Beyond Belief (2 page)

In an attempt to understand why the American public reacted as it did, this study turns its attention to the American press, for the press was the conduit of information to the public. How did it transmit this news? Did it treat it as fact or rumor? Was the news accorded the kind of attention that made Americans view it as something important, or was it treated as a “sidebar,” the name given by the press to stories which are ancillary or
subsidiary to the main story? Did the press take Hitler's threats against Jews seriously? Did it consider them perhaps just bombastic rhetoric, or did it grasp that antisemitism was the keystone of Nazism? Did the press understand that what was happening to the Jews was not simply a matter of war—related privations, but something of much greater consequence? Did the source of a report affect the way in which it was treated, i.e., was news released by groups associated with the victims—Jews in particular—treated differently than that released by “impartial” bodies? Did the press believe that America had a direct interest in Nazi Germany's treatment of the Jews? If the existence of the Final Solution was no longer a secret by 1942, why was there so much doubt and confusion in the ranks of the American public regarding what was being done to the Jews? Might the way the press conveyed this news have raised much of the doubt? A reader might well have wondered why, if editors thought a report of a massacre or gas chambers was trustworthy, they placed it in the inner recesses of the paper.

The press may not determine what the public thinks, but it does influence what it thinks
about
. If the media pay particular attention to an issue, its importance is enhanced in the public's eyes, and if the media ignore something, public reaction will be nil, for as Gay Talese has observed, news unreported has no impact.
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The way the press told the story of Nazi antisemitism—the space allocated, the location of the news in the paper, and the editorial opinions—shaped the American reaction. My analysis of the press is an attempt to shed light on that reaction. The press was not a neutral or passive observer—it almost never is. When we study the press, it may appear that we are studying the narrator, but we are really studying an actor. The press became part of the historical process by virtue of the role it played as conduit of information. Just by fulfilling its task, it became a catalyst.
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This analysis of the press begins with the Nazi accession to power in 1933, for the annihilation of Europe's Jews essentially began then, not later. As a veteran American journalist who had been stationed in Nazi Germany for many years observed in 1942 upon his release from internment, the Nazis' annihilation of the Jews had at that time “swept onward for nine years in a series of waves, each exceeding the previous one in ferocity.”
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It is critical
that we examine how the press covered and interpreted each of these “waves,” for this helped shape the American reaction to this watershed event in human history.

The press is used by policy makers to assess and create public attitudes.
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To succeed at this, a policy maker must know how to deal with the press. At this, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a master. The transcripts of his press conferences demonstrate that he was extremely adroit in his relations with the press corps. A reporter who covered the White House during the Roosevelt years wrote in December 1940, “Every time one goes to a White House press conference, he is made to recognize once again that Franklin D. Roosevelt is without peer in meeting newsmen.” The general consensus among reporters was that Roosevelt was a “newspaperman's President.” The President had a voracious appetite for news. Arthur Krock described Roosevelt, who read anywhere from eleven to sixteen newspapers daily, as the “greatest reader and critic of newspapers who had ever been in the president's office.” His concern with the press and what it was saying about his policies was almost obsessional.
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And his interest had its effect on his subordinates. For as James Reston has observed, it is a President's attitude toward the press that “sets the pattern for the rest of the administration.” If the person occupying the Oval Office carefully reviews the papers, as we know this President did, his aides will do likewise lest they find themselves unprepared for some query from him.
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In addition to the papers he read on a daily basis, the President received numerous articles and editorials from friends and opponents throughout the United States. Perusal of the President's files at the Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park reveals multitudes of press clippings that various correspondents sent him. He often passed these on to his subordinates and other government officials. He also had available to him a systematic and comprehensive analysis of American press opinion. One of the most important White House barometers of public attitudes was a daily digest of press reactions prepared by the Division of Press Intelligence, which had been established by the President in July 1933 at the instigation of Presidential Secretary Louis Howe. Its task was to read and clip articles from 500 of the largest
American newspapers and prepare a daily
Press Information Bulletin
which classified news reports and editorials according to their opinions on foreign and domestic matters. In the 1930s there were approximately 2,000 daily newspapers published in the United States. Thus the collection of clippings in the Division of Press Intelligence archives constitutes a sample from 25 percent of those newspapers. The
Bulletins
, designed for use by all government offices and departments, often contained a “box score” recording the number of editorials which supported or opposed certain policy decisions. These mimeographed multipaged releases “digested and summarized” the nation's editorial opinion. Each item in the
Bulletin
was assigned a number so that government officials could consult the articles directly. The Division of Press Intelligence continued this daily press service until the middle of 1942, when many of its functions were taken over by other government agencies, including the Office of War Information. The President, his press secretary Stephen Early, and key figures in the Administration “relied heavily” on this clipping and digest service.
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Much of the material in this book is based on news stories and editorials collected for the
Bulletin
. By tapping this rich lode, it was possible to survey a broad spectrum of press opinion and reports, the same spectrum examined by the White House, State Department, and other government offices. For those events that occurred before or after the Division of Press Intelligence was in operation, major metropolitan dailies were examined. These included the
New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Journal American, New York Sun, PM, New York World Telegram, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Examiner, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Star
, and
Washington Post
. A number of popular and influential magazines and journals were also reviewed, including
Collier's, Harper's, Life, Literary Digest, Look, The Nation, The New Republic, Newsweek, Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Time, The Christian Century
, and
Commonweal
. In addition, the files of the American Jewish Committee as well as those of a number of government agencies besides the Division of Press Intelligence, including the War Refugee Board and the Office of War Information, yielded important newspaper clippings. (In those cases where an article was found
in situ
, it was possible to
analyze page location. Clippings from the files of the Division of Press Intelligence, the other government agencies, and the American Jewish Committee did not indicate page number.) Finally, interviews with a number of reporters who were stationed in Berlin in the 1930s and 1940s as well as those who covered some aspect of this story from other places, e.g. Moscow, helped provide additional perspective on what it was like to tell the story of this whirlwind.

