On 23/24 May 1940 a final stop order was imposed on the panzers – the last one for the Operation Sickle Cut campaign before it was concluded. Time would reveal that the consequences of the various stop orders were disastrous for Adolf Hitler. But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud as they say and that was that the miracle at Dunkirk that these allowed were a blessing for Germany and the rest of the world. One of the most intriguing questions about the very last halt order is, what was the motivation. Is it the extraordinary reason that Karl-Heinz Freiser suggests in his book Blitzkrieg Legend? I believe that Hitler was such an extraordinary personality that Frieser’s idea about why Hitler did what he did in the last days of Operation Sickle Cut, can’t be ruled out. Whatever else, the conduct of Hitler during the last few days of the Sickle Cut campaign set the tone for what was to come in all German military operations until his death in the final act of suicide in the Berlin bunker in April 1945. Tag words: Karl-Heinz Freiser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Blitzkrieg; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Dunkirk; Halt Order; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, CIGS; General Sir Edmund Ironside; Gerd von Runstedt; General Georg von Sodenstern; Franz Halder; Erich von Manstein; General Edvard von Kleist; British counter-attack at Arras; Hinez Guderian; von Kluge; aufschließen; close up; General Bock; Reinhardt; von Brauchitsch;

The British attack at Arras on 21 May, which had been completely seen off that same night, was then all done and dusted in the minds of the panzer commanders, including Rommel. But the view from the front, looked very different to the view at the headquarters. The consequences of this hopelessly executed British attack, that ended in failure, and was easily brushed aside by Rommel, was to win the Allies World War II – with a little help from Rommel. Tag words: Arras Counter-attack; Erwin Rommel; Adolf Hitler; Rudolf Schmundt; Wilhelm Keitel; General Wernher von Blomberg; Franz Halder; Heinz Guderian; Dunkirk; Kenneth Macksey; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Von Kleist; Von Kluge; Gerd von Rundstedt; Lorette Heights; Sickle Cut Plan; Erich von Manstein; Panzer Corp Reinhardt; Winston Churchill;

The Germans had crossed the Meuse River on 13 May. On 14th May Guderian had ordered the Panzers to wheel westward to the Channel. The only thing slowing their dash were was Army Group commander Runstedt and the Corp commanders. Then, of course, there was the great panic by the Führer on 16 May – waiting for the counter-attack by the French Army into the flank of the Panzers – the 1940 version of the Miracle on the Marne that had robbed the Germans of victory in 1914. But that never came. It was not ever coming – or was it? But on 21 May, 11 days after the opening of the German offensive, 8 days after the crossing of the Meuse, and 7 days after Guderian unleashed the panzers against his orders, finally the British Army struck into that long exposed Panzer flank at Arras. Was this the beginning of their end? The long awaited Miracle on the Marne? Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; Miracle on the Marne; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; the Rommel Papers; 4th RTR; 7th RTR; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitkrieg Legend; Matilda Tanks; Oberleutnant Most; Hauptman Schraepler; SS Totenkopf; 88; Arras; Luftwaffe; Rommel-Album;

The French began calling Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division la division fantôme (the ghost division), because it moved with such incredible speed that the French never knew where it would turn up. The German high command probably agreed with the name because Rommel never hesitated to go off the grid, mainly so that they couldn’t rein him in. Like Julius Caesar’s exciting diary of his conquests in Gaul, Rommel kept his own diary – which is all the more interesting because he died before the war ended, so it wasn’t revised to suit the facts after the war. His diary’s a thrilling account of Rommel’s World War II, as fast paced as his exploits, with an excellent accompanying commentary by Sir Basil Liddell Hart. Here's a brief extract about how Rommel’s division was a ghost division not only to the French but also to his own side. This is taken from his diary immediately after this fight in Avesnes: Meanwhile, I had sent repeated signals to Corps through the divisional staff asking whether, in view of the success of our break-through of the Maginot Line, we should not now continue our advance over the Sambre. Receiving no reply — wireless contact had not been established — I decided to continue the attack at dawn with the object of seizing the Sambre crossing at Landrecies and holding it open. I issued orders by wireless to all other units to follow up the Panzer Regiment's advance to Landrecies [11 miles west of Avesnes]. Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; la division fantôme; the ghost division; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Julius Caesar; Major i.G. Heidkämper; Oberst Karl Rothenburg; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; The Rommel Papers; Sickle Cut Plan; Erich von Manstein; Von Bock; Panzer Corps Hoepner; General Graf von Kielmansegg; Fritz von Halder; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Goebbels

