An “Aryan German from a town in Moravia,” Villard reported, had sent a letter “to an American official begging him to get the American government to intervene.”
He said that he was a loyal German but that he could no longer remain silent. He declared that a train of cattle cars—the Jews are allowed no others—has stood for twelve hours in the station of his town. The weather was cold, and there was no heat. There were no toilet facilities. No food or water was provided. He said that the moans and groans of the older people could be heard blocks away. German laws forbid such treatment of cows or swine or dogs.
Villard ended his report with some cold, harsh details: “In Vienna, the Dutch papers report, eighty-two Jews, thirty-six of them women, have committed suicide in the last two weeks.” He believed a great wave of protest from non-Jews—for example, from American Quakers—“might help, because the Germans are particularly anxious just now not to draw America into the war.”
ER, who routinely read the Nation, would have seen Villard’s stunning article. That same week, her great friend and first biographer, journalist Ruby Black, sent another article. “Just in case you missed seeing it,” Black wrote, “I’m enclosing a clipping from the Washington Star of 16 December, written . . . by W. L. White, son of William Allen White.” William Allen White, editor of the Emporia Gazette in Kansas, was one of the most revered journalists of the day. His son’s article, datelined Berlin, was the
story of a little man who cried. I met the little man going from counter to counter at the American Embassy. He spoke almost no English and he carried the passport of a Balkan country, and there was no reason why he should come to our Embassy except that little people who have heard that America is big and powerful and generous and kindly somehow do go there to tell their little stories and plead for a little help when the rest of the world is too cynical or calloused or realistic to listen.
And this was the story of the little man who cried as he told it to me in the big high-ceilinged room of the Embassy, only at first he did not cry, but spoke only with a polite and desperate earnestness.
He said he himself was not Polish, but his relatives came from a little village in what was once Czechoslovakia and then for a while was Poland and is now German.
One morning, the SS announced that all the Jewish men “between 14 and 70” would in six days be sent to a labor camp. . . . So, not knowing quite why, the doctors took their instrument cases and the workers their spades or saws or picks. What has become of them is known in the village only through several post cards passed along from town to town, and always by hand, for they were not allowed to use the mails. . . . But they were not taken to a labor camp. They were put into railway freight cars and for many days were shunted about the country. . . . Sometimes when the train stopped near a farm village the German guards let them buy food from the farmers. Then when there was no more money, the farmers would sometimes give them food, for the farmers were Polish, not German.
The Jewish men were careful to write on the cards that the German guards were very kind to them, and that they were all well and warm and happy. The little man who showed me the cards and explained this did not cry at that point. The cards said that for six of the many days they were kept locked in the freight cars, but the German guards passed in to them warm water, with a little tea in it.
Then, no one yet knows why, they were taken out of the freight cars and put into another train which had only open cars, such as are used for hauling coal.
Then one day the train stopped and half the men were told to get out and to walk east, where they would come to a river, and over the river was that part of Poland “which now belongs to Russia, and maybe the Russians would take them in.” White continued:
Then the train went on, leaving the Jewish men standing in an open field . . . no one knows if they got there, . . . for nothing else has been heard of them. . . . The men still on the train were taken to a village near Lublin . . . where the Germans . . . set up a Jewish reservation. Here they were told to build barracks for themselves and their families. Then the women and children left in the original village [were] told they must be ready to leave in four days, and this is why the shabby little man who cried made the desperate trip to Berlin where the foreign embassies are.
He did not ask that these Jews be allowed to come to America, for he knows that cannot be. . . . He was only sent to ask that the women and children be given more time . . . Nobody can do anything and the little man who cried has gone back to the village.
In mid-December, perhaps because of White Jr.’s reports, FDR asked William Allen White to meet with him “to spend the night at the White House and let me sit you on the sofa after supper and talk over small matters like the world’s problems.” ER hoped that White’s interest would induce her husband to form a new committee for refugees, but FDR’s agenda was not yet so broad. The great journalist from America’s heartland had worked avidly to mobilize public opinion to lift the arms embargo and accept the idea of cash-and-carry to convey needed supplies to England and France. FDR now wanted “a few helpful thoughts from the philosopher of Emporia.”
FDR reviewed the “several schools of thought” about the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
One thinks that Germany took hold of the Bear’s tail in order to keep England and France out of the war and that Germany today is much concerned over Russia’s unexpected policy of action—Eastern Poland, Finland . . . [the future] of Norway, Sweden, Rumania, Bulgaria, etc. The other school of thought, with equal reason, believes that there is fairly definite agreement . . . for the division of European control [extended to] Asia Minor, Persia, Africa and the various British, French, Dutch, Belgian, etc., colonies.
Since Hitler and Stalin both assumed they would be victorious, they were to divide the earth’s resources. Concerned about German-Soviet domination in the world, FDR worried to White that if that geographic deal were true, and Germany and Russia were to win, our civilization
is indeed in peril. Our world trade would be at [their] mercy . . . and our increasingly better relations with our twenty neighbors to the south would end—unless we were willing to go to war. . . . Things move with such terrific speed, these days, that it really is essential to us to think in broader terms and, in effect, to warn the American people that they, too, should think of possible ultimate results in Europe and the Far East.
