Et Tu Ernest? Discovering (belatedly) that Hemingway didn't like Jews

I’d meant to give Ernest Hemmingway (1898-1961) another shot. I read For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) in an edition I inherited from my mother for my all-men’s book club in Jerusalem and found the narrative about the pre-WWII Spanish Civil War slow-going. 

Yet I knew that Hemmingway, known for his spare old-school newspaper writing style, is considered one of the great authors of the 20^th century. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. 

When I stumbled upon a copy of The Sun Also Rises (1926) at one of our free neighborhood book libraries, I decided to give him another try. The story is about a group of mostly Paris-based literary types, American ex-pats, who go to Madrid to watch the bullfights.

One set member is the character Robert Cohn – his name is the only thing Jewish about him. Cohn is the ex-lover of Lady Brett Ashley, the only woman in the group over whom he continued to pine after. The narrator, Jake Barnes (Hemmingway’s alter ego), loves her too but can’t consummate the relationship because of impotence. Everybody hates Cohn outright or just about tolerates him. The word “kike” and "Jew" is bandied around. It all shocked me as I had no idea that Hemmingway loathed Jews. בוקר טוב אליהו

It put me off. Later, I learned that his Paris ex-pat circle of mentors included the self-hating Jewess Gertrude Stein, the certified antisemite Ezra Pound, and the prejudiced Ford Madox Ford. That may be where he caught his case of antisemitism that existed alongside friendships with Jews.

Hemmingway was a super-masculine womanizer who routinely slurred gay people. Some scholars presume he was a latent homosexual. He killed himself at age 61.

Hemmingway wasn’t born an antisemite; scholars suggest he may not have died as one. I suppose his antisemitism was rooted in his social milieu, not racialism or theology. If he weren’t a writer, it might have expressed itself more subtlety as mere prejudice. No human is without bias; it is something we can work to overcome. In contrast, hatred rooted in racial or religious contempt is far more potent and pernicious; a matter of identity and belief system. 

Jew-hating was apparently not essential to Hemmingway’s personality, as far as I can tell. He did not embrace it as a meta-conspiracy theory that explained the entire world.

In other words, he's the kind of antisemite we need not get overly exercised over. 

Book Review: An Alternative Scenario for World War II

On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, it was not self-evident that the US would enter the war in Europe being fought between Britain and Nazi Germany.

The potent isolationist "America First" camp was reluctantly reconciled to battling Japan. They were not pacifists, and this was a war of no choice. However, nowhere was it foreordained that the US needed to go to war with Hitler. Indeed, who needed a two-front war?

British prime minister Winston Churchill was praying and lobbying for America to enter the European war because Britain was barely holding on against the Hitlerian onslaught. Recall the war began in September 1939. London and the British islands were mercilessly bombed by the Luftwaffe between July 10, 1940 – and October 31, 1940.

Despite strong isolationist opposition, since March 11, 1941, the US had been formally providing a near-bankrupt Britain with weapons. Some of which were channeled to the USSR, which since June 22, 1941, was also fighting Hitler. None of this would have been enough to turn the tide in Europe, and all sides knew this. The December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan put Lend-Lease into doubt, at least temporarily, because the US would need to focus its energies on Japan. London and Moscow would have to tread water.

As Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman remind us in their riveting Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and the German March to Global War, it was Hitler who declared war on the US, not the other way around.

Therefore, the day that arguably deserves to go down in history is December 11, 1941, when the Nazi dictator – seeing a brief window of opportunity – made his fateful miscalculation. Only the American economic engine and the manpower of the American armed forces ensured Hitler's (and Japan's) defeat.

"The Fuhrer was convinced that 'the Jews' had suborned Roosevelt, who had manipulated the United States into such a hostile attitude toward the Reich that Germany had no choice but to declare a preemptive war," the authors argue.

By December 7, 1941, the Nazis had been waging frenzied war against the Jewish population of occupied Russia. With Hitler's declaration of war against the US, the Holocaust would now go into high gear to annihilate the Jews of western and central Europe as well. The authors remind us that on Pearl Harbor Day most European Jews were still alive. "The world war is here, and the extermination of the Jews must be the necessary consequence," Hitler told his subordinates after his December 11, 1941, declaration of war on the US.

That is the context in which the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, is best understood. This was the crucial bureaucratic planning meeting addressing the nuts and bolts details of the systematic industrial destruction of Europe's Jewish people

This book is not primarily about the Shoah, but the authors so effectively weave Hitler's twisted motivations showing how central his obsessive hatred of the Jews was to his reason for going to war and how he waged it. All his economic and diplomatic grievances against Britain and the US interlocked with his warped belief in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

History is not linear, and nothing is foretold – it only appears orderly or sensible after the fact. Had Hitler not declared war on the US, the Roosevelt administration might not have found the political nerve to come to Britain's aid in WWII with boots on the ground.

Hitler's American Gamble focuses on five crucial days in the history of WWII – practically hour by hour. The book's pace is gripping, and the angle the authors take is distinctive. Highly recommended.

