1945: Churchill out, Labour in

Churchill’s responsibility for the Palestine Mandate ended with the Labour Party landslide victory in July 1945. The new Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, denied 100,000 Holocaust survivors entry into Palestine and rejected the idea of a Jewish state.

In early 1946, Jewish paramilitaries robbed a British payroll train and attacked RAF airfields. In April and May, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan achieved independence. On June 29th, the “Black Sabbath,” Britain arrested 800 Jews and confiscated arms caches in Jerusalem and Haifa. Retaliating, the paramilitary Irgun bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, killing 91 Arabs, Jews and Britons.

An infuriated Stafford Cripps told Parliament that West Palestine had produced nothing but misery since 1922. Churchill retorted: “…it would hardly be possible to state the opposite of the truth more compendiously.” He called the years between the wars the  “brightest most hopeful” West Palestine knew. Meanwhile, Britain had treated the Arabs “very well.”  Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan (East Palestine) were all 100% Arab.

“Deep and bitter resentment”

Churchill then defended the Jews, whom the Labour government had ignored. The “months slipped by…. a deep and bitter resentment spread throughout the Jewish community…. He acknowledged, “the dark and deadly crimes [by] fanatical extremists…. It is quite clear, however, that this crude idea of letting all the Jews of Europe go into Palestine” was a mistake.

A Jewish MP, Sydney Silverman, interrupted. Should “any Jew who regarded a country in Europe as nothing but the graveyard and cemetery of all his relatives, friends and hopes be compelled to stay there if he did not want to do so?” Churchill replied:

I am against preventing Jews from doing anything which other people are allowed to do. I am against that, and I have the strongest abhorrence of the idea of anti-Semitic lines of prejudice. We have never sought or got anything out of Palestine. We have discharged a thankless, painful, costly, laborious, inconvenient task for more than a quarter of a century with a very great measure of success…. [It is] Great Britain alone, which has steadfastly carried that cause forward across a whole generation to its present actual position, and the Jews all over the world ought not to be in a hurry to forget that.

Sixth Two-State Solution

In 1946 Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison and U.S. diplomat Henry Grady proposed the sixth Two-State Solution: an Anglo-American Trusteeship of West Palestine with autonomous Arab and Jewish areas. The boundaries were similar to prewar schemes. The Jewish Agency, by now determined on a State of Israel, rejected it. Now President Truman became frustrated. He wrote in his diary:

The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons, as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.

Quoting this, the fair-minded Martin Gilbert added: “Truman’s cruel comments were not limited to Jews. ‘Put an underdog on top,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist, he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.’”

Churchill blasted the Labour government, which had also rejected Morrison-Grady:

This absence of any policy or decision on these matters…has allowed havoc and hatred to flare and run rife throughout Palestine… [N]o one knows where we are today….

[I]f we cannot fulfil our promises to the Zionists, we should without delay place our Mandate for Palestine at the feet of the United Nations, and give due notice of our impending evacuation of that country…..

To have a war with the Jews in order to give Palestine to the Arabs amid the execration of the world, appears to carry incongruity of thought and policy to levels which have rarely been attained in human history.

Toward a State of Israel

Violence mounted in 1947. In February Ernest Bevin announced that Britain would hand its Mandate to the United Nations  and evacuate West Palestine on 15 May 1948. The fixed date was as bad a mistake as the fixed date set for leaving India. All the contending sides had to do now was arm and wait. Churchill reacted in March:

£82 million since the Socialist Government came into power squandered in Palestine, and 100,000 Englishmen now kept away from their homes and work, for the sake of a senseless squalid war with the Jews in order to give Palestine to the Arabs, or God knows who.

‘Scuttle,’ everywhere, is the order of the day—Egypt, India, Burma. One thing at all costs we must preserve: the right to get ourselves world-mocked and world-hated over Palestine, at a cost of £82 million.

Seventh Two-State Solution

The United Nations, pressed by the pending British departure, now offered the seventh Two-State Solution—the most balanced yet. It awarded both sides equal coastlines on the Mediterranean, including Arab Gaza in the south and Arab Acre in the north. The Arab state, 99% Arab, would hold most of the West Bank and a substantial border with Sinai. The State of Israel, 55% Jewish, would include most of the Negev and the Red Sea port of Akaba, as Churchill had hoped. Jerusalem, with equal numbers of Arabs and Jews, would be a UN-administered international city. An economic union would enable commerce between the three.

On November 29th the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan 33-13. The United States and Soviet Union voted yes, nine Arab or Muslim states voted no, while Britain abstained. The next day, Churchill’s birthday, the Jewish Agency accepted.

The Arab League rejected the plan, claiming it left half of West Palestine to a State of Israel with only a third of the total population. (Ironically, at the Camp David Summit in 2000, the Palestinian delegation said they would be happy with 22% of the land.)

By early 1948, West Palestine was aflame. On May 14th Britain ended its West Palestine Mandate and David Ben-Gurion declared the independent State of Israel. The next day, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Syria invaded. To the Arab League, Azzam Pasha declared, “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.”

War and aftermath

We lack time to recount the ups and downs of that war. You can find them on the Hillsdale Timelines. The State of Israel absorbed Acre, Jordan the West Bank & East Jerusalem, while Gaza went to Egypt. That lasted until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Israel evacuated Gaza in 2006, the Gazans voted for Hamas, and the rest is history.

Some 711,000 Arabs left West Palestine. That’s a big number—but there were bigger numbers. To put this into perspective, consider the historian Andrew Roberts, reporting on the late 1940s:

In India, 16 million Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus left their homes taking only what they could carry. Over 800,000 Jews from Arabia, who’d lived there for centuries, departed. Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars were all ‘relocated’ (as Stalin called it). Newcomers ejected the Japanese and Korean Kuril and Sakhalin islanders and Italians of Istria. Three million ethnic Germans left Silesia and the Sudetenland. More recent were the Greeks of Turkey and Cyprus and the Vietnamese boat people.

Many of these refugees built new lives and a higher standard of living than in the lands they left. None are today actively demanding the right to murder people who have now lived in their former lands for over seven decades. The sole exception is Palestinian Arabs, whose leaders again and again chose to embrace fanatical irredentism and recurrent intifadas regardless of the interests of their people. The rubble seen in Gaza today is all they have to show for it.

The end of Britain’s role

Britain, which had military agreements with Egypt and Jordan, nearly went to war with the State of Israel during 1948. When London finally recognized Israel in January 1949, Churchill was magnanimous. “[T]he coming into being of a Jewish State in Palestine,” he said. “is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand two thousand or even three thousand years.”

