THOSE
ANGRY DAYS: ROOSEVELT, LINDBERGH, AND AMERICA'S FIGHT
OVER
WORLD WAR II, 1939-1941 (New York: Random House, 2013)
BY
LYNNE OLSON
Rev.
by Hugh Murray
A
good read does not make a good book. Olson's volume is well-written,
easy to follow, flowing along with the American nation from its
isolationism of 1939 when war erupted in Europe, to the day of infamy
when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Those were angry days, when
most Americans, some 70% according to a poll she cites (p.28),
believed in 1937 that the US had been tricked into mistakenly
entering the Great War (WWI). Many continued to believe it best for
America to stay out of the wars boiling over in 1939. Others, like
Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, viewed Hitler as a threat to America, with
his blitzkrieg over Poland in 1939, followed by further blitz
victories over Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and finally
France in spring and summer of 1940. Hitler followed with his
surprise attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941; Roosevelt concluded
that all that posed a great threat to the US and the world.
Roosevelt pushed to end American neutrality, pressed for a draft law
at home, repeal of the Neutrality Act, the sale of arms to help
Britain, and then lend lease, to keep supplying Britain as it verged
on bankruptcy. To prevent German occupied Denmark from claiming
Danish islands, the US occupied Greenland and Iceland, even escorting
British convoys of ships to Iceland. The American ships even sailed
beyond and there were minor skirmishes with German U-boats. In the
fall of 1941 Roosevelt issued a shoot on sight order against the
German subs. On the heated debate that occurred in America over all
these policies, policies that were shoving America to the brink of
war with the German Reich, Olson is good. She describes in America
the growing intensity, anger, hatred on both sides, easily lumped
into two camps – isolationists vs. interventionists.
However,
Olson leaves out an important part of the equation – and she is too
knowledgeable to ascribe this omission to ignorance. Thus, she
blithely writes: “Indeed the US never faced any serious threat of
internal subversion before or during the war.”(337) What bull!
Olson must have heard of the Manhattan Project, the A-bomb, the
Rosenbergs, and the many others? All striving to give Stalin the
American atomic secrets. Was this not a serious threat of internal
subversion during the war? Furthermore, there was also internal
subversion BEFORE the US entered WWII, and that subversion is related
to how American entered WWII.
Olson
writes: “HUAC had been set up in 1934 as a special committee to
investigate pro-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups in the
United States. After ending its operations a year later,...revived
by Congress in 1938 under...Rep. Martin Dies, a right-winger,
anti-New Deal Democrat...Dies focused...on...Communist presence in
organized labor and the federal government....[Dies] worked to
portray the New Deal as part of a vast Communist conspiracy.”(327-28)
Olson
understands the HUAC of Rep. Dies had a different mission from the
earlier committee that investigated “pro-Nazi and other right-wing
extremists groups.” Perhaps the main difference between the Dies
and the previous HUAC led by N.Y. Rep. Samuel Dickstein was that the
New Yorker was at that time being paid $1,250 a month by the Soviet
NKVD. Perhaps, that might help explain why the earlier committee was
less interested in uncovering any Soviet penetration of the US
government or any criminal activity by left-wing extremists. Olson,
in a typical case of liberal bias and blindness, condemned the Dies'
exposes as McCarthyism before McCarthy (and she did not mean that as
a compliment). Of course, Olson fails to mention Dickstein's
connection to the Soviets as an example of foreign penetration of the
US government.(328-29)
Olson's
myopia on the Communist issue leads her to misinterpret much of the
period 1939-41, the scope of her book. Even the terms
“isolationists” and “interventionists” had to be slightly
scrambled during this period, and the reason was Communism.
The
world of the 1930s seemed to crash on 23 August 1939 when the two
leading antagonistic nations, Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet
Union, signed a non-aggression pact. We now know there were secret
clauses so it was, in effect, an aggression pact by the two tyrannies
to divide much of Europe between themselves. Just 9 days following
the signing of that non-aggression pact, war began on 1 September
1939 with the German invasion of Poland – the blitzkrieg. On 3
September, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Often
overlooked, on 19 September 1939 the Soviet Union also invaded
Poland, from the east. However, Britain and France, which had
declared war on Germany because of its war against Poland, DID NOT
declare war on the USSR. The apparent reason, - there was a view in
the West that declaring war on Stalin would force him to get closer
to Hitler. And one possible reason for Stalin's delay in his entry
into the war for Poland's spoils: the USSR and Japan had been engaged
in an undeclared war around their puppet states of Manchukuo and
Mongolia. That was a war the supposedly weak USSR easily won, but
both belligerents preferred to keep news of the war quiet.
Meanwhile, Poland was quickly crushed, and divided, between the
Germans and Soviets by the end of September 1939.
