Posted on 04/20/2015 8:05:33 AM PDT by Olog-hai
The more we learn about the Holocaust, even as it recedes into the “mists of time,” the more my blood boils, the closer I come to tears.
Last night, I traveled far out into Syrian-Jewish Brooklyn, where there are not only Syrian shuls but Egyptian, Lebanese, and Iraqi shuls as well—sometimes two or three on a single block. […]
Retired lawyer and filmmaker Robert Krakow was screening his film Complicit, which is about America’s and FDR’s refusal, in 1939, to allow the Jewish passengers on the German ship, the MS St. Louis, to enter the country. More than 900 Jews were on board the luxury liner that was sent back to the European death camps. […]
According to Robert Krakow, FDR’s “political ambitions won out over humanitarian need.” Roosevelt wanted to “win a third election.” He therefore decided that he had to convince American voters that he was strongly “isolationist and anti-immigration.” He was enabled in this undertaking by his anti-Semitic advisors, including diplomats such as Joseph Kennedy, FDR’s Ambassador to the UK, who hobnobbed with his Nazi German counterpart and conveyed that many Americans shared Germany’s anti-Semitism. …
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
Let me put a finer point on that, because some don't yet "get" the Left's immigration ideas.
We might ask: "why is the left trashing one of their own icons here?"
The answer is: because it's a left core value to encourage left leaning, government dependent, preferably illegal immigrants to become generations long voter base for Democrats.
The left condemns FDR because he did not fully do what our current Democrats have been doing regarding illegal immigration.
I think FDR wanted us in the war, and deep down he knew that war was inevitable, but the vast majority of Americans did not want to get involved in another European war, and most likely Congress wouldn’t have given FDR the authority to declare war, if FDR had tried.
What?
I believe there is still a difference between legitimate refugees and illegal immigrants.
I think it was within his authority to grant asylum to a lot of these, esp. the “Ship of Fools” Jews.
And yet Roosevelt followed the advice of Morganthau, a jew, to displace and dis-home millions of noncombatant Germans. Their homes were then given to jews to live in, temporarily.
The stated goal was to allow the German civilians to freeze and starve to death.
Some general was assassinated in part because of his opposition to this. Patton, I think.
FDR was an opportunist and a horrible person. Maybe the 3rd worst president in history, IMO.
Tread lightly when noob here. The veiled antisemitism is not so veiled.
Of course, and so did FDR.
The Left today condemns their own hero, FDR, for not allowing more Jews to enter the country illegally.
Breitman argues that FDR did, in fact, do all he could have done legally.
The Left is arguing that FDR coulda/shoulda acted just like Obama today -- with his phone and his pen, let the laws be damned.
So, here's the real irony & problem: the very people who most strongly supported FDR's war preparations before Pearl Harbor (Southern conservative Democrats) most strongly opposed increasing quotas of Europe's refugees.
So, as so often happened, FDR faced the choice of winning one small battle over refugees at the cost of losing the larger war.
Sure, maybe in 1942, after the US declared war on Axis powers, but certainly not in 1939 before Hitler's invasion of Poland.
I think FDR must have felt they did a good job with the 1939 "Ship of Fools", finding homes for over 900 Jews outside Germany.
He had no reason then to think that 30% would later die when Nazis overran their new home countries.
Sorry pal, but that is total, complete unmitigated rubbish, representative of a mind filled with lies & propaganda.
You were educated poorly. You need to start over in first grade.
If he read or understood Hitler, who in 1920 (!!!) said he would eradicate Jews, he should have.
The difference is clear: wartime powers. Even though war had not been declared, the US was already ramping up. I think he had plenty of legal precedents to grant asylum, not immigration. Difference.
Well... let's remember first that FDR actually believed he was doing more than, in fact, he was, due to misleading numbers fed to him by the State Department.
Significant numbers purportedly of refugees allowed in were in fact only those put on lists for some future immigration.
Second, during the war, when FDR's war powers supposedly increased, a few hundred Jewish refugees were granted asylum, transported and held in a concentration camp... in upstate New York!
Yes, from our perspective, it was pathetic, but it was the best they could do, at the time.
Finally, given today's chaotic border-immigration conditions, it's hard to remember that once upon a time, the US had serious laws which were strictly enforced.
