Menachem Begin, a young soldier in the Polish army-in-exile, first comes to Palestine in April 1942 in the aftermath of the loss of the Struma, and immediately sets out to draw together the whole underground, including Lehi, in preparation for a Jewish war of liberation against the British.

The recipient of a law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1935, Begin had been active in the Zionist movement throughout the 1930s, and in 1938 had become the leader of the Polish branch of the Betar youth movement.

When the Germans invaded Warsaw in 1939, he escaped to Vilnius (his parents and a brother will later die in concentration camps) only to be arrested by the Russians and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp.

The Soviet authorities had deported Begin to Siberia in 1940, but had released him in 1941, whereupon he had joined the Polish army in exile, with which he has come to Palestine.

Begin is a disciple of the late Ze'ev Jabotinsky, but he rejects Jabotinsky's pro-British sympathies.