1944

by Jay Winik

  So as Wise considered how best to thread his way through the maze of government intrigue and reach Roosevelt, Welles seemed to be the right guide indeed.

  THERE IS A TIME to be eloquent, and a time when eloquence is wasted. For the most part, State Department officials, from Breckinridge Long to the Division of European Affairs, thought Wise was crying wolf—or that the issues he was raising were a meddlesome sideshow. They were exceedingly skilled at smoothly uttering pious platitudes while doing nothing; already, the Division of European Affairs had suppressed another telegram coming to Wise from London, one which called for urgent steps as a response to Riegner’s report.

  By contrast, the British were serious about the threat, and had been for some time; indeed as early as 1933, the British ambassador in Berlin spoke fervently about his “great uneasiness and apprehension” regarding a country where “fanatics and eccentrics have got the upper hand.”

  That same year, in the United States, Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland had introduced a resolution calling on Roosevelt to “communicate an unequivocal statement of the profound feelings of surprise and pain experienced by the people of the United States upon learning of the discriminations and oppressions imposed by the Third Reich upon its Jewish citizens.” The State Department blocked the measure, claiming heatedly that the president would be put in an embarrassing position, and asking how Roosevelt could explain how there were still lynchings in America (even, it was pointedly noted, in Maryland)? Secretary of State Hull made sure that the resolution died in committee. Just three months after taking office, Roosevelt himself acknowledged that the Jews in Germany were being treated “shamefully,” but added, “We can do nothing,” except to help those who are American citizens. Unable to find a more comprehensive answer, he joked to James Paul Warburg, a member of a leading American Jewish family, “You know, Jimmy, it would serve that fellow Hitler right if I sent a Jew to Berlin as my ambassador. How would you like the job?”

  By now, however, these issues of 1933 seemed relatively small. More information continued to arrive about the destruction of the Jews—from Switzerland, from the Polish government in exile, from London, from sources in distant Palestine. Almost by the day, the picture as a whole was becoming unmistakable, even if some of the details were wrong or outdated. Still, officials at the State Department remained unmoved. Ray Atherton, the chief of the European division, planted seeds of doubt in Welles’s mind, insisting there was no reliable evidence about how many Jews were being “deported east.” As to “extermination”? Here again, he questioned the evidence. Actually, the State Department officials were convinced that the Jews, silent and afraid, were being used as slave laborers in the Nazi war effort, not unlike the Soviet prisoners of war as well as the captive Poles.

  Unwilling to breast the tide, Welles picked up the phone on September 3 and called Wise. He requested that Wise keep the Riegner Telegram under wraps until it could be “confirmed.”

  Fatefully, Wise relented.

  He did so having no idea how long the government would drag its heels. In the meantime, the Nazis’ roundups went on, the cattle cars continued to roll eastward, and hundreds and then thousands of Jews were being murdered each day.

  EVEN AS HE ADHERED to his promise to Welles to keep Riegner’s report out of the news, Wise continued to undertake furious behind-the-scenes measures to help the imperiled Jews. The strain began to show. He confessed to a good friend, the distinguished clergyman John Haynes Holmes, “I am almost demented over my people’s grief.” He wasn’t sure what leverage he could use, whom he could talk to, or what steps to take. One day in New York City, he exchanged views with a colleague who had just received word by cable from Switzerland that the Warsaw ghetto had been “evacuated” and that 100,000 Jews had been “bestially murdered.” The cable had said that the corpses of the victims were being used for “artificial fertilizers.” The missive ended with an urgent plea: “Only energetical steps from America may stop these persecutions. Do whatever you can to cause an American reaction.”

  The phrase “only energetical steps from America” must have rung like a Klaxon. Wise’s colleague confided that he was “physically broken down from this harrowing cable.” So was Wise. Touched by a sense of earthly doom, he saw this cable as a confirmation of Riegner’s report. A copy of the cable was passed on directly to Franklin Roosevelt as well as Eleanor Roosevelt. But there was no response. Wise had also asked the distinguished Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter to speak with Roosevelt personally; Frankfurter would not.

