Beyond Belief Read online

  The State Department and the German Foreign Office were both aware of the press’s power to shape events, and both suggested to reporters that they adopt a particular tone when it was considered in the interests of government policy for them to do so.* During the first months of Nazi rule, American reporters in Germany were urged by United States diplomats to moderate the tenor of their dispatches, lest public opinion against Germany be so inflamed that relations between the two countries would be irrevocably harmed. On certain occasions Berlin issued orders to German papers to refrain from criticizing Roosevelt in order not to alienate either the President or American public opinion.14

  The Press Within the Context of Its Times

  The two new fields of public relations and propaganda both had a profound impact on the way the press told the story of the persecution of Europe’s Jews and help to explain the skepticism which greeted the news.15 Initially these two endeavors, sometimes referred to interchangeably as manipulations of the public, were treated with great derision. Their rapid growth in the interwar period can be traced directly to the “astounding success” of wartime propaganda. Edward L. Bernays, one of the outstanding figures in the fledgling field of public relations, observed that wartime propaganda “opened the eyes of the intelligent few . . . to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind.” In less than a decade the American government’s attitude toward the use of public relations evolved from hostility to recognition that propaganda could serve government objectives.16

  Within one week of declaring war in 1917, President Wilson established the Committee on Public Information to disseminate information regarding the war and to coordinate government propaganda efforts. The Committee, which considered its job to be “mobilizing the mind of the world,” released thousands of press stories and created a vast network of writers, photographers, advertising specialists, artists, and journalists whose responsibility it was to foster a prowar sentiment. George Creel, the journalist appointed by Wilson to direct the Committee, candidly described the Committee as a “plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world’s greatest adventure in advertising.”17Some scholars consider the Committee’s activities during World War I to have been the “first modern effort at systematic, nationwide manipulation of collective passions.”18 After the war the Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry “Propaganda” asserted that during the war “the conquest of neutral opinion was seen to be almost as important as victory in the field.”19

  These new approaches to the dissemination of information had a profound effect on the way news was reported by the press and received by the public. Skepticism and cynicism, which had long been the hallmarks of the experienced reporter, intensified. Propaganda proved that any story could be created; consequently every story was now open to doubt. What seemed to be empirical evidence could now be carefully engineered illusion designed to manipulate and dupe even the most experienced reporter. The “inside story” could be the product of propagandists. Reporters, whose job it was to demand “Just give me the facts,” now had good cause to wonder whether the “facts” they were given could be trusted. The Belgian atrocity reports of World War I made the press all the more skeptical. Reports of the Germans’ use of poison gas, the brutal killings of babies, and mutilations of defenseless women in Belgium all turned out to be products of the imagination. But these stories left their legacy. During World War II, even when reporters possessed proof of mass killings they doubted they had occurred because the stories seemed too similar to the false reports of the previous war.20 And if the reporters believed the news, those far from the scene—both editors and public—often did not. This chasm between information and belief was one of the major obstacles to the transmission of this news.

  In Discovering the News, Michael Schudson notes that it was precisely during this period that “objectivity” became a journalist’s ideal. Unknown as an ideal prior to World War I, it became one because propaganda made subjectivity impossible to avoid.21Distrusting much of what they could see and, of course, even more of what they could not see, reporters and the public greeted the news of the persecution of the Jews skeptically.

  If doubt about the trustworthiness of this news was one prism through which the American view of Germany was refracted, the fear of being drawn into Europe’s internecine affairs was another. During the 1930s a deep-rooted isolationist sentiment permeated American public opinion.22 It served as a standard for judging any American foreign policy action. America, contemptuous of Europe’s inability to put its house in order, had no inclination to be involved in the Continent’s affairs.23 Isolationism and cynicism, the fear of being “duped” by government propaganda, revulsion at Europe’s inability to police itself, and despair about the future course of democracy together formed the backdrop against which the news from Germany was presented. These sentiments affected both the way the story was told and the way it was understood.

  The Press and the Historical Record

  The press has been described by veteran newsman Harrison Salisbury as “holding up a looking glass to history.”24 The press does far more than passively hold up that looking glass; it positions the glass, and the way it does that serves to shape the events themselves. The mirror, as the medium, becomes part of the message. Indeed, understanding the press’s behavior may tell us more about what the American people knew, believed, and felt about the persecution of European Jewry, and why the Americans reacted as they did, than will the analysis of diplomatic endeavors, however critical those endeavors may have been.

  As the British journalist Claud Cockburn observed,

  All stories are written backwards—they are supposed to begin with facts and develop from there, but in reality they begin with a journalist’s point of view, a conception, and it is the point of view from which the facts are subsequently organized. Journalistically speaking, “in the beginning is the word.”25

  And it is on the basis of that word that much of history is written.

