Churchill and the Jews 0714632546

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By the same author Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, 1936-1945 Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948 The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (editor) Vol. XX — 1940-1943 Vol. XXI — 1943-1945

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS WoC AE

Le CORE N

rofes istory Bar-Ilan University

PRANK

Giiss

First published 1985 in Great Britain by

FRANK CASS & CO. LTD. Gainsborough House, 11 Gainsborough Road, London, E11 1RS, England and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS & CO. LTD. c/o Biblio Distribution Centre 81 Adams Drive, P.O. Box 327, Totowa, N.J. 07511

Copyright© 1985 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

DAS66.9.C5

ISBN 0 7146 3254 6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. in writing.

Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton

& Co. Ltd., Exeter

FOR

LIEY AND

MORRIS

CONTENTS List of Illustrations Foreword Introduction

Chapter One: Churchill the Man Chapter Two: Tw The Jewish Problem

\ Chapter Three: TheMiddle M East | stImbroglio, 1919-1921 ‘Chapter Four: Crisis iin Palestine, 192 \Chapter Five: F The 1922 White ]Paper, }

Chapter SIs:c:Churchill and Palestine, 1924-1939 Chapter Seven: World War Two |

:

Chapter Eight: Churchill and the Holocaust Epilogue: Churchill in Opposition, 1945-1948 Conclusion Notes

330

Bibliography Index

376

ytTainyT x

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 influence’, which he thought would become ‘a source of weakness to the Empire’.”* 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 Meinertzhagen’s diary. Churchill’s inclinations at that time, as we have seen, were to surrender the mandate, and release Britain from the commit-

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ments 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 anything 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.” 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 imother parts. ofthe Empire. On the other hand, it was precisely the mélange of Jewish and Arab national-

isms in Palestine which had produced such an explosive situation. Without Zionism, there would not have been the ssame urgent need

for constitutional progress.

iuet Calee

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: may 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.”

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 nominated British members.” Neither formula proved sufficiently attractive 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

CRISIS IN PALESTINE, 1921

109

provide for the execution of our pledge to the Zionists ... immigration must be ultra vires ...’.”* 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 representative 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 14Juneaand 14 July, 1921. They present quite a contrast with his privately- expressed opinions at the time, whether to Lloyd George, or to,his his colleagues iin 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. Repeatedly, 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 theEast and the Middle East’. But for all of Churchill’s concern about Britain's moral duty, he insistedalso that her obligation could not be an unlimited one: 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, | think, quite unprejudiced consideration to the whole subject, | 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.”

And

CJ-E*

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’.'"' 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 performance, 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, notwithstanding his own private doubts.'” 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 ... | 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. | 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.'”

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:

CRISIS

IN PALESTINE,

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Hal

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.'™

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: an 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 difficulties 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.'”

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 sentiment. When the Conservatives lost two bye-elections on 7 and 8 June, George Younger, chairman_of the party, explained to Austen Cham-

berlain that the defeats had beencaused by ‘thestrong.anti-semitic feeling whichis very7 prominent zat the present time. Far too many

Jews ws have been placed inprominent positions by the p

tGovern-

tee,

meiit~..The Palestinestunt was}verycleverly utilised t 15]Rothermere.... and his friends. ; 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—eecparensacmanarae vote resumed on 14 July, Churchill did not so much as even mention the word Palestine inhis speech.

\ \

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CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

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 expenditure: ‘that prospect depends upon a number of the most shifting, shadowy, nebulous and unsubstantial hypotheses that have ever been presented to the House’.'” 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 MrJabotinsky of Jerusalem’.'”* Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Churchill’s Conservative 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’.'” 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 criticisms 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.'"”

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 followed 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

CRISIS IN PALESTINE,

1921

Wile

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 ina practical way. Lloyd George has sporadic outbursts of keenness but fails to appreciate the value to us of Zionism or its moral advantages.'"

Two days after their meeting, Weizmann was received by Balfour, on 7 July. Balfour undertook toarrange a high-level meeting to sort_ matters out, with Churchill, Lloyd George and himself.'? This was a most unusual procedure, A 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 Declaration — 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 authorities. 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.' Weizmann’s conviction was rein-

forced 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’.'"* Weizmann was also invited over by Churchill in July. At first, Weizmann rebuffed the Colonial Secretary, arguing that he, Weiz-

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mann, knew what to expect, and ‘academic declarations of sym-

pathy’ 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’.''* 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 minority 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.''® 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 Declaration’. 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 understood and meant the eventual possibility of a Jewish State.!’” Churchill was evidently ‘astonished’ at his colleagues’ interpretation.'" Weizmann pushed home his offensive. Once more referring to Samuel’s speech, he asked why was the Colonial Office now contemplating 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 M[esopo-

CRISISMIN

PALES MINES 1921

tSGe

tamia] and T[rans-Jordan} because you are convinced in your conscience that those countries are ripe for it, then of course I shall understand why Palestine must have it; but I fear that it is more a case of camouflaging 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.'”

Lloyd George and Balfour both agreed at once, whereupon Churchill 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 representative 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 affirmative. 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 gunrunning, for the protection of Jewish settlements; Churchill interjected: ‘We won’t mind it, but don’t speak of it’.'”) 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 outmanoeuvred. 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." 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 everything said by Samuel, whom he quoted constantly’.'** 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.’ 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 predominantly Jewish State.'*

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:

GRASTSSUINGR

IE SAnUNES 9271

iy

The six pro-Zionist measures are in some respects an advance on Dr Weizmann’s own suggestions, but in return for this we have secured his agreement to the establishment of the Advisory Council on an elected basis.'25

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 prohibited 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. arTaet provide the anti-Zionists with another ee *» But since Weizmann himself had already agreed to the package, Meinertzhagen was proving more Zionist than the Zionists themselves. Shuckburgh supported Young, and gave ‘instructions for his draft to be drawn up as an eight-point Cabinet memorandum. When approved in Cabinet, the new policy would be forwarded to High Commissioner pamine! who would then have the

option either to carry it out, or not.' 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 of the Cabinet.'*

Churchill’s whole attitude to Palestine, like Samuel’s, had undergone 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.'”’ The 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

CRISIS

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the principle of the creation of a National Home for the Jews of Palestine’ .*? 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 ...'*'

Churchill did ot 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 Government 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.'” 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 government might find a prescription agreeable to both sides, Churchill would cling 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.'” 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’.'* 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 eventually 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 circumstantial 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 demographic 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. However 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 understand-

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ing 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: “The PM indulges in a fancy sketch of the huge population of Palestine in ancient times. The Arabs must not be too much pampered. The Jews are the people for cultivating the soil’.'” 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 involving usinfutile military expenditure’. ‘Againstthis, itwas maintained | ‘that the Arabs have h no prescriptive right |toa country which they had taken, on the grounds of Balfour’s sens 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 prerogative 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 subsidize such development. We must be fair and firm with the Arabs showing no invidious preference to the Zionists.’

CHAPDERPIVE

TELE, 22

At ee eee

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 proposed 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 presentan efficient, economical 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 sate off new riots, which would place the army in an ee 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.' 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’. When in mid-November, 1921, Meinertzhagen proposed that the

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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.’ 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 oe because the League of Nations is unable to come to any decision iin. regard to them.'

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.’ 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 illness. 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’.° On the other hand, the Colonial Officials thought that Weiz-

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mann’s attitude to the Arabs, while conciliatory, was unfortunate,

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.”

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. 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’.’ 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’. 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 important 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 mented:

Administration.

As Meinertzhagen

com-

It isidle 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.'!

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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." 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 memorandum was recognised as partly the work of Captain Gladstone, late Deputy Military Governor of Bethlehem." 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 accepting 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.'* No 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 officials 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 without any attempt to obtain the Arabs’ assent."

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However, as with most of the measures implemented that winter, there was also a clear British interest involved. The Rutenberg concession 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.'* The British interest in the Rutenberg concession, 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.'”

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 £32 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’. Churchill’s original inclination, at the end of August, had been to replace British troops with Indian levies.'’ 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’.” By 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.*' 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.” 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’. 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’. 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 of the Zionist extremists, which aims at the establishment of 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.”

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 something to be desired, but greatly doubt advantages making heavy weather with the War Office over it’. As 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’.”’ 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. 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’.”” The belief that Arab intransigence during this period was encouraged by their confidence in the sympathies of British officials and officers, was a current theme in Zionist circles. It also gained cre-

dence 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 desirable to separate the Palestine garrison from the Egyptian command” (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 from

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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’.*' 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 Avans.* 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 indelible impression on him. During World War Two, when the Middle East Command, especially that of Wavell, objected to Churchill’s proZionist 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 appearance and reality they cannot expect the continued support of His Majesty’s Government’.”’ Young referred also to ‘extremist’ Zionist claims to a Jewish State, which ‘clearly demand some contradiction or modification’. Young proposed that an official letter be written to Dr Weizmann, reminding 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.™ Sir John Shuckburgh noted that Young’s proposals amounted to the issue of an ultimatum to the Zionists.** 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’.** 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’..” Samuel 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’;** an undertaking to restrict Jewish labour immigration ‘to numbers who can find employment upon new enterprises; and an absolute guarantee 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.*’ The 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).* But Samuel’s proposals assumed new significance 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 Shuckburgh 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.*' Their interpretation 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.”

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’. Therefore, 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 addressed 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 Shuckburgh. Churchill was perhaps also wary of the Cabinet veto on any curtailment of Zionism, and ruled out any further statements for the time being.” 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’.** 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 Arabs were

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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’.* 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.** Weizmann blamed the current impasse in Palestine entirely on the hostility of British officials and officers: ‘That British Generals and political officers should countenance 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 ‘P.S.’, 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’.*’ Strong Zionist pressure in London prevented the Colonial Office from acceding to the pressure mounting from Palestine.** 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’.” 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 ratification 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 amendments 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 preparation 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 pro-

tected; (3) Jewish immigration would be permitted up to the economic absorptive capacity of the country; and (4) a Legislative Council would be established.” The document was sent to the Zionists at the beginning of February,’ and handed to the Arabs by Churchill himself on 4 February, 1922.” 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’. 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.” 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 representative 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’.* However, the Arab Delegation denied having leaked the information, 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’.”° 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 Com-

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missioner would command 14 of the Council’s 27 possible votes.” In addition, the High Commissioner was empowered to prorogue 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 compromise: ‘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 Parliamentary 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 overtones, 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.** 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’.” Two days later, The Times editorial took up Northcliffe’s theme about curbing Zionist extremists. In its revealing analysis of the ferment 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.”

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 1936-1938) 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 all

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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.”

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.® Northcliffe’s Press continued 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’.” 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’. 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 apprehended in Palestine’. The Duke of Sutherland (Colonial Office spokesman in the Lords, 1921-22) advised against any official reaction, since the articles had not directly criticised the Palestine Administration — they had in fact been quite complimentary to the High Commissioner.” 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.” On 1 March, 1922, a reply to the Arab Delegation was sent. The letter, drafted by Shuckburgh, carried Churchill’s signature.” 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 situation 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 Declaration (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 mot include the well-known phrase about the Jews being in Palestine ‘as of right and not on sufferance’, as claimed in the biography.™) The letter did reiterate the government’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 Office

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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.” 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: ‘1am bound to retain in the hands of the Imperial Government the power to carry out those pledges’, he concluded.” However, 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’.”! The Zionists themselves were only too aware of the economic troubles in Palestine. They could agree to restrictions in their immigration, 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’.” In effect, when immigration had been renewed 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 significantly 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

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undoubtedly by a statistical study compiled by Eric Mills at the end 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 50 years there is only one interpretation that can be placed on the Balfour Declaration, 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.” It seems quite clear that Churchill sincerely agreed with Samuel’s gradualist policy for Palestine —in regard both to Jewish immigration, and to constitutional development — notwithstanding the pressures exerted from higher up. Here is one further illustration, among many, that Churchill 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 | 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’. 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.” In his despatches of 9 March, Samuel had urged a public statement of policy, and had forwarded a draft constitution, which would

CJ-F*

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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. Shuckburgh 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.” But at the end of April, Samuel was recalled to London. Ina round of talks with Shuckburgh (and with Zionists and Arabs), he suc-

ceeded in persuading the Colonial Office to publish his constitutional planasa White Paper, including a government reputation ofthe 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.” Churchill was reassured 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 satisfied, they might just be glad of the chance to return to Palestine

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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 correspondence with the Zionists and the Arabs, was published as a White Paper on 3 June.” 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.” 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 withdrawn 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’.* 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 predicted, did the Zionists’ public commitment to the new policy satisfy the Arabs. The 1922 White Paper was rejected by the 5th 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 Commons ‘signally overruled’ the Lords’ vote, they might expect further troubles from the Arabs in Palestine. 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," 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 interviews to The Times, about the hydro-electric project. 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.** 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.*

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

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sion ‘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’.** 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.”

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.” However, it was clear that the Rutenberg concession 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 1s faithfully and laboriously endeavouring to translate those perfervid enthusiasms into the sober, concrete facts of the day-to-day administration ... | 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.”!

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

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tion, 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’. | accepted service on the lines laid down for me. Now, when I am endeavouring to carry it out, it is from this quarter that I am assailed.”

Churchill succeeded in obtaining an overwhelming vote of confidence, 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 idées 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 idée 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 Declaration, 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,

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1921, and after Northcliffe’s Press campaign in 1922. Also, the Jewish colonies, those that Churchill managed to see briefly,

undoubtedly impressed him. Jewish capital and skills could provide the key to developing an imperial outpost at a minimum cost to the British taxpayer. 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.** 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 Churchill’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 administration of his department he had allowed decisions to be reached, often by others, which were to their disadvantage.”

Under Churchill’s reign at the Colonial Office, Jewish immigration 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 or i922.

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A public attack on the Rutenberg concession, during May, 1922, 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.” 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 | 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.”

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 operandi. At the end of October, 1922, Meinertzhagen made the following entry in his private diary: So Winston is gone. For many reasons | 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.”

CHAPTER.

SLX

CHURCHILL AND PALESTINE, 1924-1939 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 Transjordan) in one single paragraph, which states blandly that the momentous Cairo Conference of March 1921 had no need to alter policy in Palestine.' While 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, Churchill 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 boosting 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.? 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 regardless. 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.’

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).* 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.’ 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.* 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: Tam sure for instance that an announcement that Neville (Chamberlain) was

going to the Exchequer would be worth twenty or thirty seats at least. |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.’

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 commitment to the Zionist enterprise, but in 1927, Churchill went so far as to insist that Palestine pay one half of the administrative costs of the desert Emirate of Trans-Jordan. This was, to say the least, a narrow interpretation of Britain’s promise of 1917, to ‘facilitate’ the establishment 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. | acted upon the advice of that very great man Colonel Lawrence, who was at my side in making the arrangements’.*

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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.’

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 TransJordan 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 Crown Colonies. | cannot understand why the idea of keeping Palestine in a dole-fed condition at the expense of our taxpayer attracts you. | 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 selfsupporting. 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."

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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 reorganisation 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 Government, 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’." 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 £1'/2 millions — at the time when Churchill was having great difficulty in balancing the budget at home. that one half of from Palestine’s in two respects;

In March, 1927, Churchill and Amery had agreed Trans-Jordan’s administrative costs would be met budget. Now, the Treasury changed Plumer’s plan 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 TransJordan’s third —i.e. that Palestine in fact pay 5/6ths of the cost of the Force, and Trans-Jordan 1/6th. 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 5/6ths 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 5/6ths 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 dubious 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-to-one 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.'* 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!" But he did fear that

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the current budgetary surplus would not last, and that future economic 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 contribution 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 5/6ths of that, i.e. £138,000.)"* 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 Transjordan 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."

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 his

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decision, and thus informed Baldwin.'* The final decision shelved for over a month, pending Amery’s return.

was

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 exploited 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.” Churchill did not reply for two weeks. He gave scant consideration 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.’ 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 administrations had repaid loans totalling £412 millions’.'? 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.” Amery bowed to force majeure, 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 Parliamentary 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 ... | 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.”!

It is quite clear from the above that Amery too regarded Churchill’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.” Churchill’s prognosis proved to be correct, even if

Plumer’s term of three years was less than that of other High Commissioners.” 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’.** When he finally left Palestine, there were no official receptions, and it was explained that he was leaving prematurely on grounds of ill health.” b. The Zionist Loan. It was against the background of the Treas-

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ury’s swingeing fiscal policies in regard to Palestine (of which the Zionists 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.*°

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.” 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.” Nonetheless, Colonial Office sympathies did not extend to acceding to the Zionists’ request for a loan. T.I.K. Lloyd, of the Department’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’.”” 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 Government, but the Mandatory administration itself would come under fire; there would come a demand for a scrutiny of Palestine’s financial 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 nightmare 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] O[rganisation] 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 reconstruction 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’.” It is worth noting that at this stage it was the Colonial Office, presumably fearful of international 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.” 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 £1'% 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 contributed 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 commented 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. 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.® 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 principal 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.** Churchill, 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 memorandum 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 memorandum

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.” 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’.** 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 al! 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 immesnse 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. It 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.” Although Amery put up a brief struggle against the two senior Departments, he soon succumbed 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.) 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 part of

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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.” 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.” 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’.*! 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 backing 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 £4'% 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 railway 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.” 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 of

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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 government was again about to embark ona general policy of guaranteed loans for development and other purposes.’ 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.** Conveniently, this expert opinion saved the government the need to consider and reject the loan onits own merits. Dr Weizmann, thenona 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 it... 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 ... | 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 ...*

Mrs Dugdale’s information was exact. If anything, she had underestimated 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:

166 also the proposed enthusiasm had let and Austen turned postponed in order

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS Zionist loan for which Balfour and Winston in their me in but which obviously Winston has now ratted on down on Foreign Office grounds. However, they were to spare poor old Balfour a shock while he is ill.**

After the Cabinet meeting, Amery asked Shuckburgh to write Weizmann a ‘demi-official’ letter, ‘to prepare him as gently as possible 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 apparently had been raising ‘false hopes’ among American Jews.” Shuckburgh carried out Amery’s instruction and wrote to Weizmann 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.” 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.”

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 Mediteranean. 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.” 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 encouragement’. Amery was instructed at the same time to reaffirm the government’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.”! 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? Weizmann 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’, Churchill 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.” 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’.” 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, Churchill 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 encourage; 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. | am grateful to Hehama 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 permanence 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.°* The 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 heartbreak of one who had climbed so close to the pinnacle of power, only to be cast down, may well be imagined. Thus Churchill enmeshed 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 extremism 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 primarily 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’.” 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.”

