OF ALL FDR’S WARTIME EXPLOITS, HIS JOURNEY TO EGYPT IN FEBRUARY 1945 is perhaps the least known and understood. That the president would insist on taking his leave—over the objections of Churchill and Stalin—from arguably the most important summit meeting of the war to undertake a costly and time-consuming detour must have puzzled his counterparts at Yalta. In fact, FDR undertook this journey—his last overseas mission—as part of a personal quest to solve one of the most intractable political problems of his era, and ours: how to reconcile the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine.6
There were other motivations, too, including US interest in the oil resources of the Middle East, FDR’s desire to build air bases in the region, and his hope of extending the terms of the Atlantic Charter to the Arab world. But it was the “Palestinian problem” above all else that drove him to make this exhausting trek to a place few Americans had ever heard of, in a part of the world about which they knew little or nothing.7
FDR’s interest in Palestine constitutes one aspect of his long-standing and controversial relationship with the Jews. His harshest critics have assailed him for not doing more to help German Jewish refugees escape persecution in the 1930s; some even accuse him and his administration of complicity in the Holocaust in the years that followed. Meanwhile, his defenders insist that FDR simply could not open America to massive numbers of Jewish refugees in the 1930s because of the nativist—and in many cases anti-Semitic—attitudes of the US Congress and public. These tendencies were exacerbated by the economic conditions of the Great Depression, which made altering or overturning the highly restrictive immigration quotas established by the 1924 National Origins Act extremely unlikely. FDR’s advisers urged him not to raise the notion in Congress, as doing so might have resulted in the passage of an even more restrictive piece of legislation. Still, in spite of these obstacles, between 1936 and 1940 the United States, thanks in part to FDR’s leadership, admitted more German and Austrian Jewish refugees than any other country in the world. And the United States was the only Allied nation to set up an independent agency dedicated to rescuing Jews during the Holocaust—the War Refugee Board, which was established by FDR in January 1944 and saved the lives of an estimated 200,000 Jews.8
Great Bitter Lake
Whatever his failures on the question of Jewish immigration to America, FDR actively worked for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Having served in the Wilson administration during World War I, he was well aware of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government expressed its support for “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. He was also familiar with the 1922 League of Nations Mandate that turned over control of the region to Great Britain after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the Resolution that was passed by the US Congress in September 1922 that endorsed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In the two decades that followed, the British government adopted a fairly liberal policy with respect to Jewish emigration. As a result, the population of Jews in the region grew from roughly 80,000 in the early 1920s to more than 500,000 by the mid-1940s.
But there were also approximately 1.2 million Arabs living in the region, most of whom were vehemently opposed to Jewish immigration. This led to ever more frequent outbursts of sectarian violence. Then in 1936, soon after the Nazis passed the repressive Nuremberg Laws, Jewish immigration to Palestine came under a renewed threat with the outbreak of a major Arab revolt against British rule and Jewish settlement. As Jewish and Arab extremists exacted reprisals that cost dozens of British and hundreds of Jewish and Arab lives, pressure built once again within the British government to restrict or entirely cut off Jewish immigration to the Mandate.9
In late 1938, FDR sent a private message to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain via his friend, the Scottish Liberal, Arthur Murray, urging Chamberlain to continue to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine. Aware that the British government planned to host a conference of Arabs and Jews early in the New Year in search of a solution to the ongoing unrest in Palestine, FDR also asked Murray to convey the outlines of a “Palestine plan” for a “Transjordan Arab Settlement” that FDR had developed and discussed with Murray during the latter’s visit to Hyde Park in October 1938. Chamberlain certainly appreciated receiving the president’s views, and asked Murray to inform FDR that “knowledge [of it]” may be of assistance during [the] conference days.” But as war with Germany became more likely, the deliberations that the British government engaged in over the next few months to try to find a solution to the Palestinian problem would ultimately prove antithetical to the Jews. By the spring of 1939, in fact, it was clear that the Chamberlain government intended to pacify Palestine through a rapprochement with the majority Arab population via the promulgation of a new White Paper that repudiated the Balfour Declaration.10
Issued in May, and approved by the British Parliament as the de facto policy of the British government during the war, the White Paper limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to 10,000 persons per year for five years, after which no further Jewish immigration would be permitted without Arab consent—which for practical purposes meant an end to further Jewish settlement. The paper also called for the establishment of a future Palestinian state to be governed by Arabs and Jews “in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.” Based on population-growth projections, illegal Jewish immigration—which the British government was “determined to stop”—and the admission of an additional 25,000 Jews in response to the current refugee crisis, the British intended to limit the total increase in the Jewish population to 75,000. According to these projections, Jews would make up roughly a third of the population of the proposed new state. In Ambassador Joseph Kennedy’s view, which he reported to FDR, this was in keeping with the ultimate objective of the proposal—namely, to ensure that any future Palestinian state would see the Jews in the minority.11