As
the blitzkrieg completed in Poland, all was then quiet on the western
front. Indeed, it was so quiet on the Franco-German border, they
called it the sitzkrieg. In the east, Stalin prepared to expand the
borders of the USSR into Europe. In October 1939 his government made
territorial demands upon Finland, which had been a Russian province
during Czarist days. He demanded that the Finns give the Soviets
most of the Karelian Peninsular which contained the main defenses
against the Russians that had been constructed by the Finns since
their independence; in return, he offered the Finns a large area of
wasteland. Stalin's demands were to be only only the first, for he
later intended to make Finland a Soviet satellite. Stalin made no
war plans, because he expected the Finns to yield to his demands.
When the Finns rejected Stalin's swap, he had to show the Finns a
lesson. Soviet troops invaded Finland on 30 November 1939. As part
of secret protocols of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Finland had been
assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. Hitler, an indirect ally
of Stalin, refused to aid the Finns, and worse, refused to allow
Hungarian forces transport military and other aid across Germany and
German occupied lands. Finland might look large on the map, but in
1939 its population was a mere 3.5 million, compared to the 170.6
million in the USSR.
In
the US, many isolationists were fiercely anti-communist, and Soviet
aggression against Finland, prompted a great increase in
anti-communism. Even the moribund League of Nations expelled the
USSR because of its aggression against Finland. Yet, the American
isolationists did not become over-night interventionists, in part
because of the difficulties in attempting to help Finland. Germany
could block Western access to the Baltic. Republican former Pres.
Herbert Hoover did raise a large sum for clothing and medical
supplies for the Finns, and he delivered strong anti-communist
speeches, but the GOP, even if it had wanted, did not have the power
to get the US to help Finland militarily. Roosevelt, who did have
power, did not want to push Stalin closer into the arms of Hitler, so
although the Neutrality Act had been modified, the Roosevelt
Administration refused to sell arms to Finland. The Finnish
Ambassador declared that decision a death sentence.
Poland,
a nation of 35 million would last for less than a month after
invasion. Tiny Finland would endure for 3 1/2. Though the Red Army
stumbled, and seemed to have great difficulty in advancing through
the peninsular, eventually, with great cost, they broke through. By
13 March 1940 the war was over and Finland sued for peace. It had to
give up important strategic territories, but it would retain its
independence. The Soviets lost 127,000 soldiers killed. “The
whole world was shocked by the unbelievable weakness of the Red
Army.”(Viktor Suvorov [Vladimir Rezun], The Chief Culprit:
Stalin...p. 140) Suvorov disagreed with most of the commentators.
The war started in the far north in December, when the sun sets at
4pm, earlier in the northern sectors. The average temperatures
during the “Winter War” were minus 21 to minus 24 Celsius –
minus 6 to minus 11F. While Hitler and the West concluded that the
months it took to defeat Finland proved Soviet military weakness,
Suvorov concluded; “If it [the Red Army] was capable of advancing
in such conditions, then it was capable of advancing in any other
conditions ...”(Suv. p. 144) Advancing even to Berlin, and Paris!
So
in June 1940, when the West was shocked by the German blitzkrieg
again, and Hitler was celebrating a triumphal visit in Paris, Stalin
now made demands for bases on the soils of the 3 small Baltic
nations: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All were close enough to
Finland to be aware of the consequences of any rejection. Soviet
troops “were invited” into all 3 nations; soon Communist
governments were imposed, and in 1941 they were incorporated into the
USSR.
Stalin
then made demands on Romania for the province of Bessarabia. The
Romanians also quickly yielded to the Soviets. All this was
accomplished in accord with the Hitler-Stalin Pact. But when Soviet
ships began to get closer to oil fields in Romania and pose another
threat to strategic metals in the Baltic, Hitler began to have doubts
about his alliance with Stalin. Meanwhile, despite all theses Soviet
“advances,” no one declared war on the USSR.
After
the German blitz in the West, conquering from Norway to Paris to the
Mediterranean in spring/summer 1940, the Roosevelt Administration
sought to help Britain in its lonely struggle against the Axis.
Because Britain was desperate and lacking funds, the Administration
proposed a Lend-Lease bill, whereby America would lease bases on
British islands and America would lend Britain ships. Here is how
Olson describes the raging debate in the US - “thousands of
activists poured into Washington to buttonhole members of
Congress...Lend-Lease foes paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue,...'Kill
Bill 1776, Not Our Boys.' An organization called American Peace
Mobilization picketed day and night outside the White House, its
members carrying signs denouncing Roosevelt as a war monger. One of
the ubiquitous right-wing mothers' groups also appeared outside the
White House...”(278-79) I contend that by placing her sentences in
this manner, Olson leaves the impression that the APM was another
right-wing group. It was not – it was a Communist-front. Surely
Olson knew that, but she chose to mislead her readers. To make it
clear, as Olson does not, after the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov
non-aggression treaty in August 1939, the world Communist movement
ceased its anti-fascist struggles, reversing its 1934 “popular
front” policies of working with liberals. When war broke out in
Poland in September 1939, the CPUSA, like the rest of the global
Communist movement, now saw the greatest threat, not from Hitler, but
from the imperialist powers – Britain, France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, who were oppressing hundreds of millions of colonial
peoples. Therefore, the American Communist movement and its fronts
were “anti-imperialist,” opposed to any actions that would aid
Britain or France. The APM was the American expression of this
general Communist policy. The APM did picket the White House with
signs like, “The Yanks Are Not Coming,” until 22 June 1941, when
Hitler and his European allies launched a surprise attack against the
USSR. Overnight the American Peace Mobilization changed its name to
the American Peoples Mobilization, demanded US intervention in the
European war, and the same picketers of the White House now carried
signs, “Send the Yanks!”
