Churchill, International Jews and the Holocaust: A Revisionist Analysis

In the interests of fairness, Jeffrey Herf, whose work is here critiqued, was sent the following essay prior to its publication here, and asked to correct any possibly false or misleading statements. No response from Mr. Herf had been received by press time.

Introduction

Winston Churchill played an important role in the history of the twentieth century. For this reason alone, it is important that revisionists re-examine the beliefs and historical forces that motivated this lionized British icon. By improving our understanding of Churchill’s views of and his relationship with the Holocaust and the powerful Jewish groups that played a decisive role in his career, we gain a more accurate view of the past and can use these lessons to hopefully make a more peaceful future for all.

This essay is based upon the studies of three well-known Jewish historians, and will focus only upon issues that most mainstream intellectuals ignore or are afraid to deal with. In 1985, Professor Michael J. Cohen published his obscure but well researched academic study, Churchill and the Jews. Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, published his more widely known Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship in 2007, which inspired a recent Canadian movie documentary. Finally, we will be commenting upon some of the material included in Professor Jeffrey Herf’s “Holocaust classic,” The Jewish Enemy, published in 2006.[1]

Winston Churchill’s 1920 article, in which he highlighted the predominant Jewish role in the world-wide communist movement, is pretty well known. What is not discussed is how he misled his readers in essays and books published many years later. In many contemporary academic environments, it is held that the concept of “International Jewry”—groups of powerful Jews who operate on an international basis and feel that the world-wide Jewish community is united by racial bonds—is a “neo-Nazi” and “radically anti-Semitic” canard that should be immediately dismissed. Sir Winston and the British government showed us otherwise. Finally, it may raise the eyebrows of many when they find out what Churchill told the House of Commons in August 1946 about his knowledge of the Holocaust during the war.

Jews and Communism: Churchill’s Duplicity

During the early part of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill was very much aware of the decisive role that Jews played in the rise of Bolshevik Communism in Russia. Gilbert writes:[2]

“He was familiar with the names and origins of all its leaders: Lenin was almost the only member of the Central Committee who was not of Jewish origin. Neither Churchill nor his colleagues, nor the Jews, knew that Lenin’s paternal grandfather was a Jew.”

The Jewish historian adds an observation that, if stated by a non-Jew, could possibly earn him the dreaded “anti-Semite” label:

Churchill had studied the Bolshevik terror against political opponents, democrats and constitutionalists, and he knew the significant part individual Jews had played in establishing and maintaining the Bolshevik regime.”

In a June 1919 telegram to a British general, Churchill pointed out the prominent role Jews played in the Bolshevik regime and the atrocities they were guilty of.[3] In a 10 October 1919 letter to Lloyd George, Churchill again noted that Jews certainly “have played a leading role in Bolshevik atrocities.”[4] Gilbert attempts to put this in historical context: “Not only was there a deeply anti-Semitic tradition in southern Russia and the Ukraine that had seen pogroms and massacres in both the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, but after the Bolshevik revolution in November 1917 many Jews, hoping for a better break, had thrown in their lot with the Bolsheviks. A few Jews, whose deeds were much publicized and greatly feared, became political commissars, charged with the imposition of Bolshevik rule in southern Russia, and carrying out their tasks with cruelty and zeal.”[5]

Gilbert devotes a long discussion to Sir Winston’s famous 1920 article, “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People.”[6] Churchill pointed out that left-wing Jews were a major force behind Communist Marxism in many parts of Europe and Russia, which ultimately brought horror and suffering to millions. He discussed:

“the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all of them, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemburg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”[7]

Churchill specifically stated that Jewish Marxists were causing major problems in Germany. He wrote:[8]

“The same phenomenon [i.e., Jewish involvement with left-wing and Communist movements] has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers is astonishing.”

More recent scholarship has vindicated some of Churchill’s views. Jewish-American political scientists Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, and anti-National-Socialist historian Robert Payne documented the decisive role that Jews played in far left and Communist movements in Germany prior to World War II, although they may not believe that Jewish influence was as destructive as Churchill believed it to be.[9]

Despite Churchill’s 1920 exposé of the decisive Jewish involvement with Communism, in a November 1935 article he criticized Hitler and the German National Socialists for believing that Jews “were the main prop of communism.”[10] Of course, this is precisely what Churchill had stated in “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,” when he wrote:[11]

“There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews [Gilbert pointed out that Lenin’s paternal grandfather was a Jew. Ed.]. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders.”

