How The U.S. Really Reacted to Nazism

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How The U.S. Really Reacted to Nazism

1933: Washington Hitler A Moderate, Say U.S. LeadersOutgoing President Herbert Hoover sees Hitler’s government as a mixed blessing, on the one hand “monarchical and reactionary,”on the other “bitterly hostile to the Communists,” although “curiously enough committed to a very radical...program.” Secretary of State Stimson sees the Nazis as more “a protest” than a party. The incoming Roosevelt State Department divides the members of the new German government into moderates and extremists; Hitler is among the more sensible Nazis. Norman Davis, Roosevelt’s ambassador-at-large, reports from Germany that everything “depends upon Hitler’s ability to withstand the radical leaders of his own party.” George Gordon, the American charge d’affaires in Berlin, adds that “there is no doubt that a very definite struggle is going on between the violent radical wing of the Nazi Party...and what may be termed the more moderate section of the party, headed by Hitler himself...which appeal[s] to all civilized and reasonable people.” He concludes that, “At the present moment in my judgment the more reasonable element has the upper hand.” The U.S. Embassy in Berlin sends assurances that Hitler’s “inflammatory statements regarding foreign policy and Germany’s mission to expand in the East” are mainly propaganda. “The Nazi war talk...and posing is simply designed to impress their followers and should be discounted.” Pleased with the promise of strong anti-Communism, stability, and civilized order keeping Stalin’s Red Hordes at bay, American ambassador to Berlin Frederic Sackett weighs in with the judgment that, “From the standpoint of stable political conditions, it is perhaps well that Hitler is now in a position to wield unprecedented power.”28
 <br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-top: .2in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT;">1934: Berlin</span></i></b></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"> </span><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .1in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%;">The Business of America Is...Supporting Nazism</span></b></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">Ambassador William Dodd tours Bitterfeld, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Erfurt, and other German cities, taking in the results of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>U.S. investment in the Reich: </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“Every smokestack showed great activity...</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">[and]</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"> great preparation for war.” </span></i></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">According to the U.S. Consulate, factories are running round the clock to produce </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“poison gas and explosives.” </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">Reports from Dresden show production of a thousand new planes. </span></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">In the U.S. protests break out against supplying the Axis with copper, steel, arms, oil, and munitions. </span></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">Washington declines to act. No serious boycott of essential resources is planned or contemplated.<sup>42</sup></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"><sup> <style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-left: 23.75pt; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 120%;">Sources: 42<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>BlancheWiesen-Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, p. 331, Noam Chomsky on Posner-Donahue, April 20, 1993, archived by Alternative Radio</span></span></div><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"> </span><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-top: .2in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT;">1934: Berlin</span></i></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .1in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%;">American Eugenics Popular in Germany</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">American eugenic researchers swell with pride at the news that Hitler has crafted legislation modeled on U.S. eugenic laws and is conferring with them on the science of racial hygiene. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">American eugenics was popularized in Germany three decades ago by Geza von Hoffman, an Austro-Hungarian vice consul whose book, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">Racial Hygiene in the United States</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">, treated U.S. laws on sterilization and marriage restriction at length. For many years German biology students had this book recommended to them as an indispensable reference. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">Some years after Hoffman’s book appeared, German nationalists were thrilled when U.S. eugenicist Madison Grant declared in the pages of his </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">Passing of the Great Race</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"> that Nordics were destined to rule the earth. Adolf Hitler has since written the best-selling author to praise the book as </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“his Bible.”</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">Now California immigration activist C. M. Goethe returns from a eugenic fact-finding mission to Germany and congratulates E. S. Gosney of the San Diego-based Human Betterment Foundation for his contributions to Hitler’s success. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought, and particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation. I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";">The Nazis order hundreds of thousands of sterilizations and remove non-Aryans from society.<sup>45</sup></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "timesnewromanpsmt";"><sup>Source: Edwin Black, <i>The War Against the Weak - Eugenics and America's Campaign To Create A Master Race</i>, (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003)pps. 264-6, 277 </sup></span><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-top: .2in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT;">1936: Berlin</span></i></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .1in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Nazi vs. Jim Crow</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Outraged at Nazi exclusion of non-Aryans from the Berlin Olympics, U.S. athletic groups join American Olympic officials in demanding a boycott of the Games. The First American Artists’ Congress unanimously endorses a resolution refusing cooperation with </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“a government which sponsors the destruction of all freedom in art...which sponsors racial discrimination, the censorship of free speech and free expression, and the glorification of war, hatred and sadism.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Spain and the USSR refuse to participate in the Games. In the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">Crisis</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> W. E. B. DuBois urges the U.S. join the boycott, but concedes its position is weak: </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“Upon the grounds of poor sportsmanship and discrimination, America, of course, cannot raise a very sincere howl.”</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Four years ago the United States discriminated against its own black athletes at the Los Angeles Games. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Hitler’s assertion that, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“The Nordic race is entitled to dominate the world”</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> echoes the longstanding position of American eugenicists. For three years U.S. officials have taken no action against his anti-Semitic outrages while major U.S. newspapers regularly carry advertisements announcing, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“No Jews or Catholics need apply!” </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">President Roosevelt ignores the issue. With American lynchings proceeding unpunished as usual, Hitler gloats that Germany treats Jews better than the U.S. does blacks.<sup>62</sup></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-top: .2in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT;">1936: Berlin</span></i></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; margin-bottom: .1in; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: lines-together; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: center; text-autospace: none; vertical-align: middle;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 120%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Adolf Hitler</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Host of this year’s Olympic Games, he diverts attention from his racial policies while winning much acclaim for his economic miracle. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Three years ago he was appointed Chancellor with the German jobless rate at 40%. Ignoring the protests of bankers and deficit hawks, he stimulated recovery with vast public works and construction subsidies to housing. Thanks to the full employment that ensued, family income increased while interest rates and military spending stayed low. Today, with the West still writhing in Depression agony, German unemployment stands at one percent. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">All this, he hopes, is but a prelude to fulfilling dreams of a vast German empire over the Eurasian Heartland, ruled by men of superior blood. It is the world historical destiny of Aryans, he insists, to vanquish the Jewish-Bolshevik heresy of the masses, now threatening to destroy civilization. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Given this immense threat to Aryan blood, he feels he had no choice but to exclude Jews from public office, the civil service, journalism, radio, farming, teaching, the theater, and films. In 1934 he kicked them out of the stock exchanges and last year forbade Aryans to have sex with them. By now half of German Jews have no means of making a living and </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">“Jews Not Admitted”</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"> signs block them from stores all over the country. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 120%; mso-hyphenate: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 23.75pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">Well does Hitler know how indebted he is to Americans who have already blazed the trail of combining massive industrial power with racial hygiene laws. He frankly admires their Nordic supremacist achievements, praising Indian concentration camps in the West and U.S. efficiency in eliminating its indigenous population by starvation and massacre.<sup>63</sup></span></div></div><br />

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