Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Those were the days when majority rule was something to be taken seriously. Public opinion mattered and congress critters, judges and high officials payed heed. Yes, the protestant population was fearful of losing status, looking at the way things are today, I sympathize with some of the methods they used back then, as I am sure they are spinning in their graves. The eugenics thing for example, and mental hospitals that were really jails, but kept the loons off the street. We had vagrancy laws and a much stronger police, people were more law abiding in America, not like Nazi Germany, the American population had control of it's leaders.
At that time, with a depression going on, America was not the place for the Jews to immigrate. Interesting idea about the Alaskan Jew colony. South America needed some Jews to stimulate the economy, as did Africa, but really, the Palestine thing has a biblical foundation to build on, and it turned out to be something viable. It could have been so much better had Britain allocated land for Jews in the first place, back in 30's so the Jews had clear title to move there. Something which would not disturb the Arabs so much, and not cause future wars, and the eviction of Christians and Jews from Arab lands. Africa might have been even better, as Israel is mostly