Furthermore, in his famous book, The Gathering Storm, written after the Second World War and widely regarded as a “classic,” Churchill again misled his readers. He insinuated that Hitler and his followers engaged in “delusional thinking” when they claimed that Jews played a major and destructive role in German Communist and Left wing groups. Describing the alleged fantasies of Hitler in regard to Jewish influence prior to and during the First World War, Churchill wrote: “As in a dream everything suddenly became clear [to Hitler]. Germany had been stabbed in the back and clawed down by the Jews, by the profiteers and intriguers behind the front, by the accursed Bolsheviks in their international conspiracy of Jewish intellectuals.”[12] In fact, there is nothing in this “masterpiece” about the decisive role that Jews played in German communism, the international Bolshevik movement, and the threat this posed to Germany and the world, which Churchill had so vividly complained about in decades past.

On this issue, Churchill was deceitful. In 1935, he criticized National Socialists for holding beliefs that he himself had propounded years earlier. In 1948, when criticism of Jewish influence became taboo, he implied that the National Socialist idea of Bolshevism being a world-wide conspiracy of left-wing Jews that wreaked havoc in Germany was all a “paranoid fantasy.” He dishonestly failed to point out that this is very similar to what he emphatically stated in his 1920 article.

Churchill, the British Government, and the Reality of International Jewry

In his widely known works on National Socialist Germany, Jeffrey Herf asserts that the concept of “International Jewry” is a paranoid fantasy of “radical anti-Semites.” This allegedly false notion “rested on the belief that the Jews were a cohesive, politically active subject—that is, a group united on a global scale by racial bonds that transcended any allegiance to nation-states.”[13] Of course, enlightened people of today should immediately reject this “canard.” The University of Maryland professor insists that Hitler was delusional, as he believed “International Jewry” to be an “actually existing political subject with vast power that was hostile to Germany.”[14] According to Herf’s politically correct mode of thought, a world-wide Jewish entity that transcends the boundaries of nation-states had no existence whatsoever before, during or after the Second World War. Winston Churchill’s statements and behavior, and that of the British government, show us otherwise.

We remind the reader that in his 1920 article, “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,” Churchill referred directly to the “schemes of International Jews,” their “sinister confederacy” and “world-wide conspiracy.” Historian Gilbert, relying upon Churchill, defines “International Jews” as “those Jews who supported Bolshevik rule inside Russia and Bolshevik revolution beyond its borders.”[15] (As we shall soon see, this is an incomplete and inadequate definition of the term, “International Jews.” To cite just one problem, it does not include international Jewish Zionists who were opposed to Bolshevism.)

What was the goal of these “International Jews?” Churchill believed that they were seeking “a world-wide communistic State under Jewish domination.”[16] It is important to note that in The Gathering Storm, he correctly imputed this very belief to Adolf Hitler. In Churchill’s description, Mein Kampf promoted the idea that the aim of Soviet communism was the triumph of international Judaism.[17] Of course, Churchill never informed his readers of the striking similarity between his 1920 article and Hitler’s book on this issue.

Professor Herf apparently believes that only “radical anti-Semites” promoted the concept of “International Jewry”—but Winston Churchill was a philo-Semite and Gentile Zionist who worked for Jewish interests his entire career, and was accused of being “too fond of Jews” by his friend and fellow parliamentarian General Sir Edward Louis Spears.[18]

In November 1917, the British Foreign Office issued the Balfour Declaration. It read:[19]

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”

Gilbert reveals the beliefs that moved the British government to issue the Declaration:[20]

“The War Cabinet hoped that, inspired by the promise of a national home in Palestine, Russian Jews would encourage Russia—then in the throes of revolution—to stay in the war, and that American Jews would be stimulated to accelerate the military participation of the United States—already at war, but not yet in the battlefield. To secure these results, [Jewish-Zionist diplomat] Weizmann agreed to go first to the United States and then to Russia, to lead a campaign to rouse the pro-war sentiments among the Jewish masses in both countries.”

