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

by Deborah E. Lipstadt

  The chance to acquire “easy loot” may well have motivated or encouraged some of the participants. Kristallnacht doubtlessly helped many German citizens and authorities to line their pockets. However, the potential cost to the economy as a result of loss of trade and destroyed property offset many of these “gains.” Had those who organized the pogroms been only or even mainly interested in fattening German coffers, they would have chosen a less costly way of doing so. The motivating factor was not financial gain, but deep and abiding antisemitism. Even at this stage, after five and a half years of Nazi rule, much of the press and even more of the public did not understand that antisemitism was a, if not the, keystone of Nazism and not a by-product of Nazi greed or a means of deflecting the German people’s attention from other troubles.

  There were some commentators who did understand, as an analysis of Mein Kampf which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post a few months after Kristallnacht demonstrated. The author of the article argued that if Americans wanted to understand Hitler and the regime he led, they could not “blink the fact that hatred of the Jews is the mortar which binds together into one house all the bricks of Hitler’s other hatreds.”74 Those reporters, editors, and readers who adhered to economic interpretations would fail to understand this.

  Incidentally, the version of Mein Kampf which was sold in America did not contain many of the more virulent references to Jews. Senator Alan Cranston, who in the 1930s served in Italy and Germany as a reporter for International News Service, returned to America shortly after Kristallnacht. When he discovered that the sanitized American edition of Mein Kampf was “purged of its most vitriolic ravings,” he translated and published an unexpurgated version which was sold at cost. Before the American publisher sued him for violation of copyright—something the publisher, by Cranston’s own admission, had every right to do—his edition sold over 500,000 copies.75

  There were papers, including Staatzeitung, which after Kristallnacht reverted to differentiating between the people and the party and branded the pogroms the work of “fanatics in the ranks of the party in power who are trying to drag a great people into the mire of their sadistic lowness.” The advocates of this approach refused to believe that a nation of apparently civilized people could condone a modern-day pogrom.

  It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the German people, as humane in general as any nation, are under the control of a government with the morals of a lynching party at its worst.76

  Many of the papers which followed this line and exculpated the German people cited former President Hoover’s CBS broadcast, which castigated Nazi officials but absolved the German public. That one should separate the German people into two groups, those who committed such acts and those who did not, was an attitude that had been manifested consistently since 1933. Rather than dissipate with the passage of time, it seemed to grow stronger. The more outrageous German behavior became, the more likely some Americans were to argue that Hitler was an “aberration in German history.” Many Americans, particularly scholars and diplomats who had studied in Germany during their university careers, tended to divide German society into “bad Germans,” the dregs of society recruited from the gutter, and “good Germans,” those of the upper-class university-educated elite, who would neither commit nor sanction brutal acts. They remained committed to this view despite repeated eyewitness accounts, particularly from American reporters, that the German people were united behind the Führer. Some of them would not abandon this idea of two Germanys until the Nuremberg trials, when it was conclusively demonstrated that the upper-class elite was as much part of the “bad Germany” as any other group was. This natural American sympathy for the good Germany, the Germany of art, culture, and storybook charm, persisted through the war. Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Ambassador to the United States during the war, was perplexed by this “basic kindheartedness” Americans felt toward Germany even after its “ruthless” war methods were public knowledge.77

  The tendency to absolve the people and condemn the leaders was not universal. A few papers argued that the German people had to bear the full responsibility for the persecution rampant in their country. They had at least silently acquiesced if not energetically participated in all manner of acts of persecution and had to bear the consequences. The Chicago Daily News declared the Germans an “uncivilized nation”; the New York Herald Tribune described Germany as a “nation possessed.”78

  This time the vast majority of the press recognized that Germans from the highest level of government were involved. Claims that Kristallnacht occurred contrary to the government’s wishes and without its approval were dismissed as implausible. However, as noted earlier, there were still some papers, including publications such as the Atlanta Constitution, which could not fathom that Hitler would sanction such an event and believed that he must have been deceived by those around him.79 Even the Manchester Guardian, long in the forefront of British opposition to Nazi antisemitism, refused to believe that the government was involved.80

  Irrespective of whether a paper pointed the finger of blame directly at Hitler or believed that he had “inspired” but not staged the pogrom, there was almost absolute agreement that the uprising was not, as the official explanation claimed, a “spontaneous” expression of wrath by the German people.81 Time referred to the “so-called mobs,” while Newsweek was quizzical about the ability of supposedly spontaneous gatherings to wreak such “methodical destruction.”82 The Philadelphia Record pointed out that, unlike Kristallnacht, “riots do not generally happen on a timetable.”83Tongue in cheek, the New York Times observed that the rioters “worked with a precision that was a tribute to spontaneous demonstrations.”84

