarters. To this was added confusion, when they learned that Churchill had written without first consulting Martin. Leo Amery was also sur­ prised, when informed by Weizmann.12But once again, the Zionists’ indignation was not given a public airing, due to their fear that the publication of Churchill’s letter would provoke violence in Palestine itself, thus allowing the Zionists’ enemies to accuse them of having deliberately provoked disorder. At their private consultation, Ben Gurion regretted that ‘he could not tell his people what he really thought’. He considered Churchill’s letter to be the greatest blow they had received ... People here and in America were living in a fool’s paradise. In America their people thought that Dr Weizmann had an offer in his pocket of a Jewish State in a part of Palestine ... Mr Churchill had no bad intentions towards them; he still considered himself as a friend of Zionism. But what Mr Churchill believed and things as they existed were quite different... For him the delay was an escape, a way o u t... The Jewish people had been let down completely ... They were absolutely powerless and helpless, but it was most evil to deceive their people.13

Yet none felt more deceived and betrayed than Weizmann himself, who had placed so much hope in Churchill, and done so much to orient the Zionists’ policy towards Britain. He agreed with Ben Gurion that Churchill’s letter was worthless, ‘an insult to their intel­ ligence’. He concurred ‘95% with Mr Ben Gurion - if Mr Churchill had wanted to settle things, he could have done so’. On the next day, Churchill’s son, Randolph, told Weizmann that his father was very weary and worn out, and believed now that he must bring in the Americans to help out, hinting that the Zionists should direct their appeals in that direction.14 On 15 June, 1945, Weizmann replied to Churchill’s letter. He had modified its tone considerably, following a telephone conversation with Martin.15 Weizmann wrote: I confess that its contents came as a great shock to me. I had always under­ stood that our problem would be considered as soon as the German war was over; but your phrase ‘until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace Table’ substitutes some indefinite date in the future. I can hardly believe this to have been your intention.

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He reminded Churchill that the continued implementation of the White Paper immigration restrictions now prevented survivors of the Holocaust from reaching Palestine, and ‘many refugees have to wander or die’. He warned also that the 600,000 Jews already in Palestine would be unable to understand any longer their confine­ ment to a territorial ghetto ‘consisting of five per cent of the area of Western Palestine’.16 Weizmann’s appeal went unanswered. One week before the general election, Weizmann predicted that the Conservatives would be returned to power, with a small majority. In a speech before a closed forum of colleagues, he gave vent to years of pent-up frustration and bitterness. More than any other Zionist leader, he had become associated with the allegedly messianic visions of British statesmen, which had supposedly resulted in the famous Balfour Declaration. During the war he had convinced himself, and tried to convince his colleagues, that after the war the Zionists would receive their due from Western statesmen who, after the victory, would have the disposal of vast territories across the globe. But now, ostracized by Churchill, the anglicized Jew retreated back into the shell of the ‘Jewish’, ghetto Jew, born in the White Russian townlet of Motol: The P.M., General Smuts, the late President Roosevelt, had all let them down, maybe not intentionally, but inadvertently. They made promises which they did not carry out or mean to carry out. They were only a small people; he could not fight Churchill or Truman, but he could keep his conscience clear by telling them ‘You have done what you have done, but you cannot expect me to swallow it’. He felt very bitter; he had reached the end of a long road. They had tried their best. He had no confidence in the meeting of the Big Three. Nobody cared what happened to the Jews. Nobody had raised a finger to stop them being slaughtered. They did not bother even about the remnant which had survived.17

The Palestine problem was not the only one postponed by Churchill, pending the results of the general election. At the Potsdam confer­ ence, which Churchill attended with Attlee, until he learned of his electoral defeat, Lord Moran observed that the Prime Minister was not mastering his brief, that he was too tired to prepare anything and just dealt with issues as they came up. He tried to seize upon oppor­ tunities as they presented themselves, but it was upon Eden that the British team depended. Churchill confessed to Moran that he would be ‘only half a man’ before he knew the results of the election, and

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intended to shelve all the ‘really big decisions’ until then.18 The Labour landslide victory hurt Churchill deeply, both psychologically and physically. Eden noted in his diary: He was pretty wretched, poor old boy. Said he didn’t feel any more recon­ ciled this morning, on the contrary, it hurt more, like a wound which becomes painful after the first shock. He couldn’t help feeling his treatment had been scurvy , ..19

It would take a long time to heal Churchill’s broken spirit. Two weeks after the election result, he almost broke down before his private doctor: Ah, Charles, blessings become curses. You kept me alive and now - He turned his back, and when he looked at me his eyes were full of tears.20

On the day after Churchill’s electoral defeat, the Zionist Political Committee in London debated whether to make some public state­ ment ‘in tribute’ to the outgoing government. It was Weizmann’s opinion that although they owed nothing to the Conservatives, they ‘should say something favourable about outgoing friends’. He regarded Churchill’s last letter to them as ‘a stab in the back’ but ‘nevertheless in 1939 he made his famous speech against the White Paper, and the Jewish Brigade would never have come about without Mr Churchill. That justified mentioning his name’.21 When Churchill became leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, Weizmann tried repeatedly, directly, and via intermediaries, to secure a meeting with him, in order to brief him, as in the past, prior to the numerous debates on Palestine which continued to occupy the time of the British Parliament. In October, 1945, Churchill pleaded that he was not seeing many people these days, and hoped Weizmann would understand. The Zionist leader responded, via an inter­ mediary, with some asperity: ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t under­ stand at all! I know, of course, that he is none too well. Neither am I, if it comes to that’.22Weizmann drew the conclusion that Churchill ‘obviously had his own line and did not want to be told by him what to do’.23 In April, 1946, with the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine about to produce its Report, Weizmann feared that it would recom­ mend the abolition of the Jewish Agency, and the establishment of an Arab State in Palestine. Weizmann wrote direct to Churchill, remind­ ing him of their wartime meeting at Chequers, in October, 1943, together with Attlee, at which Churchill had promised to promote

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the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine after the war. Although Weizmann found it hard to believe that the Labour govern­ ment, in view of its pre-election promises to the Zionists, would renege on the Zionists, and set up an Arab state in Palestine, he now made an eloquent appeal to Churchill to intervene: I hope you will realise that I am appealing to you in extremis - as to an old friend with whom it has been my privilege to work for nearly thirty years. You know what is at stake in the coming critical weeks. And I believe that, just as you took the helm in the hours of darkness and storm that followed the Chamberlain policy of appeasement, and brought the British ship of state safe to port, so now you will lend your powerful aid to another people - old and proud as your own, but today worse than decimated, weak, defenceless - in the hour of its supreme need. Now is the time when our friends can help us, and I know you to be the most generous, as you are the most truly understanding, among them.24

One can only hazard a guess at the amount of spiritual reserves that Weizmann needed to call upon, in writing such a panegyric, at a time when he was so bitterly disillusioned. In any case, it was a pointless exercise. All the flattery and Churchillian rhetoric was of no avail. One month later, long after the government had acted on the AngloAmerican Committee’s report, Churchill replied that he had passed Weizmann’s letter on to the Prime Minister, and that although the matter was ‘of profound interest’ to him, there was nothing further that he personally could do in the matter.25 On 1 August, 1946, there took place in the House of Commons a debate on the rising wave of Jewish terrorism in Palestine, which on 22 July had culminated in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British administration in Palestine, resulting in the loss of near one hundred lives. Churchill, who was highly critical of the Labour government for not having pulled out of Palestine earlier, took the opportunity to pay a warm per­ sonal tribute to Dr Weizmann, and to urge the Yisbuv to follow his moderate leadership: There is the figure of Dr Weizmann, that dynamic Jew whom I have known for so long, the ablest and wisest leader of the cause of Zionism, his whole life devoted to the cause, his son killed in battle for our coming freedom. I ardently hope his authority will be respected by Zionists in this dark hour, and that the Government will keep in touch with him, and make every one of his compatriots feel how much he is respected here. It is perfectly clear that in that case we shall have the best opportunity of carrying this matter further forward.26

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Churchill’s hopes for the re-assertion of Weizmann’s leadership were, typically, anachronistic. Weizmann himself thought that Churchill’s speech might indicate a return of the British statesman’s support for the Zionist cause. He wrote to Churchill, asking to see him, during a week-long visit that he was about to make to London. But Churchill did not apparently reply.27 Weizmann continued to write flattering letters to Churchill, but he harboured few illusions about his commitment to Zionism. But neither could he ever afford to indulge himself in the luxury of a public expression of his grievances. Weizmann’s sentiments are described perfectly, in the following extract from a private letter he wrote in October, 1947, to the editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which was to issue a special tribute to Western statesmen, on the 30th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration: With regard to Mr Churchill, I would like to say that just at this moment he has more or less withdrawn from Zionist work because he is disgusted by the terrorists and terrorism, and it is not easy to get him back into a proper frame of mind. I have it on best and most reliable authority, and I have never attempted to see him in the last few months. There may possibly be a change now, in view of the new turn of events [presumably, the joint AmericanSoviet support for the UN partition plan]. I have on purpose included his

name among the founders of theJewish National Home together with Balfour and Lloyd George, although his role was comparatively small. It would be useful if you would give it prominence in your bulletin and send it on to him. He is rather sensitive.28 When the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine, on 29 November, 1947, Churchill remained silent. Likewise, when the State of Israel was declared by the Zionists on 14 May, 1948, there were no greetings from Churchill. Weizmann tried yet again to reach him, this time via Isaiah Berlin, the Anglo-Jewish philo­ sopher, a disciple of Weizmann’s, who during the war had worked with the British Information Services in the United States. Berlin, who had himself just published a eulogy to Churchill, continued to believe that only Churchill could change the Labour government’s Arabophile orientation. Weizmann asked his advice on how best to approach Churchill: ‘I doubt whether Winston wishes to hear from me directly: you know he always says that whenever I see him or write to him it means he has a sleepless night! Well, you will know that I don’t wish to give him any such thing ...’29 No progress was made via this avenue either. But one month later,

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Weizmann received a message from Churchill, indirectly, from Walter Elliott, the ex-Conservative Minister, and close friend of ‘Baffy’ Dugdale. Although cordial in content, the message provided fur­ ther corroboration of Weizmann’s own negative assessment. While Churchill sent his ‘warmest personal regards’, he added: The Palestine position now, as concerns Great Britain, is simply such a helldisaster that I cannot take it up again or renew my efforts of twenty years. It is a situation which I myself cannot help in, and must, as far as I can, put it out of my mind.30

And finally, which public position did Churchill adopt on Palestine after the war, in his various speeches in the House of Commons? In January, 1949, on the morrow of Israel’s military triumph over the combined armies of Arab States, Churchill pressed the Labour government to grant diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel. With the Israeli state an established fact, Churchill implied that had he been re-elected as Prime Minister in 1945, he would have implemented the partition plan for Palestine: ‘the Foreign Secretary’s policy has been the worst possible for the Arabs. I am sure we could have agreed immediately after the war upon a partition scheme which would have been more favourable to the Arabs’.31 Churchill was of course leaning heavily on the benefit of hindsight, after the Israelis had conquered large areas in excess of those allotted to them by the United Nations in 1947. He was also distorting the facts, since his own record, as leader of the Opposition, reveals little if any sympathy for partition. He had abandoned the idea in 1944, after Moyne’s murder, and returned to it only in 1948, once the Israelis themselves had made it into a fait accompli. In August, 1946, Churchill treated the Commons to his own version of the history of the Palestine mandate. He looked back nostalgically to ‘his own’ White Paper of 1922, and lamented the betrayal of the Zionist cause that had been perpetrated by the 1939 White Paper. He claimed that had he been returned to power, he would not have betrayed the Zionists; Had I had the opportunity of guiding the course of events after the war was won a year ago, I should have faithfully pursued the Zionist cause as I have defined it; and I have not abandoned it today, although this is not a very popular moment to espouse it.32

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But Churchill’s ‘definition’ of the British commitment, was not the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, but rather a return to ‘his’ White Paper of 1922. This he had made clear, some two months before, in a speech to the Commons on 24 May, 1946: ‘I am for a Jewish National Home in Palestine, with immigration up to the full absorptive capacity’.33 In his speech on 1 August, 1946, he took great care to define clearly the limited scope of the Jewish National Home, again, as defined by ‘his’ White Paper of 1922: Palestine was not to be a Jewish National Home, but there was to be set up a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Jewish immigration would be allowed up to the limit of the economic absorptive capacity - that was the phrase which I coined in those days and which seems to remain convenient - the Mandatory Power being, it was presumed, the final judge of what that capacity was ...34

If made in all sincerity, this statement was, to say the least, anachro­ nistic. It will be recalled that in 1937 the much-respected Peel Commission had pointed out the political ramifications of Jewish immigration, as a factor that inflamed Arab nationalism. Further­ more, Churchill himself had agreed that the Arabs’ apprehensions about ‘excessive’ Jewish immigration were justified, and that some limit should be placed on that immigration, to appease the Arabs (above, pp. 170-80). Why, therefore, did Churchill adopt this view in 1946? It was due, partly, to his inability to comprehend the dynamics of the Middle East, and developments in the area since World War One. He remained convinced that the Cairo settlement of 1921, master­ minded by himself, ‘with the advice and guidance of Lawrence’, was ‘a very fair deal’, and would not now concede that ‘the way we treated this matter was inconsiderate to the Arabs ... With all those countries which are given to their power and control, in every way they have had a very fair deal. It was little enough, indeed, that we had asked for the Jews - a natural home in their historic Holy Land ,..’35 He returned to the same theme in January, 1949, when he adduced, in addition to the support given to the Arabs by the govern­ ment during and after World War One, its support for the Syrians against the French during World War Two, even if that had led to ‘a bitter controversy with General de Gaulle’.36 There were several other reservations to Churchill’s public sup­ port for the Zionist cause. The most fundamental was his demand that Britain secure ‘the help and active collaboration of the United

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States’, or else surrender the mandate to the United Nations. During the debate on the draft Egyptian Treaty, on 24 May, 1946, he stated that the implementation of a political solution in Palestine was ‘too much to put on Britain alone, single-handed, weakened as she is by her efforts in the war’.37 Shortly before the debate, Churchill had made the same point, in private, to Walter Elliott. The latter reported back to ‘Baffy’ Dugdale: ‘Winston is obsessed with the idea of the strength and power of the U.S.A. in the world. He spoke of it as a mighty eagle, sitting motionless on a rock until it chooses its moment to spread its wings in flight.’38 In the debate on Palestine, in August, 1946, he reiterated the sentiments he had expressed to the Colonial Secretary and to the Chiefs of Staff, during his last month in office, in 1945: We should therefore, as soon as the war stopped, have made it clear to the United States that, unless they came in and bore their share, we should lay the whole care and burden at the feet of the United Nations organization; and we should have fixed a date by which all our troops and forces would be withdrawn from the country.39

In a mood reminiscent of his wartime minutes, Churchill argued stridently that unless the Americans cooperated forthwith, Britain should return the Mandate to the international body: Here is the action - action this day. I think the Government should say that if the United States will not come and share the burden of the Zionist cause, as defined or as agreed, we should now give notice that we will return our Mandate to U.N.O. and that we will evacuate Palestine within a specified period.40

Leo Amery, who had been absent from the August debate, noted a week later in his diary: I wish I had been in the House or had a chance of preventing Winston talking the nonsense he did about throwing up the Mandate unless America co­ operated or about our clearing out of Egypt destroying our moral position in Palestine. I fear once the immense responsibility of the P.M.ship and the war are off Winston’s shoulders he will relapse into the bad judgement and recklessness of pre-war days.41

Amery had pinpointed the second reservation held by Churchill against British tenure of the Mandate in Palestine. He believed, as indeed did the Zionists, that their evacuation of Palestine was being delayed, quite wrongly and unnecessarily, by the Labour govern-

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merit’s precipitate agreement to pull out of Egypt, and its consequent need of ‘tiny Palestine’ as a fall-back base in place of the Suez Canal complex. During the debate on the new Egyptian treaty, on 24 May, 1946, Churchill referred to widespread rumours to the effect that ‘British troops who will in time of war defend the Canal, and the Isthmus of Suez, will be maintained ... in camps or barracks in Southern Palestine’. He believed that the Americans’ traditional suspicions of British imperialism would be fuelled by such rumours, and that ‘by using Palestine as a jumping-off ground for the re­ occupation of the Canal zone in time of an emergency we will impair the prospects of American aid’.42 He elaborated upon the same theme, two months later, during the August debate on Palestine: ... His Majesty’s Government by their precipitate abandonment of their treaty rights in Egypt, and, in particular, the Suez Canal Zone, are now forced to look for a strong place of arms, for a jumping-off ground in Palestine in order to protect the Canal from outside Egypt. By this unwisdom they have vitiated disinterestedness and we can now be accused of having a national strategic motive for retaining our hold on Palestine ... what the Government have done in Egypt - though no doubt from very good motives - has greatly weakened our moral position in Palestine by stripping us of our disinterestedness in that country. I pointed out in the Debate on Egyptian policy a few weeks ago, that the moment we were dependent upon Palestine for a base from which to defend the Suez Canal, we should greatly hamper all possibility of obtaining American co-operation ...43

He poured scorn and ridicule over the government’s apparent readi­ ness to abandon key units of the Empire, while at the same time it wasted, extravagantly, the nation’s resources in holding on stub­ bornly to Palestine. The following passage, from the same speech, illustrates admirably Churchill’s traditional disdain for the imperial value of Palestine, one of those ‘New Provinces’ which, as Secretary of War, and Colonial Secretary after World War One, he had pro­ posed returning to the League of Nations: Take stock round the world at the present moment... We declare ourselves ready to abandon the mighty Empire and Continent of India with all the work we have done in the last 200 years, territory over which we possess unimpeachable sovereignty. The Government are, apparently, ready to leave the 400 million Indians to fall into all the horrors of sanguinary civil war civil war compared to which anything that could happen in Palestine would be microscopic ...

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We scuttle from Egypt which we twice successfully defended from mas­ sacre and pillage ... but... the one place where we are at all costs and at all inconveniences to hold on and fight out to the death is Palestine, and we are to be at war with the Jews of Palestine, and, if necessary, with the Arabs of Palestine. For what reason? Not, all the world will say, for the faithful discharge of our long mission but because we have need, having been driven out of Egypt, to secure a satisfactory strategic base from which to pursue our Imperial aims.44

More than any other British statesman, Churchill dismissed any possible utility that Palestine might yield to the British Empire. He hammered out the same themes, incessantly, during the stormy period after World War Two before Britain finally did hand back its mandate. Thus, on 31 January, 1947, over two weeks before Foreign Secretary Bevin announced that Britain was referring the Palestine question to the United Nations, Churchill demanded that Britain stay on in Egypt, while evacuating Palestine: Let us then stay in the Canal Zone and have no further interest in the strategic aspects of Palestine. At any rate, there is that argument, but I have

never thought that we had a strategic interest there ... If it be the case, first that there is no British interest - which I declare with a long experience that there is not - then the responsibility for stopping a civil war in Palestine between Jew and Arab ought to be borne by the United Nations, and not by this poor overburdened and heavily injured country. I think it is too much to allow this heavy burden to be put on our shoulders costing £30 million a year and keeping 100,000 men from their homes. I see absolutely no reason why we should undergo all this pain, toil, injury and suffering because of this suggested advantage ... ... there is a Conference going on now, but when that Conference is over, unless it produces a solution which it is in our power to enforce effectively, then in my view we should definitely give notice that, unless the United States come in with us shoulder to shoulder on a fifty-fifty basis on an agreed policy, to take a half and half share of the bloodshed, odium, trouble, expense and worry, we will lay our Mandate at the feet of U.N.O. Whereas, six months ago, I suggested that we should do that in 12 months I suggest now that the period should be shortened to six months ...45

Churchill simply could not fathom out how Labour had so lightheadedly decided to abandon India, while holding on to Palestine, when the economic and strategic arguments, in his view, all pointed clearly to an opposite course. In March, 1947, he told the Commons: There is a time-limit for India, but no time-limit for Palestine ... Can the House believe that there are three or four times as many British troops in little petty Palestine as there are in mighty India at the present time?

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... It is with deep grief that I watched the clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the services it had rendered to mankind ... we must face the evils that were coming upon us, and that we are powerless to avert.46

By March, 1947, there was a growing consensus in Parliament in favour of withdrawing from Palestine. Churchill’s speech was punc­ tuated by cheers. The Times prefaced its report the next day with the comment that ‘Mr Churchill had neglected none of the glittering oratorical weapons at his command ... In a crowded Chamber he made it clear, with a wealth of sonorous and vivid phrases, that his party disclaimed all responsibility for the consequences of that policy’.47 Bevin’s Palestine policy in fact enjoyed a large degree of all-party support, not to mention popular support nation-wide. Churchill’s main criticism was that Bevin had not withdrawn sooner. There were individuals in both parties who experienced some, though not too much unease, at Britain’s failure to fulfil her wartime promises to the Jews, and at the precipitate, disorganized fashion in which Britain did finally withdraw. One factor which the Jews themselves were convinced should have constituted the final argument for creating a Jewish state - the Holocaust, and its aftermath - was strangely absent from the con­ siderations of Western statesmen. On the contrary, apart from those who paid lip-service in expressing their compassion for the Jewish remnant, if any statesman did bring up the subject, it was in order to negate the Zionist thesis that a Jewish state in Palestine was the sole solution to the Jewish problem. In this respect, Churchill concurred entirely with the Labour Party. On 1 August, 1946, he dismissed out of hand any idea that Palestine might make any significant contri­ bution to a solution of the plight of the Jewish refugees, then in makeshift camps across Europe: ... no one can imagine that there is room in Palestine for the great masses of Jews who wish to leave Europe, or that they could be absorbed in any period which it is useful to contemplate. The idea that the Jewish problem could be solved or even helped by a vast dumping of the Jews in Europe into Palestine is really too silly to consume our time in the House of Commons this afternoon ...48

Both Bevin and Churchill were following popular sentiment when, in view of the rising wave of Jewish terror in Palestine, they demanded the liquidation of British responsibility in Palestine. Leo Amery was one of the few who experienced some uneasy moments, although,

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as he confessed to his diary, on the day that Israel declared its independence: I had thought again and again in the last two years of weighing in with a strong indictment of government policy, but always felt that, what with Winston giving the lead for scuttle, and the resentment against Jewish fanatics, it was useless to try and check the stampede ...49

Prior to the spring of 1948, there was a general consensus in the West that the Jews in Palestine would be defeated by the Arabs - if not by the Palestinians, who engaged them in civil war on the morrow of the UN decision, then by the Arab States, who invaded the country on the night of Israel’s independence. When all the experts’ forecasts proved wrong, and the Israelis held out against the Arabs, even enlarging their territory, many Western statesmen changed their attitude overnight. If for no other reason, many found it politic to recognize a political and military fait accompli. Not least among the motives for granting recognition was the fear that the Soviets would recognize the Jewish state first, and obtain thereby undue influence over its policies.50 With the end of Britain’s traumatic involvement in Palestine, and the establishment of a new state by a valiant display of arms, Churchill’s attitude changed radically. His sentiments were governed now by admiration and respect for the military prowess of the Jews, an asset which might yet be turned into an imperial asset in the region. When Bevin and the Labour government withheld diplomatic recog­ nition, Churchill led the Parliamentary campaign to reverse the government’s decision. Churchill’s speeches were characterised by a sharp polemical tone, and a rhetoric that at times bore little relation to the facts of the case, or to his own record. Churchill had been ready to accept either of the Anglo-American Committee had suggested a single, bi-national state; and the MorrisonGrady proposal was for community provincial autonomy, under a central, British administration.51 The claims now made by Churchill in December, 1948, cannot be substantiated by his own utterances in the same House of Commons, as recorded in Hansard: I always had in mind the hope that the whole question of the Middle East might have been settled in the largest scale on the morrow of victory and that an Arab Confederation, comprising three or four Arab States ... and one Jewish State, might have been set up, which would have given peace and unity throughout the whole vast scene of the Middle East. As to whether so large a policy could have been carried into being I cannot be sure, but

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settlement of the Palestine question on the basis of partition would certainly have been attempted, in the closest possible association with the United States and in personal contact with the President, by any Government of which I had been the head. But all this opportunity was lost.52

However, the question of recognition was for Churchill now clearly a matter of Realpolitik: The Jews have driven the Arabs out of a larger area than was contemplated in our partition schemes. They have established a Government which func­ tions effectively. They have a victorious army at their disposal and they have the support both of Soviet Russia and the United States ... It seems to me that the Government of Israel which has been set up in Tel Aviv cannot be ignored and treated as if it did not exist.53

Continuing the same campaign in the Commons, six weeks later, Churchill dwelt more on the ‘historical’ significance of the Jewish State, the first in nearly two thousand years. With his own ‘whig’ version of the Palestine mandate, he inferred that Labour’s policies, in contrast to the ‘Gentile Zionism’ of his own party, were dictated by Bevin’s personal prejudice: Whether the right honourable Gentleman likes it or not, and whether we like it or not, the coming into being of a Jewish State in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand, or even three thousand years ... ... the Conservative Party has done a great task over 25 years, with Parliaments which had a Conservative majority, in trying to build a Jewish National Home in Palestine, and now that it has come into being, it is England that refuses to recognize it, and, by our actions, we find ourselves regarded as its most bitter enemies. All this is due, not only to mental inertia or lack of grip on the part of Ministers concerned, but also, I am afraid, to the very strong and direct streak of bias and prejudice on the part of the Foreign Secretary.54

Typically, there was a substantial divide between Churchill’s public and private actions. But in this case, even his recent public record his speeches in the Commons - did not bear out the extravagant claims he now made. But by the winter of 1948, it became almost de rigueur to count oneself among the friends and admirers of the heroic young state. Churchill once more took up the mantle he had cast aside in November, 1944. Britain finally granted diplomatic recognition to Israel in April, 1950. In September of that year, Churchill received her first Ambas­ sador to the Court of St James, Eliahu Elath. Churchill remained in

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bed for the entire interview. After speaking highly of Chaim Weiz­ mann, now Israel’s first President, Churchill delivered himself of a panegyric on the creation of Israel, ‘as a great event in the history of mankind’. He told Elath that he was ‘proud of his own contribution towards it’, and that he had ‘been a Zionist all his life’. Churchill was preoccupied above all with the military prowess of the Israelis, and quite obviously delighted that they had beaten the Egyptians. He now claimed that ‘he had always believed that the Jews had the moral and physical qualities to become the best soldiers of the Medi­ terranean and the Middle East’, and stated that ‘he did not care for any of the Arab States, with the sole exception of Jordan. Abdullah, whom he had placed on the throne, had proved the only reliable and stable ruler in that region’.55 Not for the first time, Churchill underestimated the volatility of the Middle East. He had an unhappy proclivity for seeing stability in situations that in fact reflected a lull before the storm. Just nine months later, in July, 1951, King Abdullah was assassinated in Jerusalem, and with him there disappeared the last vestige of that monument in which Churchill had taken such pride, the Cairo Settlement of 1921.

CONCLUSION Today, the rhetoric of politicians is a much devalued currency. But the historian, even more than the voter, has but a single method whereby to assess the record of a statesman - and that is to measure his actions against his words. Could, or should the Jews have expected more of Churchill? If we conclude, inevitably, that more could have been done, then do his virtues still rate as exceptional, when set against the record of others who, while holding positions of equally great power, did even less than he? At the very least, might we conclude that, to quote one of my colleagues: Although Churchill did much less than he should have done, if he were really a friend of the Jews, he still did much more than many others’. Perhaps the historian should try, as much as possible, to confine himself to the facts, and leave moral judgements to the reader. I have been concerned in this book with three basic questions: first, how did Churchill relate and react to the Jews, both as a problematic minority in England, and as an allegedly all-influential international community? Second, where did Palestine fit into his imperial world­ view, and what role did he perceive for Zionism, both as an ideology, and as a colonising force? And third, to what degree does Churchill’s record match up to his reputation (fostered by himself as much as by anyone else) as one of the greatest friends of the Jewish People?

Churchill, like most members of his class, was not entirely free of anti-Jewish prejudice. His family’s close association with the English branch of the Rothschilds, who loaned the Churchills money, and pulled strings on their behalf, must surely have left an indelible impres­ sion on the young Winston. One of his earliest political experiences, in N.W. Manchester, left him acutely aware of the power of the Jewish vote, when concentrated. He had no qualms, at that stage, about pandering to Jewish demands, at times obsequiously, and at times cynically. In 1906, he was so closely identified with Israel

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ZangwilPs Territorialists (who favoured the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in East Africa, rather than in Palestine) that the historian of the Jewish vote in England has suggested this prompted Dr Chaim Weizmann to rebuff Churchill’s overtures. During the first decade of this century, Churchill was, by all accounts, an opportunistic, ambitious young politician, on the make. His record on the anti-Aliens legislation (which affected Jews above all) suggests a cynical, ‘political’ use of a burning issue of the day. He is not on record as speaking out against the proposed legislation before 1904, when he crossed the floor of the House of Commons to the Liberal benches. His flamboyant attacks on the Bill undoubtedly reflected liberal sentiment. But equally, they served him well in his new, largely Jewish constituency. However, in 1910, having been defeated in Manchester two years before, and now sitting for the ‘uncomplicated’ seat of Dundee, Scotland, Churchill (now the Home Secretary) set his own seal of approval on the 1905 Aliens Act, whose principles he had so roundly condemned from 1904 to 1905. Liberal, democratic England never legislated against the Jews by name. Nor did English law permit a ‘yellow’, mass-circulation antiSemitic Press, as did other less enlightened countries. But English society did have its own, perhaps more subtle forms of class and race prejudice. This is to be detected without too much difficulty in the Press and Hansard of the period. Churchill himself inveighed at times against the undue wealth and influence of the Jews. One case in point was the Shell Debate in the House of Commons, in 1914, when a fellow M.P. accused Churchill of pandering to popular antiSemitic feeling. There is also something indicative in the fact that his wife felt no compunction in writing to her husband of her disgust with the New York Jews - though admittedly, she did add that they were of a type completely different to those the Churchills knew in England. Churchill was a man whose early convictions and preju­ dices generally remained with him for most of his life. There is no reason to believe that it was otherwise in the case of the Jews. After World War One, Churchill shared the popular belief of the time that it had been the Jews who had engineered the Bolshevik Revolution. In an article written in February, 1920, he suggested that Zionism might provide the antidote to this pernicious doctrine, which threatened to consume not only the Jewish people, but the entire civilised world. His ideas in this connection were by no means original. In 1917, the British Government had issued the Balfour

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Declaration, partly in the belief that it would encourage the Jewish leaders of the Russian revolutionaries to keep Russia in the war (to ensure the conquest of Palestine from the Turks). The general belief in the Jews’ all-pervading international influence was encouraged after the First World War by the wide circulation and credibility accorded to the Protocols o f the Elders ofZ ion , subsequently proved to be a forgery. The Nazis’ state-controlled anti-Semitism presented the liberal West with a new challenge. Churchill himself was quite genuinely moved, emotionally, by the Jews’ sufferings. But against the frequent expression of his horror at Nazi crimes, one must record the almost total absence of any meaningful gesture or action by him to save Hitler’s Jewish victims - either when in Opposition, or in the posi­ tion of supreme power, which was his from 1940 to 1945. It is claimed by some that Churchill alone, in contrast to the unimaginative bureaucracy surrounding him, understood the his­ torical significance of the Holocaust. If this were really the case, then were not the Jews, was not humanity entitled to expect something more than just expressions of sympathy for the victims, and dire warnings of retribution to the criminals? If (to give but a single example) suicidal, futile missions could be sent to bring aid to the Polish Home Army Revolt, in Warsaw, in August, 1944, could not similar operations have been mounted against the death-camp at Auschwitz - which just happened to lie directly in the line of flight of the Warsaw missions? This was but one of the operationally feasible options open to the Allies from 1943.

Any attempt to comprehend Churchill’s attitude to Zionism must begin with the fundamental fact that after World War One, he adopted the view of the generals that the Middle Eastern mandates, the so-called ‘New Provinces’, were an unnecessary and exorbitant imperial burden. As Secretary of State for War and Air, and then for the Colonies, Churchill repeatedly urged Lloyd George, in pri­ vate, to restore the Middle Eastern mandates to their former Turkish overlord. Churchill’s perception of Britain’s imperial mission crystallised long before the Balfour Declaration was ever dreamed of. In 1917, he, like many other statesmen of the day, did not attach to it any particular significance. For Churchill, the Empire consisted of those

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territories already held by Britain at the beginning of this century, essentially, India and Black Africa. Naturally, Britain needed com­ mand of the imperial highways connecting the mother country with her colonial possessions. In the Middle East, this meant the Suez Canal (and therefore, Egypt), perhaps a foothold on the Persian Gulf, but no more. After the war, Churchill’s overriding preoccupation was with the peace settlement with the Turks. He very nearly wrecked his political career twice, in 1915, and in 1922, at the Straits. In order to reach agreement with them, Churchill was willing, at least until the Chanak crisis, to return Palestine and Mesopotamia - regardless of Britain’s commitments under the Balfour Declaration, or by virtue of any promises given during the war to the Arabs. From the late 1930s, and until mid-way through World War Two, Churchill did fight some vigorous, though mostly sterile battles on the Zionists’ behalf. In Parliament, he condemned the 1939 White Paper as a facet of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. However, his rhetoric disguised the considerable degree to which he in fact agreed with the principles embodied in that policy. During the first years of the war, Churchill fought a lone and courageous battle in Cabinet to secure for the Jews a Fighting Force that would wear the Star of David, both to defend the community of Palestine and to take revenge on their arch-persecutor in Europe. This campaign bore no results, and Churchill abandoned it in the autumn of 1941. Fortu­ nately for the Yishuv, the British Army in Egypt, at times against long odds, held out against Rommel’s Afrika Korps. When the Jewish Brigade did finally take to the field in September, 1944, it represented, in some respects, a salve to those consciences at Whitehall which realised that more could have been done to help the Jews of Europe. But Churchill’s efforts on the Jews’ behalf lay quite evidently on the periphery of his primary concerns. In 1945, after 25 years of uneven involvement with the Zionist cause in Palestine, he passed the following obiter dicta, in a confidential minute: I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now.

After the war, as leader of the opposition, Churchill heaped ridicule on the Labour Government for the alacrity with which they proposed

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to relinquish ‘mighty India’, while clinging tenaciously, at enormous expense, to ‘tiny Palestine’. For Jewish Zionists, Zionism is their movement of national libera­ tion, which requires the territorial concentration of the major part of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland. For Gentiles, this has never been the case. At the most, some Gentiles have subscribed to that school of Zionism, headed by Ahad Ha’am, which posited the return of a small part of the Jewish People to Palestine, which was to be established as a ‘spiritual centre’ for the remainder. But no Western statesman ever shared the Zionists’ conviction that Palestine on its own could solve ‘the Jewish Problem’, as manifested across the globe. Nor were their attitudes changed by the Holocaust. On 1 August, 1946, Churchill told his fellow MPs: The idea that the Jewish Problem could be solved or even helped by a vast dumping of the Jews of Europe into Palestine is really too silly to consume our time in the House of Commons this afternoon.

