Isolationism: FDR’s Immigration Crisis
Madison Kohlhepp
Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Belzec, and Ravensbrück. Think of an ice-cold place with no hope of getting out of your worst nightmare. These were some of the most well-known labor camps during World War 2 in Germany and Poland. They were built to target many different groups, like Jehovah’s witnesses, gypsies, and homosexuals. The biggest group targeted was the Jewish population. Hitler’s goal with building these labor camps was to relocate as many Jewish people as possible and make them work to death or just to kill them, these camps were meant for mass murder. There is a lot of hidden history that is not discussed about the Holocaust.
There was a lot of blame going around and new power coming into place that America was not fully aware of because they focused on being stable after the Great Depression. In Europe tensions rose and Germany became very angry about the outcome of World War 1. Germany believed the repercussion from World War I they had gotten was not fair. Hitler blamed the Jewish population for their loss in World War 1 and thought that they had to pay for their betrayal to the German people. Thus, sparked the idea for Hitler to create labor camps to torture and destroy the Jewish population. While the labor camps were being built there were things going on beforehand that sparked antisemitism in Germany. They had to go around wearing the star of David on all their clothing, they couldn’t go to public schools just Jewish schools, couldn’t go to the movies or to certain restaurants and a lot of Jewish business owners lost their businesses from German soldiers trashing it and shutting them down all because they were Jewish.
Gas chambers were the kiss of death. Jews and others who made it farther would get tattoos. Jews had no name anymore and just were referred to as a number. All hair would be cut off and then would be told to change into the same striped outfits and sent to their barracks and from there they would be sent to work all day and every day with little to no food. One wrong move and anyone could be killed. Reapings would happen as well. Those who were picked were sent to either different camps or to the gas chambers to be killed. This was kept secret in Europe and only thought to be rumors for many years. Around 6 million lives were lost.
FDR was a great leader in so many ways and did want to help the country and the people of the United States out first and foremost. He wanted to get the country out of the Great Depression and make sure that the people were being taken care of. However, there were split sides on what the United States should have been doing during this time. Historians are still debating this topic to this day and disagree with the isolationist mindsets that were put into place and FDR should have gotten involved and helped the Jewish population more. Saying he should have done what he wanted regardless of the backlash he would have gotten from the people. The isolationist mindset and closed-door policies has been seen as something that ruined the United States because in 1941 Japan had conducted a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. That created other countries to have animosity towards the United States. Pearl Harbor ended up being the turning point for the United States to get involved in the war, leading to all of those closed-door policies to go out of the window. America was finally waking up and realizing what was going on outside of the country.
FDR and the public
The public loved FDR. He had a great relationship with the country because they had felt like they truly knew him. This starts with his fireside chats where the country was able to listen to him and what he wanted to do for the American people. While he was their president there was his hominess about him where he became more than a president to them. The people saw how FDR had a helping hand in the reason the country got out of the Great Depression because of his New Deal policy. The New Deal was a domestic program between 1933-1939 which aimed to provide relief and reform the people of the country.
So many lives were lost. Lives were lost because of leaders not believing the rumors of the labor camps, but also because of the restraints put on the immigration policies and visas that would have helped the immigrants trying to get into the country. Policies have to get passed through many different levels of the government because of the checks and balances system so FDR isn’t the main source of the issue, it was the government as a whole. While the borders had been closed and not as open for quite some time, the decision to close the border angered immigrants who greatly needed help.. There was a genocide happening in Europe because of Nazi regime and the antisemitism running through Germany. America had a lot of difficult decisions to make when it came to policies and deciding what they wanted to do with the immigrants, specifically the Jewish population. America wants to be neutral, and the Jewish population was not something the country was prioritizing. From another entry that was written by FDR he states “I have no intention in getting into a war with Germany. American will not enter. (343) There was no way that FDR was going to allow American to assist with anything including with the immigrants. The US turned an eye and the immigrants had to then go back to their countries they were trying to leave. Many went into hiding and others were captured and sent to different places, whether it be different countries or a labor camp. This did not just affect the Jewish population, it affected so many immigrants from all over and while the Holocaust as a whole killed around 13 million innocent lives, 6 million of which were Jewish men, women and children.