  The Response to Kristallnacht

  Though the press may have offered differing explanations for the pogrom, there was little doubt about its revulsion at Germany. On this point the American reaction was “united as never before.” The unanimity of press sentiment was so striking that it became the topic of many editorials. The press was described as being “nearly a unit in denunciation.”85 The United States had not been so aroused “since the Lusitania.”86

  If there remained any question about this feeling Time, which used the daily press as a major source for its own reports, noted that

  singular was the U.S. attitude in one respect: on a question of foreign affairs concerning which it seldom has much feeling, the U.S. public had spontaneously expressed a strong national feeling.87

  The question remained; Would the condemnations result in an official response? Time believed that public opinion, as exemplified by the press, had given Roosevelt “a mandate” which he would undoubtedly “translate into foreign policy.” But the President, behaving in a characteristically cautious fashion, decided to wait in order to assess the nature of this mandate. Immediately after the pogrom, when first queried about events in Germany, he declined to comment and suggested to reporters that they “better handle that through the State Department.”88 Five days later, when the depth of public outrage was evident, not only did he comment but he broke a number of precedents in order to do so. He recalled Ambassador Wilson for consultation and, ignoring State Department suggestions that a written statement be sent to Germany, he read a presidential statement at his press conference. Moreover, contrary to established procedure, Roosevelt allowed himself to be quoted. This change in protocol was understood by reporters present to be indicative of the President’s seriousness about the matter. To further strengthen the impact of his announcement, he used forceful and unambiguous language.

  The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the U.S. Such news from any part of the world would inevitably produce a similar profound reaction among American people in every part of the nation. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization. With a view to having a first-hand picture of the situation in Germany I asked the Secretary of State to order our Ambassador in Berlin to return at o
nce for report and consultation.89

  Wilson’s recall met with great approval. The New York Times believed it “difficult to conceive of a more forceful expression of this country’s displeasure short of severing diplomatic relations.” Newsweek considered it “remarkable.” A West Virginia paper believed the President “spoke for America,” and the Philadelphia Inquirer assured Roosevelt that the American people stood solidly behind him.90 The State Department was surprised by the press’s enthusiasm. The Chief of the Division of European Affairs of the State Department, Pierrepont Moffat, noted in his diary that “the press played it [the recall] up even more than we anticipated.” The Department made a concerted effort to diminish the significance of the move by insisting that Wilson had planned to return to the United States anyway and that his hasty departure was not connected with Kristallnacht.91

  But even as the press was “playing up” the recall, there was an underlying cautiousness in much of its praise. The initial shock of the pogrom had hardly begun to wear off and already some of the press was expressing a fear that the United States was on the verge of becoming entangled in European political affairs. The New York Sun acknowledged that the President “no doubt wish[ed] to record in some unmistakable manner this nation’s deep concern and displeasure,” but it reminded him of the “impropriety of interfering in the domestic affairs of a friendly power.”92 Many newspapers were pleased that Wilson’s return was not irrevocable and did not entail a severing of diplomatic relations, and that it expressed American disapproval without direct American involvement.93 The New York Herald Tribune was expressing a strongly felt American sentiment when it reminded the President that, while they strongly approved of his action, the American people had “no desire to go to war with Germany.”94A few papers questioned the recall. The St. Louis Globe Democrat, for example, wondered “what such action would achieve other than to increase pressure on the helpless Jews.” But even Roosevelt’s most persistent critic, the Chicago Tribune, believed the President’s decision and American feelings of revulsion were justified, though it too warned against engaging in threats and denunciation.95

  A few liberal journals took issue with the recall because it was too limited. They were joined by a few other papers and journals in calling for action, not just the rhetoric of action, on behalf of persecuted Jews.96 They complained that the recall was a symbolic gesture which failed to pressure the Germans to rectify their ways, and that something more “concrete” was needed.97The Binghamton Sun argued that “indignation should mean action,” and wondered whether the United States was only “indignant enough to pass resolutions.”98

  What most of these critics wanted was not just a recall, but liberalization of refugee immigration. They tried to counter anti-immigration arguments by demonstrating that refugees, many of whom were not in the job market, were an asset, not a burden, bringing with them expertise previously lacking in America and freeing the country from dependence on foreign imports.99*

  Some papers, while not fervent advocates of liberalization, did urge the United States to at least give “serious” consideration to some form of liberalization, though the liberalization that they advocated was highly proscribed. It generally consisted of support for Roosevelt’s decision to permit the twelve to fifteen thousand German visitors here on visitors’ visas to remain and to call for the entry of a limited number of gifted and “brainy” immigrants such as Einstein and Freud.100 At best these papers advocated “temporary and careful modification of the immigration laws for the period of the pogrom.”101 What all these liberal critics failed to recognize was that just as the Evian conference had been designed to serve as a rebuke to Hitler, this recall was intended to demonstrate American disapproval, and not to render a material blow to Germany or even to aid the Jews.

