1944

by Jay Winik

  “alchemists of former days”: MacGregor Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 250.

  “Three months’ delay”: My discussion of the technology of war here draws extensively on Irvin Stewart, Organizing Scientific Research for War (Little, Brown, 1948), 5–7; as well as Jean Edward Smith, FDR (Random House, 2008), 578–81; and MacGregor Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 249–52, a section written with Douglas Rose and Stuart Burns, especially 252. My list of conventional weapons comes from MacGregor Burns and Rick Atkinson. On NDRC and civilian military cooperation and American-British scientific exchange, see James P. Baxter, Scientists Against Time (Little, Brown, 1946), 14–16, 119–23, 129. On the development of the atomic bomb and the fear that Hitler could get it first, there are a number of fine books. See Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster), 2012; Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (Vintage, 2008); Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists (Mariner, 1970); and the outstanding work by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage, 2006).

  “the relatively simple matter”: This discussion follows Wyman, Abandonment, 182–89. Morgenthau’s “satanic combination” is surely one of the bluntest lines coming from a cabinet member in American history; it has also become legendary for its incisiveness. By this stage, one sees, Morgenthau was at his wit’s end.

  “When you get through with it”: Wyman, Abandonment, 183. Time has dimmed the intensity of the Treasury Department’s feelings about the government unwittingly collaborating with Hitler in the destruction of the Jews, about as harsh a criticism as could be leveled. These quotations, almost mocking in tone, evidently said with a sneer, capture some of the concern of Morgenthau and the people around him.

  tough-minded Oscar Cox: See the excellent work by Richard Brightman and Allan Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 229. By this stage, things were moving very fast politically. In hindsight, the question has to be raised: did politics trump morality?

  “haunted by the suffering”: This paragraph is from Rosen, Saving the Jews, 342; Wyman, Abandonment, 183.

  “The trouble is”: Material from Wyman, Abandonment, 186. That Morgenthau accused Long of being anti-Semitic indicated he was holding nothing back. That Cordell Hull sought to blame bureaucratic politics was, in the end, a flimsy explanation and an abdication of leadership.

  “You have to figure”: Wyman, Abandonment, 194–203.

  “I personally agree”: This and next three paragraphs are drawn from the text of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Meeting, November 26, 1943 (Government Printing Office), 32. The entire text—“Rescue of the Jewish and Other Peoples in Nazi Occupied Territory, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 78th Congress, First Session on H. Res. 350 and H. Res 352, Resolutions Providing for the Establishment by the Executive of a Commission to Effectuate the Rescue of the Jewish People of Europe”—is fascinating, and wrenching, reading.

  “580,000 Refugees Admitted”: New York Times, December 12, 1943; see also Wyman, Abandonment, 198–203. The New York Times and other major newspapers largely followed the administration line in their reporting.

  “boiling pot”: Wyman, Abandonment, 203.

  “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews”: Quotes are taken from the actual report. The report may be found online at the website of the Jewish Virtual Library. There has probably never been as hard-hitting a memo about the government, and this is required reading in its entirety.

  Morgenthau Jr. was a product: Here I benefited extensively from Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (Simon & Schuster, 2002), especially 44–55. Other valuable sources include John Morton Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau (Houghton Mifflin, 1970); John Morton Blum, ed., From the Morgenthau Diaries, 3 vols. (Houghton Mifflin, 1959, 1965, 1967); and Henry Morgenthau III, Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History (Ticknor and Fields, 1991). For specific quotations and details see Blum, Morgenthau Diaries, xvi, 12–15, 193–94, 206–8, 211, 245–65; Mostly Morgenthaus, xiii. On Fishkill Farms, see Time, January 25, 1943; Henry Morgenthau III writes that Henry Sr. bought the farm for his son (Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, 218), then Morgenthau himself insisted to journalists that he bought the farm, using profits made from his investments of family money. On Morgenthau and his changing relationship with Judaism, see Mostly Morgenthaus, xiii. On the Morgenthau relationship with Zionism, see Diaries, 193–94, 206–8. See also Geoffrey Ward, First-Class Temperament (Harper and Row, 1989), 253.

  “From one of”: Beschloss, The Conquerors, 48. Original signed photo is at FDRL.