In 1921, Churchill reiterated the British government’s position on the Balfour Declaration. One of the main reasons that it was issued is because the assistance of Jews from various parts of the world was needed to induce the nation states in which they lived to enter the war on Great Britain’s side.[21] A similar agenda motivated Churchill during the late 1930s: he believed continuing British support for a Jewish home in Palestine would motivate American Jewry to help bring the United States to Britain’s side in the expected war with Germany. Here is a quote from a December 1939 Churchill memorandum:[22]

“[…] 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 [an American] 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 combating isolationist and indeed anti-British tendencies in the United States.”

In order that there is no misunderstanding, we will quote Professor Cohen:[23]

“[Churchill] 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 Zionists could play in mobilizing 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 mobilize American support. In 1939, Churchill believed that history would 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.”

Churchill’s beliefs regarding “international Jews” had validity: certain groups of Jews from one continent did engage in political actions that served the interests of Jews on other continents. As historian of the American film industry Neal Gabler pointed out in his An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Jewish screen writers and movie executives in Hollywood USA were concerned about the plight of their Jewish brethren across the ocean in Europe.[24] These important Hollywood figures held a meeting in early 1936 during which they discussed what was to be done to combat Hitler’s Germany. Film producer David Selznick wanted to fight against Hitler “in the usual Jewish way of being on the fringes and not letting yourself appear as involved in it.” He further suggested: “Don’t get too public. Do it quietly. Behind the scenes.” Apparently, other screen industry figures present wanted to conduct a more open and straightforward campaign.[25]

In autumn 1936, the more conservative Jewish film industry figures began launching “tentative attacks upon the Hitler regime.”[26] Film producer and studio executive Louis B. Mayer warned that war in Europe was looming, and he urged the United States to join forces with Britain. Before the US declared war following the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, certain Hollywood Jews were willing to use their influence to incite a pro-war sentiment in the United States. In a 20 May 1940 memo to President Roosevelt from studio executive Harry Warner, the latter stated:

“[P]ersonally we would like to do all in our power within the motion picture industry and by use of the talking screen to show the American people the worthiness of the cause for which the free peoples of Europe are making such tremendous sacrifices.”

A few months later motion picture mogul Nick Schenck offered to place his entire studio in the service of President Roosevelt’s campaign for war with Germany.[27]

Here we have another example showing the reality of International Jewry, as Churchill would have conceived of it. Viewing the fight against Hitler’s Germany as in the interests of Jews everywhere, Hollywood executives put their powerful instruments of mass persuasion in the USA in the service of Churchill’s across-the-Atlantic campaign for war with Germany.[28] As Professor Cohen so rightly noted:[29]

“Until the American entry [into the Second World War], Jewish influence was naturally at its highest premium, as a solid force countering neutralist forces in the United States [groups that opposed US involvement in a war with Germany].”

In March 1922, on Churchill’s instructions, the Middle East Department issued a defense of the Balfour Declaration. They wanted the Jewish National Home in Palestine to “become a centre in which Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride [emphasis added].”[30] Churchill discussed the Zionist desire to build a Jewish state in Palestine in his 3 September 1937 Jewish Chronicle article: this political entity would serve as a “rallying point for Jews in every part of the world.”[31]

The reader should take special note of the beliefs that Churchill and his British government acted upon. At the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the English promise to support a Jewish national home in Palestine would be used to enlist the aid of Jews from Russia and the United States to encourage their respective countries to keep fighting the First World War. In addition, an international Zionist diplomat would travel to these two nations to arouse pro-war feelings. Similar beliefs motivated Churchill in the 1930s prior to the Second World War. Supposedly, Jewish proxies across the Atlantic would help bring the US onto the British side in a war with Germany.

But just as importantly, the Jewish National Home would be of interest to Jews on the basis of race and religion, an entity that would galvanize Jewish support from all parts of the globe.[32] Significantly enough, this is very similar to the viewpoint of German National Socialist Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath, who said that a Jewish state in Palestine would provide an internationally recognized power base for Jews world-wide, like the Vatican for Catholics or Moscow for international communists.[33]

Directly refuting Jeffrey Herf and those who think like him, by enacting policies such as these, Winston Churchill and the British government clearly realized that many powerful and influential groups of Jews throughout the world in fact saw themselves as “a cohesive, politically active subject—that is, a group united on a global scale by racial bonds.” In other words, the entity “International Jewry” does in fact exist, although not all Jews should be considered a part of it.[34] There are Jews from all parts of the world who feel little or no attachment whatsoever to any world-wide Jewish community. Nevertheless, this belief that Jews are an internationally organized, racial entity has survived the Second World War and is still held by many Jewish groups world-wide, influencing Zionist and Israeli thinking to this very day. One example should suffice to demonstrate my point.

