The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.

—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The present-day fear of “killer refugees” from Syria and other Muslim countries, entering the United States to wreak havoc by committing acts of terrorism is an all-too-familiar theme in American history—and well worth recounting. In 1938, the American government closed its doors to the throngs of German Jews who were desperate to seek sanctuary from their Nazi nightmare. For many, it was tantamount to a death sentence. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was fond of pointing out that while his government was more than willing to let them go, few countries would take them.1 At the time, the Nazis were purging the Reich of Jews by transporting them to nearby countries. While President Franklin Roosevelt had harsh words for Hitler's treatment of Germany's Jewish population, his words alone were little comfort to those who were fighting for their very survival, and that of their families. The United States even put pressure on European countries not to take them in, because they supposedly posed an imminent threat to their national security.² This tragic episode took place amid great agitation that many Jewish asylum seekers were working for the Nazis and intent on infiltrating the country. Driven by anti-Semitism, bigotry, and a fear of spies, State Department officials deliberately created piles of bureaucratic red tape to slow the flow of refugees to a trickle. During the entire period that America was at war with Germany, only 21,000 Jewish refugees were allowed into the country—a mere 10 percent of the overall quota.3 Put another way, about 200,000 men, women, and children were turned away in their hour of need, without any compelling factual evidence—only fear and prejudice. This dark chapter in our history parallels present-day attempts by the American government to stem the intake of refugees from Muslim countries over concerns that some may be terrorists in disguise. As with the Jewish asylum seekers, there is little to substantiate these claims. One study of terrorist acts by refugees in the United States over the past forty years places the odds of being murdered by one at roughly one in three and a half billion (1 to 3,500,000,000).⁴ In each era, a decision was made by government officials to shut out refugees based on emotions instead of facts, and popular perceptions and stereotypes instead of reality.

America's reaction to the appalling events of Nazi Germany was the result of several factors that built up during the 1930s to culminate in a social panic over Jewish refugees. The impact of the Great Depression was still raw. People had vivid memories of the indignity of soup kitchens and the humiliation of standing with hat in hand for hours in unemployment lines. There were concerns that non-Nordic immigrants would take away jobs and dilute the nation's racial purity. Anti-Semitism was rife. National opinion polls showed that the public was overwhelmingly against admitting Jewish immigrants. They were seen as Europe's problem. These factors gave rise to a spy mania that began in 1938 and would persist for the next four years. The fear of spies and saboteurs was the final nail in the coffin for refugees hoping that the Roosevelt administration might loosen its strict immigration policy and let more asylum seekers into the country.

While America was not alone in rejecting the Jews, they were the leading light of democracy at this crucial time, and almost certainly could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. In viewing these events through the prism of life in the twenty-first century, inaction by the American government and much of its citizenry may appear incomprehensible. How could the world's wealthiest and most technologically advanced country, with arguably the most sophisticated legal and education systems in the world, allow such a preventable calamity to occur? American officials were well aware of the dire situation for German Jews. Shortly after Hitler took power as chancellor in January 1933, the Nazi regime began a systematic campaign to persecute Jews by passing a series of laws severely impeding their rights. Each year the restrictions grew more severe; and their predicament more desperate. These events were reported in the press for all to see.

THE JEWISH EMERGENCY

Hitler rose to power by blaming the Jews for the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended the war with the Allies in June 1919. Having been despised in Europe for centuries, Jews were an ideal target. Since medieval times, when they were blamed for spreading the black death, the Jews had to endure widespread discrimination. Although the Nazis were not the only country discriminating against Jews, what separated them from the rest of Europe and North America were the extreme lengths to which they were willing to go to get rid of them. During the early years of Hitler's chancellery, the American media covered the escalating discrimination and persecution of the Jews in Germany, but rarely on their front pages.5 It was not until late 1938 that US journalists began to headline the rapidly unfolding events.

