by Jay Winik
Still, such pleas fell on deaf ears, and the Nazis rejoiced. “Nobody wants them,” boasted the German newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, while a triumphant Hitler gloated, saying, “It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hardhearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them.”
SOMEHOW, EIGHTY THOUSAND JEWS in Germany, in the direst of circumstances—the government refused to allow them to take their money or possessions with them—managed to elude the talons of the Nazis and pick their way across the borders. Penniless and scared, they reached England, the United States, Latin America, and notwithstanding numerous British impediments, Palestine. Some even went as far as Japanese-occupied Shanghai, which welcomed them with the least red tape.
But those who escaped or were granted refuge were very few compared with the tens of thousands flooding into foreign consulates throughout Germany to apply for visas, desperate to flee. For his part, quietly behind closed doors, Roosevelt did what he could to let more in—within limits. Between 1933 and 1940, almost 105,000 refugees from Nazism made it to safety in the United States. No other country took any such number, though tiny Palestine did admit 55,000. And after Kristallnacht, Roosevelt allowed all German and Austrian citizens who were in the United States on visitor permits to remain when the permits expired. Still, this didn’t even come close to reaching America’s capacity to help, or circumventing the low monthly quotas for immigration.
Indeed, on May 13, 1939, six months after Kristallnacht, the luxury liner St. Louis vividly dramatized the situation. At precisely 8:13 p.m. the ship had set sail from Germany for Cuba flying a Nazi flag, with Hitler’s portrait hanging prominently in the social hall, and 937 hopeful Jewish refugees on board—among the last to escape from Germany’s ever-tightening restrictions on immigration. On reaching Havana two weeks later, however, the passengers, except for twenty-eight, were told they could not disembark; as it happened, in Berlin, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels had maliciously spread the word that the Jews were criminals and a threat to Cuba, whipping up a storm of protests against them. In any case, Cuban anti-Semites needed little goading. The Jews’ landing permits were denied. For seven days in the blistering heat the ship remained in the Havana harbor, while intermediaries sought to negotiate admission for the passengers. Meanwhile, friends and relatives anxiously gathered on the beaches, straining to see the refugees lining the rails of the St. Louis. Some even hired dinghies and motorboats to go out and meet the ship. Baskets of bananas, books, and other articles were also delivered to the liner. They were futile gestures. The Cuban government was unmoved by the negotiators. Within the week, the ship was turned away. In protest, one survivor of Buchenwald slashed his wrists and fell into the ocean.
On June 2, the St. Louis sailed north, making for the Florida coast. At this point the captain, Gustav Schroeder—a gentile and an idealist—held out hope that the United States would admit the passengers, four hundred of whom were women and children, and many of whom actually had quota numbers for eventual entry into America. For weeks while the world watched, the St. Louis cruised just offshore, close enough to Miami that the refugees could see the “shimmering towers” of the city’s skyline, as the New York Times reported. The sky was a rich blue, and the azure water sparkled; yet the days were filled with confusion and trepidation. Knowing that a forced return to Germany meant certain death, the terrified passengers sent an urgent telegram to Roosevelt asking for help. Roosevelt never replied. Nor did the White House even comment on the matter. The Jews sent a second telegram to Roosevelt, who a few days earlier had been at Hyde Park. Still no answer. Instead, the president spent the week busily occupied with other meetings, other events. On board, the refugees tried to keep their spirits up, but they were like survivors of a shipwreck, isolated from the one great nation in a position to help them.
As the days went by, the news became grimmer. The State Department took the lead, insisting that it would not “interfere” in Cuban affairs, and that the passengers would not be allowed to come ashore. Reportedly, to underscore the message, the Coast Guard even fired a warning shot just off the bow of the St. Louis. Miserable and depressed, its captain knew he had little choice but to return to Germany. As the ship turned toward the open Atlantic, the hundreds of refugees watched forlornly while Miami receded in the distance. According to some historians, at this point a Coast Guard vessel shadowed the St. Louis to prevent any passengers from jumping overboard and swimming ashore—or for that matter, committing suicide. On the ship, the passengers’ dread was palpable. Once more they pleaded with world leaders to give them asylum. In the end, it was not a humane America but an imperiled Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and England that each agreed to take a limited number of the passengers. But within a year, the first three of these countries were overrun by the Nazi Wehrmacht. And eventually at least 254 passengers, if not a majority of the St. Louis’s roster, perished in Nazi concentration camps.
