The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  The victors create the histories. If historians actually produced a correct account of World War II, people would no longer view Churchill in the same way. He said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Further, he said, “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.” He was influential enough to destroy the evidence that challenged the Churchill illusion, including ordering the death of Prince George of Kent. 683 684 John Simkin said, “One of the reasons that the creation of the Churchill myth has been so successful is that it appeals to the vanity of the British people. Churchill’s message was not only about his own courage but that of those willing to fight by his side against tyranny and injustice. As a result, British historians have been reluctant to question the reality of Churchill’s actions between 1930 and 1945.” 685

  Immigration, Not Extermination

  In 1936, in New York and London, Victor Gollancz published The Yellow Spot, the Outlawing of Half a Million Human Beings devised by a “group of investigators” to arouse moral indignation. 686 This “outlawing of half a million human beings” may refer to specific stipulations contained in the NSDAP program, written on February 24, 1920, the state is first responsible to provide job opportunities and a suitable lifestyle for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the Reich should expel the people of foreign nations (Jews or non citizens); prevention of further immigration of non citizens; the deportation of all non Germans, who immigrated to Germany since August 2, 1914.687

  Gollancz’s sensationalist book purported to document the anti-Jewish measures in Germany between 1933 and 1935. The deceptive title of the German edition was The Extermination of 500,000 German Jews. Clearly, there is a major difference between outlawing and exterminating an ideological group. According to the book, there were only 2,000 prisoners at Dachau in the 1930s, hardly an indictment demonstrating Germany’s inhumanity given that the Soviets imprisoned and starved millions during the same period. 688 Lion Feuchtwanger, editor of the Moscow-based German language Communist literary magazine, Das Wort, assisted and promoted the German edition of Gollancz’s book, which was shameful propaganda. He was a henchman for Stalin’s Comintern which had an operation in Paris in 1936-1938. 689

  A propaganda campaign continued in America where the Zionists claimed there was a pogrom in Berlin based on Roosevelt’s “quarantine” speech of October 5, 1937, asking for an international “quarantine of the aggressor nations,” implying Japan, Italy, and Germany. He suggested using economic pressure (sanctions) instead of open aggression as an option in view of America’s policy of neutrality. The Zionists and Communists, abundant in the State Department, were not so concerned about their fellow Jews, but rather they refused to alleviate whatever suffering the Jews in Germany might be experiencing. Rabbi Wise admitted that he and fellow Zionists did not respond to the urgent appeals from them to halt the economic boycott. He did not want them to resolve their issues with Hitler. He told his associates, “. . . that our Jewish brothers in Germany might feel moved or compelled to accept a peace agreement or pact that might mean some slight amelioration or mitigation of their wrongs . . . that the Nazi regime might decide to prevent some of the evil consequences of its regime by such palliative treatment of the Jews as would disarm worldwide Jewish protest.” 690

  Reb Moshe Shonfeld, in the first chapter of his book, The Holocaust Victims Accuse (1977), says, “After the fall of Poland, where the majority of European Jewry resided, Hitler immediately began to implement the ‘Final Solution’ to slaughter and exterminate every Jewish soul. The murder of the Jews was no small affair to Hitler. It was his main goal and the very first item on his agenda.” 691 The three Zionist emigration groups, intent on settling in Palestine, wanted the younger Jews, capable of hard work, to immigrate. They acknowledged that the only way to facilitate such an operation was to work with the National Socialists. The Main Office for Jewish Migration Welfare assisted the resettlement of non-German Jews 692 The NS government tried to persuade all of its Jewish citizens to emigrate and arranged two official symbiotic contracts, the Ha’avara (1933-1941) exclusively for relocation to Palestine and the Rublee-Wohlthat Agreement.

