Evelyn Barker

Sir Evelyn Hugh Barker (1894 — 1983) was a British army general in World War II, and commander of British forces in the Mandate Palestine in 1946 — 47. He gained name recognition in the latter quality, becoming a controversial figure seen by some as a spiteful anti-Semite, and by others as a tough general held back from victory by politicians.

Military service in 1913 — 1946

He was the son of a high-ranking officer, Major-General Sir George Barker. In 1913, Evelyn Barker was commissioned with King's Royal Rifle Corps, and the next year sent to the French theater of the World War I. He fought in France, took part in the Thessaloniki operation, was wounded and decorated. In 1919, together with King's Royal Rifle Corps, Barker took part in the British military expedition against the Bolsheviks in the south of the former Russian Empire.

As a battalion commander at King's Royal Rifle Corps, Barker served in Palestine during the Palestinian Arab Revolt of 1936 — 39. He then commanded a motorized division in Britain.

Evelyn Barker entered World War II as a commander of the 10th Infantry Brigade in France. After the defeat of the Allies on the continent, he was evacuated with the remaining troops to Britain where he assumed command over the 54th (East Anglian) Division. In 1943 Barker took over the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, which he led in the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing fighting in Northern France.

Barker distinguished himself during the liberation of Le Havre, and was granted the knightly title in recognition of his actions. Promoted to the command of the Eighth Corps, he battled his way into Saxony. On April 15th, 1945, a unit under Barker’s lead liberated the remaining survivors of the Belsen concentration camp. After the German capitulation, Field-Marshal Montgomery appointed Barker to head the Schleswig-Holstein Corps District of the British occupation zone.

Taking command in Palestine

In the spring of 1946, General Barker took appointment for the position of General Officer Commanding (GOC) with British forces in Mandate Palestine, where he had served in the days of the Arab Revolt. Palestine was now the scene of another guerilla war, this time waged by the Zionist militants of the Haganah, Irgun and LEHI. Barker’s was the challenging task of ending the increasingly numerous and lethal attacks by the armed Zionist groups. He found the country at a new peak of tensions between the Jewish community and the British troops, after the LEHI’s April 25 raid on the Sixth Airborne Division car park near Tel Aviv in which several unarmed soldiers were killed execution-style. Officers reported that some units were close to mutinying and going on revengeful rampage in the villages. Controlling vindictive passions of his troops, as well as his own, would for General be sometimes as difficult as controlling the security situation.

Barker soon arrived at the conclusion that pacification of the country dictated harsher measures, first of all, enforcement of the death penalty, and certain collective actions against the entire Jewish community for its perceived complicity. Like most of the military personnel stationed in Palestine, he blamed the Yishuv at large for the attacks of the militants, and the softness of the British approach to the Jews for the failure to stop them. Whereas hangings and collective punishment were broadly employed against the Palestinian Arabs during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, not a single Zionist militant had ever been executed for attacking British forces (with the exception of the two LEHI assassins of Lord Moyne who were tried and hanged in Cairo). Together with other high-ranking British officers, Barker repeatedly asked civil authorities to let the army “take off the gloves” and employ harsher methods in the pursuit of the “terrorists”. The perception of the government’s timidity with regard to the Jews, predominant in the military circles, was expressed in the memoirs of Bernard Montgomery, Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1946-48:

“Indecision and hesitation were in evidence all down the line, beginning in Whitehall…All this had led to a state of affairs in which British rule existed only in name; the true rulers seemed to me to be the Jews, whose unspoken slogan was – “You dare not touch us.”

In their turn, the Jews lamented about brutality of the British rule, of which Barker soon became the symbol, complaining of the restrictions on immigration and the excessive force applied by the soldiers during the searches.

Relationship with Katie Antonius

Soon after arriving in Palestine, Evelyn Barker became a frequenter of the Jerusalem haute societe gatherings in the mansion of Katie Antonius. The hostess was the widow of the famous Lebanese-Palestinian intellectual George Antonius, and was known for her intelligence and tastes. The evening dances in the Karm al Mufti mansion, where George Antonius had written his Arab Awakening, were attended by diplomats, artists, British officers. Evelyn Barker, by now married with a son, quickly fell under the charms of the hostess; she responded, and a romance ensued. Evelyn Barker and Katie Antonius became intimate also in the political realm, so to speak, Antonius being a strong sympathizer of the Arab anti-Zionist cause, and Barker quickly developing same vision, - in the course of his professional duties rather than under the influence of his Arab lover. It is of course possible to speculate that Katie’s intimacy was another channel of the formation of Barker’s feeling against the Jews (see below). About this feeling, Barker’s letters to Katie would become practically the only source, revealing the General’s (newly-acquired?) anti-Semitic views when the correspondence was published.

