Eleanor Roosevelt
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291 ER in Detroit: Detroit Evening Times, 10 Sept. 1935, “Better Homes Visioned by First Lady,” Vera Brown; 10 Sept. 35, Detroit Free Press, “A fluttering handkerchief fells a house,” Helen Bower; in Hall Roosevelt’s scrapbook, thanks to Diana Jaicks and ER II.
292 Felix Frankfurter to ER, 30 Apr. 1936, in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 520.
293 White to ER, with W.E.B. Du Bois’s book, 3 Sept; ER to White, 10 Sept. 1935.
293 black woman journalist: Lash, p. 519; Early to ER, 11 Sept. 1935.
293 “Just nothing”: Hall to ER, 7 Apr. 1937; ER to Ickes, 9 Apr.; Burlew to ER 14 Apr., with enclosure/ 70.
293 Dec. 1935 housing meeting: After that meeting, ER worked closely with individual members of the NYC Housing Authority, Langdon Post, chair, Mary Simkovitch, Rev. E. Roberts Moore, Louis Pink, and B. Charney Vladek; NYT, 4 Dec. 1935.
294–95 “Ma is really getting a kick”: Lash, Love Eleanor, p. 231.
295 “I could shake you”: ER to Hick, 21 Sept. 1935; “I don’t quite deserve”: Hick to ER, 23 Sept.
295 “Missy tried it”: ER to Elinor Morgenthau, Nov. 1934, Elinor Morgenthau Papers, FDRL.
295 Esther Lape on Elinor Morgenthau: interview with Lash, 17 Feb. 1970, Lash MSS.
295–96 Hick from Cleveland, 25 Sept. 1935; ER from California, 19 Sept. 1935. Ickes on shipmates, p. 449–50; on Pa Watson and Harry Hopkins, p. 461.
297 Hick certainly would have enjoyed the country’s enchanting beauty, at least. 28, 29 Sept; 1, 2 Oct. 1935.
298 ER spent her birthday at Val-Kill with Tommy, Henry Osthagen, Earl Miller, and others including Molly Dewsoh, with whom she played good tennis. ER received a gold chain, among other presents from Hick.
298 “If FDR could get out this year!”: ER to Hick, 23 Oct. 1935.
298–99 Hick’s report from West Virginia: Hick to ER, 16 Oct. 1935. Red House, in Putnam County, West Virginia, was renamed “Eleanor.” It was populated by unemployed chemical and munitions workers, stranded after World War I.
299–300 Hick’s 19 Oct. 1935 nine-page single-spaced report from Red House; “Yow confirmed”: ER to Hick, 24 Nov. 1935; see also ER to Hick 14 Oct.
301–2 ER to Urban League, 12 Dec. 1935, published as “The Negro and Social Change,” Opportunity Magazine, Jan. 1936, pp. 14–15.
301–2 “damn this women’s work”: Hick to ER, 10 Dec. 1935.
302 “ER outraged about the maids”: 13 Dec.
302 “don’t let anyone hold memorials”: ER to Hick, 19 Dec. 1935.
302–3 Lillian Smith in Cliff, ed., p. 206; cf. Rose Gladney, How Am I to Be Heard? Letters of Lillian Smith (University of North Carolina, 1993).
303 FDR on Dodd: in Ickes, p. 494; only Dodd refused to attend the Nazi Nuremberg rally. Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know (Little, Brown, 1993), pp. 33–34.
16: A Silence Beyond Repair
304–5 Maria Meyer Wachman to ER, 5 Jan. 1934/100/1324. When I first referred to Wachman’s letter in Marjorie Lightman, Joan Hoff, eds., several historians wrote to me to express doubt about its early date. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a monument has been erected to one of Hitler’s most abusive centers of detention and torture. It opened in April 1933, and is commemorated nowwhere it originally stood in history’s triangle between the Bauhaus Museum and the Reichstag, just beyond the Wall’s rubble.
306 On Hoover’s willingness for Japan to serve as an anticommunist barrier, see William A. Williams, American-Russian Relations (Rinehart, 1952), p. 226.
