1944

by Jay Winik

  Welles insisted that he could not release this information to the news media himself—“for reasons you will understand,” he said, only partially convincingly—but suggested there was nothing preventing Wise from doing so. He added, “It might even help if you did.”

  Wise agreed. No longer bound to secrecy, he promptly called a press conference early that evening. The New York Times showed up, and so did the Washington Post and seventeen other newspapers. He walked the reporters through the details. The Nazis were transporting Jews from cities all across Europe to Poland for annihilation. Of the half million Jews in Warsaw, only 100,000 remained. And the Nazi “extermination campaign” had already wiped out 2 million Jews.

  That night, a dejected Wise took the train back to New York, where he continued to publicize the details to whomever would listen. The next afternoon, he held another press conference to, as he put it, “win the support of a Christian world so that its leaders may intervene in protest” against the treatment of Jews in Hitler’s Europe.

  And suddenly, he had allies in the unlikeliest of places. In London, the Polish government in exile released a graphic statement about Jews being shunted into cattle cars and being deported to “special camps” at Sobibór, Treblinka, and Belzec. Under the guise of “resettlement in the east,” the statement continued, the mass murder of Jews was occurring. And in the far-off holy city of Jerusalem, the Jewish press released its own harrowing account of gas chambers in concrete buildings and, perhaps for the first time anywhere, a report about Jews being taken “to great crematoriums at Oswiecim, near Cracow.”

  Oswiecim, of course, was the Polish name for Auschwitz.

  The following day, seventeen newspapers carried Wise’s information, though all but five relegated it to inside pages. Nevertheless, it was the most publicity that the catastrophe had generated to date. The gifted correspondent James McDonald’s special cable to the New York Times stood out. It was headed “Himmler Program Kills Polish Jews—Officials of Poland Publish Data—Dr. Wise Gets Check Here by State Department.” McDonald wrote, “The most ruthless methods are being applied” to liquidate the Jews. “All persons, children, infants and cripples among the Jewish population of Poland are being shot, killed by various other methods or forced to undergo hardships that would inevitably cause death” as a means of carrying out Himmler’s program of extermination. In his dispatch, McDonald also provided frightening details. “The people are packed so tightly” in the freight cars, he said, that they die of suffocation; or they die from lack of water and food. “Wherever the trains arrive half the people are dead.” And the remainder were then mass-murdered at the camps. “Neither children or babies are spared. Orphans from asylums and day nurseries are evacuated as well.” McDonald added that the few survivors were “only the young and relatively strong,” who then became slave laborers for the Germans, and even they didn’t last long. The newspaper also carried a UPI dispatch about Wise receiving confirmation of this from the State Department.

  And although there were those who would later insist that they didn’t have any actual knowledge about Auschwitz, the New York Times also carried the wire story from Palestine about the killings at “Oswiecim.”

  On December 2, a Day of Mourning and Prayer was solemnly observed throughout the United States and in twenty-nine other nations. There were memorial services and religious services, local radio programs, and special printed materials. There were searing speeches and lunchtime services and impromptu meetings. There were silent groups who stood in contemplation in the cold. In New York City, which had the largest Jewish population in the nation, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia took the lead in sponsoring the day’s activities. They were impressive: many shop windows were adorned with memorial notices, and that morning half a million workers in factories and stores rose to their feet and halted production for two minutes; radio stations also ceased broadcasting and went silent for two minutes. Starting at noon, Americans listened to a sixty-minute radio program. Later in the day, NBC broadcast a moving fifteen-minute memorial service on its stations across the country.

  The White House and an irritated State Department, which had hoped to sweep the whole matter under the rug, were soon flooded with telegrams and letters crying out for the administration to do something. Reading one of the newspaper accounts, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that she was stricken “with horror” and indicated that as never before had she appreciated the totality of the carnage. And in the war cabinet in Britain, there was a growing intention to condemn the Germans.

  In Germany, the Nazi leadership itself couldn’t help noticing all this activity. “The question of the Jewish persecution in Europe is being given top priority by the English and the Americans,” Goebbels remarked in his diary. “At bottom, however, I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff.”

  WISE WAS ENCOURAGED BY the heightened attention to the genocide. He now felt free to compose a letter to Roosevelt himself, asking for a face-to-face meeting with the president for his temporary committee. “Dear Boss,” he wrote, “I do not wish to add an atom to the awful burden which you are bearing with magic and, as I believe, heaven inspired strength at this time.” But it was now clear that the “most overwhelming disaster in Jewish history” was taking place in Europe. And “it would be gravely misunderstood if, despite your overwhelming preoccupation, you did not make it possible to receive our delegation.” He closed the letter with a mixture of sorrow and desperation: “As your old friend, I beg you will somehow arrange to do this.”

  Roosevelt did. He arranged to meet Wise and four colleagues on December 8. It was one of the rare face-to-face discussions the president had with any Jewish leaders about the Holocaust.

