Churchill’s “overreaction”

One reader wrote that Churchill “overreacted” to the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne by members of the Jewish Lehi (Stern Gang).  This is to misjudge Churchill, who deplored terrorism regardless of its source.

From Churchill by Himself, 442, WSC, House of Commons, 17 November 1944. (Source: Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, VII: 1052):

If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols, and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past. If there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism, these wicked activities must cease. And those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch.

Bombing Auschwitz

Another reader wrote: “Had Churchill given an order to bomb Auschwitz, rather than simply recommend that it be bombed, it would have been bombed. He did not do so, presumably, because he was loath to quarrel with his General Staff. He did not wish to stand accused of risking air crews to save Jewish lives that had no military value.”

It was more an order than a recommendation, but let that go. The more compelling idea was bombing the railway lines to Auschwitz, rather than the camp itself. The latter, as the Jewish Agency pointed out at the time, would have killed inmates who, it was hoped, would be liberated. (Remember, this was in 1944.) However, early requests by the Jewish Agency did not make this distinction (read on).

***

As to bombing railway lines, Churchill did not have plenary authority over the U.S. Army Air Force—the responsible agency for the Auschwitz sector. Martin Gilbert, in a 1993 lecture at the United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, noted that in mid-1944…

…five prisoners escaped from Auschwitz in order to bring news to the West of what was happening to the Jews there. Four were Jews. One was a Polish Catholic medical student.

The moment their information reached the West, and the truth of the gas chambers made clear, there was a tremendous and understandable outcry. (The first thing that has always struck me: What would have happened if these escapees had made their way West in 1943? Or even at the end of 1942?) The impact of their report on the Jewish and non-Jewish world was dramatic and traumatic….

On 6 July 1944, in a meeting with Anthony Eden, Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Shertok made five urgent and desperate suggestions. The fifth was that “the railway line leading from Budapest to Birkenau, and the death camp at Birkenau and other places, should be bombed.”

When Churchill saw this request by Eden, he did something I’ve not seen on any other document submitted to Churchill for his approval: He wrote on it what he wanted done.

Normally, he would have said, “Bring this up to War Cabinet on Wednesday,” or, “Let us discuss this with the Air Ministry.”

Instead, he wrote to Eden on the morning of 7 July: “Is there any reason to raise this matter with the Cabinet? Get anything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me if necessary.”

The singularity of Churchill’s order

Martin Gilbert continued:

I have never seen a minute of Churchill’s giving that sort of immediate authority to carry out a request…. I suppose it is a great tragedy that all this had not taken place in July 1943 or October 1942. For when all is said and done, July 1944 was too late to save all but a final 100,000.

There is a vast subtext, in my book, Auschwitz and the Allies. British officials did not know on 7 July that the deportations had ceased. They had to deal with the Prime Minister’s request on the assumption that it still had some validity. Some revealed considerable distaste for carrying out any such instruction.

It is interesting, however, to note that when the request was put to the American Air Force Commander, General Ira C. Eaker, when he visited the Air Ministry a few days later, he gave it his full support. He regarded it as something that the American daylight bombers could and should do.

But as you know, the request died in Washington. On the second occasion it reached the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy. He told his assistant to kill it.. The debate about bombing the Auschwitz lines continued for more than a month after the lines were no longer in use.

From the bomber crews

Dr. Gilbert interviewed several of those who would have bombed the Auschwitz lines as Churchill had wished. Every one, without exception, was emphatic that he would have done it. Some expressed anger that they were not asked to do it. Sir Martin continues:

I even found the young man who had taken that aerial photograph of Auschwitz displayed in the Museum. He was South African photo reconnaissance pilot. He was in extreme distress that he had no idea what it was he was flying over.

If only he had known, the pilot continued, he could at least have tipped his wings, to signal those on the ground that someone knew they were there.

Winston Churchill instantly recognized the terrible crime. Sir Martin quotes his letter Anthony Eden on the day that the escapees’ account of Auschwitz reached them:

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 civilised 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. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.”

Further Reading

“Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill and the Holocaust,” 2024.

“The Polish and the Holocaust: What Churchill Knew,” 2021.

“Witold Polecki: A Brave Pole Who Did His Best for Liberty,” 2020.

