While this sentiment may have been uppermost in the hearts of many—though certainly not every heart—in London, the same could not be said of the United States and particularly of its press. The American press may have been as horrified as the British press—though in view of its treatment of the news this does not seem likely—but unlike its counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic it accepted, almost without question, the official claim that rescue could only come with victory. During the month of December the same American editorials which unequivocally decried the Jews’ fate unequivocally accepted the proposition that nothing could be done. The New York Times bemoaned the “world’s helplessness to stop the horror while the war is going on” and believed that Jews’ lives would only “be accounted for at the time of reckoning,” i.e., victory, and no sooner. In its editorial condemning Nazi “savagery,” the Los Angeles Times did not even raise the possibility that rescue action was possible. The most the New York World Telegram would support was the creation of an Allied commission to identify the guilty so that after the war they could be punished.77 As has already been shown, The Christian Century believed that neither kinetic nor emotional energy should be expended on this issue.
Dorothy Thompson was one of the few journalists to strongly advocate action. In her column of December 22 she called what was being done to the Jews “complete extermination” and described the victims as 5 million “human beings who, after being removed from western and central Europe to the east are being poisoned, shot, gassed, and starved to death.” She tried to organize an appeal to the German people from Americans of German background and from American Protestants. She proposed that a group of German-Americans visit the White House and ask the President to broadcast a direct appeal to the German people. None of her plans, with the exception of a full-page ad in the form of a “Christmas Declaration” which appeared in ten major metropolitan dailies, ever came to fruition. The ad was signed by fifty prominent Americans of German ancestry, including Babe Ruth, William Shirer, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The declaration did garner attention and was broadcast by the Office of War Information to Europe and to U.S. armed forces. In order to be able to place the ad, Thompson not only had to tone down the references to Jews but had to appeal to the American Jewish Congress to help defray the expenses.78
A few American newspapers and journals pressed for immediate action. The New York Post declared it “good, but not good enough” for the Allies to denounce the extermination and promise to “deal out ‘retribution’” after the war. They needed to find a “serious plan” capable of stopping the killing and rescuing those in danger. The Nation and The New Republic both argued that the Jews of occupied Europe could do with “a little less pity and a little more help.” These lonely editorial voices asked America to respond to the moral imperative of action and not to watch with indifference while the “spiritual and physical crucifixion of the Jews” proceeds apace.79 Their requests proved as futile as their voices were few.
Official Doubts
In analyzing the American press reaction, one cannot ignore the degree to which government officials, particularly those in the State Department, were staunchly opposed to publicizing this issue. From late summer 1942, when reports regarding the Final Solution began to arrive from Switzerland, Department personnel debated not only whether the charges of a plan to exterminate the Jews were true, but, if they were, whether they should be publicized. The general sentiment was that in view of the “fantastic nature of the allegations” it was better not to do so. Department officials balked at transmitting the information to Jewish representatives, such as Rabbi Wise, who might release it to the press.80During this time both the United States and Britain followed a policy of using horror propaganda sparingly.81 Late in October 1942 Drew Pearson described in his syndicated column the debate among government officials regarding the release of the stories. Those who opposed publication argued
that the atrocity stories of the last war were largely invented, and . . . left the public disillusioned; thus the people might now react unfavorably and charge the Government with pulling the same tricks.82
Allied officials also opposed publicity because they feared, or so they claimed, that the non-Jewish population of Europe would, upon learning of Nazi brutality, become so paralyzed with fright that it would terminate all its resistance efforts. It does not seem to make much sense for officials to have argued that Americans would dismiss the stories as fabrications but Europeans would accept them without reservation. This may have simply been an excuse not to release the information.
