Introduction

Modern Zionism began in the late 19th century with idealistic calls for spiritual renewal; by 1939, it had transformed into a desperate play for bare survival. Young revolutionaries do combat with Zionist elder statesmen for the soul of the movement. Hitler’s German Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union do battle for Europe while everything between them is ground into the mud. Victims become victimizers, and the wider world gets an introduction to the dispute that has been confounding the British Empire for 20 years. Our episode begins with desperate Jews in Nazi Europe, it ends with the realization of the Zionist dream, for the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign state of Israel.