  The dimensions of the threat were so large that Wise next took the lead in organizing a temporary committee of influential Jewish leaders to prod the administration into greater action. They did whatever they could. Wise also asked Myron C. Taylor, Roosevelt’s emissary to the Vatican, who had been the president’s representative at the Évian Conference, to make an appeal to the pope. Taylor did, but the Vatican curtly informed him that the pope would not “descend to particulars” and in any case had already warned that “God would bless or condemn rulers” depending on the manner in which they handled their subjects. Meanwhile, in New York City, Wise met with the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, which had been in existence since 1938; but the group had little influence, then or now. However, he did manage to secure a meeting for his own ad hoc group with Sumner Welles and other officials on September 10.

  With a heavy heart, an increasingly pessimistic Wise boarded the train for Washington, D.C.

  WISE HAD A FULL schedule. On September 10, 1942, he sat down with Sumner Welles, Vice President Henry Wallace, Dean Acheson (who would later become the legendary secretary of state), Assistant Solicitor General Oscar Cox, and others, laying before them the “awful cables”—the Riegner Telegram, for one. Apparently unable to grasp the information, the vice president said that he had heard the Jews were being shuttled to the Russian front, where they were used as laborers, principally to build the Nazis’ defenses. For his part, Cox wondered if this was the last straw, if the time was rapidly approaching when at least a United Nations War Crimes Commission would be established—a minor step to be sure, but something. And at least Welles promised to dig deeper. Though it took him four weeks, in early October he personally instructed the U.S. chief of mission in Switzerland, Leland Harrison, to meet with Riegner and get to the bottom of matters. He had also forwarded, as a “TRIPLE PRIORITY MESSAGE,” recently received intelligence about the Jews of Warsaw being killed in special camps.

  Now, suddenly, there was movement. This time Harrison passed on information to Welles that Jews were in fact being rounded up and sent to “an unknown fate in the east.” For the first time, the concentration camp Belzec was identified by name. And a gravedigger’s account of gassings appeared in a Jewish newspaper, published in late September. Prodded by Myron Taylor, the Vatican suddenly acknowledged that it had received unverified reports of “severe measures against non-Aryans”—though it remained hesitant to take any further steps. The Roman Catholic Church, stiffly doctrinal, filled with ambitious prelates, was unwilling to place itself at the mercy of Hitler’s armies. At this point, however, the varied information had begun to trickle into the White House, and for the administration some of the hard questions could not be dodged or easily explained away, even if the complete details of the Final Solution were not yet fully understood. To be sure, war stalked Europe everywhere; so did misery and hunger and deprivation. The Continent had been transformed into a reeking slaughterhouse—and America was warily eyeing its pending North Africa campaign. Yet this reign of Nazi terror against the Jews seemed to be something entirely different, something altogether new, something crying out for action.

  The action came in the form of a statement. On October 7, 1942, the White House, echoing Roosevelt’s warning in August that war criminals would face “fearful retribution,” released a statement that the president was aware of a continuation of Nazi war crimes. Straddling the middle ground—his armed fo
rces were soon to be committed to North Africa—President Roosevelt promised what he could, but little more. He declared that war criminals would be subjected to “just and sure punishment” at the war’s end. The United Nations would establish a commission for the investigation of war crimes. Finally, Roosevelt warned the Nazis and those assisting them “to deter those committing the atrocities” and let them “know that they’re being watched by the civilized world.” What the president did not do was ask for a thousand sanctuaries across Europe, or call on Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Vichy France to refuse to cooperate in the deportations.