 

The Forces of intolerance, coarseness, and incivility react to Bennett’s Departure with … (surprise) ... churlishness

The disagreements in Israel’s polity are mainly over ethos and values, not borders, security, faith, or economics.

The forces of civility and tolerance are in the minority. 

The dominant camp (if we can trust the polls) is the one that thinks it knows the Truth, that its political adversaries must be crushed, and that those who disagree with them are “leftists,” “Reform,” and collaborators with the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Naftali Bennett turned over the running of the government to Yair Lapid, he talked about how hurt he was that so many Israelis aligned with the Netanyahu-led Opposition felt that their world had been gutted when he formed a broad-based left-right government with backing from one of the Arab parties. He said that he heard their voices and respected their feelings. If Israeli citizens are troubled, so is he. Every sector of the country will sometimes find itself in power and sometimes in opposition. It was just not acceptable that a considerable chunk of the population went into mourning when the other half formed the government – and that it would be best if the two halves could unite to create a big tent government.

In other words, Bennett called for reconciliation and healing. He said we are a divided country and the only way to move ahead is to work together.

The Likud-Hardal-Haredi Netanyahu-led Opposition’s response was disdain.

Despite achieving the fall of the government, generosity is not in the Likud-Hardal-Haredi Netanyahu-led Opposition’s vocabulary.  Forget Churchill's remark, “In War, Resolution; In Defeat, Defiance; In Victory, Magnanimity…”

Having employed a scorched earth approach to drive Bennett from office, including blocking crucial legislation in the national interest to bring him down, the Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis responded to Bennett’s departure in the meanest of spirits.

Hardal ultra-Orthodox and hyper-nationalist chief Bezalel Smotrich "explained" that Bennett’s decision to quit political life was not made of his own volition but was the result of a public so fed up with him that it vomited him out.  Vomited. 

And Sephardi Shas Party boss Aryeh Deri (an ex-con who only recently copped another plea) mocked Bennett, the first Orthodox prime minister, for forming a government that was, he claimed, the most damaging for Jewish identity in Israel’s history. 

Just the opposite was true.

Moshe Gafni, the Degel HaTorah Lithuanian boss, said that God had punished Bennett for going to Moscow to see Putin on a Saturday. Bennett was trying to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. We have seen the bloody cost and dislocation of their fighting. For this, said Gafni, God gave Bennett his comeuppance.

Gafni’s understanding of the Creator is not my understanding of the Holy One. 

Netanyahu’s idea of what Jabotinsky would have done in these times is the anthesis of how I understand what Jabotinsky stood for.

The Bibi-led Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis must create an illiberal ecosystem of anxiety, demagoguery, disorder, and disruption. It can't afford to give Lapid a day of grace. 

Let them pursue their values. I will stick with mine. Even if I am in a permanent minority.

Last night, Prime Minister Lapid gave a heartfelt address to the nation. For more than half the country – those associated with the Bibi-led Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis his remarks fell on deaf ears and closed minds.

Whereas the rest of us have a prime minister we can be proud of.

***

 

Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave the following speech this evening (Saturday, 2 July 2022):

“I want to start by thanking the 13th Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Naftali Bennett. For your decency, for your friendship and for leading the government this past year to economic and security achievements not seen here for years. A special thank you for allowing the citizens of Israel to see this week an orderly transition between people who keep agreements and believe in one another.

The State of Israel is bigger than all of us. More important than any of us. It was here before us, and will be here long after us. It doesn’t belong only to us. It belongs to those who dreamed of it for thousands of years in the Diaspora, and also to those yet to be born, to future generations.

 

 

 

For them and for us, we must choose the common good; that which unites us. There will always be disagreements, the question is how we manage them, and how we make sure they don’t manage us.

Disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing so long as it doesn’t undermine the stability of the government and damage our internal resilience. So long as we remember that we all have the same goal: a Jewish, democratic, liberal, strong, advanced, and prosperous Israel.

The deep Israeli Truth is that on most of the truly important topics - we believe in the same things.

We believe that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. Its establishment didn’t begin in 1948, but rather on the day Joshua crossed the Jordan and forever connected the people of Israel with the land of Israel, between the Jewish nation and its Israeli homeland.

We believe that Israel must be a liberal democracy in which every citizen has the right to change the government and set the course of their life. Nobody can be denied their fundamental rights: respect, liberty, freedom of employment, and the right to personal security.

 

 

 

We believe we must always preserve our military might. Without it, there’s no security. I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. A 13-year-old Jewish boy who they wanted to kill and who had no one to protect him. We will defend ourselves, by ourselves. We will make sure we always have the Israel Defense Forces, an army with undeniable strength, that our enemies fear.

One night in the winter of 1944, in the Budapest Ghetto, my grandmother called out to my father, and told him: ‘My child, you don’t know it, but today is your Bar Mitzvah. I can’t bake a cake, your father won’t return.’ My grandfather perished in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

‘But there’s one thing I can do.’ And she took out a small bottle of perfume, Chanel 5, which was the perfume of elegant ladies before the war. We’ll never know how she kept it all that time. She shattered it on the floor and said ’at least it won’t stink at my son’s bar mitzvah.

