The Holocaust: FDR’s indelible failure
This accusation of immense moral failure — or indifference — is now being addressed by a new book, “FDR and the Jews,” by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman. It sets out to find a middle ground and instead makes things worse. It is a portrait of a president who, in the authors’ own words, “did not forthrightly inform the American people of Hitler’s grisly ‘Final Solution’ or respond decisively to his crimes.” This is a Roosevelt who almost always had a more pressing political concern — American isolationism, American anti-Semitism, a fear and hatred of immigrants — and who stayed mum while a bill to allow 20,000 Jewish children into the United States died in Congress.
Roosevelt inattentively also permitted a cabal of heartless anti-Semites in the State Department to control the country’s visa policies. Desperate Jews, fleeing from the Nazis, were denied asylum in the United States. One of them was Otto Frank. His daughter Anne perished at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Both FDR and his wife, Eleanor, were genteel anti-Semites — although the president had Jewish aides and one close Jewish friend, his neighbor Henry Morgenthau Jr. Eleanor, a woman not afraid to confront her own prejudices, later became a champion of Jewish causes, but the record for the president on this score is hardly as redeeming. As late as 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, he sympathized with a French general’s observation that the Jews were overrepresented in the professions. FDR referenced the “understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews.”
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I don’t know what FDR may have done to delay US bomber development, but the US designed, developed, and began manufacturing the world’s first monoplane four engine long range bomber, the B-17, before the war began. We were ahead of everyone else, though the Brits started catching up quickly once the war began.
Also, IIRC, the US basically invented and pioneered dive bombing using single engined aircraft.
Where the US was deficient at the beginning of the war was in fighter aircraft. We had nothing comparable to the best the Germans and the Japanese had. And it remained that way until about 1944. We never did develop a decent in-line liquid cooled aircraft engine before or during the war. We ended up using a British engine in the P-51.
I fault FDR for a great deal, including opening the Pandora’s box of socialism and the welfare state in the US. But one of the things he did do right was doing all he could to prepare the US for WW II. He was restricted by the US Congress and public sentiment. It was not really FDR’s fault that we were not better prepared.
farsighted on March 13, 2013 at 8:02 AM
Hindsight in 20-20. What did FDR know about the holocaust for certain and when? Yes he knew Hitler was up to no good, but obviously the best way to deal with Hitler in general was to take him out as quickly as possible and with the minimum loss of American life.
If we take the approach suggested by Cohen then surely the bigger moral failure of FDR was to do absolutely nothing about Stalin’s death camps. At the time US allied with Stalin, Stalin was well known to be a mass murderer with higher body count than what Hitler had. Would that not be a moral conundrum? And how about Japan and China? Again Japan’s atrocities were well known and before the Holocaust started were definitely worse than Hitler’s antics by that time. Given Pearl Harbour shouldn’t the strategy have been Japan first? How many hundreds of thousands of Asians could have been saved if this were the case?
Also if this is the measure of moral worth, shouldn’t Cohen be screaming his lungs out for Obama to do something about Assad right away? Given the path Assad is on, its not impossible at all that he’ll end up killing hundreds of thousands. Also what about Clinton and Rwanda? And shouldn’t Cohen be praising Bush for saving Kurds from a definite genocide that was just waiting to happen.
I have a personal reason for being peeved at FDR allowing Stalin to have free hands in the territories he conquered as Stalin killed of a lot of my family. That however doesn’t make FDR responsible for Stalin’s acts and I can well understand why FDR did not want to risk a war with Stalin on top of the war with Hitler.
kittysaidwoof on March 13, 2013 at 8:02 AM
Thanks.
farsighted on March 13, 2013 at 8:04 AM
Actually, they were slow obsolete WW I era battleships that burned a lot of fuel oil very inefficiently.