As FDR said at the time to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, he read the proposed White Paper “with a good deal of dismay.” He also asked Hull to send him a copy of the original 1922 mandate, as he disputed the White Paper’s claim that “the Framers” of the 1922 directive “could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population.” As FDR put it, “My recollection is… that while the Palestinian Mandate undoubtedly did not intend to take away the right of citizenship and of taking part in the government on the part of the Arab population, it nevertheless did intend to convert Palestine into a Jewish home in a comparatively short time. Certainly, that was the impression given to the whole world at the time.” FDR also told Hull that he failed to see how the British government could read into the original mandate “any policy that would limit Jewish immigration.”12
Concerned about Anglo-American relations on the eve of the war, the ever-cautious Hull was inclined to endorse the new White Paper, and he prepared a State Department release that implied US concurrence. But FDR refused to allow Hull to release this statement. He maintained that British attitudes with respect to Palestine might change, and because he believed the United States would likely be in a stronger position to argue the question later on, he said to Hull that it was “better to cross the Palestinian bridge when we come to it, instead of now.” FDR further indicated that he welcomed Zionist pressure on the US Congress and ventured that the Arabs in Palestine could be placated through the purchase of more farms and the drilling of more wells for them, “so that any Arab who really felt himself pushed out… could go somewhere else.”13
The outbreak of war in September 1939, and the first news about the killing of European Jews two years later, brought more urgent calls for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Notably vocal was the American Jewish community. Even those Jews who had been opposed to Zionism began to reconsider as word of Nazi atrocities reached them. By December 1942, enough evidence had been compiled to determine that the Nazis were in
fact engaged in genocide. FDR supported the issuance of a joint statement released by the British and American governments and signed by nine other Allied nations—and, indeed, reported on the front page of the New York Times—“condemning Germany’s bestial policy of cold blooded extermination of the Jews.”14
At roughly the same time, FDR told Secretary Morgenthau that 90 percent of Palestine should be Jewish, that the Arabs should be moved to land elsewhere in the Middle East, and that Palestine should become an independent state. Six months later, at the Third Washington Conference in June 1943, FDR informed Churchill that he favored balancing out all concessions to the Jews in Palestine by transforming the Middle East into a bloc of independent Arab states, with Palestine as the exception—an idea that the imperialist Churchill found concerning. FDR also told the British Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, that he had convinced Churchill to support the convening of a postwar conference of Arabs and Jews, which was to be held in conjunction with the United Nations. Inspired in part by the work of Walter Clay Loudermilk, who would go on to write the best-selling book Palestine, Land of Promise, FDR even speculated that the Jews might help the Arabs develop the region; like many Americans of his generation, FDR deeply admired the manner in which the Jewish population in Palestine had transformed their desert landscape into productive farmland.15
But FDR’s arguments for a Jewish homeland in Palestine became increasingly complicated by his duties as commander-in-chief. The ongoing manpower shortage, and the opening of a Middle Eastern supply route to the Soviet Union, meant that in spite of the increasingly vocal public support for the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, FDR found his senior military advisers opposed to the idea as the end of the five-year term of the 1939 White Paper approached in the spring of 1944.
Pressed by their counterparts in London, General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson maintained that any overt move by the US government or Congress that might lead to further outbreaks of unrest in the Middle East—such as the passage of the Wright-Compton Resolution calling for a Jewish Commonwealth that was introduced in the spring of 1944—could impair the Allies in the lead-up to the long-anticipated Normandy invasion. Stimson went so far as to say that even the mere public discussion of the resolution might “provoke dangerous repercussions,” as “any conflict between Jews and Arabs [that] would require the retention of troops in the affected areas” would “reduce the total forces that could otherwise be placed in combat against Germany.”16 Secretary Morgenthau also opposed the resolution, worried that the potential controversy would divert attention from rescue efforts in Europe led by the recently established War Refugee Board.17
Military necessity was not the only brake on FDR’s ambitions in Palestine. Oil, too, played a role. By 1943, the United States was consuming oil at a rate that exceeded supply. As a result, the Roosevelt administration established a special Committee on Petroleum composed of representatives from the State, War, and Navy Departments, as well as other specialists, to determine how best to secure American access to Middle East oil, especially from Saudi Arabia.18
American relations with the Saudi kingdom dated to the spring of 1931, when the Hoover administration recognized the newly formed Arab nation. In 1933, FDR expanded the relationship between the two states to include diplomatic and consular representation, and at roughly the same time, Standard Oil of California acquired the oil rights to a huge swath of territory along the eastern coast of the kingdom for a period of sixty years.19 Yet Saudi Arabia, like much of the Middle East, still fell within the British sphere of influence, and as the US demand for oil skyrocketed, so, too, did American fears that the British might use their influence as a means to supplant American interests.20
To ensure that America’s commercial activities were protected, FDR’s Interior Department entered into negotiations with the British over a possible Anglo-American oil agreement. In a frank conversation with British Ambassador Halifax about the matter, the president pulled out a rough map of the Middle East that he himself had drawn and said in no uncertain terms: “Persian oil is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it’s ours.”21