Two official commissions of enquiry were sent to Palestine to investigate 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 according 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 Legislative 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. Ina 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.” 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.** 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 campaign.” However, the Labour government’s vacillations did provide material for Churchill’s productive and lucrative pen.® 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 obligation 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.*!

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. Predictably, 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.”

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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.” 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 onto the ruins at Petra, and from there, across the Sinai desert to Cairo:

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 correspondence with the High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope. But their contacts were confined to administrative, and agricultural matters.°° 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’. 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 1938-1939, before reaching its full complement in 1941.” 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. Henceforth, 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 control. 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 government for its decision to partition Palestine, accusing it of reneging on Britain’s commitments under the Balfour Declaration. Henceforth, 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.” 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’. CJ-G*

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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 commitments 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 it ...’ Churchill’s own enigmatic proposal was to ‘persevere, persevere, persevere’.

The Labour leader, Clement Attlee, who was never particularly inspired by the Zionist deal,” 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.” 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 concessions. 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,’ 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 performance, 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 ...”

When the House of Commons debated the Peel Report, on 21 July, 1937,” 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, ‘witha 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.*

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.” 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 opposition, 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’.” 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.” However, at a dinner at Chertwell, 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.”

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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sided with the Zionists in any way, the Arabs would go over to the Italians. For this reason, he opposed Josiah Wedgwood’s idea of taking a Jewish State into the Empire as a ‘Seventh Dominion’:” ‘if the Jewish State was allowed to come into the Empire as the result of a Plebiscite there is nothing to prevent all the Arab States going into the Italian Empire as the result of plebiscites in their countries’. Churchill told Melchett that the Zionists had waited so long for the realisation of their dreams, that they should have the patience to wait a few years more. They might even have to suffer temporary reverses, until Britain had weathered the storms facing it. But until then, they should not rock the imperial boat: This situation might last for 5, 10, or even 20 years. But never mind, the principle remains unchanged. Our claim, which is based on moral, not physical grounds remains unaltered. The World is going through stormy and perilous times. There will probably be wars ... The great cause of Zionism is capable of surviving two or three years. As long as Great Britain is the Mandatory Power it will have to preserve Palestine intact and to a greater or less degree protect our interests. There may be times when it is impossible to allow immigration: there may be times when it is wise to restrict the sale of lands. Things will then get better again ... On the other hand, the small Jewish State can be ravished by its enemies, defeated in war, annexed to other powers or suffer any of the other incidents which are common to small states in the fortunes and chances of war.*’

Basically, Churchill shared the Chamberlain government’s view that, notwithstanding the ever-worsening plight of European Jewry, the Zionists must not make demands in Palestine that would jeopardise Britain’s position in the Arab world. Ina specially commissioned article for the Jewish Chronicle, published on 3 September, 1937, he wrote that Partition could only bring war, not peace, to the Eastern Mediterranean, thus providing the Italians with an excellent opportunity for intervention, and embarrassing the British. As he had done the previous June, Churchill advised the Zionists that it would be ‘far better to persevere along the old lines’."’ At his dinner with Henry Melchett, Churchill also advised patience. Provided the Mandate ‘was worked a bit slower, on the lines that had been intended’, sovereignty must come eventually,

‘although it might take a century or two centuries’. In view, some of Churchill’s remarks displayed ‘a complete any sense of reality of the present situation’. Melchett put ideas down to domestic political motives: ‘We must not

Melchett’s absence of Churchill’s forget that from his point of view what he needs is a good situation from which

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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 common 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 Mediterranean route as a vital link of the Empire?”

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.*

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 Churchill’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.

3. The 1939 White Paper

On 9 November,

1938, the eve of the Crystallnacht pogrom in

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Germany,” 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.** 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’.** The 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.” 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’.™ 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.”

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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’.”” 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.”! This 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.” Little attention was paid to Churchill’s brainchild by other participants 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.” The Jewish Chronicle was less sanguine in its reaction, and commented 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’.”* 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 consent; and third,

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purchases of land by Jews were to be severely restricted, primarily to consolidate holdings where Jewish settlements 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.”

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 community 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.”

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 of

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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 amendments, but thought it best not to tamper too much with a work whose ‘architecture was so perfect.” . 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’. The Zionists and their supporters would make excellent propaganda use of the speech in later years. However, a more penetrating examination 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 ... |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 it ... 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, however 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’.'"” 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’.'"' 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."

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 tribulation. However, to hand over to the Arabs the ultimate control of

further immigration after five years, that was the breach!

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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 commitment 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 selfsupporting, loyal strategic base to the north of the Canal. Complementing 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.' In September, 1939, President Roosevelt sent two personal messages 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.’ 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 bolstered 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.’ 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.’ 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.’ 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’.‘ 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,’ 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’.* 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.’ 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-for-bases’ 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 Amer-

ican destroyers provided an urgently needed reinforcement 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’. Churchill pressed negotiations to a successful conclusion in September, despite severe misgivings within his own Cabinet, on the part of Eden, among others." 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.” 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, casteruled, and imperialistic’."’ 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 self-government 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." 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 commemorating 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’.'’ 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 continued 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’.'°

It is in this context that one must assess Churchill’s extreme sensitivity 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’.”” 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 anti-Hitler’. 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 1n Palestine, if possible, before the arrival of Dr Weizmann, three weeks hence.'*

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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 instrument for restricting their entry too." Lacy Bagallay, head of the Eastern Department at the Foreign Office, drafted the reply to Lothian, on the theme that, notwithstanding 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’.”° The draft reply to Lothian was printed over Halifax’s signature, as a Cabinet memorandum.”' 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. [t 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 circumstances, afford a refuge for any but a small percentage of the Jewish victims’. For Lothian’s own consumption, Bagallay sermon-

ised 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, however, 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 Mayesty’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.” Owing to other preoccupations, Churchill had not reacted. But on

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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.”’ 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.* Weizmann believed that Bracken, a man of some eccentricity,” was the

only one of Churchill’s intimate circle who was well disposed to the Zionist cause.” But Bracken’s role was somewhat more sophisticated. His task was to reassure the Zionists that Churchill was looking after their cause in the Cabinet, and to pre-empt any complaints 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.”’

By the end of November, 1939, the Zionists in London were becoming increasingly concerned that MacDonald’s rigid implementation 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.** 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 ...”” On 1 December, Weizmann met with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and apparently in complete ignorance of the correspondence with Lord Lothian, he tried to invoke Halifax’s aid against MacDonald. The Labour Opposition was also mobilised, to warn

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Chamberlain that further measures under the White Paper, 1.e. promulgation of the Land restrictions, would provoke a Parliamentary debate.” Finally, Weizmann met with Bracken himself, on 4 December, 1939. Upon learning of the Zionists’ campaign against the Government’s Palestine policy, Churchill had taken affront, and passed ona 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.”

Bracken explained that Churchill was ‘terribly worn’ and not sleeping. 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.” 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 conversation to Zionist affairs: ‘You have stood at the cradle of the enterprise, | 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.” 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’. 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 goodwill 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, ostensibly 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 confronted 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 disposition 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, Churchill did not so much as refer to the problem which had prompted the American Zionists’ intervention the previous month — the six-month 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 regulations had been in operation for nine months already and, in his view, Jewish opinion, in Palestine and elsewhere, was already reconciled. 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.** 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

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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 Hitlerfree 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’."” 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.'* 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.”

The question of Churchill’s 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 information 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’.”” 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 horizons 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

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Europe.”! Churchill is singled out as ‘the one man who did understand the enormity of the crimes’.” But these accounts pose problems and contradictions. If Churchill did indeed understand the unique historical significance of

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the Jewish tragedy, then why did he, admittedly one of the most powerful 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 conscience, 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 understand that he should not bring news of the Holocaust to Churchill, and Anthony Eden was given full authority to determine the government’s policy in this respect.*’ 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.” 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

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that 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.’ 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 unaccompanied by any concrete action ... might have a hollow ring’.° 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?”

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.”*

Very shortly after the Eden statement, there arose a concrete opportunity 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’.” 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.” The Foreign Office response to Halifax was an unequivocal negative, 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.”!

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’.* 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 confrontation, and instructed his staff: ‘I cannot do this, so get me out of it with the utmost civility’. Miss Rathbone became something of a béte 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.™*

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.”

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.** 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 ...”

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,” 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.” 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 obtuseness to the ‘horrible plight of the Jews at the mercy of the Nazis’, and laid down a challenge: [ 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 ofsuch 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?*’

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.*! 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 refugees ‘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’.* 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.”

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 Colonial Empire’. 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.” 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.* At the same time, it should be noted that the ‘illegal’ traffic provoked 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 handiwork, 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.” 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 immigration 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.“ 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.” 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 respond to it. When his feelings were moved, he acted’.”” Yet Churchill’s easily-moved emotions were not usually allowed to prevail

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over 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 interventions 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’.*! There was both strength and weakness in Churchill’s modus operandi. He hada 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 Alanbrooke. The following passage, taken from his diaries, is worth quoting at length: His mind, interested in everything pertaining to the human lot, cast a searchlight 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 of Wales and Repulse were lost, and when the entire British and American positio 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 countryside, 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.”

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’.®’ This character trait has been noted also by those who may be counted among Churchill’s most devoted staff. The following is the assessment 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.

It is in this context, | 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 dissuade 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.” 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’.*© 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. Rud-

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nitchar) 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?” 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.** 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 skeletons and to over-react. Thus, on 25 January, 1940, after Chur-

chill 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.”

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.”

Churchill was concerned about two aspects only, in this order; first,

that the Navy’s limited resources should not be squandered in chasing 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’.®! 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 stimulating the traffic (true), and that enemy agents were being infiltrated into the Middle East in this fashion (never proved).® 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.” Harold Downie, head of the Colonial Office Middle East Department, had been assured by Admiralty officials that the ‘security argument’, i.e. the risk of infiltration of enemy agents, would persuade 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 settlements in Palestine’. 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.”

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. Chur-

chill 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.”

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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 transhipped 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’.”” 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’.” 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 destroying confidence, and embarrassing them, and the British Government, in Palestine. It would also destroy their immigration schedules’.”” Weizmann proposed that they send their own agent along with the refugees, to ‘help weed out the Fifth Columnists’. Ata 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.” 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.”! 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.” Churchill gave his assent the next day, over the telephone, ‘provided the refugees were not repatriated to the torments they had escaped in Europe, and provided they were treated decently in Mauritius’.~ 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 | should expect that the Jewish authorities themselves, as Weizmann can assure you, would be most efficient and vigilant purgers in this respect.”*

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 successful landing.” 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’.”* Churchill concurred, and agreed that since the action had been announced already, it should be carried out, while stipulating that ‘the conditions in Mauritius must not involve these people being caged-up for the duration of the war’.” 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 to

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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 refugees 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.” 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 telegraphed 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.” 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 cosequently bound to humour them in every possible way. That is a complete travesty of the position ...*”

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.*! 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 MacMichael’s 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 surveillance, 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 repercussions 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. 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, consequences 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 throughout 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.* 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’.“* 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 | 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 provided 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. | am sorry you should be worrying yourself 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.”

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." 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.*’ 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 Chur-

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chill’s own neuroses about the anti-semitic tendencies at Whitehall and in military circles. There was in fact an element of truth on both counts, with each side regularly nurturing the preconceptions 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.* 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 promulgated anti-Jewish discriminatory legislation, but withstood German pressure to yield up Hungarian Jewry.” 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 accepting 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 pos-

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sibly those 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).””

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 migration 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 27,500 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.”

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) 1s 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’.” 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’.”’ 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, particularly in election year, is desperately anxious to show that nothing, however fantastic, has been neglected which might lead to the rescue of Jews.”

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...” 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’.”° 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.” 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 InterGovernmental

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’.” However, both British and American apprehensions were eased by the Soviets, to whom the Brand/Eichmann offer was communicated.

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.” In its representations to both the British and American Governments, 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.'” 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’.'’' 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 prognosis, but still searched desperately for some device that might delay the deportations to Auschwitz.'” It was at this point that Churchill himself became involved. At the end ofJune, 1944, there arrived on Churchill’s desk a Jewish Agency report on the workings of the gas-chambers in the Nazi death camps.'”’ He 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’. 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 disregard 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.’ 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 governments 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.'” 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 of Jews in London’.'” 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 determination 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.'”"

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 ts 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 of any kind on this subject.'”

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. | 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 smokescreen, 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 underworld. He carried separate instructions from both the Hungarian and German secret services.'' The Cabinet Committee on Refugees met on 13 July, 1944. Supplied 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 probably 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 represented as rescuing European Jews’. Churchill endorsed the line taken by Eden (‘I entirely agree’), and the draft he had prepared for

the Americans.""' 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 focussed almost exclusively on the new intelligence, and suggested that if Brand were sent back to Budapest, it ‘would inevitably be interpreted as a response to the Gestapo’.!” On the very day the Foreign Office telegram was sent to Washington, 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.'"

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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 negative 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.'' 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 immigration 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.'" 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’.''® 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’.''’ However, there was also a ‘subsidiary anxiety’ influencing British decisions, one that was not entirely absent from Churchill’s own calculations. That was the concern 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.''* 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.'!'"?

Now

Weiz-

mann reported mistakenly that 60,000 Jews were being gassed and burned to death each day at Birkenau (the death camp at Auschwitz Il). Eden told Churchill that this figure might well be an exaggeration. But on the next day, Eden forwarded an additional report to Churchill, describing the four crematoria at the camp, with a gassing and burning capacity of 60,000 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.'” 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.'”!

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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.'” 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 operation 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.’ 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 unhelpful 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’.'* 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 proposals to the Minister of State, Richard Law’.'” 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 Churchill’s approval of the bombing of Auschwitz has been applauded by the historians, while blame for the fact that the operation 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 ministerial 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’.'”” 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’.'** This is a key point. Admiral Horthy did in fact order the deportations to be stopped on 8 July — although the news reached the Foreign Office only on 18 July, 1944. The news was published by the Associated Press the next day.’ 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.'” 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’.”! 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.'” 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 proceeding 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.'* 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’.'* 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.’”” To say that the Air Ministry’s letter reflected ‘impatience with the Foreign Office’s indecisive and dilatory attitude’'” 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.'” 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 Auschwitz.

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.'* 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.’ It 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.'*” However, it was not just the detailed lay-out of

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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. 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. Therefore, 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’.'* 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.'* 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.'“ 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 notin 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 tt 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." 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 question 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”’’.'*° 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 installations, 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 Juiy 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 occasions.

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 whe |e

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 occasions, 26 June and 25 August, American planes took photographs. The Frantic Shuttle was cancelled during the month ofJuly, 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.'* 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 poorly-supplied Poles. It was suspected, with good reason, that the Soviets deliberately allowed the Germans to liquidate the Home Army, a non-Communist, pro-Western force, linked to the Polish Government-in-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 difficulties, 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.'” 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 fundamental political concern to ensure the survival of a pro-Western regime in Poland after the war. Whatever the actual costeffectiveness 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, therefore, 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.'” A 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’.'*' 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 directive 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’.'” 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 gave 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 insignificant of trivialities.'” 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’.'* 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 policy.

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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:*... Its terrible that we have a P.M. who simply cannot conduct business. Its allhotair.” 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 infuriated with Roosevelt when the latter refused on 27 August to make a joint appeal, through fear of offending their ‘gallant Soviet allies’.'%° 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 of Cracow, virtually over Auschwitz itself .'’ 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’.'** In a pre-publication serialization of his book on Auschwitz, Professor 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.'”

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. '

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’. 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’.’ Upon 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 interview would give comfort to the Jews, who were being driven to

desperation’.* 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.°

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.° 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.’ 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.* 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.’

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Both ‘Baffy’ Dugdale and Ben-Gurion shared Fishman’s sentiments, 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 convincing them that they could rely on Churchill’s goodwill, which was supposed to manifest itself at the end of the war. However, developments 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 proposed 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 conviction. 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).""

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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’. 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 surprised, when informed by Weizmann." But 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, BenGurion 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 out... The Jewish people had been let down completely ... They were absolutely powerless and helpless, but it was most evil to deceive their people."

Yet none felt more deceived and betrayed than Weizmann himsclf, who had placed so much hope in Churchill, and done so much to orient the Zionists’ policy towards Britain. He agreed with BenGurion

that Churchill’s

letter was

worthless,

‘an insult to their

intelligence’. 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."* On 15 June, 1945, Weizmann replied to Churchill’s letter. He had

modified its tone considerably, following a telephone conversation with Martin.’ Weizmann wrote: I confess that its contents came as a great shock to me. I had always understood 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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THE JEWS

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 confinement to a territorial ghetto ‘consisting of five per cent of the area of Western Palestine’.'*° 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,”

The Palestine problem was not the only one postponed by Churchill, pending the results of the general election. At the Potsdam conference, 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 opportunities 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

CHURCHILL

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eel!

intended to shelve all the ‘really big decisions’ until then.'® 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 reconciled 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 ..."

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.”

On the day after Churchill’s electoral defeat, the Zionist Political Committee in London debated whether to make some public statement ‘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’.*! 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 intermediary, with some asperity: ‘Well, as a matter of fact, |don’t understand at all! I know, of course, that he is none too well. Neither am , if it comes to that’.’ Weizmann drew the conclusion that Churchill ‘obviously had his own line and did not want to be told by him what to do” In April, 1946, with the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine

about to produce its Report, Weizmann feared that it would recommend 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 government, 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 | 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.”

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.” On 1 August, 1946, there took place in the House of Commons a debate on the rising wave ofJewish 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 personal tribute to Dr Weizmann, and to urge the Yishuv 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. | 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.”

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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.” 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, | 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]. | have on purpose included his name among the founders of the Jewish 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.”

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 philosopher,

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 ...’” No progress was made via this avenue either. But one month later,

314 Weizmann

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS 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 further 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.”

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. | am sure we could have agreed immediately after the war upon a partition scheme which would have been more favourable to the Arabs’! 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 | 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 ...*

CHURCHILL

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w15

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 fora

Jewish National Home in Palestine, with immigration up to the full absorptive capacity’.*’ In his speech on | 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...”

If made in all sincerity, this statement was, to say the least, anachronistic. 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. Furthermore, 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, p.000). 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, masterminded 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 ...’* He returned to the same theme in January, 1949, when he adduced, in addition to the support given to the Arabs by the government 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’. 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’.” 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 ona rock until it chooses its moment to spread its wings in flight’. 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.”

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. | 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.”

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 ofpreventing Winston talking the nonsense he did about throwing up the Mandate unless America cooperated 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.*!