There were Department bureaucrats who argued that the reports were the product of Jewish publicity tactics and the government should in no way provide its imprimatur. When the first reports of a mass murder program reached the State Department’s Division of European Affairs, it opposed release of the information because of the “impossibility of our being of any assistance.” Division officials debated whether to “pass or suppress” it.83 But for pressure from external sources, both the British Foreign Office and the State Department would have probably suppressed the information long past December 1942. One of the most ardent opponents of confirmation was R. B. Reams, the specialist on Jewish issues for the State Department’s Division of European Affairs, who repeatedly stated his “grave doubts in regard to the desirability or advisability of issuing a statement.” In December 1942 he was still telling those who inquired that the reports of mass murder were “to the best of my knowledge . . . as yet unconfirmed.” On the day before Wise and the delegation of other representatives of the Jewish community were scheduled to visit the President in order to discuss the annihilation of the Jews, Reams argued that it was necessary for Wise “to call off, or at least to tone down, the present world-wide publicity campaign concerning ‘mass murders.’” When Congressman Hamilton Fish of New York called him to obtain details on Wise’s press release, Reams informed him that the reports are still “unconfirmed.” On December 15, the eve of the Allied statement, he told an official from the Latin American Section that the reports about the murder of the Jews were still not confirmed. When it became clear that he would not be able to prevent the Allies from issuing a statement, Reams tried to weaken the proposed text and to add various disclaimers to it which would shed doubt upon the existence of the Final Solution.84
It had long been the State Department’s policy to avoid public denunciation of massacres against Jews. In 1941 Franklin Mott Gunther, American Minister in Roumania, wrote to Washington regarding “oppressive and cruel measures employed against the Jews.” Jews were being “massacred,” “executed,” and treated with “indescribable horror.” Gunther suggested a variety of steps Washington could take, all of which were ignored by the State Department.85
There were other American officials who did not share their colleagues’ reservations or spend their energies trying to keep their government from becoming involved in this issue. In October 1942 Paul C. Squire, the American Consul in Geneva, received a signed sworn affidavit from Paul Guggenheim, a professor of international law in Geneva, attesting to the existence of an order by Hitler “demanding the extermination of the Jews.” Squire expressed his faith in the professor’s “integrity, reliability and sincerity” and leaned in favor of publicizing Guggenheim’s information. Squire lamented the “futile search . . . in order to find somewhere the Good Samaritan” who might help “relieve the tragic situation.”86
John Winant, the American Ambassador to Britain, also was among those officials who supported publicizing the news. On the same day that Reams was urging the Department to distance itself from Wise and the reports of mass murder, Winant urged Washington to join with the British and Russians “in protesting against German terrorism and to make clear that punishment will be meted out to those responsible for Jewish atrocities.”87
While most American State Department officials were trying to distance themselves from the news of the Final Solution, the British Foreign Office chose a d
ifferent modus operandi After initially following a policy marked by great reserve and telling the BBC to “soft pedal” the news of atrocities, it decided that it was “particularly important . . . to continue telling the Poles that we know about the suffering of the Jews” and to seize the opportunity to publicize British anger. Among the reasons for this turnabout was combined pressure from Jewish organizations, the Polish government in exile, members of Parliament, and the press. Press attention stimulated other British religious and political leaders to speak out on the matter. Faced with articles and editorials in the London Times, the Manchester Guardian, and a myriad of other papers; the appeals from commanding personalities such as William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury; threats from members of Parliament to publicly confront the government on this matter by asking pointed questions regarding Allied behavior and the possibility that there would be even stronger demands for action, the British began to push the Americans to participate in a joint Allied statement.88 The British press alone could not have prompted the government to respond, but it clearly was a critical factor in arousing the interest and concern of both the public at large and opinion makers within the ranks of the public.
Once the statement was released, State Department officials tried to downplay its significance. Two days after the declaration, a cable was sent by the Department to Costa Rica stating that “there had been no confirmation of the reported order from other sources (except from a Jewish leader in Geneva).” Despite a claim by the Baltimore Sun that Roosevelt and the State Department have tried to keep the American public fully informed regarding the atrocities, when it came to the Final Solution this was not American policy. As Walter Laqueur has observed, the Department wanted to “have nothing to do with the content of the [Allied] message.”89 In fact, it really wanted to have nothing at all to do with publicizing any information regarding the Final Solution.
Why were officials so opposed to confirming the news? Why did they claim to be unconvinced as to its veracity? Once they acknowledged that the Nazis were engaged in the systematic annihilation of the Jews, they knew that they would have to contend with rescue demands and, if they did not heed these requests, with charges that they were being laggard in their efforts. Their fears were justified, for this was precisely what happened. Both Washington and London now had to stave off increasingly strident requests for action from various Jewish and non-Jewish groups.90In July 1943 Foreign Office officials were still complaining about Polish and particularly Jewish groups’ use of these stories to “stoke us up” and force the government to “waste a disproportionate amount of . . . time in dealing with wailing Jews.” State Department officials felt similarly.91
Yet, though London and Washington, to a lesser degree, were beset with requests for rescue, they were ultimately able to dodge the issue—thanks, in part, to the press. The British government had a task here because of the pressure of the press and prominent personalities. Washington did not face this problem. By paying relatively little attention to what was happening to Europe’s Jews and accepting the proposition that rescue would and could only come with victory, the American press as well as leading political and religious figures eased Washington’s dilemma of having to do something, or at least appear to do something. On those occasions when British and American officials felt compelled to give the appearance of action—as they did in December 1942 and would again at Bermuda in April 1943—the press readily accepted their claims that they were genuinely trying to resolve the issue. Satisfied that all that could be done was being done, the press reported news of the Final Solution but did not pursue it with any urgency. In fact, it hardly pursued it at all. When it transmitted the information, it did so in a confused, skeptical, and obfuscated fashion. Mostly, there was an air of lassitude about the way it covered this story. On those few instances when the press focused on the issue, as the British press did in December 1942, public opinion and eventually the government responded.
