This was a great interview. It would be great if you could get David back sometime to discuss matter historical.
I was fascinated by the brief discussion of Mencken’s proposal for a neutral America as sanctuary for European refugees. This would seem to go against the usual painting of isolationists as “closet anti-semites”.
By coincidence I have come across the following quote detailed in JOSEPH E. PERSICO’s “ROOSEVELT’S SECRET WAR. FDR AND WORLD WAR II ESPIONAGE.” Random House NY 2002
Quote from Page 219-220 “After the North African landings, succeeded, the President went to Casablanca and, in a meeting with the French resident general at Rabat, delivered an astonishing opinion. “The number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions- law, medicine etc.- should be limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population, ” he urged. “This plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc, in Germany were Jews.” He had echoed the rationale that the Nazis had carried to barbaric limits.”
Persico’s cited source for this is p.308, Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds., ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL: THEIR SECRET WARTIME CORRESPONDENCE New York: Saturday Review Press / Dutton 1975.
If Charles Lindbergh had said this I am sure it would be repeated ad nauseum in every History Channel documentary about him ever made. I have yet to hear in any program about FDR. Frankly Lindbergh’s controversial 1941 Des Moines speech (see here) , …a speech that made many leading ‘isolationists’ including John T Flynn on the right and Norman Thomas on the left of the ‘isolationist movement’ were angry with him…, seems to be the decidedly less ‘anti-semitic’ of the two documents. My guess is that the FDR one was from about 1943 (the footnote doesn’t give the date) by which time FDR presumably had greater intelligence information available to him about the nature of the Nazi death camps than Lindbergh did.
Very interesting… You can be assured that the boys in Tel Aviv, the AEI and the Weekly Standard are well aware of this information. Perhaps all of this “Neocon” nonsense and Israeli infiltration of the US government is nothing more than payback for Roosevelt’s attempt at racial quotas?
Also of interest are the new findings by historian Michael Beschloss (they came out around 2002) of a private interview with the 1941-1945 Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy made about 1984 or so. McCloy, who for many years argued (presumably protecting FDR’s reputation) that the decision not to bomb the Nazi death camps or their supporting railroad infrastructure never went above him. In 1984 (I’m not 100% sure of the date and am relating the story from memory) McCloy admitted that FDR insisted that no military resources be shifted to operations designed to disrupt the holocaust. Sir Martin Gilbert, probably the dean of British historians, a main Churchill biographer and an academic specialist on the Holocaust, has acknowledged that direct operations against the death camp system would have been difficult but has argued that from a morale and moral point of view, the allies’ failure to pursue them was a major failure. I’d add as an aside that morale and moral operations and justifications were part and parcel of allied strategy in WW2. For example, the aerial bombing of German civilians, an operation that killed somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 civilians (and maybe as many as 900,000 by some counts), was mainly justified as a ‘morale’ operation. “Dehousing” German workers was seen as a way of disrupting German war production (although postwar studies are unclear as to whether this effect was actually achieved) as well a means of undermining German popular morale, boosting Russian and allied homefront morale. Similarly the pro-interventionists have long used their hyper-inflated sense of grand moral altruism to justify interventionism where ever, when ever, every where. Despite all this moral grandeur, despite the use of the Holocaust as ‘the test case’ argument for interventionism, the allies never ranked operations to protect Nazi victims particularly highly.
There is some interesting stuff on FDR and the allies’ failure to bomb Auscwitz, …or even the rail links the Nazis used to transport victims to the death camps.
For a long time John McCloy, assistant secretary of War from 1941 to1945, argued that the ‘decision to bomb or not to bomb’ the death camps never reached FDR. McCloy argued it never got above his desk and he vetoed it on the (at least plausible) argument that ‘the way to help Europe’s oppressed people is to win the war’ , so he opposed diverting military resources from ‘the main game’ to anti-death camp operations.
That was more or less the state of the historical argument until 2002 when historian Michael Beschloss uncovered a tape of a private 1986 interview in which McCloy stated that FDR personally nixed the whole idea of going after the death camps. McCloy said FDR said that it “wouldn’t have done any good” and FDR wouldn’t “have anything to do with the idea”. According to Beschloss, McCloy said “The President had the idea that [bombing] would be more provocative and ineffective. And he took a very strong stand.”
There is something of a minor academic industry at work debating the non-bombing of the death camps issue. Historian William Rubinstein argues in his ‘The Myth Of Rescue’ that “(N)o Jew who perished during the Nazi Holocaust could have been saved by any action which the Allies could have taken.” Contra this David Wyman, and Martin Gilbert, both specialists who deal extensively with the Holocaust, argue that the allies should have at least tried. Gilbert concedes bombing the camps would have been a difficult mission but says “(D)ifficult to hit for what end? For success against crematoria and railway lines? Or for morale and perhaps even morality? The latter two were often at stake during Wordl War II as well.”