306 Ivy Low Litvinoff an “ER type”: George Fischer to author.
306 One segment of the business community, led by Raymond Robins and Senator Borah, had called for recognition and trade from the beginning. Russia agreed to pay: Bullitt, pp. 29, 49. Debts after 1934, Feis, 1933, p. 266.
307 “Well, now Max”: in Ted Morgan pp. 397–98; ER, TIR, pp. 134–35; Ickes, p. 124; Perkins, p. 143; Dallek, p. 81.
307 Perkins on Nazi propaganda: Ickes, p. 111–12.
308 ER to Hick, 13 Nov. 1933.
308 See Lape papers; Lamont quoted in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, p. 590.
308 telephone conversation, and “My husband told me”: TIR, p. 134.
308 Dickerman and Mary Simkhovitch promoted the idea of John Dewey for the U.S.’s first ambassador, MD to ER, n.d., Nov. 1933.
308–9 Bullitt’s mission to Russia released to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sept. 1919; Bullitt in Justin Kaplan, Lincoln Steffens, pp. 246–49; to Bernard Baruch, p. 250; “at least eleven wars”: pp. 253–4; “lie on the sand”: Steffens, p. 303.
309 to Moscow, 11 Dec. 1933: Orville Bullitt, p. 18.
309 Bullitt denied Jewish roots, but his detractors referred to his mother, Louisa Gross Horwitz, a descendant of Berlin scholars and physicians, including eminent surgeon Samuel Gross. Although she was Episcopalian, her heritage raised questions of Jewish ancestry.
309–10 Spring 1934, “to explore”: Clarence Pickett, For More Than Bread, p. 93; “confidential report to our friends,” Pickett to ER, May 1934, 70, Box 628.
310 During his first weeks in Vienna, Franz von Papen boasted: “Southeastern Europe to the borders of Turkey was Germany’s natural hinterland.” Papen’s mission was to achieve “German economic and political control over the whole of this region.” Austria was to be the “first step.” Quoted in Winston Churchill, pp. 103–4. cf. For More Than Bread, pp. 98–100.
312 State Department memo to ER, opposing international radio broadcast: Gertrude Bussey, Margaret Tims, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1965 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1965), p. 151.
312 “a new tulip” mistake: 13 May 1935, Steve Early to Malvina Scheider/ 70/660; Scheider to William Phillips, 15 May 1935; Phillips to Scheider, 16 May 1935, etc.
313–14 TR also protested, in 1902 and 1905, against violent pogroms. Correspondence over Tydings resolution in Greenway Papers, Tucson.
313–14 Herman Lewkowitz to Isabella Greenway, 25 Jan. 1934; Greenway to Lewkowitz, 7 Apr. 934; Greenway Mss 31, Box 55, “Jews,” Tucson; on the Tydings Resolution see also Arnold Offner, American Appeasement, pp. 81–83.
313–14 “Four of us”: ER, My Day, Jan. 1936; pp. 15–16.
314 Mock trial: cf. Offner, pp. 82–83.
314 Hitler and Dodd: Offner, p. 68; Dodd Diary, 16 June 1933, pp. 4–6.
315 Sarah Gertrude Millin, The Night Is Long (London: Faber & Faber, 1941), pp. 249–55. I am grateful to Merle and Martin Rubin for this reference.
317 Henry Morgenthau III: In 1978, Oral History, FDRL, p. 74.
317 Brains Trust on Baruch: Margaret Coit, Mr. Baruch, pp. 429–30.
317 “Jew party”: ER to SDR, 14 Jan. 1918; 16 Jan. 1918; see BWC, I.
317 On Frankfurter: ER to SDR, 12 May 1918.
318 ER and Baruch, during the Smith campaign: Coit, p. 374.
318 “One of the wisest”: TIR, p. 256; “There are few”: ER to Baruch, 16 May 1936; cf. Coit, p. 451.
318 Baruch, and Churchill the gambler: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill/ Alone, 1932–1940 (Little, Brown, 1988, pp. 13–15; see also Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 379; Coit, pp. 190–93, 272–273.