In March 1933, the Chicago Tribune published a troubling report describing the widespread fear among German Jews after their mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis: “On the nights of March 9 and 10, 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.”6 By summer, America's German ambassador, William Dodd, briefed the president on the deteriorating situation, but Roosevelt said he had no intention of meddling in the internal affairs of another country. Despite knowledge of the human tragedy that was unfolding in the heart of Europe, instead of easing immigration laws to help Jews escape, the administration made them stricter. The American public also opposed admitting more German refugees at this time, even if they sympathized with their plight. In 1933, the Nazis organized a boycott of Jewish shops, while across Germany, troops collected and publicly burned tens of thousands of books by Jewish authors. On July 14, a law was passed calling for the forced sterilization of the handicapped. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited marriage or sexual relations between “real” Aryan Germans and “inferior” Jewish Germans. Despite these obvious violations of human rights, after a national debate, America still participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The number of participating countries was forty-nine—the most ever. Not long after, the Nazi campaign against the Jews was ramped up. By 1938, Jewish passports were revoked, Jewish doctors could no longer practice medicine, and Jewish lawyers were forbidden from practicing law. On November 9 and 10, hundreds of synagogues were set alight across the country as German firefighters stood idly by and did nothing; their job was to ensure that no German buildings caught fire. By daybreak on the 10th, nearly one hundred Jews had been killed after being indiscriminately beaten, stabbed, and shot, while thousands of businesses and homes were ransacked or burned by enraged citizens, and Nazi Storm Troopers acting on orders from their leaders. Even Jewish hospitals, schools, and cemeteries were looted. The event would become known as the Night of Broken Glass or Kristallnacht (literally “night of crystal”) on account of the thousands of Jewish shops that had been ransacked and their windows smashed. Upward of thirty thousand Jewish boys and men were soon rounded up and sent off to concentration camps. Before the year's end, Jews would be forced to hand over all of their business assets.

By late 1938, Germany's Jews were in the midst of the worst humanitarian crisis in history. A slow-motion catastrophe was playing out for the world to read about in the press, and to watch on the newsreels at the local movie theaters. Despite these grim circumstances, the German government was still allowing Jews to leave the country, and in December ten thousand Jewish children were allowed to travel to the relative safety of England in what became known as the Kindertransport or “children's transport.” There was still time to act. With full knowledge of these and other horrors, the United States steadfastly refused to raise its modest quota of 27,000 immigrants from Germany and Austria, and take in more Jews.7 It certainly was not because immigrants were pouring into the country, outstripping the capacity to process them. Immigration from eastern Europe was at an all-time low.⁸ The Roosevelt administration's anti-refugee intentions were made clear in March 1938, when Germany invaded Austria, generating an additional 190,000 Jewish asylum seekers. Instead of keeping the quotas separate as they had been, the administration chose to combine them into one, eliminating the Austrian allotment.⁹ The quota gave the illusion that the Roosevelt administration was doing more than it was, given that 90 percent of the allotment went unfilled during the war years. A poll taken in late November 1938, after the Night of Broken Glass, found an overwhelming 94 percent of Americans expressing sympathy for German Jews. Yet 77 percent were against raising the annual quota and letting more in.¹⁰

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, America was a hotbed of racism, be it against Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Native Americans, African Americans, or Jews. Similar sentiments were common throughout much of the world as people harbored misguided notions about the effect of race on intelligence and behavior. During this period, heredity was destiny. Like the modern-day gradual acceptance of homosexuality, same-sex marriages, and, most recently, transgender bathrooms, old attitudes would stubbornly persist. By the late 1930s, the eugenics movement—the branch of science devoted to improving the genetic stock of a particular human population, was shifting rapidly away from heredity as the main determinant of a person's life course. Instead, there was an increasing realization that environment was destiny. Led by Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas, himself a German American, most Western scientists by now had rejected the idea of superior races, but these sentiments stubbornly persisted. It is within this context that the American reaction to the Jewish refugee crisis must be understood. Even though there was no credible evidence for the existence of a large contingent of refugees posing as spies, many Americans were frightened of Jewish asylum seekers. These claims provided a convenient rationale for anti-Semites in the government to shut its gates to the weary and downtrodden of Nazi Germany.11

ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE RISE OF EUGENICS

When the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, long-standing feelings of anti-Semitism came to the fore as many groups emerged to promote Hitler's views on the Jewish “menace.” Foremost among them was the German American Bund or Federation, a group of German-born Americans and German citizens. Members had to pledge that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of any traces of Jewish ancestry.¹² Established in 1936, the group's purpose was to spread the “good news” about the Nazis to America. Their charismatic leader, Fritz Kuhn, openly praised Hitler's extreme racial views. He criticized the president for having too many Jews in his inner circle of advisors, referring to him as “Franklin D. Rosenfeld,” and his policies as “the Jew Deal.” By 1939, seventy-one local branches were active across the country. Its headquarters were in the German suburb of Yorkville on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The organization's gatherings had all of the trappings of a Nazi party meeting, complete with Hitler salutes and swastikas. At the height of its popularity in 1939, membership approached thirty thousand. The Bund even operated camps similar to those of Hitler Youth. At its peak, its weekly newspaper had a circulation of ten thousand. The group was disbanded in 1941 after America declared war on Germany.13

The most influential pro-Nazi group in America at this time was the Christian Front, which was created by Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest who had an enormous following and was one of the most popular public figures of the decade. Coughlin preached Nazi principles to an audience of 15 million during his Sunday-afternoon radio sermons that were heard throughout North America. Fiercely anti-Semitic, he blamed many of America's social problems on the Jews.¹⁴ One historian boiled down his core message to a single sentence: “Jews were evil, money-hungry conspirators who were destroying every value that Christians held sacred.”¹⁵ Such was the level of anti-Semitism in the lead-up to the Second World War that in 1937, New York City's exclusive Colony Club excluded the wife of US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau for being Jewish. President Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, resigned from the club in solidarity.¹⁶ Despite an outpouring of sympathy for the Jews during the 1930s, American anti-Semitism remained strong. Even by 1946, after the horrors of the Holocaust were known, most Americans still singled out the Jews as posing the greatest single menace to the country.¹⁷

In the decade leading up to the war, prominent American scientists working in the fields of biology and genetics enthusiastically supported the Nazi eugenics program. In his study of the movement, anthropologist Robert Sussman documents the close relationship between American eugenicists and their Nazi counterparts. The two sides frequently corresponded, fraternized at conferences, and took encouragement and inspiration from one another. The Nazi eugenics program had the fingerprints of American scientists all over it. For example, Americans pioneered the concept of sterilizing the physically and socially unfit well before the Nazis. Throughout the 1930s, many American scientists were cheerleaders of Nazi eugenic policies, even though the Jews were suffering immeasurably as a direct result of it. Sussman writes that “American eugenicists had essentially written Nazi ideology and policy” and that America's legislation on immigration and sterilization had been “used as the model for the new Germany.”18 In 1933, when Germany introduced mandatory sterilization laws, prominent American publications such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Public Health applauded the action.¹⁹ In 1935, influential eugenicist Harry Laughlin was still promoting his now-discredited ideas about racial contamination. During the early 1920s, he had testified before congressional committees that the “Mongolian races,” such as the Japanese and Chinese, posed an imminent threat to America's racial purity. Laughlin's testimony was instrumental in the passage of the landmark 1924 Immigration Act, which restricted the migration of so-called inferior races. He was now testifying to Congress against allowing German Jews to immigrate to the United States, using similar logic: their interbreeding would pollute the “Nordic race.” He even authored a 267-page report justifying his call for restrictions, arguing that if more Jews were allowed into the country to reproduce in significant numbers, it would cause America's downfall.²⁰ As late as 1939, Laughlin called for reduced immigration quotas for Jews, warning that they represented “human dross” (rubbish) that endangered America's racial stock.²¹ The Nazi euthanasia program and its later policy to exterminate Jews were both based on a eugenic theory of racial inferiority that was widely circulated and promoted in America and Europe.

