Beyond Belief (3 page)

These new approaches to the dissemination of information had a profound effect on the way news was reported by the press and received by the public. Skepticism and cynicism, which had long been the hallmarks of the experienced reporter, intensified. Propaganda proved that any story could be created; consequently every story was now open to doubt. What seemed to be empirical evidence could now be carefully engineered illusion designed to manipulate and dupe even the most experienced reporter. The “inside story” could be the product of propagandists. Reporters, whose job it was to demand “Just give me the facts,” now had good cause to wonder whether the “facts” they were given could be trusted. The Belgian atrocity reports of World War I made
the press all the more skeptical. Reports of the Germans' use of poison gas, the brutal killings of babies, and mutilations of defenseless women in Belgium all turned out to be products of the imagination. But these stories left their legacy. During World War II, even when reporters possessed proof of mass killings they doubted they had occurred because the stories seemed too similar to the false reports of the previous war.
²⁰
And if the reporters believed the news, those far from the scene—both editors and public—often did not. This chasm between information and belief was one of the major obstacles to the transmission of this news.

In
Discovering the News
, Michael Schudson notes that it was precisely during this period that “objectivity” became a journalist's ideal. Unknown as an ideal prior to World War I, it became one because propaganda made subjectivity impossible to avoid.
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Distrusting much of what they could see and, of course, even more of what they could not see, reporters and the public greeted the news of the persecution of the Jews skeptically.

If doubt about the trustworthiness of this news was one prism through which the American view of Germany was refracted, the fear of being drawn into Europe's internecine affairs was another. During the 1930s a deep-rooted isolationist sentiment permeated American public opinion.
²²
It served as a standard for judging any American foreign policy action. America, contemptuous of Europe's inability to put its house in order, had no inclination to be involved in the Continent's affairs.
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Isolationism and cynicism, the fear of being “duped” by government propaganda, revulsion at Europe's inability to police itself, and despair about the future course of democracy together formed the backdrop against which the news from Germany was presented. These sentiments affected both the way the story was told and the way it was understood.

The press has been described by veteran newsman Harrison Salisbury as “holding up a looking glass to history.”
²⁴
The press does far more than passively hold up that looking glass; it positions the glass, and the way it does that serves to shape the events themselves. The mirror, as the medium, becomes part of the message.
Indeed, understanding the press's behavior may tell us more about what the American people knew, believed, and felt about the persecution of European Jewry, and why the Americans reacted as they did, than will the analysis of diplomatic endeavors, however critical those endeavors may have been.

As the British journalist Claud Cockburn observed,

All stories are written backwards—they are supposed to begin with facts and develop from there, but in reality they begin with a journalist's point of view, a conception, and it is the point of view from which the facts are subsequently organized. Journalistically speaking, “in the beginning is the word.”
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And it is on the basis of that word that much of history is written.

The press record is a large part of the raw material from which historians try to shape a coherent whole. Both the journalist's and historian's professions consider objectivity the highest ideal and believe that facts and values can and should be separated. In reality, neither the journalist nor the historian is completely objective. Their values inform their view and understanding of events, and thus influence the creation and interpretation of the historical record. And since people's values tend to reflect those of the society they are part of, our examination of how the American journalist—both the reporter and the editor—treated the news of the persecution of European Jewry will also be an examination of the values of this society which watched from afar as the Holocaust erupted in all its fury and horror.

PART I

1

As soon as the Nazis came to power, they began to institute antisemitic measures. Although the first antisemitic laws were not promulgated until early April 1933, from the earliest moments of Hitler's rule in January 1933 violence against Jews in the form of
Einzelaktionen
, or “individual” acts of terror and brutality, was an inherent facet of German life. Boycotts of Jewish shops were conducted by the Nazi storm troopers. Jews were beaten and arrested; some were killed and others committed suicide. When the Nazis strengthened and consolidated their rule in the March 5, 1933, elections, outbreaks against Jews increased in intensity. American Ambassador Frederic M. Sackett, who was then preparing to retire from his post, wrote to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that democracy in Germany had been the recipient of a “blow from which it may never recover.”
¹

Though the press had not previously ignored Hitler's antisemitism, most of the early reports stressed Nazi action against communists
and socialists. It was only after the intensification of the attacks in March that the press began to focus explicit attention on the Jews' situation. Typical of the vivid press reports sent by reporters on the scene was that by the
Chicago Tribune's
Edmond Taylor, who provided readers with a stark description of the “unholy fear” prevailing among German Jews.

On the nights of March 9th and 10th, bands of Nazis throughout Germany carried out wholesale raids to intimidate the opposition, particularly the Jews . . . . Men and women were insulted, slapped [and] punched in the face, hit over the heads with blackjacks, dragged out of their homes in night clothes and otherwise molested. . . . Innocent Jews . . . ‘are taken off to jail and put to work in a concentration camp where you may stay a year without any charge being brought against you.' Never have I seen law-abiding citizens living in such unholy fear.
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Taylor's depictions of the systematic persecution faced by Jews and those deemed “opponents” of the regime eventually resulted in his expulsion from Germany. H. R. Knickerbocker, the Berlin correspondent of the
New York Evening Post
, who was also forced to leave Germany because of official opposition to his reports, provided a similar appraisal.

Not even in Czarist Russia, with its “pale,” have the Jews been subject to a more violent campaign of murderous agitation . . . . An indeterminate number of Jews . . . have been killed. Hundreds of Jews have been beaten or tortured. Thousands of Jews have fled.

Thousands of Jews have been, or will be, deprived of their livelihood.

All of Germany's 600,000 Jews are in terror.
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As the news of antisemitic activities reached this country, newspapers in cities large and small responded angrily. The
Pittsburgh Sun
decried the “acts of revolting cruelty . . . [which] have been committed.” The
Poughkeepsie News
saw a “tide of Nazi fury” engulfing German Jews and inflicting great “bodily violence” on them. The
Toledo Times
believed that conditions in Germany were characterized by an “abuse of power, . . . unrestrained cruelty, . . . suppression of individual rights, . . . violent racial and religious prejudices.”
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A midwestern paper was horrified by the reports of “beatings, torture, murder.” According to the
Nashville
Banner
, sentiment in the United States was “solidified in condemnation of Hitler's atrocious policy.” The
New York Times
simply wondered how a nation could “suddenly go mad.”
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