Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that was crafted mainly by Europeans and North Americans, but that never achieved mainstream acceptance in the West. It was, instead, in the Arab states and Iran that Holocaust denial entered into conventional public opinion and politics. The false claim that Jews had “invented” the Holocaust both to extort money from wealthy countries and to justify the founding of Israel became a cornerstone of postwar antisemitism. In this, deniers recapitulate the logic of Nazi ideology in attributing a pervasive, hidden power to “the Jew.” The instrumental appeal of this to geopolitical foes of Israel explains why this conspiracy theory gained broader legitimacy in the Middle East than in Europe or North America.

This chapter examines important memoranda of January and February 1948, overseen by George F. Kennan, director of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. They asserted that the Zionist project would undermine the US policy of containing communism, endanger Western access to Arab oil resources, and undermine support for the economic reconstruction of Western Europe. In March 1948 Warren Austin, the United States representative to the UN, announced abandonment of support for the Partition Resolution but for a “trusteeship” overseen by the United Nations. The chapter follows President Truman’s angry response, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann’s appeal to Truman, and discusses Kennan’s opposition to the Nuremberg trials and continued denazification efforts in the American occupation zone in Germany.

In response to events such as the Exodus affair, and to the UN Special Committee support for partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, American and British diplomatic and military officials met at the Pentagon in early fall 1947. Organized by Loy Henderson and George Kennan in the US State Department, the participants agreed that a “cornerstone” of US policy was to support continued British presence in the Middle East, including in Palestine both to preserve access to Arab oil resources and to prevent expanded Soviet influence in the region. As the participants thought a Jewish state in Palestine would enhance Soviet prospects and harm Western access to Arab oil, they concluded that the Zionist project undermined US national security interests.

As war raged between the Arab states and Israel, American diplomats in Europe followed Secretary of State Marshall’s orders to support the arms embargo and prevent “military-age” Jewish men from coming to Israel. The chapter draws on American officials’ reports from Europe on possible Soviet infiltration among refugees, support for Count Bernadotte’s truce proposals, and continuation of the consensus established during the Pentagon talks. Though Truman did not reverse the policies of the US national security leaders, he did appoint the pro-Zionist James McDonald to be his special representative to the new state of Israel.

Though support for Zionist aspirations in the United States from 1945 to 1947 included some prominent members of the Republican Party, the strongest, most persistent support came from liberals, left liberals, and leftists responding to the Holocaust and World War II. The chapter examines writings by Richard Crossman, Freda Kirchwey, I. F. Stone, Alexander Uhl, Henry Wallace, and Sumner Welles in The Nation, PM, and The New Republic.

“Israel’s Moment” refers to the period of 1945-9, and particularly to 1947-9 when both liberals and leftists, especially in the United States and France, found common ground with the Soviet Union and communist regimes in Eastern Europe in support for Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In those same years, opposition to those aspirations came not only from the British government and Arab governments and organizations but from the US State Department, Pentagon, and CIA. This work examines this unique and brief moment in the interregnum when memories of World War II and the Holocaust overlapped with the beginnings of the Cold War.

The most important result of State Department opposition to the Zionist project was the imposition, in November 1947, of an embargo on arms to the Jews in Palestine and to the Arab states. The chapter examines official reasons for the embargo as well as efforts to lift it by American liberals including Senator Robert F. Wagner, Congressman Emanuel Celler, and journalists at PM such as I. F. Stone among others. They argued that the embargo, imposed when the Arabs began their violent attack in Palestine, fell most heavily on the Jews, who did not yet have a state. Secretary of State George Marshall insisted on continuing the embargo. The communist regime in Czechoslovakia became the only government to flout first the US and British, and then what became a UN Security Council embargo.

In May and April 1947 the first Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly met to address “the question of Palestine.” This chapter examines the UN records that document the emphatic support for the Jewish Agency by the Polish representative, Alfred Fiderkiewicz, and the Soviet representative, Andrei Gromyko; the neutral tones of US representative Warren Austin; statements by Jewish Agency representative Moshe Shertok, and the Arab League’s Emile Ghoury; the formation of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP); and criticism by American liberals of the Truman administration’s policy at this UN session

From the time of his capture by French soldiers May 1945 to his “escape” to Egypt in May 1946, Haj Amin al-Husseini was held under house arrest near Paris by the French government. This chapter draws on files of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to offer a detailed account of Husseini’s conversations with French officials; France’s rejection of Britain’s modest efforts to have him extradited; the French Foreign Ministry’s hopes that lenient treatment of “the Mufti” would meet with approval in the Arab states; and Husseini’s expression of gratitude to France.

In France, the most important source of support for Zionist aspirations came from two Socialist ministers, Edouard Depreux, and Jules Moch, in the shifting cabinets of the Fourth Republic. In 1947 Depreux was minister of the interior, in charge of police and visa regulations. Moch was minister of public transport, with control over harbors crucial for immigration, such as the port of Marseille. The files of the French Interior Ministry reveal Depreux and Moch’s efforts to resist British efforts to stop French assistance to Jewish immigration to Palestine. The issues came to a head in the Exodus affair of summer 1947.

In 1944 and 1945, in response to revelations of the Holocaust, support in American politics and public opinion gained momentum. Among its aspects were calls to indict Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini for war crimes as a result of his collaboration with the Nazi regime. They came from members of the US Congress, journalists at liberal papers such as PM and the New York Post, and from the American Zionist Emergency Council. Their efforts to convince the US State Department to indict or investigate Husseini were not successful, despite the existence of significant American—and British—files on his activities during World War II and the Holocaust.