“Bombing Auschwitz, from my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality,” 2020

On January 9th, the Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre zoomed a reading of one of Martin Gilbert‘s greatest lectures. Read by Lady Gilbert, it brought back memories of a memorable evening. (Video on YouTube.) The 1993 presentation included an introduction and afterword by my friend and colleague Dr. Cyril Mazansky, who lost part of his family in the Holocaust. By the end there wasn’t a dry eye in the lecture hall.

“Churchill and the Holocaust: The Possible and Impossible” was delivered on 8 November 1993 the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. As editor for the old Churchill Centre, I published it in our Proceedings series two years later. Alas today, copies are scarce and often pricey. Esther Gilbert did us a service by reprising this vital piece of history.

Sir Martin’s speech

In the Q&A session, the question came up of how Martin Gilbert spoke. Did he have detailed notes or a script? I was able to relate my experience at the very first lecture of his I attended in 1985. His method was extraordinary. I have never seen anything like it. You can read my recollections here.

Lady Gilbert and Dr. Mazansky have permitted me send a transcript of both speeches to anyone who wishes a copy. Simply email my contact link. (Your email is never given out or used for promotions in any way.) She has also permitted us to publish the text on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. (You can subscribe to its free weekly updates here: Scroll to bottom, and fill in your email in the box entitled “Stay in touch with us.” (Again, your email is secure.)

Why so little in Churchill’s memoirs?

Another question was why Churchill wrote so little about the Holocaust in his war memoirs. There were sound reasons for this. Intelligence restrictions were still in place on many aspects of the war, and war crimes trials were occurring. Also, Churchill had an understandable reluctance to criticize American officials such as John McCloy, who blocked his order to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. The war had ended. but a new cold war was on. Churchill was never wont to open a quarrel with allies over the past. And, as Lady Gilbert pointed out, it wasn’t actually known as the “Holocaust” for years later.

Churchill, however, brought out the sickening evidence uncovered by the liberating armies, long before his war memoirs. I have supplied these to the Learning Centre:

19 April 1945

Churchill to the House of Commons:

No words can express the horror which is felt by His Majesty’s Government and their principal Allies at the proofs of these frightful crimes now daily coming into view. I have this morning received an informal message from General Eisenhower saying that the new discoveries, particularly at Weimar, far surpass anything previously exposed. He invites me to send a body of Members of Parliament at once to his Headquarters in order that they may themselves have ocular and first-hand proof of these atrocities.

The matter is one of urgency, as of course it is not possible to arrest the processes of decay in many cases. In view of this urgency, I have come to the conclusion that eight Members of this House, and two Members of the House of Lords, should form a Parliamentary Delegation, and should travel out at once to the Supreme Headquarters, where General Eisenhower will make all the necessary arrangements for their inspection of the scenes, whether in American or British sectors.

Members who volunteer for this extremely unpleasant but none the less necessary duty should give their names to their Party Whips, in order that a body representative of all Parties may be selected by the usual methods during this afternoon. I should propose that they should start to-morrow.I hope that the House will approve of the somewhat rapid decision I have taken.

The delegation was duly sent, and what came to be called the Holocaust was duly and shockingly reported to Parliament and the public.

26 April 1945

A week later Churchill rose again in the House of Commons to declare that the German Reich would be held responsible for the care of all prisoners, not just military POWs:

The Allied warning to Germany about the care of prisoners is not in principle limited to Allied prisoners of war, internees and deported citizens of the United Nations. Its scope extends to all prisoners in Nazi hands, of whatever race, origin or religion, including Stateless Jews and German and Austrian political prisoners who have suffered as a result of sympathy with or activities on behalf of the cause for which the United Nations are fighting.

His Majesty’s Government, in common with other Governments of the United Nations, have repeatedly declared their intention to hold enemy authorities responsible for the maltreatment of persons who have been imprisoned on grounds of race and religion. I must add that in framing this answer I have not had time to consult other Allied Governments upon its actual terms. But I cannot conceive there is the slightest difference between us on the main principles.

Palestine, 1945-49

Sir Martin in his remarks also covered developments in Palestine as the war ended. The Holocaust heightened the desire of stateless Jews in Europe to emigrate to West Palestine. (This was one-seventh of the full Palestine Mandate, the rest being East Palestine, now Jordan.) For examples of Churchill’s distress over the Labour Government’s performance in this area, see my two timelines:

Churchill and Palestine, 1945-46

Churchill and the Road to Israel, 1947-49

1 August 1946

Churchill continued to brood publicly over the Holocaust. From my book, Churchill by Himself, again in Parliament:

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.