Olson
included a footnote, which again, revealed her myopia. “The
Almanac Singers, an antiwar folksinging group whose members included
Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie introduced a song 'Plow Under' soon
after [isolationist Mont. Dem. Sen. Burton] Wheeler” remarked that,
like the New Deal agricultural program to raise pork prices by
plowing under every fourth pig, now Roosevelt's policies would plow
under American soldiers in the same manner. The Almanacs sang,
“Instead of hogs it's men today, Plow the fourth one under.”(276)
The Almanacs followed the CP line. They also sang against lending
and leasing. After 22 June 41, however, in accord with the new
Comintern policies, they dutifully demanded that America send aid to
all nations engaged in the fight against Hitler and the Axis, and
they destroyed all of their anti-war recordings still in stock.
On
16 October 1941 off Iceland, a German torpedo struck the American
ship, the Kearney, killing 11 American sailors.(400) Roosevelt
proposed modifying the Neutrality Act and ordered a “shoot on
sight” policy and the arming of American merchant vessels. On 31
October 41 the American ship Reuben James was sunk by a German
U-boat. Many interventionists were hoping Pres. Roosevelt would use
this German attack as grounds to declare war against Hitler's Reich.
But Roosevelt chose not to do so, disappointing the pro-war groups.
The pro-war coalition had grown since 22 June to include the formerly
anti-war CP activists. Suddenly pro-war, “Upset that no one seemed
to care [about the 100 plus young sailors who had lost their
lives]...,the folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a song called 'The
Sinking of the Reuben James' and recorded it with Pate Seeger.”(406)
It became a folk classic. However, had the ship been sunk in the
early part of 1941, before Hitler struck at Stalin, neither Guthrie
nor Seeger would have bothered or publicly cared about the 100+ lost
seamen.
American
voters were aware of events in Europe, and American opinion generally
changed with news from abroad. The problem, of course, then as now,
what are the biases of the media in reporting the news? Most
Americans were opposed to Hitler and to Stalin. True, fascists and
communists had their supporters in America, but to most Americans,
those were radical fringe extremists. Invasions in Manchukuo
probably troubled few in America outside the State Dept. and Naval
Intelligence. Mussolini's assault on Abyssinia may have wakened some
American Blacks to world problems, but the American Depression, and
how to climb out of it was still the dominant issue. The revolt by
the 4 generals and the Falange against the left-wing government in
Spain did rouse more Americans, with some left-wingers volunteering
to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to support the Republic. In
opposition, the popular radio priest, Father Coughlin devoted time on
his national network to report how the Falange was defending
Christian values in Spain, and the leader of the rebels, Gen.
Francisco Franco was gratefully receiving aid from Mussolini and
Hitler against the Communist Republican Govt. Indeed, the only major
country to help the Republic was Stalin's USSR. Father Coughlin
established a weekly newspaper, Social Justice, and he gathered his
Social Justice warriors into the National Union for Social Justice.
Coughlin not only denounced Communists, but also the “International
Jews.” Some estimate the radio priest was heard by up to 90
million Americans each Sunday. When CBS dropped his popular
broadcasts from its network, Coughlin put together his own chain just
for his sermons. His weekly Social Justice magazine gained a million
subscribers. And in it he explained to his readers how social
justice was being implemented in the thriving nations of Italy and
Germany. Olson states that Coughlin's organized followers beat Jews
and others who rejected appeals to purchase the Social Justice
magazine.
On
the other side, the Communists, even if members of the Peace
Mobilization, were hardly pacifists. They fought anti-union bosses,
non-union workers, Trotskyists, members of opposition rallies, and
scuffled with police. Hemingway went to Spain to toll the bells;
Orwell went to save the Spanish Republic by joining a Trotskyist
militia, and was lucky to exit Spain before the NKVD got to him.
Picasso painted Guernica, to reveal the horrors of bombing civilians.
The fascists killed poet Federico Lorca, and the Left sought to
destroy the plans and early stages of Gaudi's cathedral, Sagrada
Familia. To anyone watching the news, the struggle in Spain between
Fascists and the ever-increasingly Communist dominated Republic, all
assumed that the next big war would be between those two giant
ideological contenders – fascists vs. communists. In Spain, Franco
won for the Falange and the fascist side. And then, the world was
turned upside down when Stalin and Hitler, instead of going to war
with each other, joined together in the non-aggression pact of August
1939.
