Churchill and the Jews - Couverture souple

Chapter Nine

The Rise of Hitler

In Britain, a General Election was called for 14 November 1935. As the day drew near, it was rumoured that Churchill would be brought back into government. On 24 October he spoke publicly of the dangers to Britain and Europe of German rearmament and of the German population being ‘trained from childhood for war.’ On the following day the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, sent the Foreign Office an article by the London correspondent of the official Nazi Völkishcer Beobachter, stating ‘that as soon as Mr Churchill opens his mouth, it is safe to bet that an attack on Germany will emerge. He is one of the most unscrupulous political intriguers in England. His friendship with the American Jewish millionaire Baruch leads him to expend all his remaining force and authority in directing England’s action against Germany. This is the man whom the government are apparently thinking of including in the Cabinet.’

In an article in the Strand, a widely circulated monthly magazine published in both Britain and the United States, Churchill described in uncompromising language the militaristic and racist aspects of the Nazi regime. His sources of information were wide-ranging. He had read Hitler’s own book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), and followed the often detailed British newspaper accounts of Nazi rule. Friends in the Foreign Office and the Intelligence Service had brought him first-hand information about the severity of Nazi rule. ‘Hitler’s triumphant career has been borne onwards,’ he wrote in his Strand article, ‘not only by a passionate love of Germany, but by currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them. Hatred of the French is the first of these currents, and we have only to read Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, to see that the French are not the only foreign nation against whom the anger of rearmed Germany may be turned. But the internal stresses are even more striking. The Jews, supposed to have contributed, by a disloyal and pacifist influence, to the collapse of Germany at the end of the Great War, were also deemed to be the main prop of communism and the authors of defeatist doctrines in every form. Therefore, the Jews of Germany, a community numbered by many hundreds of thousands, were to be stripped of all power, driven from every position in public and social life, expelled from the professions, silenced in the Press, and declared a foul and odious race.’

The twentieth century, Churchill wrote, had witnessed ‘with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace.’ The Jews were the chief victims of these doctrines. ‘No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.’

This book traces a remarkable relationship. In 1921, while in Jerusalem, Winston Churchill described the Jewish system of ethics as 'incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together'. Churchill was impressed by Jewish communal life, energy, self-help and determination, and was also attracted by Jewish national aspirations. He felt an affinity with the Jewish struggle: both to survive and to attain statehood. And that affinity informed his politics in all sorts of ways.
Drawing on a lifetime's study as Churchill's official biographer, Martin Gilbert now explores a fascinating new aspect of the life and work of this greatest of Britons, following Churchill's sometimes troubled but always strong relationship during more than fifty years and shedding new light on his thoughts and decisions.
'The book's strength is its summary of a vast amount of souce material culled from achives in Britain, the US and Israel. Interviewees include David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first premier'
Vernon Bogdanor, Jewish Chronicle
'No writer could be better qualified to tell this story . . . A heroic story, mainly told in positive tones and upbeat language'
John Ramsden, BBC History magazine
'Leaves you in no doubt that Churchill was a committed Zionist . . . And perhaps, in a contrary way, Gilbert's words have more potency precisely because they are so measured and unsensational'
Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
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ISBN: 978-1-41652-257-7