Editor’s note: As his biographer Sir Martin Gilbert has shown, Churchill had only limited awareness of the extent of the Holocaust during the war; his reactions to the news were in keeping with his character.

The Dream, 1947

The Dream was Churchill’s fanciful short story about conversing with his long-dead father in 1947. In it he explains all that had happened since his father died in 1895. The full text is available. Referring again to the Holocaust, he described the two World Wars:

“Papa,” I said, “in each of them about thirty million men were killed in battle. In the last one seven million were murdered in cold blood, mainly by the Germans. They made human slaughter-pens like the Chicago stockyards. Europe is a ruin. Many of her cities have been blown to pieces by bombs. Ten capitals in Eastern Europe are in Russian hands…. Far gone are the days of Queen Victoria and a settled world order. But, having gone through so much, we do not despair.”

The magic name of Churchill has allowed me the privilege of meeting or knowing many figures that I would otherwise know only from reading. Robert Hardy, William F. Buckley, William Manchester, Alistair Cooke, Fitzroy Maclean, Anthony Montague Browne, Margaret Thatcher and Mary Soames come to mind. From no one did I learn as much about judicious, honest history, and how to write it, than from Martin Gilbert. I encounter his words almost every day. Esther’s words brought him back again to life. He lives in memory.

More on Sir Martin Gilbert

“In Search of Churchill by Martin Gilbert: An Appreciation,” 2023.

“Sir Martin Gilbert CBE 1936-2015, Part 1,” 2015.

“Sir Martin Gilbert CBE 1936-2015, Part 2,” 2015.

“Gilbert and Manchester: Complementary Biographers,” 2012.

Mr. Paul Bonowicz staged a one-man protest against Churchill in South Ruislip, Middlesex. He denounced “the lies in British books about Winston Churchill. I am Polish and we know he betrayed Polish people.” He added: Churchill “knew about the Holocaust. He knew Jewish people were dying, but he didn’t help. After the war there was a deal between Churchill and Stalin, and the price was Poland. Part of my country went to the Soviets. It was Churchill who decided which part, not the Poles.” —Uxbridge Gazette.

Churchill did know about the Holocaust, and alone among allied leaders, he tried to do something about it. As to the alleged Polish betrayal…

Virtues and mistakes

In 1938, the Teschen District of Czechoslovakia was absorbed by the Poles, who happily took it, as a result of the Munich Agreement. In 1939 Polish parts not taken by Hitler went to the Soviets. Toward war’s end Churchill first protested, then acquiesced, and ultimately agonized over the shifting of Poland to the west. An eastern slice went to Russia and the Poles received part of Germany. In August 1945 Churchill told Parliament: “I think a mistake has been made, in which the Provisional (Communist) Government of Poland have been an ardent partner, by going far beyond what necessity or equity required.” (Churchill By Himself, 179). “There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess—and there are few mistakes they have ever avoided.”

The matter has ben raised more recently in the modern round of Churchill criticism. It is difficult to comprehend what Churchill, and Roosevelt for that matter, could have done abut the land shift. By 1945 the Red Army occupied all Polish territory. The Anglo-Americans hoped (forlornly) that Stalin would make good his promise of free elections. Some Poles have never forgiven them, although Churchill was first to predict Communism’s fall, thanks to patriots such as Lech Walesa.

War aim or by-product?

Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz. (The story of Witold Pilecki.) New York: HarperCollins, 2019, $28.99, Amazon $20.49, Kindle $13.99.

By 1 August 1946 the world knew the full truth of the Holocaust. Churchill said: “I had no idea, when the war came to an end, of the horrible massacres which had occurred.” Though he had reports from 1942 to 1944, his statement was broadly true. He did not realize the full magnitude and number of death camps until they were all liberated. Even then, it took time to reconstruct much evidence destroyed by the Nazis. Throughout the war,  many civil servants and ministries insisted that saving the Jews was not a war aim. but a by-product of victory.

“Show us the proof”

In the event, to save Jews, it was necessary to show proof of Nazi genocide. The evidential mountain was harder to scale given attitude of officialdom. Churchill knew and resented the broad anti-Semitism in his and Allied governments. The Jews, some officials said, exaggerated their mistreatment and were “prone to wailing.”