For the Nazis, and Hitler, the St. Louis affair was a rousing propaganda triumph, proving once again that the Allied countries didn’t want Jews any more than Germany did. For the United States, and Roosevelt himself, it was a humiliating episode, all the more so because as long as the United States and other countries were willing to let the Jews in, for the time being, the Nazis were still willing to let them leave. Moreover, Roosevelt was, many believed, anything but unsympathetic to the plight of the Jewish refugees. In his own administration Jews constituted a significant proportion of senior aides, which prompted anti-Semites to deride Roosevelt as “a Jew,” and to refer to his New Deal as the “Jew Deal.” “In the dim distant past [my ancestors] may have been Jews or Catholics or Protestants,” Roosevelt once quipped, “what I am interested in is whether they were good citizens and believers in God. I hope they were both.”
But Roosevelt was unwilling to confront xenophobic public opinion, a vaguely anti-Semitic State Department, and an isolationist national mood.
BY CONTRAST, AS MORE of Europe fell under Nazi dominion, there was rising concern among the American public to rescue the greatest number of European children as possible, particularly English children. No less than the Jewish refugees, these children faced severe immigration restrictions as a legacy of the quotas Congress had established in the 1920s. Yet in this case, buoyed by public support, the administration exercised considerable creativity to help the British children. The idea was to let them enter the United States not as immigrants but as temporary visitors, since visitors’ visas were exempt from numerical limitations. On radio, an impassioned Eleanor Roosevelt argued this way: “The children are not immigrants. The parents of these children will recall them when the war is over. . . . Red tape must not be used to trip up little children on their way to safety.” However, the State Department balked at even this proposal. In the summer of 1940, advocates of the refugees pressed their case for weeks, but to little avail. Then, Eleanor interceded directly with the president, who in turn personally raised the matter with Cordell Hull, the secretary of state.
The next day, with the stroke of a pen, a new ruling was issued. The British refugee children would be admitted as visitors, subject to the (largely rhetorical) provision that “they shall return home upon the termination of hostilities.” Actually, however, it was unclear how to even get the British children to the United States. They were still in England, and the British government was unable to spare warships to escort any unarmed merchant ships carrying them. For their part, the Americans were reluctant to send U.S. ships through waters infested by Nazi submarines. In the end, Congress broke the logjam, amending the Neutrality Act to allow U.S. ships to evacuate the joyous British children.
Why the British children, and not the German Jewish children? This was precisely the question an indignant congressman, William Schulte of Indiana, asked. Seeing this as a matter of conscience, with evangelical fervor he drafted a bill calling for a visitor’s visa for any Eu
ropean child under sixteen. But the anti-immigration forces clung ever more tightly to their arguments; as a result, he faced stiff opposition and the bill was bottled up in committee. The reasons behind the opposition varied. For the most part, public opinion sharply distinguished between the British children, who were mainly Christian, and the German children, who were mainly Jewish. Here, of course, was a classic formula for inaction. It was a sad fact that the whiff of anti-Semitism remained in the American landscape, and at this stage, only bold political leadership could maneuver around it. The Roper polls consistently found that the American people looked askance at Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in Germany, but the majority of Americans also looked askance at helping the Jews or increasing their immigration quotas. And in a further sign of the times, in New York City, hooliganism against synagogues was not uncommon.
