Beyond Belief Read online

  But the report could not effect a change in the prevailing attitude that “the United States has already provided a refuge for more of these European immigrants than any other major country” and was simply “incapable of supplying a solution. There is no hope for refuge here.”34 Editors repeatedly stressed that there was a limit “beyond which no nation may go.”35 Fears that here again was Pandora’s box were expressed: One such “influx” is sure to be “followed by other ship loads.” Letting this one dock would set a most “dangerous precedent.”36 Another argument that had been heard before was that trying to aid Jews would be an incentive to the Germans to subject them to even worse treatment. In this case it might prompt Germany to “dump its Jewish population upon other nations without regard for any international law or regulation.”37

  One cannot totally discount these fears. There seemed to be “hundreds of thousands of Central Europeans, both Jews and Christians, who [had] no place to go.”38 While the St. Louis was meandering aimlessly off American shores, other ships were plying the Atlantic with their cargo of “Jewish refugees.” It was easy to get the impression that these ships were the vanguard of a flotilla of refugee vessels.39 Word came from Mexico that 104 Jewish refugees had been refused entry, and from Paraguay and Argentina that 200 Jewish refugees aboard the Cap Orte, Monte Oliva, and Mendoza were turned away. The wire services reported that Costa Rica was preparing to deport twenty Jewish refugees.40During the previous year Italy had instituted antisemitic legislation. Everywhere doors were either slamming shut or Jews were being urged to leave.41 Germany was then releasing Jews who had been arrested after Kristallnacht. They were told to depart at once or face arrest. A deluge of refugees appeared ready to flood the world.

  * * *

  The same papers which had supported the entry of 20,000 children but a few weeks earlier opposed the entry of these 900 voyagers on the St. Louis. Even those that had approved of the President’s decision to allow 15,000 visitors to remain here on temporary visas did not advocate that the St. Louis be allowed to dock in Miami. As the situation grew more severe and the flood of Jewish refugees seeking a haven increased in size, the press advocated that the gates to this land be more firmly secured. Again the press offered its genuine sympathy to these victims of a fanatic regime. What it did not offer were concrete and viable suggestions to resolve the plight of those aboard what the New York Times described as the “saddest ship afloat.”

  The press reaction to the Anschluss, Evian, Kristallnacht, Wagner-Rogers, and the voyage of the SS St. Louis was indicative of the resolve behind America’s anti-immigrant sentiment. But more than that, the reaction demonstrated the degree to which the American public’s reaction to the persecution of European Jewry was tempered by other concerns. Whether a particular course of action—attending the Olympics, boycotting Germany, admitting refugees, or aiding children—was accepted or rejected depended on how it affected other American priorities. Would it compromise our neutrality, change the ethnic and social composition of our nation, force us to take a stand, drag us into war, or, after December 1941, deflect us from the war effort? Rarely, if ever, particularly during the prewar period, can America’s inaction be attributed primarily to a lack of information or knowledge. It was not a question of ignorance, but a matter of priorities, and aiding persecuted Jews was never one of them.

  6

  Fifth-Column Fears

  Long before it seemed even mildly likely that the United States would be drawn into a European conflagration, Americans believed that Hitler was preparing a network of spies in their midst. Eventually the fear that Germany was creating a “Trojan horse” in the United States grew to the proportions of a spy mania. By 1941 it had so engulfed America that Justice Department and FBI officials, who had initially counseled extreme vigilance, now urged citizens to refrain from trying to find spies lurking in thousands of dimly lit corners.1

  The press was largely responsible for reinforcing the public’s fear of a Trojan horse—or as it was often called, fifth column—of spies. Perusal of popular journals and newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s reveals a sustained sensational interest in Reich-controlled activities. Though the press vacillated as to whether Hitler was a “slick politician or a madman,” it was convinced that “America had something to fear from Hitlerism.”2 Ironically, sometimes the press seemed convinced that America had more to fear from Hitler than did Germany.

  Appearance Versus Reality

  Germany had espionage and propaganda objectives in the United States and worked hard to achieve them. There were pro-Nazi spies and groups with pro-Nazi sentiments in this country. But they never constituted a network with the scope and power that the press attributed to them.3 That, however, was irrelevant because the bombastic activities of American Nazis and the threat of alien spies made good copy. Intrigue and danger, militaristic training and secret pledges of allegiance to a foreign power captured the attention of the press. In the public’s eyes the steady stream of media coverage elevated pro-Nazi groups from the rather inconsequential menace they were to a significant threat to American security. The reading public had an almost “insatiable interest” in them and devoured anything written on the topic.4John Roy Carlson’s Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America went through twenty-one printings within six months of publication.5 But it was not only the threat from organized groups which was the object of press attention. Individual spies—particularly those disguised as refugees—were also depicted as an ever present danger to this nation’s security.

