1944

by Jay Winik

  How did his dictatorship compare with others? The question is too little asked. In the 1930s, Hitler’s regime was very different from Stalin’s: the Soviet Union was a bureaucratic dictatorship from the top down, made possible by a ubiquitous secret police—the KGB—and widespread terror at all levels of society. By contrast, Hitler’s National Socialism, although it too had a secret police—the SS—nonetheless drew its strength from an overwhelming popular sentiment, becoming in effect a populist dictatorship. While the democracies were still saddled by the Depression, the German economy flourished, fueled in good measure by the country’s military rearmament. The pace was frenetic: Germany’s income had doubled, production had risen 102 percent, and the Volk were riding on a crest of affluence and euphoria. Even the Germans’ birthrate soared, indicating their belief in this expanding prosperity. Along with his successes at home and triumphs abroad, Hitler had the advantage of being a transcendent politician, the object of a cult of adoration. And Hitler never let the German people forget that theirs had been a nation humiliated and scorned in 1918; so he expressed their resentments, their frustrations, and their aspirations. Curiously, in a global stage where Hitler’s contemporaries were such towering figures as Churchill and Roosevelt, not to mention other colorful leaders such as Haile Selassie, Benito Mussolini, and Philippe Pétain, Hitler was among the most popular heads of state in the world, at least until 1940.

  Not unlike Roosevelt, or for that matter Churchill, Hitler was a born thespian, always acting, always onstage. He was also a master of duplicity, once saying, in response to a proposal of President Roosevelt’s, that no one wanted peace more than he did, and that the National Socialists had no ambition to germanisieren (“Germanize”) other nations. He worked diligently to cultivate a sense of mystery and awe about himself: There was inevitably his delayed entry into a packed hall and his artfully chosen phrases and elaborate gestures. At the outset of a speech he liked to pause, letting the tension rise; then he would pause again in a frenzied moment of hesitation, followed by bursts of impassioned rants that sent his followers into a thrall. And there was his contrived love of the people: Hitler kissing the hands of ladies; Hitler, the friendly uncle, giving chocolates to children; Hitler the simple man of the people shaking the calloused hands of peasants and laborers.

  His philosophy of National Socialism was sui generis. For Hitler, the Germans were a “people”—or Volk. And his Volk, while they came from many places inside and outside Germany, all had the same impeccable pedigree: German “racial stock.” As Führer, he was the guardian of the Volk’s true home. Thus his dictum—Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

  Increasingly, as he rose to power, Germany bore Hitler’s stamp. He had many accomplices along the way who were happy to go along with his every obscure and ephemeral delusions, and eventually with his genocide. Even the professional generals shamelessly pandered to his tactical blunders, no matter how desperate the situation was. The vast majority of Germans—and herein lies a tale in itself—blindly submitted to his will as well.

  The writing was on the wall from the start. It was Hitler who determined the arc of the war from those early, heady days of triumph as he came to believe entirely in his own myth and omnipotence. And what did that omnipotence mean? When the time came, he was willing to kill anyone in the way of his power: the British, the French, the Poles, the Dutch, the Hungarians, the Belgians, the Czechoslovaks, the Greeks, the Soviets, the rich but also the poor, the strong but also the weak, husbands as well as wives, grandparents as well as grandchildren, his closest allies, and at the end his own “cowardly” people. And always, always: the Jews.

  At the end of 1943—when the war was almost certainly lost and the German army was falling into disarray, when the morale of the soldiers, already low, plummeted, and some of his most illustrious generals were now hesitant to follow his orders, when the Allies had reached Naples and Roosevelt and Churchill were steadily gearing up for the invasion of France, when the Soviets were ready to push westward and Germany was being punished by nightly bombing raids, when the German people were destitute—Hitler buried himself in an unreal world at Wolf’s Lair and then in the Führerbunker. There he planned and directed attacks by nonexistent armies and was almost entirely consumed by illusion, paranoia, and misanthropy.

