The British did not want to sacrifice Arab interests to Zionists but usually did because Zionists had the money. Churchill himself was indebted to a multimillionaire Jew who bailed him out when he faced bankruptcy. Zionists attempted to use their leverage over Churchill to force his approval of both more Jewish immigration to Palestine and for the formation of a "Jewish fighting force," allegedly to fight the Germans but in reality to drive Palestinians out of Palestine. Zionists promised Churchill that if he would agree to their demands, they would bring the US into the war against Germany. Such was their power.
The British saw Zionists interests as detrimental to their hold on their Arab colonies. When deportations of Jews and their mistreatment began leaking out, the British Foreign Office saw the reports as the work of the international Zionist campaign to create sympathy and to use the sympathy in behalf of their Palestinian purpose. When 700 Jews found incapable of work were shot in a work camp, the Foreign Office responded, "Information from Jewish refugees is generally colored and frequently unreliable." Eisenhower was pleased with Darlan and was unaware of Eden's plot against him. An American newsman told Eisenhower's staff that the agitation against Admiral Darlan came from "Jews of press and radio who wish to make certain we were fighting a war to make the world safe for Jews." The Jews cried wolf so often that when he actually showed up they were not believed.
Much information emerges in the second volume about Churchill's character, personal habits, excessive drinking -- he was dependent on alcohol -- and autocratic ways. He could turn people against him and then with a speech or by taking special notice of them put them back in his pocket. Churchill had flaws and the ability to survive them. Irving does not excoriate Churchill. He merely shows us what he was like. There are things to admire and things to disapprove.
Moreover, it is not only Churchill who was ambitious. All were. It is a mystery that organization survived ambition. Somehow officers were able to devote time to war against the Germans from the time they spent warring against one another for commands and promotions. The same with cabinet ministers. The same for the military services fighting one another for resources. And the same for the Germans. The Italian and German generals were so jealous of Rommel's initial successes in North Africa that they worked to undermine him.
And German efficiency also bites the dust. German intelligence never caught on that the British were reading their codes and knew precisely every shipment to resupply Rommel, which the British seldom failed to send to the bottom of the Mediterranean. One would think that after nothing gets through time and again that a light would come on.
Churchill was frustrated by his inability to come to Stalin's aid. He tried to compensate by sending supply convoys. The convoys lost half of more of the ships along with escorting Royal Navy warships. British admirals resisted these death convoys, but Churchill, perhaps afraid that WW I would repeat with a Russian separate peace, leaving Britain to face Germany alone, insisted. He continually sent reassuring messages to Stalin, who was not reassured.
Stalin must have despaired of the fighting capability of his British and American allies. All the British could do was to sic an entire fleet on a single German warship and bomb French and German civilians. In North Africa the British failed to push out the outnumbered Germans and called in the Americans. Eisenhower was far from a good field commander. After Rommel smashed through the Kasserline Pass, delivering to the American army "one of the most resounding defeats ever inflicted on the Americans in war," Rommel reported to Berlin that despite being outnumbered and without supplies, he could again take the offensive. He attributed success in part to "the low fighting value of the enemy." Eisenhower's aide Harry Butcher recorded, "We sent out some 120 tanks and 112 didn't come back." Churchill shared Rommel's dismissal of the American fighting man. "After Kasserline Churchill made little attempt to conceal his contempt for the American forces and their fighting value."
The Germans, of course, were vastly overextended. In addition to a 1,000-mile Russian front and being bombed at night by the cowardly British who attacked unprotected civilian residential areas, Hitler had to occupy Europe and to rescue his Italian ally by sending troops to Greece and North Africa. The Germans might have had the will, but they did not have the resources to fight most of the world in a war of attrition.
Germany lost 4 million soldiers on the Russian front. On the Western front, which did not materialize until the Soviets had the war won, Germany lost a few hundred thousand. The Americans and the British never faced an intact Germany army. They faced understaffed divisions of an army exhausted and worn down by three years of fighting the Red Army. Hitler had 80% of his remaining forces on the Russian front. To oppose the Normandy invasion in June 1944 Germany had divisions of less than full strength with no reserves and little fuel. Despite the weakness of German forces, it took the Americans six and one-half months to reach the Ardennes, where the invasion was halted for six weeks by a German counterattack.
Despite these facts, in recent celebrations of the Normandy Invasion the Americans in a show of extreme pettiness prevented the participation of Russia. The Americans and British persist in pretending that they all by themselves won the war.
Volume 2 has 200 pages of footnote references. It has a 35-page index. It is the kind of history that only gets written once in a century. Irving is clearly the master of historical documentation. When you disagree with Irving, most likely you are disagreeing with the documented historical record.
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