  “put it on the line”: See Mostly Morgenthaus, 267–68, 271–72; Beschloss, The Conquerors, 49; Blum, Morgenthau Diaries, Volume 1, 77.

  “stupidity and Hebraic arrogance,”: This stunning quote from Kai Bird, The Chairman (Simon & Schuster, 1992), 100; other quotes from Beschloss, The Conquerors, 48–52. It is interesting to note that Morgenthau never attended a Passover seder until after the war by which time he had an awakening about his Jewishness.

  “You and I will run”: This paragraph is extensively drawn from Beschloss, The Conquerors, 50–51; and Kai Bird, The Chairman, 224.

  “depression within a depression”: This is among Morgenthau’s most prominent observations. “If we don’t stop”: On Morgenthau and pre–World War II preparedness, see Blum, Morgenthau Diaries, Volume 2, 86–93; Mostly Morgenthaus, 318–20. For “war loving race,” see Beschloss, The Conquerors, 71 and Bird.

  “get rid of him”: This paragraph is drawn from Beschloss, The Conquerors, 51–54. For “very dangerous advisor,” “biased by his Semitic,” see Bird, The Chairman, (Simon & Schuster), 225–26. For “were a member of the cabinet in Germany” see Irwin Gellman, Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 25–26, 97–99, 209, and 286; and Beschloss, The Conquerors, 54.

  “Roosevelt was not the greatest”: see Josiah Dubois interview, Henry Morgenthau III, Private Archive, Cambridge, Massachusetts, HMPA; see also Beschloss, The Conquerors, 54. For Jews around Roosevelt, see Ward, First-Class Temperament, 253–55; Mostly Morgenthaus, 321–22.

  “What I want is his intelligence and courage”: See Samuel Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (Harper, 1952), 340; Morgenthau Diaries, 693, 196, 202–10; Wyman, Abandonment, 181–83; Rosen, Saving the Jews, 340–47; and Richard Breitman and Alan Kraut, American Refugee Policy (Indiana University Press, 1988), 189. Significantly, Morgenthau would compare his activism for the Jews to his father’s efforts on behalf of the Armenians: Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, 8.

  if the facts were properly laid before the president: See, for instance, Rosen, Saving the Jews, 341.

  where Roosevelt greeted them: Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, 531–32; Josiah DuBois interview, HMPA; “FDR Day by Day—The Pare Lorentz Chronology,” January 16, 1944, FDRL. For simplicity, one may consult the account in Beschloss, The Conquerors, 56.

  “those terrible eighteen months”: For this paragraph see Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau, table of contents; Beschloss, The Conquerors, 58; MacGregor Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 346–48 (including “You punch it”). Other scholars, such as Wyman, have described the period of inactivity as fourteen months. The War Refugee Board estimates that it saved 200,000 Jews; see Mostly Morgenthaus, 335. Others put the figure at tens of thousands; see Henry Feingold, The Politics of Rescue, 307; see also Wyman, Abandonment, 331.

  CHAPTER 13

  The rolls of the death camps: I am indebted to Rachel Dillan for helping me compile this list of American Jews who could have perished in the Holocaust; for more about them, see Biography.com.

  “The Nazis entered”: see the outstanding work by Donald L. Miller, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany (
Simon & Schuster, 2006), 255–57; 260–66; Walter S. Moody, “Big Week: Gaining Air Superiority over the Luftwaffe,” Air Power History 41, no. 2 (Summer 1994); Robert N. Rosen, Saving the Jews (Thunder’s Mouth, 2006), 366; Charles Murphy, “The Unknown Battle,” Life, October 16, 1944, 104; Bernard Lawrence Boylan, “The Development of the American Long-Range Escort Fighter,” PhD dissertation, University of Missouri, 1955, 218–19.

  “We are over there”: This paragraph is drawn heavily from Rosen, Saving the Jews, 348; see also David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews (New Press, 1984), 219–29; “History of the WRB,” FDRL, 289.

  WRB scoured Europe: For efforts by WRB, see Wyman, Abandonment, 209–20.

  “all oppressed peoples”: For establishment of an American haven for Jews, ibid., 268–72; Rosen, Saving the Jews, 362; Harvey Strum, “Fort Ontario Refugee Shelter, 1944–1946,” American Jewish History 63 (September 1983–June 1984), 404; Richard Breitman and Alan Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Indiana University Press, 1988), 197–99.

