The Jewish Hand in Britain's WWII Conscription
Hore-Belisha affair reveals power struggle over country's war effort
The spectre of military conscription is once again hovering menacingly over White nations as the death throes of the American empire threaten to plunge us into World War Three.
The Zionist stranglehold over the American political system means the US will remain yoked to Israel even as the Jewish state drags the world over the cliff of global conflict. As twilight falls over “Pax Americana”, those holding the reins may well be resigned to the view that war is the only thing that can possibly save the American project from going gentle into the good night.
Just like World War Two saved the Roosevelt regime’s faltering economic fortunes, the parlous state of US finances may once again play into Washington’s calculus. War is a great distraction from high inflation, unaffordable rents and a 30-trillion dollar deficit. If the US wants to pivot its economic base back towards manufacturing then a state-mandated munitions program would be a huge fillip.
American’s chances of winning any conflict with Iran or China are slim but if they are to have any hope then military conscription will be inevitable. Any such program of conscription in the US would no doubt follow in the UK as the British bulldog waddles obsequiously after is geriatric master.
There have been two periods of military conscription in the UK — from 1916 to 1920 during World War One and from 1939 to 1960 during and after World War Two. The National Service (Armed Forces) Act was passed in 1939 and initially allowed for the drafting of all men aged 18 to 41. This age range was broadened to those between 17 to 51 later in the war. Women aged 20 to 30 were also made liable for conscription into the service auxiliaries. By the end of 1939 some 1.5 million British men had been drafted into military service.
Following Britain’s declaration of War against Germany in September 1939, the push for mass military conscription was spearheaded by then Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha. Hore-Belisha was a controversial figure in British politics at the time for one important but perhaps understated reason — he was a Jew.
Isaac Leslie Hore-Belisha was born in London in 1893. His father’s family were Sephardic Jews supposedly driven from Spain during the inquisition who founded a cotton import firm in Manchester. He entered Clifton College in Bristol in 1907 where he was a member of Polack’s House, an exclusively Jewish section of the college founded by the Rothschilds in 1877. He was reported to be combative at school and not famed for his good manners — a trait which would come to haunt him many decades later.
After leaving Clifton he read law and became a Major in the British Army serving in France and Greece. After graduating from Oxford he worked as a journalist and then entered parliament as a Liberal MP for Devonport. He became Financial Secretary to Neville Chamberlain at the Treasury and then Minister of Transport in 1934. He is famously responsible for introducing driving tests and the highway code. He was put in charge of the War Office from 1937 until 1940. Hore-Belisha was reportedly an orthodox Jew and an Elder of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue for which he acted as representative to the Board of Deputies.
There was significant opposition in Britain in the 1930s not only to conscription but also to the mechanisation and modernisation of the British armed forces. Hore-Belisha was thus an unpopular figure among the British military’s “top brass” and wider establishment. He tended to court publicity which did not endear him to senior military officers and was viewed as over-assertive with colleagues, regularly overstepping the boundaries of his authority. It has been speculated that Hore-Belisha felt a greater need to prove himself as a Jew among Gentiles (Trythall, 1981).
“Our aims are not defined by geographical frontiers. We are concerned with frontiers of the human spirit. This is no war about a map”
Hore-Belisha had been a vocal opponent of Hitler and German National Socialism and was considered as a member of “the more aggressively bellicose wing of the cabinet” (Crockett, 1990, p. 139). He is reported to have said in 1939 that: “We did not enter the fight merely to reconstitute Czechoslovakia. Nor do we fight merely to reconstitute the Polish State. Our aims are not defined by geographical frontiers. We are concerned with frontiers of the human spirit. This is no war about a map” (Gilbert & Gott, 1963, p. 42).
After he had left the cabinet in 1940, Hore-Belisha continued to stress the need for “total war” against Hitler. Addressing the Commons, he argued that: “You cannot beat Germany, which has a fully employed population, and in addition a million prisoners whom she is using, and above that a million captives from the occupied territories, with such an effort as we are making… it is the survival of this country which depends on the realisation of these facts.”
He had begun to press for conscription as early as 1938 during the Munich Crisis as Hitler attempted to unite the Sudetenland with the German Reich. He also argued for an expansion of the British Expeditionary Force in anticipation of hostilities with Germany. Hore-Belisha’s aggressive stance had angered then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who was keen to forge friendly relations with Germany.
A central figure in the controversy surrounding Hore-Belisha was Lord John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort whom Hore-Belisha himself appointed as Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1939. Gort’s Chief of Staff Henry Pownall wrote in his diary at the time: “But the ultimate fact is that they [Hore-Belisha and Gort] could never get on — you couldn’t expect two such utterly different people to do so — a great gentleman and an obscure, shallow-brained, charlatan, political Jewboy” (Trythall, 1981, p. 400).
“One crushes a snake even if it does happen to be on the ground”
The political machinations which led to the downfall of Hore-Belisha seem on their face to be trivial disagreements. These minor matters of military strategy provided cover for what was essentially an operation within the British establishment to oust someone they considered to be a subversive operative.