Western statesmen believed that once Europe was rid of Hitler the Jews should resume their previous occupations in their countries of original residence. The conscience of the West after the war was much lighter than the Jews believed it to be, because in the first place, Western leaders had never accepted the Zionist thesis that the Jews should leave Europe for Palestine, en masse. Churchill’s Zionism was certainly not religious or evangelical in origin, as has been claimed for other Gentile Zionists. For some years, while Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, he supported Zangwill’s dissidents. After World War One, he administered Pales­ tine with some reluctance, and as Colonial Secretary presided over the translation of the Balfour Declaration into a policy which the Zionists considered to be detrimental to their own interests. After the Arab riots of May, 1921 he became convinced, along with the rest of the Colonial Office establishment, that Zionism had to ‘go slow’, so as not to arouse or offend the native Arab population. He chose to reiterate this principle in public at a not-too-appropriate moment, just two weeks after the Crystallnacht pogrom in November, 1938. On that occasion, he told the House of Commons that were he a Palestinian Arab, he too would be filled with anxiety by the ‘excessive’ tempo of Jewish immigration. So why, nonetheless, did Churchill give his support, intermittently, to the Zionist cause? There were two key elements motivating him,

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two good ‘British’ reasons for his sponsorship. First, he believed that the Zionist Movement commanded powerful political and economic influence, particularly in the United States. As late as in December, 1939, he lectured his Cabinet colleagues on the important role the Zionists could play in mobilising American resources to the British war effort. He told them that it had not been for light or sentimental reasons that the Government had issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, but in order to mobilise American support. In 1939, Churchill believed that history could repeat itself, that the Zionists, via their proxies across the Atlantic, could be influential in accelerating the vitally needed early entry of the Americans into the war. His convictions were confirmed for him by the increasingly frequent interventions of the American administration (both official and unofficial) in Palestine’s affairs. Churchill anticipated Bevin by some years in reaching the conclusion, during the war, that unless the United States could be harnessed into a joint consensus on Palestine, then Britain should relinquish its mandate over that country. The second element was somewhat negative in its nature. Given Churchill’s own reluctance to assume the Palestine mandate, yet Lloyd George’s veto on any retreat, the Zionist venture held out certain attractions, quite apart from the influence to be acquired in Washington. Zionist capital and technology might develop Palestine as an imperial outpost at a minimal cost to the British taxpayer. This implied the implementation of that hallowed imperial dictum, that colonies should be self-supporting. It led also, once troubles began with the Arabs, to the option urged more than once by Churchill, of arming the Zionists so they might relieve the British garrison, and assume the role of imperial policeman to the north of the Canal. Churchill’s support for Zionism was predicated therefore upon its continuing to serve British interests. It will be asserted by many that this was only to be expected. However, if the British mandate in Palestine is to be reduced purely to an affair of national and imperial utility, then the Balfour promise of 1917 of necessity assumes a different character - far removed from that which the British themselves painted for their allies at the time. Ideological or moral commitments may survive severe bufferings. Liaisons of convenience seldom do. Thus in November, 1944, with the assassination of Churchill’s close friend, Lord Moyne, the Prime Minister’s sponsorship of the Zionist cause jolted to an abrupt halt. The campaign of terror waged

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by a small minority of the Jewish community in Palestine, in which the Moyne murder was but the first of several major outrages, convinced Churchill that the Zionists were not be relied upon as colonial clients. During the critical years between the end of World War Two, and the establishment of the State of Israel, in May, 1948, Churchill maintained a stony silence in the face of all the Zionists’ pleas to resist Bevin’s policies. But when Churchill did speak up in the House of Commons, it was in order to chastise the Government for not getting out of Palestine sooner. Thus, during the two periods of the Jews’ greatest need - during the Holocaust, and the struggle to secure diplomatic recognition for the State of Israel - they found Churchill wanting. Should they, or might they have expected more of him? Each reader will have to answer that for himself.

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AFTERWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION DEMYTHOLOGIZING A LEGEND

The purpose of this Afterword is to re-assess the positions I took when I wrote this book, nearly 20 years ago, in the light of the plethora of new works that have been published since; and to discuss some of the issues raised in the reviews of the first edition. I should like to start by quoting from the Foreword that I wrote in 1985: ... I did not set out to destroy or reverse the popular image of Churchill, as patron of the Jews and Zionism. But I did try ... to get at what I believe is the more complex truth of the matter, reducing the myth to human proportions.... (p. xi)

Churchill’s relations with the Jewish people, and with individual Jews, were complex and multi-faceted. He had many close Jewish friends - mostly those who had made it into the English upper classes - and he became personally indebted to more than one of them. Churchill was a man of great contradictions. He was capable of being moved to tears by Jewish suffering, and yet, at other times, of blatantly anti-Semitic comments - both in public speeches and in print. In this, he was a man of his times, no different from many others of his era. Today, it is perhaps impossible to gauge accurately the depth of his true feelings or prejudices towards the Jews. Churchill’s Gentile Zionism always took second place to the preser­ vation of national interests. He was concerned above all to further British interests, as well as his own personal and political fortunes. As such, he supported the Zionist cause for so long as he regarded it as consistent with or helpful to British, and/or his own interests. Of course, this was quite a different matter from being an ardent Zionist - a member of a movement whose categorical imperative was the return of the Jewish diaspora to Palestine. For Jews of the Zionist persuasion, Zionist interests always took precedence.

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Thus, as a Gentile Zionist, Churchill was not, and could never have been, the consistent supporter of Zionism that he later claimed to be. Too many historians have taken that claim at its face value. Notwithstanding the plethora of Churchillian pro-Zionist rhetoric, his place in the pantheon of Zionist heroes is not in fact warranted by the facts. To quote again from my Foreword: ... beneath the thick layers of rhetoric, Winston Churchill was no more of a Gentile Zionist than were his more maligned colleagues. Indeed, there is no particular reason why he should have been, nor anything in his background which should have made him so. (p. xii)

All too often, there was a huge gap between Churchill’s rhetoric and his actions - or inactions. Nowhere was this gap more signifi­ cant, potentially fatal for an incalculable number of Jews, than with the project to bomb the Auschwitz death camp - which will be dealt with below. I was taken to task for casting, or implying a moral censure of Churchill’s behaviour towards the Jews. A. P. Thornton has suggested that I might have allowed the facts to speak for themselves, instead of drawing my own conclusions, and imputing motives.1This raises wider questions about the historian’s professional responsibility, whether he has the right, or even a duty, to insert his own personal, moral judgment. Whether consciously or not, each author brings to his writ­ ing his own personal value system, ethical code, and style. With the very selection of his material, the historian impresses upon his work his own interpretation - even if he does not comment upon it explicitly. Can, or indeed should, the historian set aside his own values when writing about past events? I felt unable to do so. That would have constituted a betrayal of my professional vocation. But this did not prevent me from consciously trying to treat Churchill, and indeed the subjects of all my studies, ‘fairly and judiciously’.2 The first edition of this book received what might be termed ‘mixed reviews’, running from derision to praise.3 Ironically, some of my critics have supplied me with new information in support of my original case. I could not have wished for a more fair, or intelli­ gent summary than that written by Thornton, a recognized authority on British imperialism: Michael Cohen does not deny Churchill’s greatness, but sees his champion­ ship [of Zionism] as flawed and intermittent. He makes a case, but his is also a humane book. It is not a study in denigration: Churchill with warts remains better than no Churchill at all.4

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I have also derived considerable moral support from some of the impressive scholarship that has appeared on Churchill since 1985. Of particular note are the published proceedings of a distinguished conference on Churchill held at the University of Texas at Austin, in March 1991, brought into print by Robert Blake and Wm Roger Louis. That conference attracted some of the finest scholars of the day, several of them Churchill experts. One of the central themes of the conference was the need to ‘demythologize’ the Churchill legend. As stated eloquently by Robert Rhodes James, scholars should be careful not ‘to miss the main point about’ Churchill ‘namely, that he was a human being and a very fallible one’: Indeed, it is his very humanity, his failures as well as his triumphs, his weaknesses as well as his strengths, that make him so fascinating.5

Another conference participant, David Reynolds, dared to plead for a more balanced interpretation even of that ‘holy of holies’ - of Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’ - his leadership of Britain from May 1940: ... a sober examination of Churchill’s performance as war leader in 1940 does not belittle his greatness. On the contrary, it makes him a more human and thereby more impressive figure than the two-dimensional bulldog of national mythology.6

I was able both to identify with Rhodes James’ cautionary warning about the difficulty ‘for the historian to take one particular aspect without unwittingly distorting the whole picture’,7 and to support the statement with which David Reynolds concluded his paper at the conference: What is certain is that the Churchill of 1940 is great enough to survive both the hagiographers and the historians.8

Finally, I am convinced that Churchill’s relations with the Jews and his record on Zionism can be assessed faithfully only within the wider context of his overall personal and political record. Before I turn to the main themes dealt with in my book, and to its critics, I believe that it is appropriate to refer first to the work of Sir Martin Gilbert, the author of the last six of the eight volumes of the official biography, and compiler of their companion volumes of original documents. This is important, if only because so many historians have relied and rested their case upon this work.

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CHURCHILL: A COMPLEX PERSONALITY

All students of Churchill will forever remain deeply indebted to Sir Martin Gilbert, for bringing to print such a vast treasure-trove of raw material on Churchill - not only the multi-volume biography itself but, in addition, 15 companion volumes (so far) of original correspondence and documents. At the time of writing, the com­ panion volumes have reached the year 1941 (with the publication of Churchill’s ‘War Papers’), and more volumes are in preparation.9 Nonetheless, Gilbert’s achievement has serious limitations.10 No reader of his works can be left in any doubt about his devotion to Churchill. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the one­ dimensional, black-and-white assessment of Churchill that appears in an essay he published in 1981. While conceding that Churchill’s temperament could be volatile, Gilbert makes an entirely misplaced distinction between ‘outsiders’ - to whom Churchill often appeared to be ‘insensitive and harsh, cynical and brusque’ - and ‘those who worked closest with him’, for whom, Gilbert claims: ... the quality of his mind was clear, as indeed was his overriding gentleness of character, his humour and sense of fun, as well as his deep understanding of human nature, history, and public affairs.11

Over the past two decades, much excellent scholarship has filled out the flesh-and-blood portrait of Churchill, with all his human frailties. The key to understanding his character is quite obviously to appreciate its complexity and the ‘mass of self-contradictions’.12 One of the finest summaries of Churchill’s complex personality remains that written by Piers Brendon in 1984: ... [it] was formed on heroic lines. It was a monstrous compound of courage, energy, imagination, tenacity, humour, compassion; and of ambition, vola­ tility, obsessiveness, egotism, brutality.13

Keith Robbins has noted that when Churchill served as First Lord of the Admiralty, ‘It was possible for Churchill to be respected by his naval and political colleagues and at the same time to be regarded as “quite mad”.’ He has pointed to the difficulty in determining where the specific gravity of Churchill’s political behaviour lay: Contemporaries found it increasingly difficult to determine the balance in the maturing Churchill between deep conviction, tawdry prejudice, rampant ambition, magnanimous wisdom, puckish playfulness and willful obstruc­

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tion. Perhaps Churchill himself was not sure about the balance any longer, if he had ever been.14

It was precisely those who worked closest to Churchill who most felt the brunt of his capriciousness. His insensitivity to those who served him was legendary. When he became Prime Minister in May 1940, all those who worked in proximity to him risked his ‘violent fits of irritation and petulance’, ignited only too frequently by ‘quite trivial matters’. The military were ‘his particular victims’.15 But it is equally true that most of those who served Prime Minister Churchill during World War Two felt it to have been a privilege. He did frequently display the noble attributes of ‘humanity, kindness, sensitivity’, and possessed a profound generosity of spirit. He was frequently reduced to tears, in public - so much so, that the more cynical of his contemporaries came to believe that they were ‘croco­ dile’ tears. But equally, on other occasions his emotional makeup could produce a total lack of sensitivity or consideration for the feelings of those closest to him. Even scholars sympathetic to Chur­ chill have referred to his ‘massive egocentricity’, ‘megalomania’, and ‘egotistic and dictatorial manner’.16 It has been claimed that by the end of World War Two, the Defence Chiefs had learned to cope with him: ... never to complain about the ‘ceaseless prodding’; to stand firm, but to keep him sweet by a constant stream of information and an adroit balance of flattery, cajolery, and frankness. They knew that they could not do without him, and did not want to, and he knew that they were indispensable to him.17

In fact, there can be little doubt that during the war, Churchill reduced his Chiefs of Staff to the verge of collapse with his late-night meetings, which they dubbed his ‘Midnight Follies’. They were unable to indulge themselves in the ‘luxuries’ that their Chief did the late mornings in bed (except for the twice-weekly meetings of the War Cabinet) and the afternoon siesta. And when his CIGS, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, was indiscreet enough to publish his memoirs shortly after the war, including vivid descriptions of Churchill’s ‘heat of the moment’ outbursts, Churchill and some of his inner circle regarded the publication as treachery.18 Gilbert’s verdict on Churchill’s ‘deep understanding of human nature, history, and public affairs’ has been challenged by the aca­ demic consensus. For example, Churchill’s History o f the EnglishSpeaking Peoples hardly touches on fundamental social and economic

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forces, or the mundane lives of the masses.19 It would be difficult to improve upon Robbins’ comment that the ‘man who expected his servant to squeeze his toothpaste on to his toothbrush continued to live in sublime ignorance of “ordinary life ...”’ 20

CHURCHILL, THE JEWS AND ZIONISM: THE ORTHODOX VERSION

Sir Martin Gilbert is nothing if not prolific. Apart from publishing other works, in 1986 he published volume VII of the official biog­ raphy, covering World War Two; and in 1991, he published a further, 960-page-long, single-volume biography of Churchill.21 Both refer, marginally, to Churchill’s relations with the Jews and the Zionists. However, it is when we turn to Gilbert’s version of Churchill’s record on the Jews and Zionism that his writing generates concern. A close reading of his tomes reveals a plethora of quotes, many taken out of context, all purporting to prove his overriding thesis - namely, Churchill’s lifelong commitment to Zionism. I will deal with Churchill’s role in the project to bomb the Auschwitz death camp in a separate section, below. Here, I will draw mainly on the profile of Churchill that is conveyed in Gilbert’s single­ volume biography. Naturally, any attempt to cover Churchill’s crowded life in one volume cannot hope to provide a comprehensive coverage of questions relating to the Jews and Zionism. However, Gilbert does write about these questions, but in a misleading fashion. The following presents a brief illustration of some of the central questions at issue: 1. In August 1920, Churchill published an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald , entitled ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ (see above, p. 55). Gilbert describes it as an ‘enthusiastic outburst in favour of Zionism’.22 However, along with other scholars, Gilbert quotes selectively from this article, which can be understood only in the context of Churchill’s concurrent crusade against Bolshevism, and his promotion of the war of intervention against its military instru­ ment in Russia, the Red Army. The central thesis of Churchill’s article was that the Jews had inspired and were leading the Bolshevik movement, a ‘virus’ that endangered the entire world. This part of the article, which reflects

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the theories then fashionable about the global machinations of international Jewry (i.e. in the Protocols o f the Elders o f Zion) , is overlooked by Gilbert and others. Its omission by Norman Rose, for example, is all the more remarkable, since in an earlier passage, he notes: His [Churchill’s] high praise of Zionism, no less than his condemnation of ‘international Jews’, is significant here in the context of his tenacious, often bullheaded, battle against Bolshevism.23

In the article in question, Churchill suggested that the Zionist movement might provide ‘the Jewish answer to international Com­ munism’, an antidote to the plague of Jewish-inspired Bolshevism. This is the context in which Churchill floated the balloon of transferring world Jewry to Palestine, where they might one day establish a state on the banks of the River Jordan counting ‘three to four million Jews under the protection of the British Crown’.24 Therefore, the second part of the argument, without the allimportant first part, is misleading. Churchill’s fantasies, which today might appear to have been prophetic, were totally unrealistic at the time. He never repeated them, and with good reason. Lest this be regarded as one of those instances where Churchill should be given the benefit of the doubt, I would refer the reader to the contemporary Jewish reaction to his article. The following is an extract from the Jewish Chronicle, the representative voice of ‘establishment’ Anglo-Jewry. Its editor apparently drew little comfort from the ‘Zionist’ content of Churchill’s article: The SECRETARY OF WAR charges Jews with originating the gospel of Antichrist and with engineering a ‘world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization’ .... It is the gravest, as it is the most reckless and scandalous campaign in which even the most discredited politicians have ever engaged. ... It is difficult to understand the object of this tirade, with its flashy general­ izations and shallow theories.25

This extract, published in the first edition of this book (see above, p. 56), has been ignored by all the studies published since. 2. While serving as Secretary of State for War, and from 1921, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, Churchill made repeated private appeals, from 1919 to 1921, asking Prime Minister Lloyd George to relinquish the Middle East mandates, including Palestine, and to return them to the Turks (see above, pp. 62-3, 66, 70, 75, 94-6).

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This was not in fact the first time that Churchill had proposed a candidate other than Great Britain for the role of Protector of Palestine; in 1915, he had proposed royal Belgium. Churchill’s private appeals are reproduced in the companion volumes to volume IV of the Biography. But in the biography itself, Gilbert refers to them only in those chapters on ‘The Middle East Settlement’, or on Turkey. Thus, he quotes H.A.L. Fisher’s diary report of a meeting of Ministers on 1 June 1920, at which Churchill expressed himself as ‘quite anxious to get out of Mesopotamia and Palestine’.26 In another chapter, again on Turkey, Gilbert comments: Despite Churchill’s enthusiastic outburst in favour of Zionism (in the

Illustrated Sunday Herald) he did not consider Palestine a region in which Britain should become involved.27

But comments such as these do not appear in any of the chapters in volume IV that are devoted to Palestine. Readers confining them­ selves to these chapters will remain ignorant of Churchill’s secret campaign to return the Palestine Mandate to the Turks.28 Rose asserts that Churchill’s efforts to have the government divest itself of the Mandate for Palestine do not indicate that that he was ‘pursuing an anti-Zionist policy’, and that it ‘was quite possible to be a Zionist without committing oneself to administering Palestine’.29 First, in order to comprehend what lay behind Churchill’s cam­ paign, it is necessary to understand how Palestine fitted in (or not?) within the general context of his imperial Weltanschauung at that time. Second, one must ask whether the Zionist cause would have benefited from the return of Palestine to Turkish rule. Churchill’s resistance to Britain’s taking on the tenure of Palestine, and, indeed, of any of the Middle Eastern mandates, dated back to 1919, when he was appointed War Minister. During his tenure at the War Office, he adopted the Military’s view that the new Middle Eastern territories acquired by Britain during World War One were superfluous - they were dismissed derisively as ‘the New Provinces’ (see above, p. 62). With the rise of Kemal Ataturk after the war, and his rejection of the Sevres Peace Treaty, Churchill became obsessed with the nightmare scenario that a resurgent, nationalist Turkey, backed by the Bolsheviks, would descend upon the Middle East and re-take all of Britain’s recent conquests.30 This was the context in which Churchill became a fervent advocate of appeasing Turkey, and

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returning to it all of Britain’s Middle Eastern conquests. Zionist interests were a secondary issue. The question of whether the return of Turkish rule to Palestine would have benefited the Zionist cause is hardly open to any doubt. It might be possible to maintain that the proposal that the United States should take on the Palestine Mandate - as made by Arthur Balfour - was not inimical to the Zionist interest. But it is much more difficult to sustain this claim in respect of the Turks. Given their sorry record in Palestine during World War One (during which they deported half the Jewish community from the country and starved the rest; they broke up and executed several members of a Jewish espionage-ring, Nili, that had passed on to British forces important military information that had aided their conquest of Palestine) - it is surely stretching the point too far to suggest that the return of that country to their guardianship would have furthered the Zionist cause. Fortunately for the Zionists, they were not privy at the time to this particular brainwave of Churchill’s. 3. Gilbert does not inform his reader of Churchill’s opposition in 1937 to the Zionists’ campaign for the establishment of a Jewish State in a part of Palestine - as recommended by the Royal (Peel) Commission of that year. Nor does he mention the prescient warning issued to the Zionists by Baffy Dugdale (Arthur Balfour’s niece, a member of the Conservative elite, and a Zionist confidante), against allowing themselves to be made ‘the “cats-paw” of English politics’.31 But, most importantly, Gilbert does not refer to the private lunch that Churchill gave to his friend, the Jewish magnate, Lord Melchett, at Chartwell, in July 1937. On that occasion, Churchill took the opportunity to tell Melchett that the Jews had waited thousands of years for their state and that due to the impending war they would now have to wait a few more years32 (see above, pp. 176-7). 4. Finally, a crucial error of commission by Gilbert - when he deals with the assassination of Lord Moyne in November 1944, in Cairo, by Jewish terrorists. Moyne was a close personal friend of Chur­ chill’s, and had been appointed by him as Cabinet Minister for the Middle East, resident in Cairo. Churchill had been Moyne’s houseguest in Cairo just ten days before his assassination. After the two terrorists were apprehended, Churchill instructed the British Ambas­ sador, Lord Killearn, to ‘bully Egyptian ministers into executing the

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pair, whatever pressures “Zionists and American Jewry” might bring to bear.’33 Gilbert notes that although Lord Moyne’s demise ‘shocked’ Churchill, the latter ‘opposed reprisals’ against the Jews in Palestine, and rejected the Colonial Secretary’s demand to halt further Jewish immigration into that country. True enough. But Gilbert then informs his readers that ‘Churchill's support for Jewish statehood in Palestine remained firm and uncompromising’ 34 (my emphasis). This was manifestly not the case, as has been shown conclusively, long ago. In consequence of the assassination, Churchill removed from the Cabinet’s agenda a plan to set up a Jewish State in a part of Palestine. The much-maligned White Paper of 1939 remained the law of the land in Palestine until after the war (see above, pp. 257-9). If Churchill’s did remain ‘firm and uncompromising’ in his sup­ port for Zionism, as Gilbert maintains, then why his subsequent reference to an approach made by Brendan Bracken to Churchill in 1947, asking him to intervene in a Parliamentary debate on Palestine, and Churchill’s reply: ‘I cannot do any more on Palestine. Events must take their course.’35 Rose, a sympathetic biographer, notes that after the assassination, ‘something snapped’ in Churchill. He concludes, enigmatically: At the most critical juncture in the Zionist fortunes, Moyne’s brutal murder had caused Churchill to stumble, to lose direction.36

For the duration of the critical period from the end of 1944 until December 1948 - after the establishment of the State of Israel Churchill refused to speak out on the Zionists’ behalf. He rejected all entreaties, and all attempts at mediation. He refused to meet with any Zionist leader, not even with the Anglophile Chaim Weizmann (see above, pp. 309, 311). It was only in December 1948, during the closing stages of Israel’s War of Independence, after its victory on the battlefield against five Arab states, that Churchill intervened in the House of Commons, to press the Labour government to recog­ nize Israel. By the close of World War Two, Weizmann, was ‘very bitter’ at Churchill’s ‘do-nothing policy’.37 In his memoirs (published in 1948), he dared to muse on whether the Moyne assassination had not merely served as a pretext for Churchill to drop the Zionist cause.

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CHURCHILL’S RHETORIC My own reservations about Churchill’s record derived principally from the huge gap between his rhetoric and the end results. I was by no means the first to notice this gap. A.J.P. Taylor, one of the most prominent of British twentieth-century historians, noted back in 1980: Only Churchill continued to show sympathy with the Jews until the murder of Lord Moyne, and there is nothing more striking in the story than the total failure of the supposedly all-powerful prime minister to enforce his will on numerous occasions, (quoted above, p. 306)

One reviewer took me to task for failing ‘to penetrate (let alone emulate) the supreme generosity of spirit that lay at the core of Churchill’s spirit’. He then suggested that ‘the dozens, nay ... hun­ dreds’ of Churchill’s utterances in favour of the Zionist cause were self-evident proof of his commitment.38 The pro-Zionist speeches, warnings, memoranda and minutes are indeed legion. But is history no more than the reproduction of the fitting quote, in order to ‘prove’ the historian’s pre-conception? Is it not incumbent upon the historian to match the statesman’s declarations with his actions? Most students of Churchill, including those sympathetic to him, have recognized that many of his utterances were just empty rhetoric. New material published since 1985 highlights this facet of his character further. It would be difficult to improve upon the following analysis: Churchill was a rhetorician in the classical sense of the word: he used language, often extravagant and artificial, to persuade and impress and produce effect. In many ways this is the key to his character and political career. He was intoxicated with words, particularly his own ... Churchill was quite aware of this problem, telling his mother that he often yielded ‘to the temptation of adapting my facts to my phrases’, [my emphasis]39

I cannot pretend to compete with the eloquence of this passage, but I did refer to this very same problem nearly 20 years ago (see above, pp. 8-9). ANTI-SEMITISM AND GENTILE ZIONISM

Today, the question of anti-Semitism in Great Britain remains a sensitive, even if largely latent, issue. But during the first decades of the twentieth century, one could hardly have avoided anti-Semitic

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comment, when reading the national press or the debates of the House of Commons. In the first edition of this book, I referred to the fact that in a Commons debate in 1914, Churchill was accused of Jew-baiting; and that in 1931 his wife Clementine wrote to Churchill a letter that contained some distinctly unsavoury comments about some New York Jews that she met on a cruise to the United States. Her letter included the remark that she could now understand ‘American AntiSemitic prejudice’. I expressed my doubts that she would have permitted herself such comments had she feared that her husband might rebuke her for it (see above, pp. 44-5). For this, I have been accused of being disingenuous, and of employing ‘casuistry’ in my argument.40 (This same reviewer, Bernard Wasserstein, himself wrote in 1978 of the ‘antisemitic instinct’ shared by many English Gentile Zionists of the age.41) Admittedly, I did draw my own inferences from the material that I had used. However, there was an abundance of material concerning Churchill’s anti-Jewish comments that I did not explore at the time - for instance, Churchill’s idee fixe after World War One that the Bolshevik movement was under the control of International Jewry. Further research carried out since 1985 has in fact added substantial support for the inferences that I made then. Rose suggests that a convincing case may be made against Churchill for Jew-baiting in 1920. In that year, Churchill reached ‘the height of his anti-Bolshevik crusade’, and: ... turned on ‘the international Jews’, a ‘world-wide conspiracy’ dedicated to ‘the overthrow of civilization and the reconstruction of society* ... Churchill told Lloyd George that the Jews were ‘the main instigators of the ruin of the Empire’, and have certainly played ‘a leading part in Bolshevik atrocities’.42

He warned against the ‘international Soviet of the Russian and Polish Jew’, and even claimed that he had ‘unearthed evidence of a “very powerful” Jewish lobby in Britain’.43 Rose does not concern himself with the conceptions and beliefs underlying Churchill’s campaign, but dismisses the whole episode with the remark: ‘At no time in his career had he employed such brutal language against Jews; nor would he do so again in the future.’44 It may indeed be true that Churchill never again made any public remarks of this nature. But can we simply dismiss out of hand his

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anti-Semitic outbursts as ephemeral slips of the tongue or pen? It is worth bearing in mind that at the time, in 1920, Churchill was 45 years old, a mature man of the world, in the prime of life, with considerable experience of politics behind him. His speeches and writings were not the impulsive, nor the impromptu remarks of an errant youth. Perhaps Churchill, always the ‘political animal’, learned for himself the conclusion reached later by Colin Holmes, a scholar of anti-Semitism in Britain: ... Anti-Semitism was never a vehicle for political success in British society and those who drew from European experience and attempted to inject it into British political life were to be frustrated and disappointed by the results, (quoted above, p. 49)

Churchill’s campaign against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ is the stranger, given his close acquaintance with prominent members of the AngloJewish community. A recent history of one of these friends, Sir Philip Sassoon, whose country houses, Trent Park and Port Lympne, were host to many weekend gatherings of the most senior government ministers, has noted presciently: The Jews could be hated by both ends of the political spectrum. Some on the right despised them, accusing them of being Bolsheviks intent on destroying capitalism, while some on the left depicted them as archetypal capitalists.45

Churchill’s anti-Jewish outpourings did not apparently harm his relations with prominent members of the Anglo-Jewish establish­ ment. It may be assumed that few would have cared to alienate a man of Churchill’s prominence. Like his father before him, Churchill befriended several influential Jewish magnates, and benefited from their munificence. The young Winston was taken frequently by his father to dine at the country estate of Nathaniel, Lord Rothschild, Lord Randolph’s financial adviser at the Treasury. When Lord Randolph died, he was indebted to Rothschild’s bank to the tune of £66,000, an enormous sum for those days46 (see above, p. 44). Churchill’s recurring indebtedness brought more than one Jewish magnate to his rescue. The building and upkeep of Chartwell had ‘bled Churchill dry’, and, despite his wife’s importunings, Churchill proved unable to cut back on his extravagant life-style or his gam­ bling habit.47

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Winston ‘inherited’ from his father the financial advice of Sir Ernest Cassel, another Jewish magnate, who has been called ‘Winston’s Rothschild’. When the Churchills married, in 1908, they received a handsome wedding gift of £500 from Cassel. The Churchills were frequently his house-guests in London, and in the country, and were also entertained abroad on occasion, at his expense. Cassel managed and invested Churchill’s income from his writings and lecture-tours, and also made loans to Churchill, against which he held some of Churchill’s American stocks as guarantee.48 Bernard Baruch, the American-Jewish elder statesman and financier, was another close friend and adviser to Churchill. One of his private secretaries has related that Baruch saved Churchill from rash speculations on the Wall Street stock exchange, ‘by quietly selling every time Churchill bought and vice versa’.49 But notwith­ standing Baruch’s interventions, Churchill made a series of bad investments (or speculations) on the stock market in the 1930s. Matters came to a head in 1938, when Beaverbrook terminated his lucrative contract to publish occasional articles in the Daily Express. This brought Churchill to the brink of bankruptcy. In 1938, he was forced to put Chartwell, his country estate (bought in 1922), up for sale. The asking price was £25,000. He was saved from having to sell it by Sir Henry Strakosch, another Jew, a South African goldmining magnate of Czech origin. In March 1938, Brendan Bracken, a friend of Strakosch, persuaded the latter to take over liability for Churchill’s share portfolio, and to pay off his debt of £18,000 (his shares were showing a loss of some £12,000 - estimated by Gilbert at over £200,000 in 1981 prices). This allowed Churchill to take Chartwell off the market.50 Henceforth, Strakosch enjoyed a free entree to Chartwell. During the war, he was appointed Financial Consultant to the Secretary of State for India. The fact that a wealthy Jew had rescued Churchill from near­ bankruptcy became well known. When Churchill joined Focus, an anti-appeasement group formed by, among others, Strakosch and Lord Melchett, his political opponents spread stories that he was in the pockets of the Jews. This all adds an arcane dimension to the complexity of Churchill’s relations with the Jews. Many of the class to which Churchill belonged did harbour resentment of the Jews’ success, and were

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not inhibited from nor censured for expressing their views in public. Churchill came into close personal contact not only with the Jews’ financial, but also with their political power.51 Indeed, one of the central theses of this book is that his support for Zionism was moti­ vated by the belief that American policy was influenced by the lobbying of well-placed Jews at the White House. Clear evidence for this may be found in the memorandum that he wrote for the Cabinet on Christmas Day 1939: ... it was not for light or sentimental reasons that Lord Balfour and the Government of 1917 made the promises to the Zionists which have been the cause of so much subsequent discussion. The influence of American Jewry was then rated as a factor of the highest importance, and we did not feel ourselves in such a strong position as to be able to treat it with indifference ... (quoted above, p. 195)

This brings me to the inter-linked questions of Gentile Zionism, and of Churchill’s alleged lifetime devotion to the Zionist cause. When I wrote that ‘no Western statesman ever shared the Zionists’ conviction that Palestine on its own could solve the “Jewish Problem” as manifested across the globe’ (above, p. 327), I was taken to task for imposing a ‘religious-ideological’ test.52 In ‘re-visiting’ Churchill after nearly 20 years, I am pleased to adopt Rose’s definition of the limitations to Churchill’s commitment to Zionism. I believe that it illuminates admirably my point about Gentile Zionism in general: Churchill had no difficulty with his ‘National Jews’. Things became more complicated when he applied himself to Zionism, a creed that set out its own national solution to the Jewish problem. ... Its interests were not necessarily those of Britain. At times, they coincided__ On other occasions, they clashed. ... In this clash between two conflicting national interests, it could not be expected that Churchill would choose the Zionist.53

Churchill’s record is in fact replete with occasions when he perceived Zionist interests to be in conflict with British ones - or, to put it another way, when he felt that they no longer served the Empire. As Colonial Secretary, Churchill was a somewhat reluctant supporter of the Balfour Declaration; his policy as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-29) was so prejudicial to the interests of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) that in 1928, Field Marshal Plumer, the British High Commissioner to Palestine, even threatened

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to resign in protest at the Treasury’s diktats (see above, pp. 155-7). In 1937, Churchill, keen to appease Italy, told Lord Melchett that Jewish statehood would have to wait a few more years; and as already noted, Churchill simply dropped the Zionist cause after the assassination of Lord Moyne, in November 1944. Finally, there is the perplexing mystery of Churchill’s record during the first two years of British (military) rule in Palestine, from 1918 to 1920. Churchill served as Secretary of State for War and Air from 1919 to 1921, and, as such, held Ministerial responsibility for the officers who administered Palestine.54 Much has been published about the overt sympathies of the Military Administration for the Arabs in Palestine. But, so far, no research has appeared that might enlighten us about Churchill’s attitude to their policies. The correspondence of its senior officers with the Foreign Office was spiked liberally with anti-Semitic comments. Following what was deemed by London to be their gross negligence, and responsi­ bility for the loss of life during the riots in Jerusalem in April 1920, Prime Minister Lloyd George intervened and dismissed the military regime. In its place, he appointed Sir Herbert Samuel as the first civilian High Commissioner of Palestine, in July 1920 - fully two years before the Mandate was approved and officially handed over to Britain by the League of Nations. It may well be that Churchill’s later derision of British military officers as anti-Semitic, and pro-Arab55 derives from this stint at the War Office. However, his role during this turbulent phase of Palestine’s history (when, as already noted, he was urging Lloyd George to return Britain’s Middle Eastern mandates to the Turks), has yet to be unravelled. When Churchill moved on to the Colonial Office, he was urged, but refused to curb or counter the well-known anti-Zionist attitude of the British officials in Palestine; he also refused to intervene when on 29 October 1921, General Congreve, commander of British forces in the Middle East, issued an order that referred at one point to ‘the grasping policy of the Zionist extremists’ in Palestine, and described the sympathies of the British Army as laying ‘rather obviously with the Arabs ...’56 In concluding this section, I wish to emphasise that I have never questioned Churchill’s right, even duty, to place British interests before those of the Zionists. I would expect nothing else.

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MORAL JUDGMENTS

I have already commented on the question of the historian’s licence to pass moral judgments. Churchill’s record on the Holocaust, to which I have had recourse, is by no means the only issue on which moral judgments might be considered to have been in order. I wish to digress here upon the way in which three different historians - Hinsley, Lamb and Gilbert - have dealt with the moral issue involved in one not-so-well-publicized episode in Churchill’s career. I refer to his intention to use chemical and biological weapons against the Germans during the closing stages of World War Two. (This issue assumed particular relevance at the time of writing this - April 2003 - as Anglo-American military forces completed the conquest of Iraq, ostensibly in search of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.) In June 1944, just six days after the Normandy landings had begun, Churchill became extremely concerned about the V2 rockets launched by the Germans against London. He feared that the attacks might paralyse or destroy the centres of government in the British capital - and thereby enable the Germans to snatch victory, just when it appeared to be within the Allies’ grasp. On 6 July, Churchill directed his Chiefs of Staff to consider two acts of retaliation. The first: ... that a hundred German towns with populations of between two and five thousand should be selected for total destruction by aerial bombardment.

His second proposal was to resort to the use of poison (mustard) gas and germ warfare (anthrax) against the Germans - ‘if it could be shown that it was a matter of life and death or would shorten the war by a year’.57 According to F.H. Hinsley, the official historian of British intelli­ gence during World War Two, Churchill lost his patience with his Chiefs of Staff’s procrastination and, on 18 July, he stormed out of a meeting with them, warning that he would consult the Americans and the Soviets on using the threat of poison gas against Germany. Fortunately, Churchill’s Defence Chiefs stood firm this time against his importunings. Hinsley relates that Churchill relented only on 28 July 1944, after the Chiefs insisted that the use of gas ‘would not be decisive’.58 Richard Lamb’s version is somewhat different. He asserts that Churchill bowed to the Chiefs’ protests only on 1 March 1945.

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He gave the order to discontinue work on the anthrax and mustard gas bombs only after Allied troops had conquered most of the rocketsites. Churchill himself was apparently quite aware of the moral issues involved in the use of these weapons of mass destruction (the use of such weapons would have constituted a breach of the Geneva Con­ ventions on War). However, Gilbert informs us, Churchill dismissed the moral aspect peremptorily - ‘It is absurd to consider morality on this topic ...’ Whereas Gilbert refers to Churchill’s intention to use mustard gas against the Germans, he does not mention his consider­ ation of the use of anthrax, nor his proposal to raze 100 German cities to the ground.59 Of these three authors, only Lamb addresses the moral issue involved. He expresses his ‘shock’ to find that Churchill contem­ plated initiating mustard gas and anthrax attacks on Germany. But he does not refer to Churchill’s own dismissal of any possible moral inhibitions, and excuses him with a magnanimity that not all would concur with: ... before passing an ethical judgment it should be remembered that he [Churchill] never issued a definite order for chemical or germ warfare ...60

Lamb concludes: Fortunately for mankind things got better, not worse, and most of the flying bomb sites were over-run by British troops.61

Clearly, moral issues are involved here. Equally clearly, historians who have covered this episode have felt uncomfortable with them.