Similar arguments surfaced against Jewish immigration to the West at the Evian and Bermuda refugee conferences (1938, 1943). They added weight to Hitler’s assertions that nobody in the world wanted Jews among them. In Britain the Mandate of Palestine added another complication. Large numbers of Jewish refugees there, it was said, risked provoking the Arab population.

A problem with History as an intellectual discipline is that it is too easy after the fact. During the Second World War, nobody knew for a long time who would prevail. By the time they did, it was too late for hundreds of thousands. During the war, industrial genocide on the scale actually being practised was unknown to human beings, unimaginable to many. They learned too late.

Witold Pilecki: “Were we all…people?”

…was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things. In September 1940, he walked into a Nazi roundup of Poles with the object of being sent to Auschwitz. In 1940-41, Auschwitz mainly contained Poles. By 1942, however, Jews were the main component, and a grim change occurred. Poles had been persecuted; Jews were murdered. Pilecki reported the changing events, the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria. Eloquently, he contrasted the placid scene in the world beyond the fences:

When marching along the grey road towards the tannery in a column raising clouds of dust, one saw the beautiful red light of the dawn shining on the white flowers in the orchards and on the trees by the roadside, or on the return journey we would encounter young couples out walking, breathing in the beauty of springtime, or women peacefully pushing their children in prams. Then the thought uncomfortably bouncing around one’s brain would arise…. swirling around, stubbornly seeking some solution to the insoluble question: Were we all…people?”

After three years Pilecki escaped. He lived to survive the Nazis, only to fall to Poland’s next abusers, the Communists. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising in August-October 1944, and remained loyal to the government-in-exile after the Communist takeover. In 1947, he was arrested by the secret police and executed after a show trial. Fairweather’s Pilecki account is not altogether new. It was first told in Fighting Auschwitz (1975) by the Polish historian Józef Garliński, himself a former Auschwitz inmate.

Passing word to London

Pilecki reported to Underground leader Stefan Rowecki in October. Already Poles were asking that, “for the love of God,” Auschwitz should be leveled. It might be a suicide mission and cause panic, Pilecki opined, but some prisoners might escape. Rowecki send reports to Wladyslaw Sikorski, premier of the exiled government in London. Pilecki reported installation of the first gas chamber in mid-1942.

Sikorski had a problem. Many British hosts thought of Poles as “unruly foreigners with hard-to-pronounce names. ‘Sozzle-something,’ Churchill is reported to have called the senior Polish commander Kazimierz Sosnkowski.” The British knew of German concentration camps being used to corral enemy soldiers. They were reluctant to accept Polish reports of atrocities.

Then there was the mechanics of an attack. Britain was  struggling to keep its bombers airborne, let alone hit targets as far east as Poland. Too often, “bombing” consisted of opening the bomb bays after having flown for “about the right amount of time”! Sometimes the enemy had no idea what they were aiming at.

Portal, Prime Minister and Pope

Fairweather says Churchill’s schedule was too full to hear them, which contradicts the evidence (see Addendum below). Pilecki’s appeals reached the Chief of Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal. His response was curt. Bombing Auschwitz was a diversion, he said, given the need to concentrate on German industrial plants. The “weight of bombs” at this distance with the limited force available [was] very unlikely to cause enough damage to enable prisoners to escape.”

In November The New York Times published the first reports of exterminations at Auschwitz in western media. Rabbi Stephen Wise of the American Jewish Congress brought a report mentioning Auschwitz to Roosevelt. FDR said he was aware, but did nothing. “Roosevelt didn’t reveal his concerns about stoking anti-Semitism at home by focusing on Jewish suffering.” Fairweather makes a powerful case that Anglo-American governments were chary about provoking more anti-Semitism.

Fairweather reports that the Foreign Office “repeatedly told the Poles, reprisals are such are ruled out…. The Poles are being very irritating over this.” He does not report that Churchill himself discussed bombing reprisals as early as December 1942. (See addendum.)

Pilecki’s “Polishness”

In fairness, Fairweather notes that Pilecki never saw the Holocaust “as the defining act of World War II.” His essence was “his Polishness or his sense of national struggle.”

We asked Esther, Lady Gilbert, a Holocaust historian like her late husband Sir Martin, for her view of The Volunteer. Its story, she believes, is “of the Polish experience, horrible as that was. But if by ‘Holocaust’ we specifically mean the intention to wipe out every last Jew and Jewish community, it is not a Holocaust story. The Polish Underground split between the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army, and the Armia Ludowa, the Polish Communists. If better organised and working together, he might have made more impact.”