But he was deeply critical of the postwar Labour Government. His daughter Mary always mocked claims that he was a manic depressive. She once said to me, “The things he went through would depress anybody.” Certainly West Palestine was one of those.

In mid-1946 Churchill had told the Government that if they could not solve the problem they should turn it over to the UN. It took them two years to do that, and a war resulted. He thought he could have done better:

We had the power and the chance to impose and enforce—I must use that word—a partition settlement in Palestine by which the Jews would have secured the National Home [while taking] into account the legitimate rights of the Arabs….

I always had in my mind…an Arab Confederation,  comprising three or four Arab States…however grouped…and one Jewish State…which would have given peace and unity throughout the whole vast scene.

Churchill’s verdict

“The idea that only a limited number of people can live in a country is a profound illusion,” Churchill went on. “It all depends on their cooperative and inventive power. There are more people today living twenty storeys above the ground in New York than were living on the ground in New York 100 years ago. There is no limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly and vigorously applied under conditions of peace and justice.”

Alas, peace and justice were not to be. Churchill returned power in 1951, too late to affect anything. He could only reflect sadly on the mistakes of the past:

The decline of our influence and power throughout the Middle East is due to several causes. First, the loss of our Oriental Empire and of the well-placed and formidable of the Imperial armies in India.

Second, it is due to the impression which has become widespread throughout the Middle East that Great Britain has only to be pressed sufficiently by one method or another to abandon her rights or interests in that, or indeed any other, part of the world.

A third cause is the mistakes and miscalculations in policy which led to the winding up of our affairs in Palestine in such a way as to earn almost in equal degree the hatred of the Arabs and the Jews.

Q&A: Why the two kings?

Why in 1921 did the Cairo Conference put foreign kings in charge of Iraq and Jordan? David Fromkin offered the best reply I’ve heard:

Because, in the world in which Churchill grew up, that’s what you did. When it was decided, just before the First World War, to create an independent state of Albania, an intrinsic part of the thing was to find it a king. In the Middle East in 1921, the same thinking applied.

Remember, the Ottoman Empire had no nationality. It was a Turkish-speaking Muslim empire. It was very difficult to establish ethnicity and loyalty since it was only based on religion. Thus, any Muslim government was pretty much acceptable to people of the area.

The Hashemites were brothers, but very different. Abdullah was part of the problem, so they made him part of the solution. He was already in Jordan. He had armed followers. For all the British knew, he might upset their tenuous rule.

It’s like deputizing a thief to sheriff because there aren’t any other deputies. It was logical to ask Abdullah to take charge—temporarily, they thought.” And as we now know, his descendant rules as King of Jordan today.

The King of Iraq was Faisal. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell were fond of him, and the British felt they owed him something. Faisal had fought the Turks.

It seemed like a very neat solution. By the way, they immediately repented of it. Faisal, once in office, became a nationalist. and Churchill feared that Faisal had betrayed them.

 Q&A: The Churchill solution?

What would Churchill do? We cannot speculate. He is not here to speak. He last spoke on this topic in 1958, after the deposition and execution of Faisal II in Iraq. Is there something here?

The Middle East is one of the hardest-hearted areas in the world. It has always been fought over, and peace has only reigned when a major power has established firm influence and shown that it would maintain its will.

Your friends must be supported with every vigour and if necessary they must be avenged. Force, or perhaps force and bribery, are the only things that will be respected.

It is very sad, but we had all better recognise it. At present our friendship is not valued, and our enmity is not feared.

Surely it is clear that the eight Two-State Solutions that have never satisfied the sides. What about a Three-State Solution? Gaza to Egypt, West Bank to Jordan—the 1967 borders before that Arab-Israeli war?

People will say, “But Egypt and Jordan don’t want them back!” That’s where Churchill’s idea comes in: force and bribery. The cost of bribery in lives and treasure is less than the cost of war. Back the deal with force through air power—and maybe Churchill was on to something.

Better yet, the words of a friend in a discussion on the woes of the British auto industry. “Go back to 1945 and start all over again.”

Palestine: “You deal with it.”

The best I can offer about Churchill and Palestine is what I learned from three great historians: David Fromkin, Martin Gilbert and Andrew Roberts. I also learned from King Ibn Saud of Arabia (not personally). I propose to quote all of them. And, of course, Winston Churchill. His knowledge and experience continue to instruct us across the decades.

David Fromkin was a leading authority on Churchill  and the Middle East through his book, A Peace to End All Peace. You should read it.  Twenty years ago during a Washington hurricane,  he lectured on Churchill and the making of the modern Middle East. Only fourteen turned up, and his talk was never published. I corrected that recently on the Hillsdale Churchill website. As Casey Stengel said, you can look it up.

*Churchill and Palestine had a long association, spanning two world wars and thirty years. It began in 1917, when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour promised a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. Almost simultaneously, Lawrence of Arabia was offering the Arabs sovereignty over  a Middle East ruled for nearly half a millennium by the Turks. In return, Jews and Arabs fought alongside the Allies in the Great War.

Churchill and Palestine came together because Turkey ended up on the losing side. By war’s end, its Ottoman Empire was a shambles. Revolutions and conspiracies were suspected among Arabs, Jews, Bolsheviks and recidivist Turks. The only significant military presence was a British army of about one million.

“At this truly horrendous moment,” Professor Fromkin told us, “Prime Minister David Lloyd George turned to his Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill and said in effect, ‘You deal with it.’”

Decision at Cairo

Churchill energetically expanded his Middle East Department,  including T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. They met in Cairo with Arab and Jewish delegates to redraw the borders of the former Turkish empire.

The 1921 Cairo Conference created the same Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that are there today. The French received League of Nations mandates over the last two. An unenthusiastic Britain accepted mandates for Iraq and Palestine. East Palestine, 6/7ths of Palestine, became the Arab state of Trans-Jordan, meaning “across the Jordan River.” West Palestine, “from the river to the sea” (and the Negev Desert)—slightly larger than Massachusetts—became a source of strife that has lasted a century.

Now for Britain at least, despite what you may have heard, oil was not the objective. Before the war, Churchill had secured the Royal Navy’s supply by founding Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP).  They thought Iraq had oil, but Britain had no need for it, and France did not begin thinking seriously about oil until later.