  THE KILLING AND DYING continued. Wise and his colleagues found little consolation in the White House measures. Weary of his struggle, and exhausted by the demands of alerting the public, Wise pressed on, speaking at a mass rally against the Nazis’ perfidy. He also lobbied the Department of the Interior to make the Virgin Islands available for refugees fleeing Hitler’s terror—a small gesture but still something. However, Roosevelt demurred, turning down the request. Meanwhile, in Switzerland Riegner and a colleague compiled a nearly thirty-page account with the most detailed information yet, including corroborating documents, and information from Schulte. They personally brought it to Leland Harrison and watched as Harrison began to read the first page. The report pulled no punches. “This policy of total destruction,” it announced, “has repeatedly been proclaimed by Hitler and is now being carried out.” “Poker-faced,” Harrison took his time, methodically scribbling notes in the margins as he read. When he was finished, he looked up and asked for the name of the German industrialist close to Hitler’s inner circle who provided much of the information. Riegner and his colleague hesitated, and their initial silence betrayed their dilemma. To reveal Schulte’s name was to potentially expose him to getting caught or killed. It also meant violating the promise Sagalowitz originally made to him. But not to reveal it was potentially even worse—that would deprive the report of its unimpeachable veracity.

  In the end, they relented. They handed Harrison a sealed envelope containing a single slip of paper on which was written: “Managing Director Dr. Schulte, mining industry. In close or closest contact with dominant figures in the war economy.”

  They added that a high official at the International Red Cross, one of Europe’s leading intellectuals, had independently confirmed the information provided by Schulte. From then on, a torrent of further corroboration continued coming from various sources. A Swedish businessman traveling through Warsaw learned that half the Jews there had been killed. For its part, a small publication, the National Jewish Monthly, had begun to put together the disparate pieces of the genocidal puzzle. Where were all the Jews, it wondered, particularly if they were being used as laborers? In the Polish ghettos? No—because reports indicated that 300,000 Jews had vanished “without a trace.” In Nazi-controlled White Russia? No—because Soviet guerrillas reported that all the Jews there had been cleaned out. In Germany? No—because German dispatches boasted that the German Third Reich was “Jew-free.” The monthly concluded that “the Nazis may be resorting to wholesale slaughter, preferring to kill all the Jews rather than use their labor.”

  Shortly thereafter, another publication, the Jewish Frontier, also hotly questioned whether Jews were really being used as labor. “A policy is now being put into effect, whose avowed object is extermination of a whole people,” this publication insisted. “It is a policy of systematic murder of innocent civilians, which in its dimensions, its ferocity and its organization is unique in the history of mankind.” In England, the archbishop of Canterbury agreed, declared that he was unconvinced by the “forced labor” explanation, and that a planned program of annihilation was almost certainly under way. William Temple, who would soon become the archbishop’s successor, declared that it was hard “to resist” this appalling conclusion.

  And as it happened, in Geneva, Paul Squire, the American consul, had received jolting photostats of letters from Warsaw written both in German and in partial code, providing evidence that the Germans were exterminating the Jews in frightening numbers. Incredibly, these photostats, forwarded via diplomatic airmail pouch, took more than three weeks to reach the State Department and then took nearly as much time to be brought to Sumner Welles’s attention.

  True, the information pouring in was at times confusing and contradictory; Auschwitz largely remained a carefully guarded secret, and the other killing centers were not yet fully understood. Yet by November 1942, the essentials of the Final Solution were emerging with alarming clarity.

  IN GERMANY, THERE WAS increasing clarity as well. Despite his insomnia Adolf Hitler continued his normal routine. When he was not leaning over maps of the dismal eastern campaign or berating his commanders, there was late-morning small talk with his aides and rambling monologues about the state of the war and the “sacrifices” and “heroic struggles” of the German people; then there was afternoon tea and more small talk; in the evening there would invariably be films, often two of them, procured by his propaganda minister, Goebbels. As ever, Hitler was moody; as ever, he was puritanical: a vegetarian who eschewed nicotine, he also looked askance at foul language. “Um Himmels willen!” (“For heaven’s sake!”) was as profane a phrase as he ever uttered. And as ever, he thought of himself as cultured: he would listen to records, usually Beethoven’s symphonies or selections from his beloved Wagner—leaning back in a chair as if in a daze, his eyes closed.