THE HOLOCAUST

With reference to the Allies’ failure to mount even one single military operation to rescue Jews from the jaws of the Holocaust, I adhere to the conclusion that I reached in 1985: Had rescue attempts been allotted a higher priority, there were various options open, and it cannot be stated definitely now that none could have succeeded. If moral judgments are in order, then the Allies were morally obliged at least to have made the effort, (see above, p. 266)

Gilbert does take a moral stand against Allied inaction in the face of the Holocaust - but his barbs are reserved for the Whitehall bureaucracy. His two major works on Churchill published since

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1985 - volume VII of the official biography (1988), and his single­ volume biography of Churchill (1991) - each contain just a couple of paragraphs on Auschwitz. In each of these two works, Gilbert reproduces Churchill’s minute about the murders at Auschwitz constituting probably ‘the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world’. Significantly, neither volume repeats his 1980 assertion that Churchill was unique in understanding the historical significance of the Holocaust.62 To the best of my knowledge, that assertion has not been repeated in print by anyone since 1981. In his 1991 biography, Gilbert clearly implies that the Jewish Agency’s plea to bomb Auschwitz was directly connected to the deportation of Hungarian Jewry to that death-camp which the Nazis’ had begun at the beginning of July 1944. Weizmann asked that Auschwitz be bombed from the air, and also for ‘the strongest possible public protest’. According to Gilbert, Churchill gave his full support to making ‘the biggest outcry possible’, and as a result, an immediate press and radio campaign launched from London caused Admiral Horthy, the Hungarian Regent, to halt the deportations within 48 hours. The reader might easily conclude that this obviated any further need to bomb Auschwitz. Gilbert has nothing further to say about the project to bomb Auschwitz. A footnote in volume VII of the authorized Biography refers the reader to Auschwitz and the Allies, published in 1981.63 The idea that the urgency for bombing Auschwitz simply evaporated once the deportation of Hungarian Jewry was halted, is misleading, to say the very least. In 1 9 8 5 ,1 pointed out that even if Hungarian Jewry had been saved, the mass murders of Jews brought to Auschwitz from other countries continued (see above, pp. 296-7). When I wrote that, I did not have the benefit of a study published by an American scholar, David Wyman. He estimated that during the weeks that followed 7 July 1944 - the date on which Churchill was first informed about the killings in Auschwitz - a further 150,000 Jews were gassed and their corpses incinerated in this single camp.64 My imputation that the Allies in general, and Churchill in par­ ticular, could, and should, have mounted attempts to rescue the Jews from the death camps has predictably drawn some of the most scathing criticism. My reference to George Steiner’s controversial play, The Portage to San Cristobal o f A.H. (see above, p. 261), also earned me some harsh comments.65It will be recalled that in Steiner’s

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play, A.[dolf] H.[itler] survived the war, and implied that the Allies had not acted to stop the mass murders of Jews because they had in fact silently acquiesced in what he had been doing.66 But we do not have to rely on George Steiner’s fertile imagination. I would refer the critics to a note written by an official in Churchill’s Foreign Office in December 1942, just five days after London and Washington had issued their public warning to the Nazis - that anyone implicated in the ‘Final Solution’ would be brought to justice after the war. This internal memorandum questioned the govern­ ment’s failure to take any action consequent to that warning: How can we say that ‘we have every sympathy and willingness to play our part’ when we refuse to take any positive steps of our own to help these wretched creatures. Why should anyone else do anything if we refuse? (quoted above, p. 269)

One scholarly book, devoted entirely to Churchill’s military leader­ ship during World War Two, has devoted the following paragraph to my book: Professor Michael Cohen, author of Churchill and the Jews, alleges that Churchill’s support of Zionism before the war was insincere, and castigates him for not following up a minute he wrote to Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air, advocating the bombing of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The RAF did not do so, and no documents exist to show that Churchill ever repeated his request. It is likely that he discussed the matter with Sinclair verbally, as he saw him frequently and they were old and close friends. Anyway, would the bombing of concentration camps have saved many lives? Why would bombs kill guards rather than prisoners? It is wrong to denigrate a great Englishman on such flimsy grounds. [my emphases]67

The fact that this reputable historian, a self-confessed ‘admirer of Winston Churchill’,68 should refer to the lack of any hard documen­ tation as ‘flimsy grounds’, but then proceed to rest his own case on it being ‘likely’ that Churchill discussed the Auschwitz project verbally with Sinclair - should raise an eyebrow or two. This par­ ticular assumption hardly warrants a reply. As another reviewer of my book commented, even ‘a single brief memo is hardly enough to make something happen in the teeth of predictable opposition from the Forces and the Foreign Office’.69 The twin issues of the feasibility and the utility of bombing Auschwitz-Birkenau (a death camp, not a concentration camp) were considered at the time by the Allies. The Germans were able to repair railway lines rapidly - but it would have taken them much longer to

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rebuild the gas chambers and crematoria. The Auschwitz facility had a capacity for putting to death some 12,000 human beings a day. The average number actually murdered daily was between 8,000 and 9,000.70 Even if this slaughter had been stopped for just a single day, would this not have resulted in a significant saving of lives? The risk that stray bombs might also kill some Jewish inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex has been a subject of some debate among historians - although it did not apparently occupy Allied leaders at the time. On the whole, Jewish leaders in the United States and Europe concluded at the time that the possible loss of Jewish lives was justifiable. Although they did not know it then, many of the Jewish inmates of Auschwitz in fact prayed that the Allied bombers that occasionally flew directly over their heads would release their loads on their living hell.71 In any case, some 90 per cent of the Jews brought to Auschwitz were selected for the gas chambers upon arrival, and the majority of those remaining could not have expected to survive the slave-labour conditions there for more than a few weeks. Finally, the risk of killing Jewish inmates was not in fact as high as might have been feared. The gas chambers and the crematoria were housed in round buildings concentrated at the end of the long, distinctive rows of rectangular dormitory buildings. On 7 October 1944, resistance units within the camp itself blew up two of its crematoria.72 The consensus today is that had the Allies really wanted to do so, they could have bombed the death camps. This much, as one biographer of Churchill concedes, is now ‘abundantly clear’.73 Historians have offered three main lines of defence for Churchill’s failure to follow up his instructions to Eden to ‘get what you can out of the RAF’, after being informed of the killings at Auschwitz (see p. 294 above): (1) He had determined in 1943 on a strict set of military priorities - everything would be done to pursue the war effort, whether controversial or not, and nothing would be done that was ‘not bona fide for the war’; 74 (2) he was too busy directing the war effort;75 and (3) the Whitehall bureaucracy sabotaged the bombing project behind Churchill’s back, while he was out of the country. I believe that all of these arguments are quite plainly refutable. 1. There were exceptions to the Allies’ declared strategy of devoting all military resources exclusively to the war effort:

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(i) In February 1942, the Allies sent aircraft to precision-bomb the walls of a German prison camp in France, in order to ‘spring’ mem­ bers of the French Resistance, under sentence of death. The oper­ ation was so successful that the first wave of bombers accomplished the mission and the rest were ordered to fly on to other targets.76 Apparently, the Allies were not inhibited by the risks of killing members of the French Resistance when they ordered these bombing missions. (ii) From 1942 to1944, Allied military forces were employed in the transportation of some ‘100,000 non-Jewish Polish, Yugoslav, and Greek civilians to camps in Africa and the Middle E ast...’ Most of these were refugees, whose plight was desperate. But unlike the Jews, none had been ‘the objects of systematic annihilation’.77 (iii) In August 1944, Allied aircraft air-lifted ammunition, arms and stores to the Polish Home Army in Warsaw, which had rebelled against the Germans. This operation, which did not have a direct military goal, tied up no less than 107 Allied heavy bombers for nine consecutive days (see above, pp. 301-2). The issue of whether to bomb Auschwitz was in fact purely a question of Allied priorities - as noted by one reviewer of the first edition of this book: The assistance granted to the rebellious Poles in 1944 shows the relative weakness of the Jews not Churchill’s preference for the Poles. Indeed, Jewish impotence, not Churchill’s, dictated Britain’s conduct toward Zionism and the Holocaust.78

2. When we come to assess Churchill’s direction of the war, it is well to bear in mind the caveat issued by Robert Rhodes James: ‘To dehumanize Churchill, to make him an all-wise automaton that poured out speeches, books, articles and military decrees, does him no service at all.’79 Of course, we would expect the British Prime Minister to have been fully engrossed in the supreme task of winning the war. From June 1944, the Allies were engaged in the re-conquest of Europe. Churchill monitored the Normandy landings closely, and as soon as he could (or as soon as the commanders in the field would allow him to), in late July, he visited the landing beaches, on day trips. He spent much of the month of August visiting the battle fronts in North Africa and Italy. Is it not a moot question whether the head of the government

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should direct his country’s war effort from the front lines of particular battlefields, or prefer the wider view of the war from the well-equipped War Room in his capital. President Roosevelt was unable, physically, to visit the war fronts in Europe while the fighting was still proceeding. This did not apparently impair his ability to direct his country’s war effort from the American capital. It should be remembered also that by the summer of 1944 Churchill was nearly 70 years old, and in failing health. The war memoirs of his generals, recently opened to the public (particularly the until-nowclosed notes of his CIGS, Field Marshal Alan Brooke) reveal that many of them in fact resented the Prime Minister’s visits to the front, and did their best to put him off. Even when Churchill was at the helm of government in London, he was not always focused exclusively upon high matters of state. In the summer of 1944, Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Under­ secretary at the Foreign Office noted in his private diary that Churchill was no longer able to ‘conduct business’ in the Cabinet, and that he habitually wasted hours of that institution’s time with his long monologues - ‘all hot air’ (quoted above, p. 304). There is also abundant evidence on Churchill’s proclivity for switching impulsively from the gravest to the most inconsequential of matters. John Colville, one of Churchill’s long-serving private secretaries, has confirmed that the Prime Minister ‘always found time for trivialities’ (quoted above, pp. 276-7). 3. One eclectic study of Churchill has claimed recently that his: ... determination to fight on against Hitler whatever the risks was influenced profoundly by his knowledge of the Nazi Holocaust against Europe’s Jews. From the moment he was first aware of it he condemned it and gave the highest priority to bringing those responsible for it to justice .... He supported the Jewish Agency proposal ... that Allied air power be used to disrupt the rail links that were critical to the logistics of the Final Solution. That this did not happen was not Churchill’s fault.80

Would that this had been true. This claim rests on the works of Gilbert, who has claimed: In the making of Allied policy, however, Churchill was not always the final arbiter, and in many cases, not least among them the bombing of Auschwitz, other voices and other considerations prevailed.81

Many historians have claimed that the officials at Whitehall were to blame for having sabotaged the Auschwitz bombing project,

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thereby thwarting Churchill’s will. This claim is hard to sustain - if only for the simple fact that Churchill apparently never followed up his famous directive. Had he been so minded, he had plenty of time in which to harry ministers and officials, as was his habit, in furtherance of the Auschwitz bombing project. Those officials at the Air Ministry and the Foreign Office who were charged with the project mustered all their wits to try and ‘pin the blame’ on the other department. But they need not have feared Churchill’s ire. There was never any debate with Churchill over the Auschwitz project - it was a ‘no-contest’. Churchill’s failure to return to the fray enabled the officials to allow the project to die a natural death, at the begin­ ning of September 1944 (see above, pp. 297, 299-300, 303). The fact is, as noted presciently by a recent study of the Con­ servative Party’s attitudes to the Jews, that: ... if there is a real political will the elected politicians can overrule official objections and manoeuvring.82

Another fact, usually overlooked, is that Churchill refused to deal personally with any issue pertaining to the Holocaust once he reached Number 10 Downing Street. This was why the Zionists brought the proposal to bomb Auschwitz to Foreign Minister Eden, and the latter brought it to Churchill. Throughout the war, Churchill never questioned or quarreled with the Foreign Office over its policy regarding the fate of European Jewry - as he did so frequently over Palestine (see above, pp. 268-9). It has been claimed that Churchill was out of the country at the end of August 1944, when the officials finally determined against the Auschwitz project.83 A check on Churchill’s movements reveals that from 7 July 1944 (the day on which he wrote his first directive to Eden), until the end of August, he spent approximately 34 days at the helm of government in London; he was in the capital for most of July, and again from 29 August until 5 September.84Had Churchill remained preoccupied with ‘the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed’, he had plenty of time in London in which to tackle his ministers and/or their officials. On the other hand, we know that he did devote many long hours in August to a pet project of his that was not calculated to produce any military dividend - that of airlifting aid to the Polish Home Army in Warsaw. So far, my review of the material published to date. However, during the course of my research for the preparation of this

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Afterword, I have discovered two, significant, new letters in Chur­ chill’s private archive. I believe that this is the first time that their contents have been published. These letters reveal that Churchill did in fact address the Auschwitz problem again, if only indirectly, just two days after he penned his famous minute about the mass murders being ‘probably the most horrible crime’. The content and style of these letters, while reiterating this famous comment, suggest that they were drafted for Churchill by the Foreign Office. They indicate that he adopted the official Foreign Office (and American) line on the Final Solution, as indeed he usually did. The two letters in question, signed by Churchill, were both sent out on 13 July 1944, to Lord Melchett, and to the Archbishop of Canterbury. They were evidently replies to queries about the threat­ ened massacre of Hungarian Jewry. Both included the following passage: There is no doubt in my mind that we are in the presence of one of the greatest and most horrible crimes ever committed ... I need not assure you that the situation has received and will receive the most urgent consideration from my colleagues and myself but, as the Foreign Secretary stated [in his speech before the House of Commons on 5 July 1944] the principal hope o f terminating it must remain the speedy victory of the Allied Nations. [my emphasis]85

The line that the best and only way to help the Jews trapped in Nazioccupied Europe was to devote all Allied efforts to bringing the war to a speedier end was adopted on both sides of the Atlantic. It became the stock reply given to all Jewish appeals to the Allies to do something to help their brothers in Occupied Europe. This line of argument has recently received some respectability in an elegant 1994 study by Tony Kushner entitled The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination. This work readily concedes that the British had their own agenda when considering rescue initiatives. They feared that the rescue of any more than a few thousand Jews would provoke either Arab unrest in the Middle East, or anti-Semitism at home: Whenever a major possibility of rescue [of Jews] presented itself, the fear of a flood of Jews either to the Middle East or to Britain dominated the minds of British government officials.86

However, Kushner concludes that the government’s failure to do more for the victims of the Holocaust was due primarily to its

356

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

commitment to liberal values, especially to individual freedom. This led not only to ‘a revulsion against Nazi methods’, but also to a requirement that the Jews ‘cease to be a collective body’, and a government policy of treating the Jews as ‘nationals of existing states ... a purely religious community’.87 But, however ‘liberal’ British policy may have been, the government was quite aware that Hitler was not pursuing a ‘liberal’ policy towards the Jews. Allied policy drew no distinction between those nations whose territories had come under Nazi occupation, and the Jewish people - who alone of all the peoples of Europe had been singled out by the Germans for genocide (see also above, p. 268). Do, then, the letters that Churchill signed on 13 July 1944 provide the answer to the mystery of why he did not pursue further the proposal to bomb Auschwitz? One American historian has concluded that the real reason for the Allies’ failure to mount rescue efforts was ‘the absence of a strong desire to rescue Jews’.88 This is a radical, perhaps over-simplistic judgment. But what else are we to conclude from Churchill’s behaviour: his seemingly authentic expression of horror at what was being done by the Nazis to the Jewish people - followed apparently by total amnesia? Undoubtedly, Churchill was a busy man during the summer of 1944, and many other issues, of higher priority for British interests, were competing for his attention. But, as noted above, Churchill did find time for many issues, great and small, that were not directly concerned with the prosecution of the war. The facts of the case are harsh and not given to facile solutions. Today, no definitive explanation of Churchill’s behaviour during the Holocaust is possible.

NOTES

FOREWORD 1. Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment, by A.J.P. Taylor, Robert Rhodes James, J.H . Plumb, Basil Liddell Hart, Anthony Storr, New York, 1969, p. 7. 2. Ibid., p. 8.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION Some of the topics referred to in this new Introduction are dealt with at greater length in the Afterword to this edition. 1. Foreword to Allan Bloom, The Closing o f the American Mind, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 12. 2. Cf. Norman Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism*, in Robert Blake and Wm Roger Louis, eds, Churchill, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 161. 3. Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, pp. 2 7 6 -8 . 4. Geoffrey Best, Churchill: A Study in Greatness, London: Hambledon & London, 2 0 0 1 ; Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography , New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2 0 0 1 . These two volumes are largely eclectic, and not based on archives. Cf. Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History o f World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. This book contains over 5 0 different page entries for the Holocaust in its index, and a large paragraph devoted to the subject in its bibliographic essay, on p. 927. 5. John Charmley, Churchill: The End o f Glory , London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993, p. 3 9 8 , and ‘Churchill as War Hero*, International History Review, vol. xiii/1, February 1991, p. 103. The index to Charmley’s book contains no entry for Palestine, the Jews, or the Holocaust. See also Klaus Larres, Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics o f Personal Diplomacy, New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 2 0 0 2 , pp. xviii-xix. 6. See David Wyman, The Abandonment o f the Jews, New York: Pantheon, 1984, p. xi. 7. Kushner, The H olocaust ..., p. 264.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION 1. Oskar K. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on Jewish Problems -A H alf Century Survey, London, 1956, p. 16. 2. Diary entry, 14 May, 1948.

358

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

CHAPTER ONE 1. Anthony Storr’s contribution to Churchill Revised ... forms the basis of the following paragraphs. 2. Storr, Churchill Revised ... pp. 2 2 4 , 2 2 8 -9 , 2 4 4 -5 . 3. Ibid., p. 22 4 . 4. Ibid., pp. 2 3 8 -4 1 . 5. Cf. A.G. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests and Kings, London, 1914, p. 2 29. 6. Leo S. Amery, My Political Life , vol. 1, London, 1953, p. 394. Amery gives no date for Balfour’s comment. 7. Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 , London, 197 0 , pp. 2 3 -4 . ChurchilPs loss of composure was diagnosed as ‘defective cerebration’, a sudden brain anaemia which hardly ever recurs, and usually reflects overstrain. Cf. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, companion volume II, pt. 1, 1 9 0 1 -1 9 0 7 , Boston, 1969, p. 339. 8. Cf. Amery diary, 4 December, 1936. Amery was referring to Churchill’s intervention on behalf of King Edward VIII in the Abdication crisis. The King abdicated on 10 December. 9. Churchill Revised ... p. 260. 10. Clement Attlee, ‘An Observer Appreciation’, 1965, quoted in Peter Stansky, Churchill: A Profile, London, 1973, p. 196. 11. Ronald Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905-1908 , London, 19 6 9 , p. 50 4 . 12. Robert Rhodes James, Victor Cazalet, London, 1976, p. 94. 13. Attlee, in Stansky, A Profile ... p. 196. 14. Goronwy Rees, ‘Churchill: A Minority View’, reprinted from ‘After the Ball’, Encounter, November, 1965, in Stansky, A Profile ... p. 2 15. A case in point was when Churchill passed over Field Marshal Alan Brooke for the command of the Allied invasion of Europe. Although Churchill had promised Alan Brooke, he later offered the command to General Eisenhower, without so much as consulting, or explaining it to his own CIGS. 15. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 , taken from the diaries of Lord Moran, Boston, 1966, pp. 1 1 0 -1 1 . 16. Ibid., p. 828. 17. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests ... p. 229. 18. Sir Harold Nicolson, quoted by Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 25. 19. J.H . Plumb, ‘Churchill the Historian’, in Churchill Revised ... pp. 1 5 5 -6 , 163. 20. Moran ... p. 37. On Churchill’s misapprehensions regarding the military threat posed by Germany in the 1930s, cf. Rhodes James, Churchill... pp. 2 3 5 -8 . 2 1. Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 40. 2 2. Moran, p. 828. 2 3 . Clement Attlee, ‘An Observer Appreciation’, 1965, quoted in Stansky, A Profile ... p. 191. 24. Rees, ‘A Minority View’, quoted in ibid., p. 212. 25. Rhodes James, Churchill... p. 22. 26 . A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, London, 1964, p. 82. 27. H.C. Deb. 4th. series, vol. 149, cols. 9 9 4 -5 . 28. Hyam, Elgin and ... p. 4 99. 29 . Ronald Hyam, ‘Winston Churchill Before 1 9 1 4 ’, review article in The Historical journal, vol. 12/1, 1969, pp. 1 7 1 -2 . 30. Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 19. 31. R.F. Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill, Oxford, 1981, pp. 3 8 3 -5 . 32. Rhodes James, Churchill... p. 32.

NOTES

359

33. Moran ... pp. 328 ff. 34. Taylor, Churchill Revised, p. 25. 3 5. Lord Beaverbrook, The Decline and Fall o f Lloyd George, London, 1963, p. 34. 36. Ibid., p. 33. 37. Hyam, Elgin and ... p. 500. 3 8. Isaiah Berlin, Mr Churchill in 1940 , London, 1949, p. 16. 39. Rees, ‘A Minority View*, in Stansky, A Profile ... p.209. 4 0 . Moran ... p. 74 7. 41. Arno J. Mayer, ‘The Power Politician and the Counterrevolutionary’, reprinted from The Critical Spirit, Boston, 1967, extracted in Stansky, j4 Profile ... p. 177. 4 2. Taylor, Churchill Revised ... p. 17. 4 3 . Moran ... p. 747. 4 4. Quoted in Rhodes James, Churchill... p. 26. 4 5 . Hyam, Churchill Before 1914 ... p. 172. 4 6. Hyam, Elgin and ... pp. 5 0 0 -1 . 4 7 . Amery, My Political ... p. 37. 48 . Hyam, Churchill Before 1914 ... p. 172. The five previous occasions on which Churchill used this phrase were: at an Oldham by-election, in 1899; in a speech on South Africa, in 1906; on Kenya, in 1 9 07; regarding a dam across the Victorian Nile, in 1908; and on Irish demands for Home Rule, in 1910.

CHAPTER TWO 1. Barbara Tuchman, The Bible and the Sword, London, 1957, p. 134. 2. Ibid., p. 137. 3. Franz Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles Henry Churchill’, The Herzl Year Book , No. 4, 1 9 6 1 -1 9 6 2 , p. 8. 4. Ibid., p. 9. 5. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 139. 6. Ibid., p. 134, and Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles .. . ’, pp. 1 -2 . 7. Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles . . . ’, p. 9. 8. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 135. 9. Col. Churchill-Sir Moses Montefiore, 14 June, 1841, reprinted in Lucien Wolf, Notes on the Diplomatic History o f the Jewish Question, London, 1919, p. 119. 10. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 135, and Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles . . . ’, p. 23. 11. Wolf, Notes on ... p. 123, resolutionof 8 November, 1842. 12. Chaim Bermant, The Cousinhood: TheAnglo-]ewish Gentry, London, 1971, p. 247. 13. Ibid., p. 246. 14. Quoted in Tuchman, The Bible ... p.136. 15. Blanche E. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, 2 vols, London, 1939, vol. 1, p. 325. 16. Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration , London, 1961, p. 157. 17. Dugdale Arthur James ... p. 327. 18. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 3 2 5 , vol. 2, p. 159. 19. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 198. 20. In conversation with Harold Nicolson, quoted in Stein, Tbe Balfour ... p. 157. 21. Stein, The Balfour ... p. 157. 22. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, New York, 1970, pp. 2 9 ,5 0 . First edn., 1896. 23. Colin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939 , London, 1979, pp. 5 -6 .

360

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24. Benjamin Disraeli, the first and only British Prime Minister of Jewish origins pursued the traditional British policy of supporting the Turks, in contrast to Gladstone, who campaigned against the massacre of Bulgarian Christians. 25. Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... pp. 1 1 -1 2 , 6 7 - 9 , 79. 26. Ibid., pp. 1 4 -1 7 . 27. Ibid., p. 118. 28. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen-Curzon, 26 September, 1919, in Documents on British Foreign Policy; 1919-1939 , First Series, Vol. IV, H.M.S.O., 1952, p. 4 2 5 . Colonel Meinertzhagen was Political Officer attached to the Military Administration in Palestine, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 2 0 , and later Military Adviser at the Colonial Office, 1 9 2 1 -1 9 2 4 . 2 9 . Stein, The Balfour ... p. 165. 30. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on ... pp. 4 6 ff. 31. John A. Garrard, The English and Immigration, 1880-1910 , Oxford, 1 971, p. 42. 3 2. Ibid. 3 3. Bernard Gainer, The Alien Invasion: The Origins o f the Aliens Act o f 1 905, London, 1 9 7 2 , pp. 146, 185, 190. Note the order of the motives imputed to Churchill. 3 4. Garrard, The English ... p. 44. 35. Ibid., pp. 4 5 - 6 . 36. H.C. Deb. 4th series, vol. 149, col. 155. 37. Ibid. 3 8 . For instance, in 1 9 03, Arnold White, a right-wing publicist, told the Royal Commission on Aliens that: ‘the orthodox immigrants belong to a race and cling to a community that prefers to remain aloof from the mainstream of our national life, by shunning intermarriage with Anglo-Saxons’ quoted in Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 25. 3 9 . Jewish Chronicle , editorial, 14 July, 1905. 4 0 . Letter of 19 July, 1905, quoted in Stein, The Balfour ... p. 165. 4 1 . Nahum Sokolow, The History o f Zionism, 1600-1918 , London, 1919, pp. xxix ff. 4 2 . Garrard, The English ... pp. 3 9, 144. 4 3 . Ibid., p. 143. 4 4 . Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, vol. II, The Young Statesman, 1901-1914 , Boston 1967, p. 80. Manchester Jews organized a Committee to fight the Aliens legisiation; after that battle was lost, in August, 19 0 5 , many of the same men formed themselves into the Manchester branch of the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO). Prominent members included Nathan Laski, J.P. Chairman of the Jewish Board of Guardians; Barrow Belisha, uncle of Lord Belisha, and Dr Joseph Dulberg, secretary, who was a physician. 4 5. Garrard, The English ... p. 143. 4 6 . The Bill was introduced on 29 April, 1904, under a rule which allowed only two brief statements. There was a formal debate on the second reading, but Churchill, who was present, took no part - nor did he vote either way. See H.C. Deb. 4th series, vols. 132, 133. 4 7. Churchill-Laski, 30 May, 1904, The Times, 31 May, 1904, reprinted in R. Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. II/l, Boston, 1969, p. 35 6 . 4 8 . Ibid. 4 9 . R. Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. II/l p. 3 56. 50 . Rabinowicz Winston Churchill on ... p. 5 9 ; Jewish Chronicle , 15 July, 1904. 51 . R. Churchill, Churchill, vol. II, pp. 8 2 -3 . 52 . Churchill letter of 23 November, 1904, probably to Reigate Liberal

NOTES 53. 54 . 55 .

5 6. 5 7. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 7 0. 71 . 7 2.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78.

361

Association, ibid., p. 358. Ibid. Laski-Churchill, R. Churchill, Churchill, vol. II, p. 83. The four amendments demanded were: (1) exemptions for victims of religious persecution; (2) right of appeal to ordinary courts of law; (3) removal of trivial grounds for expulsions; and (4) exemption of shipping companies from responsibility for the return passage of deported aliens they had brought into England. The first amendment was incorporated in the Law. See Board of Deputies report, in Jewish Chronicle, 8 December, 1905. Churchill speech on 9 October, 190 5, Jewish Chronicle, 13 October, 1905. Jewish Chronicle, 15 December, 1905. Jewish Chronicle, 12 January, 1906. Jewish Chronicle, 19 January, 1906. Churchill’s canvassers in N .W Manchester claimed that they had secured the pledges of five-sixths of the Jewish voters in the constituency. Cf. G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics, Oxford, 1 9 8 3 , pp. 7 5 -6 . Cf. Robert G. Weisbord, African Zion , Philadelphia, 1 968, pp. 1 1 6 -1 7 , 251. The draft concession for the Charter was drawn up in July, 1903, by a young liberal solicitor, David Lloyd George, M.P. On the strategic considerations, and the Uganda railway, see also D.I. Marmor, ‘The diplomatic negotiations of the Jewish Territorial Organisation and the circumstances for their failure*, Zion , 1 946, no. 4 (in Hebrew). The Uganda Railway cost £ 6 million to build, yet the local taxes raised did not even cover the costs of its administration. The Exchequer had to inject a further £ 1 5 0 ,0 0 0 per annum. David Vital, Zionism: The Formative Years, Oxford, 1 982, p. 4 4 0 . Ben Halpern, The Idea o f the Jewish State, Cambridge, Mass. 1969, pp. 1 5 4 -5 . Weisbord, African ... p. 258. Vital, Zionism ... p. 440. Ibid., pp. 4 4 0 -1 . Ibid., p. 4 4 1 . Bermant, The Cousinhood ... p. 246. Quoted in Marmor, ‘The diplomatic negotiations . . . ’ p. 122. Among the signatories were Lord Rothschild, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, David Alexander, the President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, Claude Montefiore, and Sir Samuel Montagu, a leading City financier. Cf. Vital, Zionism ... pp. 4 3 6 -7 . Marmor, ‘The diplomatic negotiations . . . ’ p. 129. Quoted in ibid., pp. 2 0 1 -2 . Dugdale, Arthur James ... vol. 1, pp. 3 2 6 - 7 ; Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, New York, 1 966, pp. 1 0 9 -1 1 . Their meeting took place on 9 January, 1906, cf. Weizmann-Vera, 9 January, 1906, Weizmann Letters, vol. IV eds Camillo Dresner, Barnet Litvinoff, Jerusalem, 1973, p. 2 19. On Balfour’s political motives for meeting Weizmann, cf. Alderman, The Jewish Community in ... pp. 9 5 -6 . Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 198. Sokolow, History o f ... pp. x x ix -x x . Churchill had failed in his first attempt to win a seat in Parliament, at Oldham, in 1899. He later won the same seat, at the General Election of 1900. Weizmann-Wolffsohn, 28 December, 1905, Weizmann Letters: IV pp. 2 1 5 -1 6 . The only record confirming that their meeting took place is Weizmann’s own mention of the fact, without giving any detail whatever of their conversation, in his letter to Vera, 12 January, 1906, Weizmann Letters: IV, p. 220. Dulberg-Zangwiil, 20 December, 1905, A3 6/48, Central Zionist Archives,

362

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 9 1. 9 2. 93. 9 4. 95.

9 6.

97. 98.

99.

100. 101.

102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS Jerusalem (hereafter, CZA), my emphasis. British East Africa had passed from the jurisdiction of the Foreign Office to that of the Colonial Office in April, 1905. Zangwill-Dulberg, 22 December, 1 905, ibid. Dulberg-Churchill, 26 December, 1905, ibid. Weisbord, African ... p. 23 3. Jewish Chronicle, 5 January, 1906. The paper published a full page of news about ITO meetings. Cf. Dulberg-Zangwill, 11 and 13 January, 1906, A 36/48. CZA. Churchill-Dulberg, 1 January, 1906, ibid. The Zangwill archive at the CZA, and the Jewish Chronicle date the letter as 1 January; the official Churchill biography, companion volume II/l, gives the date as 2 January, pp. 4 9 4 -5 . Ibid. Telegram in A 36/48, CZA. Zangwill-Dulberg, 9 January, 1 9 06, ibid. My emphasis. Zangwill-Joynson-Hicks, 9 January, 1906, ibid. Dulberg-Zangwill, 11 January, 1906, ibid. Zangwill-Churchiil, 12 January, 1 906, ibid. Edward Marsh (Churchill’s secretary)-Zangwill, 15 January, 1906, quoted in Weisbord, African ... p. 2 35. Weisbord, African ... p. 235. For this and following, see ibid., pp. 2 4 4 -8 . Churchill-Zangwill, 13 July, 1906, Randolph Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. II/l, pp. 5 5 2 - 3 . The Gaster draft is in the Gaster Papers, The Mocatta Library, University College, London. For his son’s first publication of the omitted part, see the Jewish Chronicle, 18 December, 1964. Churchill-Moser, 30 January, 1908, reproduced in Martin Gilbert, Churchill and Zionism, London, 1974. The letter as it stood was read out by Moser to the English Zionist Federation conference on 2 February, 1908. Edward Marsh-Rabbi M. Gaster, 31 January, 1908, Gaster Papers. Until the entry of the Turks into World War One on the German side, England adhered to its so-called ‘Eastern Policy’ - supporting the degenerate Ottoman Empire, so as to avoid a partition of its provinces among the Great Powers. The Liberals also proposed to repeal the 1902 Education Act, from which Jewish schools had benefitted; another proposal to close businesses on Sunday, was also feared by the Jews; in addition, the naturalisation fee charged to aliens had yet to be lowered. Garrard, The English ... pp. 106, 2 07. The Jewish Board of Deputies, established in 1 760, was the legal representative body of the Jewish community in England; in 1859, the Jewish Board of Guardians was established to relieve the Jewish poor; the Jewish Chronicle, mouthpiece of the older, established Jewish families in England, but also the only nation-wide organ of the Jewish community, first appeared in 1841. Cf. Holmes Anti-Semitism ... p. 4. Cf. Jewish Chronicle , 24 April, 1908. The Jewish Chronicle thought it ‘grossly unfair’ to blame Churchill personally. It was pointed out that he was a Junior Minister. Editorial 17 April, 1908. Letter from S. Rosenbaum, Jewish Chronicle, 1 May, 1908. Report in Jewish Chronicle , 24 April, 1908. Ibid. Cf. Alderman, The Jewish Community ... pp. 8 0 -1 . Dr Alderman calculated that it needed only the defection of 621 of the Jewish voters to topple Churchill.

NOTES

108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

124. 125. 126.

127. 128. 129. 130.

131. 132. 133. 134.

135. 136.

363

Dulberg later assured Churchill that 95 per cent of Manchester Jews had voted for him, Dulberg-Churchill, 25 April, 1908, R. Churchill, Churchill, com­ panion vol. H/2, p. 785. However, allowance must be made for special pleading by Dulberg, who would have certainly been embarrassed by the election result. Garrard, The English ... p. 128. Letter from S. Rosenbaum, Jewish Chronicle, 1 May, 1908. Jewish Chronicle , 1 May, 1908, editorial, and pp. 5, 8. Jewish Chronicle , 8 May, 1908, editorial. Garrard, The English ... p. 130, n.2. Churchill-Robert Katz (member of British Board of Jewish Deputies), 18 March, 19 2 4 , and correspondence, Z 4/2 4 8 7 , CZA. For the June speech, cf. Garrard, The English ... p. 1 3 2 ; and for the assessment of Churchill’s speech of July, 1910, cf. Alderman, The Jewish Community ... p. 84. Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 43. On the two Bills against Aliens which were tabled in 19 1 1 , cf. Gainer, The Alien ... pp. 1 0 5 -2 0 7 . Letter from S. Forde-Ridley, 5 January, 1911. The Times, editorial, 10 January, 1911. The Times, 16 March, 1911, p. 8. The Times, 18 April, 1911. R. Churchill, Churchill: II, pp. 3 9 5 -6 . Marian Jack, T h e Purchase of the British Government’s shares in the British Petroleum Company 1 9 1 2 -1 9 1 4 ’, Past and Present, no. 3 9, April, 1968, p. 164. Ibid. The D’Arcy oil concession in Persia had been obtained in 1901, with much diplomatic assistance, and in 1905 the Company was dissuaded by the Admiralty from selling out to foreign interests. D’Arcy’s attempts to obtain an oil concession in Mesopotamia had received Foreign Office approval since 1904, and direct diplomatic support since 1908. Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., p. 142. Ibid., p. 143. Robert Henriques, Marcus Samuel, London, 1960, pp. 5 4 9 , 5 6 4 . Marcus Samuel was a classical example of the self-made man, who began his fortune by selling sea-shells - thus the name of his oil company. Bermant, The Cousinhood ... p. 287. Jack, The Purchase o f ... p. 150. Foster, Lord Randolph ... p. 395. Randolph S. Churchill, 'Winston S. Churchill, Vol. I, Youth: 1 8 7 4 -1 9 0 0 , Boston, 1 966, pp. 1 7 4 ,2 0 6 ,2 7 3 - 4 , 330. On the Rothschilds, see also Virginia Cowles, The Rothschilds: A Family o f Fortune, New York, 1973. Clementine Churchill to husband, 12 February, 1931, Martin Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, Boston, 1981, p. 268. Jack, The Purchase o f ... pp. 1 5 0 -1 . Bermant, The Cousinhood ... p. 308. The Royal Commission proposed a four-year peace reserve; Churchill, in The World Crisis, incorrectly described the recommendation as a four-year war reserve, something entirely different. Cf. Jack, The Purchase o f ... p. 152. The Admiralty eventually built tanks with 4'A months’ war capacity, a decision which nearly cost Britain the war in 1917. During the submarine campaign, the Fleet was reduced to three weeks’ supply, and almost completely confined to base; cf. Bermant, The Cousinhood ... p. 3 08. Henriques, Marcus ... pp. 5 5 4 , 5 6 8 -9 . Jack, The Purchase o f ... pp. 1 4 9 -5 0 . Ibid., pp. 153, 157.