In 1936, an extravagant celebration was to be held in Germany to mark the 550th anniversary of Heidelberg University, a leading light in Nazi eugenics research. Many American eugenicists were in attendance. The New York Times called for a boycott and labeled as Nazi propaganda stooges anyone who attended. Despite the warning and years of oppressive laws targeting German Jews, representatives from several major American universities sent delegates, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, and Vassar College. Several weeks later, Virginia physician and staunch eugenicist Walter Plecker traveled to Germany and presented a paper on his state's efforts to stop the “spread of the Mongrel races.”22 Plecker was the state's first registrar of vital statistics, a position he held from 1912 to 1946. Even in 1939, the year that Germany was at war with Poland, Britain, and France, American writer Lothrop Stoddard was allowed to visit the Reich for over four months and was granted an audience with Hitler. Stoddard was the author of the bestselling book The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy. Published in 1920, it advanced the notion that only through eugenics could the white races of the world ensure their future survival against the faster-breeding lower races.²³ During his visit, Stoddard noted that at one gathering, without the subject having been previously breached, someone spontaneously raised a toast and called for the death of the Jews. He later wrote that the Jewish question would soon be resolved “by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich.”²⁴

Several American businesses and foundations supported Nazi research into eugenics. The Rockefeller Foundation poured in millions between 1922 and 1936, at which point it cut most funding due to the dire political situation in Germany. Industrialist Henry Ford was a major supporter of Hitler and a virulent anti-Semite who published a series of booklets under the title International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem. An admirer and reader of Ford's writings, Hitler kept his picture in his office, and in July 1938, he sent two representatives to Dearborn, Michigan, to present him with a special award. International Jew was translated into German and became a bestseller in Nazi Germany.²⁵ Hitler was mesmerized by Ford's writings to the extent that he plagiarized from them. Several passages in Mein Kampf are nearly identical to Ford's newspaper articles.²⁶ In the American edition of Mein Kampf published in 1939, the editors cautioned readers: “These reflections are copied, for the most part, from the Dearborn Independent, Mr. Henry Ford's newspaper.”²⁷ The great irony is that an American had essentially written significant tracts of Mein Kampf—the Nazi bible—and American scientists were role models for Hitler's sterilization campaign. Both would serve as blueprints for the persecution of the Jews.

TURNING AWAY JEWISH CHILDREN

If there were any lingering doubts as to whether anti-Semitism played a role in the American government turning its back on the plight of Jewish refugees, they were answered in the spring of 1939. That year, a bill was proposed to allow twenty thousand children to escape Nazi Germany and migrate to the United States over two years. It stipulated that the children must be under the age of fourteen.28 To the astonishment of many, it failed. When Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts introduced the idea, it won immediate and widespread support from a broad spectrum of Americans: church leaders, academics, the YMCA—even the Boy Scouts. No less than fifty-eight newspapers from thirty-six states wrote positively about the bill, among them were twenty-six from the south where immigration restriction was usually favored.²⁹ On February 20, the editor of the Galveston News in Texas, a state known for restricting immigration, even came out for it: “It is impossible to offer sanctuary in this country to all refugees, however urgent their need. It would dishonor our traditions of humanity and freedom, however, to refuse the small measure of help contemplated by the Wagner resolution.”³⁰ There was no sound rationale for rejecting the bill, save one: anti-Semitism. Those opposing the resolution on the grounds that immigrants would take jobs hardly had a case to object, given the age of the would-be newcomers.

Fear and anti-Semitism eventually killed the bill, as opposition mounted over concerns that its passage would be the first step to the repeal of immigration laws. Public sentiment shifted. A January 1939 Gallup poll found that Americans opposed the children's bill by a margin of two to one.31 Four months later, a poll by the Cincinnati Post asked one thousand women about the issue: nearly eight in ten were opposed.³² Laura Delano, wife of the immigration commissioner, further enflamed passions by crudely asserting that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.”³³ Several powerful lobby groups using the battle cry of “America First,” including the American Legion and the American Immigration Restrictionist League, pressured Congress into rejecting the bill. Opponents were angry at the lack of non-Jewish children. A writer in the Nation argued against the plan because it was “a Jewish bill.”³⁴ Others complained that American children were also in need and should be taken care of first.³⁵ Ohio Senator Robert Taft made the absurd claim that in taking in the children, the government would be a party to breaking up Jewish families. He concluded that they would be better off staying in Germany!³⁶ The bill died in committee before the summer was out. Ironically, the very next year when the issue of taking in British children was raised to keep them out of harm's way during the bombing of Britain, the Blitz, the administration worked with Congress to quickly approve the acceptance of five thousand. They were promptly shipped over to stay with relatives and host families.³⁷ Surely, the children of German Jews were in far graver danger. Another revealing event occurred in late 1940 when Pets magazine published the photo of a puppy under the heading “I want a home.” It asked readers if they would be willing to provide a temporary shelter for a British purebred. Thousands of readers wrote in, offering to help.³⁸ As the Wagner bill was dying in committee, another drama was playing out just off America's east coast as a cruise ship packed with Jewish refugees sought haven.