Amery had pinpointed the against British tenure of the indeed did the Zionists, that delayed, quite wrongly and

second reservation held by Churchill Mandate in Palestine. He believed, as their evacuation of Palestine was being unnecessarily, by the Labour govern-

CHURCHILL

IN OPPOSITION,

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S17

ment’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 reoccupation of the Canal zone in time of an emergency we will impair the prospects of American aid’.” He elaborated upon the same theme, two months later, during the August debate on Palestine: ... His Mayesty’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 ...*’

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 stubbornly 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 proposed 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 ... We scuttle from Egypt which we twice successfully defended from mas-

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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.”

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 ...*°

Churchill headedly when the clearly to

simply could not fathom out how Labour had so lightdecided to abandon India, while holding on to Palestine, economic and strategic arguments, in his view, all pointed 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? ... It is with deep grief that I watched the clattering down of the British

CHURCHILL

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Fike

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.”

By March, 1947, there was a growing consensus in Parliament in favour of withdrawing from Palestine. Churchill’s speech was punctuated 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’.”” 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 considerations 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 contribution 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 ir really too silly to consume our time in the House of Commons this afternoon ...*

Both Bevin and Churchill were following popular sentiment when, in view of the rising wave ofJewish 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, as

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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 ...”

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 polibies.”” 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 recognition, 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 Morrison-Grady

proposal

was

for community

provincial

autonomy,

under a central, British administration.”' 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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S24

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.”

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 functions 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.*

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 ofgrip on the part of Ministers concerned, but also, | am afraid, to the very strong and direct streak of bias and prejudice on the part of the Foreign Secretary.”

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 Ambassador to the Court of St James, Eliahu Elath. Churchill remained in

a)

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

bed for the entire interview. After speaking highly of Chaim Weizmann, 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 Mediterranean 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’.* 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 worldview, 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 impression 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

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Israe! Zangwill’s 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 anti-Semitic feeling. There is also something indicative in the fact that his wife felt no compunction in writing to ker 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 prejudices 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

CONCLUSION

525

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 of the Elders of Zion, 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 position 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 historical 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 private, 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 command 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 Africa 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 pro-

CONCLUSION

By

posed to relinquish ‘mighty India’, while clinging tenaciously, at enormous expense, to ‘tiny Palestine’. For Jewish Zionists, Zionism is their movement of national liberation, 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 M.Ps: 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 Palestine 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-tooappropriate 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

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THE JEWS

him, 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 buffetings. 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

CONCLUSION

BA

Zionist cause jolted to an abrupt halt. The campaign of terror waged 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.

NOTES FOREWORD . 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.

. Ibid., p.8.

INTRODUCTION . Oskar K. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on Jewish Problems — A Half Century Survey, London, 1956, p.16.

. Diary entry, 14 May, 1948.

ih)

CHAPTER fk

ONE

‘

. Anthony Storr’s contribution to Churchill Revised ... forms the basis of the following paragraphs. . Storr, Churchill Revised ... pp.224, 228-229, 244-245.

. Ibid., p.224.

. Ibid., pp.238-241. . Cf. A.G. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests and Kings, London, 1914, p.229.

. LeoS. Amery, My Political Life, vol.1, London, 1953, p.394. Amery gives no date

WN Nn

for Balfour’s comment. . Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939, London, 1970,

pp.23-24. Churchill’s 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, 1901-1907, Boston, 1969, p.339.

. 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.

. Churchill Revised ... p.260. . Clement Attlee, An Observer Appreciation, 1965, quoted in Peter Stansky, Churchill: A Profile, London, 1973, p.196. . Ronald Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905-1908, London,

1969, p.504.

. Cf. Harold Nicolson, The War Years, Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, New

York, 1967, pp.85, 344-345, 412.

. Robert Rhodes James, Victor Cazalet, London, 1976, p.94.

. Attlee, in Stansky, A Profile ... p.196. . Goronwy Rees, ‘Churchill: A Minority View’, reprinted from ‘After the Ball’,

NOTES

.

. . . .

. . .

. .

.

331

Encounter, November, 1965, in Stansky, A Profile ... p.215. A case in point was when Churchill passed over Field-Marshal Alanbrooke for the command of the Allied invasion of Europe. Although Churchill had promised Alanbrooke, he later offered the command to General Eisenhower, without so much as consulting, or explaining it to his own CIGS. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, taken from the diaries of Lord Moran, Boston, 1966, pp.110-111. Ibid., p.828. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests ... p.229. Sir Harold Nicolson, quoted by Rhodes James, Churchill ... p.25. J.H. Plumb, ‘Churchill the Historian’, in Churchill Revised ... pp.155-56, 163. Moran ... p.37. On Churchill’s misapprehensions regarding the military threat posed by Germany in the 1930s, cf. Rhodes James, Churchill ... pp.235-238. Rhodes James, Churchill ... p.40. Moran, p.828. Clement Attlee, An Observer Appreciation, 1965, quoted in Stansky, A Profile... pails Rees, ‘A Minority View’, quoted in ibid., p.212. Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 22.

. A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, London, 1964, p. 82. . H.C. Deb. 4th. Series, vol. 149, cols. 994-995.

. Hyam, Elgin and ... p.499. . Ronald Hyam, ‘Winston Churchill Before 1914’, review article in The Historical Journal, vol. 12/1, 1969, pp. 171-172. . Rhodes James, Churchill ... p.19. . R.F. Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill, Oxford, 1981, pp. 383-85. . Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 32. . Moran ... pp.328 ff. . Taylor, Churchill Revised, p. 25. . Lord Beaverbrook, The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George, London, 1963, p. 34.

a . . . . .

Ibideipr 33: Hyam, Elgin and ... p. 500. Isaiah Berlin, Mr Churchill in 1940, London, 1949, p. 16. Rees, ‘A Minority View’, in Stansky, A Profile ... p. 209. Moran ... p.747. Arno J. Mayer, ‘The Power Politician and the Counterrevolutionary’, reprinted

. . . . . . .

Taylor, Churchill Revised ... p. 17. Moran ... p. 747. Quoted in Rhodes James, Churchill ... p. 26. Hyam, Churchill Before 1914... p. 172. Hyam, Elgin and ... pp. 500-501. Amery, My Political ... p. 37. Hyam, Churchill Before 1914 ... p. 172. The five previous occasions on which Churchill used this phrase were: at an Oldham bye-election, in 1899; in a speech on South Africa, in 1906; on Kenya, in 1907; regarding a dam across the

from The Critical Spirit, Boston, 1967, extracted in Stansky, A Profile... p. 177.

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.

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

2, Ibid:; p= 137, . Franz Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles Henry Churchill’, The Herzl Year Book, No. 4,

1961-1962, p. 8.

s Ibid... ps 2: . Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 139. . Ibid., p. 134, and Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles ...’, pp. 1-2. . Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles ...’, p. 9.

. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 135. . Col. Churchill-Sir Moses Montefiore, 14 June, 1841, reprinted in Lucien Wolf,

Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question, London, 1919, p. 119. . Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 135, and Kobler, ‘Colonel Charles ...’, p. 23. . Wolf, Notes on ... p. 123, resolution of 8 November, 1842. . Chaim Bermant, The Cousinhood: The Anglo-Jewish Gentry, London, 1971, p. 247.

. Ibid., p. 246.

. Quoted in Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 136. . Blanche E. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, 2 vols, London, 1939, vol. 1, p. 325. . Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration, London, 1961, p. 157.

. Dugdale, Arthur James ... p. 327. » bids vol Isps325svolh2s pals9:

. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 198. . In conversation with Harold Nicolson, quoted in Stein, The Balfour ... p. 157. . Stein, The Balfour ... p. 157.

. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, New York, 1970, pp. 29, 50. First edn., 1896. 23.

Colin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939, London, 1979, pp. 5-6.

. 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. . Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... pp. 11-12, 67-69, 79. . Ibid., pp. 14-17. . Ibid., p. 118. . 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. 425. Colonel Meinertzhagen was Political Officer attached to the Military Administration

in Palestine,

1919-1920,

and later Military Adviser at the

Colonial Office, 1921-1924.

. Stein, The Balfour ... p. 165. . Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on ... pp. 46 ff.

. John A. Garrard, The English and Immigration, 1880-1910, Oxford, 1971, p. 42.

. Ibid. . Bernard Gainer, The Alien Invasion: The Origins of the Aliens Act of 1905, London, 1972, pp. 190, 146, 185. Note the order of the motives imputed to Churchill.

. Garrard, The English ... p. 44. . Ibid., pp. 45-46. . H.C. Deb. 4th series, vol. 149, col. 155.

. Ibid. . For instance, in 1903, 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

NOTES

333

national life, by shunning intermarriage with Anglo-Saxons’ quoted in Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 25. Bo: 40. 41.

The Jewish Chronicle, editorial, 14 July, 1905.

Letter of 19 July, 1905, quoted in Stein, The Balfour ... p. 165. Nahum Sokolow, The History of Zionism, 1600-1918, London, 1919, pp. xxix ff. Garrard, The English ... pp. 39, 144.

42. 43. 44,

Ibid., p. 143. Randolph

Churchill,

Winston

S. Churchill,

Vol. I], The

Young Statesman,

1901-1914, Boston, 1967, p. 80. Manchester Jews organized a Committee to fight the Aliens legislation; after that battle was lost, in August, 1905, 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 ofthe Jewish Board of Guardians; Barrow Belisha, uncle of Lord

Belisha, and Dr Joseph Dulberg, secretary, who was a physician. 4S: Garrard, The English ... p. 143. 46. 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. Ath series, vols. 132, 133. . Churchill-Laski, 30 May, 1904, The Times, 31 May, 1904, reprinted in R. Churchill, Churchill, companion volume II/1, Boston, 1969, p. 356.

. . . . .

Ibid. R. Churchill, Churchill, companion vol. Il/1, p. 356. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on ... p. 59; Jewish Chronicle, 15 July, 1904. R. Churchill, Churchill, vol. Il, pp. 82-83. Churchill letter of 23 November, 1904, probably to Reigate Liberal Associa-

tion, ibid., p. 358.

. Ibid.

. Laski—Churchill, R. Churchill, Churchill, vol. Ul, 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, 1905, 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,

1983, pp. 75-76.

. Cf. Robert G. Weisbord, African Zion, Philadelphia, 1968, pp. 116-17, 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, 1946, no. 4 (in Hebrew). The Uganda Railway cost £6 millions to build, yet the local taxes raised did not even cover the costs of its administration. The Exchequer had to inject a further £150,000 per annum. Coyli David Vital, Zionism: The Formative Years, Oxford, 1982, p. 440.

CJ-L*

CHURCHILL

AND

THE

JEWS

. Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, Cambridge, Mass. 1969, pp. 154-55. . Weisbord, African ... p.258.

. Vital, Zionism ... p. 440.

. . . .

Ibid., pp. 440-441. Ibid., p. 441. 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. 436-37. . Marmor, The Diplomatic negotiations ... p.129.

. Quoted in ibid., pp. 201-202. . Dugdale, Arthur James ... vol. 1, pp. 326-327; Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, New York, 1966, pp. 109-111. 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. 219. On Balfour’s

political motives for meeting Weizmann, cf. Alderman, The Jewish Community in... pp. 95-6.

. Tuchman, The Bible ... p. 198. . Sokolow, History of ... pp. Xxix-xx. . 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. 215216.

. 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—Zangwill,

20 December,

1905, A36/48, Central

Zionist Archives,

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, 1905, ibid. . Dulberg—Churchill, 26 December, 1905, ibid. . Weisbord, African ... p. 233.

. The Jewish Chronicle, 5 January, 1906. The paper published a full page of news about ITO meetings. . Cf. Dulberg—Zangwill, 11 and 13 January, 1906, A36/48. 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/1, gives the date as 2 January, pp. 494-95. . Ibid. . Telegram in A36/48, CZA.

. . . .

Zangwill—Dulberg, 9 January, 1906, ibid. My emphasis. Zangwill-Joynson-Hicks, 9 January, 1906, ibid. Dulberg—Zangwill, 11 January, 1906, ibid. Zangwill—Churchill, 12 January, 1906, ibid.

. Edward Marsh (Churchill’s secretary)—Zangwill, 15 January, 1906, quoted in

Weisbord, African ... p. 235. . Weisbord, African ... p. 235. . For this and following, see ibid., pp. 244-248. . Churchill-Zangwill, 13 July, 1906, Randolph Churchill, Churchill, companion

vol, UIs pp. 552-93.

NOTES

335

yee 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.

96. 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.

Die Edward Marsh—Rabbi M. Gaster, 31 January, 1908, Gaster Papers. 98. Until the entry of the Turks into World War One on the German side, England

ele

100. 101.

102. 103. 104. 10S. 106. 107.

.

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, 207. The Jewish Board of Deputies, established in 1760, 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. 80-81. Dr Alderman calculated that it needed only the defection of 621 of the Jewish voters to topple Churchill. Dulberg later assured Churchill that 95 per cent of Manchester Jews had voted for him, Dulberg—Churchill, 25 April, 1908, R. Churchill, Churchill, companion vol: II/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, 1924, and correspondence, 24/2487, CZA.

. For the June speech, cf. Garrard, The English ... p. 132; 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 1911, cf. Gainer, The Alien ... pp. 105-207. . Letter from S. Forde-Ridley, 5 January, 1911. . Times editorial, 10 January, 1911. . The Times,

16 March,

1911, p. 8.

. The Times, 18 April, 1911. . R. Churchill, Churchill: Il, pp. 395-396. . Marian Jack, ‘The Purchase of the British Government’s shares in the British Petroleum Company 1912-1914’, Past and Present, no. 39, April, 1968, p. 164.

. [bid.

336

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

123. 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.

124. Ibid., p. 142. 125. Ibid., p. 143.

126. Robert Hengriques, Marcus Samuel, London, 1960, pp. 549, 564. 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. 127. Bermant, The Cousinhood ... p. 287. 128. Jack, The Purchase of ... p. 150. 129. Foster, Lord Randolph ... p. 39S. 130.

Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 1, Youth: 1874-1900, Bos-

ton, 1966, pp. 174, 206, 273-74, 330. On the Rothschilds, see also Virginia Cowles, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune, New York, 1973. 131.

Clementine Churchill to husband,

12 February, 1931, Martin Gilbert, Chur-

chill, companion vol. IV/2, Boston, 1981, p. 268. 132. Jack, The Purchase of ... pp. 150-151. 133. Bermant, The Cousinhood ... p. 308. 134. 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 of ... p. 152. The Admiralty eventually built tanks with 4'4 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. 308. Henriques, Marcus ... pp. 554, 568-69.

135. Jack, The Purchase of ... pp. 149-150.

136. Ibid., pp. 153, 157. 137. Ibid., p. 164. 138. Ibid., pp. 165, 163.

139. H.C. Deb. Sth series, vol. 140. The Times, 23 May, 1914, to step up its production 141. Jack, The Purchase of ... 142.

H.C. Deb. fifth series, vol. 1xiii, col. 1133.

143. Ibid., col.

144. 145.

1v, cols 1465-1583; Henriques, Marcus ... p. 570. p. 8. The government investment would allow APOC from 75,000, to 500,000 tons annually. p. 163; Henriques, Marcus ... p. 572.

1151. 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. 581. H.C. Deb. Supra, col. 1151. Ibid., col. 1153. George Lloyd was Conservative M.P., 1910-1925, High

Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, 1925—1929, and Churchill’s Colonial Secretary, 1940-1941. He voted against the purchase of the shares. 146. 147. 148.

Ibid., col. 1208. Ibid., col. 1229. Ibid., cols. 1238-39.

149. Report of 23 June, 1914, quoted in Henriques, Marcus ... pp. 586-87. 150. Ibid., p. 585. When Henriques wrote the biography, he asked Churchill for his comment, but the latter replied courteously that he had no recollection of the episode.

151. Jack, The Purchase of ... pp. 164-167. 52

lbid= pa 16a.

NOTES [Syoie 154. Sys 156. 74

ei) |

Ibid., p. 168.

Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... pp. 233-34.

Ibid. 159% Ibid. Speech of 3October, 1923, quoted in Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary, ed. Keith Middlemass, vol. 1, 1916-1925,

London,

1969, p. 246.

158. 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. 159: Mr Edwin Montagu, later Secretary of State for India, 1917-1922. 160. National Review, December, 1912, quoted in Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 78. 161. Churchill-Lloyd George, 26 December, 1918, Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. IV, Boston, 1975, pp. 176-177. 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. 162. 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 Vereté, ‘The Balfour Declaration and its Makers’, Middle Eastern Studies, Frank Cass, vol. 6/1, Jan. 1970, pp. 48-76. On the coalition Cabinet’s attitude to the Declaration after the war, see below, p. 85ff.

163.

Leo Amery—Sir Edward Carson, 4 September, 1917, in The Leo Amery Diaries, vol. 1, 1896-1929, eds. John Barnes, David Nicholson, London, 1980, pp. 170171. 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, 1916,

and First Lord of the Admiralty from December, 1916 to July, 1917. He 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 gratitude, ibid., p. 177.

(a Palestinian leader) fell on Amery’s neck with

164. Weizmann, Trial and ... p. 150. 16S. 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 of Several Hands, eds. Meyer W. Weisgal and Joel Carmichael, London, 1963, p. 148, and Howard Sachar, The Emergence of 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 The Weizmann Letters, Vol. VII, August, 1914 to 166.

November, 1917, ed. Leonard Stein, Jerusalem, 1975, p. 268. Cf. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. Il, 1914-1916, Boston, 1971,

and companion volumes of documents. 167. Weizmann Letters, vol. VII, pp. xxi, xxv1. 168. Cf. Holmes, Anti-Semitism ... p. 142. 169. Lord Eustace Percy, The Responsibilities of the League, London, 1919(?). The

338

CHURCHILL

AND THE JEWS

passage on Zionism and Bolshevism was reprinted, without comment, in The Zionist Review, no.

10, 1921, p. 178.

170. Stein, The Balfour ... p. 162. 171. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 484, Stein, The Balfour ... p. 349, and Holmes, Anti-Semitism... p. 143. 172. Jewish Chronicle, editorial, 13 February, 1920. 173. During this period there took place some 887 ‘large’ and some 349 ‘lesser’ pogroms against 530 Jewish communities, leaving some 60,000 dead and many

more wounded. Rabinowicz, Winston Churchill on... pp. 89-90. 174. Churchill-Lloyd George, 10 October, 1919, Gilbert, Churchill, vol. 1V, p. 342.

175. Ibid., p. 343. 176. Ibid., p. 330.

177. 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, 1971, pp. Taeyer

4. Ibid., p. 78. On the late nineteenth century ‘scramble for Africa’, see R. Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism, New York, 1968, pp. 464, 466, 471-72; 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 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 of the war, 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. 39-40. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Diary entry of 5 August, 1929. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... p. 22. Hyam, Elgin and... p. 499. Hyam, Churchill before 1914... p. 169. Hyam, Elgin and... p. 506. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... p. 21.

