British Jews Help Instigate World War II

A critic of an article I wrote documenting Jewish involvement in instigating World War II[1] said that I did not adequately document the involvement of British Jews in influencing Great Britain to enter into the war. This article provides additional information showing that British Jews were instrumental in influencing Britain to instigate World War II.

The Focus

By the end of 1935, Winston Churchill had amassed substantial debts that he could not pay off. Churchill needed all the financial aid he could get. The Anti-Nazi Council, later known as The Focus in response to Churchill’s wishes for a less negative title, came to Churchill’s rescue and ensured his political and financial survival.[2]

British historian Martin Gilbert stated that on November 13, 1936, Churchill wrote to his son Randolph to explain why he had helped launch the Anti-Nazi League. Churchill wrote that the basis of the Anti-Nazi League “is of course Jewish resentment at their abominable persecution. But we are now taking broader ground rather on the lines of my Paris speech.”[3]

British historian Paul Addison wrote that The Focus was a conspiracy to change the course of British foreign policy, with Churchill as its chief propagandist. In the spring of 1936, with the assistance of The Focus, Churchill began to call for Britain to adopt a foreign policy based on collective security under the League of Nations. By implication, this would include the Soviet Union, which had joined the League of Nations in 1934. Although Churchill had been highly critical of the Soviet Union as recently as 1931, by 1933, Churchill’s anti-communism was subordinated to his conviction that National Socialist Germany was the greater danger to Britain.[4]

Churchill made no mention of The Focus in his wartime memoirs. The existence of The Focus’s secret network of journalists, politicians, businessmen, trade unionists and intellectuals was first disclosed in 1963, when one of its financial backers, Eugen Spier, published a short account of its history. Paul Addison wrote that The Focus was “a partly Jewish organization.”[5] British historian Henry Pelling wrote that the group’s finances were originally provided by Jewish businessman Eugen Spier.[6] British politician Roy Jenkins also confirmed that Eugen Spier, a rich German Jew, generously paid most of the early bills of The Focus.[7]

The Focus began to receive funds from other Jewish sources. The Jewish Defense Fund, for example, donated 50,000 pounds to support The Focus’s activities. After confidential approaches had been made to Churchill by the American Jewish Committee, Churchill traveled to Florida to inaugurate The Focus in the United States. Churchill gave his son Randolph instructions to talk about The Focus with Bernard Baruch, the wealthy Jewish financier. The Board of Deputies of British Jews also helped sustain The Focus during its early years.[8]

Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, the wealthy Jewish director of Royal Dutch Oil Company, also provided funding to The Focus. Using Waley-Cohen funds, The Focus set up a publishing company that brought Headway, the official monthly of the League of Nations Union, under its control. At Waley-Cohen’s request, The Focus set up German-born Werner Knop in a “front,” Union Times Ltd., disguised as a press agency. This agency agitated for an anti-German foreign policy. It also financed the pamphleteering into National Socialist Germany by Commander Stephen King-Hall.[9]

On March 28, 1938, Sir Henry Strakosch, the wealthy chairman of the South African mining company Union Corporation Ltd., agreed to pay off Churchill’s considerable debts. Strakosch was a Jew and a prominent member of The Focus.[10] Strakosch regarded Churchill as the one politician in Europe with the vision, energy and courage required to stop the Nazi threat. Strakosch wrote another large check in June 1940 to help Churchill pay off his debts. After Strakosch’s death in October 1943, Churchill received an additional 20,000-pound legacy from Strakosch’s estate.[11]

In view of the substantial Jewish financial contributions to Churchill and The Focus, it is not surprising that by 1937 Churchill had become a committed Zionist. In a letter to Franklin Roosevelt dated August 9, 1942, Churchill stated:[12]

“I am strongly wedded to the Zionist policy, of which I was one of the authors.”

In 1950, Churchill referred to the creation of Israel “as a great event in the history of mankind.” Churchill further said he had “been a Zionist all his life.”[13] In his last letter to Chaim Weizmann, Churchill wrote:[14]

“The wonderful exertions which Israel is making in these times of difficulty are cheering to an old Zionist like me.”

Churchill was an exceptional orator and writer, and he was an effective agent for The Focus in stirring up British public opinion against Germany. For example, Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons shortly after Germany’s Anschluss with Austria:[15]

“The public mind has been concentrated upon the moral and sentimental aspects of the Nazi conquest of Austria—a small country brutally struck down, its Government scattered to the winds, the oppression of the Nazi party doctrine imposed upon a Catholic population and upon the working-classes of Austria and Vienna, the hard ill-usage of persecution which indeed will ensue—which is probably in progress at the moment—of those who, this time last week, were exercising their undoubted political rights, discharging their duties to their own country.”

Churchill’s statements are all lies. The overwhelming majority of Austrians had desired a union with Germany. The Anschluss was hugely popular in Austria. Churchill in his speech had begun the warmongering that led to World War II.

After the Munich Agreement, Churchill stated in his speech on October 5, 1938, that Hitler had extracted British concessions at pistol point, and he loved to use the image of Hitler as a gangster. Churchill used flowery rhetoric and elegant phrases to describe the allegedly mournful Czechs slipping away into darkness. Churchill wanted to convince his countrymen that National Socialist Germany was governed by an insatiable desire for world conquest. The simple and stark purpose of his speech was to convince the British people to eventually accept a war of annihilation against Germany.[16]

Churchill’s campaign of speeches urging collective security against Germany aroused anger in Berlin. The Deutsche Diplomatisch-Politische Korrespondenz stated that Churchill was trying to “camouflage personal dislike of Germany” as “practical reasoning.”[17]

In a speech given in Saarbrücken on October 9, 1938, Hitler said:[18]

“All it would take would be for Mr. Duff Cooper or Mr. Eden or Mr. Churchill to come to power in England instead of Chamberlain, and we know very well that it would be the goal of these men to immediately start a new world war. They do not even try to disguise their intents; they state them openly.”