The
American public was being swayed by the wars blasting round the
world. While movies sought to remain apolitical (Europe was a
profitable market for Hollywood films), the newsreels (and cartoons)
that preceding the showing of the feature films, were important for
molding opinion in the era before television. Henry Luce, chief of
Time-Life magazines, also created the weekly news film, “The March
of Time.” “Movietone News,” and others also were seen in
different theaters. Luce was an interventionist. But men with
cameras showing aggressive wars, would inevitably show wounded and
dead Chinese and victorious Japanese; marching soldiers of the
Wehrmacht, Italian planes bombing natives in Africa, etc. These
pictures tended to stir the audience to take sides in distant
conflicts. This would not necessarily make them interventionists,
but it tended to make them less sympathetic to Germany, Italy, and
Japan.
By
the late 1930s radio technology had advanced so some radio stations
and CBS, in particular, began to include reports from journalists in
Europe. Americans were interested in the live reports of what might
become conflicts, or even a general war. Important in forming
opinion would be those like Edward R. Murrow, who broadcast from
London as the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on Britain's capital. The
Germans hoped the bombing would compel the British to negotiate a
peace, as had France, and thus end the war whose continuance only
served the “plutocrats.”
Olson
says little about radio in her volume, a great failure in the pre-TV
era. When discussing that medium a few points should be stressed:
The National Broadcasting Company began its chains officially in
November 1926. It was one company, but in reality 2 networks, the
red, the more popular chain with the stronger stations; and the blue.
By 1930, the leader of the Radio Corporation of America, NBC's
parent corporation, was David Sarnoff. On January 1929 a newly
reorganized competitor began broadcasting as the Columbia
Broadcasting System, led by William Paley. Paley, as a manufacturer
of cigars, had been a major advertiser on the precursor radio chain
to CBS. NBC Red, NBC Blue, and CBS were the three dominant networks
during the period under discussion. Significantly, both Sarnoff and
Paley were Jewish. Might this not affect the portrayal of Germany on
their networks? In 1934 another network started, but it was a looser
chain, often with weaker stations. In 1940 the FCC sued NBC
maintaining that its two major networks were a monopoly, and should
be divided. The legal cases took time but in 1943 the US Supreme
Court ordered the severance of the NBC Red and Blue chains.
Eventually, the Blue network would re-emerge as ABC, but during the
period 1939-41, the leaders of the 3 biggest networks were Sarnoff
and Paley.
One
powerful station held a large portion of stock in the Mutual
Broadcasting System, the station owned by the Chicago Tribune with
the modest call letters, WGN for World's Greatest Newspaper. The
Tribune was strongly isolationist, and its editor, Col. Robert
McCormick, a staunch enemy of Roosevelt's New Deal. Mutual grew to
have more stations than the other chains, but in North Carolina, for
example, 4 stations each sufficed for the NBC's and CBS chains to
cover the entire state; Mutual required 14 stations. I don't know,
but suspect the news and commentary on Mutual in those angry days was
probably different from the reporting on NBC and CBS. That Mutual
was the poorest of the networks can be seen by the late 1940s with
the growth of television. NBC, CBS, and even ABC made the transition
to network television; Mutual failed to do so.
[Though
it comes from a later period, one incident may illustrate the
contrast in interpreting the news. On 9 March 1954 Edward R.
Murrow's CBS-TV program “See It Now” was devoted to an attack on
the methods of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in allegedly exposing subversion
in the US Govt. The very next day on Mutual Radio, commentator
Fulton Lewis, Jr. had as his guest Sen. McCarthy to defend himself
and his Committee from liberals like Murrow; McCarthy asserted that
they the committee was being fair to the accused, who ought to
cooperate in exposing other subversives in Govt service.]
Generally,
the radio chains were not neutral; they were interventionist and
anti-Nazi. And Hollywood? Olson writes: In 1936 “energized by the
growing threat of Nazi Germany, hundreds of screenwriters, directors,
actors, and producers had come together to form the Hollywood
Anti-Nazi League, which became the focal point of liberal
interventionist activity...sponsored rallies, mass meetings, and
letter-writing campaigns...from support of the Loyalists forces in
the Spanish Civil War to backing the beleaguered Federal Theatre
Project.”(361) What Olson does not reveal is that the League was a
Communist front. When some speakers rose and urged that they
denounce Communist as well as Nazi totalitarianism, they were booed
and hissed. Furthermore, after August 1939 (Hitler-Soviet Pact), the
organization voted itself out of existence, for the Comintern had
decided that Britain and France were a greater danger than Nazi
Germany. The leaders of the HANL then joined the American Peace
Mobilization. Again, let me emphasize, the HANL, the organization
Olson implies was liberal, was in fact a Communist-front with
considerable influence in Hollywood.
