He could have checked the BBC's own files for the correct answers:

"The caricature blurs the community's complexity but nevertheless, in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore won 80% of the Jewish vote"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3878891.stm

Through its deliberate silence the BBC collaborated in the genocide of the Jews in Europe during World War II.

In case you missed that: the BBC in its own way was as guilty of the murder of 1.5 million Jewish children as the Einsatzgruppen, Mengele, Heydrich, Himmler or Hitler.

Today, the BBC is even more deeply involved in assisting the Islamofascists complete what Germans and Austrians started.

It truly is an evil organisation.

By the way, anyone else able to spot the two very big differences between America and Europe as regards the Jewish people?

"[I]n its own way"? What does that mean? Are you suggesting the BBC was uniquely silent among news organisations of the time? Are you saying it suppressed information about the Holocaust? If so, can you present any evidence for this contention (or whatever it is you do mean), or must we make do with bald assertion? What do you propose would have happened if the BBC had reported things differently? That these people would have been saved?

I ask this because you previously indicted Britain generally for both "effectively collaborat[ing] in the Holocaust" and "committ[ing] mass murder at Dresden". As a keen student of the war, you are doubtless aware that the Dresden bombing, regardless of its morality, saved the life of Victor Klemperer. But then by your criterion, he wasn't Jewish, because he had converted to Christianity. On this count he was, if I understand your previous comments correctly, "no more Jewish than Dr. Goebbels"

Does it ever worry you that your position makes no internal sense, irrespective of the empirical claims on which it purports to stand? I have the feeling it's all a joke, but it seems a very tedious one.

"What does that mean? Are you suggesting the BBC was uniquely silent among news organisations of the time? Are you saying it suppressed information about the Holocaust?"

As a matter of deliberate policy, the BBC in its broadcasts to occupied Europe refused to publicise the news about the mass-murder of Jews. Had it done so, millions of Jews in Europe would have been warned about their ultimate fate (and millions were still living in ignorance), and the Nazis and their millions of allies in their turn would have been warned that their big secret was a secret no longer. And the Brits were aware of the actions of the Einsatzgruppen almost right from the beginning.

And the BBC was in a unique position at that time in this regard for very obvious reasons.

"As a keen student of the war, you are doubtless aware that the Dresden bombing, regardless of its morality, saved the life of Victor Klemperer. But then by your criterion, he wasn't Jewish, because he had converted to Christianity."

1) That you could attempt to justify the mass-murder of Dresden, despite you ridiculous and nonsensical throat-clearing exercise, in such a manner really does put you utterly beyond the pale.

2) Klemperer was a Christian of Jewish extraction. That you would suggest that K was more important than anyone else says a lot more about your true character and principles than anything I might write.

3) The reality is that Dresden was nothing about military objectives or saving the innocent and everything about revenge. If the innocent were saved, it was a completely unintended by-product of a profoundly evil deed. ("Oh look, we found a death camp and there are survivors. We really didn't mean to help them, but they survived anyway. We truly are wonderful - God save the King! Anyone for tennis?")

4) Your attempt to suggest that it wasn't anti-Semitism that was the problem but a hatred by Jews of Christians is an idea that is very popular on neo-Nazis websites.

5) Nothing better demonstrates my point than the simple fact that while the British were quite happy to devote enormous resources to mass-murder at Dresden, she refused to lift a finger to destroy the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz.

"I have the feeling it's all a joke, but it seems a very tedious one."

I really don't blame you. After all, you have been brought up on an enormous lie about Britain's role in World War II. They never told you about the widespread anti-Semitism in Britain during the 1930s, an anti-Semitism that was deep-rooted in the popular culture - everything from Shakespeare and Chaucer to Dickens, Kipling and Agatha Christie. You were instead fed absurdly jingoistic war films with whiter-than-white, ever-so-English, stiff-upper-lip characters like Jack Hawkins and John Mills. You weren't informed about the collaboration in the Channel Islands or Britain's role in cutting off all escape routes to the drowning Jews of Europe. You weren't told about Britain's refusal to help in any way those same Jews.

So you can see what the real joke is. And it's a tremendously sad joke with a tragic punch-line, but one that I am afraid goes right to the heart of the matter about the British role in World War II.

Another fine pasquinade, Joshua -- no sources, but instead a magnificent mockery of rational debate.

If only the BBC had broadcast something everybody would have risen up in 1942 and been saved. You've persuaded me that were it not for their distorted, anti-Semitic news priorities, the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto would have been warned, and magically saved.

And why yes, we can blame it all on Agatha Christie and Shakespeare! You're quite right: Chaucer was certainly part of the "popular culture" of the 1930s. It was invariably a toss-up between visiting the cinema and reading Canterbury Tales in Middle English -- the Mein Kampf of the Mosleyites.

