The History Book Club discussion

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Hanns and Rudolf
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
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BIBLIOGRAPHY - MILITARY SERIES - HANNS AND RUDOLF - (SPOILER THREAD)
date
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A
The following book is not in goodreads nor is the author.
Alexander, John. A Memory of Time. A self-published history of the Alexander family.
by
Hannah Arendt
(no image) Kl Auschwitz Seen by the Ss by Hoss Broad Kremer (no photo)
The following book is not in goodreads nor is the author.
Alexander, John. A Memory of Time. A self-published history of the Alexander family.


(no image) Kl Auschwitz Seen by the Ss by Hoss Broad Kremer (no photo)
G
by
Gustave Mark Gilbert
by Martin Gilbert (no photo)
by Antony Godfrey (no photo)
by Leon Goldensohn (no photo)
by
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen







L
by Hermann Langbein (no photo)
by Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (no photo)
by Norbert Lebert (no photo)
by
Robert Jay Lifton
by Peter Longerich (no photo)






S
by
Tom Segev
by Ben Shephard (no photo)
by Bradley F. Smith (no photo)
by Michael Smith (no photo)
by Sybille Steinbacher (no photo)









Another post from Kressel:
Well, it opens up for me what is fast becoming my favorite "theory of everything." Two weeks ago at my Shabbos class, the speaker was a psychology professor. She recommended a book called Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity by Erving Goffman, and summarized it by contrasting "status" from "stigma." The Alexanders, as a wealthy family, had status. Rudolf, and many other veterans like him, felt stigmatized by Germany's loss. They joined groups like the Freikorps to win back some of Germany's status, which in turn would give them some, too. And one way to take away someone else's status is to reverse it by stigmatizing them, which is exactly what the Nazis did with the Jews.
I think the same applies in our other group read, The Last Days of the Incas. Pizarro was stigmatized in Spain; he was an illegitimate child. The only way he could gain any status in Spain at all was by becoming a conquistador, so he did. It might also explain why Gonzalo was so obsessed with Manco Inca's queen. She was the ultimate status symbol.
One more citation: if you read The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, you'll see another quest for status. Hitler was trying to stock up his own personal museum with all the best artwork in the world. Talk about status symbols! Why can't people ever be satisfied?
Citations:
by
Erving Goffman
by
Kim MacQuarrie
Well, it opens up for me what is fast becoming my favorite "theory of everything." Two weeks ago at my Shabbos class, the speaker was a psychology professor. She recommended a book called Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity by Erving Goffman, and summarized it by contrasting "status" from "stigma." The Alexanders, as a wealthy family, had status. Rudolf, and many other veterans like him, felt stigmatized by Germany's loss. They joined groups like the Freikorps to win back some of Germany's status, which in turn would give them some, too. And one way to take away someone else's status is to reverse it by stigmatizing them, which is exactly what the Nazis did with the Jews.
I think the same applies in our other group read, The Last Days of the Incas. Pizarro was stigmatized in Spain; he was an illegitimate child. The only way he could gain any status in Spain at all was by becoming a conquistador, so he did. It might also explain why Gonzalo was so obsessed with Manco Inca's queen. She was the ultimate status symbol.
One more citation: if you read The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, you'll see another quest for status. Hitler was trying to stock up his own personal museum with all the best artwork in the world. Talk about status symbols! Why can't people ever be satisfied?
Citations:




Here is an article which discusses both sides of the coin - the folks who think that FDR did as much as he could and the others who feel that he did not.
FDR's Jewish Problem
How did a president beloved by Jews come to be regarded as an anti-Semite who refused to save them from the Nazis?
Laurence Zuckerman July 17, 2013 | This article appeared in the August 5-12, 2013 edition of The Nation.
Read the article and post some of your thoughts as well as read the article in the next two posts which will present just another frame of reference or two.
FDR's Jewish Problem
How did a president beloved by Jews come to be regarded as an anti-Semite who refused to save them from the Nazis?
Laurence Zuckerman July 17, 2013 | This article appeared in the August 5-12, 2013 edition of The Nation.
Read the article and post some of your thoughts as well as read the article in the next two posts which will present just another frame of reference or two.
Here is another -
WHEN GEORGE BUSH saw pictures of Auschwitz at Yad Vashem, Israel’s museum of the Holocaust, he said � with “tears in his eyes� � “we should have bombed it.� That’s what The New York Times reported in 2008. Could he have read The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941�1945 by David Wyman? That’s the 1984 book that made the refusal to bomb Auschwitz the lasting symbol of FDR’s failure to help Jews in World War II Europe. Wyman, the grandson of two Protestant ministers and a historian at Amherst College, pointed out that American planes based in Italy were bombing industrial targets not far from Auschwitz in May 1944, and one day even bombed Auschwitz by mistake. Several Jewish groups and leaders had requested the bombing of the gas chambers or the rail lines leading to the death camp. The military opposed it, arguing their priority was defeating Hitler’s armies, not protecting Jews. The request got as high as John J. McCloy, FDR’s Assistant Secretary of War, who rejected it, noting simply, “No reply necessary.�
There’s an entire book about it: The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? by Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum � a debate among 15 historians, including Martin Gilbert, Walter Laqueur, and Deborah Lipstadt, based on a 1993 conference at the Smithsonian Institution, sponsored by the National Air and Space Museum and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mostly they argue that bombing was feasible, but the US lacked the will to do it.
With their book FDR and the Jews, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman hope to have the last word on the bomb-Auschwitz debate, as well as the larger one it stands for � whether FDR was a “bystander� to the Holocaust. The book � which would have been unthinkable before the 1960s � is significant not only for its new research and cogent argument, but also for what it reveals about the state of Jewish self-consciousness in America today. The authors� conclusion is that FDR was not a “bystander.� He did more to help Jews than any other leader anywhere in the world. Although he decided on many occasions to overlook threats to European Jews, those decisions were based on astute political judgments about what the American public and Congress would accept. The bomb-Auschwitz proposal never reached FDR, they point out, so it’s wrong to say the decision was his. But even if the question had been posed to him, they say, he would have followed the advice of the military � especially since “every major American Jewish leader and organization that he respected remained silent on the matter, as did all influential members of Congress and opinion-makers in the mainstream media.� Finally, they argue, even if the Allies had bombed Auschwitz, it wouldn’t have saved very many Jewish lives because the Nazis had other “mechanisms� for the Final Solution, especially shooting Jews.
While the book ends by taking up the bomb-Auschwitz debate, it covers a great deal of other territory, dividing FDR’s responses to Hitler over 12 years into four phases � an approach that is thoughtful and persuasive. During his first term, 1933�37, he was a “bystander to Nazi persecution,� not because he was an anti-Semite or didn’t care, but because fighting unemployment and bank failures and winning a second term took precedence over everything else, including helping the Jews of Europe. After his triumphant reelection in 1936, as Hitler grew more menacing, FDR took action to loosen some immigration restrictions and to work on resettling European Jews elsewhere in the world � including Palestine; he pressured the British to keep it open to Jewish immigrants.
After World War II began, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, FDR began a third phase, putting war preparations and foreign policy first and setting aside Jewish anxiety about the millions living in Nazi-occupied Poland. At a time when isolationism was dominant in America, and FDR knew US support for Britain and the USSR was essential to the defeat of Hitler, he avoided any appearance of sympathy to Jewish concerns, believing � correctly � that Americans would oppose going to war to save European Jews. He argued privately that the best way to save Jews was to defeat Hitler.
Late in 1943, as victory came closer, he reversed course and took up Jewish issues, openly denouncing anti-Semitism and establishing a War Refugee Board to help rescue Jews who had not been killed. Again he worked to make Palestine a Jewish homeland, and, despite failing health, personally met with the Saudi king. While he didn’t bomb Auschwitz, he tried to do other things to help Hitler’s Jewish victims.
Of course FDR, like all leaders, acted not just on the basis of his own beliefs and feelings, but in response to political pressure. FDR and the Jews addresses the conflicting demands put forward by Jewish organizations, but from my perspective there’s not enough here about how Jewish leaders and organizations organized rallies and found allies � how they engaged in public persuasion and political pressure that got FDR to act. There is some damning material about the refusal of some Jewish organizations to engage in popular politics, but to their credit, Rabbi Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Congress organized rallies in March 1933 in Madison Square Garden, and Columbus Circle, and Brooklyn, and tens of thousands participated. But the American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith condemned “boycotts, parades, mass meetings and other similar demonstrations� on behalf of Jews in Germany. They argued that “agitation serves only to furnish the persecutors with a pretext to justify the wrongs they perpetuate,� and that quiet diplomacy and lobbying was the best approach. Others countered with an argument that has become familiar in more recent times in another context: silence equals death.
It’s fascinating to see what moved Rabbi Wise to organize mass rallies: “If we do not,� he wrote, “there will be Socialist Jewish meetings [and] Communist Jewish demonstrations.� This brief quote strongly suggests that the left was a key to mobilizing the center, if only to preempt them on this key issue.
The Madison Square Garden rally � March 27, 1933 � was a great one. It featured the Catholic Al Smith and prominent Protestants including an Episcopalian bishop and a Methodist bishop, along with Senator Robert F. Wagner, the president of the AFL, and the Republican who ran against FDR for governor in 1930 � a truly impressive interfaith lineup. Smith, who had been the first Catholic to run for president, said “the only thing to do with bigotry,� whether anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish, “is to drag it out into the open sunlight and give it the same treatment that we gave the Ku Klux Klan.� Thousands more attended rallies in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Newark, and Washington, DC � the United Press estimated that a million people had participated in hundreds of protests, “one of the largest political demonstrations to date in American history.�
Jews could organize and campaign and appeal and negotiate, but they lived in a world of limited possibilities and counter pressures and bureaucratic inertia and open hostility. It was FDR’s task to assess those possibilities and deal with those hostilities. This book is very much about politics as “the art of the possible,� rather than an exercise in what Max Weber criticized as “the politics of ultimate ends.�
There’s no question that a lot of Americans didn’t care about the fate of the Jews in the 1930s, including some of FDR’s top advisors. But the authors remind us that a lot of people don’t care about the fate of Darfur today and didn’t care about Kosovo or Rwanda in the 1990s. Jews are among them. It’s hard to get people to do something to help strangers.
Could FDR have done more? Breitman and Lichtman’s answer is “certainly yes.� He could have taken in Jewish children as refugees; he could have filled � or even enlarged � immigration quotas for Jews from Europe; he could have pressed the British harder to let more Jews enter Palestine. Maybe he would have succeeded. But it’s hard for us to be sure. As the authors show, FDR was the master politician of his time, so his judgment of what was possible counts for quite a bit. And given that, the people second-guessing him today are probably wrong.
¤
There was a time, not so long ago, when American Jews were not obsessed with the Holocaust. For 25 years after World War II, a book like FDR and the Jews was unnecessary � indeed unthinkable. American Jews loved and revered FDR for leading the Allies in defeating Hitler. Before the 1960s, few thought of the Holocaust as a singular historical event. Yes, American Jews spoke of “the six million.� But for Jews and non-Jews alike, it was the deaths of 50 million people that defined the war. Jews understood themselves to be one group among many that suffered immense and heartbreaking losses. Anne Frank was often quoted on this theme: “we’re not the only people that have had to suffer,� she wrote; “sometimes it’s one race, sometimes another.�
In the years following World War II, 1946�48, as Peter Novick showed in his crucial 1999 book The Holocaust in American Life, the leading Jewish organizations unanimously rejected the idea of a Holocaust memorial in New York City. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, and Jewish War Veterans all opposed a monument � on the grounds that it would be “a perpetual memorial to the weakness and defenseless of the Jewish people� and thus would “not be in the best interests of Jewry.� Again Anne Frank was quoted: she wrote that she longed for a time “when we are people again, not just Jews.� That was pretty much the story for 25 years after the war.
Jewish thinking about World War II was transformed by the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. That trial, Novick shows, marked the first time that what we call the Holocaust was presented to the American public as a historical event in its own right, distinct from Nazi barbarism in general. The word “Holocaust� came into common usage only at that point, as the official Israeli translation of the term they use at Yad Vashem � “shoah.� The next big step in what we can call “Holocaust consciousness� came with the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which suggested briefly the vulnerability of Israel, and the final step came in 1993 with the opening of the official United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Its theme is that Jews were victims, and gentiles were either persecutors or guilty bystanders. Wyman’s Abandonment of the Jews placed FDR firmly in the latter camp.
Thus, starting in the 1970s, official Judaism made the Holocaust in general and Auschwitz in particular the center of Jewish self-consciousness in America. That has meant that Jewish organizations have emphasized the status of Jews as victims. The criticism of FDR has been part of this larger phenomenon, in which Jewish organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center bombard Jews with scare stories about renewed threats of anti-Semitism from neo-Nazis in America. The central question was a frightening one: if FDR wouldn’t stop the genocide of the Jews in the 1940s, would anybody do anything different today? The implication is that, when adversity threatens, the Jews have had no friends, which means that constant vigilance and suspicion of others are necessary, along with unquestioning support for an Israel that is mighty and uncompromising.
Continued on next post:
WHEN GEORGE BUSH saw pictures of Auschwitz at Yad Vashem, Israel’s museum of the Holocaust, he said � with “tears in his eyes� � “we should have bombed it.� That’s what The New York Times reported in 2008. Could he have read The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941�1945 by David Wyman? That’s the 1984 book that made the refusal to bomb Auschwitz the lasting symbol of FDR’s failure to help Jews in World War II Europe. Wyman, the grandson of two Protestant ministers and a historian at Amherst College, pointed out that American planes based in Italy were bombing industrial targets not far from Auschwitz in May 1944, and one day even bombed Auschwitz by mistake. Several Jewish groups and leaders had requested the bombing of the gas chambers or the rail lines leading to the death camp. The military opposed it, arguing their priority was defeating Hitler’s armies, not protecting Jews. The request got as high as John J. McCloy, FDR’s Assistant Secretary of War, who rejected it, noting simply, “No reply necessary.�
There’s an entire book about it: The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? by Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum � a debate among 15 historians, including Martin Gilbert, Walter Laqueur, and Deborah Lipstadt, based on a 1993 conference at the Smithsonian Institution, sponsored by the National Air and Space Museum and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mostly they argue that bombing was feasible, but the US lacked the will to do it.
With their book FDR and the Jews, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman hope to have the last word on the bomb-Auschwitz debate, as well as the larger one it stands for � whether FDR was a “bystander� to the Holocaust. The book � which would have been unthinkable before the 1960s � is significant not only for its new research and cogent argument, but also for what it reveals about the state of Jewish self-consciousness in America today. The authors� conclusion is that FDR was not a “bystander.� He did more to help Jews than any other leader anywhere in the world. Although he decided on many occasions to overlook threats to European Jews, those decisions were based on astute political judgments about what the American public and Congress would accept. The bomb-Auschwitz proposal never reached FDR, they point out, so it’s wrong to say the decision was his. But even if the question had been posed to him, they say, he would have followed the advice of the military � especially since “every major American Jewish leader and organization that he respected remained silent on the matter, as did all influential members of Congress and opinion-makers in the mainstream media.� Finally, they argue, even if the Allies had bombed Auschwitz, it wouldn’t have saved very many Jewish lives because the Nazis had other “mechanisms� for the Final Solution, especially shooting Jews.
