The Vagaries of British Compassion: a Contextualized Analysis of British Reactions to the Persecution of Jews Under Nazi Rule
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The Vagaries of British Compassion: A Contextualized Analysis of British Reactions to the Persecution of Jews Under Nazi Rule Russell Mark Wallis PhD 2010 1 I certify that all work presented in the thesis is my own. Russell Mark Wallis. 2 ABSTRACT The Vagaries of British Compassion: A Contextualized Analysis of British Reactions to the Persecution and Mass Murder of the Jews Under Nazi Rule By Russell Mark Wallis This thesis explores British reactions to the persecution and mass murder of the Jews under Nazi rule. It uniquely provides a deep context by examining British responses to a number of man-made humanitarian disasters between 1914 and 1943. In doing so it takes into account changing context, the memory of previous atrocities and the making and re-making of British national identity. It shows that although each reaction was distinctive, common strands bound British confrontation with foreign atrocity. Mostly, the British consciously reacted in accordance with a long ‘tradition’ of altruism for the oppressed. This tradition had become a part and parcel of how the British saw themselves. The memory of past atrocity provided the framework for subsequent engagement with an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world. By tracking the discursive pattern of the atrocity discourse, the evidence reveals that a variety of so-called ‘others’ were cast and recast in the British imagination. Therefore, a disparate group of ‘foreign’ victims were the beneficiaries of nationwide indignation almost regardless of the way the government eventually was able to contain or accommodate public protest. When Jews were victims there was a break with this tradition. The thesis shows that atrocity was fully comprehended by Britons but that Jews did not evoke the intensity or longevity of compassion meted out to others. In other words it shows that the reaction to Jewish suffering was particular. They were subject to a hierarchy of compassion. 3 Table of Contents The Vagaries of British Compassion: A Contextualized Analysis of British Reactions to the Persecution and Mass Murder of Jews Under Nazi Rule Page No: Cover page 1 Declaration of work 2 Abstract 3 Table of Contents 4 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1 – A History of ‘Frightfulness’: German Atrocities and British Responses During and After World War One 39 Chapter 2 – The Armenians: The End of a Long Tradition of Compassion 66 Chapter 3 – The Re-emergence of Poland: A Legacy of Mistrust 98 Chapter 4 – The Abyssinian Crisis: The Battle for British Foreign Policy 130 Chapter 5 – Spain and China: Unlikely Victims 167 Chapter 6 – Jews Under German Rule: Hierarchies of Compassion 208 Conclusion 266 Bibliography 274 4 Acknowledgements On the completion of this thesis my thanks and appreciation go to my supervisor David Cesarani. From the initial meeting when his enthusiasm and insight confirmed that I actually had an argument to make he has ceaselessly maintained the right balance between encouragement and rebuke. His almost effortless ability to straddle the divide between overarching themes and acute attention to detail has been a revelation to me. He has been the chief author of my intellectual development over the course of completing my doctorate. Furthermore, he has frequently gone ‘above and beyond’ in terms of nurturing my academic potential. I feel privileged to have spent so much time in David’s company, not least because it has been so enjoyable. My thanks also go to Dan Stone who acted as advisor. His advice, particularly after the upgrade interview, was highly valuable. Dan has been a positive influence since undertaking my masters. I am also grateful to Zoe Waxman whose insightful guidance, sensitively given, was so beneficial. Finally, I would like to state my appreciation to Sarah Butler, who has faithfully read, listened and talked through seemingly endless ups and downs not just throughout this project, but since I started as an undergraduate. 5 Introduction The twentieth century was a time of unparalleled violence.1 The numbers affected by man-made humanitarian crises reached their height between 1914 and 1945. This upsurge of violence abroad coincided with an extraordinary expansion of the British mass media. Reports of brutality in foreign lands were read by all sections of society. They were the subject of headline news, government discussion, Parliamentary debate and everyday conversation. In many cases, overseas brutality evoked humanitarian action on behalf of perceived victims. All this was part of Britain coming to terms with an increasingly dangerous world. From the onset of World War One British society responded to a series of atrocities and humanitarian crises in different parts of the world. The first of these was the so- called ‘rape of Belgium’ by German forces in late 1914. Part