United States Foreign Policy Toward Jewish Refugees During 1933-1939 :: History Historical foreign Jews Essays

United States Foreign Policy Toward Jewish Refugees During 1933-1939In reviewing the events which gave testify to the U.S.s foreign policytoward Jewish refugees, we must identify the relevant factors upon which suchdecisions were made. Factors including the U.S. establishments policy mechanisms,its bureaucracy and public opinion, coupled with the narrow municipal policy-makingmindedness of President Roosevelt, lead us to ask Why was the Americangovernment apathetic to the point of culpability, and isolationist to the pointof irresponsibility, with respect to the systematic persecution and decompositionof the Jewish people of Europe during the period between 1938-1945?Throughout the age of 1933-1939, led by Neville Chamberlain and theBritish, the United States was pursuing a policy of calming toward Hitler.They had tolerated his military build-up and occupation of the Rhineland, bothviolations of the Treaty of Versailles, as well as the annexing of Austria andthe take-over of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Hitler realized early on inhis expansionist disturb that Western leaders were too busy dealing with theirown domestic problems to pose any real opposition. In the United States,Americans were wrestling with the ravages of the coarse Depression. With thelingering memory of the more than 300,000 U.S. troops either killed or hurtin World War I, isolationism was the dominant sentiment in virtually politicalcircles. Americans were not going to be dragged into another war by theBritish. The Depression had bred increased xenophobia and anti-Semitism, andwith upward of 30% unemployment in some industrial areas1, many Americans wantedto see immigration halted completely. It was in this context that the participatory world, led by the United States, was faced with a refugee problemthat it was morally bound to deal with. The question then became what wouldthey do?Persecution of the Jews in Germany began officially on April1st 1933. Hitler had come to po wer a few weeks in the beginning and he immediately beganthe plan, as outlined in his book Mein Kampf, to manage the eternal mushroomof humanity - Jews.2 German Jews were stripped of their citizenship by theNuremberg laundry Laws of 1935 and had their businesses and stockholdings seized in1938. Civil servants, newspaper editors, soldiers and members of the judiciarywere dismissed from their positions, sequence lawyers and physicians were forbiddento practice. Anti-Jewish violence peaked on 9 November 1938, known as theNight of the Broken Glass or Kristallnacht, when over 1000 synagogues wereburned. Jewish schools, hospitals, books, cemeteries and homes were alsodestroyed3.The mistreatment of non-Aryans in Germany was common knowledge in theU.S. in 1938. afterwards the anschluss, the flow of