9
Reluctant Rescuers
As 1943 unfolded, the German resolve to expedite the destruction of those Jews who remained alive seemed to grow stronger. Information emerged from all over Eastern Europe which served to confirm that the program to finally murder all the Jews was well underway. Ghettos which had once been full were now said to be mysteriously empty. Deportations were taking place in Western Europe, including Holland, Belgium, and France. There was even a report of a Nazi order to “starve” the Jews as a means of killing them. According to the New York Times mid-February had been set as the date for the “total liquidation of the Jewish problem” in France.1 AP reported that Polish Jews had been confined to fifty-five different ghettos where they were “awaiting extermination.”2 The February 27 edition of Collier’s printed a first-hand description of life in the Warsaw ghetto. Written by Tosha Bialer, who had been in the ghetto until the previous summer, the article was accompanied by pictures of those whom the magazine described as “starving people” and “homeless, hungry children.”
The Nazi leadership seemed remarkably more candid about its plans. According to a BBC broadcast, recorded in the United States by CBS, March 31 had been set as the day on which Berlin was to be completely Jew-free. Six thousand Jews would be deported daily in order to achieve that goal. Dr. Robert Ley, the Reich Labor Minister, reaffirmed Hitler’s policy of extermination, and in light of the revelations and confirmations of the previous months no longer could his words be understood figuratively.
No one in Germany is to speak any longer of the Jews as the chosen people. The Jew has been chosen but for destruction.3
Reports released by the Polish government in exile and the World Jewish Congress in mid-February painted an even bleaker picture of conditions in Europe. The World Jewish Congress charged on February 14 that the Germans had issued orders to “speed and intensify the extermination by massacre and starvation of the Jews remaining in occupied Europe.” The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times considered this news worthy of pages 2 and 3 respectively; the New York World Telegram carried it on page 13, the Atlanta Constitution on page 18, and the New York Times on page 37.4
Additional information released in March indicated that the situation was becoming more desperate. The American Jewish Congress estimated that “two out of every seven Jews [have been] liquidated by the Nazi ‘new order.’” In a lengthy article published on March 4 the Christian Science Monitor vigorously pointed out that Germany did not deny the estimate that 2 million Jews had been killed; in fact “Germany does not even deny that the extermination of the Jews is carried out according to a meticulously arranged plan.” The article analyzed what was known about the fate of the Jewish population in each of the seventeen countries which the Nazis had conquered. It ended with the concise observation that the “deportees either starve while under way in sealed cattle cars or are killed after their arrival at one of the extermination centers that were established in Lithuania and Poland.”5
That same day an Overseas News Agency dispatch from Stockholm reported that Himmler had issued a circular indicating that the Third Reich “seriously intends to annihilate all the Jews in Europe.” The circular announced that Poles were to be taken to “educative labor camps” and then transferred to other places of incarceration, while Jews “are to be transferred to the next state police station for further dealing.” The absence, the news report observed, of “any supplementary instructions would indicate strongly that in most instances ‘further dealing’ means execution.”6 On March 20 the Polish government in exile released news that the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto was “being speeded up.” This information was preceded by an AP dispatch saying that as a result of “fighting” which had occurred during the “forced removal” of Jews from the ghetto, fifty Germans had been killed. On March 21 a number of papers carried a brief AP report that the entire Jewish population of five Polish towns, approximately 35,000 Jews, had been killed.7
Though this news painted a frightening picture, most of these st
ories were paid insignificant attention by the press. If they were to be found in a paper, they were usually relegated to a few small paragraphs tucked away somewhere unobtrusively. However, by the beginning of March the attitude of some of the American press had begun to change. This change was a response, in part, to activities sponsored by various segments of the American Jewish community. For a short period of time in 1943 American Jewry managed to focus the attention of the press on the situation of European Jewry and, of even greater importance, prompted some papers to ask whether rescue through victory was the only alternative.
The March Rallies: The Possibility of Rescue
On March 1st a massive rally was held at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was addressed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, AFL President William Green, and many other prominent personalities. The rally’s theme was “Stop Hitler’s decimation of the Jews now.” Rescue could not wait until victory. Press estimates of the number of people who listened to the speeches over a public address system set up in the street because the 22,000-seat Garden was filled were as high as 50,000. The rally, which was sponsored by the American Jewish Congress, AFL, CIO, Church Peace Union, Free World Association, and a number of other Jewish and non-Jewish groups, received wide press attention. Newspapers from all over the country and magazines, including Time and Newsweek, commented on it and described it as the largest gathering of its kind ever held in the United States.8 Stephen Wise, aware of the press’s importance, tried to capitalize on the attention the rally generated by writing to editors of various newspapers in order to get them to publicize its proposals. Similar rallies were held throughout the United States in a variety of different cities.9
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