Analysis: Notices to the US State Department Regarding Nazi Plans to Eliminate Jews
The topic of Nazi plans to eliminate Jews during World War II is a critical aspect of Holocaust history, shedding light on the systematic genocide that took place under the Nazi regime. In 1942, significant information regarding these plans emerged from a German industrialist with connections to the Nazi leadership. This individual disclosed the intentions of the Nazis to exterminate Jews, prompting a series of urgent communications between key figures in Switzerland and the Allied powers, including the United States and Britain. Despite the severity of the reported genocide, the responses from Allied leaders were characterized by skepticism and a reluctance to accept the full scope of the atrocities occurring in Europe.
As the Nazi regime expanded its control across Europe, it began implementing mass deportations and executing Jews in concentration and death camps. However, during this period, the United States maintained strict immigration quotas, significantly limiting refuge for those fleeing persecution. Efforts to address the Jewish refugee crisis at international conferences yielded little actual support for those in need. The urgency of the situation highlighted a tragic disconnect, as reports of Nazi violence, including the use of mobile gassing vans, continued to surface, yet many in power struggled to comprehend the true nature of the genocide.
The actions taken by individuals like Gerhart M. Riegner, who sought to alert Allied governments to the imminent threat, reflect the desperate attempts to garner a more robust response to the atrocities. Nonetheless, the prevailing attitudes of disbelief and denial among many Allied leaders ultimately hindered meaningful intervention during this dark chapter in history.
Analysis: Notices to the US State Department Regarding Nazi Plans to Eliminate Jews
Date: August 11, 1942
Authors: Howard Elting Jr.; Leland Harrison
Genre: letter
Summary Overview
In 1942, a German industrialist with ties to the Nazi hierarchy learned of Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe. That July, he leaked the information to a Swiss businessman who informed a journalist. He in turn relayed the news to Gerhart M. Riegner, director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva. Riegner then alerted the diplomatic offices of Britain and the United States. Riegner hoped that news of Nazi plans would motivate the Allied leaders to take direct action to rescue the victims of Nazi atrocities and to stop Nazi plans for genocide. They did not know that by that time, the mass deportation and killing of Jews was already under way.
On August 10, 1942, American vice consul Howard Elting Jr. sent a copy of the memorandum he wrote based on his conversation with Riegner to Leland Harrison, the American envoy in Switzerland. The following day, Harrison forwarded his opinion on the memorandum along with the original document to the US State Department.
Defining Moment
In 1942, World War II raged across Europe and the globe. Nazi forces, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, had conquered large swaths of land, from France to Norway to Poland. As the Nazi military machine rolled across Europe, it deported European Jews to thousands of concentration and forced labor camps and, the world would soon learn, death camps. Since Hitler's and the Nazis' rise to power in 1933, the Third Reich had launched a relentless regime of systemized persecution of Jewish people and others deemed to be “enemies of the state” or “undesirable.”
The Nazi advance through Europe was swift, and it came at a time when the United States had settled into a nativist and isolationist mood. Following World War I and later with the onset of the Great Depression, Congress had set strict immigration quotas, and the United States was not alone in this stance. As persecution against the Jews mounted, many Jews sought to flee Germany and neighboring lands, only to find that they had nowhere to go. Most nations refused them refuge or, like the United States, accepted only a small number of those trying to immigrate. Despite reports of Nazi violence against Jews, the United States did not relax quotas to admit more Jews during the 1930s. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, leaders of several nations met at the Évian Conference that July to discuss a remedy for the Jewish refugee problem. However, little was done. Immigration to the United States increased slightly but only briefly, and just as the United States joined the war and the death camps began to operate, immigration dropped.
