FDR and the Jews - Hardcover

Breitman, Richard; Lichtman, Allan J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674050266 ISBN 13: 9780674050266

Publisher: Belknap Press, 2013

Synopsis

Nearly seventy-five years after World War II, a contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler's Europe. Defenders claim that FDR saved millions of potential victims by defeating Nazi Germany. Others revile him as morally indifferent and indict him for keeping America's gates closed to Jewish refugees and failing to bomb Auschwitz's gas chambers.

In an extensive examination of this impassioned debate, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. In FDR and the Jews, they draw upon many new primary sources to offer an intriguing portrait of a consummate politician-compassionate but also pragmatic-struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions. For most of his presidency Roosevelt indeed did little to aid the imperiled Jews of Europe. He put domestic policy priorities ahead of helping Jews and deferred to others' fears of an anti-Semitic backlash. Yet he also acted decisively at times to rescue Jews, often withstanding contrary pressures from his advisers and the American public. Even Jewish citizens who petitioned the president could not agree on how best to aid their co-religionists abroad.

Though his actions may seem inadequate in retrospect, the authors bring to light a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were far greater than those of any other world figure. His moral position was tempered by the political realities of depression and war, a conflict all too familiar to American politicians in the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Breitman is Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at American University.

Allan J. Lichtman is Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at American University.

Review:

Sadly, Roosevelt left behind a rather thin paper trail. He didn't write a memoir or record many White House conversations, and he refused to allow note-taking at his personal meetings. To fill this gap, Breitman and Lichtman have combed the archives of the leading players who did write down their thoughts and recollections, and the result is quite impressive. Even those who disagree with the book's conclusions must acknowledge the mountain of research on which they rest...The authors rightly note the squeamishness of America's modern presidents in dealing with genocide...Historically speaking, Roosevelt comes off rather well...[An] eminently sensible book. (David Oshinsky New York Times Book Review 2013-04-07)

While this incisively written study is unlikely to sway anyone whose mind is already made up, readers without fixed views will find plenty to ponder. And it will remind everyone not only of the enormity of the Holocaust but...the ultimate limitations of the presidency, no matter who holds the office. (Alan Cate Cleveland Plain Dealer 2013-04-01)

Breitman and Lichtman pursue several telling currents in FDR's record, namely the president's ability to keep the private separate from the public, his reliance on Jewish leaders and his evolving enlightenment toward Jewish issues as he neared the end of his life. (Kirkus Reviews 2013-02-01)

This splendid book should banish forever the notion that Franklin Roosevelt was a blinkered anti-Semite who made little effort to stop the Holocaust. With dazzling research and astute judgments, Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman portray FDR as a cunning politician who, in the dreadful context of his times, did more to aid Jews than any other leader in the United States or abroad. (Michael Kazin, author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation)

The FDR who emerges here is concerned with the fate of European Jewry, but also exquisitely sensitive to the demands of the situation: in short, he is the ultimately political man, and his approach shifts with each turn of major events. This comprehensive work will become the definitive word on the subject. (Noah Feldman, author of Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices)

Anyone who wishes to be part of the conversation about FDR's response to the Holocaust would do well to read Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman's FDR and the Jews. In a quiet and sober fashion it reexamines what is already known and lays out new and previously unknown information. (Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of The Eichmann Trial)

A penetrating analysis of the historical record, uncovering new sources and answering haunting questions that still linger after 75 years. A must read! (Richard Ben-Veniste, Senior Partner, Mayer Brown LLP, and Commissioner, 9/11 Commission)

[Breitman and Lichtman] challenge the view that F.D.R. was remiss in helping [Europe's Jews] and plot stages in his development from aloofness to engagement. (Jerome Donnelly America 2013-05-06)

Thoughtful and persuasive...It poses a challenge to the theme that American Jews have no friends, that the gentile world has been at best indifferent to the survival of the Jewish people. It shows that, while there were some anti-Semites in the State Department, the best friend Jews had anywhere in the world in the 1940s was the government of the United States and its president FDR; that, while FDR put domestic political factors ahead of rescuing European Jews, he did far more than any other head of government to act to protect Jews facing death...It's the most responsible, reasoned, well-documented assessment of FDR's role. (Jon Wiener Los Angeles Review of Books 2013-05-12)

At long last, two historians have sought to provide an analysis of Roosevelt's stance on the 'Jewish question' that avoids the tempting urge to judge the past through the lenses of the present...FDR and the Jews offers...a new perspective, a cogent and comprehensive study of Roosevelt's evolving opinions on the Jews...Breitman and Lichtman's carefully documented explication of this somewhat byzantine narrative proves immensely valuable in understanding the mechanics of what remain some of the most controversial decisions in the history of American foreign policy: the refusal to admit the Jewish refugees aboard the SS St. Louis to the United States in 1939 and the refusal to bomb the Auschwitz crematoria after their existence was discovered in 1942...Among the other accomplishments of this remarkably clear, concise but complicated history is the attention it devotes to American Jews, who were anything but unified during the war...[It] provide[s] the perspective necessary to comprehend the complexities of what have become some of the most painful and politically charged memories in American foreign policy. In short, FDR and the Jews is a narrative that resists the temptations of artificial drama and a work of scholarship that avoids facile categorization. (James McAuley Washington Post 2013-05-24)

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0674050266
• ISBN 13: 9780674050266
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464