  In 1960, Malcolm H. Stern, a scholarly New Yorker, published 550 numbered copies of a ten-pound, $40 book entitled Americans of Jewish Descent which documented the Jews who had arrived in America before 1840, not including the large migration of Jews from Germany during the 1840s. He traced the ancestry of the elite Jews who had arrived as early as the sixteenth century, mostly the Sephardim, who considered themselves “emphatically superior.” Stern included the Roosevelt family. 693 Isaac Roosevelt (1726-1794), one of the co-founders and the president of Alexander Brown and Sons (later called Brown Brothers Harriman), was a federalist and was FDR’s great-great grandfather. 694 Isaac Roosevelt, baptized a Christian, owner of a sugar refinery, engaged in the infamous triangle trade—rum, sugar, and slaves. FDR, a Crypto Jew on both his father and mother’s side, consistently worked in behalf of the Jews.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt convened a conference in the Hotel Royale at Évian-les-Bains, on Lake Geneva, for July 6-15, 1938, in order to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. The U.S Government proposed the agenda on June 14 as follows, 1) To consider steps to facilitate the settlement in other countries of political refugees from Germany and Austria; 2) To devise immediate solutions, within the existing immigration laws… to assist the most urgent cases; 3) To consider a system of documentation… for those refugees who are unable to obtain requisite documents from other sources; 4) To consider the establishment of a continuing body of representatives… a long-range program; 5) recommendations to the participating governments regarding the subjects enumerated above. 695

  Golda Meir (Meirson) led the Jewish Agency delegation, which disregarded Germany’s offer to facilitate and fund the immigration of Jews to other countries for $250 a head. The Zionists in attendance seemed disinterested in discussing more lenient immigration policies for Jews in Germany and Austria with the representatives of the thirty-two countries who attended the conference. All of the “compassionate” representatives, while thoroughly denouncing Germany for its cruel and evil anti-Semitism, regrettably emphasized that his country was not in the position to admit any of these Jews. 696 Hitler said, “It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them…” 697 These countries included Australia, the Argentine Republic, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, England, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. 698

  At the conclusion of the Evian Conference, some delegates opted to establish a committee to determine the fate of the Jews from Germany with American attorney, George Rublee as Director of the Intergovernmental Committee of the Evian Conference. They held their first meeting on August 3, 1938. Rublee was the originator of the rarely-discussed Rublee-Wohlthat eight-month long agreement as war erupted which was applicable to the majority of Jews, those uninterested in relocating to Palestine. About two-thirds of all immigrants sought residence in another European country or in an overseas country. Germany sought emigration, not extermination. 699

  Rublee reported that British officials and diplomats were uninterested in the work of the Committee. Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador, though slightly interested never carried it any further. 700 Roosevelt may have presumed that he should offer “some sort of gesture” because of “the outrage caused by the Jewish persecution.” 701 While Kennedy was in London, he interacted with many German officials with whom he expressed his views about the Jews and their control and management of FDR. Ha
ving made a lot of money in the movie industry, Kennedy was also aware of their movie monopoly as well as their control of the press. He was close to Father Charles Coughlin and felt that, in as much as Hitler opposed Communism, then perhaps the United States should collaborate with Hitler. 702

  On November 17, 1938, Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British Ambassador in Washington called Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles and told him, per instructions from London, that Britain had decreased its immigration quota by fifty percent, applicable only to Jews emigrating from Germany. Lindsay anticipated an equivalent proposition from the United States. Welles, who was not in charge of immigration policies, told Lindsay “to forget that idea.” On November 15, FDR had already stated that he had “no intention of raising immigration quotas for immigration from Germany.” Welles assumed that “influential American Jewish leaders, who rigidly opposed increased Jewish immigration from Germany, were behind this decision.” 703

