Beyond Belief: The American Press And The Coming Of The Holocaust, 1933- 1945

by Deborah E. Lipstadt

  In an editorial the Boston Transcript interpreted the laws as indicative of the “failure of measures already taken to keep the German Jews in subjection.”64 What indication the paper had of the failure of Jews to be kept in “subjection” it did not reveal. It ignored the numerous documented reports of Streicher’s increasing strength and autonomy, the spread of antisemitic boycotts and rioting, the expulsion of Jews from German schools, and the mass migration from towns and villages where persecution was unbearable to places such as Berlin where it was often barely tolerable.65 This editorial conveyed the impression that the Jews were managing to cope successfully with Hitler’s rule.

  Some papers reverted to the “weakness, not strength” approach and argued that Hitler needed the laws to bolster his precarious position. The laws, they concluded, were symptomatic of internal difficulties.

  It is hardly possible to explain the drastic laws on any broad basis except the assumption that Hitler’s domestic situation must be extraordinarily precarious and shaky.66

  These interpretations—those that saw compromise between extremists and moderates and those that saw Nazi weakness, not strength—reflected the failure of the press to see the Nuremberg Laws as an inherent expression of antisemitic ideology. The editorial boards that offered these interpretations ignored the observations of reporters on the scene such as Otto Tolischus of the New York Times, who even before the laws were issued dismissed the discussion of moderates versus extremists as “largely academic” because the campaign against the Jews was in “such an advanced stage” that all that remained to be done was to “legalize what is already accomplished.” American officials in Berlin also dismissed the idea that moderation could be anticipated. They looked in vain for any sign of a tempered attitude toward Jews and found no “opposition to the swing towards radicalism.” Ambassador Dodd confidentially reported to the Secretary of State, a few days after the 1935 Nuremberg rally, that things seemed to be getting even worse for the Jews and that there was “a tendency in the direction of severer measures” in order to ensure “complete separation of the Jews from the German community.”67

  Press failure to grasp that antisemitism had become official state policy was exemplified by the reaction of the Los Angeles Times, which did not believe the laws made that much difference. The paper argued in a rather matter-of-fact tone that Jews had simply been deprived de jure of what all other Germans had lost de facto. It noted that “generally speaking, nobody has any civil rights in Germany, . . . and nobody votes in the sense in which voting is understood in democratic countries,” so that the laws did not entail any real change in the Jews’ situation. In a similar vein, after decrying the Jews’ loss of citizenship, the St. Louis Post Dispatch argued that there “are no citizens of Nazi Germany . . . whose rights are unimpaired” and that Jews were really being treated no differently from most other Germans. According to the paper this was a case of a dictatorship treating one segment of its population somewhat more harshly than others. The “penalties imposed on the Jews, official scapegoats of the Nazi regime, are only a part of the burdens borne by all the people under their Fascist dictatorship.”68* This argument—that the persecution of the Jews was not qualitatively different than that of a multitude of other groups—would be repeatedly expressed by press, public, and policy makers during the course of the next decade.

  In a way, the Los Angeles Times and the Post Dispatch were correct. Democracy in Germany was no longer extant. Many Germans had lost their rights and were subject to physical attack. But while much of what had previously occurred could be dismissed as unauthorized actions or individual laws designed to make life difficult for Jews, these Nuremberg decrees were different. They took Nazi ideology and made it the law of the land.

  Despite its condemnations most of the press did not grasp that this legal program for the “blood and honor” of the German Reich was categorically different from previous antisemitic acts; the ultimate effect of these 1935 laws was to be more profound and ominous than Nazi efforts to force Jews out of certain professions or to prod them to leave Germany.70 The Nuremberg Laws were the point of departure for the terror that followed. Those who interpreted them as “nothing but” a response to a minor incident in New York, a concession to extremists, or a smokescreen for other woes made it almost impossible for the American public to understand their full import: they constituted the basic legalization of Nazi hatred of the Jew. In 1935 biological criteria became the determining factor for citizenship. In 1941 they would become the determining factor for survival.