While the book ends by taking up the bomb-Auschwitz debate, it covers a great deal of other territory, dividing FDR’s responses to Hitler over 12 years into four phases � an approach that is thoughtful and persuasive. During his first term, 1933�37, he was a “bystander to Nazi persecution,� not because he was an anti-Semite or didn’t care, but because fighting unemployment and bank failures and winning a second term took precedence over everything else, including helping the Jews of Europe. After his triumphant reelection in 1936, as Hitler grew more menacing, FDR took action to loosen some immigration restrictions and to work on resettling European Jews elsewhere in the world � including Palestine; he pressured the British to keep it open to Jewish immigrants.
After World War II began, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, FDR began a third phase, putting war preparations and foreign policy first and setting aside Jewish anxiety about the millions living in Nazi-occupied Poland. At a time when isolationism was dominant in America, and FDR knew US support for Britain and the USSR was essential to the defeat of Hitler, he avoided any appearance of sympathy to Jewish concerns, believing � correctly � that Americans would oppose going to war to save European Jews. He argued privately that the best way to save Jews was to defeat Hitler.
Late in 1943, as victory came closer, he reversed course and took up Jewish issues, openly denouncing anti-Semitism and establishing a War Refugee Board to help rescue Jews who had not been killed. Again he worked to make Palestine a Jewish homeland, and, despite failing health, personally met with the Saudi king. While he didn’t bomb Auschwitz, he tried to do other things to help Hitler’s Jewish victims.
Of course FDR, like all leaders, acted not just on the basis of his own beliefs and feelings, but in response to political pressure. FDR and the Jews addresses the conflicting demands put forward by Jewish organizations, but from my perspective there’s not enough here about how Jewish leaders and organizations organized rallies and found allies � how they engaged in public persuasion and political pressure that got FDR to act. There is some damning material about the refusal of some Jewish organizations to engage in popular politics, but to their credit, Rabbi Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Congress organized rallies in March 1933 in Madison Square Garden, and Columbus Circle, and Brooklyn, and tens of thousands participated. But the American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith condemned “boycotts, parades, mass meetings and other similar demonstrations� on behalf of Jews in Germany. They argued that “agitation serves only to furnish the persecutors with a pretext to justify the wrongs they perpetuate,� and that quiet diplomacy and lobbying was the best approach. Others countered with an argument that has become familiar in more recent times in another context: silence equals death.
It’s fascinating to see what moved Rabbi Wise to organize mass rallies: “If we do not,� he wrote, “there will be Socialist Jewish meetings [and] Communist Jewish demonstrations.� This brief quote strongly suggests that the left was a key to mobilizing the center, if only to preempt them on this key issue.
The Madison Square Garden rally � March 27, 1933 � was a great one. It featured the Catholic Al Smith and prominent Protestants including an Episcopalian bishop and a Methodist bishop, along with Senator Robert F. Wagner, the president of the AFL, and the Republican who ran against FDR for governor in 1930 � a truly impressive interfaith lineup. Smith, who had been the first Catholic to run for president, said “the only thing to do with bigotry,� whether anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish, “is to drag it out into the open sunlight and give it the same treatment that we gave the Ku Klux Klan.� Thousands more attended rallies in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Newark, and Washington, DC � the United Press estimated that a million people had participated in hundreds of protests, “one of the largest political demonstrations to date in American history.�
Jews could organize and campaign and appeal and negotiate, but they lived in a world of limited possibilities and counter pressures and bureaucratic inertia and open hostility. It was FDR’s task to assess those possibilities and deal with those hostilities. This book is very much about politics as “the art of the possible,� rather than an exercise in what Max Weber criticized as “the politics of ultimate ends.�
There’s no question that a lot of Americans didn’t care about the fate of the Jews in the 1930s, including some of FDR’s top advisors. But the authors remind us that a lot of people don’t care about the fate of Darfur today and didn’t care about Kosovo or Rwanda in the 1990s. Jews are among them. It’s hard to get people to do something to help strangers.
Could FDR have done more? Breitman and Lichtman’s answer is “certainly yes.� He could have taken in Jewish children as refugees; he could have filled � or even enlarged � immigration quotas for Jews from Europe; he could have pressed the British harder to let more Jews enter Palestine. Maybe he would have succeeded. But it’s hard for us to be sure. As the authors show, FDR was the master politician of his time, so his judgment of what was possible counts for quite a bit. And given that, the people second-guessing him today are probably wrong.
¤
There was a time, not so long ago, when American Jews were not obsessed with the Holocaust. For 25 years after World War II, a book like FDR and the Jews was unnecessary � indeed unthinkable. American Jews loved and revered FDR for leading the Allies in defeating Hitler. Before the 1960s, few thought of the Holocaust as a singular historical event. Yes, American Jews spoke of “the six million.� But for Jews and non-Jews alike, it was the deaths of 50 million people that defined the war. Jews understood themselves to be one group among many that suffered immense and heartbreaking losses. Anne Frank was often quoted on this theme: “we’re not the only people that have had to suffer,� she wrote; “sometimes it’s one race, sometimes another.�
In the years following World War II, 1946�48, as Peter Novick showed in his crucial 1999 book The Holocaust in American Life, the leading Jewish organizations unanimously rejected the idea of a Holocaust memorial in New York City. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, and Jewish War Veterans all opposed a monument � on the grounds that it would be “a perpetual memorial to the weakness and defenseless of the Jewish people� and thus would “not be in the best interests of Jewry.� Again Anne Frank was quoted: she wrote that she longed for a time “when we are people again, not just Jews.� That was pretty much the story for 25 years after the war.
Jewish thinking about World War II was transformed by the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. That trial, Novick shows, marked the first time that what we call the Holocaust was presented to the American public as a historical event in its own right, distinct from Nazi barbarism in general. The word “Holocaust� came into common usage only at that point, as the official Israeli translation of the term they use at Yad Vashem � “shoah.� The next big step in what we can call “Holocaust consciousness� came with the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which suggested briefly the vulnerability of Israel, and the final step came in 1993 with the opening of the official United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Its theme is that Jews were victims, and gentiles were either persecutors or guilty bystanders. Wyman’s Abandonment of the Jews placed FDR firmly in the latter camp.