To run East Palestine (Trans-Jordan) and Iraq, the conference sent a Arab Hashemites, who were not indigenous. Dr. Fromkin explained: “The feeling at that time was that when you brought in a king for a new country, it ought to be somebody who is not from that country—not involved its internal feuds. You look for an outsider and a unifier.” His brother was sent to rule Iraq.

“Twice-promised land”

A mandate is sometimes said to be a polite word for a colony. That may have been how the French saw it, but for Britain, Iraq and Palestine were burdens. This is incidentally the origin of the myth that Churchill wanted to use poison gas on Iraqi rebels, which was cheaper than using troops. Actually he made a poor choice of words. He wanted tear gas, but his careless description of it  as “poison” has left him no end of grief.

Churchill would happily have washed his hands of “Messpot,” as he called Mesopotamia, or Iraq. In 1922 he wrote, but didn’t send, a note to Lloyd George: “We are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano, out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.” (£8 million then equals $725 million today.)*

King Faisal’s Iraq achieved nominal independence in 1932. Emir Abdullah’s Jordan took charge of East Palestine. Britain was left with troublesome little West Palestine—today’s Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria (the last two known collectively as the West Bank). For most of two decades Britain kept the peace. Superpowers have a way of doing that.

West Palestine experienced relative prosperity between the World Wars. But Jews and Arabs, who had lived between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean for thousands of years, had fought with the British and expected payback. Britain had promised them both homelands. West Palestine, wrote the historian Isaiah Friedman, was the “Twice-Promised Land.”

Two-State Solutions

Worse, no one at Cairo in 1921 anticipated the massive Jewish influx to West Palestine over the next 20 years. The causes were fivefold: drastic reduction of American immigration quotas; pogroms or expulsions of Jews in Poland, Russia and Arab countries; the great depression of 1929, Jewish persecutions in Nazi Germany, and powerful Zionist recruiting of Jews to the Holy Land.

Until 1937 Britain had promised only a Jewish homeland, not a state. London’s idea was an Arab-run West Palestine with freedom of religion and Jewish autonomous districts.  But the sides could never reach agreement, and the Jewish population soared. In 1936 the Arabs began what they called “the Great Revolt,” three years of uprisings against British authority.

In 1937 William Peel (grandson of Sir Robert, founder of the Metropolitan Police) chaired a Palestine Royal Commission. It abandoned the former one-state solution. “There can be no question of fusion or assimilation  between Jewish and Arab cultures,” Lord Peel declared. So the Peel Commission proposed the first of at least eight two-state solutions. (The eighth by my count was at Camp David in 2000.)

Peel proposed a Jewish state in the west and north, comprising 20% of West Palestine. The Arab state, linked to Jordan in the east and south, included the West Bank and the Negev Desert. Jerusalem, with a corridor to the sea, would be a British-administered international city.

The Jewish leaders Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion convinced the Zionist Congress to accept this. Both believed the area offered was too small, and hoped it could be expanded by negotiations. The Arabs, for whom any idea  of a separate Jewish state was anathema, rejected the Peel proposal unanimously.

Economics trumps religion

Three more two-state solutions were advanced in 1938 by another commission under Sir John Woodhead, a civil servant. Weizmann offered a fifth solution, leaving the Negev in the Mandate, which Churchill approved. The Jews, said, had “a way of making the desert bloom.”

No one was satisfied. Woodhead had divided areas  by majority population, but the average Jew was three times as productive and paid three times the taxes of the average Arab. The Jewish areas were the backbone of the economy. Most of the Arab wealth lay in largely Jewish areas. This is important for us to understand. The quarrel then was at least as much economic as it was religious. Another conference in 1939 made no further progress.

In May 1939, four months before war, the Chamberlain government issued a Palestine White Paper. It restricted Jewish immigration to West Palestine to 75,000 for the next five years, after which the Arabs were to decide on future numbers. This of course inflamed the Zionists, including Churchill. Two years earlier, Churchill had made one of his most criticized statements:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time… I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia…that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

King Saud: follow the money

Churchill has been excoriated for those words, and again his vocabulary didn’t help. For Churchill, “race” meant a nation or group of people. Indeed some African Jews were darker than Arabs. Churchill was saying the skills of what he called the “Jewish race” were superior to those of the Arabs. For example, the irrigation schemes of Jewish engineers brought productive agriculture to a long-barren land. Again, the argument was economic: follow the money.

One major Arab leader agreed with him. King Ibn Saud of Arabia said the Arab-Jewish conflict was not religious. What changed everything, he told President Roosevelt in 1945, was “the immigration of people who were technically and culturally on a higher level than the Arabs, [who] had greater difficulty in surviving economically. [That these] energetic Europeans are Jewish is not the cause of the trouble. It is their superior skills and culture.”

Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, later echoed the King: In Arab Palestine, he said,  the Jews may be “as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate, they will have complete autonomy.”  Whether he meant that you must judge for yourself.

“All legitimate interests are in harmony”

“Churchill,” he wrote, “continued to seek a Zionist solution whereby the 517,000 Jews, just under a third of the Arab population, would have their own State in which they would not be at the mercy of a hostile Arab majority, but able to govern themselves, albeit in only about a third of the area they had hoped for.”

Sir Martin quoted King Saud’s words to Churchill: “I have continually advised moderation to the Arabs with regard to Palestine, but fear that a clash might come.” When the war ended, Churchill replied,  good arrangements can be made so that “all legitimate interests are in harmony.”

King Saud remained pessimistic. West Palestine Jews, he told Churchill, “intend to create a form of Nazi-Fascism within sight of the democracies and in the midst of the Arab countries…. Joshua captured the land of the Canaanites—an Arab tribe—with great cruelty and barbarity…. [They were] aliens who had come to Palestine at intervals and had then been turned out over two thousand years ago.”

A better scholar than I is needed to judge who was there first, or who turned out whom, but if Jews were expelled, then they too were refugees.

Concluded in Part 2….

Further reading

“‘Jarring Gong’: Benjamin Netanyahu on Winston Churchill,” 2023.

“When Did Churchill Become a Zionist?,” 2022.

“Churchill at the Stroke of the Pen: Jordan and the Indian Army,” 2021.

“Churchill and Lawrence: Conjunction of Two Bright Stars,” 2020.

“Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East 100 Years On,” 2020.

A luncheon meeting of Northern California Churchillians will be held at Lara’s Fine Dining, 1900 Esplanade Drive, Richmond, California, starting at 11am. This wonderful location is far from the untidiness of SF and right on the water. It is next to the Rosie the Riveter Museum and the former Kaiser World War II manufacturing site, which attendees may wish to visit after our event.