Advocating death penalty

General Barker saw the capital punishment as an effective discouragement against resorting to arms, and argued for a wide application of death penalty against Zionist guerillas. That it was never applied in the preceding years, he considered among the major causes of the failure to suppress the insurgency. Barker would later express his position thusly:

“I am in favour of the death penalty for murder, political or otherwise. The one strict law we had was against carrying arms. And it’s no good having a law like that if you don’t enforce it. So if anyone was caught carrying arms, he was up before a court martial, he could state his case, but if he was found guilty that was it. And, subject to Alan Cunningham’s final say, I would confirm the death sentence.”

In his position on the death penalty, Barker was not only strongly supported by his subordinates, but directly instructed by his superiors. Chief of the Imperial General Staff Bernard Montgomery conveyed to Barker that capital punishments of the Jewish militants must be carried out even when British soldiers were held hostages for the sentenced “terrorists”. When, on the 18th of June, 1946, the Irgun abducted five British officers, to be held as hostages for the recently condemned to death members of the Irgun, Montgomery reacted by an urgent unplanned visit to Palestine for talks with Barker, of which he later recalled:

“I said that General Barker, as the confirming authority for death sentences on Jews convicted by military tribunals, must not be deterred from his duty by threats of the murder of five British officers who had been kidnapped since my visit a few days earlier. This did a good deal to strengthen his resolve. Barker was suffering from a lack of support by the Government authorities; I promised him my full support in his difficult task.”

Barker confirmed the sentences even before the instigation from Mongomery. But the opposite decision was taken by superior authorities: on July 03, High Commissioner for Palestine Alan Cunningham commuted the deaths sentences to imprisonment, in order, as it is generally held, to save the British hostages. The Irgun then released the captured British officers.

Barker’s enthusiasm about the death penalty was always curbed by the limits of his authority of the General Officer Commanding. He could not himself decide the questions of guilt and punishment, being empowered only to confirm or disconfirm death sentences pronounced by courts, and whatever his decision in this respect was, it still could be overruled by the High Commissioner for Palestine. In 1945 – 48 the latter office was held by Alan Cunningham, who was widely blamed by the military for preventing the army from tough but necessary actions.

Rumors ascribed Barker the words “I will hang a hundred of Jews, and there will be peace”, which Barker himself denied to have ever uttered.

Operation Agatha

Main Article: Operation Agatha

Spurred to deliver, in middle June of 1946 Barker started planning a large-scale police operation throughout the Yishuv. Having the long-awaited order to arrest the leaders of the Jewish Agency, which was now strongly believed to be complicit in terrorism, Barker organized Operation Agatha in high secrecy and with high hopes of delivering a strong blow to the guerillas. The operation began in early morning of Saturday, June 29 (it became known as “Black Sabbath” among the Yishuv), with tens of thousands of soldiers and policemen employed in cordon-and-search action in almost every Jewish settlement. By the end of the day, over 2700 Jews were detained, including some leaders of the Jewish Agency. Dozens of weapon caches were found, including one in the Great Synagogue of Tel Aviv. The already existing mutual aversion of the British troops and the Jewish population rose to a new height with many incidents of passive resistance during the searches, inhabitants calling the soldiers, recently from the battlefields of WWII, “Nazis” and the soldiers replying “Sieg Heil!”.

The order prohibiting social interaction with the Jews

Barker was in his office at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when at 12.37 p.m., Monday, July 22, 1946, the southern wing of the building collapsed in a large explosion, burying dozens in the ruins. It looked immediately apparent (and was very soon confirmed) that the hotel, which housed the headquarters of the Mandate administration, became a target of Zionist militants. The sight of the devastation drove General Barker into poorly controlled rage, and he felt that the way was now open to decisively place responsibility for the violence where he long thought it belonged, — on the entire Jewish community of Palestine. Within minutes after the explosion, Barker was in his office writing the to-be-notorious order to his troops:

“The Jewish community of Palestine cannot be absolved from responsibility for the long series of outrages culminating in the blowing up of a large part of the Government offices in the King David Hotel causing grievous loss of life. Without the support, active or passive, of the general Jewish public the terrorist gangs who actually carried out these criminal acts would soon be unearthed, and in this measure the Jews in this country are accomplices and bear a share of the guilt.