It isn't tedious at all. I withdraw that. Thanks for the laughs.

Stuart A why do you think that you argue better than Joshua? Where are your sources exactly? And where does that arrogance comes from that makes you say:

"If only the BBC had broadcast something everybody would have risen up in 1942 and been saved."

Haven't you heard about the fact that the media can put pressure on government by exposing facts that are not given publicity?

If I were to take Joshua’s seriously – which I now see is not the best response – I don’t believe it would be incumbent on me to provide sources to support the historical consensus against his nebulous accusations. Even if it were, he would have to say something detailed enough to rebut, which he has so far not done.

He suggests that the BBC had a “deliberate policy” of not publicising the mass murder of Jews, but has given no detail as to who decided and acted upon it, or what its effects on news output were. Given the wartime censorship policy, it seems prima facie unlikely that such a policy, if it existed, would have been decided on or could have been effectively challenged by the BBC itself. But, regardless, I have never seen anybody else suggest a change in BBC news policy could have averted the Holocaust, and the burden is on him to prove it.

Even assuming he is correct about the BBC’s wartime news output, he has given no detailed counterfactual theory as to how events were negatively affected thereby. Again, he is presenting sweeping revisionist claims without any logical or factual underpinning, and therefore he is the one obliged to present the evidence. Of course media coverage can affect policy, and the actions of listeners, but what exactly does he think would have happened differently?

If he believes, for example, that Allied bombing policy would have changed under British public pressure, how specifically? If so, why, given the British anti-Semitism (deriving, we learn, from “their mother’s tainted milk”) to which he so frequently refers, does he think the British would have exerted such pressure? Even if the British people had overcome their endemic hatred of Jews, why does he think the British government would have altered its military planning in response? There has been considerable debate about the (in my view reprehensible) Allied bombing policy, but what is he saying alternate BBC actions would have changed? Finally, why does he apparently place the onus purely on Britain when American forces were also conducting extensive raids?

He suggests that a broadcast by the BBC would have warned “millions of Jews” “about their ultimate fate”, and therefore would have saved them. He needs to explain why they were wholly dependent on the BBC for this life-saving information, given that Hitler gave several speeches in 1939 promising Jewish extermination [1] (and had hinted at it all through the 1920s); given that there was Allied coverage of Nazi executions policy, as far as it was known, from at least 1941 in Churchill’s speeches [2]; and given that tens of thousands of German Jews had emigrated in 1933 alone, apparently without stimulus from the BBC [3]. Assuming they were dependent on the BBC in the way he describes, he needs to say when the timely broadcast could have been made, what content it would have had, and what beneficial outcome it would have inspired. An uprising like that in the Warsaw Ghetto? If so, would that have saved lives?

(And no, I don’t want to hear about Britain’s disgraceful immigration policy towards Jews, unless you can tell me how the BBC would also have altered that, bearing in mind, as ever, the Chaucerian anti-Semitism pervading British society.)

Nor does he explain how, if the BBC had revealed Nazi Germany’s “big secret”, this would have altered Nazi policy. Is he suggesting that the extermination programmes were secret, depended on secrecy for their operation, and would have stopped in response to Allied media exposure? We don't know.

All he has provided so far is a selection of paractical, oracular pronouncements, without any interlinking argument or historical data. But then, as I say, this is quite understandable for what I still believe is a long-running comedy routine.

[1] http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm
[2] http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411110awp.html
[3] “The Coming of the Third Reich”, Richard Evans, page 439

Oh dear, am I supposed to point out here the fact that the BBC broadcast to all the nations involved in the Second World War helping the resistance in these countries with vital information regarding the situation on the war fronts and that the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw was a result of information finding its way into the ghetto about what was happening to the Jewish people?

Does Joshua really refer to the British mothers' "tainted milk"? How very unpleasant, stupid and, well, just a tad resembling Nazi propaganda. But I am sure, he doesn't really say that. He wouldn't would he?

About the BBC - Hetty is absolutely right about the Overseas Service during WWII. It was enormously important to all the occupied countries and the people, whether they were planning an uprising or not, in them. Yes, they tended to use English cultural icons. What would you expect them to do, Joshua? This is Britain. Our culture is British and we should be proud of it.

I was aware of the origins of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: that's why I raised it as an example. I mentioned it because it could form one link in the chain of evidence and argument that Joshua would have to provide to justify his claim. Unsurprisingly, he has instead directed himself to drawing hilarious comparisons between Neil Clark and a character in a sitcom created by the “evil organisation”. (The same applies to BBC wartime broadcasts: of course they were important, but saying that is very far from establishing what he is alleging.)