The first death camp, Chełmno, opened in Poland in 1941. There, the Nazis began the mass execution of Jews through the use of mobile gassing vans. In the next two years, five more death camps would begin gassing thousands of Jews a day and burning or burying their remains. Despite Nazi attempts to hide the extermination of the Jews, news leaked through those who escaped, those who worked in the camps, and other observers. In July 1942, the New York Times printed a story on the killings at Chełmno as reported by the Polish underground resistance. Among those who informed on Nazi plans for genocide was Eduard Reinhold Karl Schulte, a prominent German businessman with ties to the Nazi elite who passed the information onto Isidor Koppelman in Zurich, Switzerland. Koppelman communicated what he had learned to Benjamin Sagalowitz, a journalist for the Swiss Jewish Press Agency; on July 29, 1942, Sagalowitz passed on the information to Riegner. Riegner took the information along with reports from Europe confirming massive deportations of Jews across Europe to the American and British consulates. He spoke personally to Vice Consul Elting, requesting that the report be sent to the State Department in Washington and to Rabbi Stephen B. Wise, WJC president, in New York. At the same time, Riegner asked the British consulate to forward the information to MP Samuel Sydney Silverman in London. He hoped that the information would reach not only Allied leaders but also Rabbi Wise, by one or both means.
Author Biography
Howard Elting Jr. was born in 1908, grew up in Chicago, and studied at Exeter Academy and Princeton University before joining the US Foreign Service. He would work in the diplomatic corps for thirty years and was serving as the vice consul of the American embassy in Geneva in 1942. As vice consul, Elting was subordinate to envoy Leland Harrison. He died in 2001.
Born in New York City on April 25, 1883, Leland Harrison would go on to make a life of diplomatic service. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Harrison served in a number of diplomatic posts around the world, from Tokyo to Peking (present-day Beijing) to London to Bogotá. He later served as assistant secretary of state in various capacities from 1922 to 1927. At that time, he resumed his diplomatic career in the Foreign Service and, following several posts, became envoy and minister to Switzerland in 1937. He remained there for the duration of World War II and left that position in 1947. He died in 1951.
Document Analysis
In 1939, in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler had promised that if war broke out in Europe, it would result in “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Evidence was mounting that the Führer had meant his words, but Allied leaders and the world did not believe the rhetoric.
This document comprises a memo embedded in a telegram. The memo originates from Vice Consul Elting, who wrote the document as a summary of his conversation with Gerhart Riegner, which took place August 8, 1942. Elting then transmitted the memo to his superior, Harrison, to convey to the State Department in Washington. In the memo, Elting reports that Riegner had received word from a German businessman, “from whom reliable and important political information has been obtained on two previous occasions,” that the Nazis were considering “a plan to exterminate all Jews from Germany and German controlled areas in Europe.” Elting admits that he considered the report “fantastic” but goes on to explain that Riegner substantiated the information by citing the mass deportations of Jews already taking place—14,000 from France, with 10,000 more due to be deported, and at least 56,000 from the Protectorate. Elting explains that Riegner desired that the information be passed on to Allied leaders to investigate the claims, and to Rabbi Wise. In conclusion, Elting advises that the report be relayed to the State Department. Though Elting was amazed by the information, he believed that Riegner brought it forward in good faith, and moreover, he believed that Riegner considered his own source—later disclosed as Schulte—to be reliable. Elting asserts this belief in his cover letter, dated August 10, when he passed on the memo.
The following day, Harrison sent a telegram to the US State Department with Elting's memo and message enclosed. Harrison and Elting clearly considered the message to be of great importance—and potentially volatile—as they both marked their telegrams “strictly confidential,” and Harrison's led with the notation, “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone. (SC).” Harrison adds his own confidential note in which he communicates his doubts regarding the enclosed information: “The report has earmarks of war rumor inspired by fear.” Harrison dismisses the information as an exaggeration of the true suffering of refugees as a result of “physical maltreatment persecution and scarcely endurable privations malnutrition and disease.” The suggestion is that the Jews and other peoples of Europe are admittedly suffering but that Harrison doubts the existence of any deliberate plan for mass extermination of the Jews. This reasoning plays into the predisposition of Allied leaders to deny the mounting evidence for genocide as a cause that might justify assistance to Jewish populations in Europe by relaxing immigration restrictions and by taking direct action to liberate victims of Nazi camps.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Breitman, Richard, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew. New York: Hill, 1998. Print.
Hamerow, Theodore S. Why We Watched: Europe, America, and the Holocaust. New York: Norton, 2008. Print.
Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.
Neufeld, Michael J., and Michael Berenbaum, eds. The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? New York: St. Martin's, 2000. Print.
Roseman, Mark. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration. New York: Metropolitan, 2002. Print.