Thus, starting in the 1970s, official Judaism made the Holocaust in general and Auschwitz in particular the center of Jewish self-consciousness in America. That has meant that Jewish organizations have emphasized the status of Jews as victims. The criticism of FDR has been part of this larger phenomenon, in which Jewish organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center bombard Jews with scare stories about renewed threats of anti-Semitism from neo-Nazis in America. The central question was a frightening one: if FDR wouldn’t stop the genocide of the Jews in the 1940s, would anybody do anything different today? The implication is that, when adversity threatens, the Jews have had no friends, which means that constant vigilance and suspicion of others are necessary, along with unquestioning support for an Israel that is mighty and uncompromising.
Continued on next post:
Continued:
It’s this context that gives the book FDR and the Jews its significance today. It poses a challenge to the theme that American Jews have no friends, that the gentile world has been at best indifferent to the survival of the Jewish people. It shows that, while there were some anti-Semites in the State Department, the best friend Jews had anywhere in the world in the 1940s was the government of the United States and its president FDR; that, while FDR put domestic political factors ahead of rescuing European Jews, he did far more than any other head of government to act to protect Jews facing death.
But a survey of the response to FDR and the Jews suggests that the authors have not succeeded at changing minds. Even though it’s the most responsible, reasoned, well-documented assessment of FDR’s role, many official and semi-official spokespeople continue to argue that Jews had in FDR a president who didn’t care whether they lived or died. Moment Magazine, founded by Elie Wiesel, declared in a review by Marc Fisher: “Roosevelt’s inaction was an amoral decision to put politics and pragmatism ahead of even a symbolic effort to rescue Europe’s Jews.� Richard Cohen wrote in The Washington Post that Roosevelt’s “triumph in possibly saving the American free enterprise system [. . .] cannot negate the fact that he did not confront the biggest crime in all history with everything at his disposal.�
Meanwhile on the other side, those who would be expected to agree with Breitman and Lichtman, do agree: Michael Kazin, editor of the socialist magazine Dissent says, “This splendid book should banish forever the notion that Franklin Roosevelt was a blinkered anti-Semite who made little effort to stop the Holocaust.� In The New York Times Book Review, David Oshinky argued that “an even stronger case might be made� for FDR “than the one put forth in this eminently sensible book. Roosevelt masterfully prepared a skeptical nation for a war against global tyranny. […] And the final defeat of Germany, costing hundreds of thousands of American lives, ended the Holocaust for good.�
Despite the alarms raised by Jewish voices and groups on the right, the fact is that Jews in America since World War II have not been facing hostility or threatened or under siege. American Jews have become the best-educated and wealthiest ethnic group in American society, and among the most politically effective. There’s hardly been a time or place in history when Jews have been so secure. Indeed another theme of official Judaism is that Jewish identity in America today is threatened by this very security and prosperity: American Jews are not particularly religious and are intermarrying in increasing numbers, and thus, the argument goes, Judaism in America faces extinction because of successful assimilation.
Meanwhile, the bomb-Auschwitz issue has been given a new life by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last year cited FDR’s failure to bomb Auschwitz as a justification for a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He gave the speech not in Jerusalem but in Washington, at a conference of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself “America’s pro-Israel lobby.� The Jerusalem Post summarized Netanyahu’s message: “You can’t trust the United States of America� to help the Jews.
¤
John Wiener is a contributing editor to The Nation and hosts a weekly afternoon drive-time interview show on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
The article above is from the Los Angeles Times Book Review:
Jon Wiener on FDR and the Jews
FDR: Good for the Jews?
May 12th, 2013
by Richard Breitman (no photo)
The following is a book which does not think that FDR did enough:
by David S. Wyman (no photo)
It’s this context that gives the book FDR and the Jews its significance today. It poses a challenge to the theme that American Jews have no friends, that the gentile world has been at best indifferent to the survival of the Jewish people. It shows that, while there were some anti-Semites in the State Department, the best friend Jews had anywhere in the world in the 1940s was the government of the United States and its president FDR; that, while FDR put domestic political factors ahead of rescuing European Jews, he did far more than any other head of government to act to protect Jews facing death.
But a survey of the response to FDR and the Jews suggests that the authors have not succeeded at changing minds. Even though it’s the most responsible, reasoned, well-documented assessment of FDR’s role, many official and semi-official spokespeople continue to argue that Jews had in FDR a president who didn’t care whether they lived or died. Moment Magazine, founded by Elie Wiesel, declared in a review by Marc Fisher: “Roosevelt’s inaction was an amoral decision to put politics and pragmatism ahead of even a symbolic effort to rescue Europe’s Jews.� Richard Cohen wrote in The Washington Post that Roosevelt’s “triumph in possibly saving the American free enterprise system [. . .] cannot negate the fact that he did not confront the biggest crime in all history with everything at his disposal.�
Meanwhile on the other side, those who would be expected to agree with Breitman and Lichtman, do agree: Michael Kazin, editor of the socialist magazine Dissent says, “This splendid book should banish forever the notion that Franklin Roosevelt was a blinkered anti-Semite who made little effort to stop the Holocaust.� In The New York Times Book Review, David Oshinky argued that “an even stronger case might be made� for FDR “than the one put forth in this eminently sensible book. Roosevelt masterfully prepared a skeptical nation for a war against global tyranny. […] And the final defeat of Germany, costing hundreds of thousands of American lives, ended the Holocaust for good.�
Despite the alarms raised by Jewish voices and groups on the right, the fact is that Jews in America since World War II have not been facing hostility or threatened or under siege. American Jews have become the best-educated and wealthiest ethnic group in American society, and among the most politically effective. There’s hardly been a time or place in history when Jews have been so secure. Indeed another theme of official Judaism is that Jewish identity in America today is threatened by this very security and prosperity: American Jews are not particularly religious and are intermarrying in increasing numbers, and thus, the argument goes, Judaism in America faces extinction because of successful assimilation.
Meanwhile, the bomb-Auschwitz issue has been given a new life by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last year cited FDR’s failure to bomb Auschwitz as a justification for a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He gave the speech not in Jerusalem but in Washington, at a conference of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself “America’s pro-Israel lobby.� The Jerusalem Post summarized Netanyahu’s message: “You can’t trust the United States of America� to help the Jews.
¤
John Wiener is a contributing editor to The Nation and hosts a weekly afternoon drive-time interview show on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
The article above is from the Los Angeles Times Book Review:
Jon Wiener on FDR and the Jews
FDR: Good for the Jews?
May 12th, 2013