The allies had no qualms in bombing German and Japanese civilian workers’ homes in “dehousing” operations designed to strike at the morale of the enemy’s industrial workforce. I think they may have killed between 300,000 and 600,000 German civilians alone in pursuing this goal. So Gilbert’s point has some sting. Of course it is the pro-interventionists who use “moral grandeur” to sell their agenda who have the explaining to do. It’s no good blasting “isolationists” for “immorally” “standing by and doing nothing” when it’s the crusading do gooders who managed to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and somehow forgot to even try to slow the death camps.
…As long as the topic is Genocide or the recent advent of the term Democide; I would like to direct your attention the Post War Expulsion of The Volksdeutch from Eastern Europe…Historians dispute the number of Ethnic German Civilians killed, and females raped in the period following the cessation of hostilities in Europe. But it ranges from a conservative estimate of at least 500,000 to as many as 1.1 to 3 million…A little known and less discussed event that was overlapped and eclipsed by the tidal wave of Soviet atrocities, mass murders, and general terror administered by Stalin’s Military & Security Organs in consolidating what would later emerge as the Warsaw pact.
I can’t remember the quote or the source, but I think I may have read it in Robert A Nisbet’s book “Roosevelt And Stalin” (or at least I think the name was something like that), he said… or maybe he was quoting A.J.P. Taylor (the Brit historian)… that the whole “Atlantic Charter”… the war for “the Four Freedoms”… more or less became voided once Stalin entered the war. It’s amazing that so many people imagine the Atlantic Charter never ended. I suppose the myopic focus on the Anglo-American war, as seen on say The History Channel, contributes to this.
…Tim…Remember prior to the Red Hunts, HUAC Hearings and Tail Gunner Joe’s Senate Inquisition, back when Stalin was know to the US Public as “Uncle Joe?”…You can say what you want about Nikita Kruschev, but he is in large measure responsible for the partial reclamation of Russian humanity and dignity, even if it is a land where such things have been Historically repressed by their bloodthirsty Regents and Dictators; only a great people could have survived such a legacy. The Russians have demonstrated their ability to endure anything. I don’t think we in the US could take a fraction of such mass horror…The only part of this Nation that has ever known defeat, occupation and all of its attending atrocities, destruction and starvation, is the South…and I’m a displaced Southerner. Trust me, the realities that transpired compliments of “Cump” Sherman’s march to the sea, and worse, his rampage north through South Carolina, the, “Mother of Sesesh”…have never been been fully told.
This was a great interview. It would be great if you could get David back sometime to discuss matter historical.
I was fascinated by the brief discussion of Mencken’s proposal for a neutral America as sanctuary for European refugees. This would seem to go against the usual painting of isolationists as “closet anti-semites”.
By coincidence I have come across the following quote detailed in JOSEPH E. PERSICO’s “ROOSEVELT’S SECRET WAR. FDR AND WORLD WAR II ESPIONAGE.” Random House NY 2002
Quote from Page 219-220 “After the North African landings, succeeded, the President went to Casablanca and, in a meeting with the French resident general at Rabat, delivered an astonishing opinion. “The number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions- law, medicine etc.- should be limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population, ” he urged. “This plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc, in Germany were Jews.” He had echoed the rationale that the Nazis had carried to barbaric limits.”
Persico’s cited source for this is p.308, Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds., ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL: THEIR SECRET WARTIME CORRESPONDENCE New York: Saturday Review Press / Dutton 1975.
If Charles Lindbergh had said this I am sure it would be repeated ad nauseum in every History Channel documentary about him ever made. I have yet to hear in any program about FDR. Frankly Lindbergh’s controversial 1941 Des Moines speech (see here) , …a speech that made many leading ‘isolationists’ including John T Flynn on the right and Norman Thomas on the left of the ‘isolationist movement’ were angry with him…, seems to be the decidedly less ‘anti-semitic’ of the two documents. My guess is that the FDR one was from about 1943 (the footnote doesn’t give the date) by which time FDR presumably had greater intelligence information available to him about the nature of the Nazi death camps than Lindbergh did.
Very interesting… You can be assured that the boys in Tel Aviv, the AEI and the Weekly Standard are well aware of this information. Perhaps all of this “Neocon” nonsense and Israeli infiltration of the US government is nothing more than payback for Roosevelt’s attempt at racial quotas?
p.s. I forgot AIPAC
What, you thought he died of a terrific headache? ; )
Does anyone know what was the name / author of that book on WW2 that David Beito recommended?