We believe that Israel is a Jewish state. Its character is Jewish. Its identity is Jewish. Its relations with its non-Jewish citizens are also Jewish. The book of Leviticus says, ‘But the stranger who dwells with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.’

 

 

 

We believe that so long as Israel’s security needs are met, Israel is a country that seeks peace. Israel stretches out its hand to all the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, and says: the time has come for you to recognize that we’ll never move from here, let’s learn to live together.

We believe there is a great blessing in the Abraham Accords, a great blessing in the security and economic momentum created at the Negev Summit with the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Morocco and that there will be a great blessing in the agreements yet to come.

The people of Israel won’t dwell alone. It is our job to continue to strengthen our position in the world, our relations with our greatest friend and ally, the United States, and to harness the international community in the struggle against antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel.

We believe that it’s the job of the government to uphold the law, and the job of the law to uphold the standards of government. The law is what protects us from corruption and violence. A court is what protects the weak from the strong. The law is the basis for our lives together.

We believe that the Israeli economy must be based on free market principles, on the creativity and dynamism of Israeli technology, and that our job is to protect those who have nothing. To provide a fair opportunity for every child, everywhere.

 

 

 

We believe that the Iranian threat is the gravest threat facing Israel. We’ll do whatever we must to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability, or entrenching itself on our borders.

I stand before you at this moment and say to everyone seeking our demise, from Gaza to Tehran, from the shores of Lebanon to Syria: don’t test us. Israel knows how to use its strength against every threat, against every enemy.

We believe in, and pray for the well-being of our soldiers and police officers, in the air, at sea, and on land. As it’s written in the prayer for the well-being of IDF soldiers, ‘May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them.’ We won’t be quiet and won’t rest until our sons are returned: Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul of blessed memory, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.

There’s something else that we believe in: that we’re allowed to disagree. Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle. Freedom of the press is a component without which democracy cannot survive. It’s incumbent upon us to put effort into revealing the facts and understanding the Truth.

The great Israeli question is actually why in a period in which we have wide national agreement on all the important topics, the levels of hate and anxiety within Israeli society are so high? Why is polarization more threatening than ever?

 

 

 

The answer is - politics. In Israel, extremism doesn’t come from the streets to politics. It’s the opposite. It flows like lava from politics to the streets. The political sphere has become more and more extreme, violent and vicious, and it’s dragging Israeli society along with it. This we must stop. This is our challenge.

The State of Israel — Israelis — are better than this. Here, there’s brainpower, imagination, and strength that can’t be found anywhere else. The Israeli economy is a pilgrimage destination for the entire world. Precisely in a time of global crisis, our potential grew. We know how to change, to improve — we just need to do it together.

There are two photos hanging in my office in the Knesset, one alongside the other: David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Two political rivals, but also the two most important Prime Ministers we’ve had. They often argued, but they also always remembered they had the same goal: building the strength and moral character of the State of Israel.

This goal is greater than all that divides us. Our test is not whether or not we win the argument, but rather, if we learned to find a way to work together with those who don’t agree with us.

Many people who didn’t vote for this government are listening to this speech, many people who don’t and won’t support it. I thank you for your willingness to listen. I ask to work together with you for the good of our country. I’m committed to serving you as well. I embrace the words of my predecessor, and want to repeat them: we are brothers.

The challenges before us are immense. The struggle against Iran, terror at home, the Israeli education crisis, the cost of living, strengthening personal security. When the challenges are so great, we can’t let disagreements consume all our strength. In order to create a common good here, we need one another.

Our children are watching us. What do we want them to see? We want our children to see that we did everything to build a Jewish and democratic, strong and advanced, benevolent and good Israel.

Only together will we prevail.

Thank you.”

An Intolerant Court Decides Intolerantly

The Supreme Court, whether in the US or Israel, should serve as the most enlightened and elitist branch of government -- as an explicit stopgap against the popular will. The Court should interpret the Constitution to achieve this elitist objective in the American setting. In the Israeli context, it should fall back on the Basic Laws.

Over the years, the US Court has often been in the hands of intolerant counter-elites. Hence in interpreting the Constitution, the Court found ways to justify slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) or after the Civil War to uphold anti-miscegenation laws in Pace v. Alabama (1883) and to safeguard Jim Crow in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

So, much depends NOT on what is written in the Constitution but on WHO sits on the Court. Reactionary justices will read the same Constitution to defend backward-looking positions. Open-minded majorities will employ the Constitution to achieve tolerant ends.

Nor does it matter to me that a plurality of Americans say abortion should be legal.[1] The rights of the individual should not be contingent on raw majority rule. Since the masses – which are inherently the most intolerant element in any polity – have the most influence at the local and state levels, the Court ought not to relegate human rights to the legislatures of the various states.

