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Stephanie Chuang

Professor Susan A. Glenn

HSTAA 365

23 May 2020

The Terrible Denial and Antisemitism, Racism, and Censorship

While it is true that the United States fought with the Allied Powers in World War II to

defeat the Axis Powers, the ugly reality still remains that many Americans had wanted nothing to

do with World War II and fighting Nazis until Pearl Harbor was bombed in December of 1941.

Once there was a direct attack on the United States, only then did Americans feel that they were

morally obligated to join the fight. Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the massacre of Jews,

or as Varian Fry calls it, “The Terrible Truth,” was largely ignored or denied by a significant

amount of the American people. This was due to several reasons, including general antisemitism,

refusal to vilify white Germans, and previous news events of World War I. Firstly, the

discrimination of Jews was not a compelling enough reason to join the war. Antisemitic

tendencies meant that most Americans were not keen on sacrificing their soldiers for the sake of

Jewish people. Secondly, many Americans weren’t inclined to believe that the Germans were

committing such horrific acts. While Americans and the United States government were quick to

put the Japanese Americans in internment camps because they feared their loyalty to the

Japanese Empire, a designated enemy, white Germans Americans never went through that kind

of treatment. In film and real life alike, Americans were insistent on believing in the “good” side

of Germans. Finally, government censorship and previous news experiences from World War I

made Americans skeptical of what they were hearing in the news. The American government
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was careful about mentioning Jews in their reports about what was happening in Europe, so as

not to appear as if they were being influenced by them. Additionally, similar reports of gross

human rights violations had come from Europe during World War I, but were eventually found

to be false, which made Americans even less likely to believe “The Terrible Truth,” during

World War II. To summarize, the lack of collective compassion for the Jews, refusal to vilify

white Germans, censorship and previous instances of inaccurate news reports caused Americans

to be unprepared to believe what the Jews were experiencing in Europe.

American antisemitism was a deliberate force that made Americans question both the

purpose of World War II and the leadership of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, prior

to the Pearl Harbor incident, was trying to lend support to the Allied Powers without inciting too

much criticism. “President Roosevelt had to walk a fine line between maintaining America’s

official ‘neutrality’ and his growing conviction that the United States could not remain aloof

from the events in Europe” (Glenn Lecture, Week 5). The fact is that Roosevelt could have just

barged into Europe and dragged the United States in World War II right away, but he would’ve

risked his reelection and position as president for a cause that did not resonate with many

Americans at the time, due to existing antisemitism. One prominent example of this was Charles

Lindberg, the leader of America First, a group of 850,000 people who supported isolationism, a

movement opposed to American involvement in World War II. Lindberg claimed, in an article

for the ​Chicago Daily Tribune,​ just two months before Pearl Harbor, “As I have said, these war

agitators [the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration] comprise only a small

minority of our people; but they control a great influence” (Lindberg, “F.D.R. Creating War

Incidents,” 102). Lindberg was a huge opponent of President Roosevelt, and in this claim, he
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attempted to alienate the Roosevelt Administration and the Jewish along with the British in a

way that implies that it is their fault that the United States is on the brink of war, even though

very few people actually support it. Later, in the article, even though he claimed to be

understanding of why the Jews were indignant about what was going on, directly after, he says of

them, “their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our

motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government” (Lindberg, “F.D.R. Creating War

Incidents,” 102). Lindberg was trying to promote isolationism and pretend to empathize with

American Jews, but in actuality, he wasn’t sympathetic towards them at all, and was prepared to

blame them for any potential war involvement. Lindberg wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

Other isolationists included Henry Ford, a known anti-semite, pro-Hitler ideologues, and Irish

Americans who hated Britain (Glenn lecture, Week 5). An article from the ​New Republic

exposes the antisemitic undertones of Lindberg’s claims, and by extension, the beliefs of the

850,000 member organization he represented. It states, “Just as the sinking of an American ship

by a Nazi raider is is not an isolated ‘incident,’ so Lindberg’s threat to the American Jews, stark

as it is, must not be viewed by itself” (“Lindberg’s Nazi Pattern,” 104). By itself, Lindberg’s

comments could be passed off as just genuine concern for his country, but in the context of the

war, it has a more sinister meaning. The author accuses Lindberg of hiding behind fake

patriotism in order to stir discontent among a minority; the hypocrisy of Lindberg’s words lies in

the fact that they are startlingly similar to the early claims of the Nazis, “And in doing so he is, in

effect, inviting all the separate hate-groups to combine in a common hatred of the Jews”

(“Lindberg’s Nazi Pattern,” 104). As a public figure, Lindberg knew he couldn’t appear too

approving of what was going on in Europe, but he still subtly implied that the Germans weren’t
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the villains here, the Jews were. Lindberg was only one man, but he represented a large group of

people, and his political influence speaks to the number of Americans who agreed with him. This

kind of disdain for Jewish people among Americans was also common enough for President

Roosevelt to feel that he had to be careful about how he framed World War II, or else Jews

would be turned into a scapegoat and further ostracized when they needed help the most.