One good effect of Pilecki’s reports, Lady Gilbert continues, was the Allied War Declaration of December 1942. It was plain, and stark: “German authorities, not content with denying [Jews] the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.”

The Auschwitz Protocols

Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz in April 1943. Reports that Auschwitz was exterminating masses of Jews came with eye-witness escapees’ reports (the Auschwitz Protocols) between December 1943 and April 1944. These prompted Churchill’s famous command: “Get everything out of the air force you can, and invoke me if necessary.” As in 1941, the plenary authorities considered, and again said no, mainly for the same reasons. The full account is in Sir Martin Gilbert’s definitive book, Auschwitz and the Allies.

Fairweather says bombing the camp would have “alerted the world” to what was going on. Perhaps not. The Allied Declaration had alerted the world, with little reaction. The Germans were adept at covering up. Even when presented with Auschwitz Protocols, Allied officials found reasons not to send bombers. Some distrusted Polish underground sources. Military priorities motivated others. Well into 1943, just holding their own was a challenge. Then there was the question of Jewish objections to bombing the inmates—a widely shared view.

Fairweather says the decision not to bomb was “unconscionable.” In hindsight, it certainly seems so. At the time? Thoughtful people may differ over that. History stumbles along the trail of the past, Churchill said, trying to “kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”

A place among the Righteous

Fairweather believes Pilecki and his compatriots do not receive the credit they deserve. Getting himself shipped to Auschwitz was a breath-taking act of bravery. History will value Pilecki’s eloquent story of the victims of Nazi, and later Communist, crimes against humanity.

We searched for the name of Witold Pilecki on the website “Righteous Among the Nations,” part of the Yad Vashem Memorial site in Jerusalem. Lady Gilbert explains the reasons in her comment below.

Addendum by Richard Langworth

In 1940, Fairweather has Churchill “on the roof of his secure accommodation” watching the Blitz. Rooftops in the Blitz were not secure. Staffers talked the PM down for his own safety. Churchill did not sit there contentedly watching the fires.

More serious is the assertion that the Poles couldn’t get Churchill’s attention because his schedule was too busy. A cursory reading of The Churchill Documents would show he made time for much less serious things than this. He had a capacity for detail that put many to shame. And the record shows that he made time for the Poles.

Eight days after the December 1942 Allied Declaration, Sikorski described the “mass expulsion of the Polish population, slaughter and mass executions” in five Polish districts. He did not mention Jews. The Chiefs of Staff Committee met on 31 December. There, Churchill asked Portal about bombing “certain targets in Poland” as a reprisal—as the Poles had asked. Portal replied January 3rd:

…the carrying out of air attacks as  reprisals…would be an explicit admission that we were bombing civilians as such and might well invite brutal vengeance on our air crews. [The Polish request is] more strictly a political warfare matter and relates to the Jews. [Hitler] has so often stressed that this is a war by the Jews to exterminate Germany that it might well be, therefore, that a raid, avowedly conducted on account of the Jews, would be an asset to enemy propaganda.

* * *

Three days later Portal amplified his reasoning. Fairweather notes that the Polish 303 Squadron shot down more Germans in the Battle of Britain than any other unit. Portal’s words show that he too appreciated the Poles’ brave contribution. From Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 222:

It would be “very unprofitable [Portal wrote] to divert our best bombers to Polish targets and to keep them waiting for long periods for the moonlight and good weather without which they could not locate such distant objectives.” In addition, “the small scale of attack” which Britain could produce at such a distance “would not be impressive as a reprisal.” It would be more effective, Portal wrote, after a successful air-raid over Germany, to emphasise “to the world” the part played in such a raid by the Polish Air Force.”

It seems so simple in retrospect: bomb Auschwitz, stop the killing. Our knowledge of the horror overwhelms contemporary factors. Portal added that a reprisal, however ineffective would overwhelm the RAF “with requests from all other Allies that we should also redress their grievances in the same way.” The result would be nothing but “token reprisals which would not only be completely ineffective as deterrents but would also destroy the last shred of the cloak of legality which at present covers our operations.” —RML

The Auschwitz myth

“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders,” Churchill wrote. [1] A war leader is “the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations—all take their seat at the Council Board….” [2]

Churchill’s most flagrant inaction, according to many critics, was failing to bomb Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, or the rail lines leading to it. Everyone knows Churchill received confirmation of the full extent of the Holocaust too late to halt the worst of it. The controversy is over what he did when he did learn of it, particularly Auschwitz.