20°

ibid:, p; 31.

19. Ibid., p. 166.

21. Churchill-Lloyd George, 25 October, 1919, Gilbert, Churchill... companion vol: iv/2, Boston, 1978, pp. 937-39. 22.

bid.

NOTES

6 ble,

. Churchill-Lloyd George, 13 June, 1920, Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 484, and

companion vol: iv/1, p. 1120. . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... pp. 104-105, 271. . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... pp. 142, 274. . Briton Cooper Busch, Britain, India and the Arabs, 1914-1921, Berkeley, 1971, Deol 27, Voids, px43.1p . Rhodes James, Churchill... p. 139-141; Gilbert Churchill: iv, p. 610. . 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. . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... pp. 14-15. . Ibid., p.19. . Ibid., pp. 15, 180, also A.E. Montgomery, ‘Lloyd George and the Greek Question, 1918-1922’, in Lloyd George: Twelve Essays, ed. A.J.P. Taylor, London,

1971.

. Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, p. 938. » Ibidap1 939: . Sir Henry Wilson—Haldane, 28 December, 1920, in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/3, Boston, 1978, pp. 1275-1276.

. In February, 1920, 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. . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... p. 196. . Churchill Memorandum

on Expenditure in Mesopotamia, 1 May, 1920, WO

32/5744.

. Ibid. . Churchill Memorandum of 1 May, 1920, supra. On scheme for RAF control of Mesopotamia, cf. Busch, Britain, India and... p. 374. . CIGS Wilson Memorandum to Cabinet, CP 1320, 5 May, 1920, in Cab 24/106,

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 24/107. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 507.

. 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. 1260-1262.

9. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 504; Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... p. 202. . Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man ofSecrets, vol. 2, London, 1972, p. 201.

. Memorandum of 1 May, 1920, WO 32/5744. . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... pp. 202, 263-65. . Major-General Sir C.E. Callwell, Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, 2 vols. London, 1969, vol. 2, p. 273, diary entry for 13 December, 1920.

. Darwin, Britain, Egypt to the Colonial Office rejection of his proposal would in fact return to

and... p. 203, even suggests that the transfer of control was a compensation to Churchill, in respect of the to evacuate Mesopotamia — a proposal which Churchill in September, 1922.

GHURCHILE

. . 50. .

AND

EEE EWS

Roskill, Hankey... diary entry for 31 December, 1920, p. 202. Cf. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, pp.528, 531, 593-94. Hankey diary, 31 December, 1920, supra. Martin Gilbert, Churchill, vol. Ill, Boston, 1971, pp. 450-451. Gilbert, Churchill: 1V, p. S05, and Busch, Britain, India and... p. 403. Gilbert, Churchill: IV, pp. 508-509, and companion vol: iv/2, p. 1292. Curzon to his wife, 14 February, 1921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: IV, p. 528. Sir James Masterton-Smith was Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Colonies, 1921-1924.

sbide np. 53% . Edward Marsh, A Number of People, London, 1939, p. 399. John Bowle, Viscount Samuel, London, 1957, p. 212, n.3.

. Aaron S. Klieman, Foundations of British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921, Baltimore, 1970, pp. 247-48. 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, compan-

ion vol: iv/2, p. 1371. . Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, companion vol: III/1, Boston, 1973, pp. 715-716. . Gilbert, Churchill and Zionism, p. 5. . Cf. Isaiah Friedman, The Question of Palestine, 1914-1918, London, 1973,

chapter 2. . Churchill-Lloyd George, 13 June, 1920, Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 484.

. 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 371/45378, E4939. . Winston

S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries,

London, New York, 1937, p.

LS3s . Colonel R. Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary, 1917-1956, London, 1959, p.

33, and also John Lord, Duty, Honor, Empire: The Life and Times of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, New York, 1970, p. 375.

. Cf. Basil Liddell Hart, ‘The Military Strategist’, in Churchill Revised, p. 223. >. 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. . David Garnett, The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, New York, 1939, p. 267. . Lawrence minute of 25 February, 1921, in FO 371/6375, E2354. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 545. 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. 82. 83. 84. 8S.

Lawrence

minute, 25 February,

1921, FO 371/6375, E2354.

Clayton—Bell, 17 June, 1918, Wasserstein, The British in... p. 12. Meinertzhagen, Middle East... p. 17. Meinertzhagen—Smuts, 20 July, 1921, Z4/16055, CZA. Churchill-Sir James Masterton-Smith, 24 November, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill,

companion vol: iv/3, pp. 1675-76. 86. Churchill—Cox, 28 November, 1921, ibid., pp. 1677-78.

NOTES

34]

. Cab 32/2, vol. 1, p. 8, quoted in Klieman, Foundations of... p. 247.

. Churchill—Peel,

16 March,

1937, and this paragraph from Martin Gilbert,

Winston S. Churchill, Vol. V, Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939, Boston, 1977, pp.

847-48. . L.B. Namier, In the Margin of History, London, 20:

1939, pp. 282-83.

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: iv, p. 521.

. Cf. Busch, Britain, India and... p. 271, and Klieman, Foundations of... p. 96. 2.

Transjordan was detached, by decision of the Cairo conference. See below.

. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, pp. 502-503. . Lawrence—Edward Marsh, 17 January, 1921, ibid., pp. companion vol: iv/2, p. 1314. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 545.

515-16, and Churchill,

. Churchill-Lloyd George, 14 March, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol:

IV/2 ape 89: . Lloyd George—Churchill, 16 March, 1921, Lloyd George papers, quoted in Busch, Britain, India and... p. 468. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 550. . Callwell, Field Marshal Wilson... vol. 2, p. 281.

. Churchill-Lloyd George, 23 March, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: V2 ps aD.

. Ibid., p. 1413.

. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1918-1929; York, 1929;p.495:

The Aftermath, New

. Callwell, Field-Marshal Wilson, vol. 2, diary entry for 9December, 1921, p. 316. . T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Penguin edition, London, 1962,

p.283. First published privately in 1926. . Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... p. 221. During the 1920s, following the establishment of the British Mandate, Mesopotamia became known generally as Iraq. . Cf. Peter Hennessy, ‘Lawrence’s Secret “Slush Fund’”? The Times, 11 Feb. 1980.

. Khieman, Foundations of... pp. 240-241. . Ibid., p. 244.

CHAPTER

FOUR

. Cited in David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties, vol. Il. London,

1938, p. 1147.

. Ibid., pp. 1149-50. . Balfour (Washington)—Hughes,

13 January, 1922, CO 733/30, 5300.

. Cf. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and... pp. 17-18. . Memorandum respecting Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia (Paris), 11 August, nAbBwWhy 1919, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First Series, Vol. IV,

H.M.S.O., London, 1952, p. 345.

. Minutes of 6 August, 1919, ibid., p. 330. Vansittart was a member of the British delegation to the Peace Conference. . Minute by G.J. Kidston, Counsellor, 16 October, 1919, FO 371/4184, 141037. 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

CHURCHILL

AND

THE

JEWS

from French to British hands. In return, the French Premier apparently received carte blanche in Syria. . Namier, In the Margins... pp. 282-83.

. Garnett, The Letters of... p. 333. . Churchill speech on 24 March, 1936, H.C. Deb. Sth Series, Vol. 310, col. 1114. ~ On 1 March, 1921, Dr Weizmann sent Churchill a 1000-word memorandum,

appealing that the Jewish National Home be permitted to extend up to the Hijaz railway, or even beyond. Gilbert, Churchill: IV, pp. 540-41. Dr Gilbert claims that Churchill had by that time already decided to separate Transjordan from Palestine.

. Busch, Britain, India and... p. 472. . Gilbert, Churchill: IV, p. 553.

. Ibid.

. Ibid., p. 561. . Ibid’; p. 962: palbideep: 072). . Ibid., p. 576. . Bowle, Viscount Samuel, p. 213. . 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 of Chaim Weizmann, vol. X, Ed. Bernard Wasserstein, Jerusalem, 1977, nor 2 7py Los.

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 30 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: iv, pp. 556, 572.

Churchill failed to secure the post, for which he blamed

Lloyd George

personally.

. Churchill, The Aftermath, p. 494; and Balfour’s comment on it in Blanche Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour (2 vols, London, 1936), vol. Il, p. 337.

23.

The Colonial Office files date the meetings as having taken place on 28 March, CO 733/2, 21698; Rhodes James, Complete Speeches... dates the meeting as 31 March, vol. III, London, 1974, pp. 3083-84; this is patently wrong, as Churchill left Jerusalem on 30 March. See also, Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 562.

. The Palestinians’ memorandum is re-printed from the Churchill papers, 17/20, in Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1385-88. . Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 566, note 1.

. Report of early May, 1921, circulated by Churchill to cabinet as CP 3030, 13 June, in Cab 24/125. 7. Meinertzhagen minute, 16 June, 1921, CO 733/13, 19675. ; CP 3030y supra.

29.

Notes in CO 733/2, 21698, also Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1421-22. t CO'733/2, 21698: . 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 1920. He returned to England in 1931. . Cf. Churchill conversation with Thomas Marlowe, editor of the Daily Mail, 30

May, 1921, in Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 588.

NOTES

343

a ilbidsap) ost: . Beaverbook, The Decline... p. 33. . Minutes of Cabinet meeting in Cab 23/25; Wilson diary entry, in Callwell, Field

Marshal Wilson: Ul, p. 293. . Minutes of Cabinet meeting at 5.30 p.m., 31 May, 1921, Cab 23/25. . Meeting of 1 June, 1921, cab 27/133. . Diary entry of H.A.L. Fisher (Minister of Education, 1916-1922), 1 June, 1921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill, vol: iv, p. 590.

. Lloyd George report to Cabinet committee on Constantinople, 9 June, 1921, cab 27/133. . Churchill-Lloyd George, 2 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, vol: iv, pp. 590-591,

and companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1489-91; also Callwell, Field-Marshal Wilson... vol. Il, p. 294. . By paragraph 132 of the Sévres 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 1921-1922, 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 of American Palestine Relations, Washington, 1949, and The Weizmann Letters, vol. XI, ed. Bernard Wasserstein, Jerusalem, 1977, pp. 34, 55, note 3. 42. Samuel—Churchill, 4 July, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1536-37; also Samuel—Colonial Office, 4 June, 1921, CO 733/3, 28101. 43. Churchill-Lloyd George, 2 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2,

pp. 1489-91. My emphasis. Gilbert, Churchill, iv, p. 592. Cf. discussion in Cabinet on 14 June, 1921, Cab 23/26. John Darwin has asserted that Lloyd George’s suggestion was facetious, and that Churchill responded angrily, by calling the Prime Minister’s bluff, and suggesting tht 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. 46. Churchill-Lloyd George, 9 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1498-99. 47. Beaverbrook, The Decline... p. 42. 48. Lloyd George—Churchill, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, p. 1500. 49. Curzon—Lloyd George, 10 June, 1921, p. 1501. 50. Churchill—Curzon, 11 June, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp.

44, 45,

1501-1502.

Su Cabinet meeting of 14 June, 1921, in Cab 23/26. 525 Gilbert, Churchill: iv, pp. 576-580. =)5)5 Ibid., pp. 582-83, and Meinertzhagen, Middle East... 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

of 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.

CHURCHILL

AND

THE

JEWS

. Wasserstein, The British in... p. 52. . Meinertzhagen, Middle East... p. 99. . Cf. Brunton report, supra; Samuel report, 15 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 25835; also Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. S85, Wasserstein, The British in... p. 101.

. Churchill-Sir Herbert Creedy (Secretary of the War Office), 1S February, 1921, and Churchill-Lloyd George, 18 March, 1921, in Gilbert, Churchill, compan-

ion vol: iv/2, pp. 1353-54, 1401-1402. . Churchill-Samuel, 4 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 21889. . Churchill-Samuel, CO 733/13, 23742.

. Conversation between Young and Landman, in Z24/302/4A, CZA. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 585, 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. 62. 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 70—80,000. The actual number which reached Palestine until the suspension in May, 1921, was 10,650, see statistical

table in Mossek, p. 169. . Wasserstein, The British in... p. 11. . Samuel—Colonial Office, 8 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 24660. . Churchill-Samuel, 12 May, 1921, CO 733/23742.

. Landman interview with Young, Bullard of Colonial Office, and Forbes-Adams of the Foreign Office, in Z4/4/302/4A, CZA. . Speech of 9 March, 1922, H.C. Deb. Sth 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. . For this and following, see CO 733/3, 23678. . Cf. Samuel—Colonial Office, 8 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 24660. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 586.

. Ibid., pp. 586-87, and CO 733/3, 23678. . This key phrase, in Churchill’s telegram of 14 May (CO 733/3, 23678), does not appear in the biography. . Samuel—Colonial Office, 12 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 23678. Samuel had first established an Advisory Council in October, 1920. This functioned until 1922,

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. . Minute by Shuckburgh, 20 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 24660. . Churchill-Samuel, 25 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 25349.

. Minutes in Cab 23/25.

. Samuel—Colonial Office, 31 May, 1921, CO 733/3, 27262.

NOTES

.

-

ae . .

345

Moslem—Christian associations had been active in the nationalist cause during the period of military rule, from 1918-1920. 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 of... pp. 38, 93-94, 285-86. Officials’ minutes of 1 June, and Churchill-Samuel, 2 June, 1921, in CO 733/3, 27262. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1477-78. 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. lextin €O1733/5530263» Ibid. E. Friesel, Zionist Policy after the Balfour Declaration, 1917-1922, Tel Aviv, 1977, pp. 257-58. (in Hebrew)

. Churchill-Samuel, 4 June, 1921, CO 733/3, 27792. 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, 28358, ibid. Gilbert, Churchill: IV, p. 589. Congreve-Samuel, 5 June, 1921, CO 733/3, 29731. 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. Ibid.

. Cf. Shuckburgh minute to Churchill, 10 June, 1921, CO 733/16, 24067. . Churchill initials, 11 June, 1921, ibid.

. Minute of 10 June, 1921, CO 733/3, 28538. . Meinertzhagen, Middle East... entry for 4 August, 1921, p. 108. . Minute of 10 June, 1921, CO 733/3, 28358. . H.C. Deb. Sth series, vol. 143.

. Cf. minutes of conference of Colonial Office legal advisers, 12-13 August, 1921, COW33MA, 42532. . Churchill-Shuckburgh,

15 June,

1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion

vol:

IV/2, p. 1508. . Churchill-Samuel, 21 June, 1921, FO 371/6379. . H.C. Deb, Sth series, vol. 143; also report in The Times, 15 June, 1921, p. 14.

. Gilbert, Churchill: IV, p. 598. NO2s Lloyd George in fact congratulated Churchill on his ‘Mesopotamian’ perform-

ance, ibid. p: 599. . H.C. Deb. Sth series, vol. 143, col. 332. Esmond Cecil Harmsworth, the son of Lord Rothermere, was M.P. for the Isle of Thanet, 1919-1929. 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 (1903), and The Times (1908). He was the first owner to make papers profit-

able, therefore independent of Party subsidies. 104. 105. 106.

The Times, editorial, 15 June, 1921, p. 11. Ibid., 16 June, 1921, editorial, p. 11. Younger—Chamberlain, 10 June, 1921, quoted in Beaverbrook, The Decline... . 268.

i 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.

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

7, H.C. Deb, Sth series, vol. 144, col. 1529.

. Ibid., col. 1534. 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. . Ibid., cols. 1540-43.

| Ibid.col® 1626: . Meinertzhagen, Middle East... diary entry for 5 July, 1921, pp. 101-102. . Weizmann—Balfour,

8 July, 1921, Z4/16955, CZA.

. Cf. Weizmann—Dr M.D. Eder (chairman of the Zionist Commission), 19 July, 1921, ibid. The Washington conference lasted from November, 1921 to Febru-

ary, 1922. Balfour headed the British delegation. . The Weizmann

Letters, vol. X, ed. Wasserstein, No. 298, note 1, p. 306.

. Weizmann—Schmarya Levin, 15 July, 1921, ibid., pp. 214-17. There is no clear date for the meeting.

. The following is based primarily on Weizmann’s account of the meeting, in Weizmann—Ahad Ha’am, 30 July, and Weizmann-Sir William Deedes, 31 July, 1921, ibid., nos. 227, 228. Cf. also Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 621, which also

relies on Weizmann’s record of the meeting. M7

Balfour, as we have already noted, fluctuated wildly. In January, 1919, he had

written to Lord Curzon: ‘As far as |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: iv, p. 621, 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. 227, Wasserstein himself states that Churchill ‘demurred’ from this interpretation. . Weizmann—Ahad Ha’am, 30 July, 1921, supra. . Weizmann—Deedes, 31 July, 1921, supra. . Gilbert, Churchill: 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.

2. Weizmann—Ahad

Ha’am, 30 July, 1921, supra.

. Ibid. . For this and following, cf. minute by Young, 38372.

1 August, 1921, CO 733/14,

. 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... pp. 106-107. 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. 126. Meinertzhagen minute of 2 August, 1921, CO 733/14, 38372. ITs Shuckburgh minute of 3 August, 1921, ibid. PZ. Cabinet memorandum, 11 August, 1921, CP 3213, Cab 24/127. My emphasis. 129. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, pp. 625 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 733/14, 38372.

NOTES 130. Sie 325 133: 134.

347

Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 625.

Ibid., and companion vol: iv/2, p. 1593. My emphasis. Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1594-95, Ibid., p. 1601; also Young minute, 22 August, 1921, CO 733/14, 38372. Minutes

of Cabinet meeting on

18 August,

1921, in Cab 23/26; Gilbert,

Churchill: iv, pp. 627-28, 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. 130% Cab 23/26, and H.A.L. Fisher diary, entry for 17 August, 1921, Ms Fisher, Box 8a, The Bodleian Library, Oxford. 136. Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 1, 1916-1925, ed. Keith Middlemass, London, 1969, p. 246.

GEA RALE

Revi

. Negotiations began in London on 11 October, 1921. . Diary entry, 16 November, 1921, Meinertzhagen, Middle East ... p. 112. . Ibid., pp.

110-111; also Shuckburgh—Masterton-Smith, 22 November, 1921, CO

733/15, 57572.

. Churchill-Balfour, 10 October, 1921, quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: companion

vol. iv/2, p. 1647. My emphasis. . For Minutes of meeting on 29 November, 1921, cf. CO 537/855. . Weizmann—Deedes, 13 December, 1921, CO 537/854. . Minute by Eric Mills (attached to Colonial Office in 1921; later Director of Department of Immigration in Palestine administration), CO 537/855, quoted in Weizmann

Letters, vol. x, ed. Wasserstein, p. 304.