  AT NOONTIME, THE DOOR to the Oval Office was flung open, and Roosevelt received Wise and his colleagues. The president, in a half jocular manner, detailed his plans for a postwar Germany—he was already looking ahead, clearly confident that victory was within the Allies’ grasp. Wise then pulled out a two-page letter and solemnly read from it: “Unless action is taken immediately, the Jews of Hitler’s Europe are doomed.” What was to be done? The message asked Roosevelt to deliver a stern warning to the Nazis that they would be held in strict “accountability for their crimes.” It also outlined a request for a commission to be formed to sift through the evidence of the Nazis’ atrocities and “report it to the world.”

  “Do all in your power,” Wise pleaded, his voice tinged with melancholy, “to bring this to the attention of the world and all in your power to make an effort to stop it.” He then handed the president a twenty-page memorandum entitled “Blueprint for Extermination,” which gave a horrifying summation of the Nazis’ activities, including a country-by-country analysis provided by Riegner. Roosevelt’s reply left little doubt that he had been fully briefed on the Final Solution, or at least on what the U.S. government and Wise knew about it.

  “The government of the United States is very well acquainted with most of the facts you are now bringing to our attention,” the president said. “Unfortunately we have received confirmation from many sources. Representatives of the United States government in Switzerland and other neutral countries have given us proof that confirms the horrors discussed by you.”

  Unhesitatingly, and buttressing the White House statement of October, Roosevelt said the government would indeed issue a warning about war crimes. He did not, however, want to make it appear that the German nation as a whole was complicit in the mass killings. He pointed out that Hitler was “an insane man,” and that Hitler’s inner circle was “an example of a national psychopathic case.”

  Were there any other recommendations? he wondered. Wise and his colleagues had none. Beyond their request for a warning and a commission, they had settled on no other specific requests. They should have known better; the president’s time did not come lightly, and this was their one opportunity. Then the president began bantering about a host of topics unrelated t
o the genocide; by all accounts, he did 80 percent of the talking, merely filling the meeting time without making further commitments. This, of course, was part of his magic and political genius. His demeanor, which one might have expected to be somewhere between anger and despair, was neither; he was his usual unruffled self. In any case, Wise and his colleagues scarcely noticed. At 12:30 p.m. an aide slipped into the Oval Office, indicating that the meeting had come to an end. “Gentlemen,” Roosevelt boomed as they were walking out, “you can prepare the statement. I am sure that you will put the words into it that expressed my thoughts.”

  Shaking hands with each of the participants, Roosevelt closed with his own heartfelt remark, “We shall do all in our power to be of service to your people in this tragic moment.”

  BUT THERE WAS ONE thing in his power that Roosevelt did not offer to do. Unwilling to detract from the war effort or to risk political capital, he neither offered to make a speech personally denouncing the Final Solution nor offered to make it the topic of a fireside chat, as he did with such wartime issues as rationing and rubber. Nor did he offer to undertake anything to counteract the State Department’s obstructionism—though he had recently instructed Robert Murphy to send him direct reports from Africa before Operation Torch, pointedly saying, “Don’t bother going through State Department channels. . . . That place is a sieve.” Instead, the initiative again fell to Wise, speaking as a sort of proxy for Roosevelt, and then to the British.

  Once more, Wise convened a press conference and announced to the scribbling reporters that the Jewish leaders had just met with the president, who was “profoundly shocked” to learn that 2 million Jews had been murdered as “a result of Nazi rule and crimes.” Moreover, Wise continued, the American people would hold the perpetrators of these crimes “to strict accountability in a day of reckoning, which will surely come.”

  At last, there seemed to be momentum: as Roosevelt had indicated, nine days later, on December 17, the United Nations, consisting of the three main allies—the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—and the governments of eight occupied countries, issued a dramatic joint declaration about the agony of the Jews and condemning genocide. Describing the Germans’ actions as “bestial,” the declaration used the “strongest possible terms.” It received extensive publicity and its impact was significant.

  In London, the tough-minded British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, himself heavy with despair, read the declaration to the House of Commons. “I regret to have to inform the House,” he said, “that reliable reports have recently reached his Majesty’s government regarding the barbarous and inhuman treatment” of the Jews. Line by line, he calmly read the declaration’s graphic words: “None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or deliberately massacred in mass executions.” So shocked were the members of Parliament that they all then stood, heads bowed, in a moment of silence. Speaking over the BBC, Count Raczynski, a member of the Polish government in exile, denounced the German nation for “accepting the destruction of an entire race” that had contributed so much to the glory of German civilization.

  Yet in Washington there remained doubters, inside and outside the government. This stern declaration had arisen less from Wise’s meeting with Roosevelt than from the actions of the British war cabinet. In fact, when the proposal for the statement was forwarded from the British to the State Department, one official dryly wrote that he had “grave doubts” about the “desirability or advisability” of issuing such a statement; in any event, he described the reports, which came largely from the Riegner cable, as “unconfirmed.”