Rommel is one of the most exciting and inspiring military leaders of all times. His exploits from World War I, recorded in his 1936 book Infantry Attacks, telling about his actions as a junior officer in World War I. His actions in the Battle of Caporetto in 1917 gives the first insights into Rommel’s unique gifts as a commander, and especially how he was going to wage war in France in 1940 and in North Africa between 1941 and 1942. Luckily for Rommel he never served on the Eastern Front. He was a Nazi, as so many of the top generals of his age were during the Third Reich, and he would most likely have become involved in war crime activity against the Jews and the Russian partisans. But thankfully that never happened. This tribute to Rommel’s chivalry was delivered by Winston Churchill on the news of Rommel’s forced suicide after the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. Part of that tribute is a reference back to this praise, surprisingly from Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, in January 1942 when he said of Rommel: We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general. Rommel’s most astounding accomplishments happened over his few days in the dash to the English Channel in 1940 at the head of the 7th Panzer Division. The time has come to tell you about how Rommel disobeyed Hitler and the senior generals in his dash to the Channel, as they were trying to slow things down to a pace that they could understand, but not win the campaign. Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; Infantry Attacks; Winston Churchill; 7th Panzer Division; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Bltizkrieg Legend; World War 2; General Georg von Sodenstern; General von Brauchitsch; Ardennes; Meuse River; von Kluge;

To be very British, and understated about it, the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939, had turned out very badly for the Muslims, discussed in Parts 32 and following. But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud, and the silver lining in the Grand Mufti’s cloud was World War 2. And best of all Hitler offered the glittering prospect of a Final Solution to both of their Jewish problems. And as lawyers say, Hitler and the Grand Mufti were ad idem on this topic – at one. This was one problem that Hitler really wanted to help permanently fix. Tag words: Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; World War 2; Holocaust; Genocide; The Final Solution; Adolf Hitler; American Christian Palestine Committee; Glubb Pasha; Herbert Hagen; Adolf Eichmann; Nazism; Führer; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Major General Erwin La Housen; Abwehr; National Socialism; Waffen-SS; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; General Erwin Rommel; Afrika Korps; Suez Canal; SS Einsatzkommando Afrika; SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff; Wilhelm Melchers; Dieter Wisliceny; SS General Oskar Dirlewanger; Dr. Heinrich Willerman; Alois Brünner;

The wargames that had been conducted by Manstein on 7 February 1940, at the headquarters of Army Group A, and then subsequently other wargames by other people, were all about getting through the Ardennes and then over the Meuse River. I can’t imagine that Manstein would have left his plans up in the air after that point, but Halder had gotten rid of him to command a new Corp that didn’t yet exist and no more forward planning happened. On 13th May Guderian got across the Meuse, and then everyone at the various Army, Army Group and the Führer’s headquarters scratched their heads. What now? Incredible! The most respected General Staff in the world and they had no idea what to do once they were over the Meuse. The only two people that had the exact plan were Manstein and Guderian – and now Manstein was gone from where he could have helped everything to run smoothly. So we now have Panzer Corp Guderian and Panzer Corp Reinhardt charging off to the Channel as Manstein wanted, and we have the higher echelons of the German field armies all the way up to the Führer himself all in a flap about this. Soon the greatest military genius of all times (größte Feldherr aller Zeiten), and I mean Adolf  Hitler of course, was going to go into meltdown. Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Ardennes; Meuse River; Franz Halder; Heinz Guderian; Kleist; Panzer Leader; Winston Churchill; Gerd von Runstedt; Col-Gen. von Brauchitsch; Major Henning von Tresckow; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Dunkirk; Operation Sickle Cut;miracle on the Marne; Benito Mussolini

Although Guderian didn’t know it, once he began disobeying orders from above in the race to the English Channel there was a first and a second prize awaiting. The second prize was trapping the Allied armies that had advanced into Belgium against the coast. That would be the bulk of the Allied armies and would effectively end the Battle of France. The glittering first prize, though, was to take Dunkirk before 24 May, 1940, beating the British there, so that the entire British Army would be captured and Hitler would win the war. So let’s start the race. Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Heinz Guderian; Dunkirk; Adolf Hitler; Sedan; Meuse River; Panzer Group Kleist; Panzer Corp Guderian; Panzer Corp Reinhardt; Generalmajor Werner Kempf; Erich von Manstein; General Gerd von Runstedt; Sickle Cut; Franz Halder; General Georg von Sodenstern; Sickle Cut plan; 6th Panzer Division; Army Group A; Colonel Freiherr Baron von Esebeck; Oberst (General Staff) Count von Stauffenberg; Pursuit Detachment von Esebeck;