NO SAFE HARBOR

In June 1939, the SS St. Louis was bound for Cuba with 936 passengers. All but six were Jewish refugees who had bought Cuban landing visas. Since most of the refugees were on waiting lists to enter the United States, they planned to stay in Cuba until being allowed to enter. Their plan was doomed from the start, as Cuban president Federico Laredo Bru signed a decree invalidating the certificates just before the ship left Hamburg. Their documents were now useless, and the passengers were not let off the ship once it reached Havana Harbor.39 While most newspapers blamed the Cuban government for the crisis, some showed understanding for the Cuban decision because of the country's economic woes. Many American newspaper editors offered possible locations where the refugees could settle. Suggestions included British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, North Rhodesia, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines.⁴⁰ These suggestions were not new. It was well-known that no suitable area and no country existed that was willing to admit Jewish refugees at this point in time. American officials made no attempt to help the refugees that had come agonizingly close to its coast. Their reluctance to act was firmly supported by the American people. Just months earlier, an April 1939 poll found that only 8 percent were willing to expand the quota for European refugees.⁴¹ The saga of the St. Louis was used by the Nazis as a propaganda tool to reinforce their claim that the Jews were an inferior race that no one wanted. The St. Louis eventually returned to Hamburg. No one knows how many of its passengers later perished in the Holocaust. One small success story was the SS Quanza. In September 1940, the Portuguese freighter tried to reach Virginia with eighty-six Jewish refugees on board, after failing to receive permission to dock elsewhere. Only after Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied her husband to intervene were the passengers saved. Franklin Roosevelt circumvented strict visa protocols by issuing an Executive Order allowing the passengers to be admitted into the country, much to the dismay of State Department officials who were incensed by the action.⁴²

NEWS OF THE HOLOCAUST EMERGES

In August 1942, an official of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, received troubling news. Gerhart Riegner had obtained reliable information about a plan by Hitler to exterminate millions of European Jews. His source was a trusted friend who had met with a German businessman who said he had knowledge of the scheme. The confidential source would be identified decades later as industrialist Eduard Schulte. Riegner contacted local law professor Paul Guggenheim, who helped him write an urgent cable to be sent to American and British diplomats in Washington and London.43 On the morning of August 8, Riegner visited both consulates in Geneva and relayed the information, which was sent by cipher. The original cable to London read as follows: “Received alarming report stating that, in the Fuehrer's Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 3 1/2 to 4 millions should, after deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in order to resolve, once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be planned for the autumn. Ways of execution are still being discussed including the use of prussic acid.” At Guggenheim's urging, the end of the cable was cautiously worded: “We transmit this information with all the necessary reservation, as exactitude cannot be confirmed by us. Our informant is reported to have close connexions with the highest German authorities and his reports are generally reliable. Please inform and consult New York.”⁴⁴

Riegner asked that the cable be shared with Rabbi Stephen Wise of the World Jewish Congress in New York, a close confidant of President Roosevelt. But when the US State Department received the cable, they refused to share its contents, citing the “unsubstantiated character of the information.”⁴⁵ Elbridge Durbrow, the department's assistant chief of eastern European affairs, opposed any move to disclose the information, based on “the fantastic nature of the allegation, and the impossibility of our being of any assistance if such action were taken.” Historian Rebecca Erbelding has examined correspondence of State Department officials during this period and observed that they failed to understand “why atrocity information was transmitted, and were such reports true, they believed any assistance to the victims to be impossible.”46 It is clear from their foot-dragging and inaction that key State Department officials were at best apathetic, and almost certainly anti-Semitic. Wise eventually received news of the cable, but not from the Americans; it came from the British Consul. It was not until November 24, 1942, that Wise was given permission to release the information publicly after the US government had become convinced from various sources that the report was true. In reality, one key aspect of the cable was inaccurate: the claim that the mass exterminations were set to begin in autumn 1942. The mass killing of European Jews had been underway for over a year, in a systematic, ongoing process—not as a planned single blow, as stated in the telegram. However, the central premise was correct: the Nazis were intent on exterminating the Jews of Europe.⁴⁷