The following is a book which does not think that FDR did enough:

There’s an entire book about the debate over FDR and FDR's administration: The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? by Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum � a debate among 15 historians, including Martin Gilbert, Walter Laqueur, and Deborah Lipstadt, based on a 1993 conference at the Smithsonian Institution, sponsored by the National Air and Space Museum and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mostly they argue that bombing was feasible, but the US lacked the will to do it.
by Michael J. Neufeld (no photo)

Another book which deals with this subject:
by Peter Novick (no photo)
This book is dismissive of FDR's rationale:
by David S. Wyman (no photo)

This book is dismissive of FDR's rationale:


PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- An 89-year-old Philadelphia man was ordered held without bail Wednesday on a German arrest warrant charging him with aiding and abetting the killing of 216,000 Jewish men, women and children while he was a guard at the Auschwitz death camp.
The man, retired toolmaker Johann "Hans" Breyer, was arrested by U.S. authorities Tuesday night. Breyer spent the night in custody and appeared frail during a detention hearing in federal court, wearing an olive green prison jumpsuit and carrying a cane.
Legal filings unsealed Wednesday in the U.S. indicate the district court in Weiden, Germany, issued a warrant for Breyer's arrest the day before, charging him with 158 counts of complicity in the commission of murder.
Each count represents a trainload of Nazi prisoners from Hungary, Germany and Czechoslovakia who were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau between May 1944 and October 1944, the documents said.
Attorney Dennis Boyle argued his client is too infirm to be detained pending a hearing on his possible extradition to Germany. Breyer has mild dementia and heart issues and has previously suffered strokes, Boyle said.
"Mr. Breyer is not a threat to anyone," said Boyle. "He's not a flight risk."
But Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice ruled the detention center was equipped to care for Breyer, who appeared to comprehend questions about the nature of the hearing.
A law enforcement officer also testified Breyer and his elderly wife grasped what was happening during his arrest Tuesday outside their home in northeast Philadelphia.
"They both understood," deputy marshal Daniel Donnelly said. "It wasn't news to them."
Breyer has been under investigation by prosecutors in the Bavarian town of Weiden, near where he last lived in Germany.
Breyer has admitted he was a guard at Auschwitz in occupied Poland during World War II, but has told The Associated Press he was stationed outside of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp part of the complex and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of about 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates.
Thomas Walther, a former federal prosecutor with the special office that investigates Nazi war crimes in Germany, now represents family members of some of Breyer's alleged victims as co-plaintiffs in the case. He called for a speedy extradition.
"The German court has to find late justice for the crimes of Breyer and for the victims and their sons and daughters as co-plaintiffs," Walther wrote in an email to the AP. "It is late, but not too late."
Prosecutors in Weiden could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Their investigation comes after years of failed U.S. efforts to have Breyer stripped of his American citizenship and deported.
A court ruling in 2003 allowed him to stay in the United States, mainly on the grounds that he had joined the SS as a minor and could therefore not be held legally responsible for participation in it. His American citizenship stems from the fact his mother was born in the U.S.; she later moved to Europe, where Breyer was born.
During Breyer's arrest Tuesday, he asked the marshals to retrieve papers in his home that document his right to stay in the U.S., Donnelly testified.
Breyer's wife and two grandsons attended the hour-long hearing in Philadelphia on Wednesday. His extradition hearing was scheduled for Aug. 21.
Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said he hoped there would be no obstacles to Breyer's extradition and trial overseas.
"Germany deserves credit for doing this - for extending and expanding their efforts and, in a sense, making a final attempt to maximize the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators," he said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. (Source: Associated Press
_____________________________________________________
This was also posted on our Holocaust topic in the WWII thread.
message 23:
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Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
(last edited Jun 20, 2014 11:09AM)
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rated it 5 stars
Vince - I am going to have to reread my note because I think it was misinterpreted. Let me do that and I will update things here.
Yes as I thought - you misspoke or my note was not carefully read in response:
(I have nothing really further to add). But the Germans had been left starving during World War I by the British blockade so I am sure that they remembered that.
This was my response:
You raise a good point Libby - an entire nation cannot be sociopathic - but I do think that a nation (through "ism brainwashing") can actually act as if they were sociopathic and appear to be the most evil versions of themselves. And fear can paralyze the best of the human race.
I am sure that fear, depravation, starvation, and everything else that they endured during and after World War I contributed to their feeling undervalued and starved.
The blockades and World War I left the German people in desperate straits and then there was the treaty of Versailles while they were virtually starving.
However Rudolf I believe had childhood problems and I believe he was unbalanced and became sociopathic. The SS seemed to attract and seek out individuals with certain personality disorders and psychotic tendencies who knew no boundaries in terms of right from wrong and had little empathy.
Rudolf was their type.
Now about the blockade and the Treaty:
Blockade of Germany (Source - Cited Below)
Through the period from the armistice on 11 November 1918 until the signing of the peace treaty with Germany on 28 June 1919, the Allies maintained the naval blockade of Germany that had begun during the war. As Germany was dependent on imports, it is estimated that 523,000 civilians had lost their lives.
N. P. Howard, of the University of Sheffield, claims that a further quarter of a million more died from disease or starvation in the eight-month period following the conclusion of the conflict.
The continuation of the blockade after the fighting ended, as author Robert Leckie wrote in Delivered From Evil, did much to "torment the Germans ... driving them with the fury of despair into the arms of the devil."
