By this time much of the enthusiasm for the conference had evaporated and a keener recognition of the problems faced was to be found in news stories and editorials. Since the Anschluss Germany had increased the economic pressure on Jews, forcing them into what Newsweek described on the eve of the conference as “an isolation unequaled since the Middle Ages.” It was now clear that few nations wanted immigrants at all and fewer still were willing to provide places for those who were both penniless and Jews.33 Clarence Streit, writing in the New York Times, described the atmosphere which prevailed at this tranquil resort as “so much like a poker game . . . a none too trustful poker game particularly as between the three great democracies, the United States, the United Kingdom and France”—a poker game in which each of the players refused to even contemplate raising the stakes. This gathering, supposedly dedicated to helping refugees, was permeated by an “air of inhospitality” to them.34
During the conference various editorials energetically explained why the United States, despite its deepest sympathies, could offer little additional aid. Some papers vigorously protested, possibly a bit too much, that this was due to economic and not racial or religious considerations.35 They contrasted the contemporary situation with earlier times when “farmers needed more consumers for their products; railroads wanted new settlers along their rights of way, . . . [and] mills had room for common labor at low wages.” The press argued that while this was America’s mythic identity, reality was quite different. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, even skilled refugees were not wanted in this country, where there was not only a surfeit of common laborers but “already as many doctors as can make a living, perhaps more.”36
Some papers ignored the issue of whether refugees should be allowed to enter the United States and simply echoed the demand of the “Big Three” powers—the United States, Great Britain, and France—that Germany permit the refugees to take a substantial portion of their income and belongings with them to facilitate their resettlement. Editorials repeatedly argued that Germany could hardly “expect other countries to admit the Jews” who had been cast “abroad penniless.”37 A New Orleans paper bluntly informed Berlin that if it was more “interested in getting rid of these people than in confiscating their property,” then the rule that Jews could only take 5 percent of their income should be eased.38 These demands seemed strangely unrealistic. Germany had previously done nothing to ease Jewish emigration, and there was no reason to expect it to begin to cooperate with other nations now. A few press observers recognized the ludicrousness of expecting German cooperation and dismissed it as a “naive suggestion.”39 One commentator cynically mused that life would certainly be easier if the Nazis would “give each refugee a cow and a horse, seed and farm implements, as well as some cash!”40The Baltimore Sun wryly and accurately pointed out that the fact that Jews’ reception in other lands was made “doubly difficult” by their penniless state would be no “shock” to Nazis because expelling them in this condition was “part of their plan.”41
There was nothing to indicate that Germany would change its tactics without a strong incentive such as a decision at Evian to impose economic pressure on Germany. The few editorial suggestions for explicit action—e.g., countries which owed Germany money should withhold payments as a form of protest and leverage until Germany “acquiesces”—were the exception.42
As the conference progressed, press appraisal of it grew progressively harsher. The great expectations of March dissolved in the realities of July. The Detroit Free Press decried the behavior of the various delegations, dismissed the reasons they gave why they could do nothing as “immaterial,” and branded the gathering a “sad commentary” on the willingness of the world’s democracies to resolve one of the “most serious problems” the world faced.43Another paper aptly categorized the meeting as a polite game of “passing the buck.”44 According to yet another paper the delegates had all but nullified their “profound sympathy for the tortured victims of Europe’s totalitarian tyranny” with their various excuses why they were unable to provide asylum.45
The New York Herald Tribune declared the gathering “not exactly a pretty spectacle” as it got “nowhere with great dignity but at a high rate of speed.” Demonstrating both pessimism and insight, the Tribune observed that Evian was enough to justify the “scorn” which the fascist governments of the world “delight in pouring out” on the other nations. Time described Evian as a place which had heard “many warm words of idealism and few practical suggestions.”46 The “air of inhospitality” and undercurrent of antisemitism prevalent at Evian were most dramatically exemplified by Australia’s representative, who declared that “we have no real racial problem [and] we are not desirous of importing one.”47 Once again Jews were explicitly and implicitly held responsible for their suffering. The New Republic, one of the most ardent critics of the failure to rescue, observed that the delegates’