Olson
mentions that Hollywood did begin to produce anti-Nazi films by 1940
like “Foreign Correspondent,” “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,”
and “Mortal Storm,” but what she fails to mention is the films
that were not made about Communist spies. In this period there were
top-selling books exposing Soviet espionage in the US and its
brutality elsewhere, but none were transferred to the big screen.
Later, in a film guild newspaper, the Worker, Dalton Trumbo in 1946
conceded that his colleagues could not always bring progressive
novels like Howard Fast's “Freedom Road” to the screen;
nevertheless the Communist Trumbo boasted that his comrades had
successfully prevented production of anti-Communist movies, “Out of
the Night,” “Report on the Russians,” “There Shall Be No
Night,” “Adventures of a Young Man,” and Trotsky's biography of
Stalin. Diana West charges that the Communist influence in Hollywood
was so prevalent that it created a hole in American culture in what
was not produced. (Diana West, American Betrayal, pp. 88-89) Would
anyone today know of the influential book, Gone With the Wind, if the
movie version had been vetoed? (For more on Trumbo, see Kenneth
Billingsley, Hollywood Party, pp. 92-93) Once America entered WWII,
pro-Stalinist films were made in Hollywood at the request of the
Roosevelt Administration, such as “Mission to Moscow,” and “North
Star.”(374)
It
may have been acceptable in Hollywood to be interventionist or ever a
member of the anti-interventionist APM, but when Lillian Gish joined
the America First group, she could no longer find work in films. She
resigned from America First to find employment. We rarely hear of
the Hollywood blacklist of conservatives. Yet, liberal Olson is so
besotted of the mainstream myth of McCarthy that she writes that
during the post-WWII Cold War era in Hollywood “anyone who had ever
marched against Hitler or Mussolini was at risk of loosing his or her
livelihood...ruining hundreds if not thousands of lives.”(374)
Dalton Trumbo was one of the famous Hollywood Ten, blacklisted for
refusing to answer questions about Communism after WWII. But during
the war, he boasted he and his comrades were vetoing the making of
any film critical of Communism. As Olson seems incapable of
distinguishing a Communist front from a liberal organization, she
probably opposed any exposes of Communists or spies in Hollywood or
elsewhere. And there were Communist spies elsewhere.
In
1941 after Japan occupied part of Vichy French IndoChina and made
some demands upon Siam, the Roosevelt Administration froze all
Japanese assets in the US and “further Japanese purchases of
American goods, including oil, had to be cleared by a government
committee...The president, however, had not intended his order to
signal an automatic cutoff of oil. He wanted to keep his options
open and the Japanese at the negotiating table. Nevertheless, State
Dept. officials applied the freeze in such a way that no further
exports...were released to Japan...the crisis that Roosevelt
hoped to put off for as long as possible was now on his
doorstep.(410-11, emp. Mine)
That
sounds innocuous enough. But in late 1941 the USSR was fighting for
its life against the German and Axis invasion. The last thing Stalin
wanted was a major attack on his flank. In the book, Operation Snow
(2012) by John Koster we learn that a Soviet agent, Vitalii Pavlov
gave orders to Harry Dexter White, director of the Division of
Monetary Research of the US Treasury Dept., to provoke Japan to
attack the US so that the island empire would not strike north
against Soviet Siberia. Between the lines written by Olson, you can
see the successful work by a Soviet agent in the American Treasury
Dept. in cutting off oil to Japan, making the negotiating table
useless, and prompting the Japanese to attack the US rather then the
USSR. “Harry Dexter White, acting under orders of Soviet
intelligence, pulled the strings by which [US Sec. Of State] Cordell
Hull and [State Dept expert] Stanley Hornbeck handed the Japanese an
ultimatum that was tantamount to a declaration of war – when both
the Japanese cabinet and the US military were desperately eager for
peace...Harry Dexter White gave us Pearl Harbor.”(Koster, p. 215)
Olson is oblivious to the Communist penetration of the US Govt. that
had major consequences – war.
Olson
writes of the many problems in the Lindbergh marriage. On the cover
of her book are the pictures of two men, two antagonists during the
period of her study – FDR and Charles Lindbergh. If she is going
to discuss the marriage difficulties of one of the protagonists, why
is she silent on the other? Olson's silence is another form of bias.
Were there not troubles in the marriage of the Roosevelt's during
this period?
