Roosevelt ("Rosenfeld") was also accused of Jewish ancestry.

This issue brings out the loonies. I read a long anti-Semitic tract once which would have been stupid anyway, but which really outdid itself by confusing the Khazakhs and the Khazars throughout (a thousand years and hundreds of miles off).

Someone with only Jewish great-grandparent would be a German by Nazi law unless they practiced Judaism (though they theoretically couldn't join the SS, which require Christian ancestry back to 1750). Even with two Jewish grandparents you could be a "mischling" and serve in the German Army. So even if the rumor were true, lots of Nazis were as German as Churchill was.

This just like the hoax story about the chalice / womb /magdalene/jesus christ.

Next thing we will read, magdalene gave birth to the ancestors of all the great /popular men. One by one, the history is being rewritten to feed the ego of some.

If David Irving told me the time, I would check five different clocks before I accepted it

David Irving himself (at that time still not entirely discredited

Interesting that you'd bother to spend time researching the work of a 'discredited' historian.

Also interesting that nowhere do you mention that Irving is now in prison in Austria for the crime of Holocaust Denial.

Interesting world.

Looks like Irving was let out of prison in Dec. 2006 after serving 10 months. My mistake. I must've missed reading about it in the newspapers.

I thought everyone at this site would have already known Irving was imprisoned for Holocaust denial. There's a sort of invisible sign saying "You must be at least this well-informed to find material here worthwhile". I haven't read anything by Irving, but I find it chilling that it's a felony in some first world countries to bullshit about history. It's also rather odd that (I think in France) you can be locked up for denying the Armenian genocide while in Turkey you can get busted for affirming it! Ownthink ist verboten!

I am amazed at the use of the racial biology methods of the turn of the century (1900) to investigate Churchill's ancestry. Why not analyze his DNA through his children and grandchildren and relatives? Also the Jerome/Jacobsohn/Ben Yaakov family survives, lets analyze the genotype of contemporary survivors. It should be easy to discover Jewish markers, shouldnt it be?

Jefferson prolly wasn't Jewish either. (You probably covered this.)

I am amazed at the use of the racial biology methods of the turn of the century (1900) to investigate Churchill's ancestry

sometimes 21st century methods are really not needed.... (though when it doubt, supplementary methods are prolly helpful)

If Churchill were an American political figure, the merest rumor of a long-ago black ancestor would of course throw everyone into a tizzy. Given our one-drop rule, confirmation of the ancestry would require Churchill's racial reclassification.
I get the impression that most foreigners find the one-drop rule to be a very peculiar aspect of American life.

It's amazing that people are concerned about < 1/8 jewish ancestry. I hope these people are less common than you make it seem.

Does that vid deal with Churchill's motivations at all? I'm not too informed on WWII Britain.

The last leader of the British Conservative Party was the son of a Romanian Jewish refugee. His predecessor was one-eighth Japanese. No big deal.

& some British PM was fractionally Indian. I forget which.

BRITAIN'S NON-WHITE PRIME MINISTER .

Hitler probably wasn't 1/4 Jewish either. It's unknown who his paternal grandfather was, but I think the evidence that he was Jewish is primarily "wouldn't that be funny."

Wow, just noticed the (assumed) borat reference in the title.

"Interesting that you'd bother to spend time researching the work of a 'discredited' historian."

- I wouldn't, except that in this case Kohn and Irving are the only two *published* sources that I could find cited for the Jerome/Jacobson story. It isn't 'interesting' that I should try to check the sources: what else could I do? As for the idea of checking living descendants of Churchill for 'Jewish' DNA markers, his grandchildren would have at most 1/16 Jewish ancestry (assuming that Leonard Jerome was fully Jewish and they have no other Jewish ancestors).

Friends,

About 10% of the Roman Empire's population was Jewish. The majority of the Jews accepted Christianity and melted into the Empire population. Their genes are part of the area's current population's genome.

Preceding the Nurnberg laws, the Nazis made a study about Jewish blood in Germany. They concluded that in historical times (say from 1600 on) the number of Jews who left Judaism and assimilated in the German nation was more than double of the actual living Jews. That's why they stopped at the third generation and then, they even closed eyes on dubious grandparents.

In America Jewish immigrants have been melting for centuries. There are few "old" Jewish families who are Jewish. And there are many thousands who went to America to make a new life and forget the old one: Margret Albright and Kerry and Gov. whatshisname are only three of them. They changed names and identities. Most were never heard of.