While the Final Solution was formally approved in January 1942 at a gathering outside of Berlin, the Allies were already aware of the mass slaughter of Jews and other groups that was being perpetrated in Europe. Since summer 1941, and the German invasion of the Soviet Union, intercepts of German radio transmissions detailed “dozens of reports of mass executions” conducted by special mobile death squads of Nazi police and security personnel known as the SS Einsatzgruppen.⁴⁸ Clearly, by the time of Riegner's cable, the Roosevelt administration was aware that mass atrocities were taking place across Europe at the hands of the Nazis, their only uncertainty was as to the scale.

During 1943, several senior aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau uncovered a pattern in the State Department: it became clear that some officials had been blocking efforts to rescue Jews. On January 16, 1944, FDR received a scathing report from the Treasury office, charging that officials in the State Department not only had been apathetic toward Jews but had been working to actively obstruct Jewish refugees from reaching sanctuary in the United States by denying them visas. Several Treasury aides helped to draft the report, which was written by an aid named Josiah DuBois and approved by Morgenthau. As the highest ranking Jew in the Roosevelt administration, Morgenthau's family had migrated from Germany, making him particularly sympathetic. DuBois, who was not Jewish, did not mince words. He began: “One of the greatest crimes in history, the slaughter of the Jewish people in Europe, is continuing unabated.”49 He went on to charge that State Department officials were complicit in the mass murder of Jews. “I am convinced on the basis of the information which is available to me that certain officials in our State Department, which is charged with carrying out this policy, have been guilty not only of gross procrastination and wilful failure to act, but even of wilful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler.”

The report said that the State Department had placed unnecessary restrictions on Jewish refugees who were trying to obtain visas to enter the country, all under the guise of security. It noted that many asylum seekers were denied entry because they had close relatives in Axis-controlled countries, which stoked fears that they may be coerced to act as spies under the threat of harm to family members. Another complaint was the ludicrous amount of red tape that was required for a refugee to be sponsored, including references from two reputable American citizens. Historian David Wyman would later observe that Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long had constructed a “paper wall” of bureaucracy and red tape designed to keep Jewish immigrants out.⁵⁰ DuBois wrote tersely: “It is obvious of course that these restrictions are not essential for security reasons. Thus refugees upon arriving in this country could be placed in internment camps similar to those used for the Japanese on the West Coast and released only after a satisfactory investigation. Furthermore, even if we took these refugees and treated them as prisoners of war it would be better than letting them die.”⁵¹

DuBois was blunt and forceful in his criticism of Long, who was in charge of issuing European visas, whom he claimed had given “false and misleading” information about the refugee crisis, and downplayed the mass killing of Jews. DuBois continued: “State Department officials not only have failed to facilitate the obtaining of information concerning Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe but in their official capacity have gone so far as to surreptitiously attempt to stop the obtaining of information concerning the murder of the Jewish population in Europe.” DuBois remarked that “the evidence supporting this conclusion is so shocking and so tragic that it is difficult to believe.”52 After digesting the report's findings, Roosevelt moved quickly to create the War Refugee Board on January 22, with the goal being the “immediate rescue and relief of the Jews of Europe and other victims of enemy persecution.”

