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By the
mid-1930's, the preoccupation of the Roosevelt Administration
with the Depression and attempts to restore economic health
began to compete with concerns over the deteriorating situation
in Europe and Asia. In August 1935, President Roosevelt signed
what would be the first of a series of Neutrality
Acts that attempted to keep the U.S. from becoming a party
to foreign conflicts by authorizing the President to prohibit
shipment of military supplies abroad and to restrict the travel
of U.S. citizens on foreign vessels except at their own risk.
While the measures were initiated by members of Congress responding
to the significant public sentiment against taking steps that
might lead to U.S. involvement in a foreign war, Roosevelt
evidently did not wish to risk provoking opposition to his
domestic program through vetoing the bills.
Congress
also resisted efforts to allow more European refugeees fleeing
the Nazi oppression to enter the U.S. by easing the tight
restrictions on immigration that had been enacted in 1924.
With the country continuing in the grip of the Depression,
many feared that refugees would compete for still scarce jobs.
There also continued to be both open and covert expressions
of antisemitism.
Only weeks
after the President signed the first Neutrality Act in 1935,
the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg
Laws that deprived Jews of their German citizenship and
prohibited marriage or sexual relations between Jews and those
of German blood. These acts were followed by increasingly
harsher restrictions. In 1938, Jews in Germany were required
to register their property, Jewish children were barred from
attending school and Jews were prohibited from all public
places, including theaters, movies, beaches, and resorts.
Even
as the intentions of the Nazis toward the Jews became more
obvious, there was little support for refugee relief. Four
different polls taken in 1938 reported that between 71% and
85% of the U.S. public opposed raising the refugee quota.
See Plater
Robinson, Deathly Silence: Everyday People in the Holocaust,
Southern Institute For Education and Research, Tulane University.
In 1938, the President attempted to develop a multi-national
approach to the refugee problem through the Evian
Conference convened at his suggestion in France where
32 countries met for nine days.Most nations, however, including
the U.S. and Britain, were unwilling to make commitments to
significantly increase the numbers of refugees they were willing
to accept and, apart from establishing a weak international
refugee commission based in London, the conference ended with
little of substance being accomplished.
The lack
of a united international response may have encouraged the
Nazis to broaden their anti-Jewish campaigns. On October 28,
1938, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship, many of whom had
been living in Germany for decades, were arrested and relocated
across the Polish border and then interned in "relocation
camps" on the Polish frontier when the Polish government
refused to admit them. On the nights of November 9 and 10,
known as Kristallnacht,
"the Night of Broken Glass", organized violence
broke out as gangs of Nazis ransacked Jewish neighborhoods,
breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues
and looting. The violence led to 91 deaths and the destruction
included 101 synagogues and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses.
Sime 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
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In
May 1939, several hundred Jewish refugees on the ocean
liner St.
Louis arrived off the Atlantic coast after being
allowed to sail from Germany without U.S. visas; when
the ship was denied permission to dock at ports in either
the U.S. or Cuba, it was forced to return to Europe
where its passengers disembarked at Amsterdam, soon
coming under Nazi control after the invasion in May
1940 of the Netherlands.
Passengers
on deck of S.S. St. Louis. Image Source: U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum
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I myself
could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century
civilization.
Statement
of Franklin D. Roosevelt
The
few exceptions to the immigration restrictions were largely
limited to the elite of the refugee community, who often were
assisted by influential Jewish patrons. The New Jersey retailer
Louis
Bamberger, for example, financed the establishment of
the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton as a center to accomodate leading thinkers fleeing
Nazi rule such as Albert
Einstein, who accepted an appointment to its faculty in
1933.
On February
9, 1939, Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative
Edith Rogers of Massachusetts introduced a bill to suspend
the normal quota to allow entry of 20,000 German refugee children
under the age of 14. The Wagner-Rogers
Bill died in committee, however, after failing to gain
support from the Roosevelt Administration, which apparently
feared that the measure might provoke a reaction by anti-refugee
forces to cut the existing quotas. The President declined
to intervene despite the efforts of his wife Eleanor who corresponded
with advocates for the legislation on strategic options for
generating sufficient support:
...My
husband says that you had better go to work at once
and get two people of opposite parties in [Congress]
and have them jointly get agreement on the legislation
which you want for bringing in children.
The
State Department is only afraid of what Congress will
say to them, and therefore if you remove that fear
the State Department will make no objection,
He
advises that you ... get all the Catholic support
you can. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I
talked with [a White House staffer] and he told me
... that pressing the President at the present time
may mean that the people in Congress who favor drafting
bills to cut the quota will present them immediately
and that might precipitate a difficult situation which
would result in cutting the quota by 90%...
