The Allied War Effort and the Jews, 1942-1943

The publication of Bernard Wasserstein's Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 in 1979 implicitly raised questions about existing studies of American response to the Holocaust. Wasserstein's approach and interpretation of British policies toward European Jews differed appreciably from those of scholars who had studied the Roosevelt administration's corresponding activities. Not content with highlighting the Foreign Office's role in the formulation of refugee policy, Wasserstein probed the views of the Home Office and Colonial Office as well. What he found was a virtually solid bureaucratic bloc that opposed most proposals for aid to Jewish victims of nazi persecution. The single most important consideration behind this opposition was concern that Britain might have to introduce Jewish refugees into Palestine, which would have damaged Britain's political and military position. A pro-Zionist Winston Churchill could make only limited headway against the consensus of the professional civil service and, on occasion, the military. Although Wasserstein found a number of cases of official dislike for Jews, most notably in the case of Foreign Minister Anthony Eden,' British policy did not rest primarily on prejudice. It was, rather, a question of priorities. Studies of the United States have concentrated to varying degrees on the activities of the State Department and the pervasiveness of anti-semitic prejudice there. Although surprisingly well-researched, journalist Arthur Morse's While Six Million Died (1967)2 bore the tone and episodic structure of an expose. Morse's main villain, apart from the nazis themselves, was Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, whose political and social views were said to have kept Jews from reaching the shores of the United States. Historian Henry Feingold (The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945) goes even further in

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• The Politics of Rescue

  James R Leutze, Henry L Feingold•Journal of American History•1971

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