Richard Langworth, Churchill historian and Senior Fellow of the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, will speak and answer questions on “Churchill and Palestine, 1917-1948.” The nearby Kaiser factory is a happy coincidence: Richard’s first book, Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit, began with Henry Kaiser building Liberty and Victory ships during the Second World War. (See “Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History.”)

How to register

We will hold a social hour at 11 am followed by lunch at noon and the discussion at 1pm. If you wish to attend, please mail a check for $60 per person (made out to CBTB or “Churchillians by the Bay”) attending to Gregory B. Smith, 154 W. Spain St, Villa T, Sonoma, CA 95476. Be sure to include your menu choice of chicken, salmon, or ravioli from this menu. We hope to see you there for this important event. —Gregory B. Smith, Chairman, Churchillians by the Bay, telephone: (707) 974-9324, churchilliansbythebay@gmail.com.

Churchill and Palestine

Richard will review Churchill’s involvement with Palestine and Israel from the 1917 Balfour Declaration and 1921 Cairo Conference through the “Two-State Solutions” of 1937, 1938 and 1947, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Churchill’s views and comments will be discussed.

Churchill and Palestine had a long association, spanning two world wars and thirty years. It began when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared Britain’s support for a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. Almost simultaneously, T.E. Lawrence was promising the Arabs sovereignty over Middle Eastern lands ruled for nearly half a millennium by the Turks. In return, Jews and Arabs fought with the Allies in the First World War. A reluctant Britain accepted responsibility for the Mandate of Palestine after the war. East Palestine, 6/7ths of the Mandate, became Arab-ruled Jordan. West Palestine, a tiny sliver the size of Massachusetts, became the source of conflict that has now lasted over a century.

“You deal with it”

Churchill and Palestine were thrown together because Turkey was on the wrong side in the First World War. By its end, the former Ottoman Empire was a shambles. Revolutions and conspiracies were suspected among Arabs, Bolsheviks, Jews and recidivist Turks. The only significant military force left was a British army of about one million. No other power was present in force.

“At this truly horrendous moment,” wrote the historian David Fromkin, “Prime Minister Lloyd George in effect turned to his Colonial Secretary Churchill and said, ‘You deal with it.’”

Churchill expanded his Middle East department with some of the most capable people, including T.E. Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell. They convened in Cairo with Arab and Jewish delegates to redraw the borders of the expired Turkish empire.

Remember that for Britain at least, despite what you may have heard, oil was not the objective. Churchill had secured the Royal Navy’s oil by founding the Anglo-Persian Oil Company before the war. It later became known as BP. It was suspected that Iraq had oil; but Britain had no need for it, and France did not begin thinking about oil until later.

Chapter 1…

The 1921 Cairo Conference created the same Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that are there today. The French received League of Nations “mandates” over the last two. The British were handed Iraq and Palestine—east and west. In Iraq and East Palestine (Jordan), the conference placed Arab kings—Hashemites, who were not indigenous. This marked Chapter 1 in the story of Churchill and Palestine.

A frequent question is: Why did Churchill put foreign kings in charge of Iraq and Jordan? David Fromkin replied:

Because, in the world in which Churchill grew up, that’s what you did. When it was decided, just before the First World War, to create an independent state of Albania, an intrinsic part of the thing was to find it a king. In the Middle East in 1921, the same thinking applied.

Remember, the Ottoman Empire had no nationality. It was a Turkish-speaking Muslim empire. It was very difficult to establish ethnicity and loyalty since it was only based on religion. Thus, any Muslim government was pretty much acceptable to people of the area.

The scene was now set for generations of strife….

More on Churchill and Palestine

“When Did Churchill Become a Zionist?” 2022.

“Q&A: Churchill at the Stroke of a Pen, Jordan and the Indian Army,” 2021.

“Churchill and Lawrence; A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars,” 2020.

“Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East, 100 Years On,” 2020.

Nine years ago Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid Sir Winston Churchill a compliment and this writer a minor one, in his thanks for a gift of my book, Churchill by Himself.

The first four editions collected 4000 annotated quotations, along popular aphorisms WSC never said (“Churchillian Drift”). A fifth expanded edition is scheduled for 2024. With over 5000 quotations and half a million words, it will extend our knowledge of Churchill’s timeless wisdom and devotion to liberty.

Mr. Netanyahu…

…was not new to Churchill back then. He is one of the few statesmen who pay more than routine lip-service to Sir Winston’s role in history. Unlike many who invoke his name, Mr. Netanyahu has actually read Churchill extensively, and applied his thought frequently.

With thanks for those kind remarks I quote Prime Minister Netanyahu at the United Nations on 24 September 2009. There he demonstrated an ability to draw guidance from Churchill’s words, while not using them to declare what WSC would do today….

A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals….

Over seventy [now over eighty] years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the “confirmed unteachability of mankind”: the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them. Churchill bemoaned what he called the “want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong….”

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill’s assessment of the “unteachability of mankind” is for once proven wrong. I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history—that we can prevent danger in time. In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.

“Wise words, Sir, stand the test of time”*

*Churchill, House of Commons, 12 May 1901

From WSC, “Fifty Years Hence,” Strand Magazine, December 1931, reprinted in Thoughts and Adventures (1932):

Certain it is that while men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing and measureless speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. The brain of a modern man does not differ in essentials from that of the human beings who fought and loved here millions of years ago. The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress—starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy—the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up….

We have the spectacle of the powers and weapons of man far outstripping the march of his intelligence; we have the march of his intelligence proceeding far more rapidly than the development of his nobility. We may well find ourselves in the presence of “the strength of civilization without its mercy.”

Britain’s Mandate of Palestine

In 1947, Attlee’s Labour Government scuttled from Palestine in a disgraceful exit, not dissimilar from another disgrace in 2021. In November the United Nations offered a Partition Plan for the 1/7th of Palestine that wasn’t already 100% Arab. (6/7ths was Jordan.) The plan was greeted with rejoicing in Jewish communities and outrage among Arabs. Civil disturbances began and the British refused to intervene. Soon there was a full-scale civil war. The Arabs lost, like the French lost Alsace-Lorraine in 1870, and the Germans Silesia in 1944. Vast shifts of population occurred in all three instances.

The world of 1948 ignored the diasporas. No one much cared. Any more than anyone today cares about Armenian genocide going on at this writing. “History doesn’t repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.” Evidently there’s nothing in Armenia for power-hungry politicians.

