The Alexander memorandum

ABSTRACT

British officials knew a good deal about the upsurge in malignity following the terrible euphoria of the Anschluss in March 1938. Word even reached a British consul working under Sir Frederick Leith-Ross in China. Alexander made his way from the Far East to Germany, the place where he had spent contented days as a student, in order to negotiate the release of a Jewish friend from Dachau. Negotiations were progressing nicely until they were interrupted by the outburst of destructive fury against Germany’s Jews in November 1938. As talks faltered in a febrile atmosphere of Jew-hatred, Alexander used his connections to gain access to a member of the Nazi aristocracy. The British diplomat got more than he bargained for. The senior Nazi made a shocking proposal. He outlined an incredible scheme that, he claimed, would lead to permanent peace between Germany and Britain. His plan uncannily presaged details of the Final Solution three years before its implementation. This information quickly made its way back to London and indeed to the British Foreign Secretary himself, Lord Halifax. So, how would the Foreign Office react? Wallis’s article tells the story of a forgotten memorandum, one that challenges whether theories concerning the limits of the British imagination are sufficient to explain British inaction in the face of massive anti-Jewish persecution and violence.