US Response To The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the country that sponsored mass murders for of over six million Jews by the Nazi government during World War II. It was the culmination of close to a decade of official discrimination, racial segregation, and brutal violence against the Jewish residential district in Germany. Under the shield of the war, the Nazis turned to systematic genocide after 1941, setting up industrial-style “extermination camps” planning to execute the detained Jewish population of Germany and Europe. While other groups targeted for extinction by the Nazi state, including gypsies, gays and communists, anti-Semitism was a fundamental tenet of Nazi ideology. In fact, Hitler believed until the end that the “war against the Jews” was a more important goal than victory in the conventional military battles of World War II. The Holocaust is today known as one of the worst mass crimes in human history.
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There are two primary topics linked to the U.S.
response to the Holocaust. The foremost concerns the highly selective application of established American immigration policy to Jewish refugees trying to get away from their increasingly violent persecution in Germany in the 1930s and from the horrors of the Holocaust during the warfare. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in 1924 had imposed extremely tight limits on immigration to the U.S. and the limited quota for immigrants from Germany was not as detached in the 1930s, despite the American growing awareness of the systematic discrimination, mass incarceration, and nation-sponsored violence against Jews in Nazi
Germany.
The immigration rule was applied very strictly to exclude Jewish refugees trained in particular professions and others not to receive guaranteed employment upon arrival to the United States. However, the U.S. State Department forced additional bureaucratic hurdles by insisting documents that the refugees were not able to provide presenting their arrangements to German authorities, such as the requirement that they secure certificates of safe conduct from the German police. There is substantial evidence that such intransigent regulations impacted the anti-Semitic attitudes within the State Department.
President Roosevelt did little to change this competitive position. Although he received several appeals on behalf of Jewish refugees and complaints about the State Department’s opposed application of the normals, he did not address the issue until the final year of the war. While he was genuinely dismayed by the Nazi treatment of the Jews, he initially took over the State Department’s concerns about the economic shock of immigration in times of high unemployment in the 1930s and then repeated officials’ fears that German spies could be among the Jewish refugees. It was not until late in the war that the President finally shifted authority over refugee policy to an independent War Refugee Board (WRB). Afterward, he received damning reports that demonstrated the State Department had deliberately sabotaged Jewish refugee applications. In January 1944, the War Refugee Board was then charged with the task of rescuing the surviving remnants of the Jewish population from Europe.
The second historiographical concern about the U.S. response to the Holocaust involves official refusal to bring military action to destroy the extermination camps in Eastern Europe and the railroad lines that deported their victims to the camps. The U.S. had substantial evidence after 1942 that the Germans had embarked on a massive effort to eradicate the Jewish population of occupied Europe. Even the death of the Nazi machinery of mortality never became part of the American military agenda during the warfare. A behind-the-scenes request was made by Jewish leaders and, eventually, the U.S. War Refugee Board that the U.S. military stopped or block the mass murder by bombing the extermination camps which were all firmly rejected. The government was concerned that the Nazis would exploit the last toll from such bombing for propaganda gains. The military also insisted that it could not divert resources from the most important job of destroying German military and industrial targets and that they could not bomb the extermination camps with sufficient precision.
The American reluctance to intervene immediately to end the Holocaust remains a deeply contested issue in the historiography of the war and President Roosevelt. Some historians argue that the defeat of Hitler and his military forces was the overriding priority and that little could be done to stop the Holocaust before the destruction of the Nazi regime. Others indicate that US refusal to fail or other than destroy the extermination camps in the 1940s, but reinforces the conclusion that may be sucked up from the American immigration policy in the 1930s: tragic fate of European Jews was never a serious worry for U.S. policy-shapers.
There are two primary topics linked to the U.S.
response to the Holocaust. The foremost concerns the highly selective application of established American immigration policy to Jewish refugees trying to get away from their increasingly violent persecution in Germany in the 1930s and from the horrors of the Holocaust during the warfare. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in 1924 had imposed extremely tight limits on immigration to the U.S. and the limited quota for immigrants from Germany was not as detached in the 1930s, despite the American growing awareness of the systematic discrimination, mass incarceration, and nation-sponsored violence against Jews in Nazi
Germany.
The immigration rule was applied very strictly to exclude Jewish refugees trained in particular professions and others not to receive guaranteed employment upon arrival to the United States. However, the U.S. State Department forced additional bureaucratic hurdles by insisting documents that the refugees were not able to provide presenting their arrangements to German authorities, such as the requirement that they secure certificates of safe conduct from the German police. There is substantial evidence that such intransigent regulations impacted the anti-Semitic attitudes within the State Department.
President Roosevelt did little to change this competitive position. Although he received several appeals on behalf of Jewish refugees and complaints about the State Department’s opposed application of the normals, he did not address the issue until the final year of the war. While he was genuinely dismayed by the Nazi treatment of the Jews, he initially took over the State Department’s concerns about the economic shock of immigration in times of high unemployment in the 1930s and then repeated officials’ fears that German spies could be among the Jewish refugees. It was not until late in the war that the President finally shifted authority over refugee policy to an independent War Refugee Board (WRB). Afterward, he received damning reports that demonstrated the State Department had deliberately sabotaged Jewish refugee applications. In January 1944, the War Refugee Board was then charged with the task of rescuing the surviving remnants of the Jewish population from Europe.
The second historiographical concern about the U.S. response to the Holocaust involves official refusal to bring military action to destroy the extermination camps in Eastern Europe and the railroad lines that deported their victims to the camps. The U.S. had substantial evidence after 1942 that the Germans had embarked on a massive effort to eradicate the Jewish population of occupied Europe. Even the death of the Nazi machinery of mortality never became part of the American military agenda during the warfare. A behind-the-scenes request was made by Jewish leaders and, eventually, the U.S. War Refugee Board that the U.S. military stopped or block the mass murder by bombing the extermination camps which were all firmly rejected. The government was concerned that the Nazis would exploit the last toll from such bombing for propaganda gains. The military also insisted that it could not divert resources from the most important job of destroying German military and industrial targets and that they could not bomb the extermination camps with sufficient precision.
The American reluctance to intervene immediately to end the Holocaust remains a deeply contested issue in the historiography of the war and President Roosevelt. Some historians argue that the defeat of Hitler and his military forces was the overriding priority and that little could be done to stop the Holocaust before the destruction of the Nazi regime. Others indicate that US refusal to fail or other than destroy the extermination camps in the 1940s, but reinforces the conclusion that may be sucked up from the American immigration policy in the 1930s: tragic fate of European Jews was never a serious worry for U.S. policy-shapers.