A convinced believer in the traditional view of the Holocaust, Dr. Herf claims:[35]

“The radical anti-Semitism that accompanied and justified the Holocaust described Jews first and foremost as a racially constituted political subject.”

Well lo and behold! Something strikingly like this “radical anti-Semitic idea” has led to Israel’s interest in scientific studies that delineate genetic/racial differences between Jews and non-Jews.

In an article that appeared in Natural History of November 1993, renowned Jewish scientist Jared Diamond discussed the genetic studies on how Jews differ from non-Jews. He made this astounding statement:[36]

“There are also practical reasons for interest in Jewish genes. The state of Israel has been going to much expense to support immigration and job retraining of Jews who were persecuted minorities in other countries. That immediately poses the problem of defining who is a Jew.”

According to Diamond, Israeli policy asserts that Jews are a racially constituted political subject: they differ from non-Jews on a genetic/racial basis, and these biological differences may be used to determine who will be granted citizenship in the political entity of Israel.

The reader may scratch his head in wonder, asking: “So why do intellectuals like Jeffrey Herf deny the reality of International Jewry?” In the Twentieth Century, the Jewish community has emerged as one of the most powerful elements in the United States and Europe.[37] If they become widely viewed as an international, racially constituted political entity that is separate and distinct from the surrounding culture, this could create suspicion and distrust in the minds of the non-Jewish peoples they reside among. Non-Jews might start saying:

“Since certain segments of the Jews are separate and distinct from us and they form a hostile and alien elite, perhaps they should not wield the power over our society that they have.”

If such ideas ever attained widespread legitimacy, it might spawn political and social movements that could bring about a marked reduction in Jewish power and influence. Jeffrey Herf’s denial of the existence of International Jewry may be based in a desire to maintain the Jewish community’s elite status in the Western world.

Churchill and Holocaust Revisionism

In June of 1941, British code-breakers at Bletchley Park were intercepting and reading the most secret communications of the German enemy. Gilbert claims that decoded top-secret messages about the alleged mass murder of Jews and non-Jews in the German-occupied Soviet Union were shown to Churchill. In response, the Prime Minister emphatically stated in his radio broadcast of 24 August 1941, that “whole districts are being exterminated,” and concluded with this judgment: “We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”[38]

On August 27, and September 1, 6, and 11, 1941, Churchill was shown German police decrypts reporting on the execution of thousands of Jews on Soviet territory.[39] This information is consistent with the Holocaust revisionist position. As far back as the mid-1970s, Revisionist scholar Arthur Butz made the point that this is the one part of the Holocaust legend that contains a kernel of truth. During the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, thousands of Jews and non-Jews were shot by German police units and auxiliaries of local police in their attempt to stop the guerilla warfare being waged against them.[40] Brutality was practiced by both the Soviets and the Germans.

On 27 August 1941, the Bletchley Park code-breakers informed Churchill:[41]

“The fact that the [German] Police [in the Soviet Union] are killing all Jews that fall into their hands should by now be sufficiently well appreciated. It is not therefore proposed to continue reporting these butcheries specifically, unless so requested.”

Gilbert admits there is nothing in Bletchley Park decrypts about the alleged mass shooting of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev in September 1941. Therefore, should one conclude that this atrocity never took place? Not according to Gilbert: he says that German police units in Russia were cautioned by Berlin “not to compromise their ciphers.”[42] Gilbert encourages his readers to conclude that this alleged mass killing took place, although supposedly a top-secret message about it was never sent out.

Gilbert believes that Churchill received sufficient details from other sources about the mass killing of Jews in the Soviet Union, and in response, sent the Jewish Chronicle a personal message, which was published in full on 14 November 1941. It read in part: “None has suffered more cruelly than the Jew,” and he referred to “the unspeakable evils wrought on the bodies and spirits of men by Hitler and his vile regime.”[43]

In London on 29 October 1942, Christian and Jewish leaders led a public protest against the alleged mass murders of Jews that were supposedly taking place in the German concentration camps. Churchill, who was in the United States at the time, addressed the gathering by way of a letter that was read by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It stated in part:[44]

“I cannot refrain […] to protest against the Nazi atrocities inflicted on the Jews. […] The systematic cruelties to which the Jewish people—men, women, and children—have been exposed under the Nazi regime are amongst the most terrible events of history, and place an indelible stain upon all who perpetuate and instigate them. Free men and women denounce these vile crimes […].”