  After Kristallnacht, Hitler directed Hjalmar Schacht to design an immigration and resettlement program of Germany’s Jews that he would then present to leading Jews in London, perhaps the same group that had helped organize the 1933 boycott. If that was the situation, then it would be no surprise if they rejected it so that, according to Chaim Weizmann, the Zionists might found their state “following great sacrifice.” 704 Given the massive assets of the Jews in Germany, about six billion Reichmarks, Schacht thought that a committee composed of Germans, Jews, and foreign financiers should determine the best solution for the relocation of the Jews and their assets, using a foreign exchange loan of the counter value of one and a half billion Reichmarks, enough to finance the emigration. 705

  Schacht was in London on December 14-17, 1938, seeking the advocacy of wealthy Jews and others, Montagu Norman, William Roberts (Lord Winterton), the Chairman of the Evian Conference, Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, Walter Samuel (Lord Bearsted), and George Rublee, then living in London. Lord Bearsted, from a wealthy Jewish family, said that the Jews themselves would have to decide. He proposed that Schacht speak with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the Jewish Agency. Lord Bearsted reported that Weizmann inexplicably opposed the plan as he believed that he could only found the Zionist state following great sacrifice. Schacht left London under the impression that the Jews rejected his plan. In 1970, in an interview regarding the events of 1938, Schacht said that one should not exclude the notion that Weizmann may have said to himself, “I will achieve my goal to rebuild Zion, and found a Jewish State, only if I am willing to allow great sacrifices to give an impetus to the course.” He said he believed that Weizmann “nurtured the idea of creating victims.” 706

  German Ambassador, Herbert von Dirksen, in London told the Foreign Office in Berlin that Lord Winterton, and Leith-Ross had accepted Schacht’s plan to move 150,000 Jews from Germany to other countries. A foreign consortium was willing to fund it in the amount of 1.5 billion Reichmarks, with Germany making additional exports to handle the interest and amortization of the total amount. On December 18, 1938, Rublee approached officials in Washington about more financing. Evidently, Jewish leaders in London and in Paris rejected Schacht’s plan and turned it over to others to create international Jewish consortium. They also wanted the support of several governments represented on this Intergovernmental Refugee Committee (IRC). Sumner Welles totally rejected Schacht’s loan plan. 707

  Rublee convened a meeting for December 20, 1938 in Paris with financial experts who decided that only an international Jewish consortium could raise the necessary 1.5 billion Reichmarks in foreign exchange. They agreed that they should ask Germany to pay the interest directly in foreign exchange. It was the Jews in London who proclaimed a boycott in March, and then Samuel Untermeyer announced it in August, 1933, in New York. Yet, in December 1938, Jews claimed that “World Jewry” was non-existent. In 1933, the Jews used a boycott. They had used Kristallnacht and the influence of the Evian Committee to exert pressure on Germany. German officials wanted Rublee to conclude the negotiations with the Jews as they wanted these troublemakers out of Germany. 708

  In early January, Hermann Göring arranged for Rublee to come to Berlin to discuss the Jewish situation with Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat, of the Reich Economics Ministry. They negotiated an agreement regarding 150,000 of the 600,000 Jews living in Germany. German officials, each year, over the next five years, would make accommodations with other countries for 30,000 young Jews to leave Germany. Presumably, the families of these Jews would thereafter follow meaning that another 250,000 Jews would relocate; leaving 200,000 older Jews, over the age of forty-five, or those who were ill or for some other legitimate could not emigrate. 709

  The Jews viewed the results of the Evian Conference and the IRC ineffectual as they demonstrated the “world’s indifference to Jewish persecution.” However, in February 1939, the German government signed an agreement with Rublee, wholly against the resolve of Weizmann, head of the Jewish Agency. The British, the French and the American Jews opposed any program that assisted Jewish emigration from Germany even though Rublee had arranged a financial program for the resettlement of over 400,000 Jews without their loss of assets. The German government was also prepared to fund their occupational retraining and relocation of legitimate workers to the countries of their choice. Germany would also grant consent to immigrate to inmates in the camps, except to those guilty of crimes. 710