  These days, guilty of the murder of millions, he was increasingly wrapped in illusion, isolated from the German citizenry at home and from the German soldiers at the front, seldom appearing in public. But he could not escape military realities, much as he tried to. His war effort was crumbling, and the war was turning decisively in the Allies’ favor.

  The British had stepped up their nightly bombing raids: Munich was hit ferociously, and so were Düsseldorf, Bremen, and Duisburg. Afterward, crowds would swarm through the streets, numbed, shocked, and grumbling. And across Germany, increasingly long lines of women stood for hours waiting for daily rations, frustrated and hungry. On the eastern front, the battle for the immense prize of Russia was now being fought at Stalingrad. Hitler had been led to believe that this action would be over within ten days. Instead, the huge German army was caught in a prolonged, intense campaign in the snowy wastes of the Volga bend. In the city itself, with Soviet flags off in the distance, fighting took place house by house and smoking ruin by smoking ruin, in the cellars, in the muck of the sewers, in bombed-out plants, and in still-blazing department stores. The stench of corpses was palpable. In this savage battle, the Germans and Russians often circled each other at point-blank range, or engaged in hand-to-hand combat, until one unit or another was annihilated. As this dance of death continued, medical supplies ran out and food ran perilously short.

  This agony was increasingly felt even in Berlin: the cheering crowds had fallen silent and the once exuberant citizens now shuffled hesitantly down the boulevards and read lists of the dead posted at newsstands and in shop windows. For Hitler, the North Africa campaign was proving to be little better; despite Rommel’s upbeat reports, his men were short of weapons, equipment, and luck. Rommel, undertaking a mass retreat, had been forced to break off his offense at El Alamein in the direction of the Suez Canal only three days after it had begun, though this did not prevent Hitler from grandiloquently awarding the Desert Fox a field marshal’s baton.

  Against this background, on September 30, 1942, Hitler, casting himself as a returning prophet, appeared at the Berlin Sports Palace to prop up the Germans’ sagging morale and delivered a halting, rambling address to begin the Winter Relief Campaign. He frequently paused—this was his trademark—while the huge, packed audience roared, “Sieg heil! Sieg HEIL!” After deriding Roosevelt as “this demented man in the White House,” he offered this prospect: “My comrades, you have no idea what is concealed under the simple words of the communiqué of the Highest Leadership of the Armed Forces.” Then, with unrestra
ined candor he referred to his pronouncement before the Reichstag on September 1, 1939, when he had declared, “If Jewry is starting an international world war to eliminate the Aryan Nations of Europe, then it won’t be the Aryan nation which will be wiped out but Jewry.” He paused again for applause—the audience had been handpicked by the Gestapo—and then, with a flourish, added: “In Germany too the Jews once laughed at my prophecies. I don’t know whether they are still laughing, or whether they will have already lost the inclination to laugh, but I can assure you that everywhere they will stop laughing. With these prophecies I shall prove to be right.”

  This hate-filled tirade was broadcast to millions of Germans, and also received by the BBC and transcribed on the American wire services. Hitler was speaking not only to the German people, but ultimately to the world.

  BY THIS STAGE, THE bureaucrats’ inertia and callous indifference could not overcome the preponderance of information about the massacre of the Jews. Nonetheless, with their characteristic skepticism, a number of key officials in the fractious State Department continued to question reports about the Final Solution. Sumner Welles, however, no longer needed to be convinced. He now had two options before him: take the matter up directly with the White House, or take it up with Stephen Wise. He chose Wise. On November 24, he urgently telegraphed Wise and requested that he come immediately to meet at the State Department. Later that day, Wise sat down in Welles’s office, and the undersecretary handed him several reports accompanied by his own grim conclusion. This was not, he made clear, a matter of long, slow-moving lines of refugees or laborers trudging eastward. “I regret to tell you, Dr. Wise,” Welles said, his voice laden with emotion, “there is no exaggeration. These documents confirm and justify your deepest fears.”