  3

  The Olympic Games: Germany Triumphant

  In 1931 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) designated Germany as the site for the 1936 Games. The winter Games were to take place in Bavaria’s Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the summer Games in Berlin. For the Germans the Games were both a propaganda and sporting event. The Nazis used them to enhance their international image and to convince visitors that the terrible things reported in the press were figments of correspondents’ imaginations. Tourists and visiting reporters—there were over 1,500 of the latter at the Games—were so impressed by what they saw that many dismissed the stories of brutalities as exaggerated. The glowing press reports from the Olympic Games helped shed doubts on the earlier reports of persecution. As was so often the case during this period, truth was disdained as falsehood and fiction accepted as fact. Americans cite the 1936 Olympic Games as an event which, thanks to Jesse Owens’s amazing achievements, disproved Hitler’s “Aryan” theories. In truth, the victory was Hitler’s. The Games were the ultimate propaganda triumph for him, a triumph facilitated by the press.

  The Move to Boycott the Games

  Within a few months after the Nazi assumption of power, America began to debate its participation in the Olympic Games. The press wondered whether Germany’s domestic persecution was America’s concern. The battle over the Games was, at least in part, a microcosm of the fight between interventionists and isolationists over how America should react, if at all, to developments in the Reich.

  When the Nazis began to exclude Jews from various aspects of German life, they also barred them from the sports arena. In May 1933 the Reich sports commissar, Captain Hans Tschammer und Osten, explicitly declared that “German sports are for Aryans. German youth leadership is only for Aryans and not for Jews.”1In June 1933, when the IOC met in Vienna, Brigadier General Charles H. Sherrill, a member of the American Olympic Committee (AOC) and the American representative to the IOC meeting, extracted a promise from the Germans that “as a principle . . . German Jews would not be excluded from German Olympic teams.”2 Sherrill claimed that it had taken an arduous and “trying” effort to get the Germans to accede to this point.3 In the following months Germany simultaneously discriminated against Jewish athletes and repeatedly pledged that all promises made to the IOC would be fulfilled. Despite the Reich’s assurances to the contrary, Jews were slowly but deliberately excluded from a wide array of sports activities and training facilities. As early as April 1933 Newsweek reported that “anti-Jewish feeling [had] spread through German sport.” This sentiment intensified as Jews were barred from international track and field matches, Germany’s best amateur tennis player was dropped from competition, and the chairman of the German Sports Federation was fired because of his Jewish ancestry.4

  In the fall of 1934 AOC president Avery Brundage visited Germany and also obtained a German commitment that Jews would be included in Olympic tryouts. Richard Mandell, in his study of the Berlin Games, described Brundage as “one more important personage dazzled by the order, relative prosperity and joy that most travelers observed in Germany in those years.” Brundage’s assurances that the spirit of the Olympic Games was being assiduously observed by Germany and that German Jews wanted the competition to take place as planned convinced the AOC to accept the invitation to the Games.

  Brundage and Sherrill both had strong pro-German feelings. Sherrill, who had served as Hoover’s Ambassador to Tur
key, was known among his colleagues in the State Department for his profascist views. Upon his return from a meeting with Hitler regarding the Games, he described him as an “undeniably great leader.” In 1935, in a speech before the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce, he expressed his admiration for Mussolini, a “man of courage in a world of pussyfooters.” Sherrill publicly expressed the opinion that Mussolini should come to the United States and eliminate the communists as he had in Italy.5

  Sherrill and Brundage portrayed the boycott movement as an insidious effort orchestrated by American Jews. Their claims that the “demand of prejudiced groups” threatened American participation were reiterated by various publications, including the Literary Digest, which attributed the boycott movement to “wealthy American Jews and Catholics.” Sherrill and Brundage also used scare tactics to prevent American Jews from supporting the movement. In 1933 Sherrill warned American Jews against organizing a boycott because it would “provoke antisemitic feeling” in the United States. On a number of different occasions during the Olympic debate Brundage and Sherrill repeated this thinly veiled prediction qua threat. On his return from Germany Sherrill warned the press that,

