and the decency and self-respect of the civilized world," writes Walter Mondale. "If each nation at Évian had agreed on that day to take in 17,000 Jews at once, every Jew in the Reich could have been saved."26 Of course, with German expansion in the years ahead, the number of Jews and non-Jews subject to murder by the Nazis would grow to much more than 17,000 times 32 (for the 32 nations represented at Évian).
Ervin Birnbaum was a leader on the Exodus 1947, a ship that carried Holocaust survivors to Palestine, a Professor of Government in New York, Haifa, and Moscow Universities, and Director of Projects at Ben Gurion's College of the Negev. He writes that, "the fact that the Évian Conference did not pass a resolution condemning the German treatment of Jews was widely used in Nazi propaganda and further emboldened Hitler in his assault on European Jewry leaving them ultimately subject to Hitler's 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question.'"27 The U.S. Congress also failed to pass such a resolution.
Hitler had said when the Évian Conference had been proposed: "I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships."28
Following the conference, in November of 1938, Hitler escalated his attacks on Jews with Kristallnacht or Crystal Night -- a nighttime state-organized riot, destroying and burning Jewish shops and synagogues, during which 25,000 people were sent off to concentration camps. The name Kristallnacht referred to the smashing of windows, put a positive spin on rioting, and likely derived from Minister of Propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels’ favorite book on propaganda, Austrian-American Edward Bernays’ Crystallizing Public Opinion.29 To his credit, Bernays declined to himself do public relations work for the Nazis, but the Nazis did, in 1933, hire a major New York public relations firm, Carl Byoir & Associates, to portray them in a positive light.30
Speaking on January 30, 1939, Hitler claimed justification for his actions from the outcome of the Évian Conference:
"It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when it comes to aiding them — which is surely, in view of its attitude, an obvious duty. The arguments that are brought up as excuses for not helping them actually speak for us Germans and Italians. For this is what they say:
“1. ‘We,’ that is the democracies, ‘are not in a position to take in the Jews.’ Yet in these empires there are not even ten people to the square kilometer. While Germany, with her 135 inhabitants to the square kilometer, is supposed to have room for them!
“2. They assure us: We cannot take them unless Germany is prepared to allow them a certain amount of capital to bring with them as immigrants."31
The problem at Évian was, sadly, not ignorance of the Nazi agenda, but failure to prioritize preventing it. This remained a problem through the course of the war. It was a problem found in both politicians and in the public at large. In 2018, the Gallup polling company looked back at and tried to explain its own polling:
“[E]ven though nearly all Americans condemned the Nazi regime's terror against Jews in November 1938, that very same week, 72% of Americans said ‘No’ when Gallup asked: ‘Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?’ Just 21% said ‘Yes.’ . . . Prejudice against Jews in the U.S. was evident in a number of ways in the 1930s. According to historian Leonard Dinnerstein, more than 100 new anti-Semitic organizations were founded in the U.S. between 1933 and 1941. One of the most influential, Father Charles Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice, spread Nazi propaganda and accused all Jews of being communists. Coughlin broadcast anti-Jewish ideas to millions of radio listeners, asking them to ‘pledge’ with him to ‘restore America to the Americans.’ Further to the fringes, William Dudley Pelley's Silver Legion of America (‘Silver Shirts’) fashioned themselves after Nazi Stormtroopers (‘brownshirts’). The German American Bund celebrated Nazism openly, established Hitler Youth-style summer camps in communities across the United States, and hoped to see the dawn of fascism in America. Even if the Silver Shirts and the Bund did not represent the mainstream, Gallup polls showed that many Americans held seemingly prejudicial ideas about Jews. A remarkable survey conducted in April 1938 found that more than half of Americans blamed Europe's Jews for their own treatment at the hands of the Nazis. This poll showed that 54% of Americans agreed that ‘the persecution of Jews in Europe has been partly their own fault,’ with 11% believing it was ‘entirely’ their own fault. Hostility to refugees was so ingrained that just two months after Kristallnacht, 67% of Americans opposed a bill in the U.S. Congress intended to admit child refugees from Germany. The bill never made it to the floor of Congress for a vote.”32
Gallup might well have noted the international appeal of fascism, which achieved political success in Spain, Italy, and Germany, but which had prominent proponents in other countries, including France, where the fascist movement was of particular inspiration to a group of Wall Street plotters who in 1934 sought unsuccessfully to organize a fascist coup against Roosevelt.33 In 1940, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. alerted Eleanor Roosevelt to another such plot from New York tycoons and army officers.34 In 1927, Winston Churchill had commented on his visit to Rome: “I could not help being charmed by Signor Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of so many burdens and dangers.” Churchill found in fascism the “necessary antidote to the Russian virus.”35
Five days after Crystal Night, President Franklin Roosevelt said he was recalling the ambassador to Germany and that public opinion had been “deeply shocked.” He did not use the word “Jews.” A reporter asked if anywhere on earth might accept many Jews from Germany. “No,” said Roosevelt. “The time is not ripe for that.” Another reporter asked if Roosevelt would relax immigration restrictions for Jewish refugees. “That is not in contemplation,” the president responded.36 Roosevelt refused to support the child refugee bill in 1939, which would have allowed 20,000 Jews under the age of 14 to enter the United States, and it never came out of committee.37 Senator Robert Wagner (D., N.Y.) said, “Thousands of American families have already expressed their willingness to take refugee children into their homes.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set aside her antisemitism to support the legislation, but her husband successfully blocked it for years. America rejected the 1939 Wagner-Rogers bill to admit more Jewish and non-Aryan refugees, but passed the 1940 Hennings Bill to allow unlimited numbers of British Christian children into the United States.38
While many in the United States, as elsewhere, tried heroically to rescue Jews from the Nazis, including by volunteering to take them in, majority opinion was never with them. In 2015, Gallup polling looked back at a January 1939 U.S. poll:
“The basic question Gallup asked related specifically to refugee children: ‘It has been proposed that the government permit 10,000 refugee children from Germany to be brought into this country and taken care of in American homes. Do you favor this plan?’ A second question asked of a different sample was basically the same as above, but included the phrase ‘most of them Jewish’ and ended with, ‘should the government permit these children to come in?’ It didn't matter much whether or not the refugee children were identified as Jewish. A clear majority, 67% of Americans, opposed the basic idea, and a lower 61% were opposed in response to the question that included the phrase ‘most of them Jewish.’ . . . A separate Gallup question in June 1940 . . . asked if Americans would be willing to take care of one or more refugee children from England and France in their home until the war was over. Attitudes in response to this question were more mixed, but still with a slight plurality saying they opposed -- 46% against, 41% in favor.”39 Of course 46% declining to themselves host a child from England or France is a different thing from 67% or 61% opposing anybody hosting children from Germany.
In
