Americas Reaction to the Holocaust Essay -- Papers

America's Reaction to the Holocaust In the years of the Second World War, American leaders were aware of the plan of the Germans to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, yet they did not act to save them. The attitude in society and the state of the economy in the years leading up to the war made for conditions that did not make saving them likely. Most Germans despised the Weimar Republic, which held control of Germany at the time they signed the Versailles Treaty. This treaty crippled Germany after they lost The First Great War. The proud Germans saw this republic as weak. Adolph Hitler, an Austrian born man of German lineage, claimed that the only true Germans were Aryans and that the Jewish influence in the Weimar Republic was the reason for their weakness. He published a famous propaganda novel entitled Mein Kampf, which helped to catapult him and his political party, the National Socialist German Workers Party, into power. (Barber) Hitler's political position was simple: Germans were always right and the Jews were to blame for everything. After the outbreak of war by all the major powers of the world, Germany immediately turned a major part of their concern towards the extermination of the entire Jewish race. It began with the Einsatzgrupen, a special mobile unit of who moved behind frontline troops in the attacks on Russia and Poland, whose sole purpose was to round up the local Jewish families and kill them. They dug massive graves intended for entire Jewish communities. Their victims were lined up, stripped naked and shot. One reporter observed that not every shot was fatal and the poor civilians were made to suffer in the pits till they were sufficiently buried alive by their own brethren. The fir... ... on the fighting and paid no attention to the genocide happening in the camps in Poland. When the decision was finally made to bomb Auschwitz in 1945, it was because the camp was used as a production center of synthetic oil and rubber. Anti-Alien, anti-Semitic, and restrictionist attitudes were all factors that contributed to the United States' decision not to act in the face of such horrible murderous activity in Europe. All these factors combined with the American policy of neutrality and the weakened state of the economy made the US an unlikely source of salvation. Bibliography: Barber, John R. Modern European History. Harper Perennial. New York. 1993. pps. 277-281, 306-331 Wiesel, Elie. Night. Bantum Books. New York. 1960. Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews. Pantheon Books. New York. 1984. pps. 3-15, 285-307