It was not quite accurate of me to imply that Joshua made a generalised claim about British people sucking in anti-Semitism “with their mother's tainted milk”. He said it in the context of the BBC [1]. But then he ascribed it to the fact that they were “sons and daughters of the kind of people who beat up Holocaust survivors”, and since I'm not aware of any specific correlation between Holocaust survivor-beating parents and BBC employment, and because he immediately then went on to talk about the Exodus incident, I took it to be a generalised comment about Britain.

Certainly such an interpretation is congruent with other less specific instances, such as the recent mention of British “stormtrooper[s]” [2], the claim that the Union Flag should be replaced by a swastika [3] and the revelation that “spivvery is very much a part of the British national character these days” [4]. He previously indicted apparently the entirety of Britain for anti-American, anti-Jewish prejudice when he referred to “[t]he default position of the Brit (intellectuals and great unwashed): when in schtuck blame the Americans or the Jews - both if at all possible.”

In other words, Joshua's comedy persona is, as far as I can see, in the grip of deep anti-British prejudice. The glaring hypocrisy of combining this with relentless concern about anti-American and anti-Jewish prejudice is, I assume, part of the satirical act.

[1] http://www.stephenpollard.net/002715.html
[2] http://www.stephenpollard.net/cgi-bin/mt/my-comments.cgi?entry_id=2808
[3] http://www.stephenpollard.net/002788.html
[4] http://www.stephenpollard.net/cgi-bin/mt/my-comments.cgi?entry_id=2685
[5] http://www.stephenpollard.net/002718.html

Stuart,

Your "commentary" (if you can even call it that) is a sad attempt to grasp at straws in a losing argument.

You are denying reality. It is obvious to anyone who is NOT biased (pro-bbc that is) that during WW2 any type of broadcast which would have told what was happening in concentration camps would have emboldened the allies, and resistance into doing more than they were already doing.

Moreover, the people of Nazi Germany, and subsequent taken lands would have had more of an incentive to fight (as opposed to capitulate). Also, it would have squashed MOST ALL dissent in the USA ... there was a large anti-war crowd back then.

So really the whole point you are trying to make, that Britain of the 1930's and 1940's was pro-jew is left for you to prove still. And furthermore, you still have to prove how letting the world know that millions were being gassed, burned, tortured, exterminated based upon the religion/race would have had no effect on the allies, resistance, and nazi controlled territories.

You need to look at thing objectively, not as a BBC shill.

One more thing... the sources you quote are ambiguous at best, and appear to have been "cherry picked" to only support your POV.

I don't need any sources to back up my claim... as it is obvious common sense and logical... that if people knew about the horrors the Nazi's were commiting.. things would have been different.

A perfect analogy today would be ... imagine if the media did NOT report on Rwanda? Would the international community even give a shit today? would the UN have even lifted a finger to try to stop the genocide of christians (non muslims)? Also the anti-muslim feelings of today, are not even 1/10th as great as the anti-Jewish feelings during WW2.... today we can't even call people islamo-fascists without being told that is incorrect, but back in the 1930's and 40's.. there was NO outcry over jewish caricatures, or anti-jewish remarks...

If you think I am wrong... prove it.... and prove it using the media of the day, not some book written 40 years later.

It’s certainly entertaining to debate evidential standards with a person whose signature links to a creationist blog.

On that subject, I’ll begin by saying that I make no apology for citing a widely-respected scholarly history written fifty-eight years after the end of the war (not forty). That you suggest there is anything wrong with such a source is an illustration of your inability to understand the basic rules of evidence-based argument.

In any case, as I have already pointed out, the burden of proof is upon someone who makes historical claims in contravention of the consensus. That means you have to provide sources and argument.

You could begin by providing a shred of evidence that the BBC did suppress evidence regarding concentration camps or the killing of Jews in general. Until you provide that, the argument that the BBC was in some way responsible for the Holocaust by its silence cannot get off the ground. Another problem is that, as I have already pointed out, even if such a policy did exist, it is not clear that such a line would have been independent of the British government. Again, you need to provide evidence.

Until you do this, there is no point in saying anything further. And no, I wasn’t trying to prove that “Britain of the 1930's and 1940's was pro-jew”. That is an invention of yours. The argument was purely about the BBC.

Also, if I recall my not-so-distant history, it was primarily the retired Jewish life-long Democrat voters who were the main victims of the "dodgy" ballots said to be so instrumental in handing the election to Bush. You remember: the ones with the "butterfly" lay out that made it look like you were voting Gore when you were actually voting for Pat Buchanan. Had it not been for that, Gore's tally of Jewish votes would have been even higher.