Therefore, my sage old friend, my problem is to get the American people to think of conceivable consequences without scaring the American people into thinking that they are going to be dragged into this war.
White’s subsequent visit resulted in a significant new offer to mobilize a movement to defend America by aiding the Allies.
• • •
While ER was generally impressed by FDR’s geopolitical vision, his 3 January State of the Union message, which promised budget cuts for everything except defense, was a disappointment. She attended with “rather a large family party” that included SDR, Sistie, and Buzzy. “I enjoy going up to Congress largely because I like to watch the reaction of the ‘floor,’” she wrote in her column. She did not criticize the president directly but commented on the partisan nature of congressional applause. Even when FDR referred to bipartisan issues agreed upon by all, Republicans sat motionless while Democrats applauded. “When the President announced, however, that except for national defense, all other items of the budget would show a decrease, the Republican side . . . applauded vigorously.” She asked with uncharacteristic candor whether the Republicans meant by this that “issues of health, unemployment, the preservation of people’s morale . . . are apparently party matters not matters of national interest, and have no part in the national defense. What is this? Blindness? Ignorance? Indifference or partisanship?”
With the future of America imperiled, and the world at risk, ER considered it her primary job to build or revive support for her husband’s best policies. She could only hope
that Congress would transcend its partisan limits and reach “national unity on questions of national importance.”
On domestic issues, she still considered her closest allies the activists of the AYC, but this alliance was now frayed and in disarray. In the wake of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, their onetime antifascist idealism had yielded to reactionary “anti-imperialism.” They attacked Britain and France and showed a surprising unconcern regarding the hideous torment of European Jews.
By contrast, her new friend Joe Lash shared her concern for Europe’s agony, the plight of Jews, and the needs of refugees. Lash, earnest and sincere, thoughtful and brash, increasingly fascinated her, lifted her spirits, dominated her thoughts, and enchanted her heart. After the Dies Committee hearings, she had noticed his disgust and confusion at the new positions adopted by his mostly former friends, and she had only sympathy for him: “I have rarely seen anyone more unhappy.” But he despised rats, and with absolute integrity he told ER that he would not name those among her AYC friends who were Communists, and he hoped she would understand. Of course she did, and she respected him for it. At an ASU convention in Madison, Wisconsin, the delegates had refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Finland, by a vote of 322 to 49. He told ER he had been prepared “for defeat but not quite for the clobbering.” He and Molly Yard resigned from the ASU immediately.
His contemplative and inquiring mind impressed her. Some considered him brooding, but ER was drawn to his serious manner and his deep consideration for others. She invited him to dinner at the White House, with her cousin Forbes Morgan; Charlotte Kraus, a Viennese singer; and Abbott Simon of the AYC. Simon’s views, wrote Lash, continued to influence ER, who was beginning to believe the student movement was Communist-dominated. They all went for a swim before dinner, in the White House pool, and Lash witnessed the first lady diving. It was rather a “breathtaking affair, a sheer triumph of will,” followed by an extraordinary “splash.” She then swam about, “got under the diving board, and chinned up several times.”
At dinner, there was a discussion of the recent novel Address Unknown by Kathrine Taylor. Written in the form of an exchange of letters between an American Jewish art dealer in California and his former friend and partner who “returned to the fatherland” to surrender to Nazi pressures, it is a story of “craven betrayal.” Both FDR and ER found it impressive and provocative, Lash observed:
Mrs. Roosevelt wondered whether she would not have acted in the same cowardly way in the same circumstances. “I really am a coward,” she added. [But] the President wouldn’t hear of this. He was absolutely sure she would have done the right thing whatever the consequences. It was a theme to which she would revert frequently. Was she standing up firmly enough for what she believed in, she would ask. How would she behave if put to the test of torture and death for her convictions?
Subsequently, she explained, the question was more general: Why had the German people “gone along with the policies of their leaders”? Could such docility occur anywhere? Would Americans do the same, “or were the Germans as a people more submissive?”
There were of course many “resisters” in Germany, Lash reminded the first lady. “The concentration camps were full of them.” In fact his friend Karl Frank, an underground leader whom ER had agreed to see the next day, was one of them.
Karl Frank was the German socialist leader of the underground movement Neu Beginnen, then based in London. A psychoanalyst and political agitator, he dedicated himself to bringing about Hitler’s demise and became leader of the German Social Democratic Party in Prague. He assumed the name Paul Hagen, to protect his family still in Germany. He had visited New York in 1935, married “activist-heiress” Anna Caples, and forged the progressive American Friends of German Freedom, supported by Norman Thomas and chaired by Reinhold Niebuhr.
When the Hagens returned to New York in December 1939, Lash, who had known the dashing, charismatic leader for five years, was eager to arrange a meeting between him and ER. Lash believed Paul Hagen’s work for refugees, his vast network of exiled Socialists from Lisbon to Stockholm, and his broadcasts and publications for German freedom would move her. She agreed, and the meeting had been scheduled for the following day.
