You may never have heard of Bernard Wasserstein. I hadn’t. But he is a British born, Jewish historian, who is now a professor emeritus of the University of Chicago. He has won awards and written several books, each of which, I imagine, is worth looking at.

I have just finished reading his Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, and found it filled with information, some new to me and some not, but all looked at from a different angle. Not from the perspective of an American wondering if the United States should have done more to stop the Holocaust, but from the point of view of Britain, closer to the action and obviously more vulnerable to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Britain was involved with the Jews in several ways. It was at war with Nazi Germany, it held the League of Nations mandate to govern Palestine, and it was home to a prominent and growing Jewish population. The book examines all of this.

You may recall the reports of antisemitism within the United States Department of State, and particularly within its immigration policy offices. The same was true in Britain, where the Foreign Office was filled with “Arabists”, officials who by and large had a romantic bias towards the Arabs and an equal aversion to the Jews. Part of this was related to British national needs: they needed to keep the Suez Canal open, they needed axis to Iraqi oil, and they needed to protect the sea routes to India, then still part of the British Empire. Some just the result of fascination with the exotic Arab communities.

At the same time, there was the Balfour population, which had promised the Jews a homeland in ancient Judea, which was controversial from the beginning, but which had been adopted by the League of Nations and made a part of the mandate given to Britain. Britain was clearly in a bind – needing to conform to the mandate restrictions and needing to keep the Arabs happy. These somewhat conflicting goals were made more difficult to balance as Jews wanted to flee Europe, and the Arabs were being wooed by the Nazis. Britain ended its mandate in 1947, but – were it not for the German influence in Araby – Britain might have walked away from Palestine even earlier.

In addition to the conflicting terms of its mandate, there was another conflict playing out in Britain – the division among government officials as to whether they did or did not support the Balfour Declaration’s goal of a homeland for the Jews. The majority of British officials were clearly not Zionists, but a few were, and most important among the Zionists in Britain was one Winston Churchill, who consistently supported Jewish rights in Palestine. Not that he always had a high degree of influence, but he was always there, and had he not been, again things would have been much different. (Interestingly, with so many British officials mentioned in the book, one was noticeably absent – I don’t think Wasserstein ever mentioned King George.)

The 1939 White Paper, which cut back sharply Jewish immigration to Palestine, is viewed today as an evil proclamation, trapping Jews in a Europe where their only choices were how to die, while relatively few were allowed into Palestine. But Wasserstein makes it clear that, at the time, the White Paper was itself a major compromise between those who wanted to cut off Jewish immigration into the mandate territory completely and those who did not. And also, as various ships tried to run the boycott and bring their refugee passengers into Palestine, there were so many questions raised. What should the mandate holder do? Sending them back to Europe didn’t seem right (for obvious reasons). Letting them into Palestine as refugees would only embitter the majority Arab population more, and induce additional Jews to try to make the trip. So often a middle ground was implemented. Allow them into the Palestine, but imprison them. But, obviously, then what? Eventually, they had to be let out, although there were many thoughts about moving them to South America, to Australia, to various spots in central Africa and to remote Indian Ocean islands. At the same time, Britain had to cope with increasing Arab violence, and the development of Jewish terrorist groups, like the Stern Gang.

The book also talks about the Jewish community in England, about various groups of refugees allowed into the country. But should have England allowed even more Jews in? Many thought that they should be (even before the death camps were known), but there were always considerations pointed into another direction, including the fear that if Britain focused to get Jews, and only Jews, out of Nazi occupied Europe, how would non-Jews in Europe feel, people who were also being oppressed and in danger. Would focusing on the Jews just increase antisemitism even more?

And, after the international meetings in Evian and Bermuda, where everyone talked about saving Jews, but no one did anything about it – it became clear that the entire world felt that letting Jews in would lead to massive influxes of groups who would both overwhelm and change societies, and that temporary asylum was not an answer, because there was no way to see the temporary asylum ever ending. At the same time, within Europe, there was a big market in fake visas – for countries all over the world, giving Jews – who sometimes paid big money for their visas – false hopes, while some countries like Spain and Portugal and (at certain times) Italy and Romania and Hungary kept Jews from German hands, only to hand them over at other times.

And then the question, as the war went on, and the Auschwitz statistics began to climb, should the camps, or the railroad tracks, be bombed? Wasserstein’s chapter on this delicate question is very interesting – would attacks on the camps have had a negative effect on winning the war? How much money, fuel, manpower would be needed, and what would not be done? And would it had been effective? If railways had been bombed, would other ways to transport the Jews be used? If camps had been bombed, would inmates have been killed and the Allies blamed for the death of Jews along with the Nazis? And the camps were located at places where British and American planes would have a hard time getting to without refueling, and being spotted along the way. His description of the logistical difficulties in carrying out major attacks on the camps in quite convincing.

There is much more to the book that I am able to write about here. It is a fairly long book, filled with information (most of which you won’t remember, I am fairly sure), but very well written, and worth the time to read through. I recommend it highly.