  One goal seemed to motivate him above all else: the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

  BACK IN WASHINGTON, D.C., and London, there was increased pressure to assist the beleaguered Jews of Europe. But President Roosevelt was preoccupied with military strategy—the next step for the U.S. forces now in North Africa was to push hard into Italy—and the State Department was more obstructionist than ever. On February 10, 1943, the department would become involved in one of the worst scandals in its history. A shocking cable—telegram 354—bearing the secretary of state’s name was sent to the Bern legation in Switzerland. It instructed the legation to cease transmitting future reports from private individuals unless there were “extraordinary circumstances.” This was diplomatic doublespeak; the real intent was to impede the flow of information from Europe to the United States about the ongoing Holocaust. In effect, the State Department was now using the machinery of government to prevent, rather than facilitate, the rescue of the Jews.

  Thus far, Congress had been largely silent. Perhaps the members felt they couldn’t legislate virtue; nor could they command armies, bombing raids, and generals the way Roosevelt did. Yet now they took a stand.

  In late February 1943, Alben W. Barkley, the Senate majority leader, proposed a resolution. A lawyer, a Methodist, and a liberal Democrat, Barkley was one of the nation’s most respected political voices; he was also a close ally of Roosevelt’s and had been the chairman of the Democratic convention that renominated the president for a historic third time in 1940. He would later become Harry Truman’s vice president. Able to immerse himself in the small legislative details, he was by temperament and conviction anything but a freewheeling legislator. But when roused, he was a risk taker, and as time went on he would become a Zionist and a passionate defender of the Jewish people. On March 9, the Senate voted on his resolution expressing the American people’s indignation about the “atrocities” and “mass murder of Jewish men, women and children,” and condemning “these brutal and indefensible outrages.” The measure passed overwhelmingly.

  Meanwhile, across the Atlantic there was also a drumbeat of outrage. The much respected Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, himself only a year away from his own death, addressed the House of Lords on March 23. He made his way to the rostrum, and then in a clear, resonant voice, issued an urgent plea for immediate rescue steps to be undertaken. He bemoaned all the months that had been lost—the endless delays in taking action; the diplomats’ heedlessness and procrastination; the blinders that politicians wore—and warned, “The Jews are being slaughtered at the rate of tens of thousands a day. . . . We at this moment have upon us a tremendous responsibility. We stand at the bar of history, of humanity and of God.”

  In a scathing editorial, an influential American weekly, the Nation, agreed: “In this country, you and I and the president and the Congress and the State Department are accessories to the crime and share Hitler’s guilt.” It added, “What has come over the minds of ordinary men and women that makes it seem normal and indeed inevitable that this country should stolidly stand by and do nothing in the face of one of the world’s greatest tragedies?”

  Then, as night fell on March 9, a record-setting audience of forty thousand came to Madison Square Garden in New York to watch a performance called “We Will Never Die,” a memorial to the Jews butchered by the Nazis. Outside, thousands of others stood, stamping their feet in the chill evening air, hoping for a repeat performance. The event was no ordinary pageant; Edward G. Robinson was the narrator; the actors included Frank Sinatra, Burgess Meredith, and Ralph Bellamy, along with Paul Muni lending his voice. And it was produced by the legendary impresario Billy Rose, a close ally of the White Hou
se; and the author was Ben Hecht, an Academy award–winning screenwriter, playwright, and novelist, who had worked on Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious and the 1932 classic Scarface.

  As the production began, the hall went dark, and then dazzling rays of light fell on the stage. In the background were two massive tablets forty feet high, etched with the Ten Commandments. In the foreground were the actors, dozens of them, standing erect and silent. They then began speaking. They spoke of Jewish contributions to mankind: Moses, Maimonides, and Einstein. They spoke of the Jews putting their lives on the line for the Allied armed forces. Then came a depiction of a postwar peace conference—much like what Roosevelt envisioned—in which the Jewish dead reappeared to narrate their stories of mass murder at the clutches of the Germans. In an ethereal tone, out came the haunting plea: “Remember us.” Amid audible weeping in the audience, out came the haunting voice: “The corpse of a people lies in the steps of civilization. Behold it. Here it is!” Out came the call for conscience: “And no voice is heard to cry halt to the slaughter, no government speaks to bid the murder of human millions end.”

