Americans and the Holocaust

Holocaust history raises important questions about what Europeans could have done to stop the rise of Nazism in Germany and its assault on Europe’s Jews. Questions also must be asked of the international community, including the United States.

What did the US government and the American people know about the threats posed by Nazi Germany? What responses were possible? And when?

This exhibition examines the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war, and genocide.

Americans participate in an anti-Nazi protest in New York after learning of the Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in Germany, November 1938.

Associated Press.

By the time Nazi Germany forced the world into war, democratic civilization itself was at stake. The US military fought for almost four years to defend democracy, and more than 400,000 Americans died.

The American people—soldiers and civilians alike—made enormous sacrifices to free Europe from Nazi oppression. Yet saving Jews and others targeted for murder by the Nazi regime and its collaborators never became a priority.

The United States alone could not have prevented the Holocaust, but more could have been done to save some of the six million Jews who were killed.

In 1933 . . .

This film provides a glimpse of what the United States was like in 1933. It is mainly silent, but includes a small audio portion of President Roosevelt's inaugural address.

On his first day as president, Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
In the fourth year of the Great Depression, 25 percent of US workers were unemployed.
Public facilities, churches, and schools were racially segregated.
The United States continued to limit immigration, especially by people of “undesirable” national origin, including eastern European Jews.
Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler was appointed to lead Germany’s government.

Nazism in the News

American newspapers reported frequently on Hitler and Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s. At least 2,000 daily newspapers were printed in the United States in 1933, and most American households received one. US press coverage included reports on the Nazis’ persecution of Jews, Communists, and other political opponents.

Yet American readers could not imagine that this persecution would lead to Germany’s mass murder of Jews and other civilians by 1941.

The Petoskey Evening News (Petoskey, Michigan), May 11, 1933.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Honolulu, US territory of Hawaii), April 1, 1933. — The Petoskey Evening News (Petoskey, Michigan), May 11, 1933.

Protesting Nazism

“What is happening in Germany today may happen tomorrow in any other land on earth unless it is challenged and rebuked. . . . We must speak out.”

— Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, March 1933

American Jewish leaders hoped to persuade the US government to condemn the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany but disagreed on strategy and tactics. Some favored public demonstrations and a boycott of German goods, but others advocated working quietly behind the scenes, perhaps concerned about an antisemitic backlash in the United States.

These silent historic films show some of the anti-Nazi protests in more than 65 American cities during the spring of 1933, in the first months of Nazi Party rule in Germany.

Not a Governmental Affair

US Ambassador William Dodd (seated left, in front of the waiter) celebrates Thanksgiving dinner at the Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, Germany, November 1934.
*William Edward Dodd Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.*

The United Churches of Lackawanna County in Scranton, Pennsylvania, sent this resolution to US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, March 27, 1933.
*National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.*

“It has been a favorite pastime of the SA men to attack the Jews and one cannot avoid the plain language of stating that they do not like to be deprived of their prey.”

— George Messersmith, US Consul General, Berlin, July 26, 1933

American diplomats in Germany were well aware of the Nazi persecution of Jews and political opponents. Yet the US government respected Germany’s right to govern its own citizens and was hesitant to aid those being targeted.

Anti-Nazi Petitions

Throughout spring 1933, tens of thousands of Americans signed petitions protesting the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. Hundreds of petitions were sent to the State Department, but the US government made no official statement against the German regime.

Attacks on Americans

But when members of the Nazi Party’s SA militia physically assaulted Americans in Germany—as happened at least 35 times during 1933 alone—US diplomats did protest. During their first meeting, Hitler assured US Ambassador William Dodd that attacks on Americans in Germany would end, and many fewer occurred after 1933.

Boycott the Olympics?

A New York City pedestrian reads flyers announcing a public meeting to debate boycotting the 1936 Olympics, December 1935.
*National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.*

Track and field stars Jesse Owens, left, and Ralph Metcalfe pose together in July 1936. Both athletes faced pressure to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but chose to attend and won multiple medals for the United States.
*Associated Press.*

Violating Olympic Rules?

As the 1936 Olympics in Berlin neared, Americans debated whether to boycott the Games as a protest against Nazism, with 43 percent of Americans supporting a boycott. Jeremiah Mahoney, the president of the Amateur Athletic Union, contended that Germany violated Olympic rules by denying equal training and competition opportunities to Jewish and other minority athletes. US Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage argued that boycott advocates were injecting political concerns where they did not belong and suggested that the boycott movement was orchestrated by a Jewish-led conspiracy of “radicals and Communists.” In December 1935, the Amateur Athletic Union narrowly voted to participate in the Olympics.

African-American Athletes

During the boycott debate, African-American and Jewish athletes faced pressure from within their respective communities to take a moral stand against Nazism. Some resented being asked to protest the discrimination against Jewish athletes in Germany while America had its own pervasive and segregationist Jim Crow laws. Eighteen African-American athletes participated in the Games and dominated the track and field events. Their victories abroad, however, did little to diminish racial discrimination and segregation at home.

American Newsreels

During the 1930s, 80 million Americans—nearly two-thirds of the country’s population—went to the movies each week. Newsreels shown before the feature film, along with radio broadcasts, newspapers, and magazines, shaped how Americans understood the world in the era before television.

The newsreel clips in this six-minute compilation, depicting both national and international events, were shown in American theaters between 1934 and 1938.

Nazis in America

In 1937, the residents of Southbury, Connecticut, successfully opposed the Bund’s efforts to establish a summer camp in their town.
*Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.*

In May 1938, The Anti-Nazi Bulletin, a publication by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, printed this map depicting the locations of German American Bund training camps in the United States. — In May 1938, *The Anti-Nazi Bulletin*, a publication by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, printed this map depicting the locations of German American Bund training camps in the United States.
*US Holocaust Memorial Museum*

The German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization for Americans of German descent, demonized Jews and Communists and dreamed of a fascist America. Fritz Kuhn, the Bund’s leader, tried to portray himself as the “American führer,” though he never received the support from the Nazi Party in Germany that he desired.

Rallies

The Bund’s membership probably never exceeded 25,000, yet its pro-Nazi propaganda and mass demonstrations sometimes reached large crowds. At one Bund rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1939, more than 20,000 attendees booed any mention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and cheered “Heil Hitler!” Thousands of anti-Nazi protesters filled the streets outside the arena.

Summer Camps

The Bund established more than a dozen summer camps around the United States to indoctrinate German American children. Campers wore uniforms of the Hitler Youth and carried Nazi banners.

Americans and the Holocaust