Several were available for battle within months after Pearl Harbor. Most were used for patrols and convoy duty until 1944, because they were slow, obsolete, and burned a lot of fuel oil. We had some fuel oil shortages in 1942 into 1943. Beginning at the end of 1943 they were used for shore bombardment during the central Pacific island hopping campaign.
The “best” we had were the carriers, and they were luckily not in port when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
farsighted on March 13, 2013 at 8:11 AM
Effectivley bombing rail lines is very,very difficult. We had trouble dropping most bombs within a mile of the designated target.
And rail lines can be rebuilt in a day or two. So they must be bombed over and over again. Also, the rail lines we would have to bomb were in the same areas as the camps, mostly out of range until the fall of 1944.
The strategic bombing campaign never targeted rail lines until the months before D-Day. Then we mostly bombed rail yards and hubs in cities within a few hundred miles of Normandy which were a bigger target. Railroad bridges were also targeted, but bridges were very hard to hit.
All and all targeting railway lines would have been a waste of time, effort, aircraft, and lives better utilized as they were.
The sad fact is there is very little we could do to mitigate the Holocaust once it and the war began.
The allies failure was in stopping Hitler before the war began. Once the war began little could be done to help the Jews other than ending it as fast as possible.
farsighted on March 13, 2013 at 8:21 AM
It’s easy for us to sit back & say what FDR should have done.
In the end, when you see what he had been doing all along up until the point of the war, he stands fully on his own merits as a real POS.
I’ve always found it interesting how many many Jews are leftists and many were outright communists.
And considering the infiltration that was allowed to happen under FDR’s watch of communists in all levels of govt, including the state department, I’m surprised he didn’t like Jews.
They certainly helped him set the path for destruction in America.
I don’t blame Jews for anything. They’re just people like anyone else.
It is the ideological war that is important. This idea that communism/socialism will somehow work.
That those who become wealthy by the sweat of their own brow & natural talent are somehow not entitled to those fruits.
That somehow by getting rich this way they have stolen wealth from others, which is absurd.
And yet, this belief reigns today still.
FDR was one of these people. He is a major player in the absolute destruction of the American Republic.
He was a leftist & fought a war. But not like leftists today. I’ll agree he had some tough choices.
We had a guy lead this war for us who was a communist (even though he didn’t know it himself).
I will say that many of the Democrats of this era were much different than they are today.
Back then many staunch Dems hated communism and some were quite religious.
It’s interesting to see the merging of communists & Democrats that we have today. Showing that these evil tendencies have a lot in common: the curtailment of free choice & Liberty.
Badger40 on March 13, 2013 at 8:26 AM
<blockquote I can well understand why FDR did not want to risk a war with Stalin on top of the war with Hitler.
kittysaidwoof on March 13, 2013 at 8:02 AM
From all of the literature & history I have read, it seems FDR really thought Stalin was a good guy.
FDR seemed privately furious & surprised when Stalin double dealed.
I think FDR, as politically clever as he was, was also very stupid, like many liberals.
He put his trust in the wrong people & seemed to refuse to see the danger of letting people who were communists infiltrate his administration.
I think he did not take the communist threat very seriously.
And bcs of that, America’s foreign policy was hijacked in favor of pro-Communist policies.
This certainly did not help China.
FDR’s presidency was a tragedy & outrage in just so many ways.
Badger40 on March 13, 2013 at 8:31 AM
IIRC those were the Hungarian Jews. They were protected by the Hungarian government until then. They were the last to be transported and mass murdered — one of Eichmann’s proudest achievements.
Birkenau was still out of range of our bombers during this time.
farsighted on March 13, 2013 at 9:05 AM
Stalin played FDR made a fool out of him. FDR thought he could charm and influence any one, including Uncle Joe.
farsighted on March 13, 2013 at 9:06 AM
Of course, I’m using “best” as a relative term.
Like other socialist presidents Ogabe, Clintoon and Peanut Carter the budgetary focus was on handouts and social programs rather than keeping the military strong and modern….
viking01 on March 13, 2013 at 5:33 PM
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