After President Franklin D. Roosevelt learned that Hitler was slaughtering the Jews, he created a government agency to try to rescue them–so said the new Ken Burns documentary, “The Roosevelts,” which aired on PBS earlier this month.
Burns’s depiction of FDR’s response to the Holocaust is an excellent example of something that is technically true–yet is, in fact, utterly misleading.
“When news began to reach [Roosevelt] at the end of 1942 that the Germans had moved on from mistreatment to mass murder,” the narrator of ‘The Roosevelts’ recounted in episode #6, “he joined Churchill and Stalin and ten Allied governments in exile in promising to prosecute and publish those responsible for what they called ‘this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.’ ”
Technically true, but profoundly misleading.
The president did not exactly rush to acknowledge and condemn the mass murders. In fact, when information about the killings began reaching Washington in mid-1942, Roosevelt administration officials suppressed it. When that information reached American Jewish leaders from another source, U.S. officials pressed them to hold back the news until it could be investigated further. Finally, three months later, the administration grudgingly conceded that the information was correct.
Even at that point, the White House was in no hurry to speak out. It was the British government that suggested issuing a joint Allied statement about the killings. Roosevelt’s State Department at first resisted the proposal, fearing–as one official put it–that “the various Governments of the United Nations [as the Allies were informally known] would expose themselves to increased pressure from all sides to do something more specific in order to aid these people.”
The Roosevelt administration eventually went along with the joint Allied statement, but only after watering down some of the language. For example, the proposed phrase “reports from Europe which leave no doubt” (that mass murder was underway) was whittled down to just “numerous reports from Europe.”
Back to the Ken Burns version of history: “And [President Roosevelt] eventually created the War Refugee Board, that provided funds and authorization to help Jews flee from the edges of the Nazi empire.”
“Eventually” is what we might call a wiggle word. It’s correct, but it’s so vague that the listener has no idea whether it means four weeks or four months. In this case, it actually meant 14 months.
After verbally condemning the mass murder (in December 1942), President Roosevelt shunted the issue aside. That’s where it would have remained, except for the fact that in late 1943, senior aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. discovered that State Department officials had been blocking transmission of Holocaust-related information to the U.S. and obstructing opportunities to rescue Jews from Hitler.
Meanwhile, at almost the same time, the rescue issue was reaching the boiling point on Capitol Hill and in the press. Throughout 1943, the Jewish activists known as the Bergson group had been waging a campaign of rallies, full-page newspaper ads, and lobbying Congress for U.S. rescue action. In November, Members of Congress introduced a Bergson-inspired resolution calling for creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue refugees.
The agency that the activists had in mind ultimately came into existence as the War Refugee Board–that’s the board which Ken Burns credits Roosevelt for establishing. The problem is that the White House actively opposed the resolution that urged creating the board.
In other words, FDR was against the refugee board before he was for it.
The Roosevelt administration’s attempt to block the resolution in the House of Representatives backfired. FDR’s old friend Breckinridge Long, the assistant secretary of state in charge of refugee matters, gave wildly misleading testimony about the number of refugees who had already been admitted into the country. Long’s lies were quickly exposed, triggering a wave of criticism of the administration. Meanwhile, the rescue resolution was quickly approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It was against this backdrop of congressional pressure and Jewish protests that Secretary Morgenthau met with the president in January 1944. He explained to FDR what his aides had discovered about the State Department blocking rescue, and he warned that “you have either got to move very fast, or the Congress of the United States will do it for you.” Ten months before election day, the last thing FDR wanted was a public scandal over the refugee issue. Within days, Roosevelt did what the Congressional resolution sought–he issued an executive order creating the War Refugee Board.
So, yes–Roosevelt did indeed “eventually” establish the board, as Ken Burns put it. But he did so only after the administration’s attempt to kill the board proposal failed. And it took him 14 months from the time the genocide news was confirmed–14 crucial months in which much more could have been done to rescue Jews from Hitler.
When it came to President Roosevelt’s creation of the War Refugee Board, Ken Burns’ “The Roosevelts” got it wrong. Praising FDR for establishing the board that he fought against tooth and nail is giving him credit where credit isn’t due.
