Beyond Belief (4 page)

But the persecution of the Jews constituted only one small segment of the story of Nazi Germany and was never the central theme of the reports about the new regime. News of political upheavals, Hitler's jockeying for control, the Reichstag fire, the March elections, and the violence perpetrated by groups such as the storm troopers against communists and socialists took precedence. Rarely was news of the persecution of the Jews handled by journalists, particularly by those who viewed the situation from the safety of the United States, as an inherent expression of Nazism. This failure to see Nazi antisemitism as a reflection of the fundamental principles of Nazism was to have important consequences for the interpretation and comprehension of the news of the persecution of European Jewry.

When the first reports from Nazi Germany reached this country, Americans were incredulous. This was not the Germany of Beethoven, Goethe, and Schiller. The entire situation, not just that of the Jews, rang of chaos and confusion, revolution and upheaval. There were what the
Chicago Tribune
and the
New York Times
described as “wild rumors” that the Nazis planned to “massacre Jews and other political opponents.” The whole Jewish population in Germany was living, according to a
London Daily Herald
report which the
Chicago Tribune
reprinted, “under the shadow of a campaign of murder which may be initiated within a few hours and cannot at the most be postponed more than a few days.”
⁶
In addition to these extreme reports, there were eyewitness descriptions by returning Americans of what the
New York Times
described as “atrocities” being inflicted on Jews. A number of Americans were among those who were terrorized and beaten. There was a striking difference between the United Press and
New York Times
versions of this story. The United Press described “three incidents alleged to have been perpetrated,” while the
Times
described “three more specific cases of molestation” about which American Consul General George Messersmith had complained to the German Foreign Office.
⁷

Though the news that emerged from Germany during this initial period was not nearly as horrifying as that of subsequent years, a deep-seated American skepticism was already evident. In fact, some Americans were more skeptical about this news than they would be about news of far more terrible magnitude. Ignoring the fact that much of the news was based on eyewitness accounts, editorial boards lamented that the “stories which have trickled through cannot be checked and officially verified.”
⁸

It was quite common to find papers and magazines which were convinced that the situation could not be
as
bad as the reporters contended. This, in fact, would become one of the recurring themes in the press coverage of the entire period: “Terrible things may be happening but not
as
terrible as the reports from Germany would have you believe.” The
Los Angeles Times
, which in mid-March carried exclusive reports of German persecution, a few weeks later told its readers that the “amazing tales of oppression” being brought from Germany by Americans who were visiting or living there were “exaggerated.” On March 26 the
Los Angeles Times
featured news of a Los Angeles physician who had visited Germany and claimed that the stories were incorrect.
⁹
The
New York Herald Tribune
did the same on March 25. In a front-page story John Elliott of the
Herald Tribune
bureau in Berlin complained that while the situation of German Jews was “an unhappy one,” it was exacerbated by the “exaggerated and often unfounded reports of atrocities that have been disseminated abroad.” He dismissed ten cases of American Jews who had been “mishandled” as not an “accurate picture of the position of German Jewry under Hitler.” As proof he cited both the claims of German Jewish organizations that Jews were not being molested and the fact that he was personally “acquainted with members of old Jewish families in Berlin who were so undisturbed by the political change in Germany that they had never even heard of these deeds of violence against their co-religionists.”
¹⁰
Another doubter, initially, proved to be Frederick Birchall, chief of the
New York Times
Berlin bureau, who in mid-March assured listeners in a nationwide radio talk broadcast on CBS that Germany was interested only in peace and had no plans to “slaughter” any of its enemies. He acknowledged that there had been persecution but believed that German violence was “spent” and predicted “prosperity and happiness” would prevail.
¹¹
(As the situation became
worse, Birchall's doubts would be totally erased.) On March 27, 1933, five days before all Jewish shops in Germany were subjected to a one-day nationwide boycott by the Nazis, the
Los Angeles Times
announced in a page 1 exclusive “German Violence Subsiding” and “Raids On Jews Declared Over.”
The Christian Century
, which would emerge as one of the more strident skeptics regarding the accuracy of the reports on Jewish persecution, called for a “tighter curb . . . [on] emotions until the facts are beyond dispute.”
¹²

Other papers expressed their reservations less directly. One paper acknowledged with an almost reluctant air that there “seems to be evidence to support the charges [of brutality against Jews] in the main.” But it then reminded readers that “many of the cruelties charged against Germany in war propaganda were later proved not to have existed.”
¹³
The
Columbus (Ohio)Journal
also associated these reports of “destruction of property, beatings and blacklisting” with the “exaggerated . . . stories the allies told about German atrocities during the war.” The link with World War I atrocity reports as a means of casting doubt on the current spate of stories was to become a common feature of the American public's reaction to the news of the Final Solution. By the time World War II began, Americans had determined, according to
Journalism Quarterly
, “that they would not be such simpletons that they would be fooled again” as they had been in the previous war by the tales of German atrocities.
¹⁴