Meanwhile dinner consisted of significant banter between the first couple concerning fair wages, money for extended benefits, and the prohibitive costs of the Youth Act. FDR supported his wife’s efforts on behalf of the act but wondered where the money might come from. ER said youth wanted more money for training, jobs, and social services—and less for armaments. “At this,” recounts Lash, “the President pushed back in his chair and said, ‘All right. Let’s accept the opinion of youth, but I want my protest recorded for history.’”
Abbott Simon suggested that the United States did not “need all these battleships,” while ER expressed concern that the congressional pressure for 85,000-ton battleships was navy- or industry-inspired. The president “snapped, ‘Utopianism.’” Ultimately, he feared a German-Russian victory in Europe throughout the Americas: “We had to be armed to prevent penetration of the continent and disruption of the hemispheric system.” Social services and armaments, the Youth Act and the navy, were all necessary, he agreed. But we had to arm first. He turned to Simon and said, “You will have to wait a year. You can wait a year.”
ER offered Joe Lash her home at Val-Kill as “a haven for a few weeks.” Lash returned the next day for lunch to learn more about Val-Kill and “where to find things”—notably “wine, skis, and cigarettes.” And he brought Karl Frank with him.
Frank told ER detailed stories of the many German underground leaders in concentration camps, and the urgency for rescue and Hitler’s defeat. Their compelling discussion of refugees caused ER to call Dorothy Detzer of the WILPF, who told her about a U.S. consul in Geneva, who was reputed to be “anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic” and who held up visas, even for those whose “number had been reached.” More than one State Department official, it seemed, was determined to block refugees from entering the United States. With Frank and Lash present, ER called Assistant Secretary of State James Messersmith to protest. He could do nothing within the State Department and wondered if FDR knew about its inaction. ER was hopeful about Karl Frank’s energetic movement to bypass and resist it.
By this time ER and FDR knew everything anybody would need to know to change the popular mood regarding rescue and sanctuary. They had personally received reports. Hitler’s decrees had been published and disseminated widely as propaganda. On 5 December he had announced that some were to be sent to concentration camps to be enslaved; others were to be stamped “NN” for Nacht und Nebel (night and fog), marked for execution. Mass public executions of Jews and Poles were ongoing, as William Shirer reported in his amazing broadcasts from Berlin and Helsinki: Hitler was engaged in “a holy struggle against the Jews . . . an ideological struggle against world Jewry.” According to Nazi propaganda, Shirer continued, England was “spiritually, politically, and economically at one with the Jews. . . . England and the Jews remain the common foe.”
Moreover, on 22 January, Pope Pius XII used the Vatican Radio to denounce Nazi atrocities in Poland. “The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a helpless and a homeless people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses.” Fifteen thousand Poles had been executed since September. General Friedrich Mieth, chief of staff of the German First Army, deplored these executions “without proper trials,” which “besmirched” the honor of the Germany army.
Yet the next day, 23 January, FDR promoted his friend Breckinridge Long to be assistant secretary of state and widened his portfolio at the State Department. Wealthy and well-connected, Long was dedicated to keeping America uncontaminated by un-Americans. ER was stunned—she had consistently protested Long’s politics. Now, he would be in charge of all visa and refugee issues and supervise twenty-three of the forty-two divisions of the State Department, including the visa sect
ion, the legal division, and the Foreign Service Personnel Board. His hand would prevent the granting of visas even for those whose numbers had come through.
• • •
On a snowy day in January, Lash arrived at the Poughkeepsie station to take ER up on her offer to use the Val-Kill cottage as a haven while he decided what to do next. He was greeted by Earl Miller. It is not clear whether the first lady asked Miller to meet him or whether Miller, ever suspicious—and now her self-appointed protector—wanted to investigate the new kid in town.
Joe unpacked, went down to the kitchen for lunch, and “found he had company.” Miller explained he liked to “keep an eye on the place.” He was eating a simple ham and cheese sandwich, while Joe was served “three of the thickest chops I had ever seen.” Joe’s immediate offer to share the feast was “gratefully accepted,” and the road to a tentative friendship unfolded. Miller introduced Joe to ER’s favorite walks through the snow and ice. The time went by “placidly,” surrounded by books, the deep quiet of Val-Kill, splendid food, and long walks with companionable if snarling dogs. During his last days there, the first family arrived with various guests, and conversations about the future continued.
At moments when they were alone that week, Lash asked ER probing, poignant, even impertinent questions. Had she read in the social sciences? Yes, she replied, and Ibsen too. While his blunt banter might have caused others to bristle, his awkward intensity amused her. She enjoyed his manner, his quest for the good, his deep sense of responsibility—a quality she considered spiritual. He was easy to talk to, interested in everything, witty, and generous. In a letter, he had compared FDR’s leadership style to Abraham Lincoln’s. He suggested the president’s relationship to militant New Dealers was akin to Lincoln’s relationship to “radical abolitionists.” Both had to compromise with congressional reality and not abandon “basic purposes.”
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