What the German Panzer Divisions did in May 1940 was not in their training and operational manuals. What they did had never been practised. It was all made up as they went. Improvised. Karl-Heinz Frieser in his book Blitzkrieg Legend says: As earlier emphasized, the operations plan of the army high command was only a half-hearted and inconsistent implementation of Manstein's bold Sickle Cut idea. The decisive breach point was at Sedan. Manstein and Guderian had assumed that after crossing the Meuse River the Panzer formations would immediately have to push to the Channel coast, disregarding their exposed flanks, or otherwise lose the race against the Allies. All of the higher-ranking generals from the army high command and all the way down to Army Group A and von Kleist had discarded precisely this requirement as being too risky. So now the panzers were across the Meuse – what next? Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Sickle Cut; Fritz Halder; General Georg von Sodenstern; Meuse River; Great War; 1st Panzer Division; 2nd Panzer Division; un pépin assez sérieux; a rather serious pin prick; General Georges; größte Feldherr aller Zeiten; greatest military genius of all times; Führer; Adolf Hitler; Walther Wenck; Klotzen, nicht kleckern!; Hit with the fist, don't feel with the fingers!; 10th Panzer Division; Infanterieregiment Großdeutschland; Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland; Winston Churchill; Pierre Le Goyet; Le mystère Gamelin; The Mystery of Gamelin; Oberleutnant Günther Korthals; major Philip Gribble; Oberst i.G. Kurt Zeitzler; Graf von Kielmansegg; Dunkirk;

From the moment of the first German attack in the north, the air forces of both sides had been deployed in the skies over the northern sector where the main German attack was expected. At noon on the 13th May, the Luftwaffe suddenly vanished from the skies in the North. Soon the Allies would learn why. Tag words: Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Colonel Bourguignon; General Gamelin; General André Prételat; General Heinz Guderian; Meuse River; Ardennes; Deuxième Bureau; Panzer Group Kleist; General Francois d'Astier de la Vigerie; Marshal Henri Philippe Petain; World War I; Dyle Line; General Franz Halder; General Charles Huntziger; Generalleutenant Bruno Loerzer; General Sperrle; Rolling Raid;

On 15 March 1940, less than two months before the launching of the German offensive in the West, Hitler summoned a meeting of General von Runstedt, the commander of Army Group A, the commanders of the individual armies under his command, and the commanders of the panzer forces, Heinrich von Kleist and Heinz Guderian. The purpose of the meeting was for each of the generals to present their plan for the first phase of the looming offensive. Guderian was the last to speak. He began explaining what he’d do once he‘d crossed the Meuse. As Guderian was speaking, General Ernst Busch, the commander in chief of the Sixteenth Army, interrupted him saying: Well, I don't think you'll cross the river in the first place! Hitler was silent. It was a disturbing suggestion. He looked to Guderian to – hopefully - firmly rebut this comment. Guderian turned to Busch and said:  There's no need for you to do so, in any case. Long after everything had gone better than anyone of those doubting generals at that meeting had imagined, Guderian spoke of a hard task ahead, in whose successful outcome nobody at that time actually believed, with the exception of Hitler, Manstein and myself. Hitler honestly had no idea of the breathtaking operations that Guderian was intending to unleash, as he lost it on more than one occasion when things were under way and going unbelievably as expected. Hitler wasn’t the sort of ally that Guderian was going to need when his panzers were racing ahead of the infantry – no one protecting the flanks or rear of the panzers. Manstein had been gotten out of the way by Franz Halder the German Army chief of staff who detested the man on the personal level and hadn’t wanted Hitler to hear about Manstein’s ridiculous idea of attacking out of the Ardennes, something Hitler himself was keen to do. Until February 1940 Halder had, managed to keep Hitler in his cage – that was when Hitler’s Army adjutant, Schmundt, had brought the two together – and that plan became THE plan. The only people who were involved with the execution of the Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) Plan, who believed in what Guderian was going to do, who were on the spot, were a few of his younger subordinate generals who increasingly believed in this insane plan. Realising what, until then, had been the largely unsuspected possibilities that slumbered in the German Panzer force. Luckily, commanding one of the panzer divisions, the 7th Panzer Division, was its new commander, Erwin Rommel. Rommel had in fact conducted a blitzkrieg in World War I, commanding infantry, not tanks, in what was going to be the style of the panzer blitzkrieg, exhilaratingly recounted by him in his 1936 book, Infantry Attacks describing his operations during the Battle of Caporetto in north Italy in 1918. His leadership of that Panzer Division resulted in his enemy calling it the ghost division, because no one knew where it was, advancing so swiftly once it was thrown into the fight. In this programme I’m going to look at the disbelief of the German officer corp, with a few exceptions, at this wild scheme that Manstein and Hitler had cooked up. Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Meuse River; General von Runstedt; Adolf hitler; General Heinrich von Kleist; Heinz Guderian; General Ernst Busch; Erich von Manstein; Franz Halder; Sichelschnitt Plan; Sickle Cut Plan; Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; Infantry Attacks; General Alfred Jodl; General Georg von Sodenstern; General Water von Brauchitsch; Schlieffen Plan; Bock; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Oberst i.G. Kurt Zeitzler;