The reports on Nazi brutality which appeared in the
Christian Science Monitor
were also decidedly skeptical in tone.
¹⁵
In March the paper noted that the
Frankfurter Zeitung
had condemned as false the stories of the persecution of the Jews which had appeared in foreign newspapers. The Frankfurt paper was described as an “outstandingly outspoken” critic of the regime. The
New York Herald Tribune's
John Elliott also cited the Frankfurt paper in his page 1 denial of reports that Jews were being molested. The implication was clear: if a newspaper which had been outspokenly critical of the government claimed that the brutality reports were untrue, then they obviously must be.
¹⁶
The
Chicago Tribune's
Taylor offered a very different assessment of the Frankfurt paper's denunciation of the foreign coverage. Taylor pointed out that the paper was owned and edited by Jews and noted, not without a touch of sarcasm, that even though German Jewry was “living
through the most systematic persecution known since the Middle Ages, and has had a fair taste of physical violence, by its own account it has seen nothing, heard nothing, remembered nothing.” To Taylor it was clear that this myopia was prompted by fear and not by a desire for journalistic accuracy.
¹⁷
Similarly, the popular and widely syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson, who visited Germany in March 1933, assured her husband, Sinclair Lewis, that the Jews' situation was “really as bad as the most sensational papers report. . . . It's an outbreak of sadistic and pathological hatred.” When she returned to the United States she repeated this theme.
¹⁸

In sum the picture that was drawn in the American press particularly during these early days was a confused one. There was the question of the truthfulness of the reports. Once it became clear that the reports were accurate—though there were those who would never accept them as completely accurate—there was the question of what this meant. Were these attacks actually being perpetrated and directed by the Nazi hierarchy, or had they been inspired by the Nazis' extreme rhetoric? Was this the result of Nazi government policy, or was it simply an outgrowth of the chaos which often followed a revolutionary change in government? Were these events “boyish tricks” perpetrated by overzealous Nazi enthusiasts, or was this a reign of terror designed and controlled by those at the highest level of authority?

German authorities used a variety of tactics to reinforce American confusion. They followed a policy which the
New York Evening Post
's Knickerbocker accurately described as “first, they never happened; second, they will be investigated; third they will never happen again.” In March 1933 a reporter asked Hitler's foreign press chief, Ernst Hanfstaengl, if the reports “about alleged Jew baiting” were true. Hanfstaengl's answer was entirely false but typical of the Germans' tactics in dealing with news they did not wish to be reported. “A few minutes ago, . . . the Chancellor authorized me to tell you that these reports are every one of them base lies.” Hermann Goering also attacked those who had spoken these “horrible lies,” and declared that there were “no plundered, no broken up shops, no warehouses destroyed, robbed
or interfered with.”
¹⁹
Other German officials including Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath and Reichsbank President Hjlamar Schacht, who visited the United States, made a point of attacking the news reporters' credibility. When German officials could not deny the reports, they disavowed responsibility for the outbreaks and blamed them on “all sorts of dark elements” intent on pursuing “their anti-governmental purposes.”
²⁰

These protestations of innocence were continuously contradicted by both the recurring cycle of terror and the frequent predictions by Hitler and others in the Nazi hierarchy that the Jewish community in Germany would be “exterminated.” Some reporters tried to alert readers to this cycle of terror and the German duplicity in trying to disclaim responsibility for it. Edwin James, writing in the
New York Times
, pointed out that though the Germans claimed that “a few individual acts of violence have been grossly exaggerated,” the situation was severe enough for Hitler to have given “official orders” to stop the recurring violence. An Associated Press (AP) dispatch from Berlin in March also took note of the contradiction in Nazi claims. While Hitler instructed storm troopers to “remember their discipline [and] refrain from molesting business life,” Hermann Goering, who was described in the article as Hitler's “confidential man,” was telling an audience that the police would never be used “as protective troops for Jewish merchants.” At the end of 1933
The Nation
noted that this cyclical process continued unabated. Each time violence was reported, the German government “issues denials, punishes Jews for spreading atrocity stories, expels honest correspondents and continues to encourage the very violence and confiscation it is denying.”
²¹
Ultimately the reporters stationed in Germany grew so cynical about German disclaimers that when high-ranking officials vigorously denied a report, reporters became convinced that there was some truth to it.
²²

In June 1933 the
New York Times
described the denial of the terror as “more shocking” than the terror itself.

Even while Hitler [is denying] that such terror ever existed . . . and perfect calm reigns in Germany, the
Collier
reporter found the Jewish persecution in full swing and life in Berlin like sitting on the edge of a volcano.
²³

During this early stage of Nazi rule American officials joined German authorities in shedding doubts on the press reports. In
late March 1933 Secretary of State Cordell Hull pressured the press to adopt a “spirit of moderation” and suggested to reporters that conditions in Germany may not have been “accurately” and “authoritatively” reported. He believed that the “gravity” of the press reports was not borne out by the facts.
²⁴
Hull apparently was convinced that many of the reports regarding “terror and atrocities which have reached this country have been grossly exaggerated,” despite the fact that American officials in Germany were sending him news to the contrary. George Gordon, American Chargé d'Affaires in Germany, reported to Hull that “numberless sources” agreed that the Jews' situation was “rapidly taking a turn for the worse.”
²⁵
The
New York Times
and
New York Herald Tribune
placed Hull's denials on the front page under headlines which proclaimed the “end” of German violence against Jews. Actually Hull did not succeed in convincing everyone that the violence was “virtually terminated.”
Newsweek
observed that “no great improvement was evident” in German behavior.
²⁶

Hull considered his claims that the severity of the situation had been exaggerated to be in America's best interest. He told American officials stationed in Germany of his “fear that the continued dissemination of exaggerated reports may prejudice the friendly feelings between the peoples of the two countries and be of doubtful service to anyone.”
²⁷
His objective was to “try and calm down the situation created by a lot of extremists in Germany and inflamed by a lot of extremists in this country.”
²⁸
Hull did not identify the American extremists to whom he was referring, but faulted the press for disseminating “exaggerated” stories.