annoyance at the Nazis seemed to proceed fully as much from the fact that they had presented the rest of the world with an awkward problem of absorption as from the cruelty practised toward the exiles, past and future.48
An even sharper condemnation was contained in a query by the Richmond (Virginia) News Leader:
When the conference adjourns and a permanent commission is established in London to aid in mass migration, what will the United States do? Will this country set an example and modify immigration laws carefully and wisely to permit the entry of a considerable number of these intelligent refugees? Or will we simply play politics, hide behind nationalism, and insist that South America is the proper home for these people? As between the two questions, the answer is nearly obvious. The United States will be content with friendly gestures and kind words. That is why some of us not only are cold to the report of the conference but also are a bit ashamed of our country.49
The Richmond News Leader’s response was unique in explicitly taking the United States to task for refusing to act. Generally press condemnations of the world’s intransigence excluded the United States. Victor Wilson of the Philadelphia Record assailed the “indifference if not downright hostility” of the conference in a lengthy article under a telling headline:
Humanitarianism Suffers a New Blow as Evian Parley Fails to Provide System for Aiding Europe’s Unhappy Exiles—France and Britain Maneuver to Shunt Burden on U.S.
As the headline indicates, Wilson’s ire was directed at other nations, France and Britain in particular.50 Similarly Newsweek noted that when other nation’s governments heard American calls for prompt action, they responded by “promptly . . . slamming their doors against Jewish refugees.”51 The Washington Star also castigated Evian’s participants, with the exception of the United States, for their “yes-but” behavior. The delegations “vied with one another in deploring the plight . . . faced by [the] oppressed”; the problem was that when it came to the “brass tacks . . . for facilitating emigration . . . Evian emulated a famous region paved with good intentions.”52
Then, during the meeting’s final days, when the participants managed to agree on the establishment of a permanent intergov emmental commission charged with the task of finding a solution to the refugee problem, some of the press’s sharp critique was tempered.53
The vast majority of the critics in the American press refused to consider that America’s refusal to change its quota laws might have been responsible in some measure for the limited results of Evian. When the United States promised that the status quo would be maintained, Evian’s eventual outcome could well have been predicted. In truth, had America expanded its quota allotments or assumed responsibility for a greater number of refugees, the press would have condemned its actions just as relentlessly as it now condemned the inaction of the rest of the world. The press had supported the idea of a conference because it guaranteed no increase in immigration. In fact its stance was entirely consistent with—if not slightly more liberal than—public sentiments. A Fortune survey taken earlier in the year revealed tha
t less than 5 percent of Americans favored expanding the quotas while 67 percent favored trying to keep refugees out. Only 18 percent of the public—but most of the press—favored the status quo.54
In the opinion of the press America had done enough, and some even wondered if it had not done too much. Though this was a European matter, America had convened the conference, had promised full quota allocations, and and had already taken in more refugees than many other countries. An American, Myron C. Taylor, had served as the conference’s president. America had come to France and England’s aid just two decades earlier and now was being asked to do so again. A number of papers cautioned that it was not America’s responsibility to “remake Europe.”55The burden was on others to respond.
For the American press, the failure of Evian was the failure of the rest of the world to shoulder its share of the burden. Press reaction to the Anschluss, Evian, and, as shall be demonstrated in the pages that follow, Kristallnacht exemplified the way in which American contempt for German behavior coexisted with an unwavering commitment to isolationism and anti-immigrationism. Though the press was increasingly hostile to Nazi Germany, this did not preclude its strengthened commitment to the maintenance of American neutrality. Its sympathy for the victims and its contempt for the perpetrators did not negate its conviction that the gates of this land must remain firmly shut.