In Parliament on 30 July 1951, Churchill sadly reviewed Britain’s contribution to the Palestine morass:

The decline of our influence and power throughout the Middle East is due to several causes. First, the loss of our Oriental Empire and of the well-placed and formidable resources of the Imperial armies in India. Second, it is due to the impression which has become widespread throughout the Middle East that Great Britain has only to be pressed sufficiently by one method or another to abandon her rights or interests in that, or indeed any other, part of the world. A third cause is the mistakes and miscalculations in policy which led to the winding up of our affairs in Palestine in such a way as to earn almost in equal degree the hatred of the Arabs and the Jews.

Churchill on Terrorism

On 8 July 1920, before there even was a Palestine Mandate, Churchill denounced the massacre of Indians at Amritsar. Joseph Montague Kenworthy, 10th Baron Strabolgi (1886-1953) was a Liberal MP (1919–26) and Labour MP (1926–31). Echoes of Churchill’s words may be heard again today: more “rhyming” of history.

What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or the whole country.… Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British pharmacopoeia.…

I have heard the Hon. Member for Hull [Lieutenant-Commander Kenworthy] speak on this subject. His doctrine and his policy is to support and palliate every form of terrorism as long as it is the terrorism of revolutionaries against the forces of law, loyalty and order. Governments who have seized upon power by violence and by usurpation have often resorted to terrorism in their desperate efforts to keep what they have stolen….

Unteachable mankind

Neither his opponents nor supporters would dispute Netanyahu’s Churchill reference today. With absolutely no more credentials than the reader, it’s possible to guess that the latest war will not be just another protracted street fight. It is very likely to be much worse than that, and the end of somebody, or some thing. At God knows what cost. Netanyahu was canny to invoke those words. Fifteen years later they are worth quoting in full:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. —WSC, House of Commons, 2 May 1935

Further reading

“When Did Churchill Become a Zionist?,” 2022

“Churchill at the Stroke of Pen: Jordan and the Indian Army,” 2021

“Churchill and Lawrence: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars,” 2020

“How Winston Churchill Preserved the Dream of Israel, July 1922,” 2018

“Churchill, a Zionist, was first to call for the creation of  Israel in 1905.” Where and when in 1905 did he say that? —G.H., New York City

A: Date undetermined

Churchill was probably a Zionist by 1905. Reader Gene Kopelson (Comments, below) notes Michael Makovsky’s evidence of young Winston’s early respect for Jews and many Jewish friends. This didn’t make him a Zionist per se, but he certainly had become one by the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But I can find no public statement calling for an independent Israel until 1948. Until then he called for a “Jewish National Home.” With his characteristic optimism, he believed Arabs and Jews in Palestine could coexist. He pointed to the talent of the Arabs. And he praised the Jews for their horticulture and irrigation projects. Indeed in today’s Israel, Arabs comprise 20% of the population.

Cairo, 1921

Headed by Churchill in 1921, the Cairo Conference set the borders of the modern Middle East. There he opted for the Zionist idea, what he called a “Jewish National Home” within Britain’s Palestine Mandate, roughly coinciding with what is now Israel. The rest of the Palestine Mandate became the Arab state of Jordan. To a delegation of Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem on 28 March 1921 Churchill declared for a Jewish National Home:

And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? (Churchill by Himself, 175)

Churchill’s impressive achievement at that time was to convince two Arab potentates, King Abdullah in Jordan and King Feisal in Iraq, to tolerate a Jewish Homeland in their midst. This situation prevailed until Britain gave up the Palestine Mandate (without resolving the tensions) after World War II. In the 1948 war Israel secured independence.

A world war later…

…on 10 December 1948, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons. He regretted that Britain and the West had lost the opportunity to make a permanent settlement in the Middle East. This is the first admission that I can find that he accepted partition and an independent Zionist state:

I always had in my mind the hope that the whole question of the Middle East might have been settled on the largest scale on the morrow of victory and that an Arab Confederation, comprising three or four Arab States—Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Transjordania, Syria and the Lebanon—however grouped, possibly united amongst themselves, and one Jewish State, might have been set up, which would have given peace and unity throughout the whole vast scene of the Middle East. As to whether so large a policy could have been carried into being I cannot be sure, but a settlement of the Palestine question on the basis of partition would certainly have been attempted, in the closest possible association with the United States and in personal contact with the President, by any Government of which I had been the head. But all this opportunity was lost. (Churchill by Himself, 176-77)

Hopes and regrets

Churchill supported the Zionist state, declaring in the House of Commons in 1949: “…the coming into being of a Jewish State in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years.” (Churchill by Himself, 175)

But in 1951 he deplored British policies after the Second World War. These, he said, “led to the winding up of our affairs in Palestine in such a way as to earn almost in equal degree the hatred of the Arabs and the Jews.” (Churchill by Himself, 439).

Many who still have hope for Churchill’s optimism accept a “two state solution” for Palestine and Israel. But the two separate Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, subdivide the latter’s population. A solution with a chance of success might contemplate a shift of peoples to create a contiguous state. No one seems to want to grasp that nettle (which caused havoc in India in 1947). Even in 1948, Churchill recognized that it would not be easy.

Further reading

“How Winston Churchill Preserved the Dream of Israel, July 1922” (2018)

“Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars” (2020)

Questions and Answers (continued from Part 3)

From Senator Bob Packwood (who recalls shelling peas with you on a pleasant former occasion): Everybody asks what Churchill’s position would be today on the Middle East. It appears that he wanted to do right by everybody—guarantee the Jews a homeland but respect the rights of the Arabs. If that view of his is correct. would he be something closer to a pro-Zionist today or a supporter of the PLO? Did Churchill personally support The United Nations partition of Palestine in the 1940s?

Palestine and Israel

Churchill knew the Palestine Mandate (which in 1921 comprised Jordan as well as Israel) posed difficult demographic questions. Yet he was an eternal optimist, less cynical than most. He actually believed, in 1921, that Jews and Arabs could coexist for mutual benefit. That’s why he spoke then of a Jewish homeland, but not a Jewish state. But he did become resigned to the partition, and later the state.

Faced with intransigence, as we have been with the PLO, he always looked for ways to go around the problem—thus the Dardanelles to bypass the stalemate on the western front. But he tended not  to support thugs. So I think he would try to go round the PLO by sponsoring Arab treaties of peace with Israel. It is ironic that two U.S. presidents who probably don’t agree on anything else did this successfully: Jimmy Carter in 1978, Donald Trump in 2020.