This brings me to one of the most fraught issues in American politics though practically a non-issue in the UK and Israel.[2] When on June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court’s Trumpian majority used the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson (2021), to overturn Roe v Wade (1973), Israelis who share my values were incredulous.[3] 

Roe had not only decriminalized abortion but made a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy during the first trimester a constitutionally protected right, with increasingly stringent restrictions kicking in further along in gestation riding on the fetus’s viability outside the womb. 

As had been feared, Trump appointed justices – Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch aligned with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the Court’s staunch conservative bloc, and conservative-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts to overturn Roe v. Wade.[4] Roberts did so reluctantly; the Trumpians zealously. 

There was little the Court’s diminished tolerant camp comprised of justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan could do but dissent. Breyer and Kagan, it is worth noting, are Jewish.[5] Upon Breyer’s retirement in July 2022, he will be replaced by Biden-nominee Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.[6] 

The forces of intolerance will remain in the majority. In fact, Thomas hinted that he saw Dobbs v. Jackson as a first step and that were it up to him, other federal protections would be removed. These could include the right to purchase condoms and other contraceptive devices, homosexual marriage, indeed consensual homosexual sex, and employment and housing protections gays now enjoy nationwide.

Some say that abortion should be treated uniquely. Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite columnists, argues in The Wall Street Journal that of all hot button issues, abortion should, on an exceptional basis, be left to the states and their varying moral values. [7] That sounds reasonable, but you would need to be prepared to live with the idea that basic protections apply only to Americans who live in blue or Democratic-dominated states.

To my mind, Roe v Wade had struck the right balance between fetus (as a potential life) and mother. Naturally, like many people who are pro-abortion or pro-choice, I would prefer pregnancies be terminated only rarely and not as a form of birth control. But that reflects my personal values. Regardless, it is too bad that abortion will now be re-criminalized in many red or Republican-dominated states.

Whether on abortion or guns,[8] the US Supreme Court is once again in the hands of counter-elites. Gloating Trumpians might want to consider that the Court could one day fall into the hands of woke counter-elites attentive to the will of their electorate. 

That is why I am saying the Court should not cater to the popular will -- but to the highest (if unpopular values) of tolerance and forbearance.

 

 

 

 

---

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/

[2] Abortion is available legally in the UK and in Israel. In Israel, vetting committees must approve abortions on a case-by-case basis. Disapprovals are extremely rare.

[3] Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is a case that involves a Mississippi statute that banned abortion after 15 weeks ignoring the viability standard of 23-24 weeks set by Roe. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/

[4] Kavanaugh had told the US Senate during his confirmation hearing that Roe v. Wade was “settled as precedent.” Barrett was more circumspect in public testimony.  Gorsuch emphasized that it was worthy to be treated as a precedent.

[5] Breyer, who announced in January 2022 his intention to retire, has attended Jewish communal fundraising dinners and is married to a non-Jewish upper-crust British woman https://www.jta.org/archive/clinton-nominee-for-high-court-seen-as-sharing-jewish-concerns He has attended Yom Kippur services https://www.jta.org/archive/clinton-nominee-for-high-court-seen-as-sharing-jewish-concerns  Kagan practices Conservative Judaism. https://www.timesofisrael.com/supreme-court-justice-elena-kagan-talks-of-her-very-strange-jewish-upbringing/  Sotomayor is of Catholic heritage but is discreet about her religiosity perhaps because she is divorced. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett are all mass-attending Catholics. Gorsuch was raised Catholic but has attended Episcopalian services.

[6] https://www.thewrap.com/supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson/  

[7] https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-justices-let-go-of-abortion-roe-wade-jackson-mississipi-fifteen-weeks-dobbs-11638487513?st=lk10t4v48dv8yal&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

[8] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-gun-law-new-york-second-amendment/#:~:text=Washington%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Supreme%20Court%20on,for%20self%2Ddefense%20is%20unconstitutional. 

A LESSON IN DEMOCRATIC INGRATITUDE? WHY CHURCHILL LOST THE FIRST ELECTION AFTER THE WAR

May 8th was Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) commemorating the Allied triumph over Nazism in 1945. It was also the beginning of the end of Winston Churchill’s political career. As soon as the war in Europe was won, British voters sent him packing. Why?

Back Story

He had taken over in May 1940 from fellow Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain whose signature policy of appeasing Hitler, embodied in the September 30, 1938, Munich Pact, had come unraveled.

The pact had given Hitler a chunk of Czechoslovakia. On March 15, 1939, the Führer gobbled up what was left. A rearmed Germany had already annexed Austria on March 12, 1938. And on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland triggering World War II. To make matters worse for Poland, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. 

The country was divided between Hitler and Stalin just as the two dictators had previously and secretly conspired.

On September 3, 1939, Chamberlain announced, “This country is at war with Germany.” 

Charitable observers say that Chamberlain’s appeasement policy was rooted in the trauma of WWI and in his desire to buy time so that Britain could rearm. Regardless, it was clear he was not cut out to be a wartime prime minister. Meanwhile, though, he was prime minister. Chamberlain dispatched a British Expeditionary Force to France but not much happened until April 9, 1940, when British troops engaged with the Germans in Norway. The battle did not end well.