Also of interest are the new findings by historian Michael Beschloss (they came out around 2002) of a private interview with the 1941-1945 Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy made about 1984 or so. McCloy, who for many years argued (presumably protecting FDR’s reputation) that the decision not to bomb the Nazi death camps or their supporting railroad infrastructure never went above him. In 1984 (I’m not 100% sure of the date and am relating the story from memory) McCloy admitted that FDR insisted that no military resources be shifted to operations designed to disrupt the holocaust. Sir Martin Gilbert, probably the dean of British historians, a main Churchill biographer and an academic specialist on the Holocaust, has acknowledged that direct operations against the death camp system would have been difficult but has argued that from a morale and moral point of view, the allies’ failure to pursue them was a major failure. I’d add as an aside that morale and moral operations and justifications were part and parcel of allied strategy in WW2. For example, the aerial bombing of German civilians, an operation that killed somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 civilians (and maybe as many as 900,000 by some counts), was mainly justified as a ‘morale’ operation. “Dehousing” German workers was seen as a way of disrupting German war production (although postwar studies are unclear as to whether this effect was actually achieved) as well a means of undermining German popular morale, boosting Russian and allied homefront morale. Similarly the pro-interventionists have long used their hyper-inflated sense of grand moral altruism to justify interventionism where ever, when ever, every where. Despite all this moral grandeur, despite the use of the Holocaust as ‘the test case’ argument for interventionism, the allies never ranked operations to protect Nazi victims particularly highly.
There is some interesting stuff on FDR and the allies’ failure to bomb Auscwitz, …or even the rail links the Nazis used to transport victims to the death camps.
For a long time John McCloy, assistant secretary of War from 1941 to1945, argued that the ‘decision to bomb or not to bomb’ the death camps never reached FDR. McCloy argued it never got above his desk and he vetoed it on the (at least plausible) argument that ‘the way to help Europe’s oppressed people is to win the war’ , so he opposed diverting military resources from ‘the main game’ to anti-death camp operations.
That was more or less the state of the historical argument until 2002 when historian Michael Beschloss uncovered a tape of a private 1986 interview in which McCloy stated that FDR personally nixed the whole idea of going after the death camps. McCloy said FDR said that it “wouldn’t have done any good” and FDR wouldn’t “have anything to do with the idea”. According to Beschloss, McCloy said “The President had the idea that [bombing] would be more provocative and ineffective. And he took a very strong stand.”
There is something of a minor academic industry at work debating the non-bombing of the death camps issue. Historian William Rubinstein argues in his ‘The Myth Of Rescue’ that “(N)o Jew who perished during the Nazi Holocaust could have been saved by any action which the Allies could have taken.” Contra this David Wyman, and Martin Gilbert, both specialists who deal extensively with the Holocaust, argue that the allies should have at least tried. Gilbert concedes bombing the camps would have been a difficult mission but says “(D)ifficult to hit for what end? For success against crematoria and railway lines? Or for morale and perhaps even morality? The latter two were often at stake during Wordl War II as well.”
The allies had no qualms in bombing German and Japanese civilian workers’ homes in “dehousing” operations designed to strike at the morale of the enemy’s industrial workforce. I think they may have killed between 300,000 and 600,000 German civilians alone in pursuing this goal. So Gilbert’s point has some sting. Of course it is the pro-interventionists who use “moral grandeur” to sell their agenda who have the explaining to do. It’s no good blasting “isolationists” for “immorally” “standing by and doing nothing” when it’s the crusading do gooders who managed to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and somehow forgot to even try to slow the death camps.
…As long as the topic is Genocide or the recent advent of the term Democide; I would like to direct your attention the Post War Expulsion of The Volksdeutch from Eastern Europe…Historians dispute the number of Ethnic German Civilians killed, and females raped in the period following the cessation of hostilities in Europe. But it ranges from a conservative estimate of at least 500,000 to as many as 1.1 to 3 million…A little known and less discussed event that was overlapped and eclipsed by the tidal wave of Soviet atrocities, mass murders, and general terror administered by Stalin’s Military & Security Organs in consolidating what would later emerge as the Warsaw pact.
I can’t remember the quote or the source, but I think I may have read it in Robert A Nisbet’s book “Roosevelt And Stalin” (or at least I think the name was something like that), he said… or maybe he was quoting A.J.P. Taylor (the Brit historian)… that the whole “Atlantic Charter”… the war for “the Four Freedoms”… more or less became voided once Stalin entered the war. It’s amazing that so many people imagine the Atlantic Charter never ended. I suppose the myopic focus on the Anglo-American war, as seen on say The History Channel, contributes to this.
…Tim…Remember prior to the Red Hunts, HUAC Hearings and Tail Gunner Joe’s Senate Inquisition, back when Stalin was know to the US Public as “Uncle Joe?”…You can say what you want about Nikita Kruschev, but he is in large measure responsible for the partial reclamation of Russian humanity and dignity, even if it is a land where such things have been Historically repressed by their bloodthirsty Regents and Dictators; only a great people could have survived such a legacy. The Russians have demonstrated their ability to endure anything. I don’t think we in the US could take a fraction of such mass horror…The only part of this Nation that has ever known defeat, occupation and all of its attending atrocities, destruction and starvation, is the South…and I’m a displaced Southerner. Trust me, the realities that transpired compliments of “Cump” Sherman’s march to the sea, and worse, his rampage north through South Carolina, the, “Mother of Sesesh”…have never been been fully told.