364 137. 138. 139. 1 40. 1 41. 142. 143.

144. 1 45.

146. 147. 148. 149. 150.

151. 152. 1 53. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158.

1 59. 1 60. 161.

162.

163.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., pp. 16 3 , 165. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. lv, cols 1 4 6 5 -5 8 3 ; Henriques, Marcus ... p. 5 7 0 . The Times, 23 May, 1914, p. 8. The government investment would allow APOC to step up its production from 7 5 ,0 0 0 , to 5 0 0 ,0 0 0 tons annually. Jack, The Purchase o f ... p. 1 63; Henriques, Marcus ... p. 572. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. Ixiii, col. 1133. Ibid., col. 1 151. The press reports noted that at this point Churchill beamed in the direction of Samuel Samuel, M.P., a member of the Shell Board, and a relative of Sir Marcus, who was absent, cf. Henriques, Marcus ... p. 5 8 1 . H .C. Deb. Supra, col. 1151. Ibid., col. 1153. George Lloyd was Conservative M.P., 1 9 1 0 -1 9 2 5 , High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, 1 9 2 5 -1 9 2 9 , and Churchill’s Colonial Secretary, 1 9 4 0 -1 9 4 1 . He voted against the purchase of the shares. Ibid., col. 1208. Ibid., col. 1229. Ibid., cols. 1 2 3 8 -9 . Report of 23 June, 1914, quoted in Henriques, Marcus ... pp. 5 8 6 - 7 . Ibid., p. 5 8 5 . When Henriques wrote the biography, he asked Churchill for his comment, but the latter replied courteously that he had no recollection of the episode. Jack, The Purchase o f ... pp. 1 6 4 -7 . Ibid., p. 165. Ibid., p. 168. Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... pp. 2 3 3 -4 . Ibid., p. 159. Ibid. Speech of 3 October, 1923, quoted in Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary , ed. Keith Middlemass, vol. 1, 1 9 1 6 -1 9 2 5 , London, 1969, p. 246. The ‘scandal’ concerned the grant of government contracts by Herbert Samuel, Postmaster-General, to the Marconi company (Managing Director, Godfrey Isaacs, a Samuel). Before the contract was ratified, Godfrey Isaacs managed to buy up shares of the American branch of Marconi, on preferential terms. On his return, he offered some of the shares to his brother Harry, who in turn sold some to Sir Rufus Isaacs, who in turn offered some to Lloyd George. Mr Edwin Montagu, later Secretary of State for India, 1 9 1 7 -1 9 2 2 . National Review, December, 1 912, quoted in Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 78. Churchill-Lioyd George, 2 6 December, 1918, Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. iv, Boston, 1975, pp. 1 7 6 -7 . Herbert Samuel had been Home Secretary, briefly, from January to December, 1916. Whether due to Churchill’s advice or not, he did not get the appointment, or any other cabinet office. Neither was Sir Rufus Isaacs given a cabinet post. Of the vast body of literature on the Balfour Declaration, see especially Stein, The Balfour .. . , Barbara Tuchman, The Bible and the Sword, New York, 1956, and Mayer Verete, ‘The Balfour Declaration and its Makers’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 6/1, Jan. 1970, pp. 4 8 - 7 6 . On the coalition Cabinet’s attitude to the Declaration after the war, see below, p. 85ff. Leo Amery-Sir Edward Carson, 4 September, 1 917, in The Leo Amery Diaries, vol. 1 ,1 8 9 6 - 1 9 2 9 , eds John Barnes, David Nicholson, London, 1 980, pp. 1 7 0 -1 . On Anglo-Jewry’s opposition to Zionism, see S.A. Cohen, English Zionists and British Jews, Princeton, 1982, especially chapter five. Sir Edward Carson was Attorney General from May, 1915 to October, 1 9 16, and First Lord of the Admiralty from December, 1916 to July, 1917. He

NOTES

164. 165.

166. 167. 168. 169.

170. 171. 172. 173.

174. 175. 176. 177.

365

remained in the War Cabinet until his resignation in January, 1918. On Amery’s drafting of the Balfour Declaration, see diary entry, 31 October, 1917, which notes also that after the cabinet decision of that day to publish the Declaration, Weizmann and Aaronson (a Palestinian leader) fell on Amery’s neck with gratitude, ibid., p. 177. Weizmann, Trial a n d ... p. 150. Ibid., p. 172. Weizmann incorrectly writes that the interview took place in March, 1916. Of course, by this date, Churchill was no longer at the Admiralty, nor, indeed, did he hold any government office. From December, 1915 to May, 1916, he was a Lieutenant Colonel, commanding an infantry battalion at the Western Front. A few historical accounts have carelessly copied Weizmann’s mistake - cf. Chaim Weizmann: A Biography o f Several Hands, eds Meyer W Weisgal and Joel Carmichael, London, 1963, p. 148, and Howard Sachar, The Emergence o f the Middle East, 1914-1924 , New York, 1969, p. 197. For a contemporary record of Weizmann’s negotiations with Sir Frederick Nathan of the Admiralty, see Weizmann Letters, vol. VII, August, 1914 to November, 1917, ed. Leonard Stein, Jerusalem, 1975, p. 268. Cf. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. iii, 1 9 1 4 -1 9 1 6 , Boston, 1971, and companion volumes of documents. Weizmann Letters, vol. VII, pp. xxii, xxvi. Cf. Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 142. Lord Eustace Percy, The Responsibilities o f the League , London, 1919(?). The passage on Zionism and Bolshevism was reprinted, without comment, in The Zionist Review , no. 1 0 ,1 9 2 1 , p. 178. Stein, The Balfour ... p. 162. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 4 8 4 , Stein, The Balfour ... p. 3 4 9 , and Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 143. Jewish Chronicle, editorial, 13 February, 1920. During this period there took place some 8 8 7 ‘large’ and some 3 4 9 ‘lesser’ pogroms against 5 3 0 Jewish communities, leaving some 6 0 ,0 0 0 dead and many more wounded. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on ... pp. 8 9 -9 0 . Churchill-LIoyd George, 10 October, 1919, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 342. Ibid., p. 34 3 . Ibid., p. 330. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill ... p. 93.

CHAPTER THREE 1. Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 199. 2. Plumb, Churchill Revised ... p. 137. 3. For this and following, cf. George Lichtheim, Imperialism , London, 1 971, pp. 7 3 -9 . 4. Ibid., p. 78. On the late nineteenth century ‘scramble for Africa’, see R. Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Climax o f Imperial­ ism, New York, 1968, pp. 4 6 4 ,4 6 6 , 4 7 1 - 2 ; they assert that ‘the policy-makers ... moved into Africa, not to build a new African Empire, but to protect the old Empire in India’, that the partition of Africa and the tension it provoked between the Powers was a product of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, that the Victorians would have ‘preferred to promote trade and security without the expense of Empire’, and that ‘so far from commercial expansion requiring the extension of territorial claims, it was the extension of territorial

366

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claims which in time required commercial expansion*. 5. Ibid., p. 114. 6. Ibid., quoting Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, London 1968, p. 125. 7. John Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East: Imperial Policy in the Aftermath o f the Wat; 1918-1922 , London, 1981, p. 8. 8. Ibid., p. 36. 9. Ibid., p. 32 . 10. Ibid., p. 6. 11. Ibid., pp. 35 , 44. 12. Ibid., pp. 3 9 -4 0 . 13. Diary entry of 5 August, 1929. 14. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 22. 15. Hyam, Elgin and ... p. 4 9 9 . 16. Hyam, Churchill before 1914 ... p. 169. 17. Hyam, Elgin and ... p. 5 0 6 . 18. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 21. 19. Ibid., p. 166. 2 0 . Ibid., p. 31. 2 1 . Churchill-Lloyd George, 25 October, 1919, Gilbert, Churchill... companion vol. iv/2, Boston, 1978, pp. 9 3 7 -9 . 2 2 . Ibid. 2 3 . Churchill-Lloyd George, 13 June, 1920, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 4 8 4 , and companion vol. iv/1, p. 1120. 2 4 . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... pp. 1 0 4 -5 , 2 71. 2 5 . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... pp. 142, 274. 2 6 . Briton Cooper Busch, Britain, India and the Arabs, 1914-1921, Berkeley, 1 9 71, p. 37 1 . 2 7 . Ibid., p. 4 3 1 . 2 8 . Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 1 3 9 -4 1 ; Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 610. 29. After the Chanak crisis, just two days before the fall of the coalition, Churchill told Hankey that he was sorry the Turks had not attacked. He felt the surrender to them of Eastern Thrace was humiliating, and the return of the Turks to Europe spelled only trouble. Hankey diary entry, 17 October,1922, in Roskill, Hankey ... vol. 2 , p. 295. 3 0. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... pp. 1 4 -1 5 . 3 1 . Ibid., p. 19. 3 2 . Ibid., pp. 15, 180, also A.E. Montgomery, ‘Lloyd George and the Greek Question, 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 2 ’, in Lloyd Ceorge: Twelve Essays, ed. A.J.P. Taylor, London, 1971. 3 3 . Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 938. 34 . Ibid., p. 9 3 9 . 3 5. Sir Henry Wilson-Haldane, 28 December, 1920, in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/3, Boston, 1978, pp. 1 2 7 5 -6 . 3 6 . In February, 19 20, the cabinet insisted on halving the £ 21.5 million estimates for Mesopotamia. If not, withdrawal would be considered. Cf. Busch, Britain, India and ... p. 374. 37. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 196. 38 . Churchill Memorandum on Expenditure in Mesopotamia, 1 May, 1 920, WO 3 2 /5 7 4 4 . 3 9. Ibid. 4 0 . Churchill Memorandum of 1 May,1 920, supra. On scheme for RAF control of Mesopotamia, cf. Busch, Britain, India and ... p. 374. 4 1 . CIGS Wilson Memorandum to Cabinet, CP 1 3 2 0 ,5 May, 1920, in Cab 2 4 /1 0 6 ,

NOTES 42 . 43.

44. 45 . 46 . 47 . 48 . 49. 50 . 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57 . 58 . 59 . 60. 6 1.

6 2. 63 . 64. 65.

66 . 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

367

and Churchill reply, 7 May, 1920, in WO 32/5281. Curzon Memorandum for Cabinet, CP 1434, 8 June, 1920, Cab 24/107. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 136. Montagu sided with Churchill - he suggested the creation of a special Middle East office, ad hoc, or failing that, the Colonial Office should take over. CP 1402, 1 June, 1920, Cab 2 4 /107. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 0 7 . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 197. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid., p. 201. Churchill-Lloyd George, 4 December, 1920, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/3, pp. 1 2 6 0 -2 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 0 4 ; Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 202. Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man o f Secrets, vol. 2, London, 1972, p. 201. Memorandum of 1 May, 1920, W O 3 2 /5744. Darwin, Britain, Egypt a n d ... pp. 2 0 2 , 2 6 3 -5 . Major-General Sir C.E. Callwell, Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, 2 vols. London, 196 9 , vol. 2, p. 2 7 3 , diary entry for 13 December, 1920. Darwin, Britain, Egypt a n d ... p. 2 0 3 , even suggests that the transfer of control to the Colonial Office was a compensation to Churchill, in respect of the rejection of his proposal to evacuate M esopotam ia-a proposal which Churchill would in fact return to in September, 1922. Roskill, Hankey ... diary entry for 31 December, 1920, p. 202. Cf. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 2 8 , 5 3 1 , 5 9 3 -4 . Hankey diary, 31 December, 1920, supra. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iii, Boston, 1971, pp. 4 5 0 -1 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 0 5 , and Busch, Britain, India and ... p. 403. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 0 8 - 9 , and companion vol. iv/2, p. 1292. Curzon to his wife,14 February, 1921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 2 8 . Sir James Masterton-Smith was Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Colonies, 1 9 2 1 -1 9 2 4 . Ibid., p. 5 31. Edward Marsh, A Number o f People, London, 1939, p. 399. John Bowie, Viscount Samuel, London, 1957, p. 2 1 2 , n.3. Aaron S. Klieman, Foundations o f British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference o f 1921, Baltimore, 1970, pp. 2 4 7 -8 . On Lawrence’s influence on Churchill, see also Uriel Dann, ‘Lawrence of “Arabia”, One More Appraisal’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 15/2, May, 1979. Churchill-Sir George Ritchie, 23 February, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, com­ panion vol. iv/2, p. 1371. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, companion vol. iii/1, Boston, 1973, pp. 7 1 5 -1 6 . Gilbert, Churchill and Zionism, p. 5. Cf. Isaiah Friedman, The Question o f Palestine, 1914-1918, London, 1973, chapter 2. Churchill-Lloyd George, 13 June, 1920, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 4 84. For Churchill’s policy in regard to the mobilisation of a Jewish army in Palestine, and his reaction to the murder of Lord Moyne, see my Palestine; Retreat from the Mandate, 1936-1945, chapters 6 and 9. Churchill minute of 6 July, 1945, FO 3 7 1 /4 5 3 7 8 , E 4939 Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries, London, New York, 1937, p. 133. Colonel R. Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary, 1917-1956 , London, 1959, p. 33 , and also John Lord, Duty, Honor,; Empire: The Life and Times o f Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, New York, 1970, p. 375.

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75. Cf. Basil Liddell Hart, ‘The Military Strategist’, in Churchill Revised, p. 2 2 3 . 76. Churchill, Great Contemporaries, p. 138. Most of the essay was published in T.E. Lawrence by his Friends, London, 1937, part was taken from an address given at the unveiling of a memorial at Lawrence’s Oxford school. 77. David Garnett, The Letters o f T.E. Lawrence, New York, 1939, p. 2 67. 78. Lawrence minute of 25 February, 1921, in FO 3 7 1 /6 3 7 5 , E 2354. 79. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 4 5 . This is part of Lawrence’s speech at the Cairo conference on 12 March, in which he argued for favouring Faysal over Abdullah for the throne of Iraq. 80. Lawrence notes on ‘Syria: The Raw Material’, included in Yale Report to State Department, 25 February, 1918, quoted in Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 19171929 , London, 1978, p. 13. 81. Lawrence minute, 25 February, 1 921, FO 3 7 1 /6 3 7 5 , E 2354. 82. Clayton-Bell, 17 June, 1918, Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 12. 83. Meinertzhagen, Middle E a st ... p. 17. 84. Meinertzhagen-Smuts, 2 0 July, 1921, Z 4 /1 6 0 5 5 , CZA. 85. Churchill-Sir James Masterton-Smith, 24 November, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill companion vol. iv/3, pp. 1 6 7 5 -6 . 86. Churchill-Cox, 28 November, 1921, ibid., pp. 1 6 7 7 -8 . 87. Cab 3 2 /2 , vol. I, p. 8, quoted in Klieman, Foundations o f ... p. 2 4 7 . 88. Churchill-Peel, 16 March, 1 9 3 7 , and this paragraph from Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. v, Prophet of Truth, 1 9 2 2 -1 9 3 9 , Boston, 1977, pp. 8 4 7 -8 . 89. L.B. Namier, In the Margin o f History, London, 1 939 , pp. 2 8 2 -3 . 90. The venue was changed only on 6 February, during a visit by Churchill to Chequers. Cairo was regarded as a more generally convenient venue. Cf. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 2 1 . 91. Cf. Busch, Britain, India and ... p. 2 7 1 , and Klieman, Foundations o f ... p. 96. 92. Transjordan was detached, by decision of the Cairo conference. See below. 93. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 0 2 -3 . 94 . Lawrence-Edward Marsh, 17 January, 1921, ibid., pp. 5 1 5 - 1 6 , and Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1314. 95. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 4 5 . 96. Churchill-Lloyd George, 14 March, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1389. 97 . Lloyd George-Churchill, 16 March, 1921, Lloyd George papers, quoted in Busch, Britain, India and ... p. 4 68. 98 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 550. 99. Callwell, Field Marshal Wilson ... vol. 2, p. 2 81. 100. Churchill-Lloyd George, 23 March, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1412. 101. Ibid., p. 1413. 102. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1918-1929: The Aftermath, New York, 1 9 2 9 , p. 4 9 5 . 103. Callwell, Field Marshal Wilson, vol. 2, diary entry for 9 December, 1 921, p. 316. 104. T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Penguin edition, London, 1962, p. 2 8 3 . First published privately in 1926. 105. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... p. 2 2 1 . During the 1920s, following the establishment of the British Mandate, Mesopotamia became known generally as Iraq. 106. Cf. Peter Hennessy, ‘Lawrence’s Secret “Slush Fund”*, The Times, 11 Feb. 1980.

NOTES

369

107. Klieman, Foundations o f ... pp. 240-1. 108. Ibid., p. 244. CHAPTER FOUR 1. Cited in David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties, vol. II. London, 193 8 , p. 1147. 2. Ibid., pp. 1 1 4 9 -5 0 . 3. Balfour (Washington)-Hughes, 13 January, 1 922, CO 7 3 3 /3 0 , 5 3 0 0 . 4. Cf. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and ... pp. 1 7 -1 8 . 5. Memorandum respecting Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia (Paris), 11 August, 1919, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 3 9 , First Series, Vol. IV, H.M .S.O., London, 1952, p. 345. 6. Minutes of 6 August, 1919, ibid., p. 33 0 . Vansittart was a member of the British delegation to the Peace Conference. 7. Minute by G.J. Kidston, Counsellor, 16 October, 1 9 1 9 , FO 3 7 1 /4 1 8 4 ,1 4 1 0 3 7 . His superior, Sir John Tilley, minuted: i am afraid not’. In December, 1918, Lloyd George had met Clemenceau at the French Embassy in London. The two had apparently agreed on the following changes in the Sykes-Picot agreement: Palestine was to be under exclusive British control, rather than under an international regime; and the Vilayet of Mosul, with its great oil potential, was to revert from French to British hands. In return, the French Premier apparently received carte blanche in Syria. 8. Namier, In the Margins ... pp. 2 8 2 -3 . 9. Gamett, The Letters o f ...p . 333. 10. Churchill speech on 2 4 March, 1936, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 1 0 , col. 1114. 11. On 1 March, 1921, Dr Weizmann sent Churchill a 1 ,0 0 0 -word memorandum appealing that the Jewish National Home be permitted to extend up to the Hijaz railway, or even beyond. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 4 0 -1 . Dr Gilbert claims that Churchill had by that time already decided to separate Transjordan from Palestine. 12. Busch, Britain, India and ... p. 4 7 2 . 13. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 53. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 56 1 . 16. Ibid., p. 5 6 2 . 17. Ibid., p. 5 7 2 . 18. Ibid., p. 57 6 . 19. Bowie, Viscount Samuel, p. 213. 2 0. The Zionists heard of his plan to tour their settlements as early as in February, cf. Chaim Weizmann to his wife, Vera, 23 February, 1921, The Letters and Papers o f Chaim Weizmann, vol. X , ed. Bernard Wasserstein, Jerusalem, 1977, no. 127, p. 153. 21. Churchill’s biographer writes that his rival for the Ministry, Sir Robert Horne, ‘hurried home’ to London, from the South of France on 29 March, i.e. 12 days after news broke of the vacant position. Some pages later, the biography relates that Churchill returned to London, for the same purpose, just one day after Horne, on 3 0 March. We may presume that Horne had been on holiday in the South of France - Churchill cancelled a tour of duty in order to try for the post. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 5 6 , 5 72. Churchill failed to secure the post, for which he blamed Lloyd George personally.

370

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2 2 . Churchill, The Aftermath, p. 4 9 4 ; and Balfour’s comment on it in Blanche Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour (2 vols, London, 1936), vol. II, p. 3 3 7 . 2 3. The Colonial Office files date the meetings as having taken place on 28 March, CO 7 3 3 /2 , 2 1 6 9 8 ; Rhodes James, Complete Speeches ... dates the meeting as 31 March, vol. Ill, London, 1 9 74, pp. 3 0 8 3 - 4 ; this is patently wrong, as Churchill left Jerusalem on 3 0 March. See also, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 56 2 . 2 4 . The Palestinians’ memorandum is re-printed from the Churchill papers, 17/20, in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 3 8 5 -8 . 2 5 . Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 6 6 , note 1. 26 . Report of early May, 1921, circulated by Churchill to cabinet as CP 3 0 3 0 , 13 June, in Cab 24/125. 2 7. Meinertzhagen minute, 16 June, 1 9 2 1 , CO 7 3 3 /1 3 , 19675. 28. CP 3 0 3 0 , supra. 29 . Notes in CO 7 3 3 /2 , 2 1 6 9 8 , also Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 4 2 1 -2 . 3 0 . CO 7 3 3 /2 , 2 1 6 9 8 . 31. Harry Sacher-Leon Simon, 30 March, 1921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1423. Harry Sacher, a close adviser to Weizmann in Manchester prior to the Balfour Declaration had set up legal practice in Palestine in 1 920. He returned to England in 1931. 32 . Cf. Churchill conversation with Thomas Marlowe, editor of the Daily Mail, 30 May, 1 9 2 1 , in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 588. 33 . Ibid., p. 5 8 1 . 34 . Beaverbook, The Decline ... p. 33. 35 . Minutes of Cabinet meeting in Cab 2 3 /2 5 ; Wilson diary entry, in Callwell, Field Marshal Wilson: II, p. 293. 36. Minutes of Cabinet meeting at 5 .3 0 p. m., 31 May, 1921, Cab 23/25. 3 7 . Meeting of 1 June, 1921, Cab 27/133. 38 . Diary entry of H.A.L. Fisher (Minister of Education,1 9 1 6 -1 9 2 2 ), 1 June,1921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 590. 39 . Lloyd George report to Cabinet committee on Constantinople, 9 June, 1 921, Cab 2 7 /1 3 3 . 40. Churchill-Lloyd George, 2 June, 1 921, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 9 0 - 1 , and companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 4 8 9 -9 1 ; also Callwell, Field Marshal Wilson ... vol. II, p. 29 4 . 41 . By paragraph 132 of the Sevres Treaty, Turkey relinquished sovereignty over Palestine. The Allied Supreme Council had allotted the Palestine Mandate to Britain, at the San Remo conference, in April, 1920. American opposition to ratification by the League of the Palestine and Mesopotamian mandates stemmed from their demands for an ‘open door’ economic policy in the area. The Americans withdrew their demand for an ‘open door’ during negotiations in the winter of 1 9 2 1 -1 9 2 2 , though they insisted on the right to protect the interests of American citizens in both countries. On the American stand, see F. Manuel, The Realities o f American-Palestine Relations, Washington, 1949, and Weizmann Letters, vol. X I, ed. Bernard Wasserstein, Jerusalem, 1 977, pp. 34 , 5 5 , note 3. 4 2 . Samuel-Churchill, 4 July, 1 921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 5 3 6 -7 ; also Samuel-Colonial Office, 4 June, 1921, CO 733/3, 2 8 1 0 1 . 4 3 . Churchill-Lloyd George, 2 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 4 8 9 -9 1 . My emphasis. 44 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 92. 4 5 . Cf. discussion in Cabinet on 14 June, 1921, Cab 23/26. John Darwin has

NOTES

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 5 2. 53 .

54 . 55 . 56 . 57 .

5 8. 59 . 6 0. 61.

62.

63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

371

asserted that Lloyd George’s suggestion was facetious, and that Churchill responded angrily, by calling the Prime Minister’s bluff, and suggesting that the proposal be made public. Britain, Egypt and ... p. 225. In the light of Churchill’s correspondence with Lloyd George on the issue, cited below, I cannot agree with Darwin on this point. Churchill-Lloyd George, 9 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 4 9 8 -9 . Beaverbrook, The Decline ... p. 42. Lloyd George-Churchill, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1500. Curzon-Lloyd George, 10 June, 1921, p. 1501. Churchill-Curzon, 11 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 5 0 1 -2 . Cabinet meeting of 14 June, 1921, in Cab 23/26. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 5 7 6 -8 0 . Ibid., pp. 5 8 2 - 3 , and Meinertzhagen, Middle E a st ... p. 99. Amin el-Husayn; had been indicted for sedition against the military regime in April, 1920. He had fled to Trans-Jordan and been sentenced in absentia to ten years’ imprisonment. Samuel granted general pardons, and tried to form alliances with the Arab notable families, cf. Y. Porath, The Emergence o f the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929, Frank Cass, London, 1974, Joel S. Migdal, Palestinian Society and Politics, Princeton, 1980, Elie Kedourie, ‘Sir Herbert Samuel and the Government of Palestine’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 5/1, Jan. 1969. Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 52. Meinertzhagen, Middle E ast ... p. 99. Cf. Brunton report, supra; Samuel report, 15 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 2 5 8 3 5 ; also Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 8 5 , Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 101. Churchill-Sir Herbert Creedy (Secretary of the War Office), 15 February, 1921, and Churchill-Lloyd George, 18 March, 1921, in Gilbert, Churchill, com­ panion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 3 5 3 -4 , 1 4 0 1 -2 . Churchill-Samuel, 4 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 2 1 8 8 9 . Churchill-Samuel, CO 7 3 3/13, 2 3 7 4 2 . Conversation between Young and Landman, in Z 41302/4A , CZA. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 8 5 , states erroneously that Samuel called a temporary halt to immigration on 3 May. Gilbert may be referring to Samuel’s request of Allenby, at Cairo, that immigrants already en route might be accommodated temporarily at Port Said, or Cairo. Allenby refused. The Zionist Commission, headed at first by Chaim Weizmann, composed of European Jews, came first to Palestine in April 1918, under the auspices of the British Government, with a British liaison officer (William Ormsby-Gore), in order to organize the affairs of the Yishuv. It came to be regarded in the first years of the mandate as a quasi-autonomous government. Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 104. M. Mossek, Sir Herbert Samuel’s Immigration Policy, Frank Cass, London, 1978, pp. 12, 169. Mossek, Sir Herbert Samuel’s ... pp. 19ff, 24. Samuel had in July, 1920 issued 16 ,500 labour immigrant certificates. If each immigrant brought his family, total immigration might have reached 7 0 ,0 0 0 -8 0 ,0 0 0 . The actual number which reached Palestine until the suspension in May, 1921, was 10 ,6 5 0 , see statistical table in Mossek, p. 169. Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 11. Samuel-Colonial Office, 8 May, 1921, CO 733 /3 , 2 4 6 6 0 . Churchill-Samuel, 12 May, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /2 3 7 4 2 .

372

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6 9 . Landman interview with Young, Bullard of Colonial Office, and Forbes-Adams of the Foreign Office, in Z 4/41302/4A , CZA. 70. Speech of 9 March, 1922, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 151, col. 1548. Churchill’s remarks were also in response to a vehement press campaign conducted by the Northcliffe press against the introduction of undesirable, ‘Bolshevist’ Jewish immigrants. Cf. below, pp. 137ff. 71. For this and following, see CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 3 6 7 8 . 72. Cf. Samuel-Colonial Office, 8 May, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 4 6 6 0 . 7 3 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 8 6 . 74. Ibid., pp. 5 8 6 - 7 , and CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 3 6 7 8 . 75. This key phrase, in Churchill’s telegram of 14 May (CO 7 3 3 /3 ,2 3 6 7 8 ), does not appear in the biography. 7 6 . Samuel-Colonial Office, 12 May, 1 921, CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 3 6 7 8 . Samuel had first established an Advisory Council in October, 1920. This functioned until 1 9 22, when it lapsed in anticipation of the new Legislative Council. The first Advisory Council was composed of 11 nominated British officials, and 10 ‘elected’ non­ officials - 4 Moslems, 3 Christian Arabs and 3 Jews. The obvious objection of the Arabs was that the official British representatives outnumbered the indigenous, not to mention Arab members of the Council. 7 7. Minute by Shuckburgh, 2 0 May, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 4 6 6 0 . 7 8. Churchill-Samuel, 25 May, 1 921, CO 733/3, 2 5 3 4 9 . 7 9. Minutes in Cab 23/25. 80. Samuel-Colonial Office, 31 May, 1 921, CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 7 2 6 2 . Moslem-Christian associations had been active in the nationalist cause during the period of military rule, from 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 . The military regime had even helped and encouraged the associations. The revival of the idea in 1921 was most likely due to the fact that many of the British officials who had worked under the military regime were kept on by Samuel. Cf. Porath, The Emergence o f ... pp. 3 8, 9 3 - 4 , 2 8 5 -6 . 8 1. Officials’ minutes of 1 June, and Churchill-Samuel, 2 June, 1921, in CO 7 3 3 /3 , 27262. 82. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 4 7 7 -8 . Despite Churchill’s explanations, it will be recalled that just two days later he did in fact suggest to Lloyd George that they surrender the two mandates. 83. Text in CO 7 3 3 /3 , 3 0 2 6 3 . 84. Ibid. 85. E. Friesel, Zionist Policy after the Balfour Declaration, 1917-1922, Tel Aviv 1977, pp. 2 5 7 -8 (in Hebrew). 86. Churchill-Samuel, 4 June, 1921, CO 733 /3 , 2 7 7 9 2 . My emphasis. There is some confusion over the date of this message; the telegram is dated 4 June, but a minute by Sir John Shuckburgh of 11 June states that this telegram was sent on 2 June, i.e. prior to Samuel’s speech, cf. minute by Shuckburgh, 2 8 3 5 8 . 87. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 89. 88. Congreve-Samuel, 5 June, 1 921, CO 733/3, 2 9 7 3 1 . 89. Ibid. The three alternatives offered by Congreve were: (1) an alteration in policy; (2) an increase in the garrison; and (3) the acceptance of a greater danger to the Jewish population. 90. Ibid. 9 1. Cf. Shuckburgh minute to Churchill, 10 June, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 6 , 2 4 0 6 7 . 9 2 . Churchill initials, 11 June, 1921, ibid. 93. Minute of 10 June, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /3 , 285 3 8 . 94. Meinertzhagen, Middle East ... entry for 4 August, 1921, p. 108. 95. Minute of 10 June, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /3 , 2 8 3 5 8 .

NOTES

373

96. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 143. 97. Cf. minutes of conference of Colonial Office legal advisers, 1 2 -1 3 August, 1 921, CO 7 3 3 /1 4 , 4 2 5 3 2 . 98 . Churchill-Shuckburgh, 15 June, 19 2 1 , Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1508. 99. Churchill-Samuel, 21 June, 1921, FO 3 7 1 /6 3 7 9 . 100. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 143; also report in The Times, 15 June, 1921, p. 14. 101. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 5 98. 102. Lloyd George in fact congratulated Churchill on his ‘Mesopotamian’ per­ formance, ibid., p. 599. 103. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 143, col. 3 32. Esmond Cecil Harmsworth, the son of Lord Rothermere, was M.P. for the Isle of Thanet, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 2 9 . Alfred Harmsworth, the first Lord Northcliffe, was the founder of modern journalism; owner of the Evening News (1894), the Daily Mail (1896), the Daily Mirror (19 0 3 ), and The Times (1908). He was the first owner to make papers profitable, therefore independent of Party subsidies. 104. The Times, editorial, 15 June, 1921, p. 11. 105. Ibid., 16 June, 1921, editorial, p. 11. 106. Younger-Chamberlain, 10 June,1921, quoted in Beaverbrook, The Decline ... p. 268. Lord Rothermere, the younger brother of Lord Northcliffe, had helped the latter establish the Daily Mail and Evening News; he bought the Daily Mirror from Northcliffe in 1914, and launched the Sunday Pictorial in 1915. 107. H.C. Deb , 5th series, vol. 144, col. 1529. 108. Ibid, col. 15 3 4 . Vladimir Jabotinsky had helped mobilise Jewish battalions for service in Palestine during World War One; he was gaoled in 1920, for using the battalions for Jewish self-defence during the riots, without higher authority. 109. Ibid., cols. 1 5 4 0 -3 . 110. Ibid., col. 1626. 111. Meinertzhagen, Middle E a s t... diary entry for 5 July, 1921, pp. 1 0 1 -2 . 112. Weizmann-Balfour, 8 July, 1921, Z 4 /1 6 9 5 5 , CZA. 113. Cf. Weizmann-Dr M.D. Eder (chairman of the Zionist Commission), 19 July 1921, ibid. The Washington conference lasted from November, 1921 to February, 1922. Balfour headed the British delegation. 114. The Weizmann Letters, vol. X , ed. Wasserstein, No. 2 9 8 , note 1, p. 306. 115. Weizmann-Schmarya Levin, 15 July, 1921, ibid., pp. 2 1 4 -1 7 . There is no clear date for the meeting. 116. The following is based primarily on Weizmann’s account of the meeting, in Weizmann-Ahad Ha’am, 3 0 July, and Weizmann-Sir William Deedes, 31 July, 1921, ibid., nos. 2 2 7 , 228. Cf. also Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 6 2 1 , which also relies on Weizmann’s record of the meeting. 117. Balfour, as we have already noted, fluctuated wildly. In January, 1919, he had written to Lord Curzon: ‘As far as I know, Weizmann has never put forward a claim for the Jewish Government of Palestine. Such a claim is, in my opinion, certainly inadmissible, and personally I do not think we should go further than the original declaration which I sent to Lord Rothschild’; quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 6 21, note 1. Dr Wasserstein, in his introduction to volume X of the Weizmann Letters, p. xix, comments that at the meeting both Lloyd George and Churchill affirmed that they had always understood the Balfour Declaration to mean the eventual establishment of a Jewish State. This is quite obviously a mistaken substitution of Balfour for Churchill. In his bridge-note on p. 2 2 7 , Wasserstein himself states

374 118. 119. 120. 121.

122. 123. 124. 125.

126. 1 27. 128. 129.

130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

135. 136.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS that Churchill ‘demurred* from this interpretation. Weizmann-Ahad Ha’am, 30 July, 1921, supra. Weizmann-Deedes, 31 July, 1921, supra. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 621. It is difficult to ascertain on what Dr Wasserstein bases his conclusion that Weizmann was ‘pleased’ with ‘the tone and content’ of the meeting, Weizmann Letters, vol. x, p. 227. Weizmann-Ahad Ha’am, 30 July, 1921, supra. Ibid. For this and following, cf. minute by Young, 1 August, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 4 , 38372. Undated minute by Young, ibid. Churchill minuted on it: ‘Let me see yr paper in print’. WSC, 5 August, 1921. Meinertzhagen claims that he persuaded Young and Shuckburgh to adopt a firm line, in place of their ‘wavering game* in Palestine. Diary entry, 2 August, 1921, Middle East ...p p. 1 0 6 -7 . As we have noted, Young’s first memorandum is dated 1 August. Meinertzhagen’s diary does not mention the elected Advisory Council - and his opposition to it is recorded in the Colonial Office files. Meinertzhagen minute of 2 August, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /14, 3 8 3 7 2 . Shuckburgh minute of 3 August, 1921, ibid. Cabinet memorandum, 11 August, 1921, CP 3 2 1 3 , Cab 24 /1 2 7 . My emphasis. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 6 2 5 ff, and companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1592 ff, dates the meeting as 15 August; but the source given is the Zionist Archives, Jerusalem. The Colonial Office files date the meeting as 12 August, cf. CO 7 3 3 /1 4 ,3 8 3 7 2 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 625. Ibid., and companion vol. iv/2, p. 1593. My emphasis. Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 5 9 4 -5 . Ibid., p. 1 6 0 1 ; also Young minute, 22 August, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 4 , 3 8 3 7 2 . Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 18 August, 1921, in Cab 2 3 /2 6 ; Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 6 2 7 -8 , mistakenly dates the meeting as 17 August. He may have copied the mistake from H.A.L. Fisher’s diary, which notes a Cabinet discussion on 17 August, 1921. However the Cabinet minutes at the P.R.O. are quite clear. Cab 2 3 /2 6 , and H.A.L. Fisher diary, entry for 17 August, 1921, Ms Fisher, Box 8a, The Bodleian Library, Oxford. Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary , vol. 1, 1 9 1 6 -1 9 2 5 , ed. Keith Middlemass, London, 19 6 9 , p. 246.