Even after German troops stormed across the Polish frontier in September 1939, anti-immigration forces continued to muster arguments against increasing entry quotas or relaxing entry rules. They persisted in the spring of 1940 when the Germans invaded the Low Countries, and stories abounded that beforehand, the Nazis had successfully placed spies in the targeted nations. Such rumors were worrisome, and a weary, war-conscious President Roosevelt took them to heart, especially when, as if in the blink of an eye, the conquered European capitals were surrounded by barbed-wire fences and 2 million Germans occupied these countries.
On May 16, the day after the Netherlands unthinkably surrendered, Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress. “These are ominous days,” he intoned. “We have seen the treacherous use of the fifth column.” In other words, he was talking about ostensibly peaceful visitors who were actually part of enemy units. Cable after cable and intelligence report after intelligence report seemed to confirm his preoccupation with subversion. He was told that in Norway, thousands of Nazi agents were disguised as diplomatic attachés, newsmen, university professors, and even refugees. He was told that so-called German tourists provided help to German troops in Norway. About the Netherlands, he was told that unknown numbers of agents had infiltrated the country and had played a significant role in facilitating Germany’s stunning parachute landings.
This had a profound effect on Roosevelt’s attitude toward refugees. In a fireside chat ten days after he spoke to Congress, Roosevelt gave one of his most muscular speeches of the war, firmly insisting that national security was more than simply a question of military weapons.
“We know of new methods of attack,” he declared, pausing for emphasis. “. . . The Trojan horse, the fifth column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.” He paused again. “. . . Spies, saboteurs and traitors are all actors in the new strategy.” Another pause, and then he said, his voice booming: “With all that we must and will deal vigorously.”
He did. Roosevelt authorized the illegal use of wiretaps for monitoring subversive activities, and he enjoined the State Department to tighten the restrictions on refugees. In theory this made sense; no president could ignore the sobering possibility of spies in the nation’s midst. In reality, however, the policy was often bewildering. Every generation has illusions that baffle its successors, and this was the case here. It is hard to accept that Hitler’s principal victims, the beleaguered Jews trying to cling to life, were German spies, any more than the British children were. Yet tragically, as the Nazis’ grip tightened in German-occupied territories, the official anti-immigration policy in the United States gathered in volume and strength.
That it did so was largely the responsibility of one man: Breckinridge Long, President Roosevelt’s head of the visa section in the State Department.
IN AN ADMINISTRATION FILLED with oversize personalities and raw talent, Breckinridge Long was a bit of an anomaly, despite his imperial presence. His speech was clipped, his mouth was turned down in what seemed to have been a permanent frown, and he was suspicious and distrustful of everyone. He was tall and powerfully built, and had narrow eyes, a striking shock of white hair, and an acerbic tongue. His pedigree seemed impeccable. Just as the president proudly traced his roots to Teddy Roosevelt and Hyde Park, Long, a midwesterner, could boast that his lineage stretched to two distinguished southern families: the Longs of North Carolina and the Breckinridges of Kentucky. Among his relatives was the distinguished John C. Breckinridge, who had been a U.S. senator, the youngest vice president in American history, and later the Confederacy’s secretary of war. Long was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1881; his mother was Margaret Miller Breckinridge and his father William Strudwick Long. Young Breckinridge attended the finest schools, receiving his BA and MA from Princeton. In between, he studied law at Washington University.
He soon opened a law office in Saint Louis, built a thriving international practice, and amassed a considerable sum of money. He married well, too, and had a daughter. He acquired the tastes of a country gentleman and loved the outdoors, particularly foxhunting and sailing; he also bred horses. He was a collector as well, of English antiques, fine art, and models, such as little ships. In his practice he spoke meticulously, each word neatly sounded out, and colleagues and rivals sensed that his words carried authority. An ardent Democrat, he soon engaged in politics, supporting Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and assiduously promoting the League of Nations. By this stage, he was rapidly advancing through the political hierarchy.