Though the Germans were the leading force of the Axis Powers, Americans refused to

believe that they were anything but a misfortunate, misled country. This belief is evident in the

way Japanese Americans and German Americans were treated during World War II. Both Japan

and Germany were members of the Axis Powers, but they were perceived very differently to the

American people. “Many, if not most, Americans saw Nazi Germany as having strayed from the

path of ‘civilization.’ Thus they distinguished between ‘good Germans’ and ‘evil Nazis.’ By

contrast, Americans viewed all Japanese as identical. To most, there was no such thing as a

‘good Japanese’” (Glenn Lecture, Week 6). Any benefits of the doubt that were offered to the

Germans were most certainly denied to the Japanese. Additionally, the belief of the American

military was that “the only good Jap is a dead Jap,” but the German soldiers were “boys like us”

(Glenn Lecture, Week 6). Americans were already discriminating towards Asian people prior to

World War II, but once World War II did start, it gave the ultimate reason to justify that kind of

subhuman treatment (Glenn Lecture, Week 6). This is also evident in the films ​Casablanca​ and

Bataan.​ The former featured the Germans, and the latter featured the Japanese. ​Casablanca

portrays Nazi military officers as classy, refined gentlemen who are high enough to dine with the

main character, the metaphorical equivalent of America, Rick (​Casablanca​, 1942). One of the

German subordinates is even given somewhat of a redemption arc towards the end of the film.
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By contrast, the Japanese in ​Bataan​ are portrayed as subhuman animals (​Bataan​, 1942). They

have no lines, names, or even faces. Multiple monkey and jungle stereotype comments are made

in the film as if it were completely normal (​Bataan,​ 1942). Perhaps the most stark difference in

treatment of Germans and the Japanese lies in the fact that all Japanese Americans were placed

in internment camps without due process, and their loyalty to the United States placed under

great scrutiny by Executive Order 9066 (Glenn Lecture, Week 6). While some German

Americans and Italian Americans were also targeted by this act, on a large scale, they didn’t

experience the rights violations that the Japanese did. The truth of the matter is that at the time,

the American people, government, and military, did not want to believe that the Germans were

their enemy. This might have been less apparent on its own had it not been for the Japanese, the

Germans’ political ally and equivalent, who were treated so poorly both at home, on screen, and

on the battlefield. The refusal to see the Nazis for what they were was a result of preexisting

racism, and fed American denial of “The Terrible Truth.”

Another contributing factor to Americans’ unpreparedness for believing “The Terrible

Truth” came from government censorship and past false reports. In World War I, similar reports

of horrific activities had been reported in Europe, only to be later found out as false. Varian Fry

writes in his ​New Republic​ article on December 21, 1942, “Our skepticism has been fortified by

our experience with ‘atrocity stories’ from the last war … Later, when the bitterness of war had

subsided … most of these atrocities were found to have been invented” (Fry, “The Massacre of

the Jews,” 127). In a metaphorical sense, Europe had already cried wolf once, and even though

Fry confirmed the troubling reports were true this time, the United States wasn’t going to fall for

it again. An important thing to note is that Fry’s article was written in 1942, after Pearl Harbor
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was bombed and the United States had already entered the war. Even then, when Americans

were already involved in World War II, Fry was still pleading for Americans to believe and pay

attention to what was happening in Europe, a sure indication of how deliberate American denial

was. Another important aspect of this, particularly in our early years of involvement, was

government censorship, or the general refusal to mention the Jews when discussing the Nazis in

politics or the news. Breckinridge Long, the Assistant Secretary of State at the time, not only

restricted the ability of Jewish refugees to enter the United States, but censored reports about the

mass murder of Jews in order to avoid public pressure to aid them (Glenn Lecture, Week 5). The

mention of Jews was something that was always handled very delicately, for fear of the United

States government seeming too pro Jew, something that could cause a lot of backlash due to

existing antisemitism or seemingly confirming the Nazis’ accusations. The Office of War

Information, the U.S. State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Dept. of Defense

were also some of the government entities who opposed publicizing Nazi atrocities against Jews

because they feared that it would be taken as pro-Jewish “propaganda,” and further prove the

Nazi belief that the Jews controlled the state and media (Glenn Lecture, Week 5). The omission

of the Jewish people and the horrors they experienced in wartime news meant that the details of

the worst that was happening to the Jews in Europe was, for a time, largely concealed from

Americans. The United States wanted to fight Germany and the Axis Powers, but not actively

appear like they were helping the Jewish people. Even in ​Casablanca​, Jews or the massacre of

Jews are never mentioned. Victims of the Nazi regime are all treated as one nameless entity

(​Casablanca​, 1942). Seeing as the movie’s purpose was to inspire American involvement in the

war, it would make sense for it not to mention the Jews, for fear of seeming like exactly what
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isolationists would accuse it of being. The government censorship was something done both to

avoid public pressure to help the Jews, but also in fear of seeming too pro Jew. While the latter is

more of an unfortunate consequence of the Roosevelt Administration’s attempts to appear neutral

to avoid domestic disturbance and existing antisemitism, the former is the more significant

contributor of Americans’ denial of “The Terrible Truth.” Without the complete information on

what was going on in Europe, there was no chance of Americans being prepared to understand

and believe what was happening, and why it was imperative that their government and military

join the fight against the Axis Powers.

In conclusion, Americans’ convictions about “The Terrible Truth” were weak due to their

antisemitism, racism, skepticism and censorship. Widespread antisemitism meant that the

horrible things happening to Jewish people in Europe wouldn’t alone be enough to convince

Americans to join the fight. Extended sympathy for the Germans, but not the Japanese, meant

that Americans were also reluctant to fight them in battle. Previously falsified reports from

World War I and government censorship meant that not only were Americans not getting the full

story, but even if they did, they already felt they had been tricked before and weren’t keen on

falling for it again. Eventually, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and when reports of genocide

grew increasingly evident, President Roosevelt was able to officially take a bolder stance against

the Axis Powers and join the war. Until then, there was a lack of sympathy for the main victims

of WWII, the Jews, too much sympathy for the main perpetrators of WWII, the Germans, and

any chance of this being reversed by reports of what was actually going on in Europe wasn’t

going to happen if the United States Government had anything to do about it. Altogether, these
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factors really expose why Americans both wouldn’t, as a result of collective racism and

prejudice, and couldn’t, as a result of skepticism and censorship, believe “The Terrible Truth.”