CHAPTER FIVE 1. Negotiations began in London on 11 October, 1921. 2. Diary entry, 16 November, 1921, Meinertzhagen, Middle E a st ... p. 112. 3. Ibid., pp. 1 1 0 -1 1 ; also Shuckburgh-Masterton-Smith, 22 November, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 , 5 7 5 7 2 . 4. Churchill-Balfour, 10 October, 1 921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1647. My emphasis. 5. For Minutes of meeting on 29 November, 1921, cf. CO 537 /8 5 5 . 6. Weizmann-Deedes 13 December, 1921, CO 5 3 7 /8 5 4 . 7. Minute by Eric Mills (attached to Colonial Office in 1 9 2 1 ; later Director of Department of Immigration in Palestine administration), CO 5 3 7 /8 5 5 , quoted in Weizmann Letters, vol. x, ed. Wasserstein, p. 3 04.

NOTES

375

8. In a letter to his wife Vera, of 14 August, 1921, Weizmann referred to the Arabs as ‘trash’, ibid., p. 251. 9. Letter of Miriam Sacher (wife of Harry) quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 639. 10. Meinertzhagen, Middle E a st ... p. 112. 11. Minute of 17 November, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 ,5 7 8 6 0 , reproduced by him in Middle E a st ... p. 111. 12. Weizmann-Shuckburgh, 16 November, 1921, 'Weizmann Letters, vol. x, p. 287. 13. Minute by Eric Mills, 24 January, 1922, CO 7 3 3 /2 9 , 5 0 5 , quoted in ibid., p. 2 88, note 1. 14. Shuckburgh minuted that it was ‘unfortunate that Lord Sydenham should have made a fiery speech to the Delegation on the very eve of their interview with the Secretary of State’, 16 November, 1921, CO 733/IS , 5 7 8 6 0 . 15. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 6 3 2 -4 . 16. Pinhas Rutenberg, a Russian Jew, had belonged to the revolutionary Movement before the war. He was reputed to have been involved in the murder of Father Gapon in 1906 (Gapon was suspected of being either a police, or government spy, or agent provocateur, after a march he had led, to present a petition to the Tsar, was fired upon, causing many casualties). Rutenberg was Churchill’s guide and interpreter in March, 1921, when the latter toured the Jewish colony of Rishon LeZion. 17. Shuckburgh-Masterton-Smith, 17 January, 1922, CO 7 3 3 /29. Shuckburgh was responding to the latter’s query as to why they were embarking upon the electrification of Palestine’s railways, when those of England and France were as yet served by steam locomotives. A copy of the explanation was also sent, apparently, to Churchill, cf. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 642. 18. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 6 3 4 -5 . 19. Ibid., p. 6 32. 2 0 . Ibid., p. 63 5 . 21. CP 3 5 1 5 , Cab 2 4 /140. 22 . The War Office resumed command in 1936, after the Cabinet despatched a full army Division to Palestine, to suppress the Arab Rebellion. Cf. Michael J. Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, London New York,1978, chapter two. 23. Meinertzhagen, Middle E a st ... pp. 110, 1 1 2 -1 3 . 24. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 683. 25 . Quoted in Weizmann Letters, vol. x, pp. 3 1 3 , note2, 3 25. Myemphasis. 26 . Minute of 1 December, 1921, CO 73 3 /7 5 7 9 5 5 . 27. Churchill minute of 9 December, ibid. Britain signed the Peace Agreement with Ireland on 6 December, which may explain the eight-day lapse. 28. Alfred Mond (later Lord Melchett) was the founder of ImperialChemical Industries. In 1921 he donated £ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 to theJewish Colonisation Cor­ poration for Palestine. 29. Mond-Churchill, 15 December, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, pp. 1 6 9 2 -3 . 30. Cf. Weizmann Letters, vol. x, p. 3 3 7 , no. 3 2 3 , note 3. 31. Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol. iv/2, p. 1693, note. 32. Note of Mond conversation with Mr S. Landman, 16 December, 1921, A 181 4 3 /4 CZA 33. Young-Shuckburgh, 5 October, 1921, CO 733/17B , 5 3 3 0 8 . 34. Ibid. Article 4 of the Mandate recognized ‘An appropriate Jewish Agency ... as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the

376

35. 36. 37. 38.

3 9. 4 0. 4 1. 42. 43.

44. 4 5. 46. 4 7. 4 8.

4 9. 5 0. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine ...*. Shuckburgh minute, 7 November, 1 921, CO 7 3 3/IS , 5 7 5 7 2 . Meinertzhagen minute, 21 October, 1921, CO 733/17B , 5 3 3 0 8 . Samuel-Churchill, 14 October, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /6 , 632. Shuckburgh was later convinced by Weizmann that this ‘tag* was being quoted unfairly, out of context. He tried, in vain, to persuade Churchill not to make reference to this statement, which would look like ‘a personal reproof to Dr Weizmann*. Cf. Shuckburgh-Masterton-Smith, 16 November, 1 9 2 1 , CO 7 3 3 / 15, 5 7 8 6 0 . The assertion was later included in the 1922 White Paper. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 6 3 6 , and Weizmann Letters, vol. x , p. 2 8 0 . The meeting took place during the last week of October. For this and following, see Shuckburgh minute of 7 November, 1 9 2 1 , CO 7 3 3 /1 5 , 5 7 5 7 2 . Cf. Weizmann-Shuckburgh, 16 November, 1921, Z 4 /1 6 0 5 5 , CZA. Shuckburgh minute of 7 November, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 , 5 7 5 7 2 . Shuckburgh minute of 2 2 November, 1921, ibid. The draft statement drawn up by Shuckburgh reaffirmed that the government stood by the Balfour Declaration, which was not inimical to Arab interests; it referred to the recent Zionist Congress, and its Resolution 5, which recorded the Zionists’ deter­ mination to ‘live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect ...*; it announced the establishment of a representative Legislative Council, with clearly defined and limited functions, that would not affect the Zionists* status as defined in article 4 of the Mandate, it referred also to Jewish immi­ gration, proportionate ‘to the numbers for whom employment can be found without detriment to the existing labour market*. Cf. Wasserstein, The British in ... pp. 1 4 1 -2 . For this and following, see ibid., pp. 1 3 4 -5 . Deedes-Weizmann, 26 November, 1921, Weizmann Archives, Rehovot (here­ after WA). Weizmann-Deedes, 13 December, 1921, CO 5 3 7 /8 5 4 , quoted in Weizmann Letters, vol. x , pp. 3 2 7 -9 . We have already referred (above, p. 128) to pressure exerted by Alfred Mond. In addition, Lord Rothschild protested to Balfour. The Central Zionist Office in London prepared statements of protest for publication in the United States, in the event of any changes in the draft mandate, cf. Friesel, Zionist Policy after ... p. 2 5 9 . Churchill-Samuel, 29 December, 1921, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 , 6 3 6 7 7 . Cf. Freisel, Zionist Policy after ... p. 2 9 9 . Weizmann-James de Rothschild, 5 February, 19 2 2 , Weizmann Letters , vol. x, p. 33. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 6 43. Shuckburgh-Churchill, 7 February, 1922, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 6 4 3 . Shuckburgh minute, 7 February, 1922, CO 7 3 3 /3 3 , pp. 4 5 8 -9 . The Times, 7 February, 1922, p. 9 ; The Morning Post, 10 February, 1 922, p. 9 and 2 2 February,1922, p. 4. See also Weizmann Letters, vol. xi, ed. Bernard Wasserstein, Jerusalem, 1977, p. 5 4, n. 4. Shuckburgh minute, 21 February, 19 2 2 , CO 7 3 3 /3 6 , 6 5 7 5 . For this and following, see Arab Delegation-Colonial Office, 21 February, 1922, re-printed in Cmd. 1700, June, 1922. The Council was to comprise 25 members, in addition to the High Commis­ sioner; in addition to his own vote, the High Commissioner was empowered,

NOTES

58.

59 . 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66 .

67. 68.

69. 70 . 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76 . 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

377

in the event of a tie (i.e. 13 against 13) to make an extra, ‘casting’ vote. Thus the 14 votes referred to by the Arabs were those of the 10 official members, the two elected Jewish members, and the High Commissioner’s two votes. The Times, 8, 9, 15, 17 February, 1922. It will be recalled that in 1921, The Times had criticised the administration for suspending Jewish immigration, in May; in general, the paper had attacked the Samuel administration’s weakness in face of Arab violence. The Times, 15 February, 1 922, p. 10. The Times, 17 February, 1922, editorial. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 156, col. 264. R. Pound and G. Harmsworth, Northcliffe, London, 1959, p. 8 4 6 , and Weizmann, Trial and ... pp. 2 8 2 -3 . Weizmann Letters, vol. xi, p. 4 2 , No. 3 8, note 4. Quoted in ibid., p. 5 4, note 3. Minute in CO 7 3 3 /1 8 , 6881. In his speech of 9 March (H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 151) Churchill dwelt almost exclusively on the question of military costs in the Middle East. In regard to Palestine, he in fact stated: ‘I am not going to re-arrange the whole question of Zionism, or the pledges which were given by us in the War’. However, a few moments later, he did give the House reassurances that the Administration was taking the strictest measures to avoid the country being ‘inundated by Bolshevist riffraff’ - see also above, p. 102. Text in Cmd. 1700, June, 1922. Compare the letter of 1 March, in Cm d.1700, and Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 644. The phrase about the Jews being in Palestine ‘as of right and not on sufferance’ appears in the Government’s statement of policy, of 3 June. It appeared first in Samuel’s draft of the White Paper, dated 9 March, 1922, cf. CO 7 3 3 /1 9 ,1 3 5 0 2 . Samuel dispatch of 9 March, Shuckburgh minute of 11 March, and Churchill initial of 14 M arch, 1922, in CO 7 3 3 /1 9 , 11623. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 151, col. 1549. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 646. Mills minute of 10 March, 1922, CO 7 3 3 /1 9 ,1 1 6 2 3 . Young minute of 23 February, and Churchill initials, 1 M arch,1922, CO 7 3 3 /3 3 , 8 4 0 9 . Shuckburgh minutes of 5 and 6 April, and Churchill approval, 6 April, 1922, CO 7 3 3 /3 6 , 12752. Mills-Deedes, 3 0 March, 1922, ibid. Shuckburgh minute of 29 March, and Churchill initial, 4 April, 1 9 2 2 , CO 7 3 3 /1 9 , 13 5 0 2 . It is safe to assume that Samuel would have briefed Shuckburgh about the Zionists’ internal difficulties. In 1921, the leadership of the American Zionist Movement had seceded, after a fight between Weizmann and Judge Louis Brandeis, which the former won. The result was a serious drop in American Zionists* fund-raising for Palestine. Shuckburgh minute of 24 May, and Churchill initial, 2 7 May, 1 922, CO 7 3 3 /3 4 , 2 5 4 9 4 . Cf. Friesel, Zionist Policy after ... p. 30 2 . Shuckburgh-Samuel, 3 June, 1922, CO 7 3 3 /3 4 , 2 5 4 9 4 . Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 119. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 650. Gilbert refers to the debate as ‘the Rutenberg debate’, ibid., p. 659.

378

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

84. The Times, 2 6 , 29 May, 1922. 85. As we have noted above, there was some anger in British industry that a British concern had not received the concession; in addition, there was anger that the concesstion had not stipulated that sub-contracting, for machinery, for instance, had to be to British companies. 86. The Times, 2 9 May, 1922, p. 17. 87. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 648. 88. The Times, 30 May, 1922, p. 17. 89. The Times, 31 May, 1922, p. 17. 90. For the debate on 4 July, 1922, cf. H .C . Deb. 5th series, vol. 156; Churchill’s speech is in cols. 3 2 7 -4 2 . 91. Ibid., cols. 3 3 2 -3 . 9 2. Ibid., col. 3 3 5 . My emphasis. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 656. 9 3. Friesel, Zionist Policy after ... pp. 3 1 3 -1 4 . 94. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. iv, p. 66 2 . 9 5. For a recent affirmation of this verdict,cf. NeilCaplan, ‘The Yishuv, Samuel and the Arab Question’, in Zionismand Arabism inPalestine and Israel, eds Elie Kedourie, Sylvia G. Haim, Frank Cass, London, 1982, which speaks of ‘the Statement of Policy written by Samuel, but bearing M r Churchill’s name’, p. 21. 96 . Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm , Penguin edition, 1960, p. 33 (first published by Cassell, 1948). 97 . Diary entry for 29 October, 1 922, Meinertzhagen, Middle E a st ... p. 124.

CHAPTER SIX 1. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: fThe Aftermath, New York, 1929, p. 4 9 4 . 2. Cf. C.L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918-1940, London, 1968, pp. 2 0 0 , 3 4 0 - 1 , Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. v, The Prophet o f Truth, 1922-1939, Boston, 1977, pp. 2 3 8 - 9 ; on the vicious effect of de-rating on industry in depressed areas, see The Leo Amery Diaries, vol. 1 ,1 8 9 6 - 1 9 2 9 , ed. John Barnes and David Nicholson, London, 1980, pp. 5 3 1 -3 . 3. Churchill-Baldwin, 15 February, 1928, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. v, p. 2 69. 4. Amery Diaries ... p. 3 81. 5. Ibid., p. 5 3 2 ; cf. also Weizmann-Zionist Executive, 4 April, 1 9 28: ‘I think that Amery is rather jealous of C.[Churchill]. When Amery returned from his Imperial Tour he had a great many projects, which were of course dependent on the consent of the Treasury for their realisation. Churchill turned them all down . . . ’ in Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, ed. Pinhas Ofer, Jerusalem, 1 9 7 8 ; p. 4 2 5 . 6. Amery Diaries ... p. 535. 7. Amery-Baldwin, 2 7 April, 1929, Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, companion volume v, part 1, Boston, 1981, p. 1469. 8. Debate on 2 4 March, 1936, in H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 1 0 , col. 1114. 9. J. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East, 1918-1922 , London, 1981, p. 2 2 1 . 10. Churchill-Amery, 30 April, 1927, Churchill, companion vol. v/1, p. 995. 11. For this and following, see minute by T.I.K. Lloyd, 8 February, 1928, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 1 /1 ,5 7 1 5 5 . 12. On the economic tribulations in Palestine during the 1920s, cf. D. Giladi, The Yishuv During the Fourth Aliya, Tel Aviv, 1973 (in Hebrew) and N. Gross, ‘The

NOTES

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20 . 21. 22. 23.

24 . 25. 2 6. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

3 2. 3 3. 34. 35.

379

1923 Recession and Public Sector Finance in Palestine’, Discussion Paper, No. 7 9 4 , The Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, October, 1979. Cf. Weizmann-Kisch, 2 0 January,1928, in Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, p. 35 3 . Minute by Sir John Shuckburgh, 1 February, 1928, CO 733/1 5 1 /2 , 5 7 1 5 5 . Plumer-Ormsby-Gore, 8 January, 1928, ibid. Ormsby-Gore-Baldwin, 23 January, 1928, and Churchill-Ormsby-Gore, 1 February, 1928, ibid. Amery-Churchill, 1 March 1 928, ibid. Pipelines were built from Baghdad to terminals at Haifa and at Tripoli (Lebanon) during the early 1930s, and opened in 1935. Churchill-Amery, 14 March, 1928, CO 73 3 /1 5 1 /2 , 5 7 1 5 5 . Gilbert, Churchill, vol. v, p. 281. Churchill-Amery, 14 March, 1928, supra. Amery-Plumer, 13 April, 1918, ibid. Churchill-Amery, 21 May, 1928, ibid. The normal term of a High Commissioner was five years. Sir Herbert Samuel, the first High Commissioner, ruled from 1920 to 1925; Plumer’s successor, Sir John Chancellor, had his five-year term cut short at the end of 1930, following the Wailing Wall riots in 1929. His successor, Sir Arthur Wauchope, was initially a great success, and was the first to have his five-year term extended. However, he was held partly responsible for the fact that the 1936 Rebellion got out of hand, and was dismissed at the end of 1937. Plumer-Amery, 1 May, 1928, CO 7 3 3 1 1 5 1 /2 , 5 7 1 5 5 . The Times, 1 August, 1928. Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, p. 33 8 . Leo Amery was involved, since 1924, as Colonial Secretary. But he had also been a member of the War Cabinet Secretariat in 1917. In that capacity, he had been asked by Lord Milner to compose the final draft of the Balfour Declaration. When the Cabinet ratified his draft, on 31 October, Weizmann and Aaronson (a leader of Palestine Jewry) both ‘fell on his neck’ with gratitude. Diary entry, 31 October, 1917, Amery Diaries, p. 177. Minute of 11 February, 1928 (signature illegible), CO 7 3 3/150/5. For this and following, see minute of 13 February, 1928, by T.I.K. Lloyd, ibid. On Weizmann’s failure to raise private loans, both in London and on Wall Street, cf. Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, p. xii. Minute of 2 7 March, 1928, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 0 1 4 . Sir (Percy) James Grigg was Principal Private Secretary to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer from 1921 to 19 3 0 , Permanent Under-Secretary of State for War, 1 9 3 9 -1 9 4 2 , and promoted by Churchill to Secretary of State for War, 1 9 4 2 -1 9 4 5 . Weizmann mobilised Balfour, but it was Shuckburgh, apparently, who suggested that Churchill be invited, seeing that the question of pledging British credit was essentially a Treasury issue. See minute of 17 February, 1928, CO 7 33/ 150/5. The account of the meeting which follows is based primarily on Weizmann’s record, in S50/5, CZA, and Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, p. 387. Amery made a short note in his private diary. I cannot be certain if Churchill made any note - there is no mention of the meeting in the authorised biography, or in the companion volume of documents. Diary entry, 2 7 February, 1928, Amery Diaries, p. 538. Shuckburgh minute, 5 April, 1928, CO 7 3 3/150/4. Shuckburgh minute, 17 February, 1928, CO 7 3 3/150/5. Blanche E.C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, 1 9 0 6 -1 9 3 0 , New York, 1937,

380

36. 37. 3 8.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55 . 56.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS p. 171. Mrs Dugdale, Balfour’s niece, nursed him during the last, ailing years of his life. This sentiment she attributes to Balfour is one of her recollections. For this and the following, see Balfour memorandum, CP 7 1 ,5 March, 1928, in Cab 2 4 /1 9 3 . On the Cabinet’s desire not to upset Balfour, see below, p. 166. Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 13 March, 1928, in Cab 23/57. On Palestine’s repayments of the Ottoman debt, cf. minute by Lloyd, 8 March, 1928, CO 7 3 3 /1 5 0 /4 . Colonial Office memorandum, CP 8 5 ,1 5 March, 1 928, in Cab 24 /1 9 3 . Foreign Office memorandum, CP 110, 29 March, 1928, Cab 2 4/194. Treasury memorandum, CP 114, 2 April, 1928, ibid. In December, 1 927, the Bank of England, on behalf of the Palestine Govern­ ment, had issued £ 4 ,7 5 0 ,0 0 0 of Palestine 5 per cent guaranteed stock, 19 4 2 / 19 6 7 . The issue had been subscribed in full, immediately, at an issue price of £ 1 0 0 . The capital raised was controlled, and dispursed by the British Treasury, cf. Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, p. 3 3 2 , no. 3 0 4 , note 3. CP 114, supra. Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 4 April, 1928, in Cab 23/57. Blanche Dugdale-Weizmann, 5 April, 1928, Weizmann Archives (hereafter, WA). Dugdale indicated her source as ‘M .H .’ - possibly a reference to Douglas M. Hogg, Lord Hailsham, the Attorney General since 1924, and Lord Chancellor since 28 March, 1928. Diary entry for 4 April, 1928, Amery Diaries, p. 5 4 1 . My emphasis. It was not certain that Balfour would survive his illness, and his doctors had ordered that he was to be spared any undue stress, cf. Dugdale-Weizmann, 5 April, 1 928, WA. Shuckburgh minute, 5 April, 1 928, CO 7 3 3/150/4. Weizmann-Shuckburgh, 23 April, 1928, Weizmann Letters, vol. xiii, pp. 4 4 2 - 3 . Weizmann-Dugdale, 17 April, 1 9 2 8 , ibid., p. 4 3 8 . Minutes of Cabinet, 2 0 June, 1 928, in Cab 23/58. Weizmann’s report of meeting, to Zionist Executive, London, 21 June, 1 928, WA. Diary entry for 2 0 June, 1928, Amery Diaries, p. 5 4 6 . The official biography is silent about the Zionist loan. However, this diary entry of Amery’s, for 2 0 June does appear in the companion volume v, part 1, p. 1304. The earlier diary entry of 4 April (note 46) recording Churchill’s opposition is not printed in the companion volume. Thus the reader of the Churchill printed documents will be left wondering why Amery should have been surprised at Churchill’s support, on 2 0 June. Amery Diaries, ibid. On the India question, and on the incorrectness of many of Churchill’s warnings about the dangers Germany posed, cf. Rhodes James, Churchill ... pp. 2 3 5 -8 . Churchill to Clementine, 2 7 August, 1929, Churchill, companion vol. v/2, p. 62. Ibid., p. 7 1 , note 2. No link has in fact ever been established between events in Palestine and those in Egypt. The new Labour government had recalled Lord Lloyd within a week of taking office, and had initiated negotiations with the Egyptian nationalists. On Churchill’s fury at the Labour government’s initiative, cf. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. v, pp. 3 3 8 -9 . On the 1929 riots in Palestine, see Y. Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929-1939, From Riots to Rebellion, Frank Cass, London, 1974.

NOTES

381

57 . The Times, 23 Oaober, 1930. 5 8 . Cf. Joseph Gorny, The British Labour Movement and Zionism 1917-1948 (Frank Cass, 1983), especially chs. 5 and 6. 59. The official biography is silent on the subject. The Weizmann Letters, vol. xv, ed. Camillo Dresner, Jerusalem, 1978, p. 2 9, note 2, states that Churchill ‘added his voice to the protests’. However, a check of the source referred to indicates that Churchill acquiesced to a request telephoned in by a newspaper correspondent, cf. the Jewish Chronicle 31 October, 1930. 60. In 1 930, Churchill estimated his literary income for the coming year, from the press, and commissioned historical works, at £ 3 5 ,0 0 0 , a formidable sum for that time, cf. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. v, p. 363. 61. Enclosed in despatch from Sir Ronald Lindsay, 6 November, 1930, Churchill, companion volume v/2, p. 220. 6 2. Ibid. 6 3. Walter Guinness, cr Baron Moyne, 1932. Appointed by Churchill as Colonial Secretary, 1 9 4 1 -1 9 4 2 , and Minister of State Resident in the Middle East, 1944. Assassinated in Cairo by Jewish terrorists, 6 November, 1944. 6 4. Cf. Gilbert, Churchill, vol. v, p. 5 6 3 , and Palestine Post, 11 October, 1934. 6 5. See their correspondence, in December, 1934, in Churchill, companion vol. v/2, pp. 9 6 0 - 1 , 969. 66. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 1 0 , col. 1114, debate on 24 March, 1936. 67. Cf. Lawrence Pratt, East o f Malta, West o f Suez, Cambridge, 1975, also Cohen, Retreat... chapter 1. 68. For a short time in 1916, Sinclair had been Churchill’s adjutant, in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He would be Churchill’s Secretary of State for Air, from 1 9 4 0 -1 9 4 5 . Also present at the meeting were Leo Amery, Clement Attlee, Victor Cazalet, Josiah Wedgwood, James de Rothschild, and Weizmann himself. The account here is based upon Weizmann’s record, in WA, and S 25/4418, CZA, and on Cazalet’s record, as told to Mrs Dugdale, Dugdale Diaries, p. 45. 69. Cf. Gorny, The British Labour M ovement ... chs. 5, 6. 70. Amery Diaries, p. 169. 71. Her family (the Cecils) connections were an obvious source of information; from 1 9 3 6 , her close friend, Walter Elliott (Minister of Agriculture, of Health, and Secretary of State at the Scottish Office, from 1 9 3 6 -1 9 4 0 ) frequently leaked to her information from Cabinet meetings. Lord Killearn (Sir Miles Lampson) described her as ‘the most ardent Zionist and apparently travels about in the pocket of the Weizmanns propagating the doctrine’, ed. T.E. Evans, The Killearn Diaries, London, 1972, p. 85. 7 2. Diary entry for 9 June, 1937, Dugdale Diaries, p. 45. My emphasis. 7 3. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 2 6 , cols. 2 2 3 5 -3 6 7 . 7 4. Diary entry for 21 July, 1937 Dugdale Diaries, p. 54. 7 5. N.A. Rose, The Gentile Zionists, London, 1973, p. 139. 76. Dugdale diary entry for 2 2 July, 1937, reporting on lunch with Walter Elliott, Dugdale Diaries, p. 5 4 , and note of Churchill dinner with Henry Melchett on 28 July, 1 9 3 7 , in Z 4 /1 7 1 2 1 , CZA. The Melchett family were traditionally active in the Zionist cause. Henry’s father, Alfred, the head of Imperial Chemical Industries, had been active on the Zionists’ behalf when a Minister in the Lloyd George Coalition. Henry was the second Baron, inheriting his father’s title, when the latter died in 1930. 77. Diary entry for 23 July, 1937, Dugdale Diaries, p. 54. 78. Churchill-Melchett dinner, note by Melchett in Z 4 /1 7 1 2 1 , CZA. 7 9. On the Seventh Dominion, cf. Rose, The Gentile ..., chapter 4.

382

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80. Churchill-Melchett dinner, supra. 81. The Jewish Chronicle , 3 September, 1937, pp. 2 4 -5 . 82. Smuts (Pretoria)-Leo Amery, 2 0 August, 1937, in the Smuts Papers, Cambridge University Library. I am grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for bringing this document to my attention. 83. Debate on 23 May, 1939, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 4 7 , col. 2 1 7 5 . 84. On 7 December, 1938, a 17-year-old German-Jewish youth, Hetschel Grynszpan, shot and mortally wounded the third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath. The youth’s action was in retaliation for the Nazis’ deportation of his father the previous year to a concentration camp. The Nazis responded on the night of 9 - 1 0 November with a wave of governmentincited pogroms throughout Germany. Hundreds of Jewish synagogues, homes and shops were burned out, and several innocent Jews were shot or died in the flames. The pogrom received its nickname from the amount of glass shattered insurance claims came to over five million marks, or 1.25 million dollars. See William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall o f the Third Reich , Crest paperback, New York, 19 6 3 , pp. 5 8 0 -7 . The Commons held a special debate on the pogroms on 21 November, 1938, in which Churchill did not take any part. H.C. Deb. 5th Series, vol. 3 4 1 , cols. 1 4 2 8 -8 3 . 85. Cmd. 5 8 9 3 , November, 1938. See also Cohen, R etreat... pp. 7 1 -2 . 86. Amery diary entry, 10 November, 1938. 87. Debate of 2 4 November, 1938, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 4 1 , cols. 1 9 8 7 2 1 0 7 . For statistics provided by Weizmann, see K. Hill (Churchill’s private secretary)-Miss May (Weizmann’s secretary), 28 November, 1938, Z 4 /1 7 .0 9 7 , CZA. 88. Ibid., col. 2 0 3 1 . 89. Ibid., col. 1999. 90. Ibid., col. 2 0 3 6 . 91. Ibid., col. 2 0 3 9 . 92. Ibid. 93. The Times, 25 November, 193 8, report on Commons debate, p. 8, and editorial, p. 15. 94. Jewish Chronicle, editorial, 25 November, 1938. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husayni, was head of the extreme nationalists in Palestine. In 1937, he had initiated a reign of terror against those moderate Arabs who had inclined to agree to partition. See Cohen, Retreat ... chapter 4 , and Porath, The Palestinian ... chapters 9, 10. 95. Report of 2 4 January, 1939, ME(O) 2 9 2 , Cab 51/11. 96. Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 8 March, 1939, Cab 23/97. 97 . Diary note, 23 May, 1939, Dugdale Diaries, p. 139, and Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 4 1 1 . 98. Weizmann, ibid., and Gilbert, Churchill, vol. v, p. 1069. 99. Debate on 2 2 -2 3 May, 1939, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 4 7 ; see cols.2 1 6 8 , 2 1 7 5 -8 . 100. Ibid., col. 2 1 6 8 . 101. Amery diary entry, 22 May, 1939. 102. MacDonald-Chamberlain, 16 January, 1940, Prem 1/420. The hand-written letter is dated 1 939, but this is obviously a mistake, since it quite obviously refers to the Commons Debate on the White Paper, inthe summer of 1939. For a different interpretation of this letter, cf. R.W Zweig, Britainand Palestine During the Second World War, ch. 1, London, Royal Historical Society, 1986.

NOTES

383

CHAPTER SEVEN 1. Sir Ian Jacob (Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet, 1 9 3 9 -1 9 4 5 ), in Action This Day, ed. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, London, 1968, p. 2 0 5 . This collection of articles by Churchill’s wartime staff was written with the purpose of refuting Lord Moran’s thesis that Churchill’s judgement was impaired from quite an early stage in the war, due to recurrent illness, and the onset of old age. 2. See F. Loewenheim and H.O. Langley, eds, Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Correspondence, London, 1 9 75; and James Leutze, ‘The Secret of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence, September, 1939-M ay, 1 9 4 0 ’, Journal o f Contemporary History, vol. 10/3, July, 1975, pp. 4 6 5 -9 2 . James Leutze has asserted that Roosevelt was definitely in breach of American Neutrality Laws when he disclosed to Churchill the positions and movements of German shipping off American coasts; when he ordered secret staff conversations between the two countries a full year before the United States entered the war; when he replaced British forces in Iceland, and when he issued ‘shoot on sight’ orders against German shipping in the Atlantic. 3. Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 , New York, 1976, pp. 24, 2 8 - 9 ,3 1 . 4. Jacob, Action this ... p. 2 0 7 , Lash, Roosevelt and ... p. 391. 5. Jacob, Action this ... p. 208. 6. Samuel 1. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt , New York, 1952, p. 4 07. 7. On Smuts’ unique relationship with Churchill, cf. R Addison, in British Prime Ministers in the 20th Century, ed. J.P. Mackintosh, London, 1978. Smuts was one of the handful of men let into the secret of the atomic bomb during the war, when Churchill withheld the information from most of the British Cabinet. 8. Lash, Roosevelt and ....pp. 1 5 4 -5 . 9. Jacob, Action this ... pp. 2 0 5 -6 . 10. Lash, Roosevelt and ... p. 211. 11. On the ‘exorbitant’ demands put forward at various stages of the negotiations and on the poor condition of the ships received, see The Rt Hon The Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs, The Reckoning, London, 19 6 5, p. 134. 12. The first two ‘climacterics’ were the fall of France and the Battle of Britain; the fourth was the German attack on Russia, in June, 1941, see Lash, Roosevelt a n d ... p. 291. 13. Ibid., p. 39 8 . 14. Cf. A.P. Thornton, Imperialism in the Twentieth Century, London, 1978, p. 228. 15. Churchill-Roosevelt, 9 August, 1942, in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. IV, The Hinge o f Fate, London, 1951, p. 786. 16. Lash, Roosevelt and ... p. 400. 17. Telegrams of 15 November, 1939, signed by Judges Brandeis and Mack, Rabbis Stephen S. Wise, Abba Hillel Silver, and Louis Lipsky, in FO 3 7 1 /2 3 2 4 2 , E 7874. 18. Lothian-Halifax, 24 November, 1939, ibid. 19. Minute by H. Eyres, 8 December, 1939, ibid. 20. Minutes by Lacy Bagallay, Alexander Cadogan, 9 December, 1939, ibid. 21. WP (40) 161, 2 0 December, 1939, Cab 67/3. 22 . Minutes by Halifax’s Private Secretary, R.S. Stevenson, and by Chamberlain, 18 and 19 December, 1939, FO 3 7 1 /2 3 2 4 2 , E 7874. 23. Minute of 25 December, 1939, E 8118, ibid. 2 4. Dugdale Diary, pp. 1 5 1 -2 . 2 5. Brendan Bracken was a Conservative M.P. from 1929 to 1951; Parliamentary

384

26. 2 7. 2 8. 29. 30. 31. 3 2. 3 3. 34. 35 . 36 . 3 7. 3 8. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 4 4. 45. 46. 47 . 48.

49. 5 0. 51 . 52.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS Private Secretary to Churchill 1 9 4 0 -1 9 4 1 , Minister of Information, 1 9 4 1 1 945, and First Lord of the Admiralty, 1945. In the 1930s, he handled some of Churchill’s private business affairs, such as securing him contracts to write series in the press. He once evoked Churchill’s wrath by allowing the story to spread that he was the latter’s illegitimate son. Cf. Gilbert, Churchill, com ­ panion vol. v/2, pp. 3 4 9 -5 3 . Weizmann report to Political Committee, 16 February, 1944, Z 4/302/28 11, CZA. Bracken-Eden, 15 August, 1940, and 26 August, 1940, WO 3 2 /9 5 0 2 . Diary entries for 15, 20 November, Dugdale Diary, pp. 153, 1 5 4 -7 . Weizmann-Bracken, 2 7 October, 1939, Weizmann Letters, vol. xix, ed. N.A. Rose, Jerusalem, 1979, pp. 1 8 1 -2 . Diary entry, 1 December, 1 939, Dugdale Diary , p. 154. Weizmann note of meeting, in Z 4 /1 4 .6 9 6 1 , CZA. Diary entry for 5 December, Dugdale Diary, p. 155. Weizmann, Trial and ... pp. 4 1 8 - 1 9 , and report in Z 4 /1 4 .6 9 6 1 . W.P. (39) 163, 25 December, 19 3 9 , Cab 67/3. Meeting of War Cabinet, 2 7 December, 1939, minutes in Cab 65/2. Diary note of 28 December, 1939, Dugdale Diary, p. 157. Namier-M rs Dugdale, 2 January, 1940 Z 4 /1 4 .6 9 6 1 , CZA. Minute of 2 9 December, 1 939, FO 3 7 1 /2 3 2 4 2 , E 813 4. Six months later, with Italian forces threatening the British hold in the Middle East, Bagallay changed his tune. When Nuri Said pressed the Government to implement the constitutional clauses of the White Paper, Bagallay commented: ‘Great Britain and France will not help themselves ... by making further declarations about Palestinian independence. Beyond an affirmation that the White Paper remains the policy of His Majesty’s Government (if it does) there is no further declaration that they could sincerely and honestly make, and if they did make one it would not really satisfy Arab aspirations, it might, on the contrary, merely confirm the Arabs in their sense of their own importance and of the present opportunity. The only way in which the two countries can help themselves effectively is to re-persuade the Arabs that they are going to win the war. The best way of achieving this object is to have actual military successes. The second best is propaganda about coming military successes’. Minute of 3 June, 1 940, FO 3 7 1 /2 4 5 6 3 , quoted in Cohen, Retreat ...p. 91. Minute of 29 December, 1 939, FO 3 7 1 /2 3 2 4 2 , E 8134. Cadogan and Butler minutes of 30 December, 1939, ibid.; and Halifax memorandum of 4 January, 1940. W.P. (G)(40), Cab 67/4. Minute of 7 February, 1940, CO 7 3 3 /4 2 6 , 7 5 8 7 2 /1 4 . For this and following, see minutes in Cab 65/5. MacDonald-Chamberlain, 16 January, 1940, Prem 1/420. Cf. G. Cohen, Churchill and the Question o f Palestine, 1939-1942 , Jerusalem, 1976 (in Hebrew), p. 26. Maurice Cowling, The Impact o f Hitler, Cambridge, 1975, p. 3 69. Chamberlain memorandum, 4 February, 1940. W.P.(G) 3 8 , Cab 67/4. I am grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for enlightening me on this point. On the Zionists’ surprise at the admission of the 73 0 ‘illegal’ immigrants, cf. diary note of 2 9 - 3 0 January, 1940, Dugdale Diary, pp. 1 6 0 -1 . Minutes in Cab 65/5. Diary note, 13 February, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 162. Ibid. On MacDonald’s reluctance to leave London, and his request to join the armed forces, see Harold Nicolson-Virginia Sackville-West, 18 February, 1 9 4 1 , in

NOTES

53. 5 4. 5 5.