  The performance, also broadcast widely on radio, became a sensation. There was extensive coverage in newspapers and newsreels. The pageant toured nationwide to considerable acclaim; there were presentations in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston, and at Los Angeles’ legendary Hollywood Bowl. When it came to Washington, D.C., it was seen by Eleanor Roosevelt, six Supreme Court justices, several cabinet members, more than three hundred senators and congressmen, military officials, and even foreign diplomats. All together, over 100,000 Americans saw the pageant.

  It was almost impossible for the American mind to grasp the full horrors of Hitler’s butchery. Yet Eleanor Roosevelt was so moved by the drama that she devoted one of her “My Day” columns to it. “ ‘We Will Never Die,’ ” she wrote, was “one of the most impressive and moving pageants I have ever seen. No one who heard each group come forward and give the story of what had happened to it at the hands of a ruthless German military, will ever forget those haunting words: ‘Remember Us.’ ”

  No one? Despite all the attention this play and the other measures received, one thing was missing. There was no proposal for actual steps to rescue Europe’s trapped victims.

  In fact, when the pageant’s producer, Billy Rose, had asked for a brief statement of support from President Roosevelt that could be incorporated into “We Will Never Die,” the White House demurred.

  THEN, ON FEBRUARY 13, the New York Times carried a major story about the first significant opportunity to rescue Jews.

  Headlined “Romania Proposes Transfer of Jews,” a dispatch from London announced the Romanian government’s willingness to free seventy thousand Jews, moving them from Transnistria to a place of the Allies’ choosing, preferably Palestine. The Romanians themselves were willing to provide ships to give the Jews safe passage. Why were they doing this? And why now? The simplest reason was hard cash. The war-strapped Romanians were asking for approximately $130 per refugee, along with transportation and related expenses. But a more crucial reason was that the Romanians could interpret the shifting fortunes of the war as well as anyone; they were calculating that the war was turning the Allies’ way, and that sooner or later the Axis powers would buckle—notwithstanding the German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s pronouncement, the very same day, that “the German people stand erect as on the first moment of the war.” Thus, Romania was hoping to curry favor with the Allies by releasing the Jews, and thereby lessen the retribution to be exacted on it for collaborating with the Nazis. Its offer was a sign that Axis countries outside Germany were increasingly worried about the price to be paid for inflicting incalculable suffering on the innocent, especially on the Jews. To indicate the government’s sincerity, the Times reported, the bishop of Bucharest and the papal nuncio would supervise the transfer; moreover, to ensure safe passage, the ships would bear the insignia of the Vatican.

  For humanitarians everywhere, all this seemed almost too good to be true.

  ONE RENEGADE ACTIVIST OUTSIDE the government was unwilling to wait for the Allies’ governments to initiate action. Peter H. Bergson, a Palestinian-born Jew, had been applauded and revered by his admirers, but he was distrusted, disliked, and even hated by his critics. Bergson—his name was originally Hillel Kook, and his late uncle had been the chief rabbi of Palestine—had first come to America hoping to campaign for a Jewish army, but then shifted his focus to rescuing the Jews from annihilation. Suspicious of the administration, intense yet charming, he was a charismatic orator and a dynamic leader of his movement. He was also a virtuoso in overcoming adverse odds. Rather than work through the State Department or the White House, he sought to build nationwide support for the embattled Jewish people through high-profile measures, including large display advertisements, mass demonstrations, and processions. Three days after the article about the Romanians appeared in the New York Times, his group took out an almost full-page ad in the Times with an arresting headline:

  FOR SALE TO HUMANITY

  70,000 Jews

  GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS AT $50 APIECE

  The ad was blunt. It was also embarrassing to the administration. Romania, it announced, “is tired of killing Jews. It has killed 100,000 of them in two years,” but it was now willing to “give Jews away practically for nothing.”