Chamberlain had to go. No election was held. The politically dominant Conservative Party selected Churchill as its new leader, and he became prime minister on May 10, 1940. After all, he had been the leading Conservative voice against appeasement. Labour was no alternative; the party, too, had advocated appeasement until 1938. 

It was a gloomy time. Britain was alone. 

Churchill formed an all-party War Cabinet and famously declared, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He saw the country through the most intense German air bombing of London. The worst of the Blitz happened between September 7, 1940, and May 11, 1941. Fear of a German invasion was palpable. 

Only when Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, and America was compelled to enter the war in Europe did Churchill have a reason for genuine optimism. 

And the rest is history.

***

The mood after the victory

Now, fast forward to May 8, 1945, the day the war in Europe ended. There had not been a general election since 1935 when Stanley Baldwin led the Tories to victory. Baldwin resigned in May 1937 and Chamberlain took over without an election. So by the time WWII ended, Parliament had been sitting for almost ten years. The political parties in the war coalition began bickering. He hoped not, but Churchill recognized that there would probably have to be new elections. In April 1945, the Tories suffered a spectacular defeat in a by-election at the hands of a left-wing candidate. 

Clementine Churchill urged her husband not to run again, not to risk his reputation for the Tories – they were not worth it. He had never won a general election. He was tired. Ahead was Potsdam, which would further sap his energies. FDR was dead (on April 12, 1945).

The Tories had nothing worthwhile to offer except Churchill. And the diplomat Harold Nicolson, a confidante, thought even Churchill’s personal popularity would decrease once he had navigated Britain to victory.

Meanwhile, Churchill hoped against hope that Labour would stay in his government until Japan was defeated. Labour leader Clement Attlee and his deputy Ernest Bevin signaled that was their plan too. As Deputy Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945, Attlee was efficient and low-key in the crucial committee work of the wartime government. For his part, Churchill was willing to accommodate Attlee on social security and full employment.

Then came the "Let Us Face the Future," Labour Party Conference in Blackpool. On May 21, Attlee telephoned Churchill to say that Labour had a change of heart and did not want to stay in the government until the Japanese were defeated. The Liberals also quit.

So, on May 23, 1945, the parliamentary wartime coalition broke up. Churchill had held office for five years and 13 days. He went to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King George VI at which he tendered his resignation and humbly withdrew. Summoned, he returned to the palace four hours later, and the King asked him to head a Conservative government during the six-week election campaign. The monarch and his first minister had grown close during the war, with the sovereign writing to Churchill as “My dear Winston.”

Churchill formed a new government because he had to replace the Labour and Liberal members who had quit. He loved being prime minister and he was not going to give up the position without a fight.

Churchill appealed to the public to let him finish the job and defeat Japan. His approval rating had never fallen below 78 percent and in May 1945 stood at 83 percent. 

***

A bestseller no one read

Back on December 1, 1942, Sir William Beveridge, an economist, had written a turgid yet bestselling book that advocated Britain become a welfare state. Paradoxically the Conservative Party, not Labour, had conceived of a National Health Service scheme and a massive state-funded housebuilding program. What 17-year-old Margaret Thatcher thought about all this I do not know. When it came to social welfare Churchill was, by no means, a small-government conservative. Nonetheless, in the public's eye, he was not perceived as a sufficiently passionate campaigner for social welfare.

In contrast, the Labour election manifesto, “Let Us Face the Future,” promised nationalization, centralized economic planning, full employment, and, yes, national health insurance. Atlee further promised housing, state retirement pensions, and disability benefits.

Going Over the top against socialism

In the political campaign, rather than accentuate domestic concerns and his proven commitment to social welfare, Churchill went on an over-the-top ideological attack against socialism. He warned that socialists would rob citizens of their liberty and create Gestapo-like secret police: “No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinions in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders….”

Maybe this was psychological displacement on Churchill's part redirecting his revulsion of Stalinism onto Attlee’s mild-mannered democratic socialism. Churchill may also have been influenced by  Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom which he'd recently read. It is a sort of gospel to free-market conservatives. Churchill's flirtation with economic libertarianism did not last but it was in full swing at this stage. In reality, it was absurd to claim that Attlee, who had served as his deputy over the past four years, was anything like the Soviet dictator.  

Churchill's campaign theme was that socialism “and the abject worship of the State” were inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism. If the Labour Party socialists took power, they would prescribe where people could work, “where they may go, and what they may say; [and] where their wives are to queue up for the state ration.”

By dissolving the wartime government before Japan could be defeated, Churchill declared, “our socialist and Liberal [Party] friends [had] put party before country.” Telling voters to “leave these socialist dreamers to their utopias or their nightmares,” he promised food and housing for demobilized soldiers. 

Yet, his economic recovery plan sounded vague and half-hearted.

***

Divided attentions

Churchill did not give himself over entirely to the election campaign. 

