Jabotinsky's death symbolised the collapse of Revisionism. Its place on the stage of history was taken by the military undergrounds of the right. When the struggle for succession was over, in the 1940s, one leader remained for the entire nationalist right – Menachem Begin, the commander of the Irgun (Irgun Zvai Leumi). Under Begin's leadership the Irgun developed a completely autonomous conceptual and organisational framework which diverged radically from the path delineated by Jabotinsky. The military Zionism which replaced political realism was governed by the laws of nationalist revolts through history, and combined with urban guerrilla warfare to attain political aims. Begin based his view on the laws of history, the nature of Europeam nationalism and the great revolutions of the late eighteenth century. The revolt against the British was to represent the Jewish people's all-encompassing and exclusive struggle for independence, and involve the conquest of the entire Land of Israel on both sides of the River Jordan. In effect, the revolt played a fragmentary, if not marginal, role in Zionism's diplomatic and military strategy.

The struggle for the Revisionist inheritance

In the autumn of 1940 the personal and political future of Menachem Begin was more uncertain than that of any other Revisionist leader. In September he had been arrested in Vilnius by the Soviet NKVD and charged with being a Zionist activist and British spy. He was exiled to Siberia, but released as a Polish citizen under the agreement between Stalin and the Free Polish government after Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941.