The deception measures that the Germans put in place for their surprise attack out of the Ardennes forests, and then heading to Sedan, were remarkable and they never get much attention. The German high command, and many officers, were worried that Manstein’s plans was a repeat of the massive gamble of the Schlieffen Plan that had been badly executed in World War I and had lost Germany the war. In the Schlieffen Plan the German Army attacked through Belgium and then wheeled to the south. At the same time the French attacked into Alsace-Lorraine. The original Schlieffen Plans were to defend that Alsace-Lorraine area with weak German forces that the French would be able to drive back. It was, broadly, a repetition of the tactics used by Hannibal’s great victory over the Romans at Cannae in 216 BC. where the Roman Army, commanded by Gaius Terentius Varro, was lured into attacking the deliberately weak Carthaginian centre. As his legions plunged deeper into the centre, the Carthaginian cavalry enveloped both flanks and encircled and totally destroyed the Roman Army. By the time the Schlieffen Plan was launched in 1914, over the years since it had first been planned, important aspects of the plan had changed. The Germans kept adding more forces to their southern wing. For reasons of German nationalistic pride, they couldn’t bear the French to succeed – which was the whole point of the Schlieffen Plan. The result was that the Germans defeated the French attack in the south which defeated their whole concept of luring the French armies forward there so that the German armies in the north could then wheel to the left, trapping all of the French armies. In 1940 the German high command worried that Manstein’s plan involved the same sort of gamble that the Germans had made in 1914 which had failed. Everything staked on one throw of the dice. How could they be sure that the French, British and Belgians would advance forward into Belgium. The whole of Manstein’s plan depended on them doing just that. But then, remember the two German officers, one Major Helmuth Reinberger, who bungled their flight in appalling weather and bungled their way over the border of Belgium where they crash landed in January 1940, carrying some of the German plans to repeat the Schlieffen Plan. The Germans weren’t happy about this situation. They didn’t know whether the enemy had captured all, some or none of their plans. But they didn’t scrap their plans. They just changed the way that they were going to execute them, that is until that fateful meeting between Hitler and Manstein in February 1940. But that crash landing accident almost guaranteed that if the German Army went with Manstein’s Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut), they knew for sure and certain that the French were going to walk into his trap. How was revealed in a book published in 1941 by a French man, André Maurois, during the war, called The Tragedy of France. He wrote this: The Germans knew exactly what movements we would make in case of an invasion of Belgium because we were kind enough to stage a "dress rehearsal" for that, before their very eyes. Here is how that happened. One fine day, a German aircraft landed in Belgium. Its passengers were general staff officers who carried with them a. . . plan for the invasion of Belgium ... .... This the Germans did magnificently as the campaign opened and before their hand had finally been shown and understood by the enemy – to their total horror. Tag words: Blitzkrieg Legend; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Von Kielmansegg; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Schlieffen Plan; Cannae; Hannibal; Gaius Terentius Varro; Roman Army; Carthaginian cavalry; Major Helmuth Reinberger; Adolf Hitler; André Maurois; The Tragedy of France; the Dyle Line; Bernhard von Loßberg; Admiral Canaris; Abwehr; Army Group A; Army Group B; Maginot Line; Wehrmacht; Fort Eben Emael; Schwerpunkt; Gamelin; General Pierre Jacomet; Ardennes; Sedan

