A question of will and way
Richard Lamb
THE MYTH OF RESCUE. WHY THE DEMOCRACIES COULD NOT HAVE SAVED MORE JEWS FROM THE NAZIS by William D. Rubinstein Routledge, £18.99, pp. 267 Could the Allies have done more to prevent the Holocaust? This book is a strong counterblast to the stream of publi- cations — mostly from America — which accuse the British and United States gov- ernments of guilt not only for their inertia after they became aware of the death camps but also for their failure to help more German refugees to emigrate during the years 1933 to 1939. Professor Rubin- stein produces a mass of documentation from which he argues that the Allies should have no feelings of guilt because there was nothing more they could have done. Although his arguments are not wholly convincing he succeeds in tilting the scales against the critics of the Allies. Could the Allies have made it easier for German Jews to emigrate between 1933 and 1939? The racial persecution began immediately Hitler came to power in 1933 and peaked in November 1938 when, in retaliation for the murder of a German diplomat in the Paris embassy by a Polish Jew, 267 synagogues were set on fire, thou- sands of Jewish homes and shops destroyed and 30,000 Jews rounded up for dispatch to concentration camps. Panic emigration of Jews from Germany began, but simultane- ously the British government as a sop to the Arabs reduced the quota of immigrants into Palestine. Emigration to America was inhibited by a strict quota, which the gov- ernment refused to raise, while the provi- sion that no immigrants would be admitted who might become a public charge was strictly enforced. There was no sponta- neous response to the emergency, but the author thinks that Britain behaved better than America with British consuls in Ger- many instructed to be generous in giving entry visas to German Jews. Under these circumstances it is difficult to whitewash British and American conduct.
Rubinstein emphasises that 72 per cent of all Jews within the pre-1933 boundaries of Germany emigrated, and considers this to be compelling evidence that the democ- racies behaved well. However, 72 per cent is a misleading statistic, because the Nazis went in for large-scale racial persecution of practising Christian families where one of the parents was of Jewish origin. Rubin- stein ignores this. In fact an enormous number of practising Christians with some Jewish antecedents were persecuted and eventually sent to death camps.
Many Jews remained in Germany, believing that the racial persecution must blow over and having no premonition that Hitler was to decide on mass genocide. Indeed a considerable number of emigrat- ing Jews returned to Germany before 1939, not realising the danger.
After the French armistice in 1940 the route from Germany to America via France and Spain was temporarily re- opened, but the Gestapo demanded large fines before they would issue exit permits, and the author produces some interesting case histories of escapes. This came to an abrupt end in December 1941 with a total ban on emigration, and in January 1942 after the notorious Wansee Conference Himmler officially embarked on the mass slaughter of all Jews and those of non- Aryan descent in occupied Europe. From Ultra signals the British government soon became aware of the death camps, but not until some prisoners escaped from Auschwitz were the full details of the hor- ror known to the West.
A precision Mosquito bomber raid on Amiens prison in 1944 resulted in the escape of 100 Allied and Resistance prison- ers; as a result some historians consider the Allies guilty for not attempting similar raids on Auschwitz, which came within reach of long-distance bombers from Fog- gia in Italy in 1944. Rubinstein rejects this argument out of hand, claiming that, although such attacks were considered by the Americans and British, they were rejected because they would have been ineffective; he pours scorn on historians who allege that this inaction is evidence that the Allies had no real interest in sav- ing the Jews. Relying almost entirely on US sources, the author did not find the minute from Churchill to Sinclair (Secretary of State for Air) in 1944 advocating the bombing of Auschwitz (quoted in my book Churchill as War Leader). Anyway would bombing Auschwitz have saved many inmates' lives? Why would the bombs kill guards not prisoners? The chapter devoted to Auschwitz is the most convincing of the book.
In 1944, through Istanbul, Himmler sug- gested to rich Jewish groups that he would free a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 motor trucks — to be used solely on the Russian front — plus large quantities of foreign exchange; failing this, all remaining Jews in Hungary, Romania and Czechoslo- vakia would be killed. The Jews wanted to accept. The Russians were dead against it, but the British and Americans kept the negotiations going for months. Rubinstein dismisses the plan as not being 'feasible' because Hitler was unaware of it and would never have agreed. Whether Himmler's offer was genuine or not will never be known.
The author concludes that the only way in which the Allies let down the Jews was by not attempting to assassinate Hitler, and he is correct in asserting that Hitler's prob- able successor, Goring or Goebbels, would have halted the death camps. But so fanati- cal was the security around the Fiihrer that any assassination attempt would have had little chance of success.
This controversial book will not be received enthusiastically everywhere. How- ever, it brings home strikingly the massive difficulties which faced the Allies in their efforts to foil Hitler's slaughter of Jews, gypsies, mental defectives and those opposed to his regime.
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