In 1942 the State Department also began a systematic analysis of public opinion on foreign affairs and used the media as one of its major sources of information. The Department prepared comprehensive analyses of the public's views based on newspaper reports, editorials and columns, radio programs, and public opinion polls. In 1943 it contracted with the Office of Public Opinion Research of Princeton to prepare studies on the public's attitudes regarding foreign policy. Wherever possible this work considers these studies and other public opinion polls.
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American officials were not the only ones who used the press as a barometer and cultivator of American public sentiment. Foreign countries did the same. From 1933 on the Germans resolutely sought ways to enhance Nazi Germany's image in America. Concerned about that image, they even hired American public relations firms and assigned them the task of fostering a “good press.” (When the identity of the firms was revealed in the course of Congressional hearings, their usefulness to the Germans came to an end and they were fired.) Throughout the 1930s Germany continued to attempt to influence the press because of the key role it played in the battle to win public support.
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Reports by German embassy officials in Washington often discussed the attitude of the American press toward Germany. The German embassy monitored the American press on a regular basis and kept Berlin informed about how the news conveyed by particular reporters was greeted. In 1939, after the beginning of the war, the German Chargé d'Affaires in the United States informed Berlin that the “most effective tool of German propaganda in the United States is, as heretofore, the American correspondents in Berlin who give detailed descriptions of their courteous treatment
in Germany.”
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On other occasions the embassy suggested that certain American correspondents in Germany be rewarded and others more severely censored or expelled. Naturally, reporters studiously tried to avoid expulsion because it angered their employers and seriously disrupted their own careers. American reporters, some of whom were present in Germany until 1942, witnessed the brutalities inflicted on the Jews, the effect of the Nuremberg Laws, the expropriation of Jewish wealth, and the forcing of Jews to wear an identifying mark. Some reporters accompanied Polish Jews who were expelled from Germany in 1938. They traveled with them to the border and witnessed their treatment by German officials. In 1941 America correspondents watched as Jews were loaded onto trains for “resettlement” in the east. On other occasions they heard soldiers on leave from the Russian front describe the massacres of civilians there. But fearing the impact of such news on themselves and their informants, reporters did not always transmit what they saw and heard. Moreover, the news they did transmit was not necessarily the story Americans read at the breakfast table, for reporters do not work alone. They pass the news to editors, who decide whether to print it at all, where to place it, and whether to publish it in its entirety or in an abridged form. At times, editors excised portions of reports they considered unreliable or unbelievable.

The State Department and the German Foreign Office were both aware of the press's power to shape events, and both suggested to reporters that they adopt a particular tone when it was considered in the interests of government policy for them to do so.
*
During the first months of Nazi rule, American reporters in Germany were urged by United States diplomats to moderate the tenor of their dispatches, lest public opinion against Germany be so inflamed that relations between the two countries would be irrevocably harmed. On certain occasions Berlin issued orders to German papers to refrain from criticizing Roosevelt in order not to alienate either the President or American public opinion.
¹⁴

The two new fields of public relations and propaganda both had a profound impact on the way the press told the story of the
persecution of Europe's Jews and help to explain the skepticism which greeted the news.
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Initially these two endeavors, sometimes referred to interchangeably as manipulations of the public, were treated with great derision. Their rapid growth in the interwar period can be traced directly to the “astounding success” of wartime propaganda. Edward L. Bernays, one of the outstanding figures in the fledgling field of public relations, observed that wartime propaganda “opened the eyes of the intelligent few . . . to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind.” In less than a decade the American government's attitude toward the use of public relations evolved from hostility to recognition that propaganda could serve government objectives.
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Within one week of declaring war in 1917, President Wilson established the Committee on Public Information to disseminate information regarding the war and to coordinate government propaganda efforts. The Committee, which considered its job to be “mobilizing the mind of the world,” released thousands of press stories and created a vast network of writers, photographers, advertising specialists, artists, and journalists whose responsibility it was to foster a prowar sentiment. George Creel, the journalist appointed by Wilson to direct the Committee, candidly described the Committee as a “plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventure in advertising.”
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Some scholars consider the Committee's activities during World War I to have been the “first modern effort at systematic, nationwide manipulation of collective passions.”
¹⁸
After the war the
Encyclopedia Britannica's
entry “Propaganda” asserted that during the war “the conquest of neutral opinion was seen to be almost as important as victory in the field.”
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