. Ina letter to his wife Vera, of 14 August, 1921, Weizmann referred to the Arabs as ‘trashi, ibid pn 20. . Letter of Miriam Sacher (wife of Harry) quoted in Gilbert Churchill, iv. p. 639. . Meinertzhagen, Middle East... p. 112. . Minute of 17 November, 1921, CO 733/15, 57860, reproduced by him in Middle

Eastioeps lide . Weizmann—Shuckburgh, 16 November, 1921, Weizmann Letters, vol. x, p. 287. . Minute by Eric Mills, 24 January, 1922, CO 733/29, S05, quoted in ibid., p. 288, note

1.

. 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 733/15, 57860.

. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, pp. 632-34. . Pinhas Rutenberg, a Russian Jew, had belonged to the revolutinary 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. . Shuckburgh—Masterton-Smith, 17 January, 1922, CO 733/29. 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

CHURCHILL

AND

THE

JEWS

yet served by steam locomotives. A copy of the explanation was also sent, apparently, to Churchill, cf. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 642. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, pp. 634-35. 5 Ibid. ps 632. .

[bid., p. 635.

. CP 3515, Cab 24/140.

. The War Office resumed command in 1936, after the Cabinet despatched a full army Division to Palestine, to suppress the Arab Rebellion. Cf. MichaelJ.Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate, London & New York, 1978, chapter two.

Meinertzhagen, Middle East ... pp. 110, 112-113. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 683.

Quoted in Weizmann Letters, vol. x, pp. 313, note 2, 325. My emphasis. Minute of 1 December, 1921, CO 733/7, 5795S. Churchill minute of 9 December, ibid. Britain signed the Peace Agreement with Ireland on 6 December, which may explain the eight-day lapse. . Alfred Mond (later Lord Melchett) was the founder of Imperial Chemical Indus-

29. . . . 33.

34.

tries. In 1921 he donated £100,000 to the Jewish Colonisation Corporation for Palestine. Mond—Churchill, 15 December, 1921, Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, pp. 1692-93. Cf. Weizmann Letters, vol. x, p. 337, No. 323, note 3. Gilbert, Churchill, companion vol: iv/2, p. 1693, note. Note of Mond conversation with Mr S. Landman, 16 December, 1921, A18/43/4, CZA. Young—Shuckburgh, 5 October, 1921, CO 733/17B, 53308.

Ibid. Article 4 of the Mandate recognized ‘An appropriate Jewish Agency ... asa public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establish-

ment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine’... . Shuckburgh

minute, 7 November,

1921, CO 733/15, 57572.

Meinertzhagen minute, 21 October, 1921, CO 733/17B, 53308. 7. Samuel—Churchill,

14 October, 1921, CO 733/6, 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,

1921, CO 733/

15, 57860. The assertion was later included in the 1922 White Paper. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 636, and Weizmann Letters, vol. X, p. 280. The meeting

took place during the last week of October. . For this and following, see Shuckburgh minute of 7 November, F33(NSyLow2. . Cf. Weizmann—Shuckburgh, . Shuckburgh

16 November,

minute of 7 November,

1921, CO

1921, Z4/16055, CZA.

1921, CO 733/15, 57572.

. Shuckburgh minute of 22 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’ determination to ‘live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect ...’; itannounced 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 immigration, proportionate ‘to the numbers tor whom employment can be found without detriment to the existing

NOTES

349

labour market’.

. Cf. Wasserstein, The British in ... pp. 141-142. . For this and following, see ibid., pp. 134-35. . Deedes—Weizmann, 26 November, 1921, Weizmann Archives, Rehovot (hereafter WA). . Weizmann—Deedes, 13 December, 1921, CO 537/854, quoted in Weizmann

Letters, vol. x, pp. 327-329. . We have already referred (above, p. 000) to pressure exerted by Alfred Mond. In addition, Lord Rothschild protested to Balfour. The Central Zionist Office in London prepared statements ofprotest for publication in the United States, in the event of any changes in the draft mandate, cf. Friesel, Zionist Policy after ... p. DSS) . Churchill-Samuel, 29 December, 1921, CO 733/15, 63677.

. Cf. Freisel, Zionist Policy after ... p. 299. . Weizmann—James de Rothschild, 5 February, 1922, Weizmann Letters, vol. x, p. 33s . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 643. . Shuckburgh—Churchill, 7 February, 1922, Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 643.

. Shuckburgh minute, 7 February, 1922, CO 733/33, pp. 458-59. . The Times, 7 February, 1922, p. 9; The Morning Post, 10 February, 1922, p. 9, and 22 February, 1922, p. 4. See also The Weizmann Letters, vol. xi, ed. Bernard Wasserstein, Jerusalem, 1977, p. 54, n. 4. . Shuckburgh minute, 21 February, 1922, CO 733/36, 6575. . 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 Commissioner; in addition to his own vote, the High Commissioner was empowered, 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. Sighs 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 violence.

Arab . The . The . H.C.

Times, 15 February, 1922, p. 10. Times, 17 February, 1922, editorial. Deb. Sth series, vol. 156, col. 264.

. R. Pound and G. Harmsworth, Northcliffe, London, 1959, p. 846, and Weiz-

mann, Trial and ... pp. 282-83. . Weizmann Letters, vol. xi, p. 42, No. 38, note 4. - Quoted in ibid., p. 54, note 3.

. Minute in CO 733/18, 6881. . In his speech of 9 March (H.C.Deb. Sth 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. 67. Text in Cmd. 1700, June, 1922. 68. Compare the letter of 1 March, in Cmd. 1700, and Gilbert, Churchill: 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

350

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

Samuel’s draft of the White Paper, dated 9 March, 1922, cf. CO 733/19, 13502.

. Samuel dispatch of 9 March, Shuckburgh minute of 11 March, and Churchill initial of 14 March, 1922, in CO 733/19, 11623. . H.C. Deb. Sth series, vol. 151, col. 1549. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 646.

. Mills minute of 10 March, 1922, CO 733/19, 11623.

. Young minute of 23 February, and Churchill initials, 1 March, 1922,CO 733/33, 8409. . Shuckburgh minutes of 5 and 6 April, and Churchill approval, 6 April, 1922, CO TeaioViotoy Mase, . Mills—Deedes, 30 March, 1922, ibid. . Shuckburgh minute of 29 March, and Churchill 733/195 13502,

initial, 4 April, 1922, CO

. 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, 27 May, 1922, CO 733/34, 25494.

. Cf. Friesel, Zionist Policy after ... p. 302. . Shuckburgh-Samuel, 3 June, 1922, CO 733/34, 25494. . Wasserstein, The British in ... p. 119. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 650.

. Gilbert refers to the debate as ‘the Rutenberg debate’, ibid., p. 659. . The Times, 26, 29 May, 1922. . 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

concession had not stipulated that sub-contracting, for machinery, for instance, had to be to British companies. . The Times, 29 May, 1922, p. 17.

. Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 648. . The Times, 30 May, 1922, p. 17. . The Times, 31 May, 1922, p. 17.

. For the debate on 4 July, 1922, cf. H.C. Deb. Sth series, vol. 156; Churchill’s

speech is in cols. 327-42. . Ibid., cols. 332-33.

2. Ibid., col. 335. My emphasis. Quoted in Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 656. . Friesel, Zionist Policy after ... pp. 313-14. . Gilbert, Churchill: iv, p. 662. . Fora recent affirmation of this verdict, cf. Neil Caplan, ‘The Yishuv, Samuel and the Arab Question’, in Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, eds. Elie Kedourie, Sylvia G. Haim, Frank Cass, London, 1982, which speaks of ‘the

Statement of Policy written by Samuel, but bearing Mr Churchill’s name’. p. 21. 96. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 1, The Gathering Storm, Tk

Penguin edition, 1960, p. 33 (first published by Cassell, 1948). Diary entry for 29 October, 1922, Meinertzhagen, Middle East ... p. 124.

NOTES CHAPTER

55.1 SIX

. Winston S$. Churchill, The World Crisis: ‘The Aftermath’, New York, 1929, p.

494.

. Cf. C.L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918-1940, London, 1968, pp. 200, 340-341, Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. V, The Prophet of

Truth, 1922-1939, Boston, 1977, pp. 238-239; on the vicious effect of de-rating on industry in depressed areas, see, The Leo Amery Diaries, vol. 1, 1896-1929,

eds. John Barnes, David Nicholson, London, 1980, pp. 531-533. . Churchill-Baldwin, 15 February, 1928, Gilbert, Churchill: vol. V, p. 269. . Amery Diaries ... p. 381. ahwW nA . Ibid., p. 532; cf. also Weizmann — Zionist Executive, 4 April, 1928: ‘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 The Weizmann Letters, vol. XIII, ed. Pinhas Ofer, Jerusalem, 1978; p. 425.

. Amery Diaries ... p. 535. . Amery—Baldwin, 27 April, 1929, Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, companion volume V, part 1, Boston, 1981, p. 1469. . Debate on 24 March, 1936, in H.C. Deb. Fifth series, vol. 310, col. 1114. . J. Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East, 1918-1922, London, 1981, p. 2257

10. Churchill-Amery, 30 April, 1927, Churchill, companion vol. V/1, p. 995. Mike For this and following, see minute by T.I.K. Lloyd, 8 February, 1928, CO PSO MO LAE

LL Oe RO:

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 1923 Recession and Public Sector Finance in Palestine’, Discussion Paper,

No. 794, The Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, October, 1979. U3}, Cf. Weizmann—Kisch, 20 January, 1928, in The Weizmann Letters, Vol. XII, p.

395: 14. Minute by Sir John Shuckburgh, 1 February, 1928, CO 733/151/2, 57155, PRO. IS: Plumer—Ormsby-Gore, 8 January, 1928, ibid. 16. Ormsby-Gore—Baldwin, 23 January, 1928, and Churchill-Ormsby-Gore, 1 February, 1928, ibid.

U7. Amery—Churchill, 1 March, 1928, ibid. Pipelines were built from Baghdad to terminals at Haifa and at Tripoli (Lebanon) during the early 1930s, and opened in 1935. 18. Churchill-Amery, 14 March, 1928, CO 733/151/2, 57155, PRO. os Gilbert, Churchill: vol. V, p. 281. 20. Churchill—-Amery, 14 March, 1928, supra. Pails Amery—Plumer, 13 April, 1928, ibid. 22; Churchill-Amery, 21 May, 1928, ibid. 23). 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.

24. Plumer—Amery, 1 May, 1928, CO 733/151/2, 57155, PRO.

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

The Times, 1 August, 1928. Weizmann Letters, vol. XIII, p. 338. . 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. 28.

Diary entry, 31 October, 1917, Amery Diaries, p. 177. Minute of 11 February, 1928 (signature illegible), CO 733/150/5, PRO.

29. 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. xu.

30. Minute of 27 March, 1928, CO 733/150/4, PRO. Sir (Percy) James Grigg was Principal Private Secretary to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer from 1921 to 1930, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for War, 1939-1942, and

promoted by Churchill to Secretary of State for War, 1942-1945. 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

30. Weizmann

733/150/5. PRO.

The account of the meeting which follows is based primarily on Weizmann’s record, in $50/5, CZA, and Weizmann Letters, vol. XII, 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, 27 February, 1928, Amery Diaries, p. 538. . Shuckburgh minute, 5 April, 1928, CO 733/150/4, PRO.

. Shuckburgh minute, 17 February, 1928, CO 733/150/5, PRO. . Blanche E.C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, 1906-1930, New York, 1937, p. 171. Mrs Dugdale, Balfour’s neice, 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 71, 5 March, 1928, in Cab 24/193. 7. On the Cabinet’s desire not to upset Balfour, see below, p. 000. . 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 733/150/4,

PRO.

. Colonial Office memorandum, CP 85, 15 March, 1928, in Cab 24/193. . Foreign Office memorandum, CP 110, 29 March, 1928, Cab 24/194.

. Treasury memorandum, CP 114, 2 April, 1928, ibid. . In December, 1927, the Bank of England, on behalf of the Palestine Govern-

ment, had issued £4,750,000 of Palestine 5 per cent guaranteed stock, 1942/ 1967. The issue had been subscribed in full, immediately, at an issue price of £100. The capital raised was controlled, and dispursed by the British Treasury, cf. Weizmann

Letters, vol. XII, p. 332, no. 304, note 3.

» €P 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. 46.

Diary entry for 4 April, 1928, Amery Diaries, p. 541. My emphasis. It was not certain that Balfour would survive his illness, and his doctors had ordered that

NOTES

Soke:

he was to be spared any undue stress, cf. Dugdale-Weizmann, 5 April, 1928, WA. . Shuckburgh minute, 5 April, 1928, CO 733/150/4, PRO. . Weizmann—Shuckburgh, 23 April, 1928, Weizmann Letters, vol. XIll, pp. 442443. . Weizmann—Dugdale,

17 April, 1928, ibid., p. 438.

. Minutes of Cabinet, 20 June, 1928, in Cab 23/58. . Weizmann’s report of meeting, to Zionist Executive, London, 21 June, 1928,

WA. . Diary entry silent about does appear of 4 April

for 20 June, 1928, Amery Diaries, p. 546. The official biography is the Zionist loan. However, this diary entry of Amery’s, for 20 June, in the companion volume V, part 1, p. 1304. The earlier diary entry (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 20 June. 58: Amery Diaries, ibid. 54. On the India question, and on the incorrectness of many of Churchill’s warnings about the dangers Germany posed, cf. Rhodes James, Churchill... pp. 235-238. Sor Churchill to Clementine, 27 August, 1929, Churchill, companion vol. V/2, p.

62. 56. Ibid., p. 71, 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. 338-339. On the 1929 riots in Palestine, see Y. Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929-1939, From Riots to Rebellion, Frank Cass, London, 1974. The Times, 23 October, 1930.

ie 58. Cf. Joseph Gorny, The British Labour Movement and Zionism 1917-1948 (Frank Cass, 1983), especially chs. 5 and 6. . The official biography is silent on the subject. The Weizmann Letters, vol. XV, ed. Camillo Dresner, Jerusalem, 1978, p. 29, 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. . In 1930, Churchill estimated his literary income for the coming year, from the press, and commissioned historical works, at £35,000, a formidable sum for

that time, cf. Gilbert, Churchill: vol. V, p. 363. . Enclosed in despatch from Sir Ronald Lindsay, 6 November, 1930, Churchill, companion volume V/2, p. 220. . Ibid. . Walter Guinness, cr Baron Moyne, 1932. Appointed by Churchill as Colonial Secretary, 1941-1942, and Minister of State Resident in the Middle East, 1944.

Assassinated in Cairo by Jewish terrorists, 6 November, 1944. . Cf. Gilbert, Churchill: vol. V, p. 563, and Palestine Post, 11 October, 1934. . See their correspondence, in December, 1934, in Churchill, companion vol. V/2,

pp. 960-961, 969.

. H.C. Deb. Fifth series, vol. 310, col. 1114, debate on 24 March, 1936. . Cf. Lawrence Pratt, East of Malta, West ofSuez, Cambridge, 1975, also Cohen,

Retreat ... chapter 1. . 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 1940—

354

CHURCHILL

AND THE JEWS

1945. 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 $25/4418, CZA,

and on Cazalet’s record, as told to Mrs Dugdale, Dugdale Diaries, p. 45. 69. Cf. Gorny, The British Labour Movement ... chs. 5, 6. ZO; Amery Diaries, p. 169. Tie Her family (the Cecils) connections were an obvious source of information; from 1936, her close friend, Walter Elliott (Minister of Agriculture, of Health,

and Secretary of State at the Scottish Office, from 1936-1940) 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.

. Diary entry for 9 June, 1937, Dugdale Diaries, p. 45. My emphasis. . H.C. Deb. Fifth series, vol. 326, cols. 2235-2367. . Diary entry for 21 July, 1937, Dugdale Diaries, p. 54. . N.A. Rose, The Gentile Zionists, London, 1973, p. 139.

. Dugdale diary entry for 22 July, 1937, reporting on lunch with Walter Elliott, Dugdale Diaries, p. 54, and note of Churchill dinner with Henry Melchett on 28

July, 1937, in Z4/17121, 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. . Diary entry for 23 July, 1937, Dugdale Diaries, p. 54. . Churchill—-Melchett dinner, note by Melchett in Z4/17121, CZA. . On the Seventh Dominion, cf. Rose, The Gentile ..., chapter 4. . Churchill—Melchett dinner, supra.

. The Jewish Chronicle, 3 September, 1937, pp. 24-25. . Smuts (Pretoria)—Leo Amery, 20 August, 1937, in the Smuts Papers, Cambridge

University Library. lam grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for bringing this document to my attention. . Debate on 23 May, 1939, H.C. Deb. Fifth Series, vol. 347, col. 2175.

. On 7 December, 1938, a 17-year old German-Jewish youth, Herschel 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 9-10 November with a wave of government-incited 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% million dollars. See

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Crest paperback, New

York, 1963, pp. 580-587.

The Commons held a special debate on the pogroms on 21 November, 1938, in which Churchill did not take any part. H.C. Deb. Fifth Series, vol. 341, cols. 1428-1483.

. Cmd. 5893, November, 1938. See also Cohen, Retreat ... pp. 71-72. . Amery diary entry, 10 November, 1938. . Debate of 24 November, 1938, H.C. Deb. Fifth Series, vol. 341, cols. 19872107. For statistics provided by Weizmann, see K. Hill (Churchill’s private secretary)—Miss May (Weizmann’s secretary), 28 November, 1938, Z74/17.097,

Cars

NOTES

00)

wIbideicolk 203m,

. Ibid., col. 1999:

. + . .

Ibid., col. 2036. Ibid, col. 2039. Ibid. The Times, 25 November, 1938, report on Commons debate, p. 8, and editorial, Dron

. The 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. . Report of 24 January, 1939, ME(O) 292, Cab 51/11. . Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 8 March, 1939, Cab 23/97. . Diary note, 23 May, 1939, Dugdale Diaries, p. 139, and Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 411. . Weizmann, ibid., and Gilbert, Churchill: vol. V, p. 1069. . Debate on 22-23 May, 1939, H.C. Deb. Fifth Series, vol. 347; see cols. 2168, 2175-78.