He kept one eye on a possible US pullback in liberated Germany, fearing with good cause that the Soviets would cast their shadow across the entire continent. They had the most enormous army in Europe (the US was still engaged in the Pacific). If Stalin wanted to take control of Poland and Eastern Europe, Britain alone would be powerless to stop him. 

Meanwhile, the Americans were testing the atomic bomb. Churchill wrote President Harry S Truman asking for an update. He had already given his consent for its use against Japan. Though Stalin wasn’t told about the Bomb until Potsdam, Soviet spies and American and British fellow travelers had been keeping him well informed.

Winston Churchill was tired but campaigned in spurts up and down the UK, sometimes holding six events in one day.

He was also feverishly preparing to meet Truman and Stalin at the Potsdam conference outside Berlin set for mid-July 1945. He had lobbied -- unsuccessfully -- against a pre-meeting without him between Truman and Stalin as a slap in the face to Britain.

***

Election Day & the Opening of Potsdam

Polling took place on July 5, but the results would not be tallied for three weeks so that the votes of the armed forces scattered around the globe could be counted. Meanwhile, it was business as usual. A weary Churchill and an optimistic Attlee – after short vacations – journeyed to Potsdam. It was magnanimous to bring Attlee, now the opposition leader, but he wanted him to be up to speed on the negotiations in the event of a Labour victory.

Churchill had previously met with Stalin and FDR in Teheran in November 1943 and at Yalta in February 1945. FDR died on April 12, as noted, and Churchill had yet to meet Truman. 

The prime minister arrived in Berlin on July 15, 1945, accompanied by Anthony Eden, his Foreign Secretary.  The wide-ranging discussions involved how Germany would be divided among the victors, whether Poland would become a Soviet satellite, and even how Vietnam would be partitioned.

Shortly after he arrived in Berlin, Churchill was taken to see the ruins of Hitler’s chancellery and the bunker in which the Fuhrer had shot himself. He saw the spot where Hitler’s corpse had been incinerated.

The prime minister, at last, met the new president on July 16. He later described him as “a man of immense determination.” 

The Potsdam conference opened on July 17 and lasted until August 2.

It was paused on July 25 so that Churchill and Attlee could return from Germany to await the British election results. Some members of Churchill’s staff didn’t bother to pack all their things figuring they’d soon be back.

***

The man himself

As readers of biography and history, we often imagine Churchill as a larger-than-life character, iconic, if perhaps one-dimensional: He was Victorian, patrician, educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, and his command of the English language was unparalleled if sometimes archaic.

He craved the love of his American mother, who was too infrequently present while he was growing up. His father was distant, cold, and emotionally unstable. Winston was desperate for his approval but never got it.

We know that he could be kind to his staff or so rude as to make them cry. He could behave like a spoiled child but could also be unbelievably big-hearted. He was recklessly fearless in the face of danger. He was seriously ill on more than several occasions during WWII. He was quick to tear up when his emotional strings were pulled.

Lady Pamela Lytton (died 1971), a member of his circle, said: “The first time you meet Winston, you see all his faults, and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.”

In July 1945, the question for voters was whether this complicated, flawed, charismatic wartime leader was suited to lead the country at a point when domestic issues were taking center stage. 

Had Churchill overplayed the anti-socialism card by warning that the placid Attlee, who, after all, had been in his War Cabinet, had it in him to become a socialist dictator? 

***

The votes are counted 

Churchill flew from Germany into Northolt, an airport in west London, where Clementine, his brother Jack, good friend Lady Mountbatten, and Jock Colville, a civil servant long assigned to him, were waiting. They headed to the Number 10 Annexe (Number 10 Downing Street had been damaged by German bombing), where they were greeted by Churchill’s son Randolph and senior Conservative party figures.

The assembled group was expecting to win. Churchill met with the King to brief him on Potsdam in the evening. Lord Beaverbrook, confidante, former cabinet member, and newspaper publisher, was waiting at No 10 Annex when he got back from Buckingham Palace.

He dined with Clementine, Randolph, daughter Mary Soames, and brother Jack. Mary was full of confidence. Daughter Diana and her husband, MP Duncan Sandys, who arrived after dinner, were grim because it looked like Sandys would lose in his constituency. Brenden Bracken, another cabinet member and founder of the Financial Times, joined the group. Daughter Sarah who sometimes accompanied Winston on trips abroad was also present.

Most observers were predicting a 100-seat Conservative majority in the House of Commons. Of all his advisers, only Bracken, who was also a member of the “Other Club” (the dining society co-founded in 1911 by Churchill), thought his friend would lose.

“That night Churchill worked until 1.15 a.m., then went to bed ‘in the belief,’ as he later wrote ‘that the British people would wish me to continue my work,’” according to his authorized biographer Martin Gilbert.

Perhaps. But Andrew Roberts, his latest biographer, reported that at lunch with the King on June 20, Churchill predicted that young men and women of the armed services would not vote for him. In fact, as it would transpire, soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Labour, desiring the welfare state that had been promised in the 1942 Beveridge Report.

