Despite turning 180o on almost all of my historical perspectives, there are some establishment positions that, even for me, are hard to give up. Some of my reversals are well known to the readers of TJL. For example, The United States government is the cause of evil not good. Abraham Lincoln was a murderer, not a hero. The South was justified in seceding from the US, and the North was the aggressor for invading the South. Iran is not going to nuke anybody. AIPAC is a detrimental organization and should be shut down. Those who claim Israel controls much of US foreign policy are correct, not anti Semitic. The US should have sent Japan a letter of apology for the oil embargo after Pearl Harbor instead of declaring war.
And so on.
But for me, there was one major establishment position that still stuck in me like a dagger and was only loosened last week. That is, declaring and winning World War II was justified if only in order to save what was left of European Jewry.
On the face of it, this makes sense. Hitler is exterminating us wholesale, so naturally you want Britain, Russia, America to invade and stop it. They liberate death camps in 1945 and save what is left of the survivors. Obviously they should have invaded much sooner to stop it that much quicker, no? If only Britain and America had declared war in 1933 immediately when Hitler rose to power.
But then I read Ralph Raico, a libertarian historian and student of Ludwig von Mises. And he said something that totally took me for a loop. Here’s Raico, in his collection of essays, Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal
: (My bold.)
In 1940 Churchill at last became Prime Minister, ironically enough when the Chamberlain government resigned because of the Norwegian fiasco—which Churchill, more than anyone else, had helped to bring about.80 As he had fought against a negotiated peace after the fall of Poland, so he continued to resist any suggestion of negotiations with Hitler. Many of the relevant documents are still sealed—after all these years81 —but it is clear that a strong peace party existed in the country and the government. It included Lloyd George in the House of Commons, and Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, in the Cabinet. Even after the fall of France, Churchill refused even to consider Hitler’s renewed peace overtures, whether sincere or not.
This, more than anything else, is supposed to be the foundation of his greatness. The British historian John Charmley raised a storm of outraged protest when he suggested that a negotiated peace in 1940 might have been to the advantage of Britain and Europe. A Yale historian, writing in the New York Times Book Review, referred to Charmley’s thesis as “morally sickening.” Yet Charmley’s scholarly and detailed work makes the crucial point that Churchill’s obdurate refusal even to listen to peace terms in 1940 doomed what he claimed was dearest to him—the Empire and a Britain that was non-socialist and independent in world affairs. One may add that it may also have doomed European Jewry.84 It is amazing that half a century after the fact, there are critical theses concerning World War II that are off-limits to historical debate.
Churchill’s refusal to listen to Hitler’s peace overtures may have doomed European Jewry. When I first read that sentence I did a double take. I didn’t even understand what Raico was saying on a basic level, the thought was so foreign to me. So I read it again. And again. Was I reading this right? How can that be?
Then I saw that little 84 footnote. And I read that. Here’s what the footnote said:
84 On March 27, 1942, Goebbels commented in his diary on the destruction of the European Jews, which was then underway: “Here, too, the Führer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately, a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.” The Goebbels Diaries, 1942–1943, Louis P. Lochner, ed. and trans. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), p. 148.
When I read the footnote I understood. It was very possible that World War II cemented the Final Solution. Straight out of Goebbels’ diary. Without an all-out war, Hitler would not have been able to exterminate us on a systematic global scale. War enabled him to enact radical measures and we were doomed.
Had Churchill made peace with Hitler in 1939, it is much more likely that the worst that would have happened to the Jews is that most would have been slaves rather than be exterminated. Yes, Hitler would have killed Jews. Perhaps even hundreds of thousands. But in order to embark on a project to exterminate millions, you need the full support of an entire country, and Hitler could have only gotten that through war.
And then I just stared into space for a minute and said to myself, “Oh my God.”
It may have been Winston Churchill who set the Final Solution and the Holocaust in motion. Adolf Hitler was only the vehicle and the direct cause. Winston Churchill may have been the ultimate enabler.
FROM THE COMMENTS:
* Says Jeffrey Herf, in answer to a question posed by (the late) Carla Cohen, when Herf spoke at Cohen’s bookstore, Politics & Prose.
Cohen: “So are you saying that if there had been no war there would have been no final solution?”
Herf: “No war, no final solution. Yes.”
* We all know World War II did not save many Jews from dying in the holocaust, and it is very plausible to say it sped up the killing machine. The reason we link the WWII and the Holocaust is just because we have been hammered into thinking that way.
* Yes, Hitler wanted to destroy the Jews. But he may not have been able to had Churchill sued for peace. It is possible. And any possibility – this one actually being plausible – is better than what ended up happening.
Second, Lew Rockwell is in no way an anti Semite. I donate money to the Mises Institute every month and I love Lew Rockwell. I will continue donating money to the Mises Institute every month and cherish the thank you letters that Lew sends me. Lew is anti Israel and anti Zionist.
