Ford, facing a lawsuit, eventually apologized for fostering this fantasy. But the damage had already been done. The image of a Jewish conspiracy that connected communist and capitalist forces in an attempt to dominate the world had taken root in the minds of many Americans, particularly those from the extremist right.
Many of these Jewish-conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial, share common features. Behind each conspiracy is a collective that has targeted another group. Though the victims are more numerous than the conspirators, because they remain unaware of the conspiracy they are highly vulnerable. It is the responsibility of those who have uncovered the scheme to bring it to the victims’ attention. The conspirators are thought to pursue their goals with a diabolical skill that far exceeds that of their enemies. Endowed with almost mystical powers, they control the stock exchange, world banks, and the media. Having successfully carried out such conspiracies in the past, these conspirators are so adept that, unless they are stopped, they will surely triumph in the future.31
These delusions impose orderly consistency on situations that seem inexplicable—worldwide depressions, famines, and the death of millions—and draw on familiar stereotypes. The Holocaust deniers have built on this tradition. Some among them may actually be convinced of the truth of their charges. The conviction that they are right does not, of course, make their claims any more rational or true than the earlier claims of those who accused the Jews of poisoning wells, killing Christian children for ritual purposes, and fomenting world revolution.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II a number of isolationists again took up the cudgels on behalf of Germany. Among the post-World War II revisionists were extremists who shared a belief that a military and political conspiracy of major proportions had again been perpetrated to drag the United States into war. According to them, Roosevelt had been intent on U.S. participation from the outbreak of the war in 1939. With a select cadre of advisers and the support of certain ethnic and interest groups, he sought a “back door” into World War II. In order to achieve his objective he concealed information indicating that an attack on Pearl Harbor was forthcoming. Convinced of Roosevelt’s complicity in allowing the attack to occur, the Chicago Tribune accused him of deliberately sacrificing the lives of thousands of American soldiers. Led by journalists, pacifists, and politicians, critics argued further that Pearl Harbor was part of a bigger and more complex picture. They believed that the Roosevelt administration needed a war to divert public attention from the failures of the New Deal.
Criticism came from those who were bitterly disappointed that the war had taken place and unhappy with its outcome. Bitterness was reflected in their rhetoric. In his book The Roosevelt Myth, America First leader John T. Flynn accused Roosevelt of finding war a “glorious, magnificent escape from all the insoluble problems of America.” Flynn argued that nothing had been accomplished by the war except to “put into Stalin’s hands the means of seizing a great slab of the continent of Europe.” Flynn’s book, which was rejected by all major publishers because of its inflammatory rhetoric, was eventually released by Devin-Adair, which would in turn become one of the leading publishers of Holocaust denial material. Its rhetoric notwithstanding, it reached the number two position on the New York Times best-seller list.32
Charles Beard also argued that the defeat of one totalitarian entity resulted in the rise of an equally despotic regime. Nazism had been replaced by another despotism, consequently there was no justifiable reason for going to war. Juxtaposing the outrages committed by the Nazis with those committed by the Soviets, Beard wondered how it could be argued “that the ‘end’ justified the means employed to involve the United States in the war?”33 Citing Beard for a purpose that would have appalled him, Holocaust deniers’ journals and publications argue that the war against Hitler was not just folly but counterproductive to American interests. Consequently, the deniers contend, there must have been some interest group that wanted the war to occur.
These critics had various objectives. Some, possibly prompted by their German American heritage, wished to win more lenient economic and political terms for a defeated Germany. Others may have been motivated by their conservative midwestern roots and were wary of foreign entanglements. Many among them were anticommunists who believed that a strong postwar Germany provided the best defense against the spread of Communism. Others, such as Barnes, were World War I revisionists who did not distinguish between one conflagration and the other. While the idea of a strong Germany became the linchpin of American postwar policy, some of the more extreme post-World War II revisionists took it a step further and, echoing a prewar argument, contended that Nazi Germany had also been an excellent defense against Communism but that the Allies had been blind—or blinded—to this fact.