  We are almost certain to have a wave of antisemitism among those who never before gave it a thought, and who may consider that about 5,000,000 Jews in this country are using the athletes representing 120,000,000 Americans to work out something to help the German Jews.6

  When Sherrill and Brundage were criticized for such statements, they responded by arguing that they were acting in Jews’ best interests. Their behavior was reminiscent of a familiar tactic of “saving” Jews or any other minority group “in spite of themselves.” At best such behavior is paternalistic in nature; at worst it is prejudicial, and in this case it was antisemitic.

  In the months that followed it became increasingly obvious that the situation was not improving. Participation in special pre-Games training programs was denied to Jewish athletes, and of the twenty-one Jews “nominated” for Olympic training camps, none were ultimately “invited.” By May of 1935 Jews were excluded from the gardens of Bad Dürkheim, the swimming pools and baths of Schweinfurt, the municipal baths of Karlsruhe, Frie-burg Gladbach, and Dortmund. Even the streetcars of Magdeburg were closed to Jews.7 Nonetheless, Brundage echoed German claims and emphatically reassured critics that Germany would abide by its “unqualified assurances of non-discrimination.” In August 1935 Brundage assured the press that he had heard nothing about discrimination against athletes of any race or religion since Germany had pledged to allow Jews to participate and that there were no “reports whatsoever official or otherwise that Germany has failed to give Jewish athletes a fair opportunity.”8 As long as Germany abided by its promises, Brundage argued, then the AOC could not interfere in its internal political, religious, or racial affairs. Sherrill declared that it did not concern him “one bit the way the Jews in Germany are being treated, any more than lynchings in the South of our own country.”9 The views of Sherrill and Brundage were buttressed by the claims of Frederick W. Rubien, secretary of the American Olympic Committee, that

  Germans are not discriminating against Jews in their Olympic tryouts. The Jews are eliminated because they are not good enough as athletes. Why, there are not a dozen Jews in the world of Olympic caliber.10

  While Brundage, Rubien, and Sherrill were arguing that everything was fine, the New York Times’s Fred Birchall was reporting a very different story. The headline constituted a sharp rebuttal to Brundage:

  NAZI OLYMPIC VOW KEPT TECHNICALLY

  In Theory Even Jews May Try For Team,

  but All Except Hitlerites Are Handicapped.

  In its reports to the State Department the American embassy also contradicted Brundage’s claim that there were no reports “official or otherwise” that Germany was discriminating against Jewish athletes.11 By this time the Germans had managed by deft manipulation and sheer terror to transform the question of Jewish participation into a theoretical and not a practical matter. Many Jews who were potential competitors had left Germany because they knew they would not be able to train in the manner demanded of an Olympic contender. Lacking financial means and communal support, two critical components of Olympic preparation, those who remained faced such substantial psychological and personal handicaps that qualifying for a berth on a team became a virtual impossibility.

  Despite these developments, the press paid relatively sporadic attention to the question of American participation during the first two and half years of Nazi rule. It was only after the Berlin riots and the Nuremberg Laws that the issue of whether Americans should go to the Olympics acquired a new prominence. The debate about the Games now spilled over from the sports pages, where it was first raised, to the editorial pages, and from the meetings of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to the Congressional floor.12 The presence of an American team at the 1936 Olympic Games became a matter of national significance and remained so until the day the team set sail for Germany. In the twelve months preceding the Games reporters, columnists, sports writers, and editorial boards debated how an American presence at the Games would be interpreted and what was more likely to violate America’s neutrality: boycotting or participating in the Games.

