Churchill and the Jews (review)

Churchill’s place in history derives primarily from his bulldog spirit, which during the dark days of 1940 inspired the British people and gave them the will to fight on alone. Until 1940, although he had served as Minister several times, he was generally considered a political opportunist and a has-been—a failure. One ground-breaking, insightful study of him, published in 1970, was entitled: Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900–1939.¹

Prior to September 1939, Churchill himself would probably have agreed with the title.

After the war, Churchill played a major role in the creation of his own legend, with the publication of his six-volume history of the war. In 2004, Prof. David Reynolds, in his prize-winning study, detailed how the memoirs were researched and written for Churchill by a team of well-paid historians (the “syndicate”), how he rejected evidence that did not suit his purpose and manipulated the facts so as to create the heroic image by which he wished to be remembered.²

Clearly, it is important to distinguish between Churchill’s thoughts and actions, and the way they have been refurbished. To recognize Churchill’s human frailties does not impair his stature—it merely portrays his true, human proportions. Presenting only the “heroic” version of Churchill’s career—as Sir Martin Gilbert, the prolific author³ of the multi-volume official biography of Churchill does in this book—produces only a caricature. Gilbert has quite evidently fallen prey to the occupational hazard against which one biographer has warned so graphically:

After several years cohabiting with a historical figure, the biographer must guard against the dangers of unwittingly adopting his subject’s angle of vision, of exaggerating his importance, or of executing a mere celebration.⁴

An intriguing comparison might be drawn between Churchill’s influence for so many years on how historians viewed World War Two, and Gilbert’s influence on the growth of the Churchill legend. In the first case, Churchill was given the unique privilege of access to government documents, closed for more than 25 years, until the promulgation of the 30-year archives law in 1969. In the second case, Gilbert was given exclusive rights and access to Churchill’s private papers until 1995.

Churchill was often right on the large issues, even if his motives were contradictory and muddled. But he also had his faults. The “two-dimensional bulldog” image of Churchill in the “national mythology” has been questioned and revised by leading scholars. One of them, in a turn of phrase that might well have referred to the official biography itself, argued:

To dehumanize Churchill, to make him an all-wise automaton that poured out speeches, books, articles and military decrees, does him no service at all. Indeed, it is his very humanity, his failures as well as his triumphs, his weaknesses as well as his strengths, that make him so fascinating.⁵

In the book under review here, Gilbert is determined to “prove” his subject’s consistent, long-term friendship for the Jews and devotion to the Zionist cause. To do this, he has collected almost every speech and article that Churchill ever wrote on the subject, and by corollary, every word of praise that the Zionists ever lavished upon him. The result not only portrays an imaginary lifelong romance between Churchill and the Jews, but also reflects a symbiosis between the author and the object of his admiration for over 40 years.⁶

In order to obtain a balanced view of Churchill’s complex relationship with the Jews, it is necessary to comprehend the cultural clime and norms in which Churchill grew up, his conception of Palestine’s place in the British Empire and the British economy, as well as the politics of Whitehall and Westminster. But Gilbert is singularly dedicated to preserving Churchill’s heroic place in history. Not only does he disregard material that does not promote his goal (even material that he himself has...