Book Review: Middle East: The Third Reich and the Arab East
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200163 |
| Author | G. M. Wickens |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
156
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
tration
consisted
of
permanent
officers
of
the
British
Colonial
Service,
men
who
left
Britain
in
their
youth
for
postings
in
undeveloped
parts
of
the
world,
where
they
were
called
upon,
frequently
m
the
face
of
physical
hardship,
to
bring
some
vestige
of
order,
and a
touch
of
twentieth
century
based
on
British
traditions
of
justice. Few
senior
members
of
the
adnimistration had
had
the
experience
previously
of
finding
that
the
community
to
which
his
assignment
brought
him
consisted
of
persons
who
were
his
intellectual
and
social
equal.
He was
asked
to carry
out
policies
which
were
never
clearly understood
by
him
in
the
first
place,
and
then
which
were subjected
to
endless
interpreta-
tions
and
re-interpretations.
The
world
in which
these
policies
were
being
made and
re-made
was
itself
undergoing
the
convulsion
which
characterized
much
of
this
period,
bringing
in
its
wake
the
catastrophic
upheaval
to
the
Jews which
no
statesman
in
the
twentieth
century
could
have
envisaged.
While
many
of
the
men
in
the
British
adnunistra-
tion
were
small
men,
it
would
have
taken
giants
to
have
coped
with
some
of
the
problems confronting
the
Palestine
Civil
Service.
The contributions
to
these
Memories
of
Helen
Bentwich
make
interesting
comment
on
social
attitudes, particularly
in
the Jerusalem
of
forty
years
ago,
but,
to
the
reviewer,
her
most
moving
expression
is
that
contained
in
the
epilogue,
written
in
the
Spring
of
1963.
Looking
out
over
the
City
of
Jerusalem
from
Mount
Scopus,
she
recalls
the
shock
first
experienced
on viewing
the
barriers
dividing
the
two
halves
of
the
City,
and
of
her
sadness
at
the
lost
hope
for
a
peaceful
and
united
Palestine.
Ottawa
SYLvA
M.
GELBER
THE
THIRD
REICH
AND
THE
ARAB
EAST.
By
Lukasz
Hirszowica.
1966.
(London:
Routledge
&
Kegan
Paul.
Toronto:
University
of
Toronto
Press.
xi,
403pp.
$10.00)
When,
some
three
years
ago,
this work
first
appeared
in
Polish
it
gained
good
opinions,
but
there
were
naturally
few
Orientalists
or
students
of
international
affairs
outside
the
Slavic-speaking countries
generally
who
could
judge
it
at
first-hand.
Now,
however,
in
an
excellent
English
translation
and
with
some
additional
material,
it
has
become
available
to
anyone
likely
to
wish
to study
it.
It
is
indeed
a
fine
piece
of
work,
well
worthy
of
the
Oxford-inspired
series
in
which
it
appears.
Perhaps
the
greatest
surprise,
at
least
for
one
reader,
is
its
objectivity
and
factualness.
There
is
little
or
no
attempt
to adhere
to
any
of
the
several
standard
iron-curtain
positions
on
this
critical
chapter
in
the
history
of
World
War
II.
Nor,
perhaps
even
more
remarkably,
is
there
much
evidence
of
Polish
"
passion"
directed
towards
any
of
several
likely
targets.
The
rulers
and
the
agents
of
the
Third
Reich
(as
of
other
powers)
are
studied, in their
dealings
with
Arab
lands, not
as
the
evil,
unbalanced
or
cowardly
men
they
no
doubt often
were,
but
as
actors-competent
or
otherwise-in
a
prolonged and
involved
drama
of
considerable political moment.
The
story
cannot,
by
its
nature,
be
an
inspiring
or
even
an
exciting
one:
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