But
the most blatant example of Olson's bias in her assessment of the two
antagonists is when she calls Lindbergh an anti-Semite.(xxx)
In
September 1941 as America sailed ever closer to war against Germany
in the Atlantic, Lindbergh, the leading spokesman of the
anti-interventionist America First Committee, decided to speak and
identify outright those most responsible for pushing America into
war. They were the Roosevelt Administration, the British, and
American Jews. Olson notes, Lindbergh leveled “...his sharpest
criticism for the president and his men,...devoting only three
paragraphs to Jewish influences.”{378) But the Jewish comments
broke a taboo and set off a storm. Lindbergh asserted that the
reason the Jews were a danger in this setting was because of “
'their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our
press, our radio, and our government.'”(378) Olson does concede
that “on at least one occasion, FDR voiced “...some views similar
to Lindbergh's,” that the Jews were outsiders and that America was
a Protestant country.(383)
Olson
dismissed as “erroneous” the view that “Jews dominate the
media.”(385) She writes: “Fewer than 3% of US newspaper
publishers were Jewish...” Some newspapers, however, have large
circulations; others tiny; some have prestige; others not. On a
different subject, Olson would dismiss the influence of Communists in
Hollywood, also, but Dalton Trumbo boasted of the influence he and
his comrades had in preventing the making of films critical of
communism. As to Jewish influence in the media, which Olson also
dismisses, I ask the reader a simple question: How many Americans
died in WWII? Now, how many Jews died in WWII? She presents the
answer to the former.(p. 436) She does not have to include the
answer to the second question because most educated Americans know it
already. Why do educated Americans know the data on Jewish deaths in
WWII but not know the number of Americans killed in that war? Does
this not illustrate the Jewish influence on American culture, and
that influence is a consequence of Jewish prominence in the media?
I
am not denying that some of Lindbergh's views were anti-Semitic.
Olson quotes from his private journal of April 1939: “A few Jews
add strength and character to a country, but too many create
chaos...and we are getting too many.”(380) So, in the contrast
Olson has drawn between Lindbergh and FDR on anti-Semitism, Lindbergh
is clearly the ogre, properly chosen as the villain in Philip Roth's
award-winning, nightmare fantasy novel of 2004, The Plot Against
America. But Olson has weighted the scales in Roosevelt's favor.
Absent from her bibliography is the article by Rafael Medoff (Los
Angeles Times, 7 April 2013) on Franklin Roosevelt's private views of
the Jews. Thus, “in 1923, as a member of the Harvard board of
directors, Roosevelt decided there were too many Jewish students at
the college and helped institute a quota ...” Olson does discuss
university policies limiting Jews by quotas(381), but never connects
the quota programs to FDR. In one short paragraph, Olson notes that
Roosevelt, though sympathetic to the Jewish plight, did little to
help them before and during the war. She quotes Arnold Forster
asserting “'FDR failed Jews in their darkest hour.'”(385) Medoff
explains the not so obvious hurdles Jewish hopeful immigrants faced.
“The US immigration system severely limited the number of German
Jews admitted during the Nazi years to about 26,000 annually – but
even that quota was less than 25% filled during most of the Hitler
era, because the Roosevelt administration piled on so many extra
requirements...For example, starting in 1941, merely leaving behind a
close relative in Europe would be enough to disqualify...- ...Nazis
could threaten the relative and force the immigrant into spying for
Hitler.” Medoff discounted that possibility as absurd. (I could
find no Jews listed as spies for Germany during WWII. On the other
hand, many Jews were part of the Soviet network: Harry Dexter White
[Weit] in Treasury, and many atomic spies, among whom were: Theodore
Hall [Holtzberg], Saville Sax, Morris Cohen and wife Lona, David
Greenglass, Harry Gold, George Koval, Irving Lerner, and of course,
the Rosenbergs.) Moreover, Medoff asks a question, “Why didn't the
president [FDR] quietly tell his State Department (which administered
the immigration system) to fill the quotas for Germany and
Axis-occupied countries to the legal limit? That alone would have
saved 190,000 lives. It would not have required a fight with
Congress or the anti-immigration forces; it would have involved
minimal political risk to the president.” Perhaps Medoff answers
that question when he reported in the same article of Roosevelt
“dismissing pleas for Jewish refugees as 'Jewish wailing' and 'sob
stuff.'” But FDR called Lindbergh a Nazi, and some of the media
apparently believed the president. Olson calls Lindbergh an
anti-Semite. But Lindbergh cannot be held responsible for the
probable loss of 190,000 Jews, - but FDR can.
Roosevelt
was clearly hostile to the Hitler regime. He allowed the British
intelligence units to work inside the US, and even received the help
of MI6 in establishing the first American national intelligence
organization, the OSS. Roosevelt allowed the FBI to wire tap,
intercept mail, even that of foreign embassies, and permitted the
FBI to smear opponents and disrupt their activities.(xix) “In
September 1939, he [FDR] told an associate that it was going to be 'a
dirty fight.'...and he played a major role in making it so.