Just before dawn, Churchill awoke suddenly with a sharp stab of almost physical pain and the subconscious conviction that he was about to go down in defeat. He went back to sleep. On the morning of July 26, he worked in bed for an hour. Then, his military aid and keeper of maps (military and now electoral), Captain Richard Pim, came to his bedroom suite to report the first losses for the Conservatives.

Churchill, who had been bathing, got dressed quickly and came down to the map room wearing his blue jumpsuit. The ticker tape machine clattered rhythmically in the background. With each result, constituency by constituency, it became plain that the socialists were winning in a stunning landslide. 

At 1 p.m., the BBC declared Labour the overwhelming victor. Anthony Eden telephoned Churchill from his constituency to commiserate.

Labour, with 393 seats, won its first-ever absolute majority in the 650 seat House of Commons. (The Liberals got 12 seats.) The Conservatives dropped to 213 from 585. Churchill handily won his own constituency (which had been slightly redrawn), but Randolph and Duncan lost their places. 

Lunch at 1:30 was a joyless affair. As Mary recalled: “Pappa struggled to accept this terrible blow.”

“It may be a blessing in disguise,” Clementine offered.

“At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised,” he replied.

His doctor Lord Moran grumbled that the British people were ungrateful. “Oh, no,” Churchill answered. “I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time.”

He did not try to hold on until after Potsdam or until Parliament reconvened. He decided to resign immediately. He wrote to “my dear Attlee” that he would “tender my resignation to the King at seven o’clock this evening. On personal grounds, I wish you all success in the heavy burden you are about to assume.”

Downstairs in the kitchen, Mrs. Landemere, Churchill’s long-time cook and housekeeper, was making comfort food – honey sandwiches – while bemoaning the defeat and declaring that she didn’t know what the world was coming to. On the way out of the building for the palace, Churchill thanked her for taking such good care of him.

At 7 p.m., the King accepted Churchill’s resignation – they had, as mentioned, grown close. The King echoed the sentiment in Churchill's camp that the people were very ungrateful after the way they had been led in the war. Churchill declined the King’s offer of an honour. He did arrange honours for some of his aides – Captain Richard Pim, for instance, would get a knighthood.

He returned to the annex no longer PM to issue a press statement saying he regretted not being able to finish the job, meaning Japan. He thanked the British people for their support during the war. That night he dined at the Annexe with family, Eden, and Bracken. 

Abruptly, one of the busiest people in the world had no pressing duties. No dispatch boxes. No meetings in which lives hung in the balance. “Thirty years of my life have been passed in this room,” he told Eden earlier as they left the Cabinet chamber for the last time. “I shall never sit in it again. You will. I shall not.”

He bade farewell to the three military chiefs of staff, his private secretaries, and to the cabinet. The day that had started with sanguinity ended in tears.

***

Prime Minister Attlee 

Attlee went back to Potsdam and took Churchill’s seat next to Truman and Stalin. The Soviet leader pressed him to rationalize Churchill’s defeat. Attlee’s reply: “One should distinguish between Mr. Churchill the leader of the nation in war and Mr. Churchill the conservative party leader...a reactionary party which would not carry out a policy answering to peace requirements.”

Truman was also caught by surprise. He thought Churchill perhaps long-winded yet eloquent and likable. In contrast, Attlee and Bevin struck him as a bunch of sourpusses.

Attlee wrote Churchill to acknowledge that “my having been present from the start was a great advantage...”

***

Ingratitude?

What explains Churchill’s loss and the seeming ingratitude of the British public for their adored prime minister? At least 10 possibilities have been offered by scholars:

* War-weariness may have been a factor.  Churchill was seen as a war leader; three months after the shooting stopped, the people wanted a prime minister to win the peace. Voters vented against the government they associated with the lead-up to the war and its execution.

* Churchill had not devoted himself wholeheartedly to campaigning. He was planning for -- or away in -- Potsdam.

* His shrill attacks against Attlee as a prospective socialist dictator boomeranged with the electorate.

*  Labour offered change and a more precise domestic blueprint. It promised massive housebuilding to nationalize critical industries: steel, coal, electricity, railways, the Bank of England, civil aviation, and road transport.

* Labour leaders had become known to the public and were trusted thanks to their wartime roles in Churchill’s government.

*  Working people were bitter at the Tories for their policies on housing, coal, and the high cost of living.

* While Churchill was popular, he was perceived for what he was: an old Victorian, paternalistic and elitist.

* Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s authorized biographer, speculated that voters were belatedly punishing the unpopular Conservative Party of Chamberlain for its appeasement policy – and Churchill was in a sense collateral damage.

* Britain was getting more interested in equal opportunity. Labour offered egalitarianism over class distinctions.

* The British system is parliamentary -- neither proportional nor presidential. So, Churchill’s popularity over Attlee so the Tories could not win on Churchill's coattails. 

***

At the time of his defeat, Churchill was just short of his 71st birthday. He stayed on as the Conservative leader. 