The terms of the Armistice did allow food to be shipped into Germany, but the Allies required that Germany provide the means (the shipping) to do so. The German government was required to use its gold reserves, being unable to secure a loan from the United States.
Historian Sally Marks claims that while "Allied warships remained in place against a possible resumption of hostilities, the Allies offered food and medicine after the armistice, but Germany refused to allow its ships to carry supplies".
Further, Marks states that despite the problems facing the Allies, from the German government, "Allied food shipments arrived in Allied ships before the charge made at Versailles".
This position is also supported by Elisabeth Gläser who notes that an Allied task force, to help feed the German population, was established in early 1919 and that by May 1919 " Germany [had] became the chief recipient of American and Allied food shipments".
Gläser further claims that during the early months of 1919, while the main relief effort was being planned, France provided food shipments to Bavaria and the Rhineland. She further claims that the German government delayed the relief effort by refusing to surrender their merchant fleet to the Allies.
Finally, she concludes that "the very success of the relief effort had in effect deprived the [Allies] of a credible threat to induce Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
However, it is also the case that for eight months following the end of hostilities, the blockade was continually in place, with some estimates that a further 100,000 casualties among German civilians to starvation were caused, on top of the hundreds of thousands which already had occurred. Food shipments, furthermore, had been entirely dependent on Allied goodwill, causing at least in part the post-hostilities irregularity.
Rest of article:
Aftermath of World War I -
==================================================
Vince as you stated in another note of yours (possibly on another thread) - the Nazis took over the populace"s "thought style". And that is what I meant above. Normally very decent folks got caught up in the frenzy. And that really is one of the points of Harding's book - that ordinary and normal people can think this way and were caught up in genocide like Rudolf Hess and others like him. Chilling.
by Manfred F. Boemeke (he was the editor) and Elizabeth Glaser (not even in ŷ) (no photos and no link in the case of Elizabeth Glaser)
by Sally Marks (no photo)
by Sally Marks (no photo)
by Gordon Martel (no photo)
The National Archives - UK:
by Margaret MacMillan (no photo)
by
Harold Nicolson
by
Joseph E. Persico - although about World II which is pertinent - also discussed some of the other topics above
by
Hew Strachan
by
Robert Leckie
Note: This complete response was placed in the Bibliography as all such posts that list books should be placed. Since it also has direct relevance to this thread and discussion it has been placed on both threads.
Yes as I thought - you misspoke or my note was not carefully read in response:
(I have nothing really further to add). But the Germans had been left starving during World War I by the British blockade so I am sure that they remembered that.
This was my response:
You raise a good point Libby - an entire nation cannot be sociopathic - but I do think that a nation (through "ism brainwashing") can actually act as if they were sociopathic and appear to be the most evil versions of themselves. And fear can paralyze the best of the human race.
I am sure that fear, depravation, starvation, and everything else that they endured during and after World War I contributed to their feeling undervalued and starved.
The blockades and World War I left the German people in desperate straits and then there was the treaty of Versailles while they were virtually starving.
However Rudolf I believe had childhood problems and I believe he was unbalanced and became sociopathic. The SS seemed to attract and seek out individuals with certain personality disorders and psychotic tendencies who knew no boundaries in terms of right from wrong and had little empathy.
Rudolf was their type.
Now about the blockade and the Treaty:
Blockade of Germany (Source - Cited Below)
Through the period from the armistice on 11 November 1918 until the signing of the peace treaty with Germany on 28 June 1919, the Allies maintained the naval blockade of Germany that had begun during the war. As Germany was dependent on imports, it is estimated that 523,000 civilians had lost their lives.
N. P. Howard, of the University of Sheffield, claims that a further quarter of a million more died from disease or starvation in the eight-month period following the conclusion of the conflict.
The continuation of the blockade after the fighting ended, as author Robert Leckie wrote in Delivered From Evil, did much to "torment the Germans ... driving them with the fury of despair into the arms of the devil."
The terms of the Armistice did allow food to be shipped into Germany, but the Allies required that Germany provide the means (the shipping) to do so. The German government was required to use its gold reserves, being unable to secure a loan from the United States.
Historian Sally Marks claims that while "Allied warships remained in place against a possible resumption of hostilities, the Allies offered food and medicine after the armistice, but Germany refused to allow its ships to carry supplies".
Further, Marks states that despite the problems facing the Allies, from the German government, "Allied food shipments arrived in Allied ships before the charge made at Versailles".
This position is also supported by Elisabeth Gläser who notes that an Allied task force, to help feed the German population, was established in early 1919 and that by May 1919 " Germany [had] became the chief recipient of American and Allied food shipments".
Gläser further claims that during the early months of 1919, while the main relief effort was being planned, France provided food shipments to Bavaria and the Rhineland. She further claims that the German government delayed the relief effort by refusing to surrender their merchant fleet to the Allies.
Finally, she concludes that "the very success of the relief effort had in effect deprived the [Allies] of a credible threat to induce Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
However, it is also the case that for eight months following the end of hostilities, the blockade was continually in place, with some estimates that a further 100,000 casualties among German civilians to starvation were caused, on top of the hundreds of thousands which already had occurred. Food shipments, furthermore, had been entirely dependent on Allied goodwill, causing at least in part the post-hostilities irregularity.
Rest of article:
Aftermath of World War I -
==================================================
Vince as you stated in another note of yours (possibly on another thread) - the Nazis took over the populace"s "thought style". And that is what I meant above. Normally very decent folks got caught up in the frenzy. And that really is one of the points of Harding's book - that ordinary and normal people can think this way and were caught up in genocide like Rudolf Hess and others like him. Chilling.