THE FIFTH COLUMN SCARE

Historian Bruce Hodge has examined the actions of Breckinridge Long between 1940 and 1944, when he was in charge of the State Department's visa section. Already an enormously powerful position in the best of times, during the war, the role of the assistant secretary of state was even more important; decisions made by the person in this position often determined who lived and died. After analyzing archives and his personal diary, Hodge concludes that Long was a product of his time, and his apathy was a reflection of the prevailing war hysteria and fears of the fifth column infiltrating the country.⁵³ The term fifth column originated in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War, when General Emilio Mola, who was in charge of four columns of troops heading for Madrid, proclaimed that he had a fifth column of sympathizers inside the city. The term refers to any group in a country at war who are aiding its enemies.⁵⁴ As early as 1940, before America had entered the war, Long was advocating for tougher visa restrictions out of fears that enemy agents were already in the country. He wrote that America was harboring “thousands of aliens, some of them known to be active German agents, and many illegally in this country.”55 Fifth column fears were heightened in May 1940, with the Tyler Kent affair. A clerk at the US embassy in London, Kent managed to copy hundreds of sensitive documents before his arrest. Fearing that other embassies may have been compromised, Long concluded that Kent's activities “made it apparent that he may have accomplices and confederates or that there may be other cells…of another Government representing their interests in our own offices abroad.”⁵⁶

Some Americans were hesitant to raise the issue of Jewish refugees, for fear of being viewed as disloyal and unpatriotic.⁵⁷ During the late 1930s and early 1940s, a significant portion of American Jews were noncommittal toward German Jewry, despite the steady stream of news reports detailing the hardships they were facing.⁵⁸ Historian Joyce Delgado writes that disagreement and disorder “permeated every aspect of the Jewish community's plans to help the victims of Nazism. Some Jewish organizations championed emigration to the United States while others opposed this, fearful that increased Jewish immigration might result in violent anti-Semitic eruptions…20% of the American Jews polled favoured the absolute exclusionist policy.”⁵⁹ By summer 1940, a Roper poll found that seven in ten Americans believed that a German fifth column was at work in the country.⁶⁰ A Gallup survey conducted at about the same time found that 48 percent of Americans were convinced that their own communities had been infiltrated.⁶¹ During summer and fall of 1940, several prominent newspapers each published a series of articles on how the fifth column had gained a foothold in America. These included the New York Journal-American, the New York Post, the Pittsburgh Press, and the New York World-Telegram. While FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had earlier urged Americans to be on guard against the fifth column, he had grown so alarmed by the spy panic that by the following year he was warning against the dangers posed by “vigilantes,” “fearmongers,” and “hysterical mobs” that were threatening American democracy.⁶²

In his study of American immigration policy during the war, historian Saul Friedman concurs with Hodge's assessment that national self-interests were more influential than anti-Semitism in solidifying attitudes against Jewish refugees.63 Well before the war, conspiracy theorists had spread the notion that Hitler was preparing a network of spies to infiltrate the country.⁶⁴ This fear grew into a full-fledged spy mania that lasted from 1938 until 1942. Although the threat was real, it was massively inflated. As Interior Secretary Harold Ickes later observed, many citizens had worked themselves into a panic and viewed “every alien as a possible enemy spy or saboteur.”⁶⁵ Even President Roosevelt contributed to the scare. On May 26, 1940, he told a national radio audience: “Today's threat to our national security is not a matter of military weapons alone. We know of new methods of attack. The Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs and traitors are the actors in this new tragedy. With all of this, we must and will deal vigorously.”⁶⁶ By 1941, the Justice Department and the FBI tried to reassure an anxious public that spies were not lurking in every community. It was true that the Nazis had pro-German spies and groups in America—people who supported the idea of a superior Aryan race and the concept of a European Reich. But these groups never formed a spy network, and they did not pose a threat to the extent that the American public liked to believe and that the press attributed to them. Nevertheless, the idea of an underground movement of Nazi spies made good headlines and drew much attention. The media reported on Nazi groups that pledged allegiance to a foreign power and had militaristic training, leaving the impression that they posed an actual threat to the American people, when they did not.⁶⁷