I
cabled [my husband] and he said ... he would be pleased
to have the bill go through but he did not want to
say anything publicly at the present time.
Excerpts
from Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt to Justine Wise
Polier
Source:
The
Jewish Virtual Library
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The Administration
also tried unsuccessfully early in 1939 to get Congressional
support to ease the restrictions imposed by the Neutrality
Acts in order to provide increased aid to the British. After
the Germans invaded Poland in September, Congress approved
repeal of the embargo against trading with combatants, and
in March 1941 the Lend-Lease
Act provided the British with 50 American destroyers in
exchange for U.S. leases on British bases in the Western Hemisphere.
After the Germans broke their treaty with the Soviet Union
in June and invaded Russia, the Russians also received military
aid and other supplies. Spending on defense was also sharply
increased, which further helped to create jobs for domestic
economic recovery.
Yet the
Roosevelt Administration's shift toward more open actions
to counter Nazi expansion continued to face strong isolationist
opposition, often coupled with antisemitism, as well as objections
by those generally opposed to Roosevelt's massive expansion
of the federal government. While the President expressed outrage
at the Nazi-organized riots against the Jews in November 1939
followed by the arrest of thousands of Jews, he still reaffirmed
the government's opposition to any significant increase in
the refugee quota. As the President began his campaign for
an unprecedented third term in 1940, the America
First Committee was formally established in July, ultimately
growing to over 800,000 members.
Image
Source: The
Forum: International Arts, Antiques and Collectibles Forum
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Chaired
by Robert
E. Wood, chairman of Sears Roebuck and a retired Army
general, the AFC energed as the most prominent group lobbying
against American involvement in Europe. Its diverse composition
included business leaders like Wood who were concerned
over the economic consequences of war, as well as the
rapidly growing size of the federal government under Roosevelt.
Others, however, expressed a variety of nativist or antisemitic
views.
Charles Lindbergh, who had spent considerable time
in Germany and accepted a medal from the Nazis, also joined
the AFC executive committee, and became a controversial
leader of the isolationist forces. Yet even some members
of the AFC were embarrassed by some of the more extreme
views of Lindbergh:
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The
three most important groups who have been pressing
this country toward war are the British, the Jewish
and the Roosevelt Administration. Behind these groups
. . . are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles,
and intellectuals who believe that the future of
mankind depends upon the domination of the British
Empire.The Roosevelt Administration is the third
powerful group which has been carrying this country
toward war.Its members have used the war emergency
to obtain a third presidential term for the first
time in American history....Instead of agitating
for war, Jews in this country should be opposing
it in every way, for they will be the first to feel
its consequences. Their greatest danger to this
country lies in their large ownership and influence
in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and
our government.
Charles
A. Lindbergh, speech
given in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941
Source:
CharlesLindbergh.com.
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Roosevelt's
controversial decision to run for a third term, which was
opposed even by influential Democratic leaders, made his re-election
prospects somewhat more questionable, and may have led to
his continuing suggestions in his 1940 campaign that under
his leadership the country would be able to avoid entering
the war. During the 1940 campaign, the President also appeared
to be reluctant to press for any relaxation of the refugeee
quotas , supporting the State Department's position against
easing entry into the country.
Excerpt
from diary entry for October 3, 1940, of Assistant
Secretary of State Breckinridge
Long, who
headed the State Department's immigration visa program,
in which he notes that President Roosevelt supports
his policy of encouraging consulates to "postpone
and postpone and postpone" the granting of visas.
"The
War Diary of Breckinridge Long"; ed. Fred L.
Israel; University of Nebraska Press, 1966. Source:
PBS.org
So
when I saw him [President Roosevelt] this morning
the whole subject of immigration, visas, safety of
the United States, procedures to be followed; and
all that sort of thing was on the table. I found that
he was 100% in accord with my ideas. He said that
when Myron Taylor, [the President's personal representative
to the Vatican], had returned from Europe recently
the only thing which they discussed outside of Vatican
matters was the visa and refugee situation and the
manner in which our Consulates were being deprived
of a certain amount of discretion by the rulings of
the Department...The President expressed himself as
in entire accord with the policy which would exclude
persons about whom there was any suspicion that they
would be inimical too [sic] the welfare of the United
States no matter who had vouchsafed for them and irrespective
of their financial or other standing. I left him with
the satisfactory thought that he was wholeheartedly
in support of the policy which would resolve in favor
of the United States any doubts about admissibility
of any individual.