318 Baruch esoteric womanizer: Helen Lawrenson, Stranger at the Party: A Memoir, pp. 107; 136–37; Hobcaw and biographical details: Coit pp. 13, 27, 317–18; Laurenson, p. 148; and Patricia Spain Ward, Simon Baruch: Rebel in the Ranks of Medicine, 1840–1921 (University of Alabama, 1994), pp. 83, 92, 316n43.
320 For Ford’s “paper pogrom”: See Lewis Carlson and George Colburn, In Their Place: White America Defines Her Minorities (Wiley, 1972) pp. 259–61; Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 81–84 and passim. Ford’s apology to Samuel Livingston, 7 Jan. 1942, ADL papers, with thanks to Ernest Nives.
320 Baruch reviled: Coit, 35–37; 359; 361; 469.
320 Felix Frankfurter once remarked to Baruch’s great friend Herbert Bayard Swope that he thought Baruch w
as “kidding himself” to think he was in a different category from other Jews. Frankfurter and Walter Lippmann both worked in Newton Baker’s Office of War Information, then criticized for employing too many Jews. Lippmann asked Frankfurter: “‘What is a Jew anyhow?’” Frankfurter offered, “as a working definition”: Anybody “‘whom non-Jews regard as a Jew.’” Jordan Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard Baruch in Washington (University of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 560.
320–21 Henry Morgenthau, Sr., on Palestine: Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (Knopf, 1983), p. 72.
321 Henry Morgenthau, Jr., “drive for total Americanization”: Mostly Morgenthaus, pp. 80–81; 274; Elinor Morgenthau blackballed by the Colony Club: ER to NYT, 1937. Bill Preston’s friend John Marquand said his mother (Christina Sedgwick) also resigned in protest when ER did: He was certain, since she spoke about it subsequently, and often. Henry HI described his own sense of brooding adolescent loneliness at school the year his parents moved to Washington, and Hitler came to power. His grandfather visited him at Deerfield in the spring of 1933, and gave him Edgar Ansel Mowrer’s Germany Puts the Clock Back: “It was as though my concept of Jewish alienation had permeated my sensibilities….” Mowrer’s book “chilled me to the marrow of my bones.”
Mowrer, The Chicago Daily News’s Berlin correspondent, was accused of exaggeration when he wrote in March 1933 that Germany had become an “insane asylum.” When the State Department’s Allen Dulles visited Berlin, he told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” As president of the Foreign Press Association, he retained significant support among journalists, and the State Department did nothing when Hitler demanded his resignation. But on 20 Aug. 1933, his publisher Frank Knox transferred him to Tokyo. Mowrer left behind his prescient words: The goal of Hitler’s “barbarous campaign was the extermination, permanent subjection or voluntary departure of the Jews from Germany.”
See Mostly Morgenthaus, pp. 269–70; on Mowrer, Lipstadt, Beyond Belief, p. 25ff; Offner, p. 69.
321 Louise Wise to ER, 27 Oct. 1933/100, Box 1282.
321–22 ER to Mrs. Stephen S. Wise, American Jewish Congress, 14 Nov. 1933/100/1282; Louise Wise to ER, 22 Nov. 1933. On 23 Nov. 1933 ER presented the American Hebrew Medal to Carrie Chapman Catt at City College. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., presided; Rabbi Isaac Landman and Einstein celebrated Cott’s work.
322 ER at the Hotel Commodore: NYT, 29 Feb. 1934; “Mrs. Catt to Receive the Hebrew Medal,” NYT, 17 Nov. 1933; “Mrs. Catt Honored,” Praised by ER, NYT, 24 Nov. 1933; “Catt, Women Ask Haven for Nazi Victims,” NYT, 19 Mar. 1934.
322 NYT, 1 Mar. 1934; Florence Rothschild, “The Mistress of the White House,” The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 9 Mar. 1934; FDR/PPF, Box 1.
323 ER received hate mail, and letters of polite protest: As a “ninth generation” American, “of the same stock as you and your husband,” and also an officer of “The Netherlands Society of Philadelphia,” one correspondent wanted ER to know that she would only hurt her husband’s future if she persisted complimenting Jews. H.S.J. Sickel to ER, 5 May 1934; ER to Sickel, 16 May 1934/100,1320.