In 1917, when Long was thirty-six, Wilson rewarded him by appointing him assistant secretary of state, overseeing Asian affairs. Just as important, he befriended another rising star, the brash, charismatic assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt would return to New York to run for governor, and in 1920 the dour but ambitious Long left the State Department to run for the senate in Missouri. Long was decisively trounced in an election that was an overwhelming Republican triumph. Undaunted, he ran again two years later, but once more lost. The postmortems indicated that as a politician, Long had a built-in tension that he could never easily reconcile. Socially he could be warm and cordial, even charming; his friends good-naturedly called him “Breck.” Professionally, he was incorruptible, able, and austere. However, he had an abiding dislike of the give-and-take of politics, a fatal weakness in any politician.
For the next eleven years he practiced law, but like a dog returning to his bone, in 1932 he couldn’t resist the tug of politics once more. He threw his weight behind Roosevelt and gave handsomely to Roosevelt’s presidential campaign, for which he was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Italy, a plum assignment. Forging friendships with all the right people, he had clearly learned how to navigate in the tumultuous 1930s.
But Long’s tenure, then and later, was marked by controversy. When Benito Mussolini marched into Ethiopia in 1935, Long, mesmerized by Mussolini, advised against retaliatory restrictions of oil shipments to Italy. Critics whispered that Long was shamelessly pro-Mussolini. This may have been an overstatement, but the words stung. After three years, he resigned his ambassadorship, although he remained ensconced in Roosevelt’s administration. In 1938, Long became a delegate of a State Department mission to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Suddenly, his rise was meteoric. A year later, he landed in the State Department, and a year after that he became one of the most influential assistant secretaries of state, responsible for, among other things, overseeing immigration and the all-critical Visa Division. Under his tutelage, much of the State Department soon mirrored not only his strengths but his weaknesses as well.
Long’s unwavering belief was that all refugees were potential spies and constituted a menace to U.S. national security. To be sure, the Germans had assiduously sought to infiltrate spies into potential refugee populations, and in this regard Roosevelt himself shared Long’s fear. But Long’s diary entries paint a much more revealing picture, in which he seems less a scion of the establishment and more a relic from the Know-Nothing South of the 1840s. In slur after slur, he made it clear that he thought ill of virtually anyone who didn’t have his social values or come from his socia
l class; didn’t think much of liberals; disliked Catholics, New Yorkers, and eastern Europeans; and despised Jews most of all. To run afoul of his anti-immigration hysteria often came with a cost. He even interpreted the desire to allow British refugee children into the United States as “an enormous psychosis” on the part of the American people.
For all his zealotry and nativist sentiments, it was Long who bordered on being paranoid, seeing himself as under assault from “extreme radicals,” “Jewish professional agitators,” and “refugee enthusiasts.” Here, perhaps he was right. But despite the fact that many of his subordinates were equally indifferent to the plight of the refugees in Europe, he believed that many of his colleagues were waging a campaign against him. Deep within him lurked a dark vein of stubbornness. This flaw, and it was a flaw, meant that once he made up his mind and adopted a position, he treated virtually any attempt to argue him out of it as an assault on his integrity.
Yet even when refugee policy—in particular, whether to admit Jews or not—had become a costly war of attrition in government circles, Long proved himself to be an effective bureaucratic infighter. In the summer of 1940, he had successfully upended Roosevelt’s 1938 policy softening the most restrictive immigration policies, which were a legacy of the worst months of the Great Depression. This reversal was just a start. Within a year, convinced Germany was loading the United States with Gestapo agents, he mounted a double-pronged assault against opening the door to immigrants, tightening visa controls and cutting the number of refugee admissions by 50 percent. He said, “I believe that nobody, anywhere has a right to enter the United States.” The next year, the number was reduced once more, to one fourth of the original quotas. As it happened, Long was as inventive as he was dogged. His department unabashedly devised an insidious regulation known as the “relatives rule,” which subjected all would-be immigrants to an almost impossibly strict review by the State Department’s so-called Interdepartmental Committee. Purportedly a means of expediting decisions, the committee in fact operated in the strictest secrecy and became a means for inaction.