I am determined that they shall suffer punishment and be made aware of the contempt and loathing with which we regard their conduct. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the hypocritical sympathy shown by their leaders and representative bodies, or by their protests that they are in no way responsible for these acts… I have decided that with effect on receipt of this letter you will put out of bounds to all ranks all Jewish establishments, restaurants, shop, and private dwellings. No British soldier is to have social intercourse with any Jew… I appreciate that these measures will inflict some hardship on the troops, yet I am certain that if my reasons are fully explained to them they will understand their propriety and will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them.”

Barker’s aid, Brigadier Walter Sale, gave the order the lowest secrecy status, “Restricted”, and the leaders of the Yishuv quickly learnt of the GOC’s outburst of anger. Upon making its way to the hands of Palestinian Zionists, the text was immediately multiplied and sent to Western capitals, before it could be silently revoked. The order was rescinded in two weeks, but the avalanche of criticism it produced delivered a blow to the government’s handling of Palestine. The public resonance of Barker’s reaction to the bombing soon rivaled the resonance of the bombing itself; the order became the “spoiler” of the politico-diplomatic offensive allowed to the British government by the King David Hotel bombing. Already with a trail of rumors about his alleged anti-Semitism, General Barker became possibly the individual most hated by the Jews, together with Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. The publicity campaign against Barker became a part of the propaganda thrust against the British policy in Palestine whereas the odious brutal anti-Semite commanding the garrison was the personification of the Empire’s persecution of the Jews. A British newspaper carried a caricature of the GOC holding Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Barker later regretted issuing this order:

“My office was in the middle of the building, overlooking the Old City. When I heard the explosion, I walked across the landing and I couldn’t see anything, only dust. I was so anger when I found out what had happened that I went straight to my office and wrote an order to the troops, putting all Jewish establishments out of bounds. It was a rotten letter, written on the spur of the moment. I ought to have restrained myself for an hour or two before putting pen to paper.”

With the idea of collective responsibility of the Palestinian Jewry, Barker was neither unique nor the first. Collective punishment was a usual practice of the British Empire (in Iraq, for instance, British troops burnt entire villages), and, speaking specifically of the Palestinian situation, Commander-in-Chief Miles Dempsey reported to War Minister Frederick Bellenger:

“We know that terrorism is tacitly accepted by all and sundry. Were this not so these murderers would soon be apprehended. The people must therefore take the consequences.”

While civil Zionists toiled to destroy Barker propagandistically, military Zionists endeavored to destroy him physically. Throughout his time in Palestine (and later in Britain also), Barker survived several assassination plots, without knowing about most of them. The entrance of his residence was booby-trapped, explosive charges hidden in a baby carriage parked near his house. Sometimes he survived due to the vigilance of his officers, more often due to luck.

Operation Shark

With information that the Irgun ring responsible for the King David Hotel bombing was hiding in Tel Aviv, General Barker organized a massive police operation in the city. His instructions to his subordinate Major-General Cassels were short and totalizing: “Jim, I want you to search Tel Aviv, every single room and attic and cellar in Tel Aviv. Is that quite clear ?”

The police action in Tel Aviv, codenamed Operation Shark, began on July the 30th and achieved several successes, like the discovery of a large weapon cache in the city’s main synagogue, and the arrest of the LEHI’s leader Yitzhak Shamir. But the most important figure of the Zionist underground, Menachem Begin of the Irgun, slipped through the British hands. He hid in a secret compartment of his house while British soldiers stayed in his home for two days. General Barker later recalled: “We should have caught him, but the men did not search his house properly. This is one of the problems of search operations. You have to rely on very junior people, and, if they make a mistake, the whole operation can be damaged.”

In August, Barker had his authority overruled once more, when High Commissioner Cunningham commuted death sentences of 18 LEHI combatants and sent them to jail instead of the gallows.

Meanwhile, British government, under economic pressures of the post-war period, and pro-Zionist political pressures from the USA, intensified efforts to find a political solution. Palestine became too sensitive an issue, and Barker too scandalous a figure; the two had to be divorced. On October 22, it was announced that the General would be promoted to a position in Britain. He continued in his duties of General Officer Commanding for several more months.

On January 24th, 1947, Barker confirmed death sentence on the Irgun fighter Dov Gruner. Barker later said in an interview for a researcher:

“This was a cut-and-dried case. Gruner had been caught redhanded, armed and shooting up British troops. His political views were nothing to do with the matter. It’s nonsense to say that he was a prisoner of war. There was no war. Even if there had been, the Irgun were not obeying the rules of war. He was a criminal, a murderer. So I took it up to Alan Cunningham and I said, “This is an absolutely definite case of carrying arms and I propose the sign the death warrant. Do you agree? He said he did. It wasn’t political. It wasn’t referred to London. It was a decision taken by me on the spot.”