Here’s what Churchill said in 1958, long after he’d left office:

The Middle East is one of the hardest-hearted areas in the world. It has always been fought over, and peace has only reigned when a major power has established firm influence and shown that it would maintain its will. Your friends must be supported with every vigour and if necessary they must be avenged. Force, or perhaps force and bribery, are the only things that will be respected. It is very sad, but we had all better recognise it. At present our friendship is not valued, and our enmity is not feared.

100 years on?

From Andrew Roberts (who needs no further introduction): Do you think the statue of Winston Churchill will be standing in Parliament Square in 100 years’ time?

Trust Andrew to toss me a spanner! I don’t even know if Parliament will be standing in 100 years’ time. After all, Orwell made London the capital of Oceania in “1984,” remember?

The job of Orwell’s hero, Winston Smith (we know where he got that name) was constantly to rewrite history to suit the party line. Everything proscribed by Big Brother was put into something called the Memory Hole and never heard of again. Statues too, I suppose. The best we can hope for is what Churchill said in 1954:

For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else—and I cannot believe that the human race will not find its way through the problems that confront it, although they are separated by a measureless gulf from any they have known before….

If he proves right, Parliament and the statue will endure.

Churchill vs. the Appeasers

Reading Britain At Bay, by Alan Allport, I was struck by just how much hung in the balance early in the war. What personality traits did Churchill possess that made him able to rally a nation and lead so effectively? How were they shaped during his life and how did he draw on them? How do those traits contrast with those of Mr. Chamberlain, whom Allport characterizes as vain, boring, spiteful, friendless, and lacking intellectual curiosity?

There’s a good review of Allport by Professor Raymond Callahan on our website. We also offer an annotated bibliography of works about Churchill. There are now over 1150….18 in 2020 alone.

You have to remember that Chamberlain and many of the appeasers, like Stanley Baldwin, started as businessmen. They had no experience of war, except that it interfered with business. Andrew Roberts makes this point. Hardly any leading appeasers—Chamberlain, Baldwin, Sam Hoare, Horace Wilson, fought in the First World War. (Halifax, who fought with distinction, was the chief exception.) Yet all the leading advocates for defying Hitler were veterans—Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Louis Spears, Roger Keyes, Alfred Duff Cooper.

Ask yourself why that was. I think those who had fought knew what war would be like. So they wanted to stop Hitler before it came to that. The appeasers thought they could make deals with him, like any other businessman.

When war did come, it required someone with will to see it through. Churchill had that quality. Even Baldwin knew it. I’ll prevent war by accommodating Hitler, he thought, or pit him against the Russians. Baldwin had no place for Churchill in his cabinet. But he also said—and this is a direct quote: “Anything [Winston] undertakes he puts his heart and soul into. If there is going to be war—and no one can say that there is not —we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister.”* That was the difference between them.

*Baldwin to J.C.C. Davidson, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, Prophet of Truth 1922-1939 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 687.

“Love me, love my dog”

Why did Churchill and his Conservative Party lose the general election and, thus, control of the government, in 1945?

This is among the most frequent questions. Churchill himself didn’t lose. He was reelected by a wider margin than in 1935. His party lost because their history was the war, and the depression before that—and because the Labour Party seemed to promise a brave new world. But after ten years the Conservatives were deeply unpopular.

There’s a funny cartoon showing Churchill before the election, holding the leash to an enormous beagle wearing a top hat, with his tongue hanging out, labeled “Tory Party.” The caption says, “Love me, love my dog.” The voters didn’t love the dog.

Best books

What three books by and about Churchill would you recommend to a new Churchill student? What three books about (not by) Churchill must you take to the Gulag?

That presumes the masters of the Gulag will permit any Churchill books!

This has as many answers as questions, but here’s a try. Among his own books, first read My Early Life. Sure it’s full of inaccuracies and special pleading. But it’s a wonderful read, full of insight into his development.

Then read Marlborough, his greatest biography. In the 1960s it was abridged by Henry Steele Commager, who ruined it. He took out the politics and left only the military. Who cares who won the Battle of Ramillies? In the original you can read all of Churchill’s political philosophy, and see the great war speeches aborning. The scholar Leo Strauss called it “the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding, which should be required reading for every student of political science.”

Third, The Second World War. Again, it’s biased and one sided, but as he said, “this not history, this is my case.” More important, Churchill describes the war that made us what we are today. So it’s more important than The World Crisis, although The World Crisis is better written. (See “Churchill’s War Accounts: History or Memoirs?“)

About Churchill: I mentioned Andrew Roberts’ Walking with Destiny. Next the Official Biography, because you get to take 31 volumes—you’ll never run out. Third, Mary Soames’s Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill. Because this tells us what they were really thinking—a true revelation of their persona.

“Thou shalt not say…”

What would Churchill do/have done about North Korea’s escalating development of nuclear bombs and missiles, which continues as unabated under the present U.S. administration as it did under the previous one?

This raises the Mary Soames Commandment: “Thou shalt not say what Papa would do about any modern situation. After all, how do you know?” History doesn’t repeat, Mark Twain said, but it sometimes rhymes. I think we can get an idea from Churchill, but not the answer. After all, in 1940 the French fleet posed an existential threat, and he didn’t hesitate to take it out. But the French fleet was not a nuclear arsenal, and France was already defeated. It was not the same situation.

Cancel Culture and Free Speech

What would Churchill’s speech be to the Commons on Cancel Culture and Big Tech Censorship?

I don’t know, but what I’ve said about Cancel Culture is based on his thought. We can learn from it. For instance, in 1933, he spoke about much the same impulses in British life:

The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within…. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.…Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.

As to censorship, he would say what he said in 1952: “Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant and venomous things that are said; but on the whole we would rather lump them than do away with it.”

Of course he never met up with social media. That presents a real problem. Umberto Eco said: “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community … but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.” I don’t know what Churchill would say about that. But he would not censor anybody.

Russia and Ukraine

What do you believe Sir Winston’s view would be today respecting Russia’s military presence on its border with Ukraine? Do you believe he would have perceived parallels with 1937-39 continental Europe?

I take refuge in the Mary Soames Commandment. We cannot say what Papa would do today. We can guess—keeping his principles in mind. He was a great proponent of coalitions, domestic and international. He would want to bring the forces of liberty together on such threats. That suggests what he preached in the 1930s: collective security. Today we have NATO, which he praised. (Do we still have NATO? I think so.) But Ukraine is not part of NATO. So this is the place for inspired diplomacy with nations, NATO or not, whose interests are involved.