  The press record is a large part of the raw material from which historians try to shape a coherent whole. Both the journalist’s and historian’s professions consider objectivity the highest ideal and believe that facts and values can and should be separated. In reality, neither the journalist nor the historian is completely objective. Their values inform their view and understanding of events, and thus influence the creation and interpretation of the historical record. And since people’s values tend to reflect those of the society they are part of, our examination of how the American journalist—both the reporter and the editor—treated the news of the persecution of European Jewry will also be an examination of the values of this society which watched from afar as the Holocaust erupted in all its fury and horror.

  PART I

  LAYING THE FOUNDATION

  1

  Dateline Berlin: Covering the Nazi Whirlwind

  As soon as the Nazis came to power, they began to institute antisemitic measures. Although the first antisemitic laws were not promulgated until early April 1933, from the earliest moments of Hitler’s rule in January 1933 violence against Jews in the form of Einzelaktionen, or “individual” acts of terror and brutality, was an inherent facet of German life. Boycotts of Jewish shops were conducted by the Nazi storm troopers. Jews were beaten and arrested; some were killed and others committed suicide. When the Nazis strengthened and consolidated their rule in the March 5, 1933, elections, outbreaks against Jews increased in intensity. American Ambassador Frederic M. Sackett, who was then preparing to retire from his post, wrote to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that democracy in Germany had been the recipient of a “blow from which it may never recover.”1

  The First Reports of Persecution

  Though the press had not previously ignored Hitler’s antisemitism, most of the early reports stressed Nazi action against communists and socialists. It was only after the intensification of the attacks in March that the press began to focus explicit attention on the Jews’ situatio
n. Typical of the vivid press reports sent by reporters on the scene was that by the Chicago Tribune’s Edmond Taylor, who provided readers with a stark description of the “unholy fear” prevailing among German Jews.

  On the nights of March 9th and 10th, bands of Nazis throughout Germany carried out wholesale raids to intimidate the opposition, particularly the Jews . . . . Men and women were insulted, slapped [and] punched in the face, hit over the heads with blackjacks, dragged out of their homes in night clothes and otherwise molested. . . . Innocent Jews . . . ‘are taken off to jail and put to work in a concentration camp where you may stay a year without any charge being brought against you.’ Never have I seen law-abiding citizens living in such unholy fear.2

  Taylor’s depictions of the systematic persecution faced by Jews and those deemed “opponents” of the regime eventually resulted in his expulsion from Germany. H. R. Knickerbocker, the Berlin correspondent of the New York Evening Post, who was also forced to leave Germany because of official opposition to his reports, provided a similar appraisal.

  Not even in Czarist Russia, with its “pale,” have the Jews been subject to a more violent campaign of murderous agitation . . . . An indeterminate number of Jews . . . have been killed. Hundreds of Jews have been beaten or tortured. Thousands of Jews have fled.

  Thousands of Jews have been, or will be, deprived of their livelihood.

  All of Germany’s 600,000 Jews are in terror.3

  As the news of antisemitic activities reached this country, newspapers in cities large and small responded angrily. The Pittsburgh Sun decried the “acts of revolting cruelty . . . [which] have been committed.” The Poughkeepsie News saw a “tide of Nazi fury” engulfing German Jews and inflicting great “bodily violence” on them. The Toledo Times believed that conditions in Germany were characterized by an “abuse of power, . . . unrestrained cruelty, . . . suppression of individual rights, . . . violent racial and religious prejudices.”4 A midwestern paper was horrified by the reports of “beatings, torture, murder.” According to the Nashville Banner, sentiment in the United States was “solidified in condemnation of Hitler’s atrocious policy.” The New York Times simply wondered how a nation could “suddenly go mad.”5

  But the persecution of the Jews constituted only one small segment of the story of Nazi Germany and was never the central theme of the reports about the new regime. News of political upheavals, Hitler’s jockeying for control, the Reichstag fire, the March elections, and the violence perpetrated by groups such as the storm troopers against communists and socialists took precedence. Rarely was news of the persecution of the Jews handled by journalists, particularly by those who viewed the situation from the safety of the United States, as an inherent expression of Nazism. This failure to see Nazi antisemitism as a reflection of the fundamental principles of Nazism was to have important consequences for the interpretation and comprehension of the news of the persecution of European Jewry.

