Researcher Alleges Harvard Was Warm to Nazis at University Events in 1930's

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBFK74SJ1E.html

BOSTON (AP) - Harvard University enhanced the reputation of the Nazi regime when it sanctioned events in the 1930s attended by Nazis, a historian claimed Sunday.

"Harvard remained largely indifferent to the persecution of Germany's Jews," said Stephen H. Norwood, a University of Oklahoma history professor who is writing a book about the response of American universities to the Nazi party. snip

Harvard administrators, alumni and student leaders "remained indifferent to Germany's terrorist campaign against Jews and indeed on numerous occasions assisted the Nazis in their efforts to gain acceptance in the West," he said.

Norwood criticized former Harvard President James Bryant Conant for failing to speak against the Nazis despite numerous opportunities between 1933 and 1937.

He said that during that time, it was widely reported that German Jews were segregated in schools, beaten in the streets, purged from universities and their businesses boycotted. The persecution later culminated in the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews across Europe were executed in Nazi concentration camps.

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[candy]

1. Jeff Jacoby,the conservative on the Boston Globe staff------

has a column on this today.

[DulceDecorum]

2. And yet

Sharon and Bush are pals.

[David Dunham]

3. Stupid article. Conant hated Hitler and helped lead the A-bomb project

[metisnation]

11. Conant

James B. Conant was not really off and running with the Manhattan Project until after that period more like the 1940's, America was in a period of isolationism at that time still recovering from the after shock of WWI.

[TwentyFive]

4. Conservative attack on Harvard? Why am I not surprised!

I think this has the mark of a hidden right wing agenda on it.

[Rose Siding]

5. Perhaps they'll explore American banking practices around the same time?

Surely the public will benefit from having a broader sense of our First Family.

[ithacan]

6. can we add the Bush family to this list...

This is amazing. When right wingers want to smear someone they can bring up the Nazis. What they neglect to mention is how right wingers in this country, including many wealthy republicans, were VERY sympathetic to Hitler and Naziism in general.

They also neglect to point out that in terms of ideology, Nazism, as a version of fascism, is very close to conservativism.

[Julius Civitatus]

8. That's right....

I find it funny when ignorant wingies try to associate Nazis and fascism to the left and liberal causes... while at the same time calling us "commies" and "hippies." I guess you could be either or, but not both, as they seem to be located in opposite sides of the political and cultural spectrum.

Fascism are a radical version of right-wing politics, and Nazism could be considered the ultimate, most radical wing of the right-wing. Somebody should point that to them.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. Ford had something going on with Hitler... just google for Henry

Ford and Hitler to see the rest....


Henry Ford's reward from Hitler finally came in July 1938, when on his seventy-fifth birthday he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Ford was the first American and the fourth person in the world to receive this medal, which was the highest decoration that could be given to any non-German citizen. Benito Mussolini, another of Hitler's financiers, had been decorated with the same honor earlier that year.<128>

[JudyM]

15. IBM, also - gave Hitler the technology to track intended victims

[Julius Civitatus]

7. Another episode of the winger's "cultural crusade"

This is how you should understand this stupid article and the stupid study it reports:

- Them pointy-headed libruls from Taxachussets and their fancy book-learnin' universities don't support our "glorious crusade against evil" as conducted by Fearless Leader.

- Them pointy-headed libruls from Taxachussets didn't condemn Nazis fast enough in their early days.

- Therefore, to that conservative "professor" from Oklahoma, them pointy-headed libruls from Taxachusetts are a bunch of traitors that fail to see that the war on terra is exactly the same (if not more important) than WWII.

This is nothing but another attack on an icon of the "Blue State America" by a conservative group, and trying to give it a sense of credence by having a "professor" write it. Right wing think-tanks do that all the time. They have a huge arsenal of willing "scholars" ready to validate the latest propaganda.

If you dig enough, nobody really condemned the Nazis in their early days because they were viewed as irrelevant and wacky, as sad as it may sound.

By the way... there was a guy that not only did NOT condemn the Nazis, but thought they were a cash cow. His name was Prescott Bush, FYI.

[George_S]

14. Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

Edwin Black

Sunday, November 9, 2003

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL

[gmoney]

9. Don't forget their dearly desired 2008 Candidate

Literal son-of-a-brownshirt Arnie Schwarzenegger...

[Kellanved]

12. *yawn* a cheap attack on one particular University

World War Two and the Holocaust were the fault of exactly one group of humans: the German people. Whatever or not the terrible events could have been averted or lessened is not even an Academic question, it is a fictional one.
The people who had the duty to prevent it, the German Establishment and Intellectuals failed; a majority of the German people went along.
Yes, there were Americans supporting the Nazis, yes the world had too much faith in Germany and the Germans.
But to blame an American University for doing nothing from the perspective of today's "global village" has the ring of revisionist history; especially considering that many International Companies actively supported the fledging Nazi government.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

18. The power elite of the US financed fascism and built Hitler's army.

The US genocide of Native Americans was the model for Hitler's Final Solution of the Jews.

The American eugenics movement also provided a genocidal rationale.

American slavery, lynching, apartheid of Africans did too.

But the money and steel came from the largest US corporations including Ford, DuPont, Prescott Bush and company, etc.

FDR couldn't get armament contracts filled for the US because companies were busy building Hitler's war machine.

General Smedley Butler disparaged Mussolini and was almost jailed for it in the US. Roosevelt had to rescue him from cruxifiction.

Read about the Nazi Hydra in the US from 1919 to present and then see where fascism comes from and who supports it and why.
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/noon.html

[Lisa]

13. check out Dorothy L. Sayers's 1930s novel "Gaudy Night"

It was a mystery story set at Oxford University in England. Sayers was careful to put in a lot of background description -- even though it wasn't intended as such, it's an interesting historical document now, given that it was published prior to the outbreak of war.

Sayers was opposed to fascism, but she notes that there were various people in British society (including some intellectuals and aristocrats) who didn't see anything wrong with what was going on in Germany. She even quotes one university staff member as saying, "What we need is another Hitler" in England! While a number of people are aware of the situation (and several times she has profs and students discussing it), there are plenty who aren't concerned, either because they tacitly approve of the Nazis' social policies (which included job creation initiatives and cracking down on labour unrest), or they want to stay apolitical. One colleague is active in the eugenics movement and is always handing out pamphlets on "sterilization of the unfit" -- not something restricted to fascist sympathizers, but advocated by some progressives (including some feminists).

[George_S]

17. Thanks.

The library has it!

[President Jesus]

16. fact is, nearly every western nation and corp was friendly...

...to Germany in the 20's and 30's.

[Octafish]

19. Harvard may've bought Bush's worthless HARKEN stock.

Using inside information, Bush got out just weeks before the stock tanked. Some large investor purchased it -- and never went public with complaints about being duped. Bush used the cash to buy into the Texas Rangers.

http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/bush_harken.html

Bush is a CROOK.

Bush acts like a NAZI, too.

[starroute]

20. Harvard has never been liberal

At best, it's had a certain number of liberal professors -- but it didn't stand up for those who were there during the McCarthyite period.

Like other Ivy League universities, it was well known as having quotes to keep down the number of Jewish students admitted -- probably as late as the 1950's.

It's full of the children of the elite.

It was not in the lead during the anti-Vietnam student movement in the 60's.

As I recall, it was slow to disinvest from South Africa in the 80's.


During the 30's, the extent to which leading American institutions turned a blind eye to the crimes of the Nazis was an ongoing scandal, reported by people like George Seldes. The fact that it's been so completely forgotten since then may be an even greater scandal.