President Roosevelt's World
The United States has a complicated history with immigration. At various times in its history, America has welcomed immigrants, while at other periods it has reviled them. In 1883, Emma Lazarus penned “The New Colossus” to raise money for the construction of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and in 1903 the poem was cast in bronze and placed at the statue (Doc A). However, this welcoming attitude was far from universal. Poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich authored “Unguarded Gates” after he was robbed by an immigrant, angrily telling a friend he did not want America to become a “cesspool of Europe”. Published in The Atlantic in 1892, the poem gave voice to the xenophobic and nativist feelings many Americans shared (Doc B).
Legislation specifically limiting immigration began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the turn of the 20th Century brought more calls for limiting all immigrants. Congress formed The US Immigration Commission which warned that newcomers, especially the poor from Southern and Eastern Europe who were primarily Catholic or Jewish, as well as others from Asia, threatened America’s moral, intellectual and social fiber. To alleviate this perceived problem, Congress passed The Immigration Act of 1917 requiring a level of literacy for immigrants over the age of 16 (Doc C), The Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the more restrictive National Origins Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act). These acts imposed quotas lowering the total number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States, required more documentation from each potential immigrant, and restricted the number of immigrants allowed from each country to 2% of their nation’s percent of the American population in 1890 (Document D). As a result, immigrants as a percent of the United States population dropped from 14.7% in 1910 to 8.8% by 1940.
Meanwhile, Hitler’s rise to power made Germany increasingly dangerous for Jews. Many Jews had served honorably in the German army in World War I and were well integrated into their communities, but with Hitler’s accession to power on January 30, 1933, Jews became increasingly targeted by restrictive laws and mob violence. On September 15, 1935, the German (Nazi) government issued regulations that declared that Jews were not citizens and removed their political rights. These Nuremberg Laws proclaimed that Jews - and other groups such as the Sinti and Roma - weakened German “Aryan” blood and must be separated from true Germans. Other laws soon followed, further limiting the rights of Jews. For example, the government invalidated all passports of Jews until stamped with a “J” and required that they have specific names or add Israel (for men) and Sara (for women) to their legal documents. By the end of 1938, the Nazis had passed laws that forbade Jewish children from attending their schools, banned Jews from certain professions and shut Jewish businesses.
Restrictions and complicated application processes made it almost impossible for Jews to escape the rising tide of antisemitism in Germany (Document E). In 1938, there were 139,163 Germans on the waiting list for US visas, most of whom were Jewish. A Gallup poll conducted in November 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, asked, “Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live? An overwhelming majority of Americans, 72%, answered, “No,” even though many of the respondents also said that they opposed how Germany was treating Jews. By 1939, the number of refugees applying for visas more than doubled to 309,782. Nonetheless, the U.S. issued only 27,370 visas – the maximum number allowed by the Quota Act. The wait for someone who applied to enter America was over ten years. Emma Lazarus’s Golden Door was all but closed.
President Roosevelt (remember, that is you for this case study) is reluctant to act. Anti-immigration sentiment has continued to grow and many have accused you of abandoning traditional Christian American values; these people cite your choice of Jewish advisers, such as Felix Frankfurter, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. They claim these men are secretly communist (Document F). Nonetheless, you recognize the crisis of emigres wishing to leave Germany, so you decide to act. You spearhead organizing an international meeting – The Intergovernmental Conference on Political Refugees, better known as The Evian Conference. Although 32 countries send delegations to the meeting held in early July of 1938 and many express sorrow for the plight of the Jews, only the Dominican Republic is willing to accept Jewish refugees. Sadly, this plan results in fewer than 500 Jews ultimately settling in the Dominican Republic. For most Jews, there is no place that they can go (Document G).
Some historians have argued that Hitler took the conference as a sign that no one would act to save the Jews and thus encouraged him to condone and increasingly encourage the violence that led to Kristallnacht only a few months later. After the Night of Broken Glass, FDR (that’s you) withdrew the American ambassador from Berlin and promulgated an executive action which allowed Germans currently visiting America on temporary visas to stay, commenting, “I cannot, in any decent humanity, throw them out.” (FDR Library: President’s Secretary’s Files; Diplomatic Correspondence; Germany, 1933-1938; Box 31). However, you remain acutely aware of opposition to any policy that increases immigration.
One telegram sent to Washington, D.C. and signed “A fed up American gentile” read (in all capital letters with limited punctuation): “Mr. President You are going too far. You seem to forget that genuine American Gentiles millions of them are completely unheard because unable to speak over our Jewish controlled press radio and news reel but they do not intend to sit idly by while their country is given away to red Moscow and international Jew mongers. You may face either a revolution or an impeachment if you continue a catspaw for Washington Jewish minorities.”
These sentiments are not just those of one angry voter. Many public figures support these beliefs, with a loud voice coming from the popular Reverend (Father) Coughlin’s radio show where approximately 40 million listeners (or one-third of Americans) heard his antisemitic and anti-communist sermons each week. Another voice was that of Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and perhaps America’s first billionaire, who sponsored The Dearborn Independent, a weekly newspaper with a circulation of approximately 900,000 readers in 1926. Through articles in the paper, Ford incited antisemitism for most of the 1920s. Each week, the front page featured an article under the headline: "The International Jew: The World’s Problem” and argued that Jews aimed for world domination. He based these articles on a discredited antisemitic text entitled, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had been proven to be a forgery (Document H1). Still, many people read and believed the articles. Famed American aviator Charles Lindberg also made no secret of his antisemitic feelings. Other “regular” Americans joined groups sponsored by the German American Bund and marched in blackshirts (Document H2).
Your wife Eleanor Roosevelt is an outspoken advocate for aiding refugees fleeing Germany. She supported a 1939 bill to allow up to 20,000 German children to enter the United States outside of the established quota system. You refused to offer any public support for the Wagner - Rogers Bill, aware that Congress would not pass it, and the public opposed it. The bill never made it out of committee. Certainly, for Jews in Germany, the situation remains dire.