So stop this stupid game of searching for Jewish blood.

I think that Churchill's oppposition to the Nazi's needed Jewish ancestry on Churchill's part to be explained is more than a bit daft. Someone who thought that one couldn't despise the Nazis without referring to Nazi anti Semitism, as if that was the only thing one could hold against them and if they weren't anti Semites they wouldn't have been all that bad, is a bit daft too.

Apart from that from obvious 'in the present' reasons for being anti Nazi, one needed to look for 'historical' or geneological reasons for Churchill's anti Nazism, the fact that Churchill was descended from John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, the bane of Louis XIV and a more towering figure of his age than Winston was in Winston's age, is pretty sufficient for his views.
Winston Churchill was perfectly aware of all this, he wrote a 2000+ page biography of him, an excellent book which I heartily recommend, in which he at one point lets loose with a fine withering tirade about periwigged dandies bent on world domination.

Given the truth of the quip by some English WWII era diplomat about, "we're still fighting Louis XIV", I think that's all one needs to know.

Of course Hitler's sick hate of the Jews has nothing to do with the war with England. Should decide England not to fight, its status would have been that of occupied France, Holland and Norway. A Gauleiter would have taken residence in Buckingham Palace and German soldiers would have started to produce war babies. Simply put, there was no place for England (nor for Poland, Russia, etc.) in a Hitlerian Europe.

I haven't read Mein Kampf, but according to Wikipedia it shows Hitler had planned all along to conquer France and Russia, but sought to ally with Britain. My guess is that England could have just left Germany for Russia to take care of.

I should have pointed out that Churchill's living descendants would inherit neither Y chromosomes not Mitochodria from Leonard Jerome. Any genetic 'markers' would have to be autosomal.

You are wrong in supposing England could have found a role in Nazi Europe. The English people of that generation thought they had to fight for their lives, and let us assume they knew better. Regarding abandoning Russia, my impression is that was exactly what England did till events turned (Russia started winning). Anyway, the issue now is that crazed religious fanatic in Iran for whom England is the Little Satan and he means it.

Jews have also contributed to the search for Jewish blood in distinguished historical figures, out of a (reasonable or misplaced) sense of pride. As a Jew, I have always enjoyed hearing that such-and-such a noted individual (Churchill, Ringo, Charlie Chaplin, whoever) might have been part Jewish. I don't know why I care. However, the search for truth should not indulge wishful thinking. It seems that Churchill, the greatest statesman of his age and one of the greatest of any age, was not Jewish at all. That does not change my admiration of him one bit.

"Regarding abandoning Russia, my impression is that was exactly what England did till events turned (Russia started winning)."

- I haven't researched the details, but I do know that Britain sent many convoys of arms and supplies to Russia via the Arctic Sea, which was the only available route. It was dangerous work, as the ships were vulnerable to U-boats. I guess it might be said that Britain (and the US) should have opened a Western Front earlier than they did, but I leave that question to military experts. The other British-US contribution before D-Day was the bombing campaign against Germany, but that gets criticised for killing German civilians. Can't win, can you?

I much appreciate this investigation into Churchill's claimed Jewish ancestry, because I do believe it to be significant. Moreover I am familiar with the problem of a single unreliable source replicating unchecked and leading to erroneous claims like this one seems to be.

However, all your commentators omit three very significant facts:

1. Jews worldwide declared war on Germany in 1933;
2. The Board of Deputies of British Jews paid £50,000 to finance an 'Anti-Nazi Committee' (later renamed 'Focus') in 1936. That Committee was headed by Churchill.
3. Churchill was undeniably in the pocket (due to his debts) of a figure called Strakosch, who was likely Jewish, and both Churchill and Roosevelt were heavily influenced by Jews, particularly Bernard Baruch. Roosevelt joked about the fact.

The Second World War was a Jewish war, and modern propaganda on the theme ('Holocaustianity') is a religion, not history. For example, the official death-toll at Auschwitz is now 1.5 million, so anyone quoting "6 million" is expressing a religious idea.

Irving may be a bit of an oddball but he's undeniably good. As he says, and I know this from my own experience, all most '"historians" do is quote each others' books. This leads to the sort of error which this article details.

Finally, I invite you to contemplate how much influence £50,000 would have bought in 1936.

Simon Sheppard