The sum of all fears

Rumors of what was happening had circulated from early in the war. But not until June 1944 did five Auschwitz escapees bring concrete evidence which fully awakened the Allies. Churchill received the details on 27 June 1944, following a telegram from Richard Lichtheim. A German Zionist in Switzerland, Lichtheim had contacted the British legation in Berne.

He reported the deportation of nearly half of Hungary’s 800,000 Jews to Auschwitz. There in the past year over 1.5 million European Jews met their deaths. He offered detailed reports on four crematoria, burning 12,000 gassed Jews per day. [3] The same week, the Manchester Guardian reported this news.

Churchill read Lichtheim’s report and minuted Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden: “What can be done?” [4] Amid the horrific facts, confusion reigned. The Jewish Agency was actually pondering an offer from Adolf Eichmann, an organizer of the “Final Solution.” Eichmann proposed to trade surviving Jews for military equipment: “I am prepared to sell you all the Jews. I am also prepared to have them all annihilated.” Eichmann expressed himself indifferent: “It is as you wish.” [5]

Churchill had incomplete information, but his reaction was unequivocal:

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 civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races in 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. [6]

The Jewish Agency’s requests

A week after the Lichtheim telegram, Churchill and Eden received the report from the five Auschwitz escapees. Their concern, and that of the Jewish Agency, was that deportations of Hungarian Jews were still occuring. Two days later, Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Shertok, the two senior Zionists in Britain, made five urgent requests. The first four were (1) an Allied declaration of readiness to admit Jewish refugees. (2) Issuance of protective documents for Budapest Jews by nations with embassies there. (3) War crimes charges against any Hungarians involved in deportations. (4) A similar warning by Stalin. The British government acceded immediately. Churchill himself drafted a declaration he hoped Stalin would issue.  

The fifth and key request by Weizmann and Shertok was to bomb the railway lines leading from Budapest to Auschwitz, or the death camp itself. When Churchill read this, wrote Martin Gilbert,

he did something I’ve not seen on any other document submitted to Churchill for his approval: He wrote on it what he wanted done. Normally, he would have said, “Bring this up to War Cabinet on Wednesday,” or, “Let us discuss this with the Air Ministry.” Instead, he wrote to Eden on 7 July: “Is there any reason to raise this matter with the Cabinet? Get anything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me if necessary.” I have never seen a minute of Churchill’s giving that sort of immediate authority to carry out a request. [7]

“Out of our power”

Eden immediately conveyed Churchill’s order to Minister of Air Sir Archibald Sinclair, asking him to report back. With a lack of celerity we may regret and even deplore, Sinclair didn’t reply until July 15th. He considered destroying the railways “out of our power.” It worked in Normandy only by “enormous concentration” of bombers, and at much shorter range from airbases. Bombing Auschwitz by night (the RAF’s usual mission) was declared impossible. Daytime bombing (the US Army Air Force mission) would be “costly and hazardous.” But Sinclair would be happy to pass the query to Americans. “A characteristically unhelpful letter,” Eden noted. “He wasn’t asked his opinion of this; he was asked to act.” [8]

Sinclair’s request went U.S. Undersecretary of War John J. McCloy, who had actually been approached earlier by Jewish leaders. They asked him authorize bombing the railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. He refused. He would again. In all, five separate requests to bomb Auschwitz or its rail lines reached McCloy’s desk. Each was denied. After the fifth request, McCloy said bombing could only be done by diverting essential air support from vital operations. Even then it would be of “doubtful efficacy.” It might provoke “even more vindictive action by the Germans. [9] It is hard to conceive of more “vindictive action.”

The options difficult, the choices appalling

Jews themselves frequently argued against bombing Auschwitz. One was Leon Kubowitzki, head of the Rescue Department of the World Jewish Congress. Kubowitzki argued that bombing meant that “the first victims would be the Jews who are gathered in these camps.” [10]

Kubowitzki’s alternative was to dispatch paratroopers to seize the camps and liberate the inmates. But where would they go? This was not clear, nor were available resources at hand. Bombing Auschwitz would certainly mean death for most inmates. Balance that against saving future victims who had not yet arrived. There was also the question of whether the Germans would simply rebuild Auschwitz, or transport Jews elsewhere. The options were difficult to measure, the available information sparse and vague, the choices appalling.