At this point the country was torn on what to do. There were some groups that wanted to just get involved in the war because they didn’t want anything to happen to us because we were staying out and cutting ties with other countries. Yet there were the other groups that wanted nothing to do with the war because it was on European soil and did not concern the US in any way. Due to this split there were discussions being had in Congress over what to do with these sets of Neutrality acts that were rolled out and how to rethink the mindsets of the isolationist.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor it was like the United States woke up. The Japanese had bombed America’s soil and the people were shocked and distraught. This is what isolationist mindsets do, they had created enemies because with these policies the US was cutting ties with allies and countries had been trading with which was going to create conflict. We never truly had any issues with Japan until all of this happened. The immigration policies after the attack got even tighter than they were before. They truly didn’t want anyone, no matter where they were coming from, to come in and that showed because of the way they were treating the Japanese American groups in the country. However, the containment mindset and isolationism changed completely after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The people were angry; they wanted everyone who was on the axis side to pay for what they had just done to us, so America joined the allied powers and in 1941 America was officially a part of the war.
The United States was involved in the war and helping out the Allied powers, men and women were being a part of the war being nurses and taking over the jobs that men were doing and in ways being a part of the war was an eye opening for what women’s roles were like showing women can do just as much as men could do. The American citizens started to speak out more about how they were feeling about the policies already in place and in the novel America Between The Wars there is a letter that gets discussed about how the American families are feeling during his time of presidency, this section shows the side of the American families that want nothing to do with the war, it states“ Dear Mr. President, my wife and I have just heard your speech over the radio, I can not refrain from expressing our deepest appreciation for your state will do everything to keep this country neutral.”(214) This was what the American citizens were thinking; however, being isolated was the wrong move for this country even though the leaders and some of the public agreed to just be focused on the country but in the end the country got attacked by enemies. The isolationism did bring harm to the country and didn’t truly help us. It made the country look weak and made the people feel divided because if the country had not been isolated could Pearl Harbor have been prevented. While that is a question historians will never truly know it shows FDR should have listened to his heart. FDR should have focused on the people like he did but not in a containment isolationist mindset where certain events might have been avoided.
Overall, FDR did a lot of good for the people of the country. Did he do the same for immigrants that wanted to come into the country or for the immigrants already in the country? That is questionable. FDR did not treat the Japanese American immigrants in America right after that attack on Pearl Harbor and FDR changing his immigration quotas and rejecting the Jewish population into the country was not seen as a good move. There will always been good and bad things that any president will do but in this case things could have been different and prevented if he did what he wanted to do and stopped listening to mixed opinions of the public and his cabinet members and because of these policies and the split down the middle this caused a lot of antisemitism and hatred in the country to the Japanese Americans and to the Jewish population that were already here and or the ones who were trying to come in.
FDR’s America with antisemitism
Antisemitism is all too well known throughout the world. Antisemitism is something that has been seen for centuries, the meaning of antisemitism is to be hostile or prejudiced against Jewish people, this has dated back to ancient times but became more seen during the time when Hitler was the dictator of Nazi Germany. The Nazi’s were corrupting the youth and they were being taught how to spot a Jew based on their eyes and hair color, their nose side, how their skull lined up etc. The antisemitism that was happening in Germany would later on during the war spread to the United States in a different way. As mentioned before, it was antisemitism was always around but because of the increase in hate crimes and antisemitism, other countries were seeing what was really going on.
The Jewish population is one of the groups throughout history that have been blamed and have suffered for far too long. Hitlers building of the labor camps was a genocide and a way to try and erase them for good. FDR and the American population had heard word about these labor camps that were built out in Germany and Poland but had just thought they were rumors. Over in the United States, immigrants had always been coming in for quite some time from all over the world for a fresh start for their families and at the time we were a very friendly and welcoming country when it came to these matters. This had stopped for a while and had been tightened during World War I. When the Great Depression began and people were laid off from their jobs and couldn’t afford anything for their families, their outlooks on immigration started to shift. The people of the United States started to think it wasn’t fair that there were all of these immigrants coming into the country and because they had just suffered through a Depression where they could hardly afford anything that the immigrants should either go somewhere else or that America should be going from open door to a closed-door policy with self-containment and isolationism.