323 On Ruth Liberman: ER to Dr. J. Edgar Park, President, Wheaton College, 4 June 1936/ 100 1397; cf. ER to Armand May, Hebrew Orphanage of Atlanta, 13 Jan. 1934/100/1309; ER to Rabbi Louis L. Mann, to speak at his Temple, Chicago Sinai Congregation, 16 Sept. 1936; ER to Ruth Oppenheimer, 30 Sept. 1934/100/1313.
323–24 Felix Frankfurter to FDR, and James McDonald’s letter to Frankfurter, 20 Nov. 1933, in Freeman, ed., p. 173ff; 20 February 1934 telegram, pp. 194–95; FF to FDR, 22 Mar. 1934, p. 209.
324 answered paragraph by paragraph: FDR to FF, 24 Mar. 34.
325 “It glittered and it glared”: Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 101–2ff.
326 Madison Square Garden rally, NYT, 7 Oct. 1934; Jewish Examiner, 12 Oct. 1934; in Mrs. S. Miller to ER, 18 Oct. 1934; ER to Mrs. Miller, 12 Nov. 1934; 100, Box 1310.
327 In honor of ER’s address and her 50th birthday, she received a “tree certificate” which announced that fifty trees would be planted in the Hadassah Forest at Kiryath Anavim, near Jerusalem. “Zionism held hope of Jew in Europe … Mrs. Roosevelt honored …,” NYT, 17 Oct. 1934.
328 Alice Youngbar to ER, with article on Dachau, 20 Nov. 1934/100/1326; ER to Miss Youngbar, Oswego, Oregon, 11 Dec. 1934.
329–30 For information relating to the Brodsky family, I am grateful to Dr. Michael Brody for his family’s correspondence and memorabilia. See, NYT 8 Feb. 1934; Florence Rothschild’s 9 Mar. 1934 article also referred to Bertha Brodsky, and to ER’s frequent gifts to the residents of Washington’s Jewish Old People’s Home, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, 9 Mar. 1934. ER to Bertha Brodsky, 28 Feb. 1934/Henrietta Nesbitt to Bertha re cherries, 22 June 1934; monthly notes, Feb. 1934 to Apr. 1935, Brody collection.
330 See also ER to Bertha Brodsky, 2 Apr. 1935; Milgrim to ER 22 Apr. 1935/100, Box 1349; ER to Rex Tugwell, 8 May 1935/100 668; Frank Brodsky to ER, 10 June 1935/Brody coll; ER to Rex, 19 June 1935/ 70 Box 668; ER to Bertha 3 July 1936, Brody coll. ER left bonds to Brodsky grandchildren; and remained close to Frank, who had monthly breakfasts with ER until her death.
330 Dec. 1933 Woman’s Home Companion; and cf. NYT 19 Dec. 1933.
330–31 On 10 December, ER said to the National Student Federation: “Peacetime can be as exhilarating to the daredevil as wartime. There is nothing more exciting than building a new social order.”
331 “We can’t go on that way”: ER in NYT, “Students March to White House,” 22 Dec. 1933.
331 Hick’s report from Ajo, May 1934; Dodd to R. Walton Moore, PSF Dodd, 5 Nov. 1934.
331 Hick to ER 4 May 1934; 8 May to Hopkins, in Beasley, p. 250.
331 On Ethiopia’s resistance, see esp. NYT “Ethiopia woman to lead 15,000 men,” 10 Oct. 1935 and The Crisis on Ethiopia.
332 George Biddle, “Artists’ Boycott of Berlin Olympics Art Exhibition,” in Matthew Baigell & Julia Williams, eds., Artists Against War and Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress (Rutgers University Press, 1986), pp. 90–91.
332 “Stay Out of the Olympics,” The Crisis, Sept. 1935, p. 273.
332 “Fair Play in Sports”: NYT, 15 July 1936; “Mahoney Declares Boycott is Reason for Olympic Deficit,” NYT, 7 July 1936.
