Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne - "Blood For Trucks" Proposal

"Blood For Trucks" Proposal

Joel Brand, a member of the Jewish-Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee, approached the British in April 1944 with a proposal from Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of deporting Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz. Eichmann's so-called "blood for trucks" (Blut Für Ware; literally "blood for goods") proposal was that the Nazis would release up to one million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks and other goods from the Western Allies.

Brand was arrested and taken to Cairo, where he was questioned for several months. Brand reported that during one of the interrogations an Englishman he did not know had asked him about Eichmann's proposal, then replied "What can I do with a million Jews? Where can I put them?". On leaving the room, Brand reported, his military escort had told him that the man who had made that remark was Lord Moyne. Brand told this story to the Kastner libel trial in 1953, but in his autobiography published in 1956, he added a caveat "I afterwards heard that the man with whom I spoke was not, in fact, Lord Moyne, but another British statesman. Unfortunately I have no means of verifying this." Brand later testified in the Eichmann trial in 1961 that it was Moyne who said "What shall I do with those million Jews?" The story of the remark, attributed to Moyne, is regularly quoted by historians. Historian Bernard Wasserstein believes that "the truth is that Brand almost certainly never met Moyne".

During Brand's incarceration, both Brand and Moyne were interviewed by Ira Hirschmann, who had been appointed by Roosevelt as the War Refugee Board delegate in Turkey. According to Hirschmann, Moyne suggested sending Brand back to Hungary with a noncommittal reply that would enable the Jews there to continue talks. Moyne also supported a proposal to offer money to the Germans instead of trucks. However, the British government did not adopt either proposal.

Derek Wilson has weighed up the matter from the British side: "They concluded that the offer was genuine and reflected the desperation of Hitler's high command. They recommended that it could be safely ignored on the grounds that all the concentration camps would be liberated within weeks and that, in any case, there could be no negotiations with the Nazis."

The British released Brand in October 1944, about one month before Moyne's assassination, after which he joined the group Lehi which would commit the assassination.

Long after the war, Brand commented: "I made a terrible mistake in passing this on to the British. It is now clear to me that Himmler sought to sow suspicion among the Allies as a preparation for his much desired Nazi-Western coalition against Moscow."