  Hungary: For the takeover of Hungry, I draw on Kershaw, Hitler, 795.

  “enlarged also to”: William Hassett, Off the Record with FDR (Rutgers University Press, 1958), 239. “In one of the blackest crimes”: Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors (Simon & Schuster, 2002), 59; Wyman, Abandonment, 237; complete text is online. Actually, Roosevelt’s original statement drafted by the WRB was stronger, but Sam Rosenman watered it down, saying its explicit and sole mention of the Jews would weaken it. Nonetheless the statement—about Hitler’s “insane criminal desires,” among other things—was a departure from the past and electrifying. Roosevelt also had cleared it with Stalin and Churchill in advance.

  “Roosevelt Warns Germans”: New York Times, March 26, 1944; Rosen, Saving the Jews, 358, 356.

  “Germans!”: Eisenhower’s statement may be found, among other places, in Rosen, Saving the Jews, 356–57, or online.

  “Jews in Hungary”: New York Times, May 10, 1944, A1, for these paragraphs.

  1944 was an election year: On the Japanese American question, Kai Bird, The Chairman (Simon & Schuster, 1942), 171, makes the point that politics proved to be a strong motivator. McCloy also early on talked about the Constitution as if it were a scrap of paper when weighed against security concerns; see Jean Edward Smith, FDR (Random House, 2008), 551.

  John Jay McCloy: I rely strongly on Bird, Chairman, a Pulitzer prize–winning biography; on McCloy’s mother and his early years, see 27–28.

  When McCloy was twelve: For these paragraphs, ibid., 28–46, 50–53.

  German secret agents: Ibid., 77.

  “obsessed”: Ibid., 126, 138.

  “an enemy fleet”: Ibid., 142–43 and 147–49, from which this paragraph is drawn.

  “hysteria and lack of judgment”: Smith, FDR, 549–50. By this stage, J. Edgar Hoover was in his twentieth year. He also called the evacuation “utterly unwarranted.” For other material here, see Bird, Chairman, 148–49.

  “Constitution is just a scrap of paper”: Significantly, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provided American citizenship to all those born in the United States regardless of ethnic heritage or their parents’ status. For this reason, Smith, FDR, rightly describes the whole incident as “shabby.” For other material, see Bird, Chairman, 148–49.

  As McCloy put it: From Bird, Chairman, 151–52. For a significantly different picture of Roosevelt’s and McCloy’s actions, see H. W. Brands, Traitor to His Class (Doubleday, 2008), 489–92. Brands makes the points that Roosevelt was following a historical practice of focusing on enemy aliens during wartime; that Roosevelt did not deport the Japanese Americans but instead detained them; and that Roosevelt was unwilling to risk another Pearl Harbor. For her part, Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time (Simon & Schuster, 1994), describes this decision as “tragic,” quotes the American Civil Liberties Union as saying that it was “the worst single wholesale violation of civil rights of American citizens in our history,” and adds that the claim of military necessity was fueled by “racism,” 321–22, especially 321. Regarding the influence of McCloy on national security matters, Bird writes that McCloy “became the country’s first national security manager, a sort of ‘political commissar’ who quietly brokered any issue where civilian political interests threatened to interfere with the military’s effort to win the war,” Chairman, 175. For a short biography of McCloy, see Alan Brinkley, “Minister Without Portfolio,” Harper’s, February 1983, 31–46.

  “We have carte blanche”: See Bird, Chairman, 149–50. For more on the evacuation of Japanese Americans, see the work by Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932–1945 (Oxford University Press, 1979), 334–37. Dallek makes the point that Roosevelt was rarely theoretical and pursued “military necessity” above all else. Roosevelt even joked to Hoover, “Have you pretty well cleaned out the alien waiters in the principal Washington hotels?” Dallek says that Roosevelt’s hypocrisy on these matters is “striking,” 336. He points out that at the time when the president was railing against Nazi “barbarism” and speaking about “the great upsurge of human liberty” in America, he was egregiously violating the constitutional guarantees of Japanese Americans.

  inside the camps: For more details on the internment, see Bird, Chairman, 153–55, 160–61; and Smith, FDR, 551–53. “No federal penitentiary”: Michi Nishigiura Wegyln, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (University of Washington Press, 1995), 156.

  about the continuing internment, and challenges: James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1940–1945 (Harcourt, 1970), 463.

