Hore-Belisha - Britain's Dreyfus?
Richard Wilkinson weighs up history's verdict on Chamberlain's Secretary of State for War, and asks whether it was Establishment anti-Semitism or professional failings in the light of Dunkirk that led to the minister's downfall in 1940.
The ultimate fact is that they could never get on – you couldn't expect two such utterly different people to do so – a great gentleman and an obscure, shallow-brained, charlatan, political Jew- boy.
Thus wrote Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall on the relationship between Lord Gort, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (1939-40), and Leslie Hore-Belisha, Secretary of State for War (1937-40). Pownall's views must be taken seriously as he was Gort's Chief of Staff and closely involved in the dismissal of Hore-Belisha for 'reasons of personal incompatibility' on January 4th, 1940. This strange affair throws light on the priorities and prejudices of the time and on the Chamberlain Government's capability to conduct the 'total war' in which Britain was now involved.
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