  During the early 1930s most of press attention was focused on the Friends of New Germany (FONG). FONG was created in 1933 after the dissolution of the American branch of the Nazi Party.6 Though its membership never rose above 6,000, it was generally portrayed as a powerful entity posing a serious threat to the United States.7 The Los Angeles Examiner reported that Germany was maintaining storm troops in this country in the “guise of a [FONG] sports group.”8 According to the Chicago Daily News, “young Germans who have come to this country since the world war and many of [whom] are not citizens” were engaged in establishing a network of “clandestine” Nazi strongholds. The Boston American charged that Nazi emissaries were organizing “storm troop” clubs in order to “enlist [a] big shock army” which would “Hitlerize the United States.”9 The New York Post put Americans on alert: “should all these Nazi groups ever pool their energies . . . not merely Jews but the entire structure of the American Republic will be imperiled.”10

  Press reports of FONG’s induction of 5,000 new members, of loyalty oaths and parades in swastika-bedecked uniforms, so aroused American hostility that German officials stationed in the United States urged Berlin to use its influence to curtail their activities insofar as it could and to demonstrate that they had no official relationship with Nazi Germany. A Foreign Ministry edict in the fall of 1935 ordered all German nationals residing in the United States to resign from FONG and any other organization which engaged in political activities.11 Contrary to German expectations, this directive convinced much of the public and the press that FONG and similar groups were under Berlin’s control.

  In 1936, in the wake of the edict forcing German nationals to resign, FONG reorganized and reemerged as the Amerika-deutscher Volksbund. The size of the Bund, which was led by German-born Fritz Julius Kuhn, would rise to about 25,000.12Its growth was facilitated by the increase in German propaganda in the United States and a rising isolationist sentiment. The Bund succeeded in garnering even more press attention than FONG. Press estimates of the Bund’s size varied, and some were way above the mark. Kuhn’s private claims of a membership of between 180,000 and 230,000 were cited by The Saturday Evening Post as “much nearer the truth” in 1939 than his 1937 reports to the federal government that the membership was less than 9000.13Writers describing the Bund’s members used the terms “thug,” “social misfit,” and “Nazi” almost without differentiation. They were depicted as “beer drinking bullies, scum from th
e lowest level of society.”14

  But it was Kuhn’s apparent connections abroad which really mesmerized the press. A flurry of press comment followed his brief meeting with Hitler during the Olympics. Photographs of the two Nazis appeared in numerous papers along with Kuhn’s claim that he took his orders directly from the Führer.15 The influential Literary Digest described Kuhn as “more than friendly with Hitler.”16 As a result, Dieckhoff strengthened his warnings to Berlin about the damage press reports on the Bund were causing Germany. Kuhn’s February 1938 visit to Germany and his subsequent claim to have received “specific directions” from Goebbels and Goering regarding Bund activities strengthened the public’s perception of the group as an organization marching in locked step with Germany. Typical of the press reaction was an article in Look entitled “Hitler Speaks and the Bund Obeys.”17

  The press was fed more sensational information during the 1938 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. In fact a great deal of the attention given this topic by the press was generated by such hearings and reports issued by members of Congress, Martin Dies in particular. Other attention was generated by federal investigations and trials of suspected spies. These hearings and trials were designed to win press attention and generate public support for government counterespionage activities. A United States Attorney in charge of prosecuting a group of suspected spies told his staff that the trial would go forward even if their case was not as strong as they might have wished because “the important point is that the American public must be made aware of the existence of this spy plot, and impressed with . . . the fact that it is imperative that we have an efficient counterespionage service.” A “news-hungry” public awaited press coverage of this phenomenon and was not disappointed. During these hearings and trials Nazism was presented as a dangerous influence in American life. Charges were made at the hearings and repeated in the press that large numbers of Germans were “spying for Germany.” The Bund was accused of organizing and conducting much of the spying, but the fear that the Bund was serving as a major spy network was really unfounded. The main spying and propaganda activities that took place in America were not conducted through the Bund, but through isolationist circles. Isolationists were better equipped to achieve German objectives of keeping America out of the war than were any of the pro-Nazi groups in the United States.18

  The Bund hastened its own demise when it catapulted itself onto the front pages and into the editorial columns of this nation’s newspapers with a rally in Madison Square Garden in February 1939.19 An audience of 22,000 gave the Bund the appearance of being a real threat. Although the rally was intended to place a pro-American slant on Bund activities, it galvanized public opinion against the organization. After this, press coverage of the Bund and other fascist organizations became more frequent and even more hostile. The New York Times called the Bund the “best argument against itself.” In a lengthy analysis of American fascist groups The Saturday Evening Post reported that they were continuing to “prosper and spread” and warned that in addition to the Bund there existed in America a network of “more authentically American groups.” These “star-spangled Kamaraden” were ready to join the Bund at the barricades when “the time came.”20

  A Nation of Spy Hunters

  When Western Europe fell before the Nazi blitzkreig, Americans became even more convinced that the Nazis were using internal spy networks to achieve their military objectives. At the same time a Congressional committee began to issue its findings about the “fifth column peril” facing America.21 The public’s mood was grim. It did not want to go to war but it needed to find someone to “fight.” It needed an enemy to pursue. William Leutchenberg notes that “unable to agree on what to do about the enemy without, the nation hunted fifth-columnists within.”22 The press served as a front-line combatant in this conflagration as even the President proved susceptible to this sentiment. In May 1940, when Hitler was completing his conquest of Western Europe, Roosevelt told a group of Cabinet members and Congressional leaders, “Of course we have got this fifth column thing, which is . . . widespread through the country,” and warned them “to be pretty darned careful.”23