The most extreme revisionist account of America’s entry into World War II, Back Door to War, by Charles C. Tansill, a professor of American diplomatic history at Georgetown University, was published in 1952. Tansill had previously addressed the issue of distorted accounts of American history when he accused Lincoln, whom he called a “ ‘do-nothing’ soldier, invincible in peace and invisible in war,” of having tricked the South into attacking Fort Sumter and thereby precipitating the Civil War.34 Tansill’s book made a strong impression on Holocaust deniers who energetically promote it and use his arguments as a foundation for their own. Tansill declared that the “main objective” of American foreign policy during the first half of the twentieth century was “the preservation of the British Empire.” He linked U.S. entry into World War I with the rise of Nazism in Europe, the former having resulted in the latter: “Our intervention completely shattered the old balance of power and sowed the seeds of inevitable future conflict.” According to him this sordid set of affairs did not end with World War I, and in his view America’s entry into World War II was thus an attempt to preserve, irrespective of the cost, the “bungling handiwork of 1919.”35
Tansill set out a number of arguments that would become essential elements of Holocaust denial. Most have no basis in fact; for example, Tansill and other revisionists contended that Hitler did not want to go to war with Poland but planned for Germany and Poland to dominate Europe together. If Poland had agreed to Hitler’s scheme that it become the chief satellite in the Nazi orbit, its security would have been guaranteed.36 It was the Poles’ refusal—prompted by promises they had received from the British and made at Americas urging—to accede to the Nazi plan that was responsible for the outbreak of the war. Therefore it was American machinations that were ultimately responsible for pushing Poland into war and precipitating World War II.37 Roosevelt, according to this extreme revisionist point of view, played a “grotesque role” in the entire episode by pressing British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to make promises to the Poles that could not be fulfilled.38 These extreme arguments, which are rejected by virtually all historians, ignore the fact that Hitler did not intend to make Poland a satellite but to decimate it and that he regarded the Poles as Untermenschen, less than complete human beings. These arguments also exaggerate Roosevelt’s role in convincing the British and the Poles to go to war. Stretching existing historical evidence to distorted limits, these arguments exonerated Nazi Germany and placed responsibility for the war on the Allies. Not surprisingly, deniers would make them a critical component of the nexus of arguments that together constitute their world view.
Among the extremists who, within months of the end of the war, were engaged in an attempt to lessen Germany’s burden of responsibility were the vanguard of the deniers. They generally agreed that the United States should not have allowed itself to be drawn into the war. But their primary objective was to help Germany regain moral standing in the world. They believed that a strong, revived Germany was the key to the future of Western Europe. They recognized that the Allies in general and Americans in particular were likely to balk at aiding a country that was perceived as vicious, if not genocidal. It was necessary, therefore, to mitigate, i
f not totally dissipate, the uniqueness of Germany’s wartime behavior. They did so in a number of ways: by portraying Nazi Germany in a positive light, by minimizing the severity of its hostile actions, and by engaging in immoral equivalencies—that is, by citing what they claimed were comparable Allied wrongs.
Some of them were quite sympathetic to Hitler and portrayed him as a leader whose only motivation was the good of his own country. In addition to demonstrating a conciliatory attitude toward Poland, he had sought to avoid war. He was, according to Austin App, a “man of architecture and art, not of armaments and war.” He did not want to go to war and was reluctant to mobilize the German people.39 Hitler’s Germany had been a society with many positive features that were overlooked because of disproportionate focus on some of its less appealing domestic policies.40 The war could not be defined as a moral struggle: All sides had been equally devious and, consequently, were equally guilty. In order to free Germany of its particular burden of guilt those engaged in this effort had to address directly the issue of the atrocities committed under the Nazis. The most extreme among them tried to neutralize German actions by directly comparing the Nazis’ annihilation of the Jews and murder of millions of others with Allied actions. They contended that the United States had committed wrongdoings of the same magnitude. The ardent isolationist Freda Utley made the same point in The High Cost of Vengeance:
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery no one ever paid a higher compliment to the Nazis than their conquerors. . . . We reaffirmed the Nazi doctrine that “might makes right.” Instead of showing the Germans that Hitler’s racial theories were both wrong and ridiculous, we ourselves assumed the role of a master race.41
The argument that the United States committed atrocities as great, if not greater, than those committed by Germany has become a fulcrum of contemporary Holocaust denial and a theme repeated continually in their literature. But the deniers do not stop with this. In order to achieve their goals, one of which is the historical rehabilitation of Germany, they must “eliminate” the Holocaust. Once they do so, this equation—everyone is equally guilty—becomes even easier to make. If there was no Holocaust and the Allies committed terrible atrocities, then what was so bad about Nazi Germany?
It is also a central argument for those who relativize the Holocaust—that is, those who say the Nazis were no worse than anyone else. For the relativizer, these charges serve as immoral equivalents that mitigate the uniqueness of German wrongs. George Morgenstern, an editor of the Chicago Tribune, offered a mild example of American postwar equalizing, or relativizing, wrongdoings when he argued that none of the Allies had “clean hands” or were real “exemplar[s] of justice.” While the fascist “slave states” were abhorrent to decent people, the British Empire, whose existence was dependent on the “exploitation” of millions of natives, was equally abhorrent.42 William Neumann, who had been one of the first to attack prewar U.S. foreign policy, believed that Allied atrocities were the “point by point” equivalent of the Nazis’.43 Stalin had invaded Poland in 1939, England and France had declared war on Germany, and the United States had committed acts of aggression against Germany before Pearl Harbor in the form of lend-lease. Frederick Libby of the National Council for the Prevention of War tried to lessen Germany’s burden by stating that “no nation has a monopoly on atrocities. War itself is the supreme atrocity.”44
There were also those who, not satisfied with attacking Roosevelt or equating German and American wrongdoing, went a step further and portrayed Germany as the much-maligned victim of Allied aggression. Such arguments served as the model for those who would eventually seek not just to exculpate Germany for the Holocaust but to deny its existence altogether. According to these postwar revisionists, the bombing of Dresden and Cologne as well as Allied postwar policy toward Germany were equivalent to Nazi atrocities. They assailed Allied acquiescence in allowing the bifurcation of Germany and Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, ignoring the fact that the West had no alternative short of armed conflict with the Soviets. They demanded, and succeeded in getting, special American immigration permits for Germans.45 Ignoring similar conditions in other parts of Europe, they accused the United States of allowing the German people to starve and insisted that special relief plans be instituted to help Germany. Isolationist forces in the Senate persuaded a total of thirty-four senators to inform the president jointly that Germany and Austria were “facing starvation on a scale never before experienced in Western Civilization.”46 Utley and other revisionists falsely claimed that, for three years after their unconditional surrender, the Allies had kept the Germans on rations that were less than or, at best, the same as those in a concentration camp.