100. Ibid., col. 2168. . Amery diary entry, 22 May, 1939. . MacDonald—Chamberlain,

16 January, 1940, Prem 1/420. The hand-written

letter is dated 1939, but this is obviously a mistake, since it quite obviously refers to the Commons Debate on the White Paper, in the summer of 1939. For a different interpretation of this letter, cf. R.W. Zweig, Britain and Palestine During the Second World War, cap. 1, Royal Historical Society, forthcoming.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

. Sir lan Jacob (Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet, 1939-1945), in Action This Day, ed. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, London, 1968, p. 205. 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. . See F, Loewenheim and H.O. Langley, eds. Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Correspondence, London, 1975; and James Leutze, ‘The Secret of the

Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence, September, 1939—May, 1940’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 10/3, July, 1975, pp. 465-492. 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. . Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941, New York, 1976, pp. 24, DRS PTEL colt . Jacob, Action this ... p. 207, Lash, Roosevelt and... p. 391. . Jacob, Action this ... p. 208. . Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, New York, 1952, p. 407. . On Smuts’ unigue relationship with Churchill, cf. P. Addison, in British Prime DB NNN Ministers in the 20th Century, ed. J.P. Mackintosh, London, 1978. Smuts was

356

. .

. .

CHURCHILL

AND THE JEWS

one of the handful of men Jet into the secret of the atomic bomb during the war, when Churchill withheld the information from most of the British Cabinet. Lash, Roosevelt and ... pp.154-155S. Jacob, Action this ... pp. 205-206. Lash, Roosevelt and ... p. 211. 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, 1965, p. 134.

. 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 and ip. 291:

Thid., p. 398.

. Cf. A.P. Thornton, Imperialism in the Twentieth Century, London, 1978, p. 228. . Churchill-Roosevelt, 9 August, 1942, in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. IV, The Hinge of Fate, London, 1951, p. 786. . Lash, Roosevelt and ... p. 400.

. Telegrams of 15 November, 1939, signed by Judges Brandeis and Mack, Rabbis Stephen S. Wise, Abba Hillel Silver, and Louis Lipsky, in FO 371/23242, E7874. . Lothian—Halifax, 24 November, 1939, ibid. . Minute by H. Eyres, 8 December, 1939, ibid.

. Minutes by Lacy Bagallay, Alexander Cadogan, 9 December, 1939, ibid. . WP (40) 161, 20 December,

22.

1939, Cab 67/3.

Minutes by Halifax’s Private Secretary, R.S. Stevenson, and by Chamberlain, 18 and 19 December, 1939, FO 371/23242, E 7874. . Minute of 25 December,

1939, E8118, ibid.

. Dugdale Diary, pp. 151-152. . Brendan Bracken was a Conservative M.P. from 1929 to 1951; Parliamentary Private Secretary to Churchill, 1940-1941, Minister of Information, 1941-1945, and First Lord of the Admiralty, 1945. In the 1930s, he handled some of

Churchill’s private business atfairs, 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, companion vol. V/2, pp. 349-353. . Weizmann

report to Political Committee,

16 February,

1944, Z4/302/28

11,

CZ . Bracken—Eden,

15 August, 1940, and 26 August, 1940, WO 32/9502. . Diary entries for 15, 20 November, Dugdale Diary, pp. 153, 154. . Weizmann—Bracken, 27 October, 1939, Weizmann Letters, vol. XIX, ed. N.A.

Rose, Jerusalem, 1979, pp. 181-182. . Diary entry, | December, 1939, Dugdale Diary, p. 154. . Weizmann note of meeting, in Z74/14.6961, CZA. . Diary entry for 5 December, Dugdale Diary, p. 155. . Weizmann, Trial and ... pp. 418-419, and report in Z4/14.6961. . W.P. (39) 163, 25 December, 1939, Cab 67/3. . Meeting of War Cabinet, 27 December, 1939, minutes in Cab 65/2.

. Diary note of 28 December, 1939, Dugdale Diary, p. 157. . Namier—Mrs Dugdale, 2 January, 1940, Z4/14.6961, CZA. . Minute of 29 December, 1939, FO 371/23242, E8134. . 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

NOTES

357

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, 1940, FO 371/24563, quoted in Cohen, Retreat ... p. 91. . Minute of 29 December, 1939, FO 371/23242, E8134. . 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 733/426, 75872/14.

. 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 ofPalestine, 1939-1942, Jerusalem, 1976 (in Hebrew), p. 26.

. Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler, Cambridge, 1975, p. 369. . Chamberlain memorandum, 4 February, 1940, W.P.(G) 38, Cab 67/4. . | am grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for enlightening me on this point. On the Zionists’ surprise at the admission of the 730 ‘illegal’ immigrants, cf. diary note of 29-30 January, 1940, Dugdale Diary, pp. 160-161. . Minutes in Cab 65/5. . Diary note, 7 February, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 162. . Diary note, 13 February, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 162. . On MacDonald’s reluctance to leave London, and his request to join the armed forces, see Harold Nicolson—Virginia Sackville-West, 18 February, 1941, in Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, vol. U1, The War Years, 1939-1945, ed. Nigel Nicolson, New York, 1967, p. 146.

. Oliver Lyttelton, The Memoirs of 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. 235, circulated by Churchill in WP (G)(40) 61,

24 February, 1940, in Cab 67/5. The Land Regulations were published as Cmd. 6180. . Debate on 6 March, 1940, H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 358, cols. 411-526. . The Times, 7 March, 1940. . Amery—Weizmann,

8 March,

1940, Amery papers.

. Cowling, The Impact ... p. 368. . N.A. Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism, Oxford, 1980, p. 99. . Weizmann—Chamberlain, 29 August, 1939, WA.

. Cf. Cohen, Retreat ... pp. 98 ff. . Details and comment in Prem 4/51/9. Major General Orde Wingate: 1903— 1944. On duty as Captain in Palestine, 1936-1939, 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. 54. 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 371/13241, E7271. . Minutes in Cab 65/5.

CJ-M

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

. Cited in Kenneth Harris, Attlee, London, 1982, p. 179. . S. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, London, 1977, p. 275.

. Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 1939-1943, based on the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke, London, 1957, pp. 198-99, 320.

. In Churchill Revised, p. 219. . Note of 18 May, 1940, COS (40) 364, Cab 80/11.

. COS (40) 365, 18 May, 1940, ibid; and meeting of Chiefs of Staff, 25 May, 1940, COS (40) 146, Cab 79/4. . Note of 23 May, 1940, COS (40) 379, Cab 80/11.

. . . .

Minutes in Cab 65/7. The Eden Memoirs, p. 118. For following, see Prem 4/51/9, and minutes in FO 371/24566, E2044. 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, 1918-1923, and High Commissioner of Egypt, 1925—

1929. It will be recalled that Churchill had protested vigorously when the new Labour government dismissed Lloyd peremptorily in 1929. . Minute of 22 May, 1940, in Prem 4/51/9.

. Weizmann—Lloyd, 14 June, 1940, Z4/20.2801, CZA. . Following the evacuation of Dunkirk, between 29 May and 3 June, 1940, the

British prepared a contingency plan for the evacuation ofthe 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.

. Cf. R.W. Zweig, British Policy to Palestine During the Second World War, The Royal Historical Society, in Press, chapter 2, note 14. . Lloyd—Weizmann, 15 June, 1940, WA. . Lloyd—Churchill, 27 June, 1940, Prem 4/51/9. . Weizmann—Bracken, 11 June, 1940, Z4/14.6961, CZA, and Weizmann Letters,

vol. XIX, p. 287. . Bracken—Weizmann, 14 June, 1940, WA. . Minutes of Zionist Political Committee, London, 10 July, 1940, Z4/302/23, CZAY . Halifax—Eden,

18 July, 1940, WO

32/9502.

. Churchill minute to Lloyd, 19 July, 1940, and Lloyd—Churchill, 20 July, 1940, ibid. . Memorandum of 7 August, 1940, WA. . Weizmann—Churchill, 6 August, 1940, Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, ed. M.J.

. . . . .

Cohen, Jerusalem, 1979, pp. 28-29. W.S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. Il, London, 1949, p. 377.

Bracken—Eden, 15 August, 1940, WO 32/9502. Dalton—Eden, 30 August, 1940, ibid. Halifax—Eden, 28 August, 1940, and minute by Churchill, ibid. Eden—Churchill, 3 September, 1940, ibid. . Weizmann—Dill, 3 September, 1940, WA. . Minute of 4 September, 1940, WO 32/9502. . Note of interview on 9 September, 1940, WA.

. Weizmann report, 16 September, 1940, Z4/302/24, CZA. . Minutes of Cabinet meeting, 10 October, 1940, Cab 65/9. Lloyd told Weiz-

NOTES mann

ao

of the decision on 14 October, and sent him an official letter on 17

October, 1940, FO 371/27126, E60, 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 240 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. . Shuckburgh minute, 5 December, 1940, CO 733/419, 75113, pt. 1.

. Report of 31 December, 1940, WA. . For this and following, see Weizmann—J.M. Martin (passed to Churchill), 9 December, 1940, Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, pp. 71-76. . Weizmann-Shertok, 3 January, 1941, ibid., p. 88.

. Minute of 29 January, 1941, FO 371/27126. . Weizmann-—Lloyd, 6 January, 1941, WA. . Weizmann report, WA, and Cohen, Retreat ... p. 109.

. Shuckburgh—Haining, 14 February, 1941, and Haining—Shuckburgh, 14 February, 1941, WO 32/9502. Of course, Weizmann had visited the United States at the end of 1940, and returned. . Account of interview between Shuckburgh and Rushbrook—Williams (later editor of The Times), 19 February, 1941, FO 371/27126. . Wavell—War Office, received 5.30. a.m., 26 February, 1941, WO 193/68; passed on to Churchill, in Prem 4/51/9. . Minute by Baxter, 3 March, 1941, FO 371/27126, E739. 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. . Weizmann—Bracken, 24 February, 1941, Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, p. 112.

. Morton—Churchill, 25 February, 1941, Prem 4/51/9. . Churchill—Moyne, 1 March, 1941, FO 371/27126; also Churchill, The Second

World War, vol. iii, p. 658. . Moyne—Weizmann, 4 March, 1941, WA. . Morton—C.H. Thornley, 11 March, 1941, CO 968/39/13117/15 part 1.

1am

grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for bringing this file to my attention. . Record in WA. . Margesson—Moyne, 4 July, 1941, CO 968/39/13117/15 part 1. Eden took the same line, see his letter to Moyne, 8 July, 1941, ibid. . Weizmann—Moyne,

19 August, 1941, Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, p. 190, and

Moyne—Weizmann, 28 August, 1941, CO 968/39/13117/15/11. . Account in Weizmann—Moyne,

. Weizmann—Churchill,

XX, pp. 197-98.

1 December,

1941, WA.

10 September, 1941, WA, and Weizmann Letters, vol.

. Dugdale Diary, p. 187. . Eden minute of 16 September, 1941, FO 371/27128, E5746. . Eyres minute of 18 September, 1941, ibid. . Shuckburgh—Parkinson, 22 September, 1941, CO 968 39/13117/15/11. On the

same day, Parkinson minuted that the matter should be settled according to British interests. . Eyres minute of 18 September, supra; also minute of 19 September by Harold Caccia, ibid.

. . . .

Butler minute of 18 September, 1941, ibid. Haining minute of 18 September, 1941, ibid. Diary note, 9 October, 1941, Dugdale Diary, p. 188. Minutes of Cabinet meeting in Cab 65/19; Moyne—MacMichael, 14 October,

CHURCHILE

AND

THE JEWS

1941, CO 968 39/13117/15/11. 3.

Martin—Sir Edward Bridges (secretary to the Cabinet),

5 October, 1941, Prem

A/S2/5. . Weizmann—Stephen Wise, 20 June, 1942, Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, p. 313.

. 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, 1981, vol. II, p. 383. (in Hebrew) « Ibidy) px. 395" . Minutes of Cabinet meeting on 3 July, 1944, in Cab 65/47, and Prem 4/5 1/9. . 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. . Minutes by Baxter, and others, 2 August, 1944, FO 371/40145, E5048. . Churchill-Roosevelt, 23 August, and Roosevelt—Churchill, 28 August, 1944,

Prem 4/51/9; and minutes of Cabinet meeting on 18 September, 1944, Cab 65/47. . Gelber, Jewish Palestinian ... p. 429.

. Elizabeth Monroe, Philby of Arabia, London, 1973.

. Ibid., pp. 228, 280.

. HJ. St John Philby, Arabian Jubilee, London, 1952, p. 209. Of course, Philby fathered an even more celebrated son, ‘Kim’ Philby, the Soviet spy. . Monroe, Philby ... pp.221, 227.

. Ibid., p. 213.

. Philby, Arabian ... pp. 212-13, 142. . Ibid., p. 215; Zionist reports, especially of 2 December, 1943, in Z4/302/281 CZX. . Namier report on 17 November,

1942, Z4/302/26, CZA.

. Political Zionist Committee, 16 January, 1943, Z4/302/26, CZA. . Note of Weizmann meeting at State Department, 19 January, 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, Jerusalem, 1979, 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. 1528 Monroe, Philby ... pp. 222-223. 153: Philby, Arabian ... pp. 211, 213. 154: Note of meeting on 6 February, 1940, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter, FRUS), 1940, vol. [I], Washington,

1958, p. 840.

155: Cf. Zweig, British Policy to ... chapter 4. 156. See account of interview in Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, pp. 125-126. Weizmann’s own memoirs mistakenly date the meeting with Churchill as March, 1942, a fact which later gave rise to Philby’s anger — Philby, relying on Weizmann’s Memoirs, termed Weizmann’s account disingenuous and, without pro-

viding any evidence of his own, claimed that Weizmann

had already told

Churchill on 17 December, 1939, and Roosevelt in February, 1940; Weizmann,

Trial and ... p. 427, and Philby, Arabian ... pp. 211, 215. Confusion was compounded by other historians, who, relying on Weizmann’s Memoirs, rather than the Weizmann Archives, also placed Churchill’s speech in February, 1942 —cf. Y. Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance, New York, 1973, p. 250, and H. Sachar, Europe Leaves the Middle East, 19361954, New York, 1972, p. 438. This mistake was facilitated by the fact that Weizmann did in fact leave London for the United States, on a further trip, in

NOTES

36]

17.

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. Eden announced the decision to the House of Commons on 15 May, 1941, H.C.

158. 159. 160.

Deb. Sth Series, vol. 371, col. 1264. Prem 3/269/17, note of 18 May, 1941. Churchill-Eden, 19 May, 1941, FO 371/27043, E2685. Elie Kedourie, ‘Ibn Saud on the Jews’, in Islam in the Modern World, London,

1980, p. 68.

161. Churchill-Eden, 19 May, 1941, supra. 162. Kedourie, ‘Ibn Saud on ...’ pp. 69, 72. 163. Eden memorandum, 27 May, 1941, WP (41) 116, in Cab 66/16, and Prem 4/32/5. On the Mansion House speech, see M.J. Cohen, ‘A Note on the Mansion House Speech, May, 1941’, Asian and African Studies, vol. 11/3, Dec. 1977.

164.

16S. Eden memorandum, 27 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 | 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 politically’ - Amery Diary, 21 September, 1941. 168. Amery—Halifax, 15 June, 1940, FO 800/321. p. 9001. . Smuts—Amery, 9 September, 1941. I am grateful to Dr Ron Zweig for having brought this document to my attention. . Firoz Khan Noon: 1893-1970. Held several ministerial positions in the Punjab;

Indian High Commissioner in London, 1936-1941; later Minister and Prime . . . .

.

Minister in Pakistan, 1956-58. Amery—Churchill, 10 September, 1941, Prem 4/52/5, pt. 2, and Churchill— Amery, 6 September, 1941, WA. Amery—Churchill, 10 September, 1941, 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 4/52/5, 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, 1942, Cab 95/1, and FO 371/31337. . Eden—Churchill, 29 September, 1941, Prem 4/52/5, pt. 2. . Amery—Churchill, 4 October, 1941, ibid.

. For the Bevin correspondence, cf. Sir Alan Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. 1, Trade Union Leader, 1881-1940, London, 1960, p. 631; on the other schemes, cf. B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, Oxford, 1979, pp. 27-28, 43. 179: Minute by J.M. Martin, 3 November, 1941, Prem 4/52/5, pt. 2, and minute by Lord Moyne, 6 November,

1941, ibid.

362

CHURCHILL Churchill minute of 9 November,

180. 181. 182. 183.

AND

THE JEWS

1941, ibid.

Amery—Smuts, 10 November, 1941, The Amery Papers. Weizmann—Locker, 3 June, 1942, Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, p. 301.

Goldmann account of meeting on 19 January, 1943 at State Department, in Weizmann Letters, vol. XX], p. 2, note 2, and Weizmann—Halifax, 30 January, 1943, ibid., p. 2 and notes.

184. Minute by Harold Caccia, 17 February, 1943, FO 371/35031; and Churchill— Eden, Cab 120/660 (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 371/3495S.

185. Churchill-Eden, 9 March, 1943 Cab 120/660. 186. For this and following, see Weizmann account, in Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI,

p. 39, no. 38, 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 of Henry Morgenthau Jr., vol. 3, Boston, 1967, p. 208.

. Hoskins report of January, 1943, in FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, Washington, 1964, pp. 747-48; also in Prem 4/52/S. . Weizmann—Welles, 13 December 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, p. 109. . Hoskins Report of 31 August, 1943, FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, pp. 807-810; also

Weizmann, Trial and... p. 432, Monroe, Philby... p. 224, and Philby, Arabian... p. 216. . Philby, Arabian... p. 216. . Report on Weizmann/Namier meeting with Philby, Political Zionist Committee, 15 November, 1943, Z4/302/281, CZA. . Weizmann report, 11 November, 1943, ibid. . P.J. Baram, The Department ofState in the Middle East, 1919-1945, University

of Pennsylvania, 1978, p. 279. . Hoskins’ memorandum, 27 September, 1943, on talk with Roosevelt, in FRUS, 19435 volnlV.. p.Si2. . Weizmann—Welles, 13 December, 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, p. 110.

. . . . .

Weizmann, Trial and... p. 432; Philby, Arabian... p. 217. Monroe, Philby... p. 225. Weizmann—Churchill, 2 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/3; copy in §25/7569, CZA. Ibid. Churchill to Viscount Cranborne, Oliver Stanley, 18 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/3; copy to Eden, in FO 371/35033, E2340. It will be recalled that the idea of settling Jews in the Italians’ North African colonies, once liberated, was

Amery’s. . Lord Cranborne (Lord Privy Seal) — Churchill, 19 April, 1943, FO 371/35033,

E2340. Cranborne had voted against the 1939 White Paper. He had resigned together with Eden, whose Under-Secretary he had been, in February, 1938. . 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. 24, 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 Impact... p. 334. 204. Stanley—Churchill, 19 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/3. 205. Churchill memorandum, 28 April, 1943, WP (43) 178, Cab 66/36. 206. Cranborne memorandum, 4 May, 1943, WP (43) 187, ibid. 207. Cabinet meeting, 2 July, 1943, Cab 65/39.