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While
his margin in the November election dropped sharply from the
landslide win in 1936, Roosevelt still easily defeated Republican
Wendell Willkie,
who
argued for greater support of the anti-Nazi forces in Europe,
by about five million popular votes and by 449 to 82 electoral
votes.After his re-election, Roosevelt called for "lend-lease"
aid to the anti-German allies. This aid, approved by Congress,
greatly increased the flow of supplies to Britain. After Germany
attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, lend-lease went to
the Russians as well.
...at
a dinner party at the White House, Roosevelt said
to [Postmaster General James A.] Farley's wife that
he was having a terrible time. People were trying
to make him run and he didn't want to. To which she
replied: "Well, you're the President, aren't
you? All you have to do is to tell them you won't
run." He looked very much surprised and turned
to the lady on his right. It was at this point that
Farley knew definitely that Roosevelt was going to
run again and after this the President virtually ignored
Farley, and a White House assistant secretary was
ordered not to assist Farley in a speech he was about
to make. [Secretary of State] Cordell Hull says that
from 1938 to July, 1940, Roosevelt told him definitely
that Hull would be his successor. But all the time
he was laying his plans for a "draft"
and acting out the comedy with Hull, who apparently
still believed Roosevelt wanted him to run.
The
whole story is a chapter of duplicity, in which Roosevelt,
who had definitely decided to run if he could make
it, was putting on before Farley the pose that he
didn't want to run and before Hull the pose that Hull
was his candidate, while all the New Deal agents,
with his full knowledge and approval, were scouring
the country for delegates and Roosevelt was using
every artifice and pressure he could command to kill
off every possible contender for the nomination.
Source:
The
Third Term, Henry Hazllitt, The
Henry Hazlitt Foundation
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Meanwhile,
in the Pacific, Japan had invaded Manchuria. In July 1940,
Roosevelt reacted by shutting off American trade with Japan,
a move forcing the Japanese to aggressively seek resources
from other parts of Asia to support industrial and military
expansion. Japan then invaded the British and Dutch colonies
in Southeast Asia followed by attacks on French Indochina
in September. In July 1941, all Japanese assets in the United
States were frozen. Similar action by Great Britain and the
Netherlands affected shipments of oil from the East Indies.
This created such a critical situation for Japan that its
cabinet decided that, unless the United States made concessions,
the oilfields to the south would be seized by military operations.
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...Shortly
after three o'clock I went to the White House, where
I talked with the President and others for forty minutes.
Mr. Roosevelt was very solemn in demeanor and conversation.
The magnitude of the surprise achieved by the Japanese
at Pearl Harbor was already becoming evident But neither
he nor any of us lost faith for a moment in the ability
of the United States to cope with the danger.
We had a general discussion preparatory to a conference
that the President decided to hold that evening with
Stimson, Knox myself General Marshall, Admiral Stark,
and other principal advisers. We discussed in a tentative
way the many different steps that would have to be taken,
when and by whom. The President early determined to
go to Congress with a message asking for a declaration
of a state of war with Japan....
The
Memoirs of Cordell Hull
Source: Spartacus
Educational
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The
Atlantic Charter was published on August 14, 1941, by
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. The eight
point declaration aimed at achieving a peaceful world for
all nations and was an important diplomatic step in the defeat
of the Axis powers.
Resources
The
Holocaust, anti-Semitism, U.S. immigration policy, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, World War II,
PBS.org
Museum
of Tolerance, Simon Wiesenthal Center
Great
Depression and World War II >> Library
of Congress
American
Isolationism, schoolshistory.org
1932:
Roosevelt defeats Hoover, Department of Political Science
& International Affairs, Kennesaw State University
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt's Deception: Was It Successful?, Gifted
Education and Special Education Lesson Plans and Resources,
Edmund J. Sass, Ed.D., College
of Saint Benedict, Saint John's University
New
Deal Network>>
Institute for Learning Technologies, Columbia
University
Fallen
Hero: Charles Lindbergh in the 1940s, >> PBS.org
Charles
Lindbergh's Noninterventionist Efforts & America First
Committee Involvement, CharlesLindbergh.com
The
American First Committee, Sheldon Richman, The
Future of Freedom Foundation
Franklin
D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Educational
Tools
Educational
Lesson Plans on the Holocaust >>
Remember.org, A Cybrary
of the Holocaust
New
Deal Lesson Plans, New
Deal Network >>Institute
for Learning Technologies, Columbia University
FDR
and the Supreme Court, New
Deal Network >>
Institute for Learning Technologies, Columbia University
Teacher
Resources: S.S. St. Louis >> U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum
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