So, the Left's assault on FDR here is really an assault on those laws -- they say FDR should have ignored the law then, just as Obama ignores such laws today.
So, if we respond: FDR should have broken the laws then, but Obama should enforce them today, then we're forced to set criteria by which any President should or should not follow the Constitution's requirements.
And that path leads to insanity...
Hitler's Mein Kampf was first published in 1925, with the first abridged English translation in 1933.
A full translation was not published until 1939.
Yes, Mein Kampf expresses Hitler's avid anti-Semitism, but it does not yet hint at mass expulsions, much less complete extermination of millions.
Actual public warnings of Jewry's destruction did not come until 1939:
Why “certainly not”?
And FDR’s intelligence agents would leave him ignorant of Adolf’s plans, really?
So “so did FDR”, yet he utterly refused to act in this instance, which did not require executive fiat, but instead the US Coast Guard actively chased off the boat. None of the passengers on the St. Louis were trying to sneak into the USA as illegals, and their demeanor ought to have made it utterly obvious as to what they believed they would face if forced to return to the embrace of the Drittes Reich—many committing suicide rather than face it.
Like Wilson, FDR got re-elected on an anti-war platform; and like Wilson, FDR got hit over the head with war for his efforts. Obama is quintupling-down at least on what these predecessors did with respect to trying to evade war, but with the addition of actually providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
BTW, in the face of continued alterations of handle as an Alinskyite attempt at ridicule: just how old are you? Never mind the ping feature leaving no doubt as to whom one is addressing.
No, here my friend you are indeed wrong. Hitler was making “extermination” statements since 1920. Not in “Mein Kampf.” See Ronald Radosh, “Explaining Hitler,” or Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.” He has a lot of statements that make it clear what he intended and only the naive wouldn’t believe them.
Ok, when I get time, I’ll have to read this book. No time right now, so I’ll defer.
But out of curiosity, what part is incorrect?
I am pretty sure that "kicking German civilians out of their homes" thing is part of the historical record, but please feel free to cure me of my ignorance if I am off base.
I know you're not going to believe this, because it's seen so rarely today, but you can look it up in any history book -- the United States was founded on the concept of limited (not unlimited) Federal powers, especially the President's ability to do whatever the h*ll he wants to.
So Congress passed laws restricting immigration, laws which allowed the President some flexibility in admitting more Jews, fewer others, which Roosevelt did do.
But he could not increase the totals.
Further, there were strong political forces (i.e., Southern Democrats) who supported FDR on the war buildup, but would oppose large numbers of new Jewish immigrants.
And certainly in pre-war 1939 there was no extraordinary reason to think that ordinary immigration policies should not continue to apply.
And... we should also note again that the US State Department was lying to FDR about how many Jews were being admitted, so he believed he had helped far more than in fact, he did.
Ology-hai: "And FDR’s intelligence agents would leave him ignorant of Adolf’s plans, really?"
Doubtless FDR knew of Hitler's Reichstag threat of January 1939.
But FDR's focus was still on getting the last Jews out of Germany, which he continued to negotiate for even in the summer of 1939.
FDR then was not thinking of the fates of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Western Europe (Holland, France, etc.), much less the millions in Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, etc.)
And of course, in 1939 FDR had no concept of Holocaust killing centers, none of which had then been established.
So what, exactly, is your problem with all that?
But of course FDR acted -- to enforce US laws, which did not allow the "ship of fools" entry to the US.
And as it happened, all passengers found new homes OUTSIDE Germany, which in 1939 was considered satisfactory.
Yes, in the end, about 30% of the 900 died in Hitler's Holocaust, but that was totally unknowable in April 1939.
Ology-hai: "...their demeanor ought to have made it utterly obvious as to what they believed they would face if forced to return to the embrace of the Drittes Reich—many committing suicide rather than face it."
None -- zero, zip, nada -- of those passengers returned to Germany, and no passenger committed suicide.
Olog-hai: "BTW, in the face of continued alterations of handle as an Alinskyite attempt at ridicule: just how old are you?
Never mind the ping feature leaving no doubt as to whom one is addressing."
But that word "Alinsky" never previously appeared on this thread, so your premise is false -- so what are you talking about?
You should simply assume that I am much older and wiser than you, FRiend.
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