Abstract
At the heart of this book about the wartime Allied triumvirate of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin and their knowledge of and public statements on what after the war was recognized as the genocide of Europe's Jews, is historical context, not moral judgements made with hindsight. Hitler's murderous intention vis-à-vis the Jews, according to Richard Breitman, was known, although its details were obscured. Certainly, information seeped out of fortress Europe sporadically and was not always reliable or believed. At the earliest by late 1942, at the latest by the spring of 1944, the evidence was accumulating that Jews were being singled out for destruction by virtue of being Jews. The Allied response to this information was frequently framed by factors that intervened to restrain outright condemnation; not least to avoid being cast as marionettes of an alleged hidden world Jewish conspiracy on whose behalf the Allies were fighting Nazi Germany. The question of why not more was done is, in Breitman's view, an ahistorical one and decontextualizes their room for manoeuvre. This is something that frequently comes up in student discussions regarding to bomb or not to bomb Auschwitz, which only assumed its killing site status from 1942.
The broad outline of the story as presented by Breitman in eight chapters is largely well-known to historians and their students. From Hitler's well-known notorious ‘prophecy’ speech of 30 January 1939 to the Reichstag, when he briefly referred to the destruction of Europe's Jews, to Churchill's radio broadcast of 24 August 1941, to Stalin's reluctance to acknowledge the singularity of the Nazis’ campaign against Jews (with the example among many, of Babi Yar), to Roosevelt's cautious and belated support for a humanitarian intervention in the spring of 1944, triggered by events in Hungary that laid bare Hitler's exterminatory war against the Jews. Breitman's discussion of each leader and the contexts within which they acted make up the core of the book. In chapter eight, the focus turns to Hungary where we find Joel Brand's ill-fated mission to buy Hungarian Jews freedom in exchange for war materiel (trucks for Jews), an almost apologetic discussion of fellow Hungarian Reszö Kasztner's role in buying the freedom of about one and half thousand Jews (including his family and most of his circle), and finally the so-called Auschwitz Reports authored by the camp escapees, Rudol Vrba and Adolf Wetzlar, that provided details of what was happening in Auschwitz-Birkenau are given due space (but surely, a seasoned historian such as Breitman should have offered readers a correction to the over-estimation of Jews gassed in Auschwitz, p. 233). Again, this is familiar territory to students of the Holocaust.
So, what is new, if anything in A Calculated Restraint that Breitman has not already laid out in his earlier major works? Perhaps, the answer lies in the narrative with its gripping detail of the political context and his insight. Throughout the book, Breitman adopts a judicious approach to the questions he raises and to these leaders’ responses to Hitler's war against the Jews. In explaining their apparent caution, he draws on decades of his own research (and teaching) to lay out the contemporaneous factors that governed their responses, weighing up the differences between each leader's policy and when and why they eventually converged. He does not shy from injecting his opinion based on his reading of the historical facts, inserting a gentle revisionism here (where Churchill and his biographers are concerned) and a mild critique there (fellow historian David Wyman and the non-bombing of Auschwitz). Roosevelt is venerated for his eventual support of Europe's remaining beleaguered Jews (as if they were only to be found in Hungary) with the creation of the War Refugee Board (its nomenclature tellingly omitting reference to Jews in much the same way Stalin would not concede the Jewish specificity of mass murder). While one may sometimes disagree with the thrust of his opinion, it nonetheless makes for a refreshing read.
But there is a niggling issue. The singularity of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators only became apparent after the camps were liberated; only after captured Nazi documents had been sifted and analysed. Breitman knows this, but he seems to imply the Allies were confronted with a clear-cut blueprint for murder. Another approach to the question might be to view the three leaders’ actions in the context of a changing persecutory landscape where what we have come to know as the Holocaust unfolded piecemeal as opportunity arose, where Nazi policies also were being governed by context. Rather than by design, the Holocaust emerged ad hoc because of several factors, not least the competing polycratic and eventually chaotic structures that characterized the so-called Third Reich, itself subject to the vagaries of the war it had unleashed. Nevertheless, we can all agree, that by early 1944 (but surely not by late 1941when with hindsight we can discern the shift), the primacy of Hitler's war with its focus on the utter and comprehensive destruction of Europe's Jews was known to the outside world. By that date, Berlin had lost the conventional war, but Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann et al. were intent on winning the war against the Jews while there was still some time left and wherever they were within their grasp. The Allied leaders, on the other hand, were focused on winning the conventional war.
In the final chapter, Breitman takes off the gloves to challenge those historians who with the benefit of hindsight pass moral judgement on the Allied leaders. He swiftly and deftly deals with them. He also levels his pen at those ‘influencers’ today who continue to poison public discourse with their antisemitism. Thus, it becomes clear that this book is written for a wider readership (and more likely, for an American audience) than that found within the confines of the academy. Breitman leaves the last word to Roosevelt in his letter of February 1944 to Rabbi Stephen Wise (founding father of the World Jewish Congress) and released to the public condemning antisemitism in America. It is a fitting conclusion to a wonderfully written book, which in its own way, is a call to arms for a restorative morality, not just in the USA but transnationally. Context is everything.