  Those papers which opposed a boycott generally shared Brundage’s view that what occurred in Germany, as deplorable as it might appear, was none of America’s business and that it was not America’s responsibility to approve or disapprove.13 Moreover, they contended, since no country, including the United States, had a blemish-free record regarding minority groups, it was hypocritical to single Germany out for its treatment of Jews. Japan’s treatment of China, the Norfolk (Virginia) Pilot believed, would rule it out of Olympic contention; Rome would be eliminated because of its Ethiopian escapade, London because of its treatment of Indian nationalists, Russia because of forced labor, Dublin for its religious riots, and the United States because of the lynching of blacks. It was not, the Pilot declared, “the function of the Olympic Games to distribute clean bills of political health. Too many glass houses are involved.”14

  When it learned that antisemitic signs had been posted in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the site of the winter competition, the Pilot changed its stance and advocated a boycott because Germany does not “seem to be in a position to guarantee the proper physical arrangements for the Olympic festivals.”15 But the paper’s fundamental position had not changed. It still believed that America should avoid anything which might force it to become entangled in Germany’s affairs. The signs at the winter site indicated that Jews’ safety could not be guaranteed. If something happened to an American Jew or if an American non-Jew was attacked in the course of some action against Jews, this country would be forced to respond. Therefore remaining at home was prudent and the best way to guarantee that America would not be forced to violate its neutrality.

  Ultimately this noninterventionist position became one of the more frequently voiced arguments against participation. Irrespective of a paper’s views about events in Germany, there was a possibility that something could occur during the Games which would severely strain American-German relations.16 Some noninterventionists advocated a boycott because they feared that participation might necessitate involvement in German affairs, and some noninterventionists argued against a boycott because they feared a protest would, ipso facto, involve us in German matters. Although the practical considerations differed, the motivation was the same: ensure that America distance itself from a troublesome situation.

  The Scripps-Howard chain’s New York World Telegram expressed the views of those who advocated a boycott for noninterventionist reasons, when it acknowledged that, while it opposed “gestures” which could be interpreted as a protest because they were an “irritant” for an already difficult international situation, it believed it “imperative” that America not attend. It would be a practical mistake to do so because it would invite “bad friendship, embarrassing incidents and involvement in controversy.”17 The Boston
Globe counseled that holding the Olympics in Nazi Germany created a “risk” which was probably not worth taking.18 The Trenton Gazette contended that the atmosphere in Germany was anything but conducive to promoting “friendship” and “sportsmanship” among nations.19 These papers all feared that if an American Jewish competitor narrowly bested a German, the crowd might subject the American to abuse and obloquy, which in turn might necessitate an official American response. It was prudent, therefore, to stay on the sidelines rather than risk becoming embroiled in a potentially volatile situation.

  Sports, Kultur, and Politics

  Some of the proparticipation editorials reverted to the “differentiation” approach utilized earlier, but with different villains. In a switch from exonerating the Nazi leaders and blaming their overzealous followers, editorials now exculpated Germans at large and argued that not all Germans were Nazis, but many were “law abiding, hard working people” who were not culpable for the party’s wrong doings. A boycott, the Springfield (Illinois) Journal claimed, would convince the German people that they are “universally disliked” when it really was their leaders who were at fault.20Even if the “outrages” in Germany were fostered by the government, the paper claimed, the government was not the people and the people “deserved” the Olympics. Overlooked in these arguments was the fact that the German people would and rightfully did interpret the world’s participation in the Games as a sign of its legitimization of Hitler’s policies. As a result opposition and resistance to the Nazis became even harder. The differentiators also argued that sports and politics were two separate issues. The athletes were, in the words of Brundage, “pledged to good clean competition and sportsmanship. When we let politics, racial questions, religious or social disputes creep into our actions we’re in for trouble.”21 This argument ignored the fact that from the outset the Nazis had not only let politics “creep” into the sports arena, but had created a symbiotic relationship between the two.