  A Drawing Back

  When the first reports from Nazi Germany reached this country, Americans were incredulous. This was not the Germany of Beethoven, Goethe, and Schiller. The entire situation, not just that of the Jews, rang of chaos and confusion, revolution and upheaval. There were what the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times described as “wild rumors” that the Nazis planned to “massacre Jews and other political opponents.” The whole Jewish population in Germany was living, according to a London Daily Herald report which the Chicago Tribune reprinted, “under the shadow of a campaign of murder which may be initiated within a few hours and cannot at the most be postponed more than a few days.”6 In addition to these extreme reports, there were eyewitness descriptions by returning Americans of what the New York Times described as “atrocities” being inflicted on Jews. A number of Americans were among those who were terrorized and beaten. There was a striking difference between the United Press and New York Times versions of this story. The United Press described “three incidents alleged to have been perpetrated,” while the Times described “three more specific cases of molestation” about which American Consul General George Messersmith had complained to the German Foreign Office.7

  Though the news that emerged from Germany during this initial period was not nearly as horrifying as that of subsequent years, a deep-seated American skepticism was already evident. In fact, some Americans were more skeptical about this news than they would be about news of far more terrible magnitude. Ignoring the fact that much of the news was based on eyewitness accounts, editorial boards lamented that the “stories which have trickled through cannot be checked and officially verified.”8

  It was quite common to find papers and magazines which were convinced that the situation could not be as bad as the reporters contended. This, in fact, would become one of the recurring themes in the press coverage of the entire period: “Terrible things may be happening but not as terrible as the reports from Germany would have you believe.” The Los Angeles Times, which in mid-March carried exclusive reports of German persecution, a few weeks later told its readers that the “amazing tales of oppression” being brought from Germany by Americans who were visiting or living there were “exaggerated.” On March 26 the Los Angeles Times featured news of a Los Angeles physician who had visited Germany and claimed that the stories were incorrect.9 The New York Herald Tribune did the same on March 25. In a front-page story John Elliott of the Herald Tribune bureau in Berlin complained that while the situation of German Jews was “an unhappy one,” it was exacerbated by the “exaggerated and often unfounded reports of atrocities that have been disseminated abroad.” He dismissed ten cases of American Jews who had been “mishandled” as not an “accurate picture of the position of German Jewry under Hitler.” As proof he cited both the claims of German Jewish organizations that Jews were not being molested and the fact that he was personally “acquainted with members of old Jewish families in Berlin who were so undisturbed by the political change in Germany that they had never even heard of these deeds of violence against their co-religionists.”10 Another doubter, initially, proved to be Frederick Birchall, chief of the New York Times Berlin bureau, who in mid-March assured listeners in a nationwide radio talk broadcast on CBS that Germany was interested only in peace and had no plans to “slaughter” any of its enemies. He acknowledged that there had been persecution but believed that German violence was “spent” and predicted “prosperity and happiness” would prevail.11 (As the situation became worse, Birchall’s doubts would be totally erased.) On March 27, 1933, five days before all Jewish shops in Germany were subjected to a one-day nationwide boycott by the Nazis, the Los Angeles Times announced in a page 1 exclusive “German Violence Subsiding” and “Raids On Jews Declared Over.” The Christian Century, which would emerge as one of the more strident skeptics regarding the accuracy of the reports on Jewish persecution, called for a “tighter curb . . . [on] emotions until the facts are beyond dispute.”12

  Other papers expressed their reservations less directly. One paper acknowledged with an almost reluctant air that there “seems to be evidence to support the charges [of brutality against Jews] in the main.” But it then reminded readers that “many of the cruelties charged against Germany in war propaganda were later proved not to have existed.”13 The Columbus (Ohio)Journal also associated these reports of “destruction of property, beatings and blacklisting” with the “exaggerated . . . stories the allies told about German atrocities during the war.” The link with World War I atrocity reports as a means of casting doubt on the current spate of stories was to become a common feature of the American public’s reaction to the news of the Final Solution. By the time World War II began, Americans had determined, according to Journalism Quarterly, “that they would not be such simpletons that they would be fooled again” as they had been in the previous war by the tales of German atrocities.14

  The reports on Nazi brutality which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor were also decidedly skeptical in tone.15 In March the paper noted that the Frank
furter Zeitung had condemned as false the stories of the persecution of the Jews which had appeared in foreign newspapers. The Frankfurt paper was described as an “outstandingly outspoken” critic of the regime. The New York Herald Tribune’s John Elliott also cited the Frankfurt paper in his page 1 denial of reports that Jews were being molested. The implication was clear: if a newspaper which had been outspokenly critical of the government claimed that the brutality reports were untrue, then they obviously must be.16 The Chicago Tribune’s Taylor offered a very different assessment of the Frankfurt paper’s denunciation of the foreign coverage. Taylor pointed out that the paper was owned and edited by Jews and noted, not without a touch of sarcasm, that even though German Jewry was “living through the most systematic persecution known since the Middle Ages, and has had a fair taste of physical violence, by its own account it has seen nothing, heard nothing, remembered nothing.” To Taylor it was clear that this myopia was prompted by fear and not by a desire for journalistic accuracy.17 Similarly, the popular and widely syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson, who visited Germany in March 1933, assured her husband, Sinclair Lewis, that the Jews’ situation was “really as bad as the most sensational papers report. . . . It’s an outbreak of sadistic and pathological hatred.” When she returned to the United States she repeated this theme.18