Convinced that the isolationists, particularly Lindbergh, posed a
major threat... Roosevelt..., assisted by a covert British
intelligence operation, embarked on a campaign to destroy their
credibility, influence, and reputations.”(xix) Roosevelt thought
that Lindbergh was a Nazi,(103) and that he and other opponents
should be muzzled.(310-11) FDR openly compared Lindbergh to the
Copperheads of the American Civil War, the Northerners who
sympathized with the Confederacy.(314) By 1941 America First found
it impossible to hire public parks for rallies, and Lindbergh's books
were removed from public libraries. Yet, Olson writes, “Feeding
Lindbergh's persecution complex...”(376) were additional verbal
assaults on him by members of the President's Cabinet. Persecution
complex?!? There was real hatred of and persecution of Lindbergh
stirred up by Roosevelt's Government; it was not simply the
imagination of the famous flier.
What
was Lindbergh's great crime? Lindbergh believed that Communism was a
huge tyrannical system and a greater danger to the world than
Hitler's Nazism.
When
Hitler and his European allies struck eastward against the Soviet
Union, what should the rest of the world do? Hitler thought the war
would be short and the Soviet's would quickly crumble before his
seasoned fighters. Why worry about winter supplies? A few years
earlier, most Americans in 1939 knew that France had Europe's best
army and the Maginot Line for defense; so it would be just a matter
of time to starve Germany into submission. Those assumptions quickly
proved to be wrong, but still many assumed the Red Army was
undoubtedly weaker than the defeated French one. British PM
Churchill was no Communist sympathizer. When Lenin and the
Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and pulled Russia out of WWI,
Churchill urged Western intervention in Russia to aid the
anti-communist White forces. His objective was to smother the babe
of Bolshevism in its crib. But when Hitler attacked Stalin,
Churchill, then standing alone against the Germans, was delighted; he
said he would make a deal with the devil to defeat Hitler. Churchill
announced his Govt would send aid to the USSR (though as British
resources were so depleted, this may have been more propaganda than
reality). Because many thought the Soviets would collapse in about 7
weeks, there was a question of how viable any promise might be. FDR
“cautiously followed Churchill's lead, and in August 1941 pledged
to send “planes, tanks, trucks, and other aid to Stalin...”(347)
Olson assures her readers that most Americans, assessing Germany as
“a far greater immediate danger” than the USSR, supported the
President's decision.(347)
Elsewhere,
Olson reported how FDR and his supporters working inside the Gallup
polling company manipulated the questions to skew poll results.(343)
Not all Americans were on board with helping the Red Army. Missouri
Dem. Sen. Harry Truman asserted, “'If we see that Germany is
winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought
to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as
possible.'”(346) Truman seemingly supported a balancing act for
the US, liking neither totalitarian belligerent. A 3rd
position was enunciated by Lindbergh. “At an America First
rally...Lindbergh declared that while he opposed US alliances with
foreign countries, he 'would rather see my country ally herself with
England, or even with Germany with all of her faults, than with the
cruelty, the godlessness, and the barbarism that exists in Soviet
Russia.' Unsurprisingly, this inflammatory remark touched off
another round of bitter attacks against him.”(346) Clearly,
Lindbergh was in a camp hostile to Roosevelt's policies; but was he
that far from Truman's skeptical idea? Moreover, was it such an
inflammatory notion to judge the USSR as a tyranny worse than that of
Nazi Germany?
There
is a scene in the wonderful film, “Europa, Europa” 1990, that
occurs shortly after the beginning of the German attack on Poland in
September 1939. The film is based on the autobiography of the
protagonist, Solomon Perel, a young Jew whose family flees
persecution in Germany. They move to Poland. but in September 1939,
the Germans invade. Now Solly and his brother, along with masses of
Poles, flee the incoming German army. They reach a river and have to
cross it, some by boat, others swimming. As they cross, they see
some turn round after reaching the farther shore, and begin swimming
back to the side whence they came. What's happened? The Red Army
has invaded Poland from the east. An existential moment! Generally,
most Jews keep heading eastward, toward the Russians, away from the
Germans. Most Christians seem to be turning around, now fleeing
westward toward the Germans, away from the Soviets. Given a choice
between the two great tyrannies of that time, some chose to race
toward the Reds, others toward the Nazis.
Under
the German occupation, Jews were targeted for extermination. Before
the war some 3.2 million Jews resided in Poland; after, 100,000 had
fled to the USSR, 2OO,OOO made it to the West, and 100,000 were left
in Poland. Of the 24.3 million Poles in 1939, excluding various
minority groups, 2,770,000 were killed during the German occupation;
150,000 killed under Soviet occupation; 1.2 million moved to the USSR
or to the West. Many nations had at war's end lists of the dead
killed by this group or that. And how accurate were historical
judgments at war's end? Many Poles had their property confiscated
too, and the Nazis sought to eliminate Polish intellectuals. But in
the Soviet occupied zones, Polish officers were rounded up, and 15 to
30,000 killed in the Katyn Forest (1940-41). The Germans captured
this area from the Soviets beginning 22 June 1941, and discovered the
atrocity, and showed the Red Cross evidence that the Soviets had done
it. After the war, the Nurnberg Trials ruled that the massacre had
been the work of the Nazis; of course, the Soviets were among the
winners and thus among the judges. With the fall of the USSR
researchers suddenly had access to evidence demonstrating that it was
the Soviets who committed this crime.