What has become known as the pillbox affair was the catalyst for Hore-Belisha’s ousting. In November 1939 Hore-Belisha toured the French front and criticised both the Allies’ plans to advance into Belgium in response to a German attack and the lack of pillboxes along the section of the Maginot under British stewardship. Hore-Belisha addressed these concerns through Gort’s subordinate Major General Pakenham-Walsh. At the end of a meeting he reportedly assured Pakenham-Walsh that his criticism of the pillbox shortage was not meant as a criticism of Commander-in-Chief Gort. However, expecting a subordinate to communicate criticism of any kind to his superior constituted a major breach of military etiquette.
Gort’s Chief of Staff Henry Pownall now set about the task of having Hore-Belisha defenestrated. He dispatched a list of Hore-Belisha’s faults to Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General staff. Pownall wrote in his diary: “One crushes a snake even if it does happen to be on the ground” (Trythall, 1981, p. 404-405).
The King George VI travelled to France and after a meeting with Gort it was decided that Hore-Belisha’s time was up. Chamberlain was told that Hore-Belisha’s retention at the War Office “would cause serious discontent in Whitehall” (Trythall, 1981, p. 405). Hore-Belisha was summoned to see the Prime Minister in December and when asked if he had confidence in Gort responded in the affirmative.
“A fine day’s work for the Army and for the proper conduct of the war”
Chamberlain advised Hore-Belisha to be careful about how he offered criticism of those in the field.
In his diary, the Prime Minister wrote that Hore-Belisha “did not and could not see where he had gone wrong and only thought he had been treated with great injustice and prejudice” (Trythall, 1981, p. 406).
Hore-Belisha was sacked only four months after the outbreak of World War Two and replaced by the conservative Oliver Stanley. Pownall noted in his diary: “A fine day’s work for the Army and for the proper conduct of the war” (Trythall, 1981, p. 406). Chamberlain decided to move Hore-Belisha to the Ministry of Information. However, Lord Halifax opposed the move at the last minute “because he thought it would have a bad effect on the neutrals both because Hore-Belisha was a Jew and because ‘his methods would let down British prestige’” (Trythall, 1981, p. 406).
It has been argued that Hore-Belisha’s questions about pillboxes were appropriate but appear to have been “deliberately misunderstood as criticism rather than support” (Trythall, 1981, p. 407). There appears to have been a deep sense of distrust of Hore-Belisha among the top military figures, Gentile aristocrats to a man. Many feared that Hore-Belisha intended to replace many senior officers from Gort downwards and that any criticism was taken as an ominous sign that the end was nigh.
In the end, the British establishment turned on Hore-Belisha who had few friends he could seek support from. “[F]aced with such an insidious onslaught Hore-Belisha was in the end defenceless because he did not fit, because he was a Jew and an outsider and because he had no substantial political basis of support in Parliament” (Trythall, 1981, p. 408). One military attaché remarked that it was good for his soul to meet Hore-Belisha because “he disliked him so much that it was a very good exercise in self-control” (Trythall, 1981, p. 408).
The Hore-Belisha case illustrates the general unease at the time over Jewish influence in British politics. Other prominent Jewish political figures have been equally mistrusted. Austin Chamberlain is reported to have said of Edwin Montagu — the Jewish Secretary of State for India in 1917 — that “a Jew may be a loyal Englishman and passionately patriotic, but he is intellectually apart from us and will never be purely and simply English” (Rubinstein, 1972, p. 73).
In an article published in the right-wing journal Truth following the Hore-Belisha sacking there appeared the following verse:
“Onward Christian Soldiers
You have nought to fear,
Israel Hore-Belisha
Will lead you from the rear,
Clothed by Monty Burton
Fed on Lyons pies,
Die for Jewish freedom
As a Briton always dies.”
(Wilkinson, 1997)
At the time of World War Two the British establishment was on a hair trigger over any potential subversion from within. Such a tone of mistrust within the Gentile elite becomes more understandable given the dominance of the Jewish lobby over Western politics some 80 years following the defeat of Hitler who was himself fighting against such foreign domination of Europe.
If military conscription is again to be forced on White nations will Jewish political figures be leading the charge? Will it be US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, or Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen? Perhaps it will be Attorney General Merrick Garland or Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines or Director of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas? Or perhaps the call for conscription will come from top Jewish political donors such as Miriam Adelson who has given over $100m dollars to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign?
Might history repeat itself? We dare to hope it will not.
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Crockett, R.B. (1990). Ball, Chamberlain and Truth. The Historical Journal, 33(1), 131-142.
Gilbert, M., & Gott, R. (1963). The Appeasers. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.
Rubenstein, W. (1972). Jews among top British wealth holders, 1857-1969: decline of the golden age. Jewish Social Studies, 34(1), 73-84.
Trythall, A.J. (1981). The downfall of Leslie Hore-Belisha. Journal of Contemporary History, 16, 391-411.
Wilkinson, R. (1997). Hore-Belisha — Britain’s Dreyfus? History Today, 47(12), 17-23.