On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Immediately, newspapers in the United States printed articles speculating about how the Nazi Party’s political goals and antisemitic policies might transform Germany. The
Boston Globe, for example, reported on February 1 that the Nazis were already warning that “Jews who got out early would be wise.” Nevertheless, some American journalists wondered whether power would curb Hitler’s radicalism. Others, however, feared that Hitler would act on his antisemitic rhetoric and considered some Jews’ fear of Hitler as justified.
In the spring of 1933, Nazi attacks on German Jews increased. Dozens of American journalists stationed in Nazi Germany submitted reports to US newspapers nationwide about what they were witnessing. On the front pages of their newspapers, Americans could read about the April 1
boycott of Jewish businesses; the April 7 “
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,” which excluded Jews and the “politically unreliable” from the civil service; and about the May 10
book burnings. Americans could see photographs of these events in popular magazines such as
Time, Newsweek, and others. Journalists also reported that Americans were being attacked by Nazi storm troopers (
Sturmabteilung, or SA) or by pro-Nazi crowds on the streets of Germany for laughing at an anti-Nazi joke, refusing to salute the Nazi flag, or just because the attackers thought the victim looked Jewish. US diplomats protested some of the three dozen attacks on Americans in Germany in 1933, but did not issue a formal statement against the Nazi treatment of Germany’s Jews.
As Americans read these press reports, the United States was in its fourth year of suffering through the effects of the Great Depression. Some twenty-five percent of workers were unemployed. The new US President,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, inaugurated on March 4, 1933, promised the country a “New Deal” and immediately embarked upon an ambitious agenda to repair the US economy. The president, as well as many Americans, was more focused on the serious domestic problems than on the persecution of a minority group thousands of miles away in Nazi Germany.
www.ledauphine.com