The mythology of Auschwitz

The evidence of Churchill’s concern and urge to act seems plain, but he has his critics. The most effective of these, Michael J. Cohen, leveled several charges against Churchill and Martin Gilbert. [11] Cohen quoted Churchill’s striking July 7th order, “get what you can out of the RAF,” but omitted Churchill’s two imprecations: invoke his name, and bypass the War Cabinet. Churchill’s description of “the greatest and most horrible crime in the whole history of the world,” Cohen wrote, simply retreaded something Churchill said about Turkish massacres of Armenians. No such earlier quotation is among Churchill’s writings or papers.

Cohen did not credit Churchill for granting the Jewish Agency’s first four requests, which unquestionably saved Jewish lives. He rightly pointed out that Auschwitz continued to murder people for months after deportations from Hungary ended. In August, for example, thousands of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto were deported to Auschwitz. More than half perished immediately. According to Gilbert, for weeks these Lodz deportations, and trainloads from Rhodes and elsewhere remained unknown. But enough was known, Gilbert adds, “to stimulate a further Jewish request for the bombing of the camps.” On 8 August “the World Jewish Congress appealed to the War Refugee Board in Washington….” [12]  This was the fifth and final plea that John McCloy denied.

On July 8th, a day after the Jewish Agency’s five requests, Churchill prodded Eden for an Allied “tripartite declaration…. I am entirely in accord with making the biggest outcry possible.” Two days later, he was pressing for a Jewish Brigade Group, something he campaigned for and finally saw accomplished in October. [13]

“Surely publicity might have a chance…”

Professor Cohen ignored these evidences of Churchill’s continued concern. Instead he claimed Churchill “turned down the bombing project” in letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Melchett on 13 July.

The facts are very different, as one may learn by reviewing the actual letters. There is nothing in either letter about “turning down” the bombing. Churchill wrote Melchett and the Archbishop “that the most earnest consideration has been given by my colleagues and myself to this matter and to the question whether any action is open that might stay the criminals.” He added, correctly, that the “principal hope” of Jews was “the speedy victory of the Allied Nations.” [14] This cannot be interpreted as a refusal to bomb Auschwitz or its rail lines. Indeed, Churchill would not have the Air Ministry’s appraisal for another four days.

Professor Cohen agreed that deportations of Jews from Hungary ceased on 9 July. But he alleged that the deportations from elsewhere, which cost 150,000 lives between July and November, “never occurred to Churchill.” Yet in October 1944, when reports of continued murders reached him, Churchill wrote to Eden: “Surely publicity given about this might have a chance of saving the multitudes concerned.” [15]  The Soviets had demurred, furious over charges of Red Army massacres of Poles in the Katyn Forest. The Anglo-Americans, however, issued joint warnings. To everyone’s surprise, Berlin responded: “These reports are false from beginning to end.” (If you’re going to lie, lie big.)

“A gruesome duty”

Advancing Allied troops discovered  the full extent of the Holocaust in early 1945. Churchill wrote to his wife, who was in Moscow, of  “horrible revelations of German cruelty in the concentration camps.” Eisenhower asked for a visit by a Parliamentary delegation. He wrote: “They will go to the spot and see the horrors for themselves—a gruesome duty.”¹⁶

The crucial days of June and July 1944, when news of the Holocaust arrived in London, confirmed Churchill’s descriptions of war: unforeseeable and uncontrollable events, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprises and awful miscalculations. Whatever we may think of the decision not to bomb Auschwitz or its rail lines, it was not based on Allied attitudes toward the Jews. It was based on military priorities and resources as seen at the time.

When Churchill first heard of the massacres, he faced another priority. It was to break out from the Normandy beachhead. The Allied invading armies had not yet reached Caen and St. Lô. It would be ten more days before St. Lô fell and the armies could begin their advance across France. Also, at home, Churchill faced another massacre—of British civilians from Hitler’s flying bombs. No one at the time knew whether these were a feeble, last-ditch effort or a new form of airborne destruction.

Churchill was not, as some of his partisans like to believe, all-prescient and all-knowing. But it is wrong to believe he did not do all he could in response to the horror of Auschwitz.