I probably shouldn’t be mentioning George Washington and Adolf Hitler in the same sentence, but I’m going to. George Washington said: Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan. So the brilliant Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) was claimed by Erich von Manstein, Adolf Hitler and Franz Halder as its father. If it had failed I think Manstein would have been given the credit by Hitler and Halder. Maybe I should have given a spoiler alert before I said that. So let’s first look at Adolf Hitler, the man proclaimed to be the greatest military genius of all times (größte Feldherr aller Zeiten). Tag words: Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; George Washington; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; greatest military genius of all times; größte Feldherr aller Zeiten; Nicholas von Below; von Rundstedt; General Jodl; Karl-Heinz Frieser; The Blitzkrieg Legend; Blitzkrieg; Heinz Guderian; Luftwaffe; Graf von Kielmansegg; Franz Halder; 4th Deployment Directive;

Manstein had seen the army high command’s hopeless, unimaginative plan, for the attack on France. He’d come up with a better idea – an attack through the impenetrable Ardennes Forest in Belgium in the centre using the new, and really untested, panzer divisions. As fate would have it, the father of Germany’s panzer forces, Heinz Guderian was in the town of Koblenz where Manstein was also based as the chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein should have been Chief of Staff of the German Army but that’s another story. That job had ended up with General Franz Halder. A remarkably capable and brilliant general but, to be honest, not in the class of Manstein. Manstein and Guderian got together in Koblenz. Manstein revealed his plan for what would come to be known as Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut). The German Army manuals contained nothing about how to fight the war that Manstein so clearly so in his head, which he shared with Guderian. Together they were going to have to work out how to make this new way of war work. Together they ticked all of the boxes. Selling it to the German High Command was now Manstein’s job. He needed to put a plan together on paper. That sounded like a plan! Tag words: Erich von Manstein; Blitzkrieg; Ardennes Forest; Heinz Guderian; General Franz Halder; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Schwerpunkt; Major Helmuth Reinberger; General Gerd von Runstedt; Luftwaffe; War Directive No.6; Teilsieg; Matador’s Cloak; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; General von Brauchitsch; Leibstandarte; Grossdeutschland; Kriegsspiel; Oberst Gunther Blumentritt; Major Henning von Tresckow; Rudolf Schmundt; Major Gerhard Engel; General Alfred Jodl; Fall Gelb; Case Yellow; Rommel;

In May 1940 the German Army won the greatest military victory in the history of the world. In just six weeks, in reality in a couple of days, the greatest army in the world, the French Army, and their ally, the British, had been completely and utterly defeated. The win was stunning. A new technique to fight this new war in Europe had been developed. The French were taken by surprise, so were the British, but the most surprised of all were the Germans themselves. The secret to win this war, that Hitler had accidentally dragged Germany into prematurely was clear, after it had actually been done – not before then. Replicating the technique used in France, in Russia would quickly bring of all Europe under German control, bring about the surrender of Britain, or at least make sure that no landing from England would be possible because it would be facing the entire German Army – not a German Army mostly tied down fighting on the eastern front as happened on D-Day. But the finer point of what had happened in France, in that heady summer, had been lost. That finer point was that Hitler should have decisively won World War II in that single campaign – at least have set up the springboard to make sure of victory when he invaded Russia the next year. But that prize of winning the war had irretrievably slipped from his hands by the time France had surrendered. And the reason why it slipped from his hands, was going to be the reason he was destined to lose the war. It was, as Cassius said in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2 –  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves Hitler tried to reproduce what the elite panzer forces had done in France when he invaded Russia in 1941 – but the lightning war ran out of puff. Why is for another programme in this series. Blitzkrieg, a rapid war waged by fast moving armoured columns, mostly fought by tanks had been born on 10 May 1940. It died on about 19th December in the snow close to the Russian town of Tula which was near Moscow. In this series of programmes, I’ll tell you the incredible story that you probably haven’t heard before, of how the Blitzkrieg was born, against the wishes of the majority of the top people in the German Army and how it died 19 months later. Karl-Heinz Frieser, German historian, wrote this summary of the history of these two blitzkriegs: To boil it down to a simple formula, the difference between the campaign in the west and the campaign in the east was that the 1940 campaign in the west was an unplanned but successful blitzkrieg, whereas the 1941 campaign in the east was a planned but unsuccessful blitzkrieg. Let me explain. Tag words: Blitkrieg; May 1940; French Army; British Army; World War II; Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves; Adolf Hitler; Tula; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Karl May; Old Shatterhand; Winnetou; Christa Schroeder; Major Helmuth Reinberger; German General Staff; Clausewitz; Wild West frontier; General Weygand; Patrick Turnbull; Dunkirk: Anatomy of Disaster; Treaty of Versailles; Maginot Line; Sedan; General Heinz Guderian; Herman Göring; Table Talks; Obersalzberg; Josef Goebbels; Wilhelm Weiß; Völkischer Beobachter; National Socialist; Nazi; Konstantin Hierl; Schlieffen Plan; Erich von Manstein; Gerd von Runstedt; Schwehrpunkt; Ardennes; Kurfürstliches Schloss; XIX Corps; Panzer Corp Guderian; Reims offensives; Klotzen, nicht Kleckern; Clout, don't dribble; Franz Halder; David Irving; Hitler’s War;