The National Archives - UK:









Note: This complete response was placed in the Bibliography as all such posts that list books should be placed. Since it also has direct relevance to this thread and discussion it has been placed on both threads.

What I had meant more was to think / imply that by the time Hitler got to power the daily situation in Germany was declining from the eventual post WWI recovery due to the American withdrawal of loans.
I try to avoid spoilers so normally am not looking at the Bibliography notes of what we read.
Vince
message 25:
by
Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
(last edited Jun 20, 2014 12:13PM)
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rated it 5 stars
No worries Vince - I just try to keep things on track, on topic and on the right threads if possible.
Difficult task sometimes.
I agree with you with the bleak economic picture that America was facing - when the withdrawal of loans took place - that must have been the final nail in the coffin.
Difficult task sometimes.
I agree with you with the bleak economic picture that America was facing - when the withdrawal of loans took place - that must have been the final nail in the coffin.
message 26:
by
Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
(last edited Jun 20, 2014 04:02PM)
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rated it 5 stars
Here is another book:
Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial
by
Joseph E. Persico
Synopsis:
The Nuremberg trials remain, after nearly a half a century, the benchmark for judging international crimes. Using new sources--ground-breaking research in the papers of the Nuremberg prison psychiatrist and commandant, the letters and journals of the prisoners, and accounts of the judges and prosecutors as they struggled through each day making compromises and steeling their convictions--Joseph Persico retells the story of Nuremberg, combining sweeping history with psychological insight. Here are brilliant, chilling portraits of the Nazi warlords and riveting descriptions of the tensions between law and vengeance, between East and West, and of the friction already present in the early stages of the Cold War.
Joseph Persico on his books: Part One
Joseph Persico on his books: Part Two
Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial


Synopsis:
The Nuremberg trials remain, after nearly a half a century, the benchmark for judging international crimes. Using new sources--ground-breaking research in the papers of the Nuremberg prison psychiatrist and commandant, the letters and journals of the prisoners, and accounts of the judges and prosecutors as they struggled through each day making compromises and steeling their convictions--Joseph Persico retells the story of Nuremberg, combining sweeping history with psychological insight. Here are brilliant, chilling portraits of the Nazi warlords and riveting descriptions of the tensions between law and vengeance, between East and West, and of the friction already present in the early stages of the Cold War.
Joseph Persico on his books: Part One
Joseph Persico on his books: Part Two
message 27:
by
Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
(last edited Jun 20, 2014 06:26PM)
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rated it 5 stars
Charter of the International Military Tribunal - Nuremberg
This is often called the London Charter.
The Charter of the International Military Tribunal, also known as the the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, was signed in London on August 8, 1945.
Books on Nuremberg:
by Airey Neave (no photo)
by
Gustave Mark Gilbert
by Richard Norton-Taylor (no photo)
by Leon Goldensohn (no photo)
by Ann Tusa (no photo)
by
Paul Roland
by Robert E. Conot (no photo)
by
William F. Buckley Jr.
This is often called the London Charter.
The Charter of the International Military Tribunal, also known as the the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, was signed in London on August 8, 1945.
Books on Nuremberg:











message 28:
by
Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
(last edited Jun 20, 2014 06:45PM)
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
Books on Nuremberg Continued:
by Richard W. Sonnenfeldt (no photo)
by
David Irving
by
Abby Mann
by Ann Tusa (no photo)
by Bradley F. Smith (no photo)
by Jacques Mazeau (no photo)
by
Helen Fry
by Harold Burson (no photo)
by James Owen (no photo)
by Tim Coates (no photo)
by
Christopher J. Dodd
by Mitchell G. Bard (no photo)
by Christiane Kohl (no photo)
by Michael R. Marrus (no photo)
Greg Dawson (talks about Ukraine)
by Tim Townsend (no photo)
by Danilo Zolo (no photo)
by Whitney R. Harris (no photo)






















Books mentioned in this topic
Hunting Eichmann (other topics)The Nuremberg Trials (other topics)
The Judgement of Nuremberg, 1946 (other topics)
Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice (other topics)
Nuremberg: Evil on Trial (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Neal Bascomb (other topics)Tim Coates (other topics)
Christopher J. Dodd (other topics)
Mitchell G. Bard (other topics)
James Owen (other topics)
More...
This thread is a "spoiler thread" and is a bibliography thread which identifies many of the books which were referenced or used as primary documents for Hanns and Rudolf.
Please feel free to add properly cited books (book covers, author's photo, and author's links). Add a review or a few words why this book is important to the subject matter, etc.; but remember there is no self promotion, etc.
Any self promotion links or posts are removed.