5 6. 57. 5 8. 59 . 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 6 5. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81.

385

Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, vol. II, The War Years, 1939-1945, ed. Nigel Nicolson, New York, 1967, p. 146. Oliver Lyttelton, The Memoirs o f Lord Chandos, London, 1962, p. 171. Diary note, 14 February, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 162. Weizmann-Churchill, 23 February, 1940, Weizmann Letters, vol. xix, ed. M .J. Cohen, Jerusalem, 1979, p. 2 3 5 , circulated by Churchill in W P(G )(40) 6 1 , 24 February, 1940, in Cab 67/5. The Land Regulations were published as Cmd. 6180. Debate on 6 March, 1940, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 5 8 , cols. 4 1 1 -5 2 6 . The Times, 7 March, 1940. Amery Weizmann, 8 March, 1940, Amery papers. Cowling, The Im pact ... p. 368. N.A. Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism, Oxford, 1980, p. 99. Weizmann-Chamberlain, 29 August, 1939, WA. Cf. Cohen, R etreat ... pp. 98ff. Details and comment in Prem 4/51/9. Major General Orde Wingate: 1 9 0 3 -1 9 4 4 . On duty as Captain in Palestine, 1 9 3 6 -1 9 3 9 , organised special night commando of Jews to combat Arab terrorism. Ordered back to England after suppression of Arab Rebellion, on suspicion of collusion with Zionists. Candidate for command of Jewish Division, but ruled out, on account of Palestine record. Meeting of 19 October, 1939, Cab 65/1. Minute of 31 October, 1939, Prem 4/51/9. For this and following, see minutes in FO 3 7 1 /1 3 2 4 1 , E 7271. Minutes in Cab 65/S. Cited in Kenneth Harris, Attlee, London, 1982, p. 179. S. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, London, 1977, p. 275. Arthur Bryant, The Turn o f the Tide, 1939-1943, based on the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke, London, 1957, pp. 1 9 8 -9 , 320. In Churchill Revised, p. 219. Note of 18 May, 1940, COS (40) 3 6 4 , Cab 80/11. COS (40) 3 6 5 , 18 May, 1940, ibid; and meebng of Chiefs of Staff, 25 May, 1940, COS (40) 146 Cab 79/4. Note of 23 May, 1940, COS (40) 3 7 9 , Cab 80/11. Minutes in Cab 65/7. The Eden Memoirs, p. 118. For following, see Prem 4 /51/9, and minutes in FO 3 7 1 /2 4 5 6 6 , E 2044. Lloyd served in the Middle East during World War One, and went on one expedition with T.E. Lawrence; he was later a Conservative M.P. and a banker; Governor of Bombay, 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 3 , and High Commissioner of Egypt, 1 9 2 5 1929. It will be recalled that Churchill had protested vigorously when the new Labour government dismissed Lloyd peremptorily in 1929. Minute of 2 2 May, 1940, in Prem 4/51/9. Weizmann-Lloyd, 14 June, 1940, Z 4 /2 0 .2 8 0 1 , CZA. Following the evacuation of Dunkirk, between 29 May and 3 June, 1940, the British prepared a contingency plan for the evacuation of the Middle East. More serious planning took place in April, 1941, following the defeat of the Allied expeditionary force in Greece, and Rommel’s advances across the Western desert. The plans in June, 1941 did not provide for the evacuation of any Jews from Palestine. Lord Moyne, Colonial Secretary at the time, explained the evacuation contingency to Churchill in a private note. When no comment was received, the Prime Minister’s approval was presumed. Cf. R.W. Zweig, ‘British Plans for the Evacuation of Palestine*, Studies in Zionism, October, 1983.

386

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

82. Cf. R.W Zweig, British Policy to Palestine During the Second World War, The Royal Historical Society, in Press, chapter 2, note 14. 83. Lloyd-Weizmann, 15 June, 1940, WA. 84. Lloyd-Churchill, 27 June, 1940, Prem 4/51/9. 85. Weizmann-Bracken, 11 June, 1940, Z 4 /1 4 .6 9 6 1, CZA, and Weizmann Letters, vol. xix, p. 28 7 . 86. Bracken-Weizmann, 14 June, 1940, WA. 87. Minutes of Zionist Political Committee, London, 10 July, 1940, Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 3 , CZA. 88. Halifax-Eden, 18 July, 1940, W O 3 2 /9502. 89. Churchill minute to Lloyd, 19 July, 1940, and Lloyd-Churchill, 2 0 July, 1940, ibid. 90. Memorandum of 7 August, 1 9 40, WA. 91. Weizmann-Churchill, 6 August, 1940, Weizmann Letters, vol. x x, ed. M .J. Cohen, Jerusalem, 1979, pp. 2 8 -9 . 9 2. W.S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. II, London, 1949, p. 37 7 . 9 3 . Bracken-Eden, 15 August, 1 940, WO 32/9 5 0 2 . 94 . Dalton-Eden, 3 0 August, 1940, ibid. 9 5 . Halifax-Eden, 28 August, 1940, and minute by Churchill, ibid. 9 6 . Eden-Churchill, 3 September, 1940, ibid. 9 7. Weizmann-Dill, 3 September, 1940, WA. 9 8. Minute of 4 September, 1940, WO 3 2 /9502. 9 9. Note of interview on 9 September, 1 940, WA. 100. Weizmann report, 16 September, 1940, Z 4/30 2 /2 4 , CZA. 101. Minutes of Cabinet meeting, 10 October, 1 940, Cab 65/9. Lloyd told Weiz­ mann of the decision on 14 October, and sent him an official letter on 17 October, 194 0 , FO 3 7 1 /2 7 1 2 6 , E 60, and WA. 102. On 25 November, 1940, the Patria, a ship loaded with Jewish refugees, due to be deported from Palestine, was sabotaged by the Hagana in Haifa harbour. Instead of merely disabling the ship, extensive damage resulted in the ship capsizing and sinking with the loss of some 2 4 0 refugees’ lives, and some 12 British policemen. It was generally believed that the explosion was a suicidal act on the part of desperate refugees. Cf. Cohen, Retreat ... p. 95. 103. Shuckburgh minute, 5 December, 1940, CO 7 3 3 /4 1 9 , 7 5 1 1 3 , pt. 1. 104. Report of 31 December, 1940, WA. 105. For this and following, see Weizmann-J.M. Martin (passed to Churchill), 9 December, 1 9 40, Weizmann Letters, vol. x x , pp. 7 1 -6 . 106. Weizmann-Shertok, 3 January, 1941, ibid., p. 88. 107. Minute of 2 9 January, 1941, FO 3 7 1 /2 7 1 2 6 . 108. Weizmann-Lloyd, 6 January, 1 941, WA. 109. Weizmann report, WA, and Cohen, R etreat ... p. 109. 110. Shuckburgh-Haining, 14 February, 1941, and Haining-Shuckburgh, 14 February, 1 941, WO 32/9 5 0 2 . Of course, Weizmann had visited the United States at the end of 1 9 4 0 , and returned. 111. Account of interview between Shuckburgh and Rushbrook-Williams (later editor of The Times), 19 February, 1941, FO 3 7 1 /2 7 1 2 6 . 112. Wavell-War Office, received 5 .3 0 a.m., 26 February, 1 941, WO 19 3 /6 8 ; passed on to Churchill, in Prem 4/51/9. 113. Minute by Baxter, 3 March, 1 941, FO 3 7 1 /2 7 1 2 6 , E 739. Present were the Secretary of State for War, Margesson, the Colonial Secretary, Lord Moyne, and R.A.B. Butler, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 114. Weizmann-Bracken, 24 February, 1 941, Weizmann Letters, vol. x x, p. 112. 115. M orton-Churchill, 25 February, 1 9 4 1 , Prem 4/51/9.

NOTES

387

116. Churchill-Moyne, 1 March, 1941, FO 3 7 1 /2 7 1 2 6 ; also Churchill, The Second World War, vol. iii, p. 658. 117. Moyne-Weizmann, 4 March, 1941, WA. 118. M orton-C .H . Thomley, 11 March, 1941, CO 968/39 /1 3 1 1 7 /1 5 part 1. 1 am grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for bringing this file to my attention. 119. Record in WA. 120. Margesson-Moyne, 4 July, 1941, CO 968 /3 9 /1 3 1 1 7 /1 5 part 1. Eden took the same line, see his letter to Moyne, 8 July 1941, ibid. 121. Weizmann-Moyne, 19 August, 1 9 41, Weizmann Letters, vol. x x , p. 190, and Moyne-Weizmann, 28 August, 1941, CO 968/39/1 3 1 1 7 /1 5 /1 1 . 122. Account in Weizmann-Moyne, 1 December, 1941, WA. 123. Weizmann-Churchill, 10 September, 1941, WA, and Weizmann Letters , vol. x x , pp. 1 9 7 -8 . 124. Dugdale Diary, p. 187. 125. Eden minute of 16 September, 1941, FO 3 7 1 /2 7 1 2 8 , E 5746. 126. Eyres minute of 18 September, 1941, ibid. 127. Shuckburgh-Parkinson, 22 September, 1941, CO 968 3 9 /1 3 1 1 7 /1 5 /1 1 . On the same day, Parkinson minuted that the matter should be settled according to British interests. 128. Eyres minute of 18 September, supra; also minute of 19 September by Harold Caccia, ibid. 129. Butler minute of 18 September, 1941, ibid. 130. Haining minute of 18 September, 1941, ibid. 131. Diary note, 9 October, 1941, Dugdale Diary, p. 188. 132. Minutes of Cabinet meeting in Cab 6 5 /1 9 ; Moyne-MacMichael, 14 October, 1941, CO 968 39/131 1 7 /1 5 /1 1 . 133. Martin-Sir Edward Bridges (secretary to the Cabinet), 5 October, 1 941, Prem 4/52/5. 134. Weizmann-Stephen Wise, 2 0 June, 1942, Wetzmann Letters, vol. xx, p. 313. 135. Weizmann account to Zionist Political Committee, 23 February, 1944, quoted in Y. Gelber, Jewish Palestinian Volunteering in the British Army During the Second World War, Jerusalem, 1 981, vol. II, p. 383 (in Hebrew). 136. Ibid., p. 39 5 . 137. Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 3 July, 1944, in Cab 65/4 7 , and Prem 4/51/9. 138. Minute of 26 July, 1944, Prem 4 /51/9, pt. 2 - to be found also in the War, Colonial and Foreign Office files. P.J. Grigg had been Secretary of State for War since February, 1942. 139. Minutes by Baxter, and others, 2 August, 1 944, FO 3 7 1 /4 0 1 4 5 , E 5048. 140. Churchill-Roosevelt, 23 August, and Roosevelt-Churchill, 28 August, 1944, Prem 4 /5 1 /9 ; and minutes of Cabinet meeting on 18 September, 1 944, Cab 65/47. 141. Gelber, Jewish Palestinian ... p. 4 2 9 . 142. Elizabeth Monroe, Philby o f Arabia, London, 1973. 143. Ibid., pp. 2 2 8 , 2 8 0 . 144. H .J. St John Philby, Arabian Jubilee, London, 1952, p. 209. Of course, Philby fathered an even more celebrated son, ‘Kim* Philby, the Soviet spy. 145. Monroe, Philby ... pp. 2 2 1 , 227. 146. Ibid., p. 21 3 . 147. Philby, Arabian ... pp. 142, 2 1 2 -1 3 . 148. Ibid., p. 2 1 5 ; Zionist reports, especially of 2 December, 1943, in Z 4/302/281 CZA. 149. Namier report on 17 November, 1942, Z 4/302/26, CZA. 150. Political Zionist Committee, 16 January, 1943, Z 4/3 0 2 /2 6 , CZA.

388

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151. Note of Weizmann meeting at State Department, 19 January, 1943, Weizmann Letters , vol. xxi, Jerusalem, 1 9 7 9 , p. 2, note 2. In January, 1919, the Emir Faysal had agreed to the Jews’ return to Palestine, provided the Arabs obtained their kingdom, centred on Damascus. The ‘agreement’, quite possibly inspired by Lawrence, was never referred to the Arabs of Palestine, or even of Syria, for their assent. It lost its validity automatically when the French drove Faysal out of Syria in July 1920. 152. M onroe, Philby ... pp. 2 2 2 -3 . 153. Philby, Arabian ... pp. 2 1 1 , 2 13. 154. Note of meeting on 6 February, 1940, Foreign Relations o f the United States (hereafter, FRUS), 1940, vol. Ill, Washington, 1 958, p. 840. 155. Cf. Zweig, British Policy to ... chapter 4. 156. See account of interview in Weizmann Letters , vol. x x , pp. 1 2 5 -6 . Weizmann’s own memoirs mistakenly date the meeting with Churchill as March, 19 4 2 , a fact which later gave rise to Philby’s anger - Philby, relying on Weizmann’s Memoirs, termed Weizmann’s account disingenuous and, without providing any evidence of his own, claimed that Weizmann had already told Churchill on 17 December, 1 939, and Roosevelt in February, 1 9 4 0 ; Weizmann, Trial a n d ... p. 4 2 7 , and Philby, Arabian ... pp. 2 1 1 , 215. Confusion was compounded by other historians, who, relying on Weiz­ mann’s Memoirs, rather than the Weizmann Archives, also placed Churchill’s speech in February, 1942 - cf. Y. Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance , New York, 1 9 7 3 , p. 2 5 0 , and H. Sachar, Europe Leaves the Middle East, 1936-19S4, New York, 1 9 7 2, p. 4 3 8 . This mistake was facilitated by the fact that Weizmann did in fact leave London for the United States, on a further trip, in March, 1942. The Weizmann Archives contain a contemporary, hand-written account by Weizmann of the March, 1941 meeting. Weizmann later claimed to a colleague that he had only attached such importance to the Philby plan because Churchill himself had taken the initiative, independently, and without any prior knowledge of Philby’s plan, cf. Weizmann-Sam Rosenman, 4 January, 1944, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, p. 118. 1 57. Eden announced the decision to the House of Commons on 15 May, 1941, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 7 1 , col. 1264. 158. Prem 3 /2 6 9 /1 7 , note of 18 May, 1941. 159. Churchill-Eden, 19 May, 1941, FO 3 7 1 /2 7 0 4 3 , E 2685. 1 60. Elie Kedourie, ‘Ibn Saud on the Jews’, in Islam in the Modern World, London, 198 0 , p. 68 . 161. Churchill-Eden, 19 May, 1941, supra. 162. Kedourie, ‘Ibn Saud on ...”pp. 6 9, 72. 163. Eden memorandum, 27 May, 19 4 1 , WP (41) 116, in Cab 6 6 /1 6 , and Prem 4/32/5. 164. On the Mansion House speech, see M .J. Cohen, ‘A Note on the Mansion House Speech, May, 1 9 4 1 ’, Asian and African Studies, vol. 11/3, Dec. 1977. 165. Eden memorandum, 2 7 May, 1941, supra. 166. Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 28 August, 1941, Cab 65/19. 167. Amery wondered whether Churchill’s animosity to himself dated back to their ‘relative positions in early youth’, or to their quarrels over imperial questions in Baldwin’s Cabinet, or perhaps their conflict over reform in India during the 1930s. Amery thought Churchill morbidly suspicious, that he was ‘instinctively inclined to disagree with anything I say and to think that I want to mobilize opinion against him, or even that I have, as he once let out, ideas of supplanting him’. Amery Diary, 31 December, 1941. Amery at times mused whether Churchill had appointed him to the India Office ‘just in order to destroy him

NOTES 1 68. 169. 170.

171. 172. 173. 174. 175.

1 76. 177. 1 78.

179. 180. 181. 182. 183.

184.

185. 186.

187. 188. 189. 190.

191. 192. 193. 194.

389

politically* - Amery Diary, 21 September, 1941. Amery-Halifax, 15 June, 1 9 4 0 , FO 800 /3 2 1 . p. 90 0 1 . Smuts-Amery, 9 September, 1 9 4 1 .1 am grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for having brought this document to my attention. Firoz Khan Noon: 1 8 9 3 -1 9 7 0 . Held several ministerial positions in the Punjab; Indian High Commissioner in London, 1 9 3 6 -1 9 4 1 ; later Minister and Prime Minister in Pakistan, 1 9 5 6 -5 8 . Amery-Churchill, 10 September, 1941, Prem 4 /52/5, pt. 2, and ChurchillAmery, 6 September, 1941, WA. Amery-Churchill, 10 September, 1 941, ibid. Amery-Weizmann, 6 September, 1941, WA. Amery-Churchill, 10 September, 1941, supra. Churchill minute of 23 September, 1941, to Eden, Amery, Moyne, Lyttelton, Prem 4 /5 2 /5 , pt. 2. In January, 1942, the Ministers reported back that ‘any scheme of federation which we could devise would raise many long-standing difficulties which are probably best left alone at this moment ...*. Report on Arab Federation, 9 January, 1 942, Cab 95 /1 , and FO 3 7 1 /3 1 3 3 7 . Eden-Churchill, 29 September, 1941, Prem 4 /5 2 /5 , pt. 2. Amery-Churchill, 4 October, 1941, ibid. For the Bevin correspondence, cf. Sir Alan Bullock, The Life and Times o f Ernest Bevin, vol. 1, Trade Union Leader,; 1881-1940 , London, 1960, p. 6 3 1 ; on the other schemes, cf. B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews o f Europe, 1939-1945 , Oxford, 197 9 , pp. 2 7 - 8 , 43. Minute by J.M . Martin, 3 November, 1941, Prem 4 /52/5, pt. 2, and minute by Lord Moyne, 6 November, 1941, ibid. Churchill minute of 9 November 1941, ibid. Amery-Smuts, 10 November, 1941, The Amery Papers. Weizmann-Locker, 3 June, 1942, Weizmann Letters, vol. xx, p. 30 1 . Goldmann account of meeting on 19 January, 1943 at State Department, in Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, p. 2, note 2, and Weizmann-Halifax, 30 January, 1943, ibid., p. 2 and notes. Minute by Harold Caccia, 17 February, 1 9 43, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 1 ; and ChurchillEden, Cab 1 2 0 /6 6 0 (files of General Ismay, Churchill’s Chief of Staff); also minute by Sir Maurice Peterson, head of the Middle East Department at the Foreign Office, 25 March, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 4 9 5 5 . Churchill-Eden, 9 March, 1943 Cab 120/660. For this and following, see Weizmann account, in Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, p. 39 , no. 3 8 , note 1. Churchill visited Washington in May, 1943, to discuss with the Combined Chiefs of Staff military plans following the defeat of the Axis in North Africa. Diary entry for 3 December, 1942, in John Blum, From the Diaries o f Henry Morgenthau Jr., vol. 3, Boston, 1967, p. 208. Hoskins report of January, 1943, in FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, Washington, 1964, pp. 7 4 7 - 8 ; also in Prem 4/52/5. Weizmann-Welles, 13 December 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, p. 109. Hoskins Report of 31 August, 1943, FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, pp. 8 0 7 - 1 0 ; also Weizmann, Trial a n d ... p. 4 3 2 , Monroe, Philby ... p. 2 2 4 , and Philby, Arabian ... p. 2 1 6 . Philby, Arabian ... p. 216. Report on Weizmann/Namier meeting with Philby, Political Zionist Committee, 15 November, 1943, Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 8 1 , CZA. Weizmann report, 11 November, 1943, ibid. P.J. Baram, The Department o f State in the Middle East, 1919-1945, University

390

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

of Pennsylvania, 1978, p. 279. 195. Hoskins’ memorandum, 2 7 September, 1943, on talk with Roosevelt, in FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, p. 812. 196. Weizmann-Welles, 13 December, 1 943, Weizmann Letters, vol.xxi, p. 110. 1 97. Weizmann, Trial and ... p. 4 3 2 ; Philby, Arabian ... p. 217. 198. Monroe, Philby ... p. 225. 199. Weizmann-Churchill, 2 April, 1943, Prem 4/5 2 /3 ; copy in S 25/7569, CZA. 2 0 0 . Ibid. 2 0 1 . Churchill to Viscount Cranborne, Oliver Stanley, 18 April, 1943, Prem 4 /5 2 /3 ; copy to Eden, in FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 3 , E 2340. It will be recalled that the idea of settling Jews in the Italians’ North African colonies, once liberated, was Amery’s. 2 0 2 . Lord Cranborne (Lord Privy Seal) - Churchill, 19 April, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 3 , E 2340. Cranborne had voted against the 1939 White Paper. He had resigned together with Eden, whose Under-Secretary he had been, in February, 1938. 2 0 3 . On Stanley, cf. W. Roger Louis, Imperialism ..., who quotes the opinion of Sumner Welles that Stanley was the ‘most narrow, bigoted, reactionary Tory’ he had ever met during his official career, pp. 2 4, 35. Maurice Cowling refers to him as ‘the second son of that 17th Earl of Derby who, after a military youth, had embodied in the manifest flesh a wealthy, amiable, horse-racing Conservatism . . . ’, The Im pact ... p. 334. 2 0 4 . Stanley-Churchill, 19 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/3. 2 0 5 . Churchill memorandum, 28 April, 1943, WP (43) 178, Cab 66/36. 2 0 6 . Cranborne memorandum, 4 May, 1943, WP (43) 187, ibid. 2 0 7 . Cabinet meeting, 2 July, 1 9 43, Cab 65/39. 20 8 . WP (43) 178, supra. My emphasis. 2 0 9 . Minute of 1 May, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 3 , E 2341. 2 1 0 . Ibid. My emphasis. 2 1 1 . Hoskins report of 30 January, 1943, FRUS, 1943, vol. IV pp. 7 4 7 -8 . Quoted in M.J. Cohen, ‘American Influence on British Policy in the Middle East during World War Two: First Attempts at Coordinating Allied policy on Palestine’, American Jewish Historical Quarterly, vol. LXVII, September, 1977, p. 60. The Hoskins report was forwarded to Churchill in March, 1943, cf. Prem 4 /52/5, pp. 1 1 1 9 -2 0 . 2 1 2 . Minute by H. Caccia, 13 April, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 3 , E 2341. 2 1 3 . Halifax-Foreign Office, 8 February, and Eyres minute of 21 February, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 2 , E 1027. 2 1 4 . Eden memorandum of 10 May, 1943, WP (43) 2 0 0 , Cab 66/36. 2 1 5 . Hurley Report of 5 May, 1943, FRUS, 1943, IV, pp. 7 8 2 -5 , 7 7 6 -8 0 . 2 1 6 . Halifax-Eden 15 June, 1 943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 5 , E 3455. 2 1 7 . FRUS, 1 943, IV, p. 7 91, and in Eden-Halifax, 11 June, 1943, E 3 5 0 3 5 , ibid. 2 1 8 . Cab 65/39. 2 1 9 . Cf. Cohen, American Influence on ... pp. 6 4 -5 . 2 2 0 . Stanley memorandum,4 May, 1943, WP (43) 192 Cab 6 6 /36, and Resolutions of Middle East War Council (M EW C),W P ( 4 3 ) 2 4 7 ,17June, 1943, Cab 6 6 /3 7 , also Casey memorandum, 17 June, 1943, WP (43) 2 4 6 , Cab 6 6 /37. For the text of the Biltmore Resolution, see J.C . Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, New York, 1956, vol. II, pp. 2 3 4 -5 . 2 2 1 . See Memorandum by Oliver Lyttelton, 23 June, 1943, WP (43) 2 6 5 , Cab 6 6 /3 7 first sent to Churchill on 3 April, 1942 but held up by the latter. For other estimates cited here, cf. Ron Zweig, ‘Evaluating the Threat of a Jewish Revolt against Britain: The Political Uses of Military Intelligence’, Festschrift in Honour o f Prof F.H. Hinsley, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985,

NOTES 222. 22 3 . 22 4 . 22 5 . 2 26. 2 27.

228. 22 9 . 23 0 . 23 1 .

23 2 . 233. 234. 23 5 . 23 6 . 237. 23 8 . 23 9 . 240. 24 1 . 24 2 . 24 3 . 244. 24 5 . 24 6 . 24 7 . 248. 24 9 . 25 0 . 251. 252. 253. 254.

2 55.

391

notes 4 5 , 4 6 , 49. Resolutions of M EW C, 17 June, 1943, supra. Sec Moran ... p. 194. In Action This Day, ed. Wheeler-Bennett, p. 103. For this and following, Cherwell-Churchill, 25 June, 1943, Prem 4/52/5. Amery-Churchill, 29 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/1. Amery-Churchill 2 July, 1943, Prem 4/52/5, pt. 2, also in Amery Papers. Amery concluded his letter: ‘ ... we are certainly bound to keep at any rate Benghazi as an air base. If we do so, we should stipulate for an area of 2 0 or 30 miles radius around it, and in that area and in the development of the city and port, the Jews might be most helpful as well as find an outlet for themselves ...* Hoskins memorandum on talk with President, 2 7 September, 1943, FRUS, 1943, IV, p. 813. Churchill-Eden, 8 June, and Eden-Churchill, 15 June, 1943, Prem 4 1 5 1 1 4 . Randall minute, 31 March, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 6 7 2 0 , W S427. Quoted in W.R. Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization o f the British Empire, 1941-1945 , Oxford, New York, 1978, p. 60. Background paper, FO 3 7 1 /3 6 7 2 0 , W 9633. Minute of 12 July, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 4 1 4 , quoted in Louis, Imperialism ... p. 6 1 , note 30. Cherwell-Churchill, 25 June, 1943, supra. Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, London, NewYork, 1981, p. 152. Weizmann report to Zionist Political Committee, 30 November, 1943, Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 7 , CZA. Ibid. My emphasis. Attlee memorandum, 23 June, 1943, WP (43) 2 6 6 , Cab 66/37. Report by Rabbi Irving Miller to Zionist Political Committee, 3 June, 1943, Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 7 , CZA. Amery-Churchill, 29 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/1. Churchill-Bridges, 3 July, 1943, Prem 4/52/5, pt. 2. Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 2 July, 1943, Cab 65/39. Note in Amery Diary. Ibid. My emphasis. Ibid. Churchill-Eden, 11 July, 1943, Prem 4/52/1, and Eden minute, 6 September, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 5 0 3 8 . Churchill-Bridges, 3 July, 1943, supra. Weizmann report to Zionist Political Committee, 22 July,1943, Z 4/3 0 2 /2 7 , CZA, also Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, no. 4 9 , note 1. Weizmann report in Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 7, CZA, also Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, no. 86, note 2. Weizmann-Weisgal, 14 October, 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, no. 83, note 1. Weizmann report in Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 8 1 , CZA. Reports of 16 and 17 February, 1944, Z 4/302/28 11, CZA. Minutes of Cabinet meeting, 25 January 1944, Cab 65/45. Moyne memorandum of 1 November, 1943, P (M )(43) 15, Cab 95/14. Moyne’s scheme for the Middle East envisaged four states - Greater Syria, Christian Lebanon, a Jewish state in Palestine, and a British-protected state of Jerusalem. Churchill-Sir Edward Bridges, 16 January, 1944, Prem 4/52/1.

392 256. 257. 258. 259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264. 265.

266. 267. 268. 26 9 . 270. 271.

272.

273. 274. 275. 276. 277. 278.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS Amery-Churchill, 24 January, 1 944, ibid. Churchill-Ismay, 25 January, 1944, ibid. Cohen, R etreat ... pp. 1 7 2 -3 . Ibid., pp. 175ff. Eden to Middle East ambassadors, 1 February, 1944, Prem 4 /52/1, and FRUS, 1945, vol. VIII, Washington, 1 969, pp. 6 8 3 -7 . Eden-Churchill, 1 June, 1944, Prem 4/52/1. Stanley-Churchill, 10 June, 1944, ibid. Weizmann report, 18 April, 1941, Z 4 /302/28, CZA. Weizmann report, 6 November, 1944, Z 4/3 0 2 /2 9 , CZA, and Martin-Gater, 4 November, 1944, Prem 4/52/3. Cf. Cohen, Retreat ... p. 179, and T h e Moyne Assassination, November,1 9 44: A Political Analysis*, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 15/3, Oct.1979. On Begin’s Revolt, cf. M. Begin, The Revolt , New York, 1 951, and Y.Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance, Philadelphia, 1970. Cohen, R etreat ... pp. 1 7 8 -9 . Weizmann report, 2 4 March, 1944, Z 4/3 0 2 /2 8 , CZA. Meeting of Cabinet on 9 August, 1944, Cab 65/43. H.C. Deb . 5th series, vol. 4 0 4 , col. 22 4 2 . Martin-Churchill, 16 November, 1 9 44, and Churchill-Stanley, 17 November, 19 4 4 , Prem 4 /5 1/11. Once the Axis powers were evicted from North Africa, by the summer of 1943, Lord Moyne, then Deputy Minister of State at Cairo, found himself somewhat unemployed. Churchill asked Eden what they might do with him. Eden could think of nothing better than ‘a Viscountcy and a quiet life*. Eden papers, FO 9 5 4 /1 5 , pt. 2 , Churchill-Eden, 19 July, and Eden-Churchill, 20 July, 1943. Report by Berl Locker, on conversation with Greenwood, 2 2 November, 1944, Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 9 , CZA. At their meeting, Greenwood had requested a 750-w ord brief for his own speech in the Commons Debate on Palestine. Report by Ben-Gurion, 7 May, 1945, ibid. Minute by Churchill, 28 January, 1945, Prem 3/296/9. My emphasis. W.S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. v, Closing the Ring, London, 1952, pp. 4 7 0 -1 . Cohen, R etreat ... pp. 1 8 0 -1 . Smuts minute of 15 April, 1945, Prem 4/52/1. Churchill minute to Colonial Secretary and Chiefs of Staff,1 July,1945, FO 3 7 1 /4 5 3 7 7 , E 4 8 4 9 ; reprinted in W.S. Churchill, TheSecond World War, vol. VI, Triumph and Tragedy, London, 1954, p. 654.

CHAPTER EIGHT 1. Cf. Lucy Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians, Harvard, 1981. 2. B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews o f Europe, 1939-1945 , Oxford, 1978, pp. 4 5 , 3 9 , 80. 3. John P. Fox review of Wasserstein, European Studies Review, vol. 10/1, 1980, pp. 1 3 8 -4 6 . Fox wrote the article while an official of the Foreign Office. 4. Ibid., p. 140. 5 . Henryk Grynberg, ‘Appropriating the Holocaust’, Commentary , vol. 7 4 /5 , November, 1982. 6. F.H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 2, London, 1981, pp. 6 6 9 -7 1 .

NOTES

393

7. Ibid., p. 6 7 3 , on the macabre use made of the concentration camp figures by German cryptographers, to devise random settings for the Enigma cipher, see Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra, London, 1980, p. 15. 8. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression o f Information about Hitlers Final Solution, London, 1980, p. 72. 9. Ibid., p. 65. 10. Ibid., pp. 7 3 -5 . 11. Ibid., pp. 199, 2 0 6 , and Y. Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Seattle, 1 9 7 8 , p. 81. 12. Ibid., p. 204. 13. Randall minute of 2 2 February, 1 943, FO 3 7 1 /3 6 6 5 3 , W 3321. 14. Laqueur, The Terrible ... p. 92. 15. Law-M ajor T.L. Dugdale (Chairman of the Conservative Party), 7 December, 1 942, FO 3 7 1 /3 2 6 8 2 , W 16534. 16. Fox review, p. 141. 17. Ibid., p. 142. 18. Laqueur, The Terrible ... p. 20 8 . 19. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , col. 1258. 2 0. Churchill-Eden,l 1 July,1 944, Prem 4 /5 1 /1 0 ; repeated two days later in a letter to Lord Melchett, Z 4 /1 4 .6 9 6 1 1 , CZA. See also The Times, 8 July, 1 944, p. 3. 2 1. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 3 8 - 9 , 3 50. 2 2. M. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, New York, 1981 , p. 341. Following the staging of George Steiner’s play, Gilbert engaged in a stormy press debate, a large proportion of which was, on Gilbert’s part, designed to defend Churchill’s role (and honour) - see reprint in Jerusalem Post, 2 April, 1982. 23. Cf. Meir Sompolinsky, ‘The Anglo-Jewish Leadership, the British Government and the Holocaust’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Bar-llan University,1 977, p. 230. 24. Ibid., p. 2 3 1 . 25. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 1 7 2 -3 . 26. Ibid., p. 179. 27. Minute of 2 2 December, 1942, FO 3 7 1 /3 2 6 8 2 , W 17521. 28. James de Rothschild-Colonel Harvie Watt, 16 December, 1942, Prem 4 /51/8, and M artin-VG. Lawford 18 December, 1942, FO 3 7 1 /3 2 6 8 2 , W 1 7520. On the day after writing this letter, Rothschild apparently sat in the Commons, following Eden’s declaration with tears in his eyes - description in the diary of Sir Henry Channon, quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 173. 29. Minutes of 29 December, 1942, FO 3 7 1 /3 6 6 4 8 , W 1 2 1/49/48, quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 179. 3 0 . Weizmann-Halifax, 16 February, 1943, and quotation from New York Times, in Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, pp. 8 -9 . 31. Foreign Office-Washington Embassy, 27 February, 1 9 4 3 , FO 3 7 1 /3 6 6 7 6 , W 3019. 32. H.C. Deb. 5th Series, vol. 3 8 6 , cols. 8 6 4 -5 . 33. Eleanor Rathbone, M.P-Churchill, 29 March, 1943, and Churchill minute, 1April, 1 943, Prem 4/51/9. On Miss Rathbone’s activities, cf. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 2 0 3 -4 . 34. A.W. Randall minute, 22 February, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /3 6 6 5 3 , W 3321. 35. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 3 0 2 -3 . 36. Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... p. 108. 37. Quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 3 0 4 -5 . 38. The Committee, formed in January,1943, after Eden’s declaration in the House of Commons, was set the task of finding accommodation for those refugees who, by their own resources, managed to make their own way out of enemy-

394

39. 40. 41. 42 .

43. 44. 45. 46 . 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59 . 60. 61. 62 . 63. 64. 65. 66. 67 . 68. 69 . 70 . 71 . 72. 73. 74 . 75.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS occupied territory. But it did not deal with the feasibility of mounting Allied rescue efforts. Churchill-Eden, 10 March, 1944, Eden-Churchill, 17 March, 1944, and Churchill-Eden, 2 April, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 7 9 0 , W 4299. Lady Reading-Churchill, 16 January, 1943, Prem 4/51/8. My emphasis. Attlee speech in Commons, H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 3 8 6 , cols. 3 2 - 3 , 19 January, 1943. Churchill-Lady Reading, 21 February, 1943, Prem 4/51/8. Wasserstein states that Churchill’s reply was ‘sympathetic’. That may be so, formally, but Lady Reading, and the Jews, needed more than sympathy. He does not indicate that Churchill’s reply was prepared for him, by request, at the Foreign Office, cf. Britain and ... p. 186, note 11. Quoted in Jean Goodman, The Mond Legacy, London, 1 982, p. 192. Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 38. R. Zweig, British Policy to Palestine During the Second World War, London, 1984. Memorandum of 17 January, 1940, CO 7 3 3 /3 9 5 , 7 5 1 1 3 /1 4 . Zweig, British Policy ... H.C. Deb. 5th series, Col. 3 9 3 , cols.1 1 5 1 -4 , 10 November, 1943. Zweig, British Policy ... Quoted in Stansky, Churchill ... p. 196. Laqueur, The Terrible ... p. 204. Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West, vol. 1, Turn o f the Tide, 1939-1943 , Based on the Diaries o f Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, London, 1957, pp. 3 0 0 -1 . Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965. Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, London, 1966, pp. 712 ff. In Action This Day , ed. John Wheeler-Bennett, pp. 5 0 , 54. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 54 ff. Ibid., p. 54. Churchill-MacDonald, 4 January, 1940, CO 7 3 3 /4 2 9 , 76 0 2 1 /1 0 . MacDonald-Churchill, 6 January, 1940, ibid. Minute by Sir John Shuckburgh, 25 January, 1940, ibid. Minute by Sir John Shuckburgh, 1 February, 1940, ibid. Churchill-MacDonald, 23 January, 1940, ibid. MacDonald-Churchill, 6 February, 1940, ibid. Ibid. Admiralty-Colonial Office, 14 March, 1940, ibid. Minute by J.S. Bennett (head of Far Eastern Department, Foreign Office) 16 March, 19 4 0 , ibid. On the Patria incident, cf. C. Sykes, Crossroads to Israel,London,1967, pp. 2 3 4 - 6 ; Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 60 ff, and Zweig, British Policy ... Lloyd-Halifax, 25 November, 1940, FO 3 7 1 /3 1 8 6 7 ; copy in Prem 4/51/1. Diary entry, 15 November, 1940, Dugdale Diary , p. 178. Weizmann report, 15 November, 1 9 40, Z 4/3 0 2 /2 4 , CZA. Weizmann report, 28 November, 1940, ibid. Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 63. Lloyd-Churchill, 13 November, 1940, Prem 4/51/1. Minute of 14 November, 1 940, ibid. Churchill-Lloyd, 20 November, 1940, ibid; quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 66. Zionist Executive meeting, London, 15 November, 1 940, Z 4/30 2 /2 4 , CZA. There is tangible evidence that it had been Ernest Bevin who, pressed by Zionist and American Labour leaders, had appealed to Churchill to reverse his previous

NOTES

7 6. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 8 7. 88. 89.

