A Calculated Restraint

An eminent historian of the Holocaust examines why Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, though faced with mounting evidence of the Nazi extermination of Jews, were reluctant to speak out against the atrocities.During World War II, the Allied leaders rarely spoke directly about the Holocaust in public. In early speeches, Churchill and Stalin alluded to Nazi mass murder but shared much less than they knew. Not until December 1942 did Allied governments issue a joint statement about Nazi Germany’s policy of exterminating the Jews of Europe. Roosevelt deferred his own public statement until March 1944. Why didn’t these leaders speak up sooner?Richard Breitman pieces together the competing motivations behind each leader’s response to the atrocities. In an era of globally prevalent antisemitism, all three knew that their reactions would be politically sensitive. After the German invasion of the USSR, moreover, Stalin clearly wanted to focus on threats at home. At the same time, Churchill and Roosevelt realized that total silence would prompt accusations of willful blindness. They finessed this dilemma by denouncing Nazi atrocities in general, prioritizing wartime constraints over moral considerations.Timely and incisive, A Calculated Restraint sheds new light on the relationship between World War II and the Holocaust. Ultimately, the Allied leaders’ responses cannot be reduced to a matter of character. What they said—and did not say—must be understood in light of the political and military exigencies that drove their decision-making.