From that moment on when FDR listened to the majority of the public to become self-contained and isolated matters started to get worse from the Jewish population trying to come into the country and the Jewish population that was already here in the states before the policies were put into place. Historian Breitman who has done a lot research specifically when it comes to the Holocaust and the efforts FDR had states “FDR knew that many Americans held prejudicial views of the Jews.”(5) Breitman has done a lot of research through his book to be able to make a statement like this. There were protests before WW2 was happening towards immigrants and the Jewish population because of fear. . There was an argument made my Breitman stating “ Even if FDR has been more willing to override domestic opposition and twist arms abroad, he could not have stopped the Nazi’s in the mass murder of about six million Jews.”(5) to make this point is saying that nothing was going to change regardless of the United States changing their quotas and foreign policies to now not allowing them in wouldn’t change anything. There was nothing that could have happened from these events and issues from happening.
Congress at that point was getting very frustrated. They were seeing the reactions from FDR and the people of the US. There was craziness because emotions were all over the place. In Texas the governor had reported “Efforts to expand Jewish immigration, he said had created a terrible anti-semetic sentiment throughout the country which might break into riots if his bills go through.”(150) The people were getting very vocal about their feelings towards immigration. FDR made a case to congress about their concerns and stated “ This would be a divide with the American people and add to widespread perceptions at home and abroad that Jews had manipulated the policies.”(207) Whether Congress believed what FDR had to say is still a mystery however, what FDR had to say about the American people was something that was already going through the American people’s minds.
When the rumors were going around about the labor camps in Europe the people wanted nothing to do with. The public didn’t believe that in Europe there could possibly be any chance of a genocide to a specific group of people. FDR had heard wind of these rumors as any leader would have during this time and states in one of his letters to his Secretary of State “ I do not favor American participation over this matter.”(55) The fact he was getting wind of this and still didn’t want to believe it either and was listening to the American people was an outright shock. FDR seemed to be brushing these rumors away and just wanted to continue to only focus on his isolationism and being neutral during this war.
The closing statement
While the Jewish population was living in fear not only in Germany, they had come to fear the United States. The Jewish population had thought the states would be a safe place for them to come to but when they were turned away because FDR and his committee wanted to change his foreign immigration policies that all changed. The Jewish population was happy for what FDR had done for them, they felt like they were finally able to escape the troubles they were having with the Nazi’s slowly growing to have power. However, once World War II had started those policies changed drastically. Some of those policies were not in place anymore or changed significantly. Numbers were cut by over half and so many Jewish families were sent back to Germany at the start of the war and taken to the labor camps or just killed on the spot for trying to escape. In some ways the United States did such a disservice to the Jewish population They lost all of their clothes, jewelry, houses and worst of all their identity, they were not humans anymore according to the Nazi’s. So many of the Jewish population were killed or died of illness in those labor camps and the antisemitism that was in Germany had spread to the United States.
The people of the United States were calling the Jewish population spies to the Nazi government thinking they wanted us to get involved in the war. That was not the case. They wanted a safe place to live where they didn’t have to fear for their lives. Some were sent back to Germany. The people did not want to believe that a genocide towards the Jews were actually happening and they wanted to live in their own happy bubble. The government did nothing to stop the hatred that had spread to the United States because it was not their issue. A little later on in the war when the Americans were on Europe soil and came across a strange looking area in the middle of nowhere was when they realized what they had just stumbled upon. The United States had to do something about this, so they sent word back to the United States and FDR declared that all of the labor camps be liberated. The anger and sadness that got back to the American people and their views on the Jewish population changed drastically.
References
Secondary sources
Breitman, Richard, and Allan J Lichtman. 2014. FDR and the Jews. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press.
Wayne, Cole. 1983. Roosevelt & the Isolationists, 1932-45. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press.
Robert, Divine A. 1969. Roosevelt and World War II. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bernard, Fay. 1972. Roosevelt and His America.
Rafael,Medoff. 2009. Blowing the Whistle on Genocide : Josiah E. Dubois, Jr. And the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust. West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press.
Primary sources
Welky, David, 2012. America between the Wars, 1919-1941: A Documentary Reader. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. Harrap, and Elliot Roosevelt, The Roosevelt Letters Volume 3; 1928-1945.
njcssjournal 