90. 91. 9 2. 93. 9 4. 95.

96. 97. 9 8. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111.

395

assent to the deportations, cf. diary note of 22 November, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 178. Lloyd-Churchill, 21 November, 1940, Prem 4/51/1. Churchill-Lloyd, 22 November, 1940, ibid. Cab 65/10. Lord Lothian-Foreign Office, 27 November, 1 9 40, CO 7 3 3 /4 3 0 , 7 6 0 2 1 /2 8 . Minute by Sir John Shuckburgh, 7 December, 1940, ibid. Diary entry, 2 7 November, 1940, Dugdale Diary , p. 179. For this and following, minutes of Cabinet meeting at 5 .0 0 p. m., 27 November, 1940, Cab 65/10. Wavell-Eden, 3 0 November, 1940, Prem 4/51/2, and Lampson-Foreign Office, 2 December, 1940, Prem 4/51/1. Cab 65/10. Churchill-Wavell, 2 December, 1940, Prem 4/51/2. Wavell-Churchill, 3 December, 1940, ibid. Eden Memoirs, pp. 1 3 1 -3 . Churchill-Lord Cranborne (Colonial Secretary), 5 July, 1942, Prem 4/51/9. Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 139. Admiral Horthy was Regent of Hungary from 1919 to 1944;h e was forced to abdicate and interned by the Germans in October, 1944. On his background, and self-confessed anti-Semitic views, cf. N. Katzburg, Hungary and the Jews , 1920-1943 , Ramat-Gan, 9 8 1 , pp. 2 3 0 -5 . On the Brand Mission, cf. Wasserstein, Britain a n d ... pp. 249 ff., and Y. Bauer, The H olocaust ... pp. 9 4 -1 5 5 . Minute of 17 February, 1 944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 7 2 2 , W R 2188. Minute of 29 March, 1943, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 7 2 3 , W R 4548. My emphasis. Meeting on 31 May, 1944, Cab 95/1 5 /3 2 ; Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 2 5 2 -3 . Foreign Office brief, J.R . (44) 19, 12 July, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 1 0 , W R 323. Henry L. Feingold, ‘Who Shall Bear Guilt for the Holocaust: The Human Dilemma’, American Jewish History, 1979, vol. LXVIII, no. 3, and his fulllength, The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945, New Jersey, 1970. Halifax-Foreign Office, 19 June, 1943, Prem 4/52/5. On the establishment of the War Refugee Board, see J.M . Blum, From the Diaries o f Henry Morgenthau, vol. 3, Boston, 1967, pp. 2 0 7 -2 7 . Minute by A.W.G. Randall, 8 May, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 7 3 0 , W 7571. Bauer, The H olocaust ... p. 135, and Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 256. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 2 5 4 -5 . For this and following, see tel. no. 5 9 5 8 , 1 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10. Halifax tel. no. 5 9 5 9 , 1 July, 1944, ibid. Bauer, The H olocaust ... p. 141. Minute by E.A. Walker, Refugee Department, 1 July, 1944, copied by Eden to Churchill on 3 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10. Eden-Churchill, 6 July, and Churchill minute of 8 July, 1 944, ibid. Halifax-Foreign Office, 9 July, 1 9 44, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 8 , W R 149. Illegible signature on minute, 10 July, 1944, Prem 4 /51/10. My emphasis. Churchill-Eden, 11 July, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , copy in ibid., and reprinted in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: VI, Triumph and Tragedy, London, 1954, p. 5 9 7 . Ibid. My emphasis. Bauer, The Holocaust ... pp. 1 1 3 -1 4 , and Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 2 5 7 -8 . Eden-Prime Minister, 16 July, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 274, copy in Prem

396

112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

119. 120.

121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 1 26. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS 4 /5 1 /1 0 . Churchill minute, ibid. Minutes of Cabinet Committee meeting, 13 July, 19 4 4 , FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 1 0 , W R 323. Foreign Office-Washington, 18 July, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 274. Bauer, The H olocaust ... pp. 1 4 9 -5 0 . On this, cf. J.L . Gaddis, The United States and the Origins o f the Cold War, 1941-1947 , New York, 1972, pp. 1 1 7 -1 8 . Morgenthau memorandum on trip to London, The Morgenthau Diaries, book no. 7 6 2 , p. 2 0 5 , The Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York State. Bauer, The H olocaust ... pp. 1 5 4 -5 . Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 260. For a full account of the discussions on the possible bombing of Auschwitz, cf. Wasserstein, Britain a n d ... pp. 3 0 7 ff., and Gilbert, Auschwitz a n d ... pp. 2 7 0 ff. Bauer, The H olocaust ... p. 138. Eden-Churchill, 6 and 7 July, 1944, Prem 4 /5 1 /1 0 , and Eden-Sinclair (Secretary of State for Air), 7 July, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 276. Weizmann and Shertok apparently made similar suggestions to G.H. Hall, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, as early as on 3 0 June, but no action was taken until Eden himself received the two Zionist leaders on 6 July, 1 9 4 4 , cf. Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 309. It seems that the Zionist figure of 6 0 ,0 0 0 per day, should in fact have been 6 ,0 0 0 . M. 8 0 0 /4 , 7 July, 1944, Prem 4 /5 1 /1 0 , and FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 276. Eden-Sinclair, 7 July, 1944, ibid. Sinclair-Eden, 15 July, 1 9 4 4 , FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 277. Eden minute, ibid. Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 3 1 5 -1 7 . Ibid., pp. 3 1 2 - 1 3 , and Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... p. 2 85. Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... p. 3 4 1 , and Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 3 16. Fox ... p. 144 (see n. 3). Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... pp. 2 7 5 , 28 7 . Foreign Office-Stockholm, 19 July, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 215. Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... p. 287. Minute by V. Cavendish-Bentinck, 13 August, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 276. Minute by D. Allen, 5 August, 1944, on telephone conversation with Air Ministry; ibid. Minutes by I.L. Henderson, and E.G. Millard, 7 and 10 August, 1 9 44, ibid. Grant (Air Ministry)-Cavendish-Bentinck, 13 August, 1944, in FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 1 4 W R 749, and Air 1 9 /218; quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and ... pp. 3 1 4 -1 5 . Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 314. Cf. Fox ... pp. 1 4 4 -5 . Linton-Henderson, 16 August, 1944, and minutes of 15 and 18 August, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 1 4 , W R 749. Linton note covering plans, 18 August, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 6 , W R 823. Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 315. Minute of 25 August, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 1 4 , W R 749. Minute by Roger Allen, 21 August, 1944, ibid. Minute by lan Henderson, 22 August, 1944, ibid. Correspondence in FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 9 , W R 277. Minute by Paul Mason, 21 September, 1944, FO 3 7 1 /4 2 8 0 6 , W R 823; quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 317. David Wyman, ‘Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed*, Commentary , vol. 6 5 1 5 , May, 19 7 8 , pp. 4 2 - 3 . Ibid., p. 4 7 .

NOTES

397

148. Cf. Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... pp. 2 9 9 -3 0 0 , and the pre-publication serialization in Jerusalem Post, 8 February-7 March, 1980. 149. Wyman, Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed , pp. 4 4 - 6 . 150. Ibid., p. 41. 151. Wasserstein, Britain and ... p. 350. 152. Ibid., p. 31 6 . 153. See for instance David Dilks, The Diaries o f Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938-1945, London, 19 7 1 , pp. 3 7 4 , 5 6 4 , 6 4 3 , 653. 154. Lord Normanbrook, in Action This Day ... ed. Wheeler-Bennett, p. 22. 155. Diary entries, 2 7 June and 3 August, 1944, Cadogan Diaries ... pp. 6 4 3 , 653. 156. Correspondence in FO 8 0 0 /4 1 2 ; also John Colville, in Action This Day, pp. 9 1 -2 . 157. Cf. Gilbert, Auschwitz and ... p. 3 2 2 , and map on p. 3 23. My emphasis. 158. Ibid., p. 32 2 . 159. The Jerusalem Post, 7 March, 1980.

EPILOGUE 1. A.J.P. Taylor, review of Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews o f Europe, 1939-1945, Oxford, 1979, in English Historical Review, Vol. XCV, no. 3 7 5 , April, 1980, pp. 3 8 8 -9 2 . 2. Martin Gilbert, Churchill and Zionism, London, 1974. 3. FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, Washington, 1964, p. 793. 4. Weizmann Letters, vol. xx, p. 5 3 , no. 4 9 , note 1. 5. Weizmann-Bracken, 27 July, 1 943, Prem 4 /52/3, and in Weizmann Letters, vol. xx , p. 55 . 6. Weizmann Letters, vol. xxi, p. 244. 7. Martin-Churchill, 23 March, 1945, and minutes of 3 and 5 April, 1 945, Prem 4 /52/3. 8. Discussion on 14 May, 1945, Z 4 /3 0 2 /2 9 , CZA. 9. For this and following, see minutes of debate on 23 May, 1945, ibid. 10. Martin-Churchill, 26 May, 1945, Prem 4/5 2 /3 , and Weizmann-Churchill, 22 May, 1945, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxii, ed. J. Heller, Jerusalem, 1979, pp. 1 1 -1 2 . 11. Churchill-Weizmann, 9 June, 1945, ibid., p. 12, no. 10, note 3. 12. Diary entry, 11 June, 1945, Dugdale Diary, p. 221. 13. Discussion on 13 June, 1945, Z 4/30 2 /2 9 , CZA. 14. Weizmann report on 14 June, 1945, ibid. 15. Weizmann report on 13 June, 1945, ibid. 16. Weizmann-Churchill, 15 June, 1 945, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxii, p. 2 0, and Z 4 /1 4 7 9 2 , CZA. 17. Meeting of Zionist Political Committee, 27 June, 194 5 , Z 4/3 0 2 /2 9 , CZA. 18. Diary entry, 2 2 July, 1945, Moran, p. 300. 19. The Eden Memoirs, p. 551. 20. Diary entry, 8 August, 1945, Moran, p. 311. 21. Zionist Political Committee, 2 7 July, 1945, Z 4/3 0 2 /2 9 , CZA. 22. Churchill-Weizmann, 12 October, 1945, and Weizmann-Lady Amelia Fitz­ gerald, 19 October, 1945, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxii, p. 67. 23. Zionist Political Committee, 29 October, 1945, Z 4 /30 2/30, CZA. 24 . Weizmann-Churchill, 14 April, 1946, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxii, p. 120. On the Anglo-American Committee, see M.J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948, Princeton, 1982.

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2 5 . Churchill-Weizmann, 15 May, 1946, note on p. 120, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxii. 26. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , col. 1254. 27. Weizmann-Churchill, 2 August, 1946, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxii, pp. 1 7 8 -9 . 28. Weizmann-Jacob Landau (founding editor, Jewish Telegraphic Agency), 19 October, 1947, Weizmann Letters, vol. xxiii, ed. Aaron Klieman, Jerusalem, 1 980, p. 15. My emphasis. 29. I. Berlin-Weizmann, 6 June, 1948, and Weizmann-Berlin, 12 June, 1948, ibid., p p .1 3 3 -4 . 30. Elliott-Weizmann, 29 July, 1948, ibid., no. 2 4 1 , note 1, p. 196. 31. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 6 0 , col. 9 5 4 , 26 January, 1949. 32. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , col. 1252, 1 August, 1946. 33. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 3 , 24 May, 1946. 34 . H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , cols. 1 2 4 6 -7 , 1 August,1946. 35. Ibid., col. 1250. 36 . H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 6 0 , col. 95 5 , 26 January, 1949. 37. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 3 , col. 7 7 2 , 24 May, 1946. 38 . Diary entry, 3 May, 1946, Dugdale Diary, p. 236. 39. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , col. 1253, 1 August,1946. 40 . Ibid., col. 1257. 41. Amery diary entry, 8 August, 1946. 42. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 3 , cols. 7 7 1 -2 , 24 May, 1946. 43. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , col. 1256, 1 August, 1946. 4 4 . Ibid., cols. 1 2 5 6 -7 . 45. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 3 2 , cols. 1 3 4 8 -9 , 31 January, 1947. My emphasis. 4 6 . H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 3 4 , cols. 6 7 5 , 6 7 8 , 6 March, 1947. 4 7 . The Times, 7 March, 1947, p. 8. 48 . H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , col. 1252, 1 August, 1946. 49 . Amery diary entry, 14 May, 1948. 50 . Cf. Cohen, Palestine and ... pp. 385 ff. 51 . H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 2 6 , cols. 1 2 5 4 -5 , 1 August, 1946. On the various Anglo-American plans for Palestine in 1946, cf. ibid., chaps. 5, 6. 52. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 5 9 , col. 7 15, 10 December, 1948. 53. Ibid, col. 717. 5 4. H.C. Deb. 5th series, vol. 4 6 0 , col. 95 2 , 26 January, 1949. 5 5 . Elath-Felix Frankfurter, 24 September, 1950 (describing interview on 14 September), The Frankfurter Papers, file 0 0 0 9 8 2 , container 5 2 , manuscript division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

AFTERWORD 1. Review by A.P. Thornton, in Studies in Zionism, Vol. 7/1, 1986. 2. The phrase is Blake and Louis’s, Churchill, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 993, p. v. 3. Bernard Wasserstein asserted that my book was misconceived and dis­ ingenuous, and steeped in ‘mired paranoia’ and full of ‘self-contradictions’; see his review in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. IV, 1988, and my reply in same, vol. V, 1 9 8 9 ; Norman Rose accused me of adopting a ‘harsh, almost perverse attitude, hardly giving him [Churchill] any benefit of the doubt’. See Norman Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, footnote 14, p. 5 3 0 . This book contains the papers, amended for publication, of a conference on Churchill held at the University of Texas at Austin, in March

NOTES

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 2 0. 2 1.

2 2. 23. 24. 2 5. 26. 27.

399

1991. Rose’s biography, Churchill: An Unruly Life, London: Simon & Schuster, 1994, refers to the reader to the aforementioned article for details on Churchill’s association with the Jews and Zionism. Review by A. P. Thornton, see note 4 above. Robert Rhodes James, ‘Churchill the Parliamentarian, Orator, and Statesman’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 503. David Reynolds, ‘1940: The Worst and Finest H our’, in Ibid., p. 241. Ibid. Ibid., p. 255. The official biography, which took over 20 years to complete, was begun by Churchill’s son, Randolph. The first volume was published in 1966, the last in 1988. Gilbert was on the original team which began the project; when Randolph Churchill died, after the completion of volume II, Gilbert took over as Official Biographer. In addition to the 8-volume biography, 12 companion volumes to the first five volumes of the biography, and a further three volumes of Churchill’s War Papers, covering 1 9 3 9 -1 9 4 1 , have been published so far. Further volumes of original documents, covering the remainder of Churchill’s life, are planned. One scholar has commented that Gilbert’s style is ‘to collect a vast amount of information and, using scissors and paste or their computerized equivalent, place it in a rigid chronological setting’. The resulting mass of ‘undigested details’ leaves ‘no wood visible for the endless rows of trees’. In consequence, Gilbert has all but succeeded ‘in the almost impossible task of making Churchill boring . . . ’, cf. Martin Kitchen’s review of Gilbert’s The Second World War, in International Historical Review, vol. xii/1, February 1991. Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 110. Rhodes James, ‘Churchill the Parliamentarian, Orator, and Statesman’, p. 5 04. Piers Brendon, Winston Churchill: A Brief Life, London: Seeker & Warburg, 1984, p. 2. Keith Robbins, Churchill, London/New York: Longman, 1992, pp. 6 3 , 103. Brendon, Winston Churchill ..., p. 149. Cf Rhodes James, ‘Churchill the Parliamentarian, Orator, and Statesman’, p. 50 4 , John Charmley, ‘Churchill as War Hero’, International History Review , vol. xiii/1, February 1991, p. 9 8 ; also Rose, Churchill: An Unruly Life, pp. 134, 198, 272. Michael Carver, ‘Churchill and the Defence Chiefs’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 37 4 . Best, Geoffrey, Churchill: A Study in Greatness, London: Hambledon and London, 2 0 0 1 , pp. 180, 1965. See Clive Ponting, Churchill, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, pp. 8 0 3 -4 . Robbins, Churchill, p. 126. Martin Gilbert, The Road to Victory: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1941-1945, vol. vii, London: Heinemann, 1986, and idem, Churchill: A Life, London: Heinemann, 1991. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 1916-1922, vol. iv, London: Heinemann, 1975, p. 4 8 4 . Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, pp. 151, 155. Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 4 2 9 ; see my own analysis of the Illustrated Sunday Herald article above, pp. 5 5 -6 . Editorial, Jewish Chronicle, 13 February 1920. The Fisher quote appears in Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. iv, p. 590. Ibid., pp. 4 8 4 -5 .

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28 . On Churchill’s abortive attempt in June 1921, to seize upon Lloyd George’s ‘casual suggestion ... that the Palestine and Iraq mandates should both be transferred to the United States’, cf. Ibid., p. 5 9 2 , and Gilbert, Churchill: A Life , pp. 4 3 7 - 8 ; for a slightly different version of the proposal to offer the Palestine Mandate to the United States, see Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man o f Secrets, 1919-1931 , Vol. II, London: Collins, 1972, pp. 2 0 3 -4 . On the Zionists* disappointments with Churchill, cf. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. iv, pp. 6 4 1 , 662. 29 . Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, p. 155. 3 0 . On Churchill’s fears of the Turkish-Bolsehvik axis, see above, pp. 6 4 - 5 ; also, Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. iv, p. 4 78. 3 1 . Quoted in Michael J. Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, 1936-1945, London/New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978, p. 35. 32 . Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 57 8 . 33 . Review of the first edition by J. S. F. Parker, The Middle East, August 1985. 34 . Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, pp. 8 0 3 -4 . 3 5 . Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. viii, Never Despair, 1945-1965, London: Heinemann, 1988, p. 4 11. 3 6 . Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, Blake and Louis, pp. 1 6 4 -5 . 37 . Cf. Harry Defries, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews, 1900-1950, London: Frank Cass, p. 197. 3 8 . Wasserstein review, see above, note 3. 3 9 . Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 151. Rose concludes that not only was Churchill a good friend to the Zionists, but they regarded him as their best friend. 4 0 . Wasserstein review, see above, note 3. 4 1 . Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917-1929, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978, 1991, p. 52. 4 2 . Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, pp. 1 5 0 -1 . 4 3 . Ibid., p. 151. 4 4 . Ibid. 4 5 . Peter Stansky, Sassoon: The Words o f Philip and Sybil, London/New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2 0 0 3 , p. 207. 46 . Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965, vol. II, London: Heinemann, 1 9 67, pp. 5 5 9 -6 0 . 47 . On Churchill’s extravagance, see the correspondence on the dinner party for 18 guests that he organised at the Claridges hotel in London, to meet Bernard Baruch, in September 1 9 3 8 ; there was some quibbling over the cost of the menu. Correspondence in Char 1/244, Churchill Archives (hereafter, CA). On Churchill’s gambling losses (‘though not on a large scale’), cf. Churchill to Clemmie, 2 7 August 1934, in Soames, Speaking for Themselves, p. 3 6 2 ; also Richard Hough, Winston and Clementine, London/New York, 1990 - on Winston’s gambling, Hough notes that his wife was shocked ‘less on ethical grounds than because he was not very successful at it’. Cf. pp. 182, 3 9 7 . 4 8. Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 148, and Mary Soames, ed., Speaking for Themselves, London/New York, 1998, pp. 85, 2 2 4 , and Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 169. 4 9 . John Colville, The Fringes o f Power: Downing Street Diaries, 1939-1955, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985, p. 7 31. Colville was one of Churchill’s private secretaries. 5 0. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. v, London: Heinemann, 1 976, pp. 9 1 9 - 2 0 ; the original correspondence on these financial affairs is repro­ duced in companion volume III to this volume (1972), pp. 9 5 0 - 1 , 9 5 5 , 95 9 .

NOTES

51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 5 7.

58 . 59 . 60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67 . 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

401

In 1947, Churchill was again on the brink of having to sell Chartwell, but was saved from doing so by a group of wealthy men, who bought it and gave it to the National Trust - by a deed that ensured that Churchill and his wife could live out their days at the family estate. See above, pp. 2 9 - 3 4 , on his election in Manchester in 1906. Wasserstein review, see above, note 3. Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 151. The Military administrators of Palestine did correspond with the Foreign Office on policy, but as officers, they came under the jurisdiction of the War Office. The three opening chapters of Dr Wasserstein’s study, The British in Palestine ..., all cover the Military administration - but Churchill’s name does not appear even once. See above, pp. 129, 2 1 8 -1 9 , 285. See above, pp. 1 0 6 - 7 ,1 2 7 - 8 , Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. iv, p. 6 4 1 , and Wasserstein, The British in Palestine..., pp. 1 0 6 -7 . Richard Lamb, Churchill as War L ead er- Right or Wrong} London: Bloomsbury, 1991, p. 3 0 8 , and Ponting, Churchill, pp. 2 5 7 -8 . When Secretary of State for War, Churchill had urged upon the Cabinet the use of poison gas against the rebellious Iraqis ‘as a weapon of war’, as early as in May 1 920; he had order the Chiefs of Staff to consider the use of gas in retaliation against the V-rockets as early as in October 1943, cf. F.H. Hinsley, ‘Churchill and Special Intelligence’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 4 25. Hinsley, ‘Churchill and Special Intelligence’, p. 4 2 6 . Gilbert, Churchill..., pp. 7 8 2 -3 . This book was published in the same year as Lamb’s. Lamb, Churchill as War Leader.. , p. 3 11. Ibid., p. 3 12. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, New York: Holt, Rinehart &c Winston, 1981, p. 3 41. Gilbert, Road to Victory ..., pp. 8 4 6 -7 , and idem, Churchill: A Life ..., pp. 7 8 3 -4 . The term Holocaust does not appear in the indexes of either volume. In his 1981 work, Gilbert describes at great length the machinations of the Whitehall bureaucracy, during July and August 1944, to sabotage the bombing project. Cf. David Wyman, The Abandonment o f the Jews, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984, p. 3 0 4 . By coincidence, on 7 July, the Allies also began intensive air raids on German industrial and petro-chemical complexes in Upper Silesia - against Blechhammer, which was 4 7 miles from Auschwitz-Birkenau, and against Auschwitz town, just 5 miles from the dearh camp. Wasserstein review, see above, note 3. Steiner’s book, on which the play was based, was published in London in 1983, by Faber. Lamb, Churchill as War Leader . . , p. 347. This paragraph is the only one in Lamb’s book that refers to Auschwitz, or to the Holocaust in general. Ibid, p. 1. Review by Peter Forbes, New Statesman, 1 November 1985. Cf. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, London: Hamlyn Paperback Edition, 1983, p. 2 5 1 , and note 3 on that page, and p. 269. Wyman, The Abandonment . . , pp. 3 0 2 -3 . Kitty Hart, Return to Auschwitz, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1981. Rose, ‘Churchill and Zionism’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 160. Rose’s full-length biography is another of the many which makes no mention of the Holocaust or of Auschwitz.

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74. Ibid., p. 159. 75. Ibid., p. 160 - Rose states laconically that ‘other business occupied his limited time’. 76. Wyman, The Abandonment ..., pp. 3 0 3 - 4 ; also idem, ‘Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed’, Commentary, vol. 65/5, May 1978. 7 7. Wyman, The Abandonment ..., pp. 3 0 5 , 338. 78. Review by Joseph Heller, American Historical Review , Vol. 92/4, October 1987. 79 . James, ‘Churchill the Parliamentarian, Orator, and Statesman’, in Blake and Louis, Churchill, p. 503. 80. Ian S. Wood, Churchill, London: Macmillan, 2 0 0 0 , p. 31. Wood’s conclusions are not surprising, since he relies for this section on Gilbert’s 1980 book,

Auschwitz and the Allies. 81. Gilbert, Auschwitz a n d ..., p. 3 4 1 ; see also Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History, London: Penguin Books, 1989, which adopts the Gilbert/Wasserstein thesis. 82. Defries, Conservative ..., p. 180. This study also illustrates the contradictions in Conservative Party policies, which could be at times anti- and at other times philo-Semitic. 83. Wasserstein review, see above, note 3. 84. Churchill remained in London until 2 0 July, when he left for a two day tour of the Normandy beaches; he then spent a further two weeks in London, during which he expended much effort on trying to organize to drop ammunition and supplies to the rising in Warsaw of the Polish Home Army (see above, pp. 3 0 1 -2 ); on 5 and 6 August, Churchill made short, one-day trips to France; then he was in London until 10 August, when he made tours of North Africa and Italy returning to London on 29 August; he stayed for eight days, leaving for the United States, by sea, on 5 September 1944. cf. Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965: Taken from the Diaries o f Lord Moran, London/Boston: Constable, 1966, pp. 164; Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life , pp. 7 8 4 -9 2 , and idem, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. VII, The Road to Victory, 1941-1945 , London: Heinemann, 1986, pp. 8 4 6 -7 . 85. Char 2 0 /1 3 8 A, CA. These letters are not mentioned by Gilbert in any of his publications; the last year for which the companion volumes to the official biography of original documents appear is 1941. 86. Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, p. 199. Kushner’s chapter on the British government’s policy towards the Jews during World War Two does not refer to Churchill in person. 87. Ibid., pp. 1 9 8 - 9 ,2 7 3 - 6 . 88. Wyman, The Abandonment ..., p. 339.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO THE SECOND EDITION ARCHIVES:

The Churchill Private Archives, Churchill College, Cambridge University.

BOOKS & ARTICLES:

(Used in the preparation of this paperback edition, published mainly after 1985.) Ben-Moshe, Tuvia, Churchill: Strategy and History, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992. Best, Geoffrey, Churchill: A Study in Greatness, London: Hambledon & London, 2001. Blake, Robert and Louis, Wm Roger, eds, Churchill: A Major New Assessment o f His Life in Peace and War, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Brendon, Piers, Winston Churchill: A Brief Life, London: Seeker & Warburg, 1984. Charmley, John, Churchill: The End o f Glory, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993. ------ , ‘Churchill as War Hero’, International History Review, vol. xiii/1, February 1991. Colville, John, The Fringes o f Power: Downing Street Diaries, 19391955, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985, p. 731. Defries, Harry, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews, 1900-1950, London: Frank Cass, 2001. Gilbert, Martin, Churchill's Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

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------ , Auschwitz and the Allies, London: Hamlyn Paperback edn, 1983. ------ , Winston Spencer Churchill, vol. vii, The Road to Victory, 19411945, London: Heinemann, 1986. ------ , Winston Spencer Churchill: vol. viii, Never Despair, 19451965, London: Heinemann, 1988. ------ , Churchill: A Life, London: Heinemann, 1991. Hart, Kitty, Return to Auschwitz, London: Sidgwick &c Jackson, 1981. Hough, Richard, Winston and Clementine: The Triumph o f the Churchills, London/New York: Bantam Press, 1990. Jenkins, Roy, Churchill: A Biography, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2001. Kitchen, Martin, Review article, International Historical Review, volume xii/1, February 1991. Kushner, Tony, The Holocaust in the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Lamb, Richard, Churchill as War Leader - Right or Wrong? London: Bloomsbury, 1991. Larres, Klaus, CkurchilVs Cold War: The Politics o f Personal Diplom­ acy, New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 2002. Marrus, Michael, The Holocaust in History, London: Penguin Books, 1989. Ponting, Clive, Churchill, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994. Ramsden, John, ‘That Will Depend on who Writes the History: Winston Churchill as his own Historian’, Inaugural Lecture at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, 1996. Robbins, Keith, Churchill, London/New York: Longman, 1992. Rose, Norman, Churchill: An Unruly Life , London: Simon & Schuster, 1994. ------ , ‘Churchill and Zionism’, in Robert Blake and Wm Roger Louis, eds, Churchill, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Soames, Mary, ed., Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters o f Winston and Clementine Churchill, London/New York: Double­ day, 1998. Stansky, Peter, Sassoon: The Words o f Phillip and Sybil, London/New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Weinberg, Gerhard, A World at Arms: A Global History o f World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Wood, Ian S., Churchill, London: Macmillan, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY UNPUBLISHED SOURCES The Public Record Office, London. The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The Central Zionist Archive, Israel. The State Archives, Israel. The Weizmann Archives, Israel. The Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. The Mocatta Library, University College, London. Meir Sompolinsky, ‘The Anglo-Jewish Leadership, the British Government and the Holocaust’. Ph.D. thesis, Bar-Ilan, 1977.

PRIMARY PUBLISHED SOURCES /. The press

The Times, London; The Jewish Chronicle, London. it. Documents Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940, vol. Ill, Washington, 1958. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, vol. IV Washington, 1964.

The Letters and Papers o f Dr Chaim Weizmann, Series A Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.

IV ed. C. Dresner, B. Litvinoff, 1905-1906, Jerusalem, 1973. VII, ed. L. Stein, 1914-1917, Jerusalem, 1975. X, ed. B. Wasserstein, 1920-1921, Jerusalem, 1977. XI, ed. B. Wasserstein, 1922-1923, Jerusalem, 1977. XII, ed. J. Freundlich, 1923-1926, Jerusalem, 1977. XIII, ed. P. Ofer, 1926-1929, Jerusalem, 1978. X X , ed. M.J. Cohen, 1940-1943, Jerusalem, 1979. XXI, ed. M.J. Cohen, 1943-1945, Jerusalem, 1979. XXII, ed. J. Heller, 1945-1947, Jerusalem, 1979. XXIII, ed. A. Klieman, 1947-1952, Jerusalem, 1980.

The Churchill Biography, and companion volumes o f documents Randolph Churchill, Winston 5. Churchill, vol. I, Youth, 1874-1900 , Boston, 1966. Companion vol. I, part 1, 1874-1896, Boston, 1967. Companion vol. I, part 2, 1896-1900, Boston, 1967.

406

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Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, vol. II, Young Statesman, 19011914, Boston, 1967. Companion vol. II, part 1, 1901-1907, Boston, 1969. Companion vol. II, part 2, 1907-1911, Boston, 1969. Companion vol. II, part 3, 1911-1914, Boston, 1969. Martin Gilbert, Winston 5. Churchill, vol. Ill, The Challenge o f War, 19141916, Boston, 1971. Companion vol. Ill, part 1, 1914-1915, Boston, 1973. Companion vol. Ill, part 2, 1915-1916, Boston, 1973. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. IV, The Stricken World, 19161922, Boston, 1975. Companion vol. IV, part 1, 1917-1919, Boston, 1978. Companion vol. IV, part 2, 1919-1921, Boston, 1978. Companion vol. IV, part 3, 1921-1922, Boston, 1978. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. V, The Prophet o f Truth, 19221939, Boston, 1977. Companion vol. V, part 1, 1922-1929, Boston, 1981. Companion vol. V, part 2, 1929-1935, Boston, 1981. Companion vol. V, part 3, 1936-1939, Boston, 1983.

Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First series, vol. iy London, 1952.

Hansard: Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series. J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, vol. II, New York, 1956. BOOKS Amery, L.S., My Political Life, vol. I, London, 1953. Amery, The Diaries, eds J. Barnes, D. Nicholson, vol. 1,1896-1929, London, 1980. Attlee, C., Churchill: An Observer Appreciation, London, 1965. Bauer, Y., From Diplomacy to Resistance, New York, 1973. — The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Seattle, 1978. Beaverbrook, Lord, The Decline and Fall o f Lloyd George, London, 1963. Berlin, Sir I., Mr Churchill in 1940, London, 1949. Bermant, C., The Cousinhood: The Anglo-)ewish Gentry, London, 1971. Bowie, J., Viscount Samuel, London, 1957. Bryant, Sir A., The Turn o f the Tide, 1939-1943, based on the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke, London, 1957. Busch, B.C., Britain, India and the Arabs, 1914-1921, Berkeley, 1971. Callwell, Sir C.E., Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 2 vols, London, 1969. Churchill, WS., The World Crisis: 1918-1928, The Aftermath, New York, 1929. ---- Great Contemporaries, New York, London, 1937. ---- The Second World War, 6 vols, London, 1948-54.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

407

Cohen, G., Churchill and the Question o f Palestine, 1939-1942 (in Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1976. Cohen, M.J., Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, 1936-1945, London, 1978. — Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948, Princeton, 1982. Cohen, S.A., English Zionists and British Jews , Princeton, 1982. Cowles, V, The Rothschilds: A Family o f Fortune, New York, 1973. Cowling, M., The Impact o f Hitler, Cambridge, 1975. Darwin, J., Britain, Egypt and the Middle East: Imperial Policy in the Aftermath o f the War, 1918-1922, London, 1981. Dugdale, B.E., Arthur James Balfour, 2 vols, New York, 193 7, London, 1939. Eden, Sir A., The Rt Hon The Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs, vol. 3, The Reckoning, London, 1965. Feingold, H., The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945, New Jersey, 1970. Foster, R.F., Lord Randolph Churchill, Oxford, 1981. Friedman, I., The Question o f Palestine, 1914-1918 , London, 1973. Friesel, E., Zionist Policy after the Balfour Declaration, 1917-1922 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1977. Gainer, B., The Alien Invasion: The Origins o f the Aliens Act o f 1905 , London, 1972. Gardiner, A.G., Prophets, Priests and Kings, London, 1914. Garnett, D., ed., The Letters o f T.E. Lawrence, New York, 1939. Garrard, J.A., The English and Immigration, 1880-1910 , Oxford, 1971. Gelber, Y., Jewish Palestinian Volunteering in the British Army During the Second World War, vol. II (in Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1981. Gilbert, M., Churchill and Zionism, London, 1974. ---- Auschwitz and the Allies, New York, 1981. Gollin, A.M., Proconsul in Politics, London, 1964. Gorny, J., The British Labour Movement and Zionism, 1917-1948 , Frank Cass, London, 1983. Halpern, B., The Idea o f the Jewish State, Cambridge, Mass. 1969. Henriques, R., Marcus Samuel, London, 1960. Holmes, C., Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939 , London, 1979. Hyam, R., Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905-1908 , London, 1969. James, R., Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 , London, 1970. — Victor Cazalet, London, 1976. Kedourie, E., and Haim, S.G., eds, Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, Frank Cass, London, 1982. Klieman, A., Foundations o f British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference o f 1921, Baltimore, 1970. Laqueur, W.Z., The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression o f Information about Hitler's Final Solution, London, 1980. Lash, J.E, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 , New York, 1971. Lichtheim, G., Imperialism, London, 1971. Louis, WR., Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization o f the British Empire, 1941-1945 , New York, 1978.