SPIES EVERYWHERE

The impact of the espionage scare on the refugee issue cannot be understated. In his examination of the fifth column scare in the United States during the Second World War, historian Francis MacDonnell found that despite the commotion and concern, “Axis operations in the United States never amounted to much,” and what existed was easily countered by the FBI. Nevertheless, by the time the United States had entered the war in December 1941, he stated that “the Fifth Column scare had deeply penetrated the nation's psyche.”68 In one instance during January 1940, the FBI arrested, with great media fanfare, seventeen members of the pro-Nazi Christian Front and charged them with plotting terrorist acts. Hoover claimed that they had intended to “knock off about a dozen congressmen” and “blow up the goddamned Police Department” [of New York City].⁶⁹ When their case went to trial, it was so weak that a jury failed to convict a single member. Some of the material entered as evidence against them was laughable. For instance, two of the confiscated weapons included an 1873 Springfield rifle and an old cavalry sword.⁷⁰ Of the few cases that were uncovered, most involved amateurs who were easily captured. Another prominent case involved twenty-eight-year-old Herbert Bahr. In June 1942, the German engineer boarded an ocean liner from Sweden and traveled to New York, where he tried to pass himself off as a refugee. While he may have been a respectable engineer, he was a thoroughly incompetent spy. He was quickly caught after his story unraveled and he admitted to spying for Germany after being given $7,000 by the Gestapo and sent to steal industrial secrets. He drew the attention of authorities after he was found to be carrying the entire wad of money in his pants. After a rushed trial, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison.⁷¹

The motion-picture industry also fed the flames of hysteria. Between 1940 and 1942 alone, Hollywood released no less than seventy-two films dealing with the fifth column.⁷² The result was a refugee spy scare that would grip the nation and cloud judgments on the immigration issue for much of the war. The failure of the US State Department to relax immigration restrictions and accept more Jews was a reflection of the spy mania. Time captured the mood, reporting that from Lake George, New York, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, America had become a nation engulfed by “morbid fears of invisible enemies,” as people began to chase “ghosts and phantoms.”73 George Britt's 1940 book, The Fifth Column Is Here, further fanned the hysteria, becoming an immediate bestseller. In it he made the sensational claim that over a million enemy agents and subversives were scattered about the country, including Germans, Italians, and Communists.⁷⁴ After one fireside chat by Roosevelt about the threat posed from subversives, public anxieties increased to such an extent that FBI offices received nearly three thousand reports of suspicious people in a single day, nearly twice the number for the entire previous year.⁷⁵ The rise of the spy mania can be tracked by looking at the number of reports of suspected espionage and subversive acts that were received by the FBI. Between 1933 and 1938, the bureau averaged thirty-five reports per year. In 1939 it shot up to 1,615, and by the following year on a single day in May, an astounding 2,871 complaints were logged. In fact, when the FBI released these figures, J. Edgar Hoover noted that the number of confirmed sabotage cases to that point was “negligible.”⁷⁶

HISTORY REPEATS

While America prides itself as a nation of immigrants, it is no small irony that many of the descendants of those who flocked to our shores seeking protection from discrimination and bigotry have shown intolerance toward Islamic and Central American refugees. These hostilities are grounded not in reality but in a fear of the foreign and the unfamiliar. The rise of American Islamophobia and depictions of Muslims as terrorists parallels historical attempts to demonize Catholics as enemies of the state, and Jews as Nazi collaborators. Even before the United States was founded, the Puritans fled religious persecution in England by voyaging to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to worship in freedom. The persecuted soon became the persecutors, as their leaders began arresting and executing those who were different from them, culminating in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692. The fundamental problem facing Jewish refugees during World War II was that fear and anti-Semitism were driving the government's refugee policy. Throughout the war, there remained a widespread belief that Jews were an inferior Semitic race that posed a threat to America's security. There is no other way to explain the refusal to accept twenty thousand Jewish children, or why America's wartime German refugee quota was only at 10 percent of capacity. Few events in our history compare to the government's treatment of Jewish refugees during the Second World War. It was a preventable, human-created catastrophe that remains one of our greatest failures. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, history is repeating itself as the American government attempts to block the intake of Islamic refugees who are fleeing war and persecution and Central American asylum seekers who are trying to escape poverty and drug and gang violence. Equally disturbing is the realization that America and much of the world have failed to learn from the lessons of the past. If we fail to act again, history will judge us harshly.