  Horror at the atrocities was not shared by everyone in the public either. In the press, perhaps because Roosevelt’s personal voice was lacking, there continued to be skeptics. There were also those who vociferously opposed assisting the Jews: for example, the editors of a highly influential Protestant publication, the Christian Century, conceded that “beyond doubt, horrible things are happening to the Jews in Poland,” but considered it uncertain whether “any good purpose is served by the publication of such charges.” When, three weeks later, the United Nations condemned the annihilation of the Jews, the Christian Century continued to close its eyes, conceding only, “The right response to the Polish horror is a few straight words to say that it has been entered in the books,” and maintaining that the best way to help the Jews was through “redoubled action” on the war fronts.

  Newsweek saw it differently. When that November Roosevelt sought new war powers legislation that would enable him to defer laws impeding “the free movement of persons, property and information into and out of the United States,” Congress was uncooperative. The president and Vice President Henry Wallace met with the influential Sam Rayburn, the speaker of the House, and Rayburn insisted that the war powers bill would never make it through the Ways and Means Committee. Roosevelt quietly dropped the matter, without much of a fight. The intent of the bill was simply to ease the way for industrial and military advisers to enter and leave the United States, but were it to be passed, it would raise the specter of America’s opening the floodgates for Jewish refugees.

  “The ugly truth,” Newsweek concluded, “is that anti-Semitism was a definite factor in the bitter opposition to the president’s request.”

  But anti-Semitism was only a partial explanation. For instance, the New York Times wrote an editorial expressing a view that Roosevelt increasingly held himself: “The most tragic aspect of the situation is the world’s helplessness to stop the horror while the war is going on.” In other words, short of a complete victory over the Nazis, there seemed to be little the Allies could do except “denounce” the perpetrators and promise “retribution.”

  Was this one of those historical moments in which events acquire a momentum all their own and begin to exert an irresistible pressure? It was not. Eduard Schulte had risked his life to get his message to Roosevelt and to urge the Allies to lay waste to the Nazi death camps; he did eventually get the message to Roosevelt. But then instead of real action there was only a belated denunciation of the Nazis and surprisingly little sustained debate about what steps to take next. In retrospect, the lack of follow-through on the mounting evidence of the Final Solution was the moral equivalent of Neville Chamberlain’s astonishing statement over the BBC on the eve of what became known as the rape of Czechoslovakia: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”

  STILL, IF ROOSEVELT’S EYES were averted, it was also true that in the fall of 1942, he had his hands full. The public was unhappy with his conduct of the war both at home and abroad. And the president had to struggle to boost the morale of the American people and sustain and strengthen their spirit as the nation prepared to mark the first anniversary of its entry into the war.

  On the domestic front, rationing was becoming a way of life. Sugar became scarce; so were meats and coffee. The supply of butter was cut back, and cigarettes were rare. A black market for household goods flourished. And nationwide gas rationing—in most cases the ration was only five gallons a week—was put into place to save rubber, which was needed for the war effort. Though wages were fixed, food prices kept rising, and inflation was eating away at the economy. Farmers complained bitterly. So did owners of small businesses, who were being squeezed by the weight of heavy regulation. As store shelves remained empty, housewives, too, failed to understand why so many items like canned foods, hairpins, cameras, and even alarm clocks were restricted or rationed. The administration called on Americans to be patriotic. Nevertheless, the public was in a foul mood, and Roosevelt paid the price in the congressional elections. His party lost forty-four seats in the House, nine seats in the Senate, and a number of governorships.

  In mid-September, Roosevelt himself made extensive visits to munitions factories, navy yards, and army bases, hoping to raise morale.r />
  Yet the Germans were increasingly bogged down in the death struggle at Stalingrad, and it was becoming clear to Roosevelt that the war was reaching a turning point. In mid-October he jauntily wrote to King George of Great Britain, “On the whole the situation of all of us is better in the autumn of 1942 than it was last spring. . . . While 1943 will not see a complete victory for us, things are on the upgrade while things for the Axis have reached the peak of their effectiveness.”

  But in the European theater, against the Nazis, the Americans had yet to fire a shot. Still slugging it out against the Japanese in the Pacific, American forces needed to prove themselves against the Axis powers.

  They would do that in North Africa.

  IT WAS A PARTICULARLY inhospitable place to fight.

  The sun beat down relentlessly on the rock-studded terrain while vast mounds of desert glinted in the daylight, and the heat caused men to hallucinate. Away from the coast there were few roads. Meanwhile, what narrow passages did exist were strewn with mines. And when Erwin Rommel was placed in command of the German Afrika Korps in Libya, the British never saw it coming.

  Like the dashing General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Civil War, Rommel was an extraordinary strategist and a master of the lightning strike, always able to exploit even the smallest opening. Like Napoleon, he was worshipped by his men—they would follow him to the gates of hell if need be. And like Genghis Khan, he continually courted death, leading from the front and always on the move. Mercurial, slender, courageous, and chivalrous, he was perhaps Germany’s most capable general. His fame filled the world; even Churchill grudgingly admired him. Prone to debilitating headaches, a nervous temperament, elevated blood pressure, and pain in his joints—it was rheumatism—he was nevertheless outstanding among the German high command: a rare courageous voice, he pressed the Führer to bring the war to a close early on, albeit to little effect.