***

WWII ends

On July 27, Japan rejected calls to surrender. The Allies, again and again, warned Japan that it would be subject to a fierce bombardment – they reiterated these warnings by leaflet.

On August 5, the US dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. The USSR then declared war on Japan.

On August 9, the Americans dropped another A-bomb, this time on Nagasaki. Both cities were obliterated.

On August 10, Japan pleaded for the Allies to accept its surrender. On Aug 14, the war in the Pacific was over, and so was WWII. 

***

Out of Office

Churchill was personally wounded over the loss of Number 10, and it took him time to gain his bearings. He did not exactly become a recluse. However, his mood was not great, and he was constantly bickering with family and friends.

On Sept. 15, 1945, he began an extended vacation flying to Lake Como in Italy, and returning to London in October.

He gave some speeches and spent most of his time at Chartwell, his dilapidated country home, purchased in 1922, located about 90 minutes south of London. He also began working on his multi-volume history of WWII.

At Harry Truman’s urging (“This is a wonderful school in my home state. If you come, I will introduce you. Hope you can do it.”) Churchill gave the commencement address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” 

The London Times was critical of the speech. But then, it did not like Churchill and had urged him to retire sooner rather than later after Germany surrendered in 1945.

Incidentally, Churchill had not invented the phrase “Iron Curtain” as it related to the Bolsheviks, nor was this the first time he’d used it. Still, his expression branded the essence of communist totalitarianism and the Cold War decades ahead.

***

Whatever else Attlee & Bevin were -- they were bad for the Jews

History is full of “what ifs,” but one thing is clear – for Zionism, Attlee’s win (he was in office from 1945 to 1951) was a blow. The out-of-office Labour Party had not been especially anti-Zionist, but in-office Atlee was very much so.

At Potsdam, Truman had appealed to Churchill to admit 100,000 Jewish DPs to Eretz Israel. The prime minister implied he’d think about it -- but then lost the elections to Attlee. 

Truman then tried to persuade Attlee (think ‎Jeremy Corbyn with a pipe) to allow European Jewish refugees from the Holocaust into Palestine. It is worth pointing out that Truman was himself not ready to bring 100,000 Jews into America, he was ambivalent about Zionism, and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, was unenthusiastic.

In contrast, Churchill was a Philosemite and a Zionist sympathizer since the 1917 Balfour Declaration. That's what he told Gen. Dwight Eisenhower -- certainly no Zionist enthusiast.

Epilogue: The Sun Sets on the British Empire

In one sense, Churchill was fortunate to have lost the 1945 election. He would have had great difficulty presiding over the demise of the Empire.

Abroad, Attlee yanked Britain out of India (1947) and Palestine (1948). Both had become emotionally draining, violent, and way too costly for a near-bankrupt Britain to manage. In both instances, departure and subsequent partition were bloody affairs in part due to British policies.

In Palestine, Attlee had pursued a pro-Arab and anti-Jewish policy. In November 1945, for example, to appease the Arabs he had limited Jewish entry to 1,500 people per month. 

Attlee's number two, Ernest Bevin was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Neither he nor Attlee had been known as hostile to Jews or Zionism until they came into office. Bevin probably did not hate Jews any more than was necessary. As the Mandate was being phased down, he said: “There has been agitation in the United States, and particularly in New York, for 100,000 Jews to be put in Palestine. I hope I will not be misunderstood in America if I say that this was proposed with the purest of motives. They did not want too many Jews in New York.”  

He viewed European Jews as “pushing to the front of the queue” in wanting to leave the DP camps.

For all that, Attlee's evacuation of British military personnel from Palestine was supported by the public in Britain.

***

Almost

In 1950, the Conservatives, still led by Churchill, narrowly lost the general election.

Truth be told, Labour had done much of what it promised. Abroad, it oversaw the dissolution of the Empire.  At home, constructively, it has created the infrastructure for a welfare state as promised.

Bevin died in 1951. 

The party was plagued by Soviet spy scandals. 

The treasury was close to broke. 

Attlee seemed to have run out of steam.

Last hurrah 

He called for new elections. On October 25, 1951, the Conservatives won 321 seats to Labour’s 295, and Churchill (against the wishes of Eden), at age 77, became prime minister again, feeling much vindicated. This was his first-ever general election win!

It was his government that ended rationing. By July 4, 1954, restrictions on the sale of meat and bacon were lifted – having been introduced 14 years earlier. 

In foreign policy, he tried to reengage with the Soviet Union and negotiate an end to the Cold War.

When he was 80 years old and not in great health -- he had suffered a series of mini-strokes over the years -- Churchill finally retired on April 5, 1955. 

And Anthony Eden long waiting in the Conservative wings took over (until 1957).

***

Churchill lived another 10 years and died on January 24, 1965, age 90, on precisely the same date as his father’s death in 1895 and the day that he had predicted for his own death.

This blog is based on a talk I gave at T.E.A.M Rehovot on May 9. 

Further reading

Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts - a new one-volume biography

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchester - an old favorite in three-volumes

Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (Volume VIII) by Martin Gilbert  the final volume of the authorized biography