408

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

Marsh, E., A Number o f People, London, 1939. Meinertzhagen, R., Middle East Diary, 1917-1956, London, 1959. Middlemass, K., ed., Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 1, 1916-1925, London, 1969. Migdal, J.S., Palestinian Society and Politics, Princeton, 1980. Monroe, E., Philby o f Arabia, London, 1973. Moran, Lord, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (taken from the diaries of Lord Moran), Boston, 1966. Mossek, M., Palestine Immigration Policy under Sir Herbert Samuel, London, 1978. Nicolson, H., Diaries and Letters, vol. II, The War Years, 1939-1945, New York, 1967. Percy, Lord E., The Responsibilities o f the League, London, 1919? Philby, H.J. St John, Arabian Jubilee, London, 1952. Porath, Y., The Emergence o f the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929, Frank Cass, London, 1974. Rabinowicz, O.K., Winston Churchill on Jewish Problems, London, 1956. Rose, N.A., ed., Baffy: The Diaries o f Blanche Dugdale, 1936-1947, Vallentine, Mitchell, London, 1973. ---- The Gentile Zionists, Frank Cass, London, 1973. Roskill, S., Hankey: Man o f Secrets, vol. 2, London, 1972. ---- Churchill and the Admirals, London, 1977. Sachar, H ., The Emergence o f the Middle East, 1914-1924, New York, 1969. Sokolow, N., The History o f Zionism, 1600-1918, London, 1919. Stansky, P., ed., Churchill: A Profile, London, 1973. Stein, L., The Balfour Declaration, London, 1961. Taylor, A.J.P., et al., Churchill Revised, New York, 1969. Tuchman, B., The Bible and the Sword, London, 1957. Vital, D., Zionism: The Formative Years, Oxford, 1982. Wasserstein, B., The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917-1929, London, 1978. ---- Britain and the Jews o f Europe, 1939-1945, Oxford, 1979. Weisbord, R.G., African Zion, Philadelphia, 1968. Weisgal, M.W and Carmichael, J., eds, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography by Several Hands, London, 1963. Weizmann, C., Trial and Error, New York, 1966. Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John, ed., Action This Day, London, 1968. Wolf, L., Notes on the Diplomatic History o f the Jewish Question, London, 1919. Zweig, R., British Policy to Palestine During the Second World War, London, 1984.

INDEX

Note: For space reasons there are no entries under Winston Churchill, apart from that for a short study of his character. Entries for Churchill will be found as subheadings under other topics, e.g. Amery, Leo, on WSC. Abdullah ibn Husayn, 76, 80, 81, on WSC, 9, 6 0 ,3 1 6 82, 84, 87-90, 98, 151, 231, Palestine Mandate, 316, 319-20 237, 245, 322 partition and, 174, 178, 242, Abyssinia, 172 243, 252-3 , 255-6 acetone production Secretary for India, 254 World War I, Weizmann and, White Paper (1930), 171 53-4 Amin el-Husayani, Haj, 97, 227 Aden, 72 Anglo-American Committee on Advisory Council Palestine, 311, 320 Palestine, 117 Anglo-Indian army African colonies, 58-9, 66 Mesopotamia, 67 Afrika Korps, 216, 326 Anglo-Jewry Ahad Ha’am, 327 attitudes to Jewish Nationhood, Air Ministry 13-14 Auschwitz bombing and, 296, Anglo-Persian Oil Company 297-300 government share purchase, Ali ibn Husayn, 76 41 -7 Aliens Act (1905), 6, 324 anti-Semitism Liberal Government British, 15-17, 39-41, 49 -5 0 , administration of, 35-9 324 Aliens Bill (1904), 6, 17-18 British Army, 128, 129 WSC’s opposition to, 21-2, 324 British attitudes to Palestine and, Aliens Bill (1905) 137-8 WSC’s opposition to, 23-5, 324 Colonial Office, 286 Allen, Roger, 298 White Russian, 5 6 -7 Allenby, General E.H., 98 Zionism as cure for, 15 Allies, Western APOC Holocaust and, 261-73 Government share purchase, Amery, Leo, xix, 173, 179, 180, 4 1 -7 183, 249, 309 appeasement and Philby Plan, 233-7, 242 Balfour Declaration and, 52 WSC and, 169 Arab Delegation, 123, 124-5, Colonial Secretary, 150, 151, 134-6, 139, 140 153, 154, 156-7, 158, 160, Arab Federation, 230, 231 163, 165-6, 167

410

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

Arab National Government Palestine, 118-19, 120 Arab Rebellion (1936), 78, 83, 172-3 Arab Revolt (1916?), 75 Arab riots (1921), 327 Arab unity, 233 Arab veto on Jewish immigration, 180, 244-5 Arab World Britain and, 181 British interests in, 190, 191-2, 245 Arabists British, 75-7, 80 Arabs, Palestinian British attitudes to, 75-9 Jewish immigration and, 179-80, 244-5 political concessions to, 102-7 view of Jews, 90 Armed Forces 5-year Plan, 172 Ashley, Lord, 11-12 Asquith, H.H., 72, 112 Asquith coalition, 6 Atlantic, S.S., 280, 282, 283, 284 Atlantic Charter, 188-90, 224 Attlee, Clement, 3, 174, 252, 253-4, 273, 275, 276, 303, 3 1 0 ,3 1 1 Auni Abd el Hadi, 77 Auschwitz, 267, 325 proposed bombing, 266,294-305 topographical information on, 298-300 Auschwitz I, 263 Auschwitz II, 263, 294 Auschwitz area US bombing, 300 Bagallay, Lacy, 191, 197-8 Baghdad proposed British withdrawal, 70-1 Baghdad-Haifa railway/pipeline project, 156, 168

Baldwin, Stanley, 149 151, 171 Balfour, A.J., 5, 16, 24, 64, 85-6, 118, 119, 129, 138, 142, 146,313 Aliens Bills and, 18 and East African scheme, 25, 27 and Palestine crisis 1 9 2 1 ,1 1 3 —16 attitude to Jewish immigration, 19-20 First Lord of the Admiralty, 54 meeting with Weizmann, 14, 15 view of Britain’s Middle East commitments, 86 Zionism, 15-16, 20, 86 Zionist Loan, 158, 159-63, 167-8 Balfour Declaration, 14, 121, 131, 140, 149, 310j325, 326, 327 and American Jewish support, 16, 64, 74, 85, 146, 186, 328 and British presence in Palestine, 87 and Palestine crisis (1921), 113, 114, 115 Arab demands for repudiation, 90, 119, 141 British motives for, xv-xvi, 51-3 Curzon and, 147 Palestine Order-in-Council and, 134, 135 Peel Partition Plan and, 79 repudiation, 182-3 Samuel’s interpretation, 95-6, 130, 139, 142 significance for WSC, xvi-xvii, 146 ,1 7 4 , 324, 325, 326, 327 Trans-Jordan and, 88 White Paper (1922), 145-7 White Paper (1930), 171 Baruch, Bernard, 186 Basra oilfields, 70 Bauer, Y., 290, 293 Baxter, Charles, 216, 287 Beaverbrook-Rothermere press, 157 Begin, Menahem, 258 Bell, Gertrude, 77, 80

INDEX

Ben-Gurion, David, 211, 259, 308, 309 Beresford, Lord Charles, 47 Berlin, Isaiah, 7, 8, 313 Bermant, Chaim, 13, 43 Bevan, Aneurin, 270 Bevin, Ernest, 236, 318-21, 328 Biltmore Resolution, 248 Birkenau, 263, 294 Birkenhead, Frederick Smith, 1st Earl, 167 Black and Tans, 126 Blechhammer oil complex, 301 ‘blood for trucks’ offer, 286-94 Boer War and anti-Semitism, 16 Bolshevik revolution, 324 Bolshevism Zionism and, xvii, 49-57, 146, 324-5 fears of Jewish, 101-2 Palestine settlers, 136-7 Bracken, Brendan, 193, 194, 197, 200, 2 0 4 ,2 1 0 ,2 1 1 ,2 1 2 , 218, 254, 268, 306, 307 Brand, Joel, 286-7 Brand/Eichmann offer, 286-94 Brandeis, Judge, 187 Bridges, Sir Edward, 253 Britain economic stagnation, 58-9 British Army anti-Semitism, 128, 129 in Palestine, 126-7 British East African Protectorate, 25 British Empire, 58-61 WSC’s view of, 61, 325-6 Zionism and, 12-14 British Expeditionary Force Dunkirk evacuation 208 British Government Holocaust and, 261-2 British Intelligence monitoring SS activity, 263 British Jews attitude to Jewish nationhood, 3-14, 27

411

Brooke, Alan, Field Marshal, 207, 276-7 Brunton, C.D., 91 Buchenwald, 263 Bulgaria Jewish refugees, 278 Bulgarian Crisis (1875), 16 Butler, R.A., 198 Cabinet Committee on Palestine 251-2 Cadogan, Alexander, 191, 198, 304 Cairo Conference (1921), 79-84, 149, 322 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 5, 26 Casey, Richard, 246, 253 Cazalet, Sir Edward, 13 Cazalet, Victor, 3, 9, 174, 175, 223, 284 Chamberlain, Austen, 93, 110, 111, 163, 171 Chamberlain, Joseph, 1 4 ,2 5 ,2 7 ,3 3 Chamberlain, Neville, 151, 172, 175, 176, 177, 181, 183, 187, 194, 197, 19 9 ,3 2 6 Chamberlain Government fall, 209 Chanak Crisis, 326 Chancellor of the Exchequer WSC as, 149-68 Chatfield, Lord, 199 Cheetham, Manchester WSC adoption for, 21 Cherwell, Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount, 243, 249, 251 Christian-Moslem Committee proposed, 103-4 Churchill, Colonel Charles, 12-13, 14 Churchill, Clementine (Clemmie), 4, 44-5 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 2, 6, 44 Churchill, Randolph, 21, 22, 34, 44, 254, 309 Churchill, Winston character, 1-8 rhetoric, 8-9

412

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

Clauson, Gerard, 1 03 ,1 0 6 , 131 Clayton, Gilbert, 77 Coalition, post war, 60 Cohen, Ben, 186 Colombia alternative Jewish National Home, 250 Colonial Office anti-Semitism, 286 attitudes to Jewish refugees, 274, 275 interception of illegal immigrants, 277-86 Middle Eastern Department, 71-2 Middle Eastern responsibilities, 64 Patria incident, 2 81-2 WSC suggests responsibility for Mesopotamia, 68-9 Colonial Secretary WSC as 72-84 Colville, John, 249 Committee on Refugees, 272, 288, 291, 292 Communism fears of Jewish, 101-2 concentration camps, 263 Congreve, General W , 106-7, 127-8, 139, 144 Conservative Party WSC’s relations with, 6, 22-3 Contraband Control Service, 277 Costello, General, 124 Cox, Sir Percy, 78 Cranborne, Viscount, 243, 244-5 Crystallnacht pogrom, 178, 179, 276, 327 Curzon of Kedleston, Marquis, 16, 6 4 ,8 1 ,8 5 , 97, 110, 121, 146, 147 dash with WSC, 61 opposition to WSC’s Middle East policy, 68-9, 71, 72-3 support for Greater Greece, 65 Cyrenaica alternative Jewish National Home, 250

Dachau, 263

Daily Telegraph, 264 Dalton, Hugh, 212 Damascus, 12, 80 Damascus blood libel, 12 Dardanelles campaign, 6 Darwin, John, 69 de Gaulle, General Charles, 220,315 death camps, 263 Deedes, Sir Wyndham, 115, 129, 132-3, 134, 141 Denikin, General A.I., 5 6 -7 destroyers-for-bases deal, 188 Deterding, Henry, 45 Devonshire, Duke of, 50 Dickson, Colonel H.R.P., 232 Dilke, Charles, 18 Dill, Field Marshal Sir John, 237 Downie, Harold, 205, 279 Dreyfus, Charles, 23 Dugdale, Blanche, 141, 165, 166, 1 7 5 -6 ,1 9 7 , 202, 221, 280, 2 8 3 ,3 0 8 , 316 Dulberg, Joseph, 2 9 -30, 32-3 Dunkirk evacuation, 208 East Africa scheme, xvi, 17, 19, 25-35 Eastern Policy, xv, 12, 14 economic stagnation Britain, 58 -9 Eden, Antony, 3, 235, 284 and Auschwitz bombing, 29 4 -5 , 296, 298, 303 and Brand/Eichmann offer, 290, 291-2, 293 and Holocaust, 267, 2 6 8 -9 , 272 and Jewish Army, 212, 213, 215, 216 Arab unity, 2 3 2-3, 242 as Foreign secretary, 215, 216, 2 46-7, 250 as War Secretary, 193, 208 at Potsdam Conference, 3 Committee on Palestine, 254 on WSC, 2 8 5 ,3 1 1 Palestine trusteeship 256-7

INDEX

Egypt, 69, 1 7 0,174, 317-18 Eichmann, Adolf, 286, 289 Elath, Eliahu, 321-2 Elgin, Victor, 9th Earl, 33 Elliott, Walter, 202, 223, 316 Emerson, Sir Herbert, 289 emigration from Palestine, 154 English Zionist Federation, 34 Enigma code breaking, 263 Esher, Lord, 5 evangelism Zionism and, xv, 11-12 Evans-Gordon, Major, 16 Eyres, H.M., 221 Faysal, Emir (later King of Iraq), 69, 76, 7 8 ,8 0 ,8 1 , 82, 84, 229, 245 ‘Final Solution’, xviii, 3, 265, 266 Fisher, Colonel, 205 Fisher, H.A.L., 121 Fisher, Admiral J.A. (Jackie), 45, 46 Fishman, Rabbi, 307 Five-year Defence Plan (1937), 172 Foreign Office and Auschwitz bombing, 297-300 and Brand/Eichmann offer, 287-8, 289, 290-1 APOC affair and, 42 Eastern Department, 287 Middle East role, 64, 69 policy towards Jews, 264-5, 266, 267, 270, 273 Refugee Department, 264, 287 Fox, J.P., 296 France armistice, 207 military aid to, 188 Frankfurter, Judge, 186 ‘Frantic Shuttle’ bombing raids, 301 Free French, 220 Gabriel, Colonel, 124 Gainer, B., 18 Garrard, John, 21

413

garrisons, Mesopotamia, 67, 6 8-9 Gaster, Dr M., 34 Gelber, Professor, 226 Gentile Zionism, 11-17 Geographical Commission, 27 Gestapo, 280, 281 ‘blood for trucks’ offer, 286-94 Gilbert, Martin, 182, 267, 304 Gladstone, Captain, 125 Gladstone, Herbert, 27, 36, 38, 40 Glyn, Major, 50 Gold Standard, 150 Grand Committee on 1904 Aliens Bill, 18, 22 Grant, Air Commodore G.W.P., 298 Graeco-Turkish crisis (1921), 93-5 Greece, 65, 70, 259 Greek forces British aid to, 93-4 Greenway, Charles, 42 Greenwood, Arthur, 238 Grey, Edward, 1st Earl, 74 Grigg, P.J., 159, 226 Grosz, ‘Bondi’, 292

Hagana, 248, 283, 287 Haifa bombing, 207 harbour construction, 164, 165, 168 Haining, General, 216-17, 223 Haldane, General, 80 Halifax, Edward Wood, 1st Earl, 112, 190, 191 ambassador to United States, 215, 246, 247, 283, 289 and Jewish Army project, 206, 211,212 and Jewish refugees, 270 and Philby plan, 230, 238 as Foreign Secretary, 193, 197, 198, 199 Hankey, Sir Maurice, 114 Hankey, R.M.A., 287 Harmsworth, Esmond, 110 Hashemites, 76, 78, 223 Hawes, Brigadier-General L.A., 214

414

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

Hearst, William Randolph, 171 Herzl, Theodor, xvi, 14, 15, 25,

120 Hijaz, 80 Hildas S.S., 200, 278 Himmler, Heinrich, 262 Hitler, A., xvii, 220, 225, 227, 261, 280, 286, 3 2 5 ,3 2 7 Holman, General, 57 Holmes, Colin, 49 Holocaust, 327 British Government and, 261-2 Western Allies and, 261-73 WSC and, 266-73, 325, 329 Home Secretary WSC as, 39-41, 324 Hood, Lord, 251 Horthy, Admiral Nikolaus, 266, 286, 296 Hoskins, Lt-Col. Harold B., 239-40, 241, 242, 245, 246, 247, 256 Hull, Cordell, 240 Hungarian Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee, 286 Hungary Jews, 264, 2 96-7 Hurley, General Patrick, 247 Husayn ibn Ali, 64, 76, 77, 80, 81, 84 Hyam, Ronald, 9, 61 Ibn Saud, xviii, 64, 77, 82, 84, 227-8, 245 and Philby plan, 229, 230-3, 234-5, 237-8, 240, 241, 242, 306 Ibrahim Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, 12 Illustrated Sunday Herald , 55 immigration boards, 36 imperialism WSC’s, 325-6 India, 61, 1 6 9 ,3 1 8 -1 9 India Office APOC affair and, 42, 45-6 Mesopotamia and, 67 Middle Eastern responsibilities, 64

Iraq, 109, 162, 2 2 1 ,2 2 7 , 231, 234, 245 Irgun Zwai Leumi ( IZL ), 248, 258 Isaacs, Rufus (later Marquis of Reading), 51 Ismay, Field Marshal Lord, 2 5 6 ,2 5 9 Israel declaration of, 313 diplomatic recognition, 321, 329 WSC presses for diplomatic recognition, 314 Italy attack on Abyssinia, 172 declaration of war, 209 ITO, 16, 25, 2 7 -8 , 2-35 Jabotinsky, Zeev, 209 Jack, Marion, 49 Jacob, Sir Ian, 188 Jerusalem WSC’s visit to, March 1921, 87-92 Jewish Agency, 216, 267, 287, 289, 290, 2 9 5 ,3 1 1 topographical information on Auschwitz, 298-300 Jewish Army, proposed, 2 03-27 US support for, 246 WSC’s support for, 326 Jewish Board of Deputies, 35 Jewish Brigade, 2 2 5 -7 326 Jewish Chronicle, 20, 22, 23, 24, 34, 37, 38, 56 Jewish Division, 213-14, 255 Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany, 262, 280-1 Jewish immigration, 88, Arab fears of, 139, 315 Arab veto, 196, 199, 244-5 illegal, 200 illegal, Second World War, 273-86 limitation, 179-80, 191 renewal (1921), 105 suspension (1921), 9 9-102 US support, 246 WSC and, 146, 327 Zionist demands, 174

INDEX

Jewish National Home, 149, 189 alternatives, 236, 249-51 British financial commitment, 151 WSC’s view of, 315 Jewish refugees, 273-86 admission to Palestine, 270 British policy, 273-4 Bulgaria, 278 Colonial Office attitudes to, 274, 275 Romania, 269-70 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 313 Jewish vote, 17-25, 323-4 Jews American, 16, 74, 146, 186, 328 Arab views of, 90 arming, 120 Foreign Office policy, 264-5, 266, 270, 273 Hungary, 286-9, 294, 296-7 Poland, 271-2 singled out for genocide, 265 WSC’s relations with, 44, 259-60, 323-5 Joynson-Hicks, William, 32, 112, 144 Kallay, Hungarian Prime Minister, 286 Kemal, Mustapha, 64-5, 94, 95 Kemalism, 63, 64-6, 78 Khan Noon, Firoz, 234, 235 King David Hotel, bombing, 312 Knox, Colonel Frank, 246 Lampson, Sir Miles, 284 Land Regulations, 200-3 land sales restrictions Palestine, 181, 190, 194, 196, 199 Landman, S., 99, 102 Lansdowne, Henry, 5th Marquis, 26 Laqueur, Walter, 264, 266, 276 Lash, Joseph, 187, 189 Laski, Nathan, 21, 22 Law, Richard, 265, 295, 299

415

Lawrence, T.E., 73, 75-7, 80, 236 Congreve and, 107 influence on WSC, 87, 151, 241 Trans-Jordan and, 88 view of Faysal, 81 League of Nations, 158, 163, 164, 317 Covenant, 68 Middle Eastern Mandates and, 95-7 Palestine Mandate and, 138 Permanent Mandates Commission, 249 Lebanon, 234 Lend-Lease Bill, 188, 224 Liberal Party opposition to 1904 Aliens Bill, 18 WSC and, 7 Liddell Hart, B.H., 87, 207 Linton, Ivor, 298 Lloyd, Lord, 170, 209-10, 216, 230, 2 8 1 ,2 8 2 , 284 Lloyd, T.I.K., 158-9 Lloyd George, David, 62, 64, 66, 69, 72, 82, 104, 110, 126, 129, 14 6 ,3 1 3 , 3 2 5 ,3 2 8 and Balfour Declaration, 121 and Middle Eastern Mandates and post-war army expenditure, 60 and Weizmann, 53, 54 Middle East policy, 63 Palestine Crisis (1921), 113-16 Palestine policy, 5 1 -2 relationship with WSC, 7, 193 support for Greece, 70, 93-5 Lloyd George Coalition, 148, 149 Locker, Berl, 308 Lothian, Lord, 190-1, 192-3, 196, 199, 200, 215, 283 Lyttleton, Oliver, 235, 248 MacDonald, Malcolm, 193, 196, 197, 199, 2 0 0 -3 ,2 0 4 , 205, 206, 278-9 MacMichael, Sir Harold, 208, 246, 258, 282, 283-4

416

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

Macmillan, Harold, 150 Mallaby, Major, 205 Manchester, North-West WSC’s candidacy, xvi, 323 Manchester by-election (1908), 35-7 Manchester Guardian, 21 Marconi scandal, 50 Margesson, David, 218, 220 Marlowe, Thomas, 104 Marsh, Edward, 34 Martin, J.M., 224, 237, 243, 254, 259, 269, 2 8 1 ,3 0 8 ,3 0 9 Mason, Paul, 300 Masterman, Charles, 8 Masterton-Smith, Sir James, 72 Mauritius destination for Jewish refugees 281-2, 284 Maxse, Leo, 138 Meinertzhagen, Colonel Richard, 16-17, 7 7 ,9 1 ,9 7 - 8 , 107, 113, 122, 124, 126, 130, 131 148 Melchett,’ Henry, 176, 177, 184, 257, 273 Mesopotamia, xvi, 66-73, 96 Cairo Conference settlement, 80-4 military expenditure, 67 oil concessions, 42 Middle East British policy, 109-10 British territories, 59-60 Philby plan, 227-42 WSC’s knowledge of, 73 WSC’s role in policy, 61-3 WSC suggests special department for, 69 WSC’s view of British interests, 259 Middle East department Colonial Office, 71-3 Middle East Front World War II, 207 Middle Eastern Mandates League of Nations delay in ratification, 95 -7

USA and, 147 WSC and, 3 25-6 Miller, Rabbi Irving, 251 Mills, Eric, 140, 141 Milner, Alfred, 1st Viscount, 72, 73 Milos, S.S., 280, 282, 284 Ministry of Information, 265 Mizrahi, 307 Mohamed Osman, 91 Mond, Sir Alfred, 128, 129 Monroe, Elizabeth, 227, 228 Montague, Sir Edwin, 51, 5 2 -3 , 71 Montefiore, Sir Moses, 13 Moran, Lord, 3, 4, 5, 8, 276-7, 310 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr, 237, 239, 280, 288, 293 Morning Post, 135 Morrison-Grady proposals, 320 Morton, Desmond, 218, 219 Mosul, 70-1 Moyne, Walter Guiness, Baron, 172, 217, 218, 219, 220, 230, 235, 237, 255, 256 assassination, xviii-xix, 2 5 7-9, 306, 307, 328-9 Muhammad Ali, Viceroy of Egypt,

12 Murray, Wallace, 238, 247 Musan Kazim el Husayni, 118 Mustapha Kemal, 64-5, 94, 95 Namier, Lewis, 80, 87, 197, 228-9, 240 Nathan, Sir Frederick, 53 National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, 270 National Review , 50 Nazi Germany, 325 appeasement, 169 Nazism, rise of, xvii Nebi Musa festival, 136 Negev, 255 Neutrality Act (USA), 187 New York Herald Tribune, 292 Nicolson, Harold, 15 Niemeyer, Sir Otto, 164, 165

INDEX

Noel-Baker, Philip, 202 Norman, Montagu, 150 Normanbrook, Lord, 303 Northcliffe, Alfred, 1st Viscount, 110, 136-7, 138, 147 Nuri Said, 214 oilfields Middle East, 70-1 Oliphant, Sir Laurence, 13 Ormsby-Gore, William, 137, 155-6, 176 Oswiecem see Auschwitz Ottoman Empire, 14 British support for, xv, 12 partition, 59, 62 overseas loans, 150-1 overseas spending reduction, 60

Pacific, S.S., 280, 282, 284 Palestine, 69, 72, 83, 150, 231 alternatives to, as Jewish National Home, 12-13, 27, 236, 249-51 Arabs, 75-9, 90, 102-7, 179-80, 244-5 Arab national government 118-19, 120 Bevin’s policy for, 319-20 Biltmore Resolution, 248 British troops, 126-7 Cabinet Committee on, 251-2 economic recession, 154 elected advisory council, 108-9, 117 illegal immigration, 191, 200, 277-86 issue referred to United Nations, 318 Jewish State, 308-10 Land Regulations, 200-3 land sales restrictions, 181, 190, 194, 196, 199 Mandate, 95-7, 138 Order-in-Council, 135^45 partition, 173-8, 252, 254-7, 313

417

proposed withdrawal, 318-21 representative government, 107 riots (1929), 170 subsidy to Trans-Jordan, 151, 152-7 USA and, 315-16 US/Britain proposed joint declaration, 247 White Paper (1922), xviii, 123-48, 1 4 9 ,3 1 4 -1 5 White Paper (1930), 170 White Paper (1939), xvii-xviii, 180-4, 190-1, 192, 193, 242-4, 2 5 3 ,3 1 1 WSC urges withdrawal, xvi, 96, 3 1 6 ,3 1 8 WSC’s post-war position on, 314-22 Palestinian Arabs, 5th Congress, 143 Palin, General, 124 Palmerston, Henry, xv Pan-Arabism, 68 Pan-Islamism, 65, 68 Parker, Sir G., 48 Passfield, Baron Sidney Webb, 171 Patria disaster, 214, 219, 275, 279-85 Peel Commission, xvii, 78, 79, 1 7 3 ,2 3 1 ,2 5 4 , 2 5 6 ,3 1 5 Percy, Lord Eustace, 55 Permanent Mandates Commission, 249 Persia oil concessions, 42 oilfields, 70 Peterson, Sir Maurice, 245, 246 Philby, H. St J.B., xviii, 236, 237, 240, 241 Philby Plan, 227-42 Plumb, J. H., 4, 58 Plumer, Field Marshal Sir Herbert, 151, 153-7, 158 pogroms, White Russian, 56 Poland Jews, 271-2 Polish Government-in-Exile, 272, 297

CHURCHILL AND TH E JEWS

418

Polish Home Army, 301-2, 325 Polish Intelligence, 297 Polish Ministry of Information, 267 Poltava, 301 Protocols o f the Elders o f Zion, 50, 325 Rabinowicz, O. K., 57 Raczynski, Count, 272 Radcliffe, General, 80 Raglan, Lord, 124 Randall, A. W. G., 250, 264 Rashid Ali, 83, 221, 227, 231 Rathbone, Eleanor, 270-1, 272 Rawa Ruska, 267 Reading, Eva, Marchioness of, 272-3 receiving houses for immigrants, 35-6, 38 Rees, Goronwy, 7 Rees, Sir John D., 112 Refugee Department Foreign Office, 264 Rhodes James, Robert, 5, 6 Richmond, 133 Rishon LeZion , 89, 109, 136 Ritchie, Sir George, 73 Romania Jewish refugees, 269-70 Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin, 21 7 ,2 1 8 , 326 Roosevelt, F.D., 195, 214, 226, 234, 240, 2 4 1 ,2 4 6 , 256, 3 0 4 ,3 0 8 ,3 1 0 and Jewish tragedy, 276 Argentia (Newfoundland) meeting with WSC (Aug. 1941), 188-9 Holocaust policy, 288 relationship with WSC, 187 views on Middle East, 239 Rose, N. A., 203 Rosenman, Judge Sam, 186, 187 Roskill, S.W., 207 Rothermere, Harold, 1st Viscount, 111

Rothschild family, 323 Rothschild, James de, 269

Rothschild, Nathan, 27, 44 Royal Air Force and Auschwitz bombing, 296 Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines, 45 Royal Dutch-Shell, 42, 43 Royal Navy Contraband Control Service, 277 conversion to oil-burning ships, 42 Rudnitchar, S.S., 277-8 Rumbold, Sir Horace, 79 Rushbrook-Williams, Professor, 217 Russian Front SS atrocities, 264 Russian Jews, 19-20 Rutenburg, Pinhas, 89, 125 concession, 1 1 7 ,1 2 5 -6 , 130, 136, 144-5 Rutherford, Watson, 48 Sacher, Harry, 92 Samuel family, 50-1 Samuel, Sir Harry, 22 Samuel, Sir Herbert, 51, 73, 80, 88, 89, 109, 113, 116, 118, 128, 129 and Palestine Mandate, 95-6 Balfour Declaration and, 139, 141 King’s birthday speech, 95-107, 114 press attacks on, 111 proposals for Palestine, 130-1 White Paper (1922), 142, 143, 147, 148 Samuel, Sir Marcus, 16, 4 3 -4 , 47, 4 8 -9 San Remo Conference, 118 Sassoon, Sir Philip, 72 Schroffel (Gestapo agent), 281 Scott, David, 198 Shaftesbury, Antony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl, 11-12 Shell debate, 4 1 -9 , 324 Shell Petroleum Co., 10 Shertok, Moshe, 228, 289 -9 0

INDEX

Shibly al-Jamal, 118, 119 Shuckburgh, Sir John, 98, 108, 123, 133, 141, 155 American Zionism, 198-9 and Army anti-Zionism, 127-8 and constitutional concessions to Arabs, 103, 104, 107 and Jewish immigration, 278 and Patria incident, 214 and Samuel proposals, 130-2, 138-40 and Weizmann-Young compromise, 117 and White Paper (1922), 142-3, 148 and White Paper (1939), 181 Jewish Army, 205, 222, 283 Palestine Order-in-Council (1922) 134-5 Rutenburg concession, 126 Zionist Loan, 160-1, 166 Sidney Street siege, 39-40 Sinclair, Sir Archibald, 126, 173, 174, 202, 295, 299, 303, 304 Smuts, J. C., 77, 178,188, 232, 234, 237, 2 4 3 ,2 5 1 ,2 6 0 ,3 1 0 Smyrna, 93 Sokolow, Nahum, 20, 29, 106 Sorensen, R. W, 270 Soviet Union, 292 and Brand/Eichmann offer, 289 Spaatz, Lieutenant-General C., 299 Special Zionist Congress on East Africa scheme, 25-6 Sporting Times, 43 55, 263, 280, 287 Stalin, J.V, 259, 294, 301, 304 Standard Oil, 48 Stanley, Oliver, 206, 243-4, 256 Stein, Leonard, 17, 55 Steiner, George, 261 Stimson, Henry, 246 Storfer brothers, 280 Storr, Anthony, 1, 2 Struma disaster, 275 Suez canal, 63, 178, 317 Sutherland, Duke of, 138 Swaythling, Lord, 51

419

Sydenham of Coombe, Lord, 124 Sydenham lunch’, 124-5 Sykes-Picot agreement, 52, 86, 87, 146 Syria, 12, 66, 69, 75, 81, 220, 234, 236 Free French conquest, 233 Greater, 255, 256 Vichy, 231 Taylor, A.J.P., 7, 306 Tegart forts, 206 Tel Aviv, 89 bombing, 207 Territorialists, 16, 25, 2 7-8, 29-35, 324 terrorists, Jewish, 257-8, 312, 329 Times, The, 21, 39, 4 0 -1 , 50, 54, 110-11, 1 3 5,137, 144-5, 202, 267, 292 Toynbee, Arnold, 250 Trans-Jordan, 80-1, 82, 87-90, 98, 149, 1 5 1 ,2 3 1 ,2 3 6 , 245, 255 subsidy from Palestine, 152-7 Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, 153-7 Treaty of Sevres, 3 Treblinka, 267 Trenchard, General H.M., 80 Trevelyan, C.P., 18 Tripoli alternative Jewish National Home, 250 Truman, Harry S., 310 Trzebinia, 301 Tuchman, Barbara, 11, 12, 14, 128 Tudor, General, 126-7 Tulcea, 280 Turkey, 63-7, 94, 110, 326 Turkish Petroleum Co., 42 ‘Uganda’ scheme see East Africa scheme United Nations Palestine issue referred to, 318 recommends partition of Palestine, 313 United States, 122, 147

420

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

and Middle Eastern Mandates, 95-6, 121 and Palestine, 315-16 anti-British feeling, 181 Brand/Eichman offer and, 288-90 entry into World War One, xvii, 52 Jews, 10, 74, 145, 146, 160, 186-203, 328 military aid, World War Two, 188-9 Patria incident and, 283 State Department, 288 War Department, 296 Zionists, 257, 328 Upper Silesia bombing, 300-2

Vaad Leumi, 100, 103 Vansittart, Robert, 86 Venizelos, Eleutherios, 65, 66, 94 Wahhabis, 81, 233 Walker, Edward, 299 War Department (US), 296 War Office, 64 War Refugee Board, 288-9, 290 Warren, Sir Charles, 13 Warsaw Rising, 295, 301-2, 325 Washington Disarmament Conference, 147 Wasserstein, Bernard, 98, 261-2, 267, 271, 293, 295, 296, 303 Waters-Taylor, Colonel, 124 Wauchope, Sir Arthur, 172 Wavell, General Archibald, 208, 2 1 2 ,2 1 7 ,2 1 8 -1 9 , 2 3 1 ,2 5 6 , 284-5 Webb, Sidney, 171 Wedgwood, Josiah, 174, 177 Weisbord, R. G., 33 Weizmann, Chaim, 17, 92, 130, 140, 157, 225, 268, 322 Arab Federation and, 234, 2 37-9 attitude to Arabs, 123-4 Jewish Army and, 203, 204, 209-16, 218-24

Jewish refugees, 280-1, 282 Northcliffe press attacks, 147 partition and, 173-5, 254-5, 257 Philby plan and 228-9, 230 proposes Auschwitz bombing, 294-5 Samuel proposals and, 131, 132-3 Sydenham lunch and, 125 US visit, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 202 WSC, Palestine and, 306 -1 4 Zionist Loan and, 158, 159-60, 164, 165, 166-7 Welles, Sumner, 238, 239 Western Allies Holocaust and, 261-73 Westminster, Duke of, 144 White Paper (1922), xviii, 123-48, 1 4 9 ,3 1 4 -1 5 White Paper (1930), 170 White Paper (1939), xvii-xviii, 180-4, 190-1, 192, 193, 242-4, 253 WSC’s view of, 223, 311, 326 White Russians, 56-7, 70 Wilson, Sir Arnold, 70 Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry, 62, 65, 66, 144 Wilson, Woodrow, 52 Wingate, General Orde, 204, 213 Winterton, Lord, 110 Witton, Robert, 54 Wolffsohn, David, 29 Wood, Edward see Halifax Woodhead Commission, 179 World War One, 265 British expenditure, 59 US entry, xvii, 52 Wyman, Professor David, 301, 302

Yishuv, 100, 120, 128, 160, 203, 2 0 9 ,3 1 2 ,3 2 6 Young, Hubert, 73, 98, 99, 104, 108, 111, 116-21, 129-30, 147

INDEX

Zangwill, Israel, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30-2 Zeid, Emir, 80 Zionism(ists) as cure for antiSemitism, 15-17 attitudes of prominent British Jews, 27 Balfour’s, 15-16, 20, 86 Bolshevism and, xvii, 49-57, 146, 324-5 British imperial interests and, xv, 12-14 British policy towards, 104-6 East Africa scheme and, 25-35 evangelical support for, xv, 11-12 Gentile, 11-17

421

Jewish immigration and, 174, 179 refugees and, 274, 275, 280, 282 USA, 190, 194, 257 Western statesmen’s attitudes to, 327 WSC and, 9 -10, 74, 185-6, 3 0 7 -1 0 ,3 1 5 ,3 2 5 -9 Zionist Commission, 123, 133 Zionist Congress, 7th, 25 Zionist Loan, 157-68 Zionist Organization, 100, 130, 133, 159, 164 Zionist Organization of America, 190, 194 Zionist Political Committee, 311 Zygielbojm, Samuel, 27 1 -2