  Himmler, Göring and all the top officials agreed, without the least objections, with the Rublee memorandum, which defined the disposition of those who chose to immigrate and those who remained in Germany. They readily signed it and were committed to keeping all of their commitments. They remarked that Germany now had a “final solution” to the Jewish question. Göring discussed the agreement with Hitler who gave it his absolute approval. Jewish bankers in America were prepared to raise the funds necessary to “guarantee the accomplishment of all resettlement projects.” Dr. Wohlthat, in a document dated April 29, 1939, stated that Myron C. Taylor, Sir Herbert Emerson, and Lord William Peel assured that financing was available. The German government guaranteed the safety and freedom of the Jews over forty-five who decided to remain in Germany. Older people would have access to a social program to accommodate their needs in their retirement years. The Rublee Agreement removed all travel restrictions and all injunctions against selected professional activities. 711

  On June 11, 1939, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported that the IRC was assisting the Jews in the “plight of refugees aboard ships barred from their intended destinations.” Cuba would not let the ship dock so German authorities were welcoming the ship back to Hamburg. The Jews would return to their homes rather than be interned in concentration camps. The JTA said, “Sir Herbert has conferred with Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald and others regarding the plight of refugees aboard ships in the Mediterranean without permits to enter Palestine who are not permitted to disembark anywhere.” The JTA reported, “Representatives of an American group, which had been discussing the project in New York with Myron C. Taylor, American vice chairman of the IRC, are now holding discussions with the committee’s London bureau and are also in contact with financial interests in other countries.” 712

  On June 18, 1939, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported that officials with the international foundation were conducting intensive discussions about the emigration of Jews from Germany. “Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat, of the Reich Economics Ministry, was in London last week and discussed the question of Jewish emigration with officials of the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee, continuing talks initiated in Berlin with Robert Pell, vice-director of the committee. The German official met Lord Winterton, chairman of the committee, Sir Herbert Emerson, committee director and League High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as representatives of an American group now here to negotiate in connection with the foundation.” The JTA stated that the discussions appeared to be leading to “immediate, definite results.” 713

  George Rublee rema
rked that both the Germans and the Jews, up until August 1939, did what they agreed to do. War erupted and the immigration project stopped. From the time that Rublee left Germany until the war began, there was very little, if any, persecution of Jews in Germany. Rublee wrote, “Perhaps, if the war had not come, the Jewish question in Germany might have come to an end.” However, there were certain Jews who really did not want the Jewish persecution, legitimate or otherwise, to end. It would deprive some American Jews of “their most flammable tinder for feeding the flames of war against the German Reich.” They had to concoct some moral outrage to justify their violence. 714

  Congressman Sol Bloom, a Jew, defended FDR’s policy regarding European Jewry and their plight, as portrayed in the press. Bloom was the chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was the American delegate to the Evian Conference and to the conference in Bermuda (1943). A Jewish periodical castigated him for his lack of support for the Jewish cause. He collaborated with the administration to obstruct congressional efforts in the establishment of the Israeli state. He supported the State Department’s idea to eliminate “all public discussion of the Palestine issue” for the remainder of the war. Jewish leaders were outraged over this. 715 Was Bloom functioning as orchestrated opposition to draw even more attention to Jewish victimhood?

  Rabbi Wise, the president of the AJC, appeared to be sabotaging efforts to save the European Jews which was even confusing to the many well-meaning gentiles who wanted to counter anti-Semitism. Some people even claimed that he had the opportunity to destroy Hitler but rather protected him and abandoned the European Jews. Wise, who favored Weizmann’s ideology, accused Vladimir Jabotinsky of being a traitor for advocating the evacuation of over a million eastern Jews. Wise said that Jabotinsky wanted to send “unsuitable” Jews to Palestine. Henry Montor, the United Palestine Appeal’s publicity director by 1931, 716 and the Vice-Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal in the United States supported Wise. Montor said, “No responsible person has ever said that Palestine could hold all the millions of Jews who need shelter.” 717