After President Franklin D. Roosevelt learned that Hitler was slaughtering the Jews, he created a government agency to try to rescue them–so said the new Ken Burns documentary, “The Roosevelts,” which aired on PBS earlier this month.
Burns’s depiction of FDR’s response to the Holocaust is an excellent example of something that is technically true–yet is, in fact, utterly misleading.
“When news began to reach [Roosevelt] at the end of 1942 that the Germans had moved on from mistreatment to mass murder,” the narrator of ‘The Roosevelts’ recounted in episode #6, “he joined Churchill and Stalin and ten Allied governments in exile in promising to prosecute and publish those responsible for what they called ‘this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.’ ”
Technically true, but profoundly misleading.
The president did not exactly rush to acknowledge and condemn the mass murders. In fact, when information about the killings began reaching Washington in mid-1942, Roosevelt administration officials suppressed it. When that information reached American Jewish leaders from another source, U.S. officials pressed them to hold back the news until it could be investigated further. Finally, three months later, the administration grudgingly conceded that the information was correct.
Even at that point, the White House was in no hurry to speak out. It was the British government that suggested issuing a joint Allied statement about the killings. Roosevelt’s State Department at first resisted the proposal, fearing–as one official put it–that “the various Governments of the United Nations [as the Allies were informally known] would expose themselves to increased pressure from all sides to do something more specific in order to aid these people.”
The Roosevelt administration eventually went along with the joint Allied statement, but only after watering down some of the language. For example, the proposed phrase “reports from Europe which leave no doubt” (that mass murder was underway) was whittled down to just “numerous reports from Europe.”
Back to the Ken Burns version of history: “And [President Roosevelt] eventually created the War Refugee Board, that provided funds and authorization to help Jews flee from the edges of the Nazi empire.”
“Eventually” is what we might call a wiggle word. It’s correct, but it’s so vague that the listener has no idea whether it means four weeks or four months. In this case, it actually meant 14 months.
After verbally condemning the mass murder (in December 1942), President Roosevelt shunted the issue aside. That’s where it would have remained, except for the fact that in late 1943, senior aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. discovered that State Department officials had been blocking transmission of Holocaust-related information to the U.S. and obstructing opportunities to rescue Jews from Hitler.
Meanwhile, at almost the same time, the rescue issue was reaching the boiling point on Capitol Hill and in the press. Throughout 1943, the Jewish activists known as the Bergson group had been waging a campaign of rallies, full-page newspaper ads, and lobbying Congress for U.S. rescue action. In November, Members of Congress introduced a Bergson-inspired resolution calling for creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue refugees.
The agency that the activists had in mind ultimately came into existence as the War Refugee Board–that’s the board which Ken Burns credits Roosevelt for establishing. The problem is that the White House actively opposed the resolution that urged creating the board.
In other words, FDR was against the refugee board before he was for it.
The Roosevelt administration’s attempt to block the resolution in the House of Representatives backfired. FDR’s old friend Breckinridge Long, the assistant secretary of state in charge of refugee matters, gave wildly misleading testimony about the number of refugees who had already been admitted into the country. Long’s lies were quickly exposed, triggering a wave of criticism of the administration. Meanwhile, the rescue resolution was quickly approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It was against this backdrop of congressional pressure and Jewish protests that Secretary Morgenthau met with the president in January 1944. He explained to FDR what his aides had discovered about the State Department blocking rescue, and he warned that “you have either got to move very fast, or the Congress of the United States will do it for you.” Ten months before election day, the last thing FDR wanted was a public scandal over the refugee issue. Within days, Roosevelt did what the Congressional resolution sought–he issued an executive order creating the War Refugee Board.
So, yes–Roosevelt did indeed “eventually” establish the board, as Ken Burns put it. But he did so only after the administration’s attempt to kill the board proposal failed. And it took him 14 months from the time the genocide news was confirmed–14 crucial months in which much more could have been done to rescue Jews from Hitler.
When it came to President Roosevelt’s creation of the War Refugee Board, Ken Burns’ “The Roosevelts” got it wrong. Praising FDR for establishing the board that he fought against tooth and nail is giving him credit where credit isn’t due.