A few notes about if we do not intervene now, well what about FDR and the Holocaust argument

[nadinbrzezinski]

forget Goowin's law... it is not historically accurate.

In January 1944, after learning from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. that the State
Department was obstructing rescue efforts, Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board to
coordinate governmental and private efforts to rescue those who might still be saved. The
Board is credited with saving at least 200,000 Jews. Critics argue that if FDR had acted earlier,
and more boldly, even more lives could have been saved.

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/pdfs/holocaust.pdf

Morgenthau wanted more than what the allies did to Germany by the way. He wanted the full and utter destruction of the industrial base in the Rhine. He in essence wanted to make Germany into an agricultural zone never allowed to do anything more than plant wheat and other agricultural products. If you think WW I was bad sanctions, what Morgenthau wanted (why FDR kept him out of the IMT negotiations and later Truman did as well) was pure revenge.

You might also want to check this

In “FDR and the Jews,” Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, professors at American University, contend that Roosevelt hardly did everything he could. But they maintain that his overall record — several hundred thousand Jews saved, some of them thanks to little-known initiatives — exceeds that of any subsequent president in responding to genocide in the midst of fierce domestic political opposition.

“The consensus among the public is that Roosevelt really failed,” Mr. Breitman said in a recent interview. “In fact, he had fairly limited options.”

Such statements, backed up by footnotes to hundreds of primary documents (some cited here for the first time), are unlikely to satisfy Roosevelt’s fiercest critics. Even before the book’s March 19 release, the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, a research organization in Washington, has circulated a detailed rebuttal, as well as a rival book, “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith,” zeroing in on what it characterizes as Roosevelt’s personal desire to limit Jewish immigration to the United States.

But some leading Holocaust historians welcome “FDR and the Jews” for remaining dispassionate in a debate too often marked by anger and accusation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/books/book-tries-for-balanced-view-on-roosevelt-and-jews.html?pagewanted=all

Moreover his policies and refugee issues BEFORE the war were horrific, and I personally know one Holocaust Survivor who was denied entry to the US in 1939. You might want to read on the Ship of the Damned. If you want some info, follow this link

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html

Oh and here is more on the issue...

This accusation of immense moral failure — or indifference — is now being addressed by a new book, “FDR and the Jews,” by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman. It sets out to find a middle ground and instead makes things worse. It is a portrait of a president who, in the authors’ own words, “did not forthrightly inform the American people of Hitler’s grisly ‘Final Solution’ or respond decisively to his crimes.” This is a Roosevelt who almost always had a more pressing political concern — American isolationism, American anti-Semitism, a fear and hatred of immigrants — and who stayed mum while a bill to allow 20,000 Jewish children into the United States died in Congress.

Roosevelt inattentively also permitted a cabal of heartless anti-Semites in the State Department to control the country’s visa policies. Desperate Jews, fleeing from the Nazis, were denied asylum in the United States. One of them was Otto Frank. His daughter Anne perished at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Both FDR and his wife, Eleanor, were genteel anti-Semites — although the president had Jewish aides and one close Jewish friend, his neighbor Henry Morgenthau Jr. Eleanor, a woman not afraid to confront her own prejudices, later became a champion of Jewish causes, but the record for the president on this score is hardly as redeeming. As late as 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, he sympathized with a French general’s observation that the Jews were overrepresented in the professions. FDR referenced the “understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews.”

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-11/opinions/37621772_1_fdr-american-anti-semitism-anti-semites

This debate has been raging since 1945. This is precisely why I consider World War II an accidental just war that purely by accident tripped into the defense of the defenseless and all that put in code as early as the sixteenth century with the Just War Doctrine of Grotius. And while we might like to remember the grand honorable end of the holocaust and the saving of millions, it was purely accidental.

The policies we followed after the war were almost as atrocious as well. And I mean the almost part. We did help a lot of people at the Displaced Person Centers, and we fed and saved thousands. even hundreds of thousands, at military hospitals. But from the sheer POV of real politik, it was not what we did out of humanitarian reasons. Neither was the Marshall Plan about humanity, but to keep the Russians out of Europe, and in the chaos we slowed down the emigration of Europe of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

So if you are going to use, but, we fought Hitler to save the Jews... please, pick up a few books, and learn some history. I know legends and the American Myth are much simpler, and easier to digest, but we are not the good guys because we want to be the good guys, or the city on the hill, or the beacon of freedom, or whatever myth is in fashion this week. We might be, by accident every so often... but wars are not fought, never have been fought, for humanitarian reasons purely. There is more to the onion, and it is high time people learn to peel it.

And yes, as a daughter of the holocaust survivor I find it annoying at best.

[Behind the Aegis]

1. Watch "50 Children", this is addressed in that as well.

Heart-wrenching.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I will

[Behind the Aegis]

3. It's repeating on HBO (I think!).

It's not a horrible tearjerker, but it will make you hold your breath to hear the story.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. We don't have HBO, so will have to download it

[Behind the Aegis]

5. If I find it online, I will let you know. Will a PM be OK?

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Absolutely,

and if I do not answer in the next few days... will be positively under the weather.

[pnwmom]

7. We SHOULD have fought Hitler to save the Jews is the argument

that I've been turning over in my head. If we had intervened earlier with that end in mind, how many millions of lives could have been saved?

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. We stumbled into that role

and genocide was known as early as 1942 and policies did not change one iota until 1944.

That is the timeline.