Of
course, the Germans were attempting to kill as many Jews as possible,
mainly through work, starvation diets, and gas chambers. But to
improve the planet, certain policies were not to be limited to Jews.
Millions of Soviet PoWs died in without food, heat, shelter. Poles
and other “inferiors” were treated with contempt, and died of
various problems. Each nation had its own tabulations of how many
were killed by fascists, how many killed by communists, how many
killed by Allied bombings, how many killed by – the list of
categories.
Which
tyranny might it be better to try to live under? To fight? Or are
they both equally horrible? I do not use the term inhumane because
humans have developed these methods to rob, torture (in such creative
ways), kill, and dispose of the unwanted. And not always in camps.
Before the war began, Germany required a midwife at each birth to an
Aryan woman. If the infant was deformed, it might be taken from the
mother and sent to a special hospital for special treatment (usually,
starvation). Alcoholics, homosexuals, the mentally disturbed,
gypsies, all might be sent to camps for rehab or other special
treatment, like sterilization, castration, or starvation. And in the
early days of Hitler's leadership, these efforts to improve the race
were generally limited to Aryans; the Reich did not care if a Jew
gave birth to a defective infant. Tens of thousands of Aryans thus
discovered the pain of “improving” the race.
But
Hitler was a late-comer in mass torture and murder. Concentration
camps had been established by the Bolsheviks early in their struggle
for power. People who had jewelry and refused to disclose it and
give the state its due, might endure long punishments. The Whites,
at war with the Reds, could expect no mercy. And then in the
Ukraine, the “selfish” better-off farmers, unwilling to sell
crops to the govt. at a reasonable (low, or no, price) had to be
taught a lesson. Troops went to the farms and took; leaving nothing
for the selfish kulaks. Up to 3 million of those farmers who refused
to help the Bolshevik state progress, they ended in the dust bin of
history, dead. If you add many more millions killed in the USSR
through purges under Stalin and his successors, and then up to 50
million killed during Chairman Mao's experiments in socialism, and
then the 2 million in Cambodia (about one fourth of the population)
in the effort to develop the new, socialist man, and extra totals
from Cuba, N. Korea, and other progressive nations, the Black Book or
Communism calculated the number 100,000,000 killed by communism.
Of
course, the Communists have more time; Hitler had only 12 years.
Which
tyranny, if either, might be the better for the US to align with?
And win with? And fight against?
In
1941 Hitler's killing machines were just getting started.
Einsatzgruppen behind the lines of the invading Wehrmacht tried to
kill all Communist officials and Jews as they advanced, men, women,
children. But the numbers murdered were small compared to what would
follow, and few knew of these policies at the time. In 1941 Stalin's
state had terrorized and murdered many more people than Hitler's.
And in the long run, Communists, 100 million versus Nazis, 6 million
Jews and perhaps a few million others. War casualties, they can
share. Of course, had the Nazis endured in power longer, they might
have murdered millions more. My point is that it is not a simple
question of math, or of black and white, or red and brown. If you
are Jewish, it is clear what the great, frightening danger was. If
you are Finnish, you might see Stalin as the great monster. Letts,
Estonians, Ukrainians, Hungarians might see Communism as a far worse
threat to free people than Hitler's Reich. Those nationalities would
not be unanimous in their decision. Across the ocean from the
tyrannies of Europe, people did come to different assessments over
which was the greatest threat to the US. They gave different answers
to related questions: should we aid one and how much aid should we
give. Roosevelt decided to give large amounts of materiel to the
Soviets. We did not follow Truman's initial advice, that the US
should change sides when one totalitarian state began to win so we
would then help its rival. And while we were helping the Soviets
with vast amounts of food and production, numerous Soviet spies were
rewarding Stalin with the secrets of our A-bomb research. Yet, even
with the hindsight of decades, I too believe that Hitler was the most
imminent danger to the US in 1941. But in 1941, I don't think it was
a clear, easy decision, and honest people might come to different
conclusions.
Olson
provides a well-written history of
the period, 1939-41. But hers is a distorted version. Her
description of the 1940 GOP convention and its selection of Wendell
Willkie,
a dark horse candidate whose foreign policy was a clone of
FDR's, shows how far from reality was Roth's award-winning novel in
which the GOP chose the
isolationist Lindbergh. Olson seems satisfied with
the Eastern Establishment's sponsorship of Willkie,
whose candidacy removed foreign policy from the election debate and
deprived
voters of an
alternative to FDR's warpath.
Olson clearly prefers FDR to Lindbergh and believes Roosevelt's
interventionism
was morally required.
Olson is oblivious to differences between liberals and Communists
and
is
blind to Soviet espionage during the Roosevelt years.
Her book is unfair to Lindbergh and the millions of Americans who,
with malice toward none,
sought to keep us out of war.