Many of these isolationists seemed—according to Justus Doenecke, who has written a sympathetic portrait of them—to draw righteous justification from the fact that they had found a way to portray Germany as the victim and the United States as the victimizer and “malicious power.”47 Some World War II revisionists found it hard to exonerate the German political and military leaders who led the nation in war. Instead they attempted to distinguish between the behavior of the “people” as opposed to their “leaders,” depicting the Germans as a people who had themselves been persecuted and victimized. While there may have been elements of truth in their charges, these extremists carried them to a point where fantasy subsumed reality.48
Relativists and German apologists cited the Allies mass transfer of German citizens from Czechoslovakia and Poland in the immediate aftermath of the war as the ultimate example of Allied brutality. Sen. William Langer (R-ND), who had vigorously opposed Roosevelt’s foreign policy, spoke of a “savage and fanatical plot” to destroy fifteen million German women and children.49 Senator Langer claimed that three million of the German refugees had died en route.50 Freda Utley described these population transfers as “crimes against humanity.” Her choice of this particular phrase, which had already gained wide currency as a result of the Nuremberg indictments, was telling. (Eventually Utley would become one of the most vocal of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s supporters, branding one of those he accused of being a Communist spy as a “Judas cow,” an animal who led others to be slaughtered).51 Using a tactic that typified the actions of those who, in their quest to defend Nazi Germany, stopped short of denying the atrocities, she compared these transfers with what had been done to the Jews. According to her the expulsion of millions of people from their homes for the sole “crime” of being part of the German “race” was an “atrocity” equivalent to “the extermination of the Jews and the massacres of the Poles and Russians by the Nazis.” Utley continued: “The women and children who died of hunger and cold on the long trek from Silesia and the Sudetenland to what remained of the German Reich, may have thought that a quick death in a gas chamber would have been comparatively merciful.”52
She exonerated the German war criminals who were tried at Nuremberg because what they did was “minor in extent if not in degree” compared with the postwar behavior of the Russian armies and the “genocide” committed by Poles and Czechs against Germans.53 Taking the tactic of immoral equivalencies to its ultimate extreme, she argued that “there was no crime the Nazis had committed which we or our allies had not also committed.”54 Although Utley was an extremist who did not abandon her political beliefs even after the war, such charges were not only made by extremists. The Chicago Tribune accused the French of not permitting more than half a million German prisoners of war to return home. According to the paper they were being kept as “slaves,” denied food sufficient to allow them to work, and beaten by “Moroccan savages.”55
Many of the critics focused on a plan proposed toward the end of the war by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, which would have prevented the economic rehabilitation of Germany. Though the plan was never put into effect, World War II revisionists and Holocaust deniers claim it was and cite it as an example of the Allies’ diabolical attitude toward Germany and of the way Germany was to be made th
e victim of Allied postwar retribution. Henry Regnery, who published much of the World War II revisionist material, issued a pamphlet comparing Morgenthau’s proposal with the Nazi plan to destroy millions of Jews through starvation.56 The fact that Morgenthau was not only a member of Roosevelt’s cabinet but an identifying Jew was something these critics were quick to exploit.2*
These postwar isolationists and World War II revisionists also cast Germany as the victim by stressing the “inhumanity” and “injustice” of the Allied war crimes trials and de-Nazification programs. (Lindbergh accused the Allies of imposing an “eye for an eye” punishment.) They questioned the legality of the Nuremberg trials and accused the Allies of hypocrisy in holding them, arguing that had the outcome of the war been reversed the Allied leaders would have found themselves in the docket. Beard also attacked the trials.57 Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) argued that the trials were marked by a “spirit of vengeance,” and the Chicago Tribune declared that Russia’s participation transformed them into a “kangaroo court.”58 Congressman Rankin accused the court at Nuremberg of having “perpetrated more outrages than any other organization of its kind.” He found it particularly appalling that Soviet Communist Jews, who he argued, bore responsibility for the murder of tens of millions of Christians, should be able to sit in judgment of “German soldiers, civilians and doctors, five or six years after the war closed.”59 Robert McCormick, probably America’s most influential isolationist, refused to have dinner with former Attorney General Francis Biddle because, as a result of his role in the Nuremberg trials, McCormick considered him a “murderer.”60 The New York Daily News declared that the defendants’ “real crime was that they did not win.”61
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