Endnotes

1. 1. Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself: In his Own Words, 187.
   2. Ibid., 192.
   3. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 251. The initial estimate was 15,000, a slight exaggeration.
   4. Ibid., 252; Churchill Archives Centre, Premier Papers, 4/51/10.
   5. Ibid., 201-02; Churchill Archives Centre, Foreign Office Papers, 371/42811.
   6. Churchill to Eden, 11 July 1944, Foreign Office papers, 371/42809.
   7. Martin Gilbert, “Churchill and the Holocaust,” Holocaust Museum, Washington, 8 November 1993, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Proceedings of the International Churchill Societies 1992-1993, 57.
   8. Gilbert, Auschwitz, 285.
   9. David S. Wyman, “Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed” in Commentary, May 1978 65(5): 40.
   10. 10. Leon Kubowitzki to War Refugee Board, 1 July 1944.
   11. Michael J. Cohen, “The Churchill-Gilbert Symbiosis: Myth and Reality,” review of Gilbert’s Churchill and the Jews, in Modern Judaism, 2008 28(2): 204-28. See also his 1985 book, Churchill and the Jews.
   12. Gilbert, Auschwitz, 302-03.
   13. Prime Minister’s Personal Minutes M 806/4 (8 July 1944) and C 45/4 (10 July 1944), Churchill Archives Centre.
   14. Winston S. Churchill to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Churchill to Lord Melchett, both 13 July 1944, Chartwell Papers CHAR 20/138A, in Larry P. Arnn & Martin Gilbert, eds., The Churchill Documents, vol. 20, Normandy and Beyond: May-December 1944.
   15. Premier Papers, 3/352/4/ folio 70. Gilbert, Auschwitz, 325.
   16. Winston S. Churchill to his wife, 20 April 1945, in Mary Soames, ed., Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, 527.

Per the previous post, I append for reader comment the contents of my next book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What Churchill Stood For.

I have written on most of these matters in the past; the book recasts it afresh. I also acknowledge and cross-reference the work of experts who know far more than I, particularly in the fields of genealogy and medicine. I would be glad to hear your thoughts; please use the “contact” page.

The historian David Stafford wrote: “Myth only develops and takes hold when the time is right, and the climate has long been ripe for the emergence of myths about a wartime hero who stood firm against a totalitarian foe and smote an evil empire.”

Churchill myth is born both of exaggeration and criticism, created either to glorify the record or to belabor it. The former I suppose is somewhat less harmful, born of ignorance. The latter obfuscate the record and distract us from the truth, sometimes intentionally.

Paul Addison wrote, “Paradoxically, I have always thought it diminishes Churchill to regard him as superhuman,” Yet Professor Addison has no doubt about Churchill’s greatness. The most memorable words on that subject were by Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert:

In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil. Many of those dangers are our dangers today. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for the generations now reaching adulthood.

The aim of this book is to skewer the most popular allegations about Churchill, to offer readers what he really thought and did, sometimes about matters that are still on our minds today—for as Twain wrote, history never repeats; but sometimes it rhymes.

Youth: Lady Randolph’s indiscretions…The parentage of Jack Churchill…The Menace of Education….The death of Lord Randolph…Women’s Suffrage.

Young Parliamentarian: The loss of  the Titanic…The unpleasantness on Sidney Street…”The sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy“…Irish independence.

World War I: Warmonger image, peacemaker reality…Defense of Antwerp…Dardanelles and Gallipoli…Sinking the Lusitania…Chemical warfare...America’s involvement in the Great War.

Between the World Wars: “Taking more out of alcohol”…“The foul baboonery of Bolshevism”…Trial by Jewry…”Half-Naked Fakir“…”The Truth About Hitler.”

World War II: Broadcasting the war speeches…Refugees and enemy aliens…Torture as tool or terror…Bombing of Coventry…Pearl Harbor…The Holocaust…Famine in Bengal…Destruction of Monte Cassino…Overtures to Mussolini…Feeding occupied Europe…Firebombing Dresden.

Postwar Years: The fate of Eastern Europe…Nuking the Soviets…The Conservative Party…”Only to have accomplished nothing in the end.”

Appendix: “Things That Go Bump in the Night” (so far-fetched that they defy categorizing). Converting to Islam…A life twice-saved by Alexander Fleming...Engineering the Wall Street Crash…The myths of the Black Dog and an unhappy marriage.