British collective punishment, increasing British military deployments to Palestine, especially after the British did the disgraceful Munich deal with Hitler in 1938 which freed up considerable military forces, and the impact of combined British and Jewish intelligence, made fighting and beating the Arab Revolt so much easier. As I have demonstrated over many programmes, the Muslim population in Palestine, were overwhelmingly citizens of other countries and not people who were born in the land area comprising the British Mandate of Palestine. That naturally lent itself to gaining considerable intelligence from the Muslims. Instead of fighting the British, the Muslims in the British Mandate were more naturally inclined to fight each other. Disciplined guerrilla organisations avoid that pitfall, but the Muslim revolt was not remotely a disciplined organisation. This one story tells just how outclassed the Muslims were in this fight with the British, with the aid of Jewish intelligence. The Jews were bugging conversations in the Grand Mufti’s ultra secure, impregnable, residence that the British Army was reluctant to attack because of the strength of the position. Tag words: collective punishment; Adolf Hitler; Muslim; Jews; Palestine; British Mandate; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Nashashibi clan; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; al-Qawuqji; al-Mua`rada forces; Ngo Dinh Diem; South Vietnam; effendi; fellahin; Mao Zedong; Guerilla Warfare; General Sir Robert Haining; Colonel Gilbert MacKereth; Sûreté; General Sir John Dill; Arab Revolt; Vietnam War; Viet Cong; Walid Khalidi; Lewis Andrews; Walter Moffatt; Peel Report; Chaim Weizmann; Balfour Declaration; Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald; Zionist Congress; Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; Arab Higher Committee; Irish Free State; Michael Collin; Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921; Vietminh; Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement 1998; North Vietnamese; battle of Dien Bien Phu;

The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 had consequences that are still being felt and lived to this day. One good thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim – not if you’re an Israeli though – and a really bad thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim, not an Israeli which, I would say on balance, outweighs the good that the Muslims got. To be fair, the good thing was an accident so let me tell you about it. Tag words: Arab Revolt of 1936; Muslim; Israeli; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Higher Committee; Nashashibi Clan; effendi; notables; King Abdullah; League of Nations; Palestine; League’s Mandate Commission; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Oren Kessler; Palestine 1936; Qassamite gunmen; Zvi Danenberg; Israel Chazan; The Bible; Genesis 16:12;