  It called on readers to write to their members of Congress and inform friends, demanding action “Now, While There Is Still Time.” Tucked away in the ad was the principal demand: that the “United Nations immediately appoint an intergovernmental committee” to devise ways to bring the extermination to a halt. Within days, Bergson’s committee took out another ad, in the New York Herald Tribune, which also called for establishing an intergovernmental rescue commission. This set off a new wave of publicity. In turn, a galvanized Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Congress partnered for a “Stop Hitler Now” demonstration. Seventy-five thousand flocked to this rally, once more jamming Madison Square Garden and also demonstrating outside, carrying signs or holding hands. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia addressed the meeting, and messages were read from the former presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, New York’s governor Thomas Dewey, and the archbishop of Canterbury. This time, Wise and his group presented a detailed eleven-point program to be forwarded to Roosevelt. One New York Times columnist, Anne O’Hare McCormick, wrote that “the shame of the world filled the Garden Monday night.” Taking a cue from Bergson, Wise sought to stir the conscience of Americans by immediately dispatching letters to the sounding boards of public opinion: Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, every member of the Senate as well as the House, and prominent newspaper editors. These dispatches included the eleven proposals for a rescue.

  The president, however, gave a bland stock reply, writing that “this government has moved and continues to move, so far as the burden of the war permits, to help the victims of the Nazi doctrines . . . of oppression.” As to the Romanian Jews? The secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau, urgently brought the New York Times article to the White House for presentation to Roosevelt. It was the same story all over again. Professing ignorance, Roosevelt told Morgenthau to bring the matter to the State Department’s attention. At the department, Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles said he would examine the facts. Predictably, the inquiry was cursory. Two weeks later the State Department insisted that the Times’ story was “without foundation,” that it had originated primarily not with the Romanian government but with the “German propaganda machine,” and that it was intended to sow confusion and doubt among the Allies. At the Nuremberg trials after the war, this was found to be untrue.

  Nonetheless, the administration was now feeling the political pressure. Two days later, the State Department leaked classified information indicating that the United States and Britain were engaged in discussions to convene a diplomatic conference for a “preliminary exploration” of the refugee problem. It was to take place in Bermuda
in late April.

  In the meantime word came from Geneva about a new round of massacres. Bulgarian Jews were now being deported en masse.

  ON MARCH 27, WHILE an armada of British planes inflicted the heaviest raid on the German capital to date—a thousand tons of bombs fell on Berlin in all, reducing segments of the city to collapsing blackened ruins—President Roosevelt met in Washington with his special assistant Harry Hopkins; Secretary of State Cordell Hull; the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden; Lord Halifax, the British ambassador; and Sumner Welles. Political genius lies in seeing over the horizon, anticipating a future invisible to others. Thus, an animated Roosevelt talked principally about the postwar peace that would follow the defeat of the Axis powers, and about the United Nations to be formally established—the body that would, in the president’s words, help “police the world” for many years to come. But political genius also entails wrestling with unpleasant truths. At one point Hull interceded, mentioning that seventy thousand Jews in Bulgaria were now facing imminent extermination unless the Allies could manage to smuggle them out.

  Here, however, was Romania redux. Anthony Eden counseled caution about offering to take all the Jews out of Bulgaria. “If we do that,” he argued, “then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany.” Of course, wasn’t that exactly what the United Nations should have wanted? As it turned out, no. Eden added, “Hitler might well take us up on any such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in the world to handle them.” A half century later, such callousness seems incomprehensible. Here was humanitarianism turned on its head: The fear seemed to be, not that the Jews would be marched to their deaths, but that they would be sent to the Allied nations; and no one, not even Roosevelt, objected to this line of thinking. Actually, the president simply recommended that the whole matter be turned over to the State Department.