The Sound of Breaking Glass
When on the night of November 9, 1938, the glass was shattered in Jewish homes, stores, and places of worship throughout the Reich, along with it were shattered American hopes about the possibility of achieving stability for Jews under Nazi rule. The Munich pact, concluded but six weeks earlier, now seemed to be a mockery of the notion “peace in our time.” Any expectation that Hitler and his government intended to abandon their policy of terror and physical persecution now seemed naive.
As a result of Kristallnacht the official and popular attitude toward Germany hardened. Roosevelt, genuinely repulsed by Nazi behavior, used Kristallnacht as a means of justifying his requests for increased defense allocations. The boycott of German goods regained its momentum, while those who had advocated a liberal attitude toward Germany or who had previously remained silent about events in that country condemned “this march backward into medieval terror.”56
For the first time since the Nazi accession to power a nationwide antisemitic action had taken place in full public view. In the past, even when the government’s “hand” showed as the force behind similar violence, the violence had never occurred on such a national scale. Whereas the Germans had often dismissed foreign news reports as unreliable rumors based on “lies,” this time there was no denying. As Lionel Kochan has observed, “every newspaper correspondent in Germany and Austria could see and hear what was taking place, and through him his readers.” In reporting on Kristallnacht, the press transmitted to the American public firsthand, unimpeachable evidence of what it meant to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.
The shock waves which reverberated through all segments of the public were so severe that Ambassador Dieckhoff described the reaction as a “hurricane . . . raging here” and urged Foreign Ministry officials to understand the change of attitude in America. He warned that many Americans who had previously “maintained a comparative reserve and had even, to some extent, expressed sympathy toward Germany, are now publicly adopting so violent and bitter an attitude.”57 NBC and CBS radio broadcast condemnations by former Governor of New York Al Smith, New York District Attorney Tom Dewey, former President Herbert Hoover, former Presidential candidate Alf Landon, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, and an array of other prominent religious, political, and educational leaders. Hoover’s participation was particularly significant, because earlier in the year he had castigated the press for conducting what he felt was an anti-German campaign. Throughout the United States local, county, and state government officials expressed their horror. One southern governor wrote to Roosevelt that “it is time for America to stand four-square for humanity.”58
Nowhere was the criticism stronger and more sustained than in the press. In the weeks following Kristallnacht, close to 1,000 different editorials were published on the topic. Virtually every paper listed in the Press Information Bulletin, the White House’s barometer of press opinion, carried a series of news stories and editorials on the issue. For over three weeks following the outbreak, eyewitness reports from Germany could be found on the front pages of numerous papers. Practically no American newspaper, irrespective of size, circulation, location, or political inclination failed to condemn Germany.59 Now even those that, prior to Kristallnacht, had been reluctant to admit that “violent persecution is a permanent fixture in Nazism” criticized Germany. During the early years of Nazi rule the most influential German-language newspaper in America, the New Yorker Staatzeitung und Herald, had defended Hitler’s antisemitic measures. Its publisher and owner, Bernard Ridder, who also owned other American papers, returned from Germany in 1933 with the claim that when Hitler came into power he “found 62% of all governmental offices filled with Jews.” (The Nation hastened to deprecate Ridder’s charge by pointing out that since Germany employed 970,000 salaried officials, this would mean that 601,400 of them were Jews, or “more than 40,000 [Jews] more than there were Jewish men, women, and children in the Reich.”)60 Subsequently the Staatzeitung was virtually silent about the persecution in Germany. Now even it joined in the chorus of condemnations. Its condemnation was news in itself and was cited by numerous papers as evidence of the fact that even German Americans who had long maintained an uncompromising loyalty to their homeland would not tolerate such outrageous acts.
