RIGHT AFTER the start of the Second World War, Zionist Revisionist leader Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky spoke with his friend Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson about the former’s idea to form a “fully mechanized Jewish Army” to fight as part of the allied forces against Nazi Germany. John Henry Patterson had been commander of the Jewish Legion during the First World War, which helped to liberate Palestine from Ottoman Turkish rule.
Patterson enthusiastically agreed to work with Jabotinsky for such a military force to fight against Nazi Germany. Jabotinsky had served under Patterson in the Jewish Legion during the First World War. If Jabotinsky was confident that he could create a Jewish Army, it was because of his principal role in creating, inter alia, the Jewish Legion, the Haganah, the multi-nation Zionist youth movement Betar, and the New Zionist Organization. So with British, and ultimately, United States support, he could probably have created a Jewish army of 100,000 soldiers, or at least 50,000 troops to fight against Nazi Germany. This is a major theme in “Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler” by Rick Richman.
John Henry Patterson, an Irish Protestant who served as a career officer in the British Army, said that Chamberlain’s reason for rejecting Jabotinsky’s proposal was the lack of need for Jewish assistance. Churchill’s reason for rejecting the support of Jabotinsky’s Jewish fighting force, according to Patterson, was a lack of military equipment.
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