FDR also faced strong arguments against a Jewish homeland in Palestine from the State Department. By this point, the Near East Division of the Department had received numerous reports from the Middle East about the strength of Arab opposition to the idea, including a detailed account by Lieutenant Colonel Harold Hoskins, whom FDR had sent to the region in the summer of 1943 as his newly appointed diplomatic emissary to Palestine. FDR had hoped that Hoskins might find some basis for a settlement over Palestine through conversations with the Saudi king, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, with whom FDR had maintained a cordial correspondence since the mid-1930s. But after a week of intense discussions with Ibn Saud, the Arabic-speaking Hoskins reported that owing to the Saudi ruler’s profound political and religious feelings on the matter, there was “no possibility of his being any assistance to the Zionists in their efforts to come to terms with the Arabs in Palestine.” Hoskins also spent time conferring with British officials in London, and afterward told FDR that he concurred with the Foreign Office’s view that renewed clashes between Arabs and Jews over the question of Jewish immigration into Palestine could turn the Arab world against the Allies. Upon his return to Washington, Hoskins went to the White House, where in a long conversation with FDR he insisted that “the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine can only be imposed by force and maintained by force.” Hoskins recommended that the State Department issue a simple statement indicating that “any postwar decision [on Palestine] will only be taken after full consultation with both the Arabs and Jews.” This soon became the State Department’s official mantra on the subject.22
Yet despite the repeated warnings from two of the most important agencies in the US government, FDR did not renounce his support for a Jewish state. He also maintained his support for continued Jewish immigration to Palestine and, in March 1944, issued the first official American comment on British wartime policy in Palestine when he indicated that “the American Government had never given its approval to the White Paper of 1939.” Of course, part of FDR’s motivation for adopting this position was political. Jewish voters in the northeast United States were important constituents, and in addition to endorsing the provisions of the 1944 Democratic Party platform calling for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, FDR issued a statement in October in which he declared: “I know how long and ardently the Jewish people have worked and prayed for the establishment of Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth. I am convinced that the American people give their support to this aim, and if I am reelected, I shall help to bring about its realization.”23
Later critics have argued that these statements were mere rhetoric, pointing to FDR’s refusal to support the Wright-Compton resolution in the weeks after his election as proof. But another explanation is that given the many complex considerations involved, FDR decided to set aside a more public approach to the problem and instead forge a solution through his own personal powers of persuasion. As he told Stettinius in a conversation the two men had just three days after the election, he had come to the conclusion that he would be able to “iron out the whole Arab-Jewish issue on the ground where he can have a talk.” Shortly thereafter, FDR expressed similar confidence in personal diplomacy in a conversation he had about Middle East affairs with the economist Herbert Feis and other officials. As Feis left the White House, he found himself amazed that FDR “cherished the illusion that presumably he, and he alone, as head of the United States, could bring about a settlement—if not reconciliation—between Arabs and Jews.” Feis had read of men “who thought they might be King of the Jews and other men who thought they might be King of the Arabs, but this is the first time,” he mused, that “I’ve listened to a man who dreamt of being King of both the Jews and Arabs.”24
THE MOST CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF THE SINCERITY OF FDR’S COMMITMENT to a Jewish
state can be found in his decision to go to Egypt after Yalta. In preparation, FDR had numerous discussions with Secretary of State Edward Stettinius. On January 2, 1945, he reiterated the basic outline of his plans to Stettinius: he would meet with Ibn Saud to discuss the issue. “He would take with him a map showing the Near Eastern Area as a whole and the relationship of Palestine to the area… and point out to Ibn Saud what an infinitesimal part of the whole area was occupied by Palestine.” And he would note that “he could not see why a portion of Palestine could not be given to the Jews without harming in any way the interests of the Arabs, with the understanding, of course, that the Jews would not move into adjacent parts of the Near East.” The president then directed Stettinius to have the appropriate maps drawn up.25
Shortly thereafter, FDR held a similar conversation with James Landis, the director of the American Economic Mission to the Middle East, indicating that a “rapprochement” between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine might result from a personal appeal to King Ibn Saud. FDR asked Landis to draw up a report on the subject. Echoing Hoskins, Landis’s report warned that Ibn Saud “feels very intensely about this subject [and]… recently threatened in the presence of one of my people to see to the execution of any Jew that might enter his dominion.” Landis was extremely skeptical that FDR would be able to bring about a compromise. “The political objective implicit in the Jewish State idea,” he argued, “will never be accepted by the Arab nations and is not consistent with the principles of the Atlantic Charter.” Landis recommended that the United States oppose the creation of an independent Jewish state, arguing that the best that could be hoped for was “a Jewish National Home under Arab hegemony.” He also feared that the “economic absorptive capacity of Palestine had been greatly exaggerated” and that the injection of this “highly charged moral issue” would severely disrupt budding Arab-American relations.”26
The Last 100 Days Page 18