But the press did not only condemn; once again it sought rational explanations for this apparently senseless course of events.61 Some papers reverted to the “weakness, not strength” theory that was common during the early years of Nazi rule.62Various papers, including the New York Daily News, posited that Kristallnacht was an expression of anger and resentment on the part of those Germans who lacked funds and were under severe financial strain. The New York Daily News went so far as to conclude that Hitler “can no longer control his people, that he is losing his grip”; he had “turned so much German wealth into armaments that he can no longer provide for the rockbottom necessities of all his people.”63 This attempt to define Kristallnacht as an expression of popular anger turned the pogrom into a riot conducted by what the Daily News described as “hungry mobs” intent on plundering Jews. The paper’s isolationist sentiments may have led it to this interpretation; if Nazi Germany was on the brink of collapse, there was no need for the United States to involve itself in this affair.
In sharp contrast, a significant portion of the press believed that it was strength, not weakness, which led to Kristallnacht. The Nazis had dealt with the world without penalty and felt that as concerned the Jews they could continue to do so. World leaders who had granted Hitler’s every territorial wish certainly did not appear likely to penalize Germany for an attack on Jews. The Wilmington (Delaware) News dismissed those who would “read into [Kristallnacht] signs of Nazi weakness. The evidence points the other way.” Newsweek, concurring, noted that Kristallnacht came at a “moment of great international triumph and not as the refuge of a weak regime trying to foment hatred as a stimulant.”64 The most recent and possibly greatest German international success had come at Munich just six weeks earlier, and it was this, much of the press contended, that had given the Nazis the hubris to act in this manner.
According to much of the press, the timid and misguided policies of Neville Chamberlain had resulted in Kristallnacht. Because of the English “surrender” at Munich, various papers warned, Jews in Germany and German-dominated countries may have to be “rescued” or left “to suffer” Czechoslovakia’s fate.65 The Virginian Pilot’s observation that “peace in our times . . . seems certain only to insure an ever increasing measure of beastliness in our time” typified the reaction of numerous papers.66 There was a tendency, particularly on
the part of isolationist papers, to use Kristallnacht as a means of clearly demarcating between American and British interests.67 Generally the isolationists condemned Britain and advised the Administration to avoid all dealings with it, including dealings on matters relating to refugee resettlement.68
The Gary (Indiana) Post Tribune, in addition to declaring that Kristallnacht proved that appeasement was wrong, reminded readers, in what amounted to an almost gratuitous slap at Britain, that during World War I Americans had been “deceived by our Allies into believing a lot of atrocity tales.” The underlying message of the editorial was clear. Britain had deceived us once before and would do so again in order to entangle us in European affairs.69
The press’s conviction that Munich had led to Kristallnacht resulted in part from its willingness now to view Nazi antisemitic actions as part of a broader context. This contrasted sharply with the way in which the press generally had treated Hitler’s antisemitism as separate and distinct from his overall policies. This time the press linked Germany’s domestic antisemitism to the conduct of its foreign policy. It did not argue that the two were different spheres with no connection, but recognized that the way the world treated Germany in the international arena could have a direct influence on how Germany behaved in the domestic arena. (Some papers had understood this at the time of the Olympics; many others had not.)
But while the press was able to link Germany’s domestic and international policies, it still had difficulty grasping that one of the primary motives for Kristallnacht had been to destroy organized Jewish life and to make the Reich Judenrein. Instead the press, irrespective of its political outlook, interpreted Kristallnacht as a reflection of German financial exigencies; namely, this was said to be a way of extorting money from Jews.70 This view gained credence after the Nazi government announced that a fine was to be levied on the Jews. The Cleveland Plain Dealer believed the “confiscation of Jewish wealth and property [to be] a revelation of the government’s need of new funds” and the primary objective of Kristallnacht. Numerous papers dismissed the idea that the Nazis were motivated by racial hatred or the desire to transform Germany into an “Aryan” land. Greed had prompted them to act as they did: these were “pogroms for profit” designed to strip all “Jews in Germany of their wealth and savings.”71 The St. Louis Post Dispatch described Kristallnacht as the “looting of a people,” while the Baltimore Evening; Sun termed it a “money collecting enterprise.”72 The New York Times also adopted this view. In an editorial entitled “Profit from Persecution” it condemned Germany’s plan to “make a profit for itself out of legalized loot.”73
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