The victory of the Allies and the Soviets in World War II meant an end to the Holocaust but neither was fighting with the purpose of ending the Holocaust. Opportunities to try and stop or delay the genocide of Jewish people later in the war were not taken and public knowledge of the Holocaust was suppressed in Britain.

BEFORE HITLER'S RISE TO POWER

Although Britain has a long history of antisemitism like every country in Europe, antisemitism in the UK has generally been different to European antisemitism. It has been described by historian Daniel Tilles as:^1

distinct, prevalent and insidious while (...) far less of a threat to Jews' physical wellbeing, social acceptance and personal advancement than in many other parts of the world. Moreover, it is undeniable that more radical and explicit forms of antisemitism struggled to gain any traction (...) much of the popular prejudice that [British] Jews did face has proved not to be particular to them

So Britain in the 1930s and 1940s did not have the same recent history of violent antisemitism that Germany did.

The antisemitism of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists was widely covered and discussed in the British press in the 1930s. The sudden and dramatic success of the Nazi party in the 1932 elections especially drew attention to Nazi antisemitism. The Liberal journalist and advocate for Jewish rights Joseph Hobman warned after the July 1932 election that "the fate of the Jews under Hitlerism would involve them in a cruel network of medieval purging" in which Jews were second class citizens.^2

There were warnings that a Nazi government or Hitler presidency would mean pogroms (anti-Jewish mass murders).^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 The anti-war activist F. Mortimer Grimes wrote a widely printed condemnation of National Socialism as an ideology defined solely by its violent antisemitism, saying "we ought to denounce the race persecution that is being practised by that section which is known as the National-Socialist Party" and accusing Hitler of incitement to mass murder.^7

But generally speaking the British media did not take the threat of National Socialism as seriously as they should. Hitler's antisemitism was depicted as one commentator as something that would alienate German voters.^8 Denials by Hitler that he had any desire to treat Jewish people violently were printed without challenge.^9 He was widely derided as an inept aspiring strong man whose time in the sun would be over shortly; "accident apart", proclaimed the prominent Jewish socialist Harold Laski, "it is not unlikely that Hitler will end his career as an old man in some Bavarian village who, in the Tiergarten in the evening, tells his intimates how he nearly overturned the German Reich".^10

The words of journalist Jack Goldman in 1932 should be burnt into the brain of everyone who thinks antisemitism today is insignificant: the Jewish people "know that the attacks of Hitler represent only a phase in their life. They will suffer but the menace will pass".^11 Even the depth of his antisemitism was questioned. Another Jewish commentator remarked "I do not believe that Hitler himself deliberately wants pogroms to take place" and asserted instead the alarm was about what ordinary people would be inspired to do by his rhetoric.^12

DURING NAZI RULE

After Hitler took office in 1933 British commentators began to take the threat of Hitler more seriously and the dedication of his party to violent antisemitism became more clear. One MP warned in the press that the Government of the UK seemed willing to tolerate in Germany what it would not tolerate in a nation like Hungary or Romania, and urged intervention to defend Jewish property and lives.^13 Newspapers began to condemn the "torture" of Jewish men at the hands of Nazi violence both physical and psychological.^14 ^15

In July 1933 tens of thousands of Jewish people marched in protest at what was happening to their kindred in Germany in what may have been the biggest non-violent protest in British history to that point.^16 The British press reported on and blamed the Nazis correctly for acts of anti-Jewish violence.^17 The singling out of Jews for forced labour was called out.^18 Evidence that the Nazi party encouraged the murder of Jewish people by its members and supporters was published in response to Nazi apologism by German correspondents.^19

Books also began to appear condemning the Nazi treatment of German Jews. In 1934 the German conservative dissident Fritz Seidler (not to be confused with an SS official of the same name) published The Bloodless Pogrom in which he argued the Nazis wanted to remove, including by murder if needed, every Jew from Germany. The same year the Fabian (socialist) thinker Robert Dell wrote Germany Unmasked in which he said the goal of Nazism was to reduce the Jews to be like the Helot slave class of ancient Sparta.^20 By far the most depressingly significant book was published in Britain two years later in 1936.

Victor Gollancz's The Yellow Spot comprehensively documented Nazi law, propaganda and actions against the Jewish people since 1933. It dealt with every aspect of Nazi antisemitism to date. The penultimate chapter warned that there was evidence of "systematic horrors, of ill treatment amounting to torture, even of deaths constantly occurring within the live wire fences of the concentration camps" (which were at the time secret police prisons).^21 Having no idea of what was to come it warned that Jews were disproportionately the victims of rape, torture and murder within these camps.^22

Gollancz was a humanitarian with an optimistic view of the human race. He finished The Yellow Spot with this heartening (but as we know ultimately wrong) declaration to his British audience:^23

No Gesto agent, no Sturmer calumny, no ban nor threat can deter the daily increasing number of those who disapprove, those who react in disgust against the system, those who have seen through into the hollow purpose of the policy of Jew-baiting. This is the Other Germany, the Germany of to-morrow which will not only give back liberty to the German people and peace to the world, but which also purge Germany of the shame of the Yellow Spot [antisemitism].

But mostly commentators did not anticipate that the Nazis would one day preside over outright genocide. Although language like 'extermination' was used it was generally assumed the goal of National Socialism was to intimidate Jews out of Germany or force them into second-class citizen status; an atrocity but not genocide. British writings were also rare on the subject compared to American ones. British writers generally avoided deep analysis of antisemitic ideology and focused on other problems they had with Nazism.^24 Even Gollancz was horrified at the idea of dozens of deaths in the concentrations camps, not knowing millions were to come.

Nonetheless the fact that antisemitism in Nazi Germany was intense, widespread and ultra-violent was widely known among the British public in the pre-war period.