  “The bombing has to be made”: For this and Jacob Rosenheim’s efforts, I’ve drawn from Bird, Chairman, 211; Michael Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (Holt, 1981), 237; Wyman, Abandonment, 290–91.

  “There is little doubt”: On McClelland’s efforts, see Harrison Gerhardt (McClelland) to Secretary of State for War Refugee Board, 6/24/44, ASW, 400, 38, Jews, box 44, RG 107, NA; see also Bird, Chairman, 212, a summary that I employ. Clearly McClelland was going out on a limb, and this underscores how the evidence about the slaughter of the Jews was becoming increasingly horrifying.

  “A little rivalry”: See MacGregor Burns, Soldier of Freedom, 343, on Roosevelt’s management style.

  “several doubts about”: Quotes can be found in Bird, Chairman, 213, as can the original memo, a copy of which the author has. See also Dino Brugioni and Robert Poirier, The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz Birkenau Extermination Complex (Central Intelligence Agency, 1979), 5.

  Benjamin Akzin, was livid: For the bombing debate and the military’s reluctance, see the excellent work The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?, Michael Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, eds. (University Press of Kansas with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2003), especially 276. For a number of provocative and fascinating essays on whether or not to bomb Auschwitz, 80–181. See also the essay by Gerhart Riegner, who was of course a key actor in the drama; he feels betrayed by the Allies who failed to act when given the information. The criticized essay by Tammy Biddle is a good overview. The editors also helpfully put together all the principal documents, making their book an invaluable resource; see 240–81. For my purposes, I have used copies of originals in the WRB files. See also Bird, Chairman, 213–14, for a summary.

  So effective were the bombing raids: See Richard Davis, Carl Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (Smithsonian Institution Press for Center for Air Force History, 1993); Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, 7 vols. (University of Chicago Press, 1948–1958). See also Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 283, 301–8, especially 307.

  On August 27: See Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 311.

  took aerial photographs: Ibid., 309–10; Gilbert is superb on this, and I draw on him. I also rely on Dino Brugioni, “The Aerial Photos of the Auschwitz Birkenau Extermin
ation Complex,” in Neufeld and Berenbaum ed., The Bombing of Auschwitz (Kansas Press, 2000), 52–58. Brugioni points out that the Birkenau complex was photographed at least thirty times. He carries special authority on this issue, as he was a member of a bomber crew during World War II and then, after being hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1948, became a founder of the National Photographic Interpretation Center. Reexamining the photos later in time, he was surprised to find that they did indeed show considerable activity relating to the Holocaust at both Auschwitz and Birkenau—evidence that was completely overlooked after 1944 and early 1945. Among other images, people could be clearly seen being marched to their deaths or being processed for slave labor. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth About Hitler’s “Final Solution” (Little, Brown, 1980), 84–86, asserts that the intelligence services, such as British cryptologists who were able to track large numbers of trains carrying Jews to the Silesian death camps, suppressed the information. It is also possible that Churchill saw other evidence of the death camps. See also Peter Calvocorressi, Top-Secret Ultra (Ballantine, 1981), 16. In this memoir, Calvocorressi, a British veteran of Bletchley Park, maintains that fellow cryptologists began intercepting the daily statistics radioed to Berlin from each concentration camp. Strikingly, he says the intercepts detailed the number of new arrivals, the number of inmates in each camp, and the number killed. If so, Bletchley Park would have been expected to inform the British policy makers.

  “the tremendous rumble”: Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 301, 308.

  “We are no longer”: Robert L. Beir with Brian Josepher, Roosevelt and the Holocaust: A Rooseveltian Examines the Policies and Remembers the Times (Barricade, 2006), 254; Elie Wiesel, Night (Avon, 1958); Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (Summit, 1986), 388; see also Bird, Chairman, 214.

  “methodical German mind”: I have taken these quotes from the original documents; they may also be found in Bird, Chairman, 214–15. One of the strongest arguments against bombing has been that it applies twenty-first-century morals to World War II. Akzin’s devastating memo shreds this notion.