Another Churchill?

Is there a Churchill available today? Perhaps in view of your admiration for President Macron?

It’s an incidental admiration, because I don’t admire many of his political ideas. I admire his courage and principle over the statues issue. He was adopting Mark Steyn’s precept: Unless you are prepared to surrender everything, surrender nothing.

I don’t think he’s another Churchill. I don’t see anyone out there who is, really. Do you? Remember too that Churchills only come along when the chips are down. The chips are not quite down, although they seem to be getting there.

The volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill, and the present volume is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day.” Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Fateful Questions: Excerpts

Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr. Larry Arnn, this volume offers a fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.

Fateful Questions takes us from the Allied invasion of Italy to the first Big Three conference at Teheran; Russian successes on the Eastern Front; fraught arguments over tactics and strategy as the Allies begin closing in on Nazi Germany, and on to the eve of D-Day: the invasion of France in June 1944.

The majority of these documents have never before been seen in print. They illustrate the sheer volume and variety of subjects Churchill dealt with, leading Britain in the war while presiding of myriad mechanics of government.

In Fateful Questions, Churchill is called upon to alleviate, in the midst of war, a severe famine in Bengal, India. Almost simultaneously, he is confronted with Italy’s surrender, and the question of who will lead that nation after Mussolini. From America come constant requests, prods and proposals—and the growing realization that by comparison to the USA, Britain will soon play a greatly diminished role.

Militarily, Churchill has to consider siphoning resources from the Italian campaign to support the coming invasion of France. He must cope with belligerent notes from Stalin, often demanding the impossible; strained dialogue within the War Cabinet; difficulties in setting Big Three meetings; Parliamentary business; Japan and the Pacific; communications with the citizenry; appointments to fill; vacancies and losses; postwar planning—page after page, copiously footnoted by Hillsdale’s team of student associates and practiced historians.

Even now, in the digital age, Churchill’s workload in 1943-44 would be enormous for several persons, let alone one man pushing seventy. His output was extraordinary, his prescriptions understandable and wise. If he lost his temper on occasion, it is fully understandable. This is not to suggest—as the documents testify—that Churchill was right on every subject. But the average of his decisions was certainly not bad.

A sampling from Fateful Questions illustrates both the complexity of Churchill’s problems and their wide variety and the depths of detail into which he entered—and, in some cases, some rather astonishing facts which, until this book were confined to archives, or not known at all.

Palestine

Churchill’s steady support of a national home for the Jews continued during World War II, and Fateful Questions contains many evidences. In 1942-44 Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, was Resident Minister of State in Cairo, responsible for the Middle East, including Mandatory Palestine, and Africa. He was a lifetime friend of the Churchills. His assassination by Zionist extremists in November 1944 stunned Churchill. “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,” he declared sadly, “many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”

27 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Sir Edward Bridges. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute C.41/3 (Churchill papers, 20/106)

It must be more than three months since the War Cabinet decided that a special committee should be set up to watch over the Jewish question and Palestine generally. How many times has this Committee met? At the present moment Lord Moyne is over here. I said at least a month ago that he should be invited to lay his views before this Committee. He has been made a member, but there has been no meeting. A meeting should be held this week, and Lord Moyne should have every opportunity of stating his full case, in which I am greatly interested. The matter might be discussed further at the Cabinet next week or the week after. Pray report to me the action that will be taken.

Destroyers for Bases 

In the Destroyers for Bases Agreement on 2 September 1940, fifty mothballed U.S. Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for land rights to build American bases on British possessions. No one maintained that this was a fair exchange, but Fateful Questions reveals that Churchill downplayed this issue: “When you have got a thing where you want it, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.” To President Roosevelt’s advisor, Harry Hopkins, he admitted that the value of the trade was unequal—but that, to Britain, American security overrode considerations of an equable “business deal.” This was astonishing admission, characteristic of Churchill, and his loyalty to an ally. 

14 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Harry Hopkins. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1614/3  (Churchill papers, 20/121)

Personal and Most Secret. I am most grateful for the comments which the President made at his Press conference but there are several other important allegations which we think should be answered. I therefore propose to publish from 10 Downing Street on my authority something like the [following]…Statement begins…..

“Complaints are made about the bases lent by Britain to the United States in the West Indies in 1940 in return for the fifty destroyers. These fifty destroyers, although very old, were most helpful at that critical time to us who were fighting alone against Germany and Italy, but no human being could pretend that the destroyers were in any way an equivalent for the immense strategic advantages conceded in seven islands vital to the United States. I never defended the transaction as a business deal. I proclaimed to Parliament, and still proclaim, that the safety of the United States is involved in these bases, and that the military security of the United States must be considered a prime British interest….”

 

Famine in Bengal

Since publication of a book on the 1943-44 Bengal famine a few years ago—and a chorus of condemnations from those who read little else—Churchill and his War Cabinet have been accused near-genocidal behavior over aid to the victims. The Viceroy, Lord Wavell, and Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, are frequently represented as Churchill’s critics. Before he died, Sir Martin Gilbert told me that the relevant documents, which he had exhaustively compiled, would be revealed in the appropriate document volume. They would, he said, completely exonerate Churchill.

That time has now come with publication of Fateful Questions. Reading it, no one could consider that Churchill and his Cabinet, in the midst of a war for survival, did not do everything they could for the plight of the starving, and for the Indian people in general. Only a few excerpts are possible here. They barely scratch the surface.

8 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to the War Cabinet. (Churchill papers, 23/11), 10 Downing Street

DIRECTIVE TO THE VICEROY DESIGNATE (WAVELL)

1. Your first duty is the defence of India from Japanese menace and invasion. Owing to the favourable turn which the affairs of The King-Emperor have taken this duty can best be discharged by ensuring that India is a safe and fertile base from which the British and American offensive can be launched in 1944. Peace, order and a high condition of war-time well-being among the masses of the people constitute the essential foundation of the forward thrust against the enemy.
2. The material and cultural conditions of the many peoples of India will naturally engage your earnest attention. The hard pressures of world-war have for the first time for many years brought conditions of scarcity, verging in some localities into actual famine, upon India. Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages. But besides this the prevention of the hoarding of grain for a better market and the fair distribution of foodstuffs between town and country are of the utmost consequence. The contrast between wealth and poverty in India, the incidence of corrective taxation and the relations prevailing between land-owner and tenant or labourer, or between factory-owner and employee, require searching re-examination.
3. Every effort should be made by you to assuage the strife between the Hindus and Moslems and to induce them to work together for the common good. No form of democratic Government can flourish in India while so many millions are by their birth excluded from those fundamental rights of equality between man and man, upon which all healthy human societies must stand…. [emphasis mine]

12 October 1943. House of Commons: Oral Answers

INDIA (FOOD SITUATION)

Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): At the beginning of the year His Majesty’s Government provided the necessary shipping for substantial imports of grain to India in order to meet prospects of serious shortage which were subsequently relieved by an excellent spring harvest in Northern India. Since the recrudescence of the shortage in an acute form we have made every effort to provide shipping, and considerable quantities of food grains are now arriving or are due to arrive before the end of the year. We have also been able to help in the supply of milk food for children. The problem so far as help from here is concerned is entirely one of shipping, and has to be judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the United Nations.