of that response was that atrocity was un-English, it was something the ‘Prussians’ did. In this sense, responses were framed by a sense of national identity: in other words, who the English thought themselves to be. However, after 1918 the response to German actions was complicated by British involvement in colonial atrocities. Once German violence was qualified by news of atrocities committed by the British, the memory of wartime ‘frightfulness’ reified, but in its new form it helped to shape the response to later atrocities. This thesis will show how a similar process was repeated in the case of the Armenian genocide, the treatment of Jews in Eastern Europe after World War One, the Abyssinian crisis of the mid-1930s, the Spanish Civil War and Japanese atrocities in China. In each case it will show how context affected responses. A part of the context was the sense of national identity at any one time and the memory of previous atrocities. The thesis culminates in an examination of responses to the persecution and mass murder of the Jews of Europe between 1933 and 1943. It seeks to explain this response in the light of earlier responses and to determine whether the reaction to the 1 Bartov, Omer, Grossmann, Atina and Nolan, Mary, Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (New York: The New Press, 2002) p.xii; Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1994) p.12. 6 plight of the Jews was singular, primarily conditioned by anti-Semitism, or part of a generic pattern. In particular it questions whether the response can be framed solely in terms of ‘liberalism’. In other words, whether the British liberal imagination curtailed the ability to perceive the illiberal nature of Nazi violence, an argument proposed by Tony Kushner.2 Britain’s response to each atrocity will be examined within its own particular context. However, in accordance with Kushner’s plea for a more intellectually productive historiography, this thesis adopts a ‘social and cultural history perspective’ and takes ‘a long time span’ in order to analyze ‘the complex processes of history and memory’.3 By examining the response to atrocity case by case, and showing how one instance reacted on others, this argument challenges mono-causal explanations, including the tyranny of realpolitik and shows that it is unfeasible to look at any one case in isolation. It offers a shaded and complex account of British responses involving a taxonomy of tolerance and empathy, influenced by the multifaceted historical and ideological context and the interplay of contemporary forces. The thesis therefore evaluates the vagaries and selectiveness of British compassion. Specifically therefore, this account tracks the intensity of response in Britain to a variety of foreign atrocities and more pertinently to a range of different victims. In most cases the British reacted with a level of humanitarianism that was in accordance with a widely believed and much-lauded national tradition of compassion for the oppressed. This principle had substantial basis in fact. After all, the ‘history of Great Britain in the nineteenth century is punctuated by humanitarian crusades.’4 The movement to abolish the slave trade, Gladstone’s campaign against the Bulgarian atrocities in 1876 and the massive outpouring of indignation on behalf of the Armenians under Turkish rule in the 1890s were all seen as part of this tradition. Moreover, these events helped to cement the belief that this form of humanitarianism 2 Kushner, Tony, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp.18-20. 3 Kushner, Tony, ‘Britain, the United States and the Holocaust: In Search of a Historiography’ in Stone, Dan. (ed.) Historiography of the Holocaust (London: Palgrave, 2004) pp.267-9. 4 Cookey, S.J.S., Britain and the Congo Question 1885 – 1913 (London: Longmans, 1968) p.1. 7 was a crucial aspect of the national character. This belief lasted at least until the end of World War Two and adherence to its precepts was astonishingly consistent. Tom Buchanan, for example, when writing about Britain’s response to the Spanish Civil War, has identified three reasons why ‘foreign causes have become major political issues.’ Among these, he suggests, are firstly, ‘a pressing sense of national peril making the conflict appear directly relevant to British interests’; secondly, ‘[o]ne side in the conflict has been seen as representative of political or religious values with which a section of the population is in profound sympathy and opposing an equally well-defined ideological enemy’; and lastly, ‘there has been a strong sense of humanitarian identification with one side, generally those regarded as the victims’.5 These criteria were not only met, as Buchanan suggests, for the Spanish Civil War but also for most other major outbreaks of foreign violence in the interwar years. This thesis will show however, that British responses to atrocities against Jews were notably muted by comparison, whether in Poland in 1919 or under Nazi rule after 1933.