NOTES 208. 209. 210. Pale

363

WP (43) 178, supra. My emphasis.

Minute of 1 May, 1943, FO 371/35033, E2341. Ibid. My emphasis. Hoskins report of 30 January, 1943, FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, pp. 747-48. 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. 1119-20.

. Minute by H. Caccia, 13 April, 1943, FO 371/35033, E2341.

. Halifax—Foreign Office, 8 February, and Eyres minute of 21 February, 1943, FO 371/35032, E1027. . Eden memorandum of 10 May, 1943, WP (43) 200, Cab 66/36. . Hurley Report of 5 May, 1943, FRUS, 1943, IV, pp. 782-85, 776-80. . Halifax—Eden,

15 June, 1943, FO 371/35035, E3455.

. FRUS, 1943, IV, p. 791, and in Eden—Halifax, 11 June, 1943, E35035, ibid.

Ri@abros/o2: . Cf. Cohen, American Influence on... pp. 64-65. . Stanley memorandum, 4 May, 1943, WP (43) 192, Cab 66/36, and Resolutions of Middle East War Council (MEWC), WP (43) 247, 17 June, 1943, Cab 66/37, also Casey memorandum, 17 June, 1943, WP (43) 246, Cab 66/37. For the text

of the Biltmore Resolution, see J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, New York, 1956, vol. fl, pp. 234-35. . See Memorandum by Oliver Lyttelton, 23 June, 1943, WP (43) 265, Cab 66/37

— 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 of Prof F.H. Hinsley (in Press), notes 45, 46, 49. . Resolutions of MEWC, 17 June, 1943, supra.

sce Morai.= p. Lo4 . 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/S, 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 20 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

1943, IV, p. 813.

on talk with President, 27 September,

1943, FRUS,

. Churchill-Eden, 8 June, and Eden—Churchill, 15 June, 1943, Prem 4/51/4. . Randall minute, 31 March, 1943, FO 371/36720, W5427.

. Quoted in W.R. Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization ofthe British Empire, 1941-1945, Oxford, New York, 1978, p. 60. . Background paper, FO 371/36720, W9633. . Minute of 12 July, 1943, FO 371/35414, quoted in Louis, Imperialism... p. 61, note 30.

. Cherwell—Churchill, 25 June, 1943, supra. . Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, London, New York, 1981, p. 1s2: . Weizmann report to Zionist Political Committee, 30 November, 1943, Z4/302/

Pat GILIEN . Ibid. My emphasis.

CHURCHILL . Attlee memorandum,

AND

THE

JEWS

23 June, 1943, WP (43) 266, Cab 66/37.

. Report by Rabbi Irving Miller to Zionist Political Committee, 3 June, 1943, Z4/302/27, CZA. . Amery—Churchill, 29 April, 1943, Prem 4/52/1.

. Churchill-Bridges, 3 July, 1943, Prem 4/52/S, pt. 2. 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'371/35038. . Churchill-Bridges, 3 July, 1943, supra. . Weizmann report to Zionist Political Committee, 22 July, 1943, Z4/302/27, CZA, also Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, no. 49, note 1. . Weizmann report in Z4/302/27, CZA, also Weizmann Letters, XXI, vol. no. 86, note 2.

. Weizmann—Weisgal, note

14 October, 1943, Weizmann

Letters, vol XXI, no. 83,

|.

. Weizmann report in Z4/302/281, CZA. . Reports of 16 and 17 February,

1944, Z4/302/28

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. . Amery—Churchill, 24 January, 1944, ibid.

. Churchill-Ismay, 25 January, 1944, ibid.

. Cohen, Retreat... pp. 172-73.

_ Ibid., pp. 175 ff.

. Eden to Middle East ambassadors, 1 February, 1944, Prem 4/52/1, and FRUS,

1945, vol. viii, Washington, 1969, pp. 683-87. . Eden—Churchill,

1 June, 1944, Prem 4/52/1.

. Stanley—Churchill,

10 June, 1944, ibid.

. Weizmann report, 18 April, 1944, Z4/302/28, CZA. . Weizmann report, 6 November, 1944, Z4/302/29, CZA, and Martin—Gater, 4 November, 1944, Prem 4/52/3.

. Cf. Cohen, Retreat... p. 179, and ‘The Moyne Assassination, November, 1944: A Political Analysis’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 15/3, Oct. 1979. On Begin’s Revolt, cf. M. Begin, The Revolt, New York, 1951, and Y. Bauer, From

Diplomacy to Resistance, Philadelphia, 1970. . Cohen, Retreat... pp. 178-79. . Weizmann

report, 24 March, 1944, Z4/302/28, CZA.

. Meeting of Cabinet on 9 August, 1944, Cab 65/43. . H.C. Deb. Sth series, vol. 404, col. 2242. . Martin—Churchill, 16 November, 1944, and Churchill-Stanley, 17 November,

1944, Prem 4/51/11. . 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 954/15, pt. 2, Churchill-Eden, 19 July, and Eden—Churchill, 20 July, 1943. . Report by Berl Locker, on conversation with Greenwood, 22 November, 1944, Z4/302/29, CZA. At their meeting, Greenwood had requested a 750-word brief

NOTES

36S

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. 470-71.

. Cohen, Retreat... pp. 180-181. . Smuts minute of 15 April, 1945, Prem 4/52/1. . Churchill minute to Colonial Secretary and Chiefs of Staff, 1 July, 1945, FO 371/45377, E4849; reprinted in W.S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol.

VI, Triumph and Tragedy, London, 1954, p. 654.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

. Cf. Lucy Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians, Harvard, 1981. . B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, Oxford, 1978, pp. AS, 395,80; . John P. Fox review of Wasserstein, European Studies Review, vol. 10/1, 1980,

pp. 138-146. Fox wrote the article while an official of the Foreign Office. . Ibid., p. 140. . Henryk Grynberg, ‘Appropriating the Holocaust’, Commentary, vol. 74/5, November, 1982. . F.H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 2, London,

1981, pp. 669-671. . Ibid., p. 673; 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.

. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression of Information about Hitler’s Final Solution, London, 1980, p. 72.

. Ibid., p. 65. Sibid pp. 73-75. . Ibid., pp. 199, 206, and Y. Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Seattle, 1978, p. 81.

. Ibid., p. 204.

. Randall minute of 22 February, 1943, FO 371/36653, W3321.

. Laqueur, The Terrible... p. 92. . Law—Major T.L. Dugdale (Chairman of the Conservative Party), 7 December, 1942, FO 371/32682, W16534. . Fox review, p. 141.

_ Ibid., p. 142.

. Laqueur, The Terrible... p. 208. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 426, col. 1258.

. Churchill-Eden, 11 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10; repeated two days later ina letter to Lord Melchett, Z4/14.69611, CZA. See also The Times, 8 July, 1944, p. 3.

. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 350, 38-39. . 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. DE Cf. Meir Sompolinsky, ‘The Anglo-Jewish Leadership, the British Government and the Holocaust’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 1977, p. 230. 24. Ibid., p. 231.

CJ-M*

366

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

25. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 172-73.

26. Ibid., p. 179. 27. Minute of 22 December, 1942, FO 371/32682, W17521. 28. James de Rothschild—Colonel Harvie Watt, 16 December, 1942, Prem 4/51/8, and Martin—V.G. Lawford, 18 December, 1942, FO 371/32682, W17520. 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 29.

Sir Henry Channon, quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 173. Minutes of 29 December, 1942, FO 371/36648, W121/49/48, quoted

in

Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 179. . Weizmann-Halifax, 16 February, 1943, and quotation from New York Times, in Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, pp. 8-9. . Foreign Office-Washington Embassy, 27 February, 1943, FO 371/36676, W3019. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 386, cols. 864-65. . Eleanor Rathbone, M.P.—Churchill, 29 March, 1943, and Churchill minute, 1 April, 1943, Prem 4/51/9. On Miss Rathbone’s activities, cf. Wasserstein,

Britain and... pp. 203-204. . A.W. Randall minute, 22 February, 1943, FO 371/36653, W3321.

. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 302-303. . Gilbert, Auschwitz and... p. 108. . Quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 304-305. . 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 enemyoccupied territory. But it did mot deal with the feasibility of mounting Allied rescue efforts. . Churchill-Eden, 10 March, 1944, Eden—Churchill, 17 March, 1944, and Chur-

chill-Eden, 2 April, 1944, FO 371/42790, W4299. . Lady Reading—Churchill, 16 January, 1943, Prem 4/51/8. My emphasis. . Attlee speech in Commons, January, 1943.

H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 386, cols. 32-33, 19

. 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, 1982, 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 733/395, 75113/14.

. Zweig, British Policy... . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, Col. 393, cols. 1151-54, 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 of the Tide, 1939-1943, Based

on the Diaries of Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, London, 1957, pp. 300301. . 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. 50, 54.

NOTES

367

. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 54 ff.

. Ibid., p. 54.

. Churchill-MacDonald, 4 January, 1940, CO 733/429, 76021/10. . 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, 1940, ibid. . On the Patria incident, cf. C. Sykes, Crossroads to Israel, London, 1967, pp. 234-6; Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 60 ff, and Zweig, British Policy... . Lloyd—Halifax, 25 November, 1940, FO 371/31867; copy in Prem 4/51/1. . Diary entry, 15 November, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 178. . Weizmann report, 15 November, 1940, Z4/302/24, 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, 1940, ibid. . Churchill-Lloyd,

20 November,

1940, ibid; quoted in Wasserstein, Britain

and... p. 66. . Zionist Executive meeting, London,

15 November,

1940, Z4/302/24, 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 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.

PeCabi 6/10; . Lord Lothian—Foreign Office, 27 November, 1940, CO 733/430, 76021/28. . Minute by Sir John Shuckburgh, 7 December, 1940, ibid.

. Diary entry, 27 November, 1940, Dugdale Diary, p. 179. . For this and following, minutes of Cabinet meeting at 5.00 p.m., 27 November, 1940, Cab 65/10. . Wavell—Eden, 30 November, 1940, Prem 4/5 1/2, and Lampson—Foreign Office, 2 December, 1940, Prem 4/51/1.

. Cab 65/10. . Churchill—Wavell, 2 December, 1940, Prem 4/5 1/2. . Wavell—Churchill, 3 December, 1940, ibid.

. Eden Memoirs, pp. 131-33. . 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; he 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, 1981, pp. 230-235. . Onthe Brand Mission, cf. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 249 ff., and Y. Bauer, The Holocaust... pp. 94-155. . Minute of 17 February, 1944, FO 371/42722, WR2188. . Minute of 29 March, 1943, FO 371/42723, WR4548. My emphasis.

. Meeting on 31 May, 1944, Cab 95/15/32; Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 252-908

368

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

94: Foreign Office brief, J.R. (44) 19, 12 July, 1944, FO 371/42810, WR323. D5: 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/S. . On the establishment of the War Refugee Board, see J.M. Blum, From

the

Diaries of Henry Morgenthau, vol. 3, Boston, 1967, pp. 207-27. . Minute by A.W.G. Randall, 8 May, 1944, FO 371/42730, W7571. . Bauer, The Holocaust... p. 135, and Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 256. . Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 254-55. . For this and following, see tel. no. 5958,

1 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10.

. Halifax tel. no. 5959, 1 July, 1944, ibid. . Bauer, The Holocaust... 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, 1944, ibid. . Halifax—Foreign Office, 9 July, 1944, FO 371/42808, WR149. . Illegible signature on minute, 10 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10. My emphasis. . Churchill-Eden, 11 July, 1944, FO 371/42809, copy in ibid, and reprinted in

Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: VI, Triumph and Tragedy, London, 1954, p. 597. . Ibid. My emphasis. . Bauer, The Holocaust... pp. 113-14, and Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 257-

iS:

. Eden—Prime Minister, 16 July, 1944, FO 371/42809, WR274, copy in Prem 4/51/10. Churchill minute, ibid. Minutes of Cabinet Committee

meeting, 13

July, 1944, FO 371/42810, WR 323.

. Foreign Office-Washington, 18 July, 1944, FO 371/42809, WR274. . Bauer, The Holocaust... pp. 149-150.

. On this, cf. J.L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, New York, 1972, pp. 117-118.

. Morgenthau memorandum on trip to London, The Morgenthau Diaries, book no. 762, p. 205, The Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York State. . Bauer, The Holocaust... pp. 154-55. . Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 260.

. Fora full account of the discussions on the possible bombing of Auschwitz, cf. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 307 ff., and Gilbert, Auschwitz and... pp. 270 ff. . Bauer, The Holocaust... p. 138. . Eden—Churchill, 6 and 7 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10, and Eden—Sinclair, (Secretary of State for Air), 7 July, 1944, FO 371/42809, WR276. Weizmann and

Shertok apparently made similar suggestions to G.H. Hall, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, as early as on 30 June, but no action was taken until Eden himself received the two Zionist leaders on 6 July, 1944, cf. Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 309. It seems that the Zionist figure of

60,000 per day, should in fact have been 6,000. 12a 22) 3 124. WS 126. Loy

M. 800/4, 7 July, 1944, Prem 4/51/10, and FO 371/42809, WR 276. Eden-Sinclair, 7 July, 1944, ibid. Sinclair—Eden, 15 July, 1944, FO 371/42809, WR 277. Eden minute, ibid. Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 315-17.

Ibid., pp. 312-13, and Gilbert, Auschwitz and... p. 285. Gilbert, Auschwitz and... p. 341, and Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 316.

NOTES

369

| KOXn. podl44(seem: 3): . Gilbert, Auschwitz and... pp. 275, 287.

. Foreign Office-Stockholm,

19 July, 1944, FO 371/42809, WR 215.

. Gilbert, Auschwitz and... p. 287.

. Minute by V. Cavendish-Bentinck, 13 August, 1944, FO 371/42809, WR 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, 1944, ibid. . Grant (Air Ministry)—Cavendish Bentinck, 13 August, 1944, in FO 371/42814

WR 749, and Air 19/218; quoted in Wasserstein, Britain and... pp. 314-15. . Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 314. . Cf. Fox... pp. 144-145. . Linton—Henderson, 16 August, 1944, and minutes of 15 and 18 August, 1944,

FO 371/42814, WR 749. . Linton note covering plans, 18 August, 1944, FO 371/42806, WR 823. . Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 315.

. Minute of 25 August, 1944, FO 371/42814, WR 749. . Minute by Roger Allen, 21 August, 1944, ibid. . Minute by Ian Henderson, 22 August, 1944, ibid. . Correspondence in FO 371/42809, WR 277. . Minute by Paul Mason, 21 September, 1944, FO 371/42806, WR 823; quoted

in Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 317. . David Wyman, ‘Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed’, Commentary, vol. 65/5,

May, 1978, pp. 42-43.

. Ibid., p. 47. . Cf. Gilbert, Auschwitz and... pp. 299-300, and the pre-publication serialization in Jerusalem Post, 8 February—7 March, 1980.

. Wyman, Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed, pp. 44-46.

. Ibid., p. 41.

. Wasserstein, Britain and... p. 350.

= Ubidays p. 316. . See for instance David Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938—

1945, London, 1971, pp. 374, 564, 643, 653. . Lord Normanbrook, in Action This Day... ed. Wheeler-Bennett, p. 22. . Diary entries, 27 June and 3 August, 1944, Cadogan Diaries... pp. 643, 653. . Correspondence in FO 800/412; also John Colville, in Action This Day, pp. 91-927 . Cf. Gilbert, Auschwitz and... p. 322, and map on p. 323. My emphasis.

plbids yp. 322) . The Jerusalem Post,

7 March, 1980.

EPILOGUE . A.J.P. Taylor, review of Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, Oxford, 1979, in English Historical Review, Vol. XCV, no. 375,

April, 1980, pp. 388-92.

. Martin Gilbert, Churchill and Zionism, London, 1974. . FRUS, 1943, vol. IV, Washington, 1964, p. 793. Weizmann Letters, vol. XX, p. 53, no. 49, note 1. . Weizmann-Bracken, 27 July, 1943, Prem 4/52/3, and in Weizmann Letters, vol. BwWhH A

KX, p: 34.

370

CHURCHILL

AND

THE JEWS

. Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, p. 244. . Martin—Churchill, 23 March,

1945, and minutes of 3 and § April, 1945, Prem

4/52/3. . Discussion on

14 May,

1945, Z4/302/29, CZA.

. For this and following, see minutes of debate on 23 May, 1945, ibid. . Martin—Churchill, 26 May,

May, 1945, Weizmann

1945, Prem 4/52/3, and Weizmann—Churchill, 22

Letters, vol. XXII, ed. J. Heller, Jerusalem, 1979, pp.

EIA . Churchill-Weizmann, 9 June, 1945, ibid., p. 12, no. 10, note 3.

. Diary entry, 11 June, 1945, Dugdale Diary, p. 221. . Discussion on 13 June, 1945, Z4/302/29, CZA.

. Weizmann report on 14 June, 1945, ibid. . Weizmann report on 13 June, 1945, ibid. . Weizmann—Churchill, 15 June, 1945, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXII, p. 20, and

Z4/14792, CZA. . Meeting of Zionist Political Committee, 27 June, 1945, Z4/302/29, CZA.

. Diary entry, 22 July, 1945, Moran, p. 300.

. The Eden Memoirs, p. 551. . Diary entry, 8 August, 1945, Moran, p. 311. . Zionist Political Committee, 27 July, 1945, Z4/302/29, CZA. . Churchill-Weizmann, 12 October, 1945, and Weizmann—Lady

Amelia

Fitz-

gerald, 19 October, 1945, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXII, p. 67. . Zionist Political Committee, 29 October, 1945, Z4/302/30, CZA. . 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,

25.

Princeton,

Churchill-Weizmann,

1982.

15 May, 1946, note on p. 120, Weizmann

Letters, vol.

XXIL. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series. vol. 426, col. 1254. 27. Weizmann—Churchill, 2 August, 1946, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXII, pp. 17872)

28. Weizmann—Jacob

Landau

(founding editor, Jewish Telegraphic Agency), 19

October, 1947, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXIII, ed. Aaron Klieman, Jerusalem,

1980, p. 15. My emphasis. . 1. Berlin—Weizmann, 6 June, 1948, and Weizmann—Berlin, 12 June, 1948, ibid.,

pp. 133-34.

. . . . . . . .

Elliott-Weizmann, 29 H.C. Deb. Sth Series, H.C. Deb. Sth Series, H.C. Deb. Sth Series, H.C. Deb. Sth Series, Ibid., col. 1250. H.C. Deb. Sth Series, H.C. Deb. Sth Series,

July, 1948, ibid., no. 241, note 1, p. 196. vol. 460, col. 954, 26 January, 1949. vol. 426, col. 1252, 1 August, 1946. vol. 423, 24 May, 1946. vol. 426, cols. 1246-47, 1 August, 1946.

vol. 460, col. 955, 26 January, 1949. vol. 423, col. 772, 24 May, 1946.

