Isaiah Berlin: A Life — 9: Washington

1. 1. Berlin's weekly summaries of American opinion for the Foreign Office gave him access to key figures in wartime Washington, including columnists like Walter Lippmann and policymakers in the New Deal circle.
2. 2. Berlin fell in love with Countess Patricia de Bendern, a married socialite, in 1942, but the unconsummated affair ended when she fell for another man in 1943.
3. 3. Berlin's official digests of American opinion were read by Churchill, Eden, the Cabinet Office, and even the King, and his 'bootleg' versions circulated among friends at the Ministry of Information.
4. 4. Berlin secretly sabotaged a proposed joint US-UK declaration condemning Zionist agitation in 1943 by tipping off Jewish leaders, choosing his Jewish loyalties over his British ones.
5. 5. Berlin argued in 1944 that the British government could proceed resolutely on Palestine without excessive fear of American public opinion, as Zionist influence was overestimated.
6. 6. Berlin reported Weizmann's revised estimate that only one million Jews would survive the war, making the Zionist solution more manageable, but the full extent of the Holocaust remained inconceivable to him.
7. 7. Berlin's family in Riga—the Volshonoks and Berlins—were among 25,000 Jews murdered in the Rumbula forest massacre in late 1941, but he did not learn their fate until after the war.
8. 8. Berlin decided to leave philosophy for the history of ideas after a transatlantic flight in 1944, concluding that pure philosophy could not add to positive human knowledge.
9. 9. Berlin's assessment of Truman after Roosevelt's death was candid: Truman was decent but provincial, and his administration was 'on such a minute scale' that it could not handle a major crisis.
10. 10. Berlin helped translate the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945, catching Soviet wording that implied a right to stay in a second state, not just pass through, and saving the British Empire with a pencil stroke.
11. 11. Berlin was invited to Moscow in 1945 by Ambassador Clark Kerr to prepare a grand despatch on post-war US-Soviet-British relations, but was dropped from the Potsdam delegation, possibly due to his 'sleeping beauty' remark about Eden.
12. 12. Berlin's wartime experience taught him that even great political figures rarely understand the history they shape, and that politics always has a potential for tragedy.