  An article by J. Edgar Hoover in American Magazine typified the stories which appeared on the fifth column. In boldface type the editors alerted readers to the “tremendous import” of the message contained therein:

  Factories sabotaged . . . ships burned . . . machines smashed . . . trains wrecked . . . . In a war of utter ruthlessness the Fifth Column is on the march . . . . Saboteurs are striking at America. This article by the Chief of the G-men is . . . couched in cautious language. But if you read between the lines you will get its tremendous import.24

  Those not capable of reading “between the lines” found it easier to grasp the “tremendous import” thanks to a series of subsequent articles in the magazine on the same topic that charged that “aliens” by the thousands were being “coerced into joining the Nazi network” in America. They controlled radio stations which broadcast special messages to spies and had instructions on how to foment a “revolution” in America when the time was right. One of the articles was an exposé entitled “Hitler’s Slave Spies in America” relating how a “blitzkreig of blackmail is forcing hundreds of our foreign-born residents into the Nazi fifth column” where they created a “vast system of espionage, built on threats, robbery and reprisals.”25

  In the summer and fall of 1940 the New York World Telegram, Pittsburgh Press, New York Post, and New York Journal American were among the papers which ran series of articles detailing how the “fifth column [was] rapidly gaining power” and “swing[ing] into high gear.”26 There were other syndicated series including one by Bruce Catton which described the “incredible” German propaganda operations which were functioning on “a large scale all across America.”27

  There were some attempts to diffuse the panic by poking fun at the American propensity to see “five columns” everywhere. Walter C. Frame, writing in America, counseled in September 1940 that “hunting for Hitlers can be a mania.” Edmond Taylor, also writing in America, warned that in France it was fear of “imaginary enemies and inability to see real ones [which] helped destroy the nation.”28 Some commentators declared fifth-column stories to be the “counterparts in this war of the atrocity stories in the last war.”29 The climate of fear became so pervasive that even J. Edgar Hoover, who in his 1940 American Magazine article counseled extreme vigilance against fifth columnists, reversed his position in 1941 and warned against “cooked-up hysteria” and “ugly schemes of vigilantes and fearmongers.” The FBI was then receiving 300 complaints a day regarding “suspected un-American activity.” Hoover decried the formation of vigilante groups to “combat fifth columnists, shoot down parachutists [and] investigate foreign-born citizens.”30

  The November 1940 issue of McCall’s described how Americans’ “passionate preoccupation” with fifth-column activities was producing a nation of spy hunters. Department of Justice officials complained that one of their hardest jobs was “demobilizing amateur sleuths and deflating hysteria.” According to a report prepared by the Department for the Attorney General, the American press was paying more attention to the fifth column than to news of the war. The report contended that “if the fifth column in the United States had hired a million highpowered publicity men to create hysteria . . . they could not have managed better.”31

  This wave of panic about spies in America’s midst had various repercussions. By July 1940, 71 percent of the respondents to a Roper poll believed Germany had already started to organize a fifth column in this country. By this point the phrase “fifth column,” the New York World Telegram claimed, had reached “giant proportions in the consciousness of the United States.”32

  American Antisemitism: A Rising Tide

  Americans were hostile to these pro-German groups’ espousal of fascism and Nazism but were not immune to their antisemitic preachings. Various organizations’ and individuals’ depiction of
the Jew as a universally unwanted burden struck a responsive chord in the American public. The American Institute of Public Opinion found that the Detroit-based radio priest Father Charles Coughlin had amassed a substantial listening audience. His radio show, which regularly broadcast attacks on Jews, including material which had originated in Nazi Germany but which Coughlin did not identify as such, had an estimated audience of 15 million, of whom 3.5 million were regular listeners. A majority of the listeners approved of his violently antisemitic message.

  Regular listeners approving 67 percent

  Occasional listeners approving 51 percent

  The columnist Heywood Broun noted that the Jew served many Americans as a convenient “whipping boy.” The preachings of the Nazis on one side and the Bundists and Coughlinites on the other convinced many Americans that their antipathy toward Jews was justified. Surveys taken from 1940 through 1946 show that Jews were almost consistently seen as a greater menace to the welfare of the United States than were any other national, religious, or racial group. In June 1944, with the war in Europe and in Japan still raging, 24 percent of those responding to a poll believed Jews a “threat,” while only 6 percent considered the Germans to be one and 9 percent believed this of the Japanese. (Despite their antipathy toward Jews, Americans strongly disapproved of the Nazis’ treatment of them. In the wake of Kristallnacht 94 percent of those polled disapproved of German persecution of Jews. However, an even higher percent, 97 percent, disapproved of German ill treatment of Catholics.)33