. Diary entry, 3 May, 1946, Dugdale Diary, p. 236. . ) . . .

H.C. Deb. Sth Series, Ibid:, coll 1257. Amery diary entry, 8 H.C. Deb. Sth Series, H.C. Deb. Sth Series,

vol. 426, col. 1253, 1 August, 1946.

August, 1946. vol. 423, cols. 771-772, 24 May, 1946. vol. 426, col. 1256, 1 August, 1946.

. Ibid., cols. 1256-57.

. H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 432, cols. 1348-49, 31 January, 1947. My emphasis. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 434, cols. 675, 678, 6 March, 1947.

NOTES

|

. The Times, 7 March, 1947, p. 8. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 426, col. 1252, 1 August, 1946. . Amery diary entry, 14 May, 1948.

. Cf. Cohen, Palestine and ... pp. 385 ff. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 426, cols. 1254-55, 1 August, 1946. On the various Anglo-American plans for Palestine in 1946, cf. ibid., chaps. 5, 6. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 459, col. 715, 10 December, 1948. sibidecol, 77. . H.C. Deb. Sth Series, vol. 460, col. 952, 26 January, 1949. . Elath—Felix Frankfurter, 24 September, 1950 (describing interview on 14 September), The Frankfurter Papers, file 000982, container 52, manuscript division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

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Darwin, J., Britain, Egypt and the Middle East: Imperial Policy in the Aftermath of the War, 1918-1922, London, 1981. Dugdale, B.E., Arthur James Balfour, 2 vols, New York, 1937, London, 1939. Eden, Sir A., The Rt Hon The Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs, vol. 3, The Reckoning, London, 1965S. 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 of Palestine, 1914-1918, London, 1973.

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1917-1922

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Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1977.

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Gardiner, A.G., Prophets, Priests and Kings, London, 1914. Garnett, D., ed., The Letters of 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 of 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 of British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921, Baltimore, 1970. Laqueur, W.Z., The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression of Information about Hitler’s Final Solution, London, 1980. Lash, J.P., Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941, New York, 1971. Lichtheim, G., Imperialism, London, 1971.

Louis, W.R., Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945, New York, 1978. Marsh, E., A Number of People, London, 1939. Meinertzhagen, R., Middle East Diary, 1917-1956, London, 1959.

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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 of 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 of the League, London, 1919?

Philby, H.J. St John, Arabian Jubilee, London, 1952. Porath, Y., The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929, Frank Cass, London,

1974.

Rabinowicz, O.K., Winston Churchill on Jewish Problems, London, 1956. Rose, H.A., ed., Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936-1947, Vallentine, Mitchell, London, 1973. The Gentile Zionists, Frank Cass, London, 1973. Roskill, $., Hankey: Man of Secrets, vol. 2, London, 1972. Churchill and the Admirals, London, 1977. Sachar, H., The Emergence of the Middle East, 1914-1924, New York, 1969. Sokolow, N., The History of 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 of 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 of 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.

153, 154, 156-7, 158, 160,

Abdullah ibn Husayn, 76, 80, 81, 82, 84, 87—90, 98, 151, 231, Df DAS. S22.

on WSC, 9, 60, 316

Abyssinia, 172 acetone production

Palestine Mandate, 316, 319-20 partition and, 174, 178, 242,

World War I, Weizmann and, S34

Aden, 72

Advisory Council Palestine, 117 African colonies, 58—9, 66

Afrika Corps, 316 Ahad Ha’am, 327 Air Ministry Auschwitz bombing and, 296, 297-300

Alanbrooke, Field—Marshal Lord, 207, 276—7

Ali ibn Husayn, 76

Aliens Act (1905), 6, 324 Liberal Government administration of, 35—9

Aliens Bill (1904), 6, 17-18

WSC’s opposition to, 21—2, 324 Aliens Bill (1905) WSC’s opposition to, 23-5, 324 Allen, Roger, 298 Allenby, General E.H., 98 Allies, Western Holocaust and, 261-73 Amery, eo, xixe 173.179. 180:

183, 249, 309 and Philby Plan, 233-7, 242 Balfour Declaration and, 52 Colonial Secretary, 150, 151,

163, 165-6, 167

243, 252-3, 255-6 Secretary for India, 254 White Paper (1930), 171 Amin el—Husayani, Haj, 97, 227 Anglo—American Committee on Palestine, 311, 320

Anglo—Indian army Mesopotamia, 67 Anglo—Jewry attitudes to Jewish Nationhood, 13-14 Anglo—Persian Oil Company government share purchase, 41-7 anti-Semitism British, 15—17, 39-41, 49-50, 324 British Army, 128, 129 British attitudes to Palestine and, 137-8 Colonial Office, 286 White Russian, 56—7

Zionism as cure for, 15

APOC Government share purchase, 41-7

appeasement WSC and, 169 Arab Delegation, 123, 124—S, 134-6, 139, 140

SIA

INDEX

Arab Federation, 230,231 Arab National Government Palestine, 118-19, 120 Arab Rebellion (1936), 78, 83, 172-3 Arab Revolt (19162), 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, 310, 311 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

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, 3a3 Aliens Bills and, 18

and East African scheme, 25, 27 and Palestine crisis 1921, 113-16

attitude to Jewish immigration, 19-20

First Lord of the Admiralty, 54 meeting with Weizmann, 14, 15 view of Britain’s Middle East committments, 86 Zionism, 15—16, 20, 86 Zionist Loan, 158, 159-63, 167-8 Balfour Declaration, 14, 121, 131, 140, 149, 310, 325, 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—xvil, 146, 742A

325326, 327

Trans—Jordan and, 88 White Paper (1922), 145—7 White Paper (1930), 171 Baruch, Bernard, 186 Basra oilfields, 70 Bauer, Y., 290, 293

Bagallay, Lacy, 191, 197-8

Baghdad proposed British withdrawal, 70-1

Baxter, Charles, 216, 287 Beaverbrook—Rothermere Press, 157

Begin, Menahem, 258

378

CHURCHILI

Bell, Gertrude, 77, 80 Ben—Gurion, David, 211, 259, 308,

AND! THE JEWS

13-14, 27 Brunton, C.D., 91

309 Beresford, Lord Charles, 47 Berlin, Isaiah, 7, 8, 313 Bermant, Chaim, 13, 43 Bevan, Aneurin, i270 Bevin, Ernest, 236, 318—21, 328 Biltmore Resolution, 248 Birkenau, 263, 294 Birkenhead, Frederick Smith, 1st Earl, 167 Black and Tans, 126

Buchenwald, 263

Blechhammer oil complex, 301

Campbell—Bannerman, Sir Henry, 5,26 Casey, Richard, 246, 253 Cazalet, Sir Edward, 13 Cazalet, Victor, 3, 9, 174, 175, 223, 284

‘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, 204, 210, 211, 212, 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, DS

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,

Bulgaria Jewish refugees, 278 Bulgarian Crisis (1875), 16 Butler, R.A.B., 198 Cabinet Committee on Palestine, DUS Cadogan, Alexander, 191, 198, 304 Cairo Conference (1921), 79-84, 149, 322

Chamberlain, Austen, 93, 110, 111,

163-171

Chamberlain, Joseph, 14, 25, 27, 33 Chamberlain, Neville, 151, 172, WS 176,0776 VS SS 187, 194, 197, 199, 326 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

INDEX

879

Clauson, Gerard, 103, 106, 131

Dachau, 263

Clayton, Gilbert, 77

Daily Telegraph, 264 Dalton, Hugh, 212

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, 281—2

WSC suggests responsibility for Mesopotamia, 68—9 Colonial Secretary WSC as 72-84 Colville, John, 249 Committee on Refugees, 272, 288,

291292 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, 64, 81, 85, 97, 110, 121, 146, 147 clash 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

Damascus, 12, 80

Damascus blood libel, 12

Dardanelles campaign, 6 Darwin, John, 69 de Gaulle, General Charles, 220, a5 death camps, 263 Deedes, Sir Wyndham, 115, 129,

190-3. 154. 141

Denikin, General A.I., 56—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, 175-6, 197, 202, 221, 280, 283, 308, 316

Dulberg, Joseph, 29-30, 32-3 Dunkirk evacuation, 208

East Africa scheme, xvi, 17, 19, 2535 Eastern Policy, xv, 12, 14 economic stagnation Britain, 58—9 Eden, Antony, 3, 235, 284 and Auschwitz bombing, 294-5, 296, 298, 303 and Brand/Eichmann offer, 290, 291-2, 293 and Holocaust, 267, 268—9, 272 and Jewish Army, 212, 213, 215, 216

Arab unity, 232-3, 242 as Foreign secretary, 215, 216, 246-7, 250 as War Secretary, 193, 208 at Potsdam Conference, 310—11 Committee on Palestine, 254 on WSC 285, 311

380

CHURCHILL

Palestine trusteeship, 256—7

Egypt, 69, 170, 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 Byres. IM,

221

Faysal, Emir (later King of Iraq), 69, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 229, 245 ‘Final Solution’, xvi, 3, 265, 266 Fisher, Colonel, 205 Fisher, HV AsL., 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 287-8, 289, 290-1 APOC affair and, 42 Eastern Department, Middle East role, 64, policy towards Jews, 26 DO 73

military aid to, 188 Frankfurter, Judge, 186 ‘Frantic’ Shuttle bombing raids, 301

Free French, 220

THE

JEWS

Garrard, John, 21 garrisons, Mesopotamia, 67, 68-9 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—S Greecex65, 405 259 Greek forces British aid to, 93-4

Greenway, Charles, 42 Greenwood, Arthur, 238 Grey, Edward, Ist Earl, 74 Grigg, Po) 595 226 Grosz, ‘Bondi’, 292 Hagana, 248, 283, 287

offer,

Haifa bombing, 207 harbour construction, 164, 165,

287 69 264-5, 266,

Haining, General, 216-17, 223 Haldane, General, 80 Halifax, Edward Wood, 1st Earl,

168

Refugee Department, 264, 287 Foxe [bea 96 France armistice, 207

AND

I

INO Ta

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

Gabriel, Colonel, 124 Gainer, B., 18

Harmsworth, Esmond, 110 Hashemites, 76, 78, 223

INDEX

Hawes, Brigadier—General L.A., 214

Hearst, William Randolph, 171 Fierzl, Theodor, xvi, 143 15,25, 120 Hijaz, 80 - Hilda, S.S., 200, 278 Himmler, Heinrich, 262 either, “AL, oxvil, 2205225. 297-261.

DBOL286, 325,027, 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, 296-7 Hurley, General Patrick, 247 Husayn ibn Ali, 64, 76, 77, 80, 81, 84 Hyam, Ronald, 9, 61 Ibn Saud, xvii, 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

381

Mesopotamia and, 67 Middle Eastern responsibilities, 64 rae OS Greil 245

aio

Irgun Zwai Leumi, 248, 258 Isaacs, Rufus (later Marquis of Reading), 51 Ismay, Field Marshal Lord, 256,

259 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, 27-8, 2-35

Jabotinsky, Zeev, 209 Jack, Marion, 49 Jacob, Sir Jan, 188 Jerusalem WSC’s visit to, March 1921,

87-92 Jewish Agency, 216, 267, 287, 289, 2905.295,314 topographical information on Auschwitz, 298—300

Jewish Army, proposed, 203-27 US support for, 246 WSC’s support for, 326 Jewish Board of Deputies, 35 Jewish Brigade, 225—7, 326 Jewish Chronicle, 20, 22, 23, 24,

34,37, 38,56 Jewish Jewish from Jewish Arab

Division, 213-14, 255 emigration Nazi Germany, 262, 280-1 immigration, 88, fears of, 139, 315

Arab veto, 196, 199, 244-5

illegal, 200

WSC’s, 325-6 India, 61, 169, 318-19

illegal, Second World War,

India Office

limitation, 179-80, 191 renewal (1921), 105

APOC affair and, 42, 45-6

leo4.

273-86

382

CHURCHILL

suspension (1921), 99-102

US support, 246 WSC and, 146, 327 Zionist demands, 174 Jewish National Home, 149, 189 alternatives, 236, 249-51 British financial committment,

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, Sth Marquis, 26

AND

THE JEWS

Laqueur, Walter, 264, 266, 276 Lash, Joseph, 187, 189 Laski, Nathan, 21, 22 Law, Richard, 265, 295, 299 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, 281, 282, 284 Lloyd, T.LK., 158-9 Lloyd George, David, 62, 64, 66, 69572182 HOA 1ONIZ6. 129% 146, 313, 325, 328 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, 51-2 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, 200-3, 204, 205,

383

INDEX

206, 278-9 MacMichael, Sir Harold, 208, 246, 258, 282, 283-4 Macmillan, Harold, 150 Mallaby, Major, 205 Manchester, North-West

WSC’s candidacy, xvi, 323 Manchester bye-election (1908), 35-7 Mancheste Guardian, 21 Marconi scandal, 50 Margesson, David, 218, 220 Marlowe, Thomas, 104 Marsh, Edward, 34 Martin, J.M., 224, 237, 243, 254, 259, 269, 281, 308, 309 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, 77, 91, 97-8, 107, 113, 122, 124, 126, 130, 131, 148 Melchett, Henry, 176, 177, 184, SAT pea7 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 IJ, 207 Middle Eastern Mandates

League of Nations delay in ratification, 95—7

USA and, 147 WSC and, 325-6 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, 52-3, 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, T/2e2I 7218, 219, 220.2305 235, 237,255, 256 assassination, xvill—xix, 257-9,

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

384

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS

Noel-Baker, Philip, 202

proposed withdrawal, 318-21

Norman, Montagu, 150 Normanbrook, Lord, 303 Northcliffe, Alfred, 1st Viscount,

representative government, 107 nots (1929)5 170

110, 136-7, 138, 147

Nuri Said, 214

subsidy to Trans-Jordan, 151, 152-7

USA and, 315-16

US/Britain proposed joint 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

declaration, 247 White Paper (1922), xviu, 123-48, 149, 314-15

White Paper (1930), 170 White Paper (1939), xvii—xviui, 180-4, 190=1, 192, 193, 242-4, 253, 311

WSC urges withdrawal, xvi, 96, 516, 318

WSC’s post-war position on, 314-22

Palestinian Arabs, 5th Congress, 143

Biltmore Resolution, 248

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, 173, 23I S452 56,005 Percy, Lord Eustace, 55

British troops, 126-7

Permanent Mandates Commission,

Cabinet Committee on, 25 1—2 economic recession, 154 elected advisory council, 108-9, WA illegal immigration, 191, 200,

Persia oil concessions, 42 oilfields, 70 Peterson, Sir Maurice, 245, 246

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

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, SHllS)

249

Philby, H: SeJ)B., xvin, 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;

INDEX

Polish HomeArmy, 301-2, 325 Polish Intelligence, 297 Polish Ministry of Information, 267 Poltava, 301

Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion, 50, 325

385

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 Rabinowicz, O.K., 57

Contraband Control Service, 277

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

conversion to oil-burning ships,

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, Rkobert, 5, 6 Richmond, 133 Rishon LeZion, 89, 109, 136 Ritchie, Sir George, 73 Romania

Jewish refugees, 269-70 Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin,

217, 218, 326 Rossevelt, F.D., 195, 214, 226,

234, 240, 241, 246, 256, 304, 308, 310 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, 8. W., 207 Rothermere, Harold, Ist Viscount, el

Rothschild family, 323 Rothschild, James de, 269

42 Rudnitchar, S.S., 277-8 Rumbold, Sir Horace, 79 Rushbrook-Williams, Professor, ENG Russian Front SS atrocities, 264 Russian Jews, 19-20 Rutenburg, Pinhas, 89, 125 concession, 117, 125—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,

SOOO MISS MG 1 Sat 28s 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, 43—4, 47, 48-9 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, 41-9, 324 Shell Petroleum Co., 10 Shertok, Moshe, 228, 289-90

386

CHURCHILL

Shibly al-Jamal, 118, 119 Shuckburgh, Sir John, 98, 108, 123, 1335 TAS Is: American Zionism, 198—9

and Army anti-Zionism, 127-8 and constitutional concessions to Arabs, 103, 104, 107

AND THE JEWS 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

and Jewish immigration, 278

Greater, 255, 256

and Patria incident, 214

Vichy, 231

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, [/C., 77, 178, 41882232, 234, 237, 243, 251, 260, 310 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

SS, 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

Taylor, A. |EPs 73306

Tegart forts, 206 Tel Aviv, 89

bombing, 207 Territorialists, 16, 25, 27-8,

29-35, 324 terrorists, Jewish, 257—8, 312, 329 Times, The, 21, 39, 40-1, 50, 54,

110-11, 135, 137, 144-5, ZOQ 267292: Toynbee, Arnold, 250 Trans-Jordan, 80—1, 82, 87—90, 98, 19S 23 1, 2365 24 5) subsidy from Palestine, 152—7 Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, 153-7 Treaty of Sévres, 3 Treblinka, 267 Trenchard, General H.M., 80 Trevelyan, G>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

387

INDEX

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 I, xvii, 52 Jews, 10, 74, 145, 146, 160, 186-203, 328 military aid, World War II, 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

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 USiwisie 1905 192F 19S 194195" 19752102 WSC, Palestine and, 306-14 Zionist Loan and, 158, 159-60,

164, 165, 166-7 Welles, SKumner, 238, 239 Western Allies Holocaust and, 261-73 Westminster, Duke of, 144 White Paper (1922), xviii, 123-48,

149, 314-15

White Paper (1930), 170 White Paper (1939), xvii—xviii, 180—4, 190-1, 192, 193,

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, 212, 217, 218-19, 231, 256, 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, 237-9 attitude to Arabs, 123-4 Jewish Army and, 203, 204, 209-16, 218-24

Jewish refugees, 280-1, 282

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 Wioson, 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 1, 265

British expenditure, 59 US entry, xvii, 52 Wyman, Professor David, 301, 302 Yishuv, 100, 120, 128, 160, 203, 209N 32 O26

Young, Hubert, 73, 98, 99, 104,

108, 144, 116-21, 129-30,

147

Zangwill, Israel, 25, 26, 27, 29,

388

CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS 30=2

Zeid, Emir, 80 Zionism(ists) as cure for anti-Semitism, 15—17

attitudes of prominent British Jess, 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, eae Gentile, 11—17 Jewish immigration and, 174,

179 refugees and, 274, 275, 280, 282 USAS TOONS 427 Western statesmen’s attitudes to,

327 WSC and, 9-10, 74, 185-6, 30710, 3155 325—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, 271-2

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