The Focus had styled itself as a movement for the Defense of Freedom and Peace.[19] In reality, with Churchill as its main spokesman, the primary purpose of this Jewish-led organization was to foment a war of annihilation against Germany.

Other Confirmation

Numerous other sources confirm that Jews actively worked to draw Great Britain into war against Germany. James Forrestal, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense, wrote in his diaries about a conversation he had on December 27, 1945, with U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy:[20]

“[British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain, he says, stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into war. In his telephone conversation with Roosevelt in the summer of 1939, the President kept telling him to put some iron up Chamberlain’s backside. Kennedy’s response always was that putting iron up his backside did no good unless the British had some iron with which to fight, and they did not.”

Ambassador Joseph Kennedy knew that Churchill and his Jewish controllers were scheming to have the United States enter into World War II. Kennedy wrote in his diary about Churchill’s desire to draw the United States into the war:[21]

“I just don’t trust him. He always impressed me that he was willing to blow up the American Embassy and say it was the Germans if it would get the United States in.”

While visiting the United States in December 1939, Joseph Kennedy talked to Jay Pierrepont Moffat, one of the few men in the State Department with whom Kennedy enjoyed a good relationship. Kennedy told Moffat that Chamberlain understood that the United States had no intention of entering the war in Europe. Kennedy said:[22]

“Churchill, however, wants us there as soon as he can get us there. He is ruthless and scheming. He is also in touch with groups in America which have the same idea, notably, strong Jewish leaders.”

Kennedy said privately that the Jews were too powerful in the media and too outspokenly anti-German.[23]

Chamberlain had a Jewish Secretary of War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, who strongly agitated for war with Germany. Appointed by Chamberlain in 1937, Hore-Belisha quickly came to be seen as spoiling for a fight with Hitler. British MP Oswald Mosley publicly called Hore-Belisha “a Jewish warmonger.” Chamberlain’s chief of staff, Henry Pownall, referred to Hore-Belisha in his diary in May 1939 as “an obscure, shallow-brained, charlatan, political Jewboy.” When conflicts with Chamberlain’s relatively pacifist staff increased, Hore-Belisha was finally dismissed in January 1940, just four months into World War II.[24]

Leading British Zionist Chaim Weizmann wrote an extremely revealing letter to Churchill on September 10, 1941:[25]

“There is only one big ethnic group [in America] which is willing to stand, to a man, for Great Britain, and a policy of ‘all-out aid’ for her: the 5 million Jews. From Secretary Morgenthau, Governor Lehman, Justice Frankfurter, down to the simplest Jewish workman or trader, they are conscious of all that this struggle against Hitler implies. […] It has been repeatedly acknowledged by British Statesmen that it was the Jews who, in the last war, effectively helped to tip the scales in America in favor of Great Britain. They are keen to do it—and may do it—again.”

Weizmann admitted here that American Jews, working in conjunction with British Jews, could be crucial in driving Americans into the war.

Max Aitken, better known as Lord Beaverbrook, was a prominent Canadian-British newspaper publisher who was anti-war and against Churchill’s return to public office. Beaverbrook made statements in private letters that he would never have made in public. In one private letter written on March 9, 1938, Beaverbrook identified the people sabotaging rapprochement with Germany:[26]

“There are 20,000 German Jews in England in the professions, pursuing research, in chemical operations, etcetera. These all work against such an accommodation.”

In another private letter written to American publisher Frank Gannett in December 1938, Beaverbrook wrote:[27]

“The Jews have got a big position in the press here. ‘One third of the circulation of the Daily Telegraph is Jewish. The Daily Mirror may be owned by Jews, the Daily Herald is owned by Jews, and the News Chronicle should really be the Jews Chronicle. […] I am not sure about the Mail.’ Beaverbrook stated that for years he had prophesied there would be no war. However, he wrote: ‘But at last I am shaken. The Jews may drive us into war. I do not mean with any conscious purpose of doing so. They do not mean to do it. But unconsciously […] their political influence is moving us in that direction.’”

British Ambassador to Germany Nevile Henderson very much desired peace with Germany. In August 1939, Henderson was having no success in getting British officials to recognize the atrocities being committed daily against the German minority in Poland. Henderson deplored the failure of the British government to exercise restraint over the Polish authorities.[28] British historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote about Henderson:[29]

“He told Hitler, quite truly: ‘the proof of Chamberlain’s friendship was to be found in the fact that he had refused to have Churchill in the Cabinet’; and he said further that the hostile attitude in Great Britain was the work of Jews and enemies of the Nazis, which was exactly what Hitler thought himself.”

Conclusion

While visiting Oxford on October 6, 1936, someone asked Churchill if there was going to be a war. Churchill replied that there would be “a very terrible war in which London will be bombed…” A fortnight later, Churchill told Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King that England had never been in greater danger. Churchill said that inside five years England might become a “vassal state” of Germany.[30]

Churchill’s statements are remarkable in that Adolf Hitler had never wanted war with Great Britain. To Hitler, Great Britain was the natural ally of Germany and the nation he admired most. Hitler had no ambitions against Britain or her Empire, and all of the captured records solidly bear this out.[31]

The question is: How could Churchill have known there was going to be “a very terrible war in which London will be bombed?” In this author’s opinion, Churchill knew there would be a very terrible war because this is what he and Jewish-controlled organizations such as The Focus had wanted. Churchill obviously had access to a well-developed plan, a plan that he was helping to implement.

Endnotes

A version of this article was published in the July/August issue of The Barnes Review.