The whys or why nots are complex, but the time line is pesky and while I would love to live in alternate earth, I do not.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

9. So you're saying if the US had to do it over again

We should have gotten involved in European conflict earlier to stop mass genocide against Jews, homosexuals, and others slaughtered by Nazis.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. You are saying that.

The US did get involved in the European theater after GERMANY DECLARED WAR ON THE US.

In fact, you might not remember this about the US.



That my dear is not Nuremberg, but Madison Square Garden.

[pnwmom]

11. So the question is still on the table. Should we have entered the war sooner

in an effort to save the lives that we knew were being lost every day? If we had intervened sooner, could we have saved millions of lives?

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. We did not know of the holocaust until 1942

When activists managed to make their way from Warsaw (the Ghetto) to London.

Intelligence officials, both British and American, determined the stories to be too fantastic, unbelievable. How do you act to stop something you don't believe is happening? In your imagination you might be able to change the relevant timeline.

Those of us who are aware of history know otherwise.

Regardless, I find your use of the holocaust for a political end...disgusting. So, I will ask again, when are you enlisting? I will personally drive you, or your kin, to the recruiter.

[pnwmom]

13. What do you mean, my "use"? I was just responding to a post.

And you still haven't answered. If we had known what was going on, should we have intervened sooner? I always thought we should have.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Re-read the post

How do you stop something you don't believe is happening? And we could have done things before the war, like not turn around the SS San Louis, or pressure Mexico and Cuba not to take the passengers in.

Unlike the American myth, the reality has way too many shades of gray.

[pnwmom]

15. We knew by 1942 it was happening. Why didn't we bomb the railroad lines

leading to the death camps? If we had intervened, could we have saved more lives?

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394663#17

20. Did the Allies and the people in the Free World know about the events going on in Europe?
Answer: The various steps taken by the Nazis prior to the "Final Solution" were all taken publicly and were, therefore, reported in the press. Foreign correspondents commented on all the major anti-Jewish actions taken by the Nazis in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. Once the war began, obtaining information became more difficult, but reports, nonetheless, were published regarding the fate of the Jews. Thus, although the Nazis did not publicize the "Final Solution," less than one year after the systematic murder of the Jews was initiated, details began to filter out to the West. The first report which spoke of a plan for the mass murder of Jews was smuggled out of Poland by the Bund (a Jewish socialist political organization) and reached England in the spring of 1942. The details of this report reached the Allies from Vatican sources as well as from informants in Switzerland and the Polish underground. (Jan Karski, an emissary of the Polish underground, personally met with Franklin Roosevelt and British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden). Eventually, the American Government confirmed the reports to Jewish leaders in late November 1942. They were publicized immediately thereafter. While the details were neither complete nor wholly accurate, the Allies were aware of most of what the Germans had done to the Jews at a relatively early date.
[ top ]
21. What was the response of the Allies to the persecution of the Jews? Could they have done anything to help?
Answer: The response of the Allies to the persecution and destruction of European Jewry was inadequate. Only in January 1944 was an agency, the War Refugee Board, established for the express purpose of saving the victims of Nazi persecution. Prior to that date, little action was taken. On December 17, 1942, the Allies issued a condemnation of Nazi atrocities against the Jews, but this was the only such declaration made prior to 1944.
Moreover, no attempt was made to call upon the local population in Europe to refrain from assisting the Nazis in their systematic murder of the Jews. Even following the establishment of the War Refugee Board and the initiation of various rescue efforts, the Allies refused to bomb the death camp of Auschwitz and/or the railway lines leading to that camp, despite the fact that Allied bombers were at that time engaged in bombing factories very close to the camp and were well aware of its existence and function.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Activities did not start until 1944

That s the truth

And the could have, should have are good for alternate histories, as in fiction

The truth, I will repeat this, is far murkier and has been a matter of debate since.

[pnwmom]

17. The "could have, should have" questions are useful for debating the ethics

of that situation, to inform our subsequent behavior. Part of the reason we study history is in an effort not to repeat mistakes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. And IMO the WMD mistakes of a far more recent war

Are far more informative here. Sadam had WMD's oops...and we engaged in agressive war, which cost about a million lives, UN estimate.

And pnac is still underway. Two more countries to face regime change in that list. So excuse me while I am very skeptical of the claims made by the government, regardless of letter behind names. When it comes to war and peace, I don't trust DC, the whole lot of them.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Ignorant

The Holocaust, as we understand it, did not really begin until summer 1941 (after the kick-off of Barbarossa), and the Holocaust as systematic destruction in the death camps did not begin until late 1942, and most of the killing happened in 1943-1944. Hell, the Wannsee Conference didn't take place until January 1942. The Germans themselves hadn't decided on how to complete the "task" until at least then. Prior to that, it was the 'Holocaust by Bullets" on the eastern Front, Babi Yar and countless other special "Aktions," and the US government was well aware of these, as were the Russians, who had their own problems.

As far as the more general Holocaust, of course historians date that much earlier, but the mass killing begin after Barbarossa.

Not only are you the one using the Holocaust for political ends, you're doing so ignorantly. You don't even know what you're talking about. And your interlocutor has outmaneuvered you anyway, asking the correct question, which you are unable to answer; wouldn't your very argument suggest that earlier intervention - and intervention for humanitarian reasons - is better? You seem not to understand even the consequences of your own observation, however ignorant it may be.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Kick morning crew

[sad-cafe]

21. oh good god

please re-read your history

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Kick, since I keep seeing this historically incorrect

piece of crap

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. I guess the real history

Is revisionism to neo libs. And I might add the NYT book review is far left too