333 Not everyone fooled: NYT, 12 Jan. 1936; feast of Nazi pageantry: NYT, 6 July 1936.
333 Also, N.Y.’s Emmanuel Celler and Rhode Island’s Senator Peter Gerry raised the issue of a boycott to oppose persecutions of Jews and Catholics; NYT, 14 Aug. 1935; “Buffalo Jews in Protest,” against “the savagery and barbarism of the Hitler regime,” and call for a boycott of the 1936 games: NYT, 14 Aug. 1935.
333 The Crisis editorialized: “America’s track ace, Jesse Owens,” put Hitler “on the spot. He has been telling the Germans … that they are the chosen people … and all others, especially Jews and Black people, are the low scum of the earth…. Yet here before the amazed German nation were black and brown boys winning honors. Hitler could have greeted all winners impartially…. But Hitler is a small man.”
333 The Crisis, Sept. 1936, p. 273.
17: Red Scare and Campaign Strategies, 1936
335–36 Ethiopia, the Living Newspaper: Hallie Flanagan to ER, with Baker to Flanagan, 18 Jan. 1936/70; ER to Flanagan, 21 Jan.; Baker to Flanagan, 23 Jan.; Flanagan, Arena, pp. 64–66; Jane DeHart Matthews, The Federal Theatre, pp. 65–73.
336–37 ER censored Chicago revue: Flanagan to ER; ER to F, 13 Feb. 1936; Flanagan to ER, telegram with script, 9 Dec. 1936.
338 “When in New York”: ER to Jacob Baker, 19 Feb. 1936; Report and History of Federal Art Project, n.d., to ER, as of 15 Feb. 1936, ibid. /70, Box 675.
339 women and work: “First Lady Outstanding Forum Leader,” School Life (Mar. 1936), p. 177ff; Studebaker to ER 19 Mar. 1936; ER to Studebaker, 21 Mar. Protest mail: see esp. Jesse Gordon, with address, to ER, 22 Aug. 1935; ER to JG, “I am afraid your attitude,” 29 Aug. 1935, 100, Box 1339.
339 ER on Mary Breckenridge: Democratic Digest, Mar. 1936; ER’s press conference, 4 Feb. 1936.
339 ER and Charl Williams, “Microphone Duet”: Independent Woman (May 1936), pp 145–46; cf. ER’s Dec. 1937 article for Good Housekeeping: “Should Wives Work?”
340 but they did create a jolly atmosphere: ER to Hick, 4 Jan. 1936.
340 “you were low”: ER to Hick, 14 Jan. 1936; “we’ll forget I’m in N.Y.”: ER to Hick, 17 Jan. 1936.
340 “being leisurely with Newky,” “You have in the savings $255.43”: ER to Hick, 19 Jan. 1936;
340–41 ER’s answers to Hick’s lost letters sounded hurt and angry. After some earnest negotiation, she gave up: “I’m not making any plans ahead but I will keep your dates in mind and be here as much as possible! There, is that indefinite enough?” One of Hick’s letters seemed to ER incredible: “What a fool letter that was! I could hardly believe it.” ER to Hick, cf. esp. 26, 28 Jan. 1936.
341 Al Smith and Liberty League: NYT, pp. 25, 26, Jan; Cousin Corinne: ER to Hick, 24–26 Jan. 1936.
341–42 ER to press conference: “Preserving Civilization,” in NYT, 29 Sept. 1935; ER to Jeannette Rankin, 25 Jan. 1936, NCPW, Box 74, SCPC; NYT 22 Jan., Catt, Mary Woolley, ER, Britain’s Kathleen Courtney, at Cause and Cure of War; also, Dem. Digest, March To Youth Congress: NYT, 2 Feb. 1936; Pickett arranged ER’s peace tour, and subsequent broadcasts scheduled for Apr.: 4/15 broadcast after dinner; ER’s Mar. lecture tour “for charity,” was billed as “Ways to Peace,” NYT 4 Mar. 1936.
342 a scintillating evening: ER to Hick, 5 Feb. 1936.
342–43 Anna Louise Strong: Wald to ER, 17 Jan. 35; ER to Wald, 21 Jan. 100; on Buro Bidgin, see Robert Weinberg, with Bradley Berman photographs, Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland, 1928–1996 (University of California Press, 1998). Unfortunately, this book fails to deal with refugees and the settlement’s role as a temporary sanctuary.