Captain Ord Wingate was one of the more remarkable British officers of the 20th Century, which is saying a lot. He thought entirely, almost entirely, out of the box. The British seemed to produce these remarkable people with remarkable ideas in the quantities that they needed, when they needed them. One of the unmissable things about the British administration in Palestine was how pro-Muslim it was. On 12 January 1937 Wingate wrote a letter to his much admired cousin Rex, who had been a General in the British Army in many Muslim countries with quite the reputation for his work there. Wingate wrote to him: I am not ignorant of Arabic or the Arabs, not prejudiced either for or against them, but the [British]officials were to a man, anti-Jew and pro-Arab.. . . They hate the Jew and like the Arab who, although he shoots at them, toadies to them and takes care to flatter their sense of importance. Now for Wingate’s idea about how to fight the Arab Revolt. Tag words: Captain Ord Wingate; Palestine; Muslim; the Bible; Charterhouse; Zionist; David Hacohen; Histadrut; The Quran; Chaim Weizmann; Earl Peel; Jewish State Defense Force; JSDF; Royal Navy; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; notrim; Gideon; Judges 6 to 8; Jezreel Valley; spring of Ein Harod; Midianites; Midianites; Kibbutz Ein Harod; Chaim Sturman; Special Night Services; SNS; General Haining; Haganah; Beth She'an Valley; Zvi Brenner; Brigadier Evett; Lieutenant Mike Grove; Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment; Lieutenant Robert 'Rex' King-Clark; Manchester Regiment;, Lieutenant H. E. N. 'Bala' Bredin; Royal Ulster Rifles; Israelis; Jews;

This programme is about how the Muslims, remarkably, and unwittingly, created the Israeli Defence Forces that would, at least so far, allow Israel to survive the fury of its overwhelming numerous and powerful enemies attempts to crush it. Of course Israel has to win every war. If it loses one it will all be over for it, in a massive blood bath. Maybe this programme could be called how the Muslims shot themselves in both feet. Tag words: Muslims; Israeli Defence Force; Arab Higher Committee; Rebel fighters; mujahid; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Wing Commander Ritchie; Palestine; havlagah; Jews; British Mandate; Yishuv; General Officer Commanding, Archibald Wavell; Special Night Squads; SNS; Sir Harold MacMichael; High Commissioner of Palestine; Colonial Office; Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin Al-Husseini; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshall Sir Cyril John Deverell; Moshe Shertok; Ben Zvi; Haganah; Palmach; Frank Kitson; Captain Ord Wingate; Laurence of Judea; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; Palestine Electricity Corporation; police; supernumeraries; ghaffirs; notrim; temporary additional constables; special constables; private police officers; auxiliary port police force; temporary additional police; a special frontier protection unit; Jewish settlement police; Jewish supernumerary police; special auxiliary police; railway protection police; night watchmen; special policemen; Iraq Petroleum Company TAPline protection force; Army special night and Q units; T E. Lawrence; Lawrence of Arabia; Plymouth Brethren; Charterhouse school; General Reginald Wingate; Hejaz; London's School of Oriental Studies; John Bunyan; He Who Would Valiant Be; To be a Pilgrim; Jerusalem; Trevor-Royle;

On 19 April 1936 the Muslims gave the Jews the gift of their homeland, promised by the British in the Balfour Declaration, then by the League of Nations when it created the British Mandate on 24 July 1922 – far bigger than was looking likely at that time – if they were to get one at all.  What the Jewish homeland would eventually look like was tricky. The Muslims had fought against it ever being created, they had fought against Jewish immigration, they had fought against the British Mandate. But thanks to the Arab Revolt that began on 19 April 1936, they gave the Jews what they had been trying to block - their homeland.  They gave the Jews pretty well everything they had wanted (if you ignore Churchill giving away 83% of their promised homeland to King Abdullah in Transjordan) and much much more than the pittance that the British had ended up promising the Muslims in the 1936 Peel Report, nothing in the 1939 White Paper and the land that the United Nations offered them with their Resolution 181 for the partition of the rump of the Jewish homeland on 29 November 1947. The Muslims had wanted it all – and they ended up with close to nothing. The Jews paid a price for what happened during the Arab Revolt, a price that they’re sill paying today, but overall, they could never have hoped for a better outcome at the time that Arab Revolt started. In my last two programmes I looked at the early days of the Arab Revolt. Now it’s time to look at the big picture – starting with the unplanned and runaway strike and revolt, that started by itself, and never really found anyone to lead it. Tag words: Muslims; Arabs; Balfour Declaration; League of Nations; British Mandate; Arab Revolt; Churchill; King Abdullah; 1936 Peel Report; 1939 White Paper; United Nations; Resolution 181; Easter Riots; Nabi Musa; Adolf Hitler; Nuremberg Laws; Palestine; US Immigration Act 1924; anti-semitism; Quran; Mohammad; Istiqlal Party; Arab Higher Committee; Izz al-Din al-Qassam; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Chaim Weizmann; David Ben-Gurion; Golda Meyerson; histadrut; Grand Mufti; havlagah; Ze’ev Jabotinsky;