It was hardly Barker’s sway that convinced Cunningham to allow the execution, but rather the general toughening of the British government seeking ways towards the elusive objective of ending the Zionist attacks.

Understanding that the militants will seek hostages to prevent Gruner’s execution, as they did in the past to save other prisoners, Barker issued orders to heighten alert among the British troops.

On the final day of his Palestinian command, February the 13th, Barker confirmed death sentences of three Irgun members, - Mordechai Alkachi, Yahiel Dresner (Dov Rosenbaum) and Eliezer Kashani. With that, he left Palestine forever. Alkachi, Dresner, Kashani and Gruner were hanged in the Acre prison at dawn on April the 16th.

Assassination plots

Evelyn Barker was the dearest target of the Irgun and the LEHI. In Palestine, explosive devices were placed around his home, and at the very door of it, and the GOC survived sometimes by alertness of his officers, other times by luck. Assassination plots followed him to Britain after his return from the Mandate in February 1947. Among the would-be assassins was the future President of Israel, and the nephew of Haim Weizmann, Ezer Weizman. A former Royal Air Force pilot, and now a student of aviation in London, the 23-y.o. Ezer Weizman co-worked with his Irgun colleague tracking Barker to his house and producing a plan to use an explosive device against him. Before the duo was able to plant the device into the road, however, Weizman was visited by the police. Having attracted suspicions, the future President quickly left the island. The story of this plot remained unknown until Weizman himself revealed it in his memoir “On Eagle’s Wings” 30 years later. The retired Barker commented on this news in 1977:

“I expect he’s glad that he failed in his mission. What good would it have done to kill me? It wouldn’t have helped the Jewish cause or the Irgun or anyone else. At least General Weizman has been able to go through the last thirsty years without a murder on his conscience.”

The LEHI, for its part, produced several more attempts on Barker’s life. In one of them, a mail envelop charged with explosive powder (a method of killing that had been known for a while) arrived at Barker’s home on May 11, 1948, but was detected by his alert wife.

Last years of military service, and retirement

After leaving Palestine in February 1947, Evelyn Barker assumed his promotion to General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command. He remained in correspondence with his former lover Katie Antonius for some years.

In 1950, Sir Evelyn Hugh Barker retired from service, aged 56. He had a long and seemingly comfortable retirement. For several years he was in correspondence with Liddell Hart, the known British military specialist and historian. Barker was among many individuals who gave accounts of their personal roles in Palestinian events to the researcher Nicholas Bethell, for his book “The Palestine Triangle: the Struggle for the Holy Land, 1935-48” (among other interviewees were Menachem Begin, Abba Eban, Alan Cunningham, Israel Galili, Katie Antonius, Ezer Weizman, as well as many publicly unknown individuals).

Evelyn Barker died on November 23, 1983, at the age of 89, and was buried in Somerset.

Barker’s anti-Semitism

Barker’s letters to his former lover Katie Antonius contain overtly anti-Semitic passages. “The time has come for this vile race to know what we think of it: this is a repugnant people.”, wrote he about the Jews in April 1947. He had a strong sentiment against the Jews by that time; the question is only whether he developed it during his Palestinian months, or at an earlier stage of life. If considered within the context of the wide-spread anti-Jewish attitudes among the British troops in Palestine of the post-war period, Barker’s anti-Semitism was probably a product of the military conflict with armed Zionists. Animosity towards the Jews had indeed pervaded British army in Palestine, and Barker was in this respect outstanding in no way. Arguably, the foundation of this feeling was not the traditional anti-Semitism with its incrimination of greed and destructiveness, and not merely the fact of the armed conflict with Jewish guerillas, but the idea of a treachery committed by the Jews against Britain whom they allegedly owned everything they had in Palestine. The policy of the Balfour Declaration, the protection from the Arabs and from the Germans in 1941-43, were seen by many Britons as great favours bestowed by the Empire on the Jewish people. In the anti-Semitic passages of his letters to Katie Antonius, Barker makes a reference to such British sacrifices, unappreciated by the Jews: “…everything that we did for these Jews, in terms of money and human lives.” This particular feeling of non-appreciation and betrayal was expressed by many British soldiers, sometimes defiantly publicly. Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Webb, after two of his soldiers were killed in October 1946, summoned a press-conference and leashed out against the Jews, calling them “a despicable race” and commenting on the body shapes of Jewish women. “These bloody Jews – we saved their skins in Alamein and other places and then they do this to us”, said Webb.

Evidently malevolent toward the Jews after his "promotion" from Palestine, Barker mentioned to Katie Antonius his readiness to offer his military expertise to the Arabs in their coming war with Zionism, which the General never did.