  Even as these critics called for more action, there were other voices which cautioned against changing the laws. The Christian Science Monitor rejected suggestions for changing immigration laws and counseled that the best protest was prayer.102** The Christian Century held that despite the fact that it was the Nazis’ “inexorable purpose to annihilate the Jewish population of Germany,” it was “highly inadvisable to let down our immigration barriers.” Doing so would create “evils as great as those which it was designed to cure.” Liberalization would exacerbate the already severe economic and social problems plaguing America. The Cincinnati Times Star even opposed the President’s decision to allow Germans in the U.S. to remain on visitors’ visas until places became available to them on the regular quota. The Binghamton Press and the Tulsa World, in rather inflammatory gestures, were among the papers which cautioned their readers that there was a plan afoot to bring all Jews to this country.104

  Despite these critical voices, the recall was an astute political response. In view of the realities of the moment, more extreme action might have met with opposition. Polls taken in November 1938 shortly after Kristallnacht demonstrated that Americans were adamantly opposed to any changes in refugee legislation.105 In April 1939 they repudiated the idea of their country’s serving as a haven for the persecuted by a margin of ten to one.106 The anti-immigration mood was reflected in and reinforced by the editorials of most of the nation’s major dailies and magazines, which cautioned against lowering the bars against entry to this land. The New York Times observed that no real answer to immigration problems was to be found in the gradual absorption of refugees through enlarged quotas. It argued that “the United States . . . cannot be expected to perform today . . . the historic service it has previously performed.”107

  This popular conviction that America could no longer serve as a home for huddled masses yearning to breathe free was not the only factor that Roosevelt seems to have taken into account when he decided to recall Wilson. He was politically vulnerable during the latter part of 1938, particularly in relation to foreign affairs. He had faced strong opposition to his attempts to increase armament production and had to lobby assiduously against concerted efforts to strengthen the Neutrality Act.*

  Gallup polls from the period indicate that Americans regarded maintaining neutrality as the “most important” problem facing them.108 A politically conservative Congress had been elected, and Roosevelt knew that his policies, foreign and domestic, faced opposition. In light of his political situation, Roosevelt’s recall of Wilson was balanced. It went slightly beyond the public’s—but not the press’s—desire for an emphatic response but did not appear to draw the country into the ever intensifying crisis. The recall struck out at the perpetrators but virtually ignored the victims, and it was precisely because of its restrained and limited nature that it won press approval. Had Roosevelt chosen to offer concrete aid to the victims, that would have been opposed.

  The combined voices of those papers and journals supporting some liberalization of immigration—however limited and strictly policed—could not counter the overwhelming weight of public and press opinion that adamantly opposed any relaxation of quotas. This was to remain a virtual constant in press opinion except for one brief period in the following spring when the ones to be rescued were children.

  If Not Here, Where?

  Since Wilson’s recall was considered a sufficient American response and the quota system was treated as virtually immutable, press interest was sparked by proposals for resettlement of Jews in other areas. Frequently mentioned alternatives included British Guiana, Tanganyika, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, and “someplace” in the vast territorial expanse of the British Empire. Time let Walter Lippmann, whom it described as America’s “most statesmanly Jewish pundit,” speak for it. Lippmann’s strong influence on the press of the nation was reflected in the fact that various papers approvingly echoed his views and cited him as their authority. Time cited his argument that nothing could be done for the persecuted Jews, except possibly to find them refuge in Africa. Time’s implication was clear: if Lippmann, the Jew, believed America should not liberalize its quota system, then could Time or anyone else, Jew or non-J
ew, be faulted for thinking likewise? (After a five-year silence regarding the persecution of the Jews, Lippmann devoted two of his syndicated columns to Europe’s “over-population” problem. Without specifically referring to Jews, he contended that Europe had to be “relieved” of a million people each year. It was the surplus population which was the cause of European upheavals.)109

  The discussion of where refugees should be allowed to settle after Kristallnacht prompted interesting role reversals on the part of prominent Americans. Herbert Hoover, the overseer of refugee rescue and aid during World War I, argued that “America cannot open its doors in the face of our own unemployment and suffering. Sanctuary must be found elsewhere.” In striking contrast, Henry Ford, the industrial magnate whose newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, had published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, called for the immediate entry of Jewish refugees into America.110 Ultimately it was Hoover, not Ford, who correctly reflected public sentiments, sentiments the press consistently reinforced.