Canadian & Australian Aid

4 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to William Mackenzie King (Prime Minister, Canada). PM’s Personal Telegram T.1842/3 (Churchill papers, 20/123)

1. I have seen the telegrams exchanged by you and the Viceroy offering 100,000 tons of wheat to India and I gratefully acknowledge the spirit which prompts Canada to make this generous gesture.
2. Your offer is contingent however on shipment from the Pacific Coast which I regret is impossible. The only ships available to us on the Pacific Coast are the Canadian new buildings which you place at our disposal. These are already proving inadequate to fulfil our existing high priority commitments from that area which include important timber requirements for aeroplane manufacture in the United Kingdom and quantities of nitrate from Chile to the Middle East which we return for foodstuffs for our Forces and for export to neighbouring territories, including Ceylon.
3. Even if you could make the wheat available in Eastern Canada, I should still be faced with a serious shipping question. If our strategic plans are not to suffer undue interference we must continue to scrutinise all demands for shipping with the utmost rigour. India’s need for imported wheat must be met from the nearest source, i.e. from Australia. Wheat from Canada would take at least two months to reach India whereas it could be carried from Australia in 3 to 4 weeks. Thus apart from the delay in arrival, the cost of shipping is more than doubled by shipment from Canada instead of from Australia. In existing circumstance this uneconomical use of shipping would be indefensible….

11 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Mackenzie King. PM’s Personal Telegram T.1942/3 (Churchill papers, 20/124)

…The War Cabinet has again considered the question of further shipments of Australian wheat and has decided to ship up to another 100,000 tons, part of which will arrive earlier than the proposed cargo from Canada….

“We should do everything possible…”

14 February 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (War Cabinet papers, 65/41) 10 Downing Street

INDIAN FOOD GRAIN REQUIREMENTS

The Prime Minister informed the War Cabinet that…there had been a further communication from the Viceroy urging in the strongest terms the seriousness of the situation as he foresaw it….he was most anxious that we should do everything possible to ease the Viceroy’s position. No doubt the Viceroy felt that if this corner could be turned, the position next year would be better….

The Minister of War Transport said that it would be out of the question for him to find shipping to maintain the import of wheat to India at a monthly rate of 50,000 tons for an additional two months. The best that he could do was represented by the proposed import of Iraqi barley. If, when the final figures of the rice crop were available, the Government of India’s anticipation of an acute shortage proved to be justified he would then have tonnage in a position to carry to India about 25,000 tons a month. But even this help would be at the expense of cutting the United Kingdom import programme in 1944 below 24 million tons, this being the latest estimate in the light of increasing operational requirements. In the circumstances it was clearly quite impossible to provide shipping to meet the full demand of 1½ million tons made by the Government of India.

24 April 1944. War Cabinet: Conclusions. (Cabinet papers, 65/42) 10 Downing Street

Secret. The War Cabinet had before them a Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India (WP (44) 216) reviewing the latest position as regards the Indian food grain situation. The result was a net worsening of 550,000 tons and the Viceroy, in addition to the 200,000 tons already promised, now required 724,000 tons of wheat if the minimum needs of the civil population were to be met and the Army were also to receive their requirements.

The Secretary of State for India said that the position had been worsened by unseasonable weather, and by the disaster at Bombay, in which 45,000 tons of badly-needed foodstuffs and 11 ships had been lost. He was satisfied that everything possible had been done by the Authorities in India to meet the situation. Given the threat to operations which any breakdown in India’s economic life involved, he felt that we should now apprise the United States of the seriousness of the position. It must be for the War Cabinet to decide how far we should ask for their actual assistance….

The Prime Minister said that it was clear that His Majesty’s Government could only provide further relief for the Indian situation at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions. At the same time, there was a strong obligation on us to replace the grain which had perished in the Bombay explosion. He was sceptical as to any help being forthcoming from America, save at the cost of operations of the United Kingdom import programme. At the same time his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India.

Appeal to Roosevelt

29 April 1944. Winston S. Churchill to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. PM’s Personal Telegram T.996/4. (Churchill papers, 20/163)

No.665. I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India and its possible reactions on our joint operations. Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms which have inflicted serious damage on the Indian spring crops. India’s shortage cannot be overcome by any possible surplus of rice even if such a surplus could be extracted from the peasants. Our recent losses in the Bombay explosion have accentuated the problem.

Wavell is exceedingly anxious about our position and has given me the gravest warnings. His present estimate is that he will require imports of about one million tons this year if he is to hold the situation, and to meet the needs of the United States and British and Indian troops and of the civil population especially in the great cities. I have just heard from Mountbatten that he considers the situation so serious that, unless arrangements are made promptly to import wheat requirements, he will be compelled to release military cargo space of SEAC in favour of wheat and formally to advise Stillwell that it will also be necessary for him to arrange to curtail American military demands for this purpose.

By cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.

I have had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia without reducing the assistance you are now providing for us, who are at a positive minimum if war efficiency is to be maintained. We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but I believe that, with this recent misfortune to the wheat harvest and in the light of Mountbatten’s representations, I am no longer justified in not asking for your help. Wavell is doing all he can by special measures in India. If, however, he should find it possible to revise his estimate of his needs, I would let you know immediately.

Without Churchill…

Fateful Questions, in these documents and others included, has put paid to the outrageous allegations that Churchill, full of racist hatred for the people of India, was responsible for exacerbating the Bengal famine in 1943-44.

The historian Arthur Herman noted two facts which Churchill’s critics have thus far studiously ignored.  (1) Had the famine occurred in peacetime, without a war for survival, it would have been dealt with competently, as famines had been dealt with before by the British Raj. (2) Without Churchill, the Bengal famine would have been worse.