Head Strong | Churchill an anti-Semite?
March 25, 2007
By Michael Smerconish
Winston Churchill didn't
write the article quoted, said an expert, who went on to point out that
Churchill often took a pro-Jewish stand even when it was politically unwise for
him to do so.
Was Winston Churchill an
anti-Semite? That stunning accusation was raised last week after the University
of Cambridge issued a news release hyping a new book by one of its historians,
Richard Toye.
The release said that while
researching his book, Lloyd George & Churchill: Rivals for Greatness, which chronicles Churchill's relationship with
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Toye found an article written by
Churchill in 1937 titled "How the Jews Can Combat Persecution." While
offering advice to Jews, Churchill supposedly wrote that "they have been
partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer."
Worse, Churchill allegedly
wrote: "The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew
is that the Jew is different. He looks different. He thinks differently. He has
a different tradition and background."
This news was particularly
disheartening to me, having just come home from a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Two months ago, I stood where Josef Mengele once determined the immediate fate
of new Jewish arrivals at the camp.
"Too bad [U.S.
Assistant Secretary of War] John McCloy didn't take Churchill's advice and bomb
this place," a friend in my group offered, a reference to the fact that
Churchill had advocated doing exactly that in 1944. Churchill's record, or so I
thought, was one of consistent support for the Jews. There is great proof of
these sentiments. My favorite was documented by William Manchester and other
historians, who tell the story of Churchill and Hitler almost meeting in the
summer of 1932. The meeting was canceled by Hitler only after Churchill told an
intermediary, "Why is your chief so violent about the Jews. . . . how can
any man help how he is born?"
How, then, to treat the new
revelations that cast Churchill in this most unflattering light? I endeavored
to speak to Toye, and then to Churchill's official biographer.
Toye conceded to me that,
contrary to the Cambridge news release, Churchill did not write those words -
Adam Marshall Diston did. Diston was a British journalist and Churchill
ghostwriter. Apparently, Diston was given a set of instructions by Churchill,
which he followed in writing the article. Churchill read what Diston produced
and didn't make significant changes, Toye told me.
According to Toye, Churchill
then tried to have it published in Liberty in 1937, but the magazine Collier's
objected (on the basis of Churchill's past work for the latter magazine). He
then offered it to Strand magazine in Britain - but Strand had accepted a
similar article by Lloyd George. Later, in 1940, a Sunday Dispatch editor came
across the article and asked to publish it, but now Churchill refused, his
secretary calling it "inadvisable."
"My basic point on
which I rest my case really is that Churchill was willing to approve these
sentiments for publication under his own name," Toye said. "He didn't
make any big changes. He went off and tried to get it published, and failed
through accident, not because he didn't agree with the sentiments."
Sir Martin Gilbert disagrees
with Toye's assessment. Gilbert is Churchill's official biographer, and the
author of more than 70 books. I spoke with him in London.
He told me that Toye hadn't
realized that Churchill didn't write those words until he (Gilbert) brought it
to his attention the day before I had spoken with Toye. Gilbert told me he had
brought this matter to light back in 1982, after finding the article in the
very library where Toye was presently doing research.
"It's a fact that not
one word of it was written by Churchill," Gilbert said. "That's the
bottom line. . . . You can't be called an anti-Semite for something you didn't
write, didn't write one word of."
But then how to explain
Churchill's attempts to publish the article under his own name? Is it possible
that Churchill agreed with its faint anti-Semitic leanings, or was he just
inattentive in reviewing what Diston wrote?
It would seem to be the
latter. Toye himself notes the article's "well-meaning" message: The
persecution of the Jews was wrong and must be stopped.
And as Gilbert told me,
Churchill's public support of the Jews at times came with great political risk
in Britain. He cited an episode in which Churchill addressed the British
Parliament, telling them he had the "strongest abhorrence" of the
idea of anti-Semitism. "And the House of Commons didn't like it because
they knew he was talking about them," Gilbert told me.
A look at the instructions
to Diston regarding the article shows no trace of anti-Semitism. First, Churchill
asked Diston to express that Jews should be good citizens of the country to
which they belonged. Second, Gilbert said Churchill urged Jews to avoid overly
exclusive associations in daily life.
Third, Churchill was adamant
about keeping the Jewish movement free from communism. And finally, Churchill
felt Jews were justified in using their influence in economic or financial
realms to put pressure on governments that persecuted them.
"Well, of course,
there's nothing whatsoever anti-Semitic about those four points," Gilbert
said.
Gilbert also said he would
address the matter when he publishes his book Churchill and the Jews in the fall.
"It would have been
appalling if I'd missed out on something like this, just as it's appalling that
Dr. Toye failed to consult my existing work. How bizarre," he told me.
Bizarre indeed, I thought.
Just as there are new revelations that Jesus was married and Lincoln gay, now
it's Churchill's turn. Perhaps there isn't enough to write about.
Head Strong |
To read the Cambirdge press release, go to http://go.philly.com/churchill
Michael Smerconish's column appears on Thursdays in The
Daily News and on Sundays in Currents. He can be heard from 5:30 to 9 a.m.
weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him via the Web
at http://www.mastalk.com.