“…As Hitler’s armies advanced, Churchill broadcast to the British
people on August 24 [1941], ‘whole districts are being
exterminated. Scores of thousands – literally scores of thousands
– of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German
police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native
soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth
century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on
such a scale, or approaching such a scale.’
Churchill made no specific references to the Jews: had he done so,
it would have indicated to the Germans that British intelligence
was listening to their most secret messages. But he did make it
clear that the Germans were carrying out what he called ‘the most
frightful cruelties’, and he added: ‘We are in the presence of a
crime without name.'<23> The week following Churchill’s broadcast,
seventeen separate reports of the shooting of Jews and Russians, in
groups of between 61 and 4,200, were sent to Berlin by secret radio
code from the eastern front.<24>” (Gilbert, 186)
<23> Broadcast of 24 August 1941; quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston
S. Churchill, London, 1983, vol. 6, pages 139-40
<24> F.H. Hinsey and others, British Intelligence in the Second
World War, Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, London,
1981, appendix 5, page 671.
Work Cited
Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe
during the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1985
Last-Modified: 1995/01/18