In December 1942, Churchill was shown a report from a Polish Catholic member of the Resistance, Jan Karski. He claimed to have seen Jews being forced with great brutality into cattle cars, and then taken to an unknown “extermination location.”[45] In response, Anthony Eden of the War Cabinet wanted to issue a public declaration. “It was known,” he asserted, “that Jews were being transferred to Poland from enemy-occupied countries, for example, Norway: and it might be that these transfers were being made with a view to wholesale extermination of Jews.”[46] (Notice that Eden said the exterminations “might be” happening, and not that they were in fact happening. This suggests that he was skeptical of the “evidence” regarding the alleged mass exterminations of Jews. More on Eden in a moment.)

The Allied Declaration, supported by Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and other members of the Allied cause, was published on 17 December 1942, and it had considerable political impact, just as Churchill wished. Its central paragraph condemned “in the strongest possible terms” what was described as “this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.”[47]

On 19 December 1942, Polish-Jewish official Samuel Zygielbojm appealed to Churchill to save the one and a quarter million Polish Jews who were still alive and were in danger of “being exterminated” by the Germans. As Cohen points out, there is no record of any reply from Churchill, and no Allied operation was initiated to halt the alleged slaughter.[48]

In June 1944, Churchill viewed a Jewish Agency report on the workings of the alleged “Nazi gas chambers” in the concentration camps. He sent a memorandum to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, asking: “Foreign Secretary, what can be done? What can be said?” The evidence indicates that Churchill wanted to issue another Allied threat of retribution, but the Foreign Office said that too many such pronouncements had already been made.[49]

On 6 July 1944, Foreign Secretary Eden informed Churchill of an appeal he received from Zionist diplomat Chaim Weizmann, that the British government should take steps to mitigate the “appalling slaughter of Jews in Hungary.”[50] We let Professor Cohen pick up the story here:[51]

“Now Weizmann reported mistakenly that 60,000 Jews were being gassed and burned to death each day at Birkenau (the death camp at Auschwitz II). Eden told Churchill that this figure might well be an exaggeration. But on the next day, Eden forwarded an additional report to Churchill, 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.”

Cohen, a firm believer in the traditional version of the Holocaust, still highlighted the exaggerations in the story. Buried in a footnote he writes:[52]

“It seems that the Zionist figure of 60,000 per day, should in fact have been 6,000.”

As of the date of this writing, even anti-Revisionist Holocaust historians would point out that the figure of 1,500,000 Jews being murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau is another exaggeration of around 540,000 deaths! Robert Jan van Pelt, widely considered to be a contemporary expert on the alleged mass murder of Jews at this concentration camp, wrote in 2002 that total number of Jewish deaths at the site was 960,000.[53] The important lesson here is this: we have evidence from a respected academic source that, during the war, Churchill was being handed exaggerated atrocity information, to say the very least.

On 7 July 1944, Churchill approved the bombing of Auschwitz by the British Air Force, but the operation was never carried out.[54] Four days later, on 11 July, Churchill issued his oft-quoted declaration on the Holocaust:[55]

“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.”

At the end of August 1944, Churchill’s son showed his father a copy of the full report of four escapees from the Auschwitz “extermination camp,” an official document that had been published a month and a half earlier by the War Refugee Board in Washington. Before this, Churchill had only seen a summary version. Gilbert comments:[56]

“Not for the first time, Randolph had alerted his father to an aspect of the Jewish fate that had not reached the Prime Minister through official channels.”

Gilbert points out that in the latter part of 1944, Berlin issued a statement denouncing at least some of the reports about the deportations to Auschwitz, claiming they were “false from beginning to end.”[57] Gilbert is unclear on exactly what the Germans were claiming to be false.

Despite all of the authoritative declarations Churchill made or supported during the war with regard to the “reality” of the Nazi extermination of the Jews, when the war ended he made an astonishing statement that casts doubt on the sincerity of all of these wartime pronouncements. In a speech before the House of Commons on 1 August 1946, he emphatically declared that he knew nothing of the alleged Nazi mass murder of Jews while the Second World War was taking place. We quote him verbatim:[58]

“I must say that I had no idea, when the war came to an end, of the horrible massacres which had occurred; the millions and millions that have been slaughtered. That dawned on us gradually after the struggle was over.”

As far back as 1985, Professor Cohen stated the dilemma in these terms. He says it is debatable how familiar the Prime Minister was with the Intelligence information regarding the alleged Nazi extermination camps, but by “July, 1944 at the very latest, Churchill was supplied by the Zionists with very precise details of the murderous capacity of Auschwitz.”[59] In light of this, Cohen asks, how should we interpret Churchill’s August 1946 denial of knowledge of the mass murder of Europe’s Jews during the war?[60]

The reader should take careful note of the implications of Churchill’s words. If Sir Winston was not aware during the war of the alleged mass killings of Jews, and if he and his associates realized only after the war ended that these supposed mass murders took place, then all of his “authoritative” declarations we listed above about the mass murder of Jews taking place during the war were just unconfirmed and baseless allegations in his estimation.

Bizarre inconsistencies like this are exactly what the Holocaust Revisionist hypothesis would predict, and this is why even the most anti-Revisionist reader should consider Churchill’s statements from a Revisionist perspective. Revisionism states that many of the wartime claims of the Allies and Zionists in regard to the alleged extermination of the Jews were simply false propaganda, designed to serve ulterior Allied and Zionist political agendas.

Churchill was well aware that representations of the Jewish fate at the hands of the Germans were linked to plans for a Zionist state in Palestine. Indeed, Gilbert points out:[61]

“In Churchill’s mind, the Jewish fate in Europe and the Jewish future in Palestine were inextricably linked.”

In his seminal Revisionist work The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Arthur Butz made a somewhat parallel point:[62]

”The Zionist character of the [Nazi extermination] propaganda is quite clear; note that, as a rule, the persons who were pressing for measures to remove Jews from Europe (under the circumstances a routine and understandable proposal) coupled such proposals with demands that such Jews be resettled in Palestine, which shows that there was much more in the minds of Zionist propagandists than mere assistance to refugees and victims of persecution.”

Throughout his entire book, Gilbert discusses how the unrelenting Churchill, being wedded to Zionist policy, was up against the resistance of many factions within his own government and from around the world who were opposed to establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. They realized it would end in disaster for the indigenous people of the Middle East and for British interests in general.[63] In a situation such as this, one can readily see how “Nazi extermination” propaganda would be useful to Churchill—it would silence opposition to Zionist aims and create mass sympathy for the future Jewish state.[64] There is evidence that is consistent with this interpretation. In December 1942, Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley put the request to the Prime Minister that 4500 Bulgarian Jewish children, with 500 accompanying adults, be allowed to exit Bulgaria for Palestine, adding that British pubic opinion had been “much roused by the recent reports of the systematic extermination of the Jews in Axis and Axis-controlled countries.” Churchill replied: “Bravo!”[65]

Professor Cohen notes the strange inconsistency between Winston Churchill’s public statements about the Holocaust and his lack of action to do anything to stop it:[66]

“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.”

I ask the most hard-core believer in the traditional Holocaust story to ponder this dilemma. During the war, Churchill was making authoritative pronouncements about the “etched-in-stone” fact of the Nazi extermination of the Jews—and after the war, he tells British parliament that he had no idea such “exterminations” took place during the war, and only realized their “reality” after the war was ended! To say the least, Churchill’s statements are consistent with the point that Professor Butz made decades ago: the first claims about the “Nazi extermination of the Jews” made during the war were not based on one scrap of credible intelligence data.[67]

Butz’s revisionist hypothesis is further supported by the fact that even academic “Holocaust experts” will have to admit that, during the war, Churchill was handed exaggerated data in regard to the number of Jewish deaths, as we have shown in this essay. Finally, Churchill’s public outcries regarding the alleged Nazi extermination of the Jews were declarations that, “coincidentally,” served British and Zionist military and political agendas.

We will end here with a short note regarding Churchill’s 1 August 1946 statement that the “reality” of the Holocaust “dawned on us gradually after the struggle was over.”[68] Gilbert points out that Churchill used what was found at some German concentration camps at the war’s end as “proof” of the “Holocaust.”[69] A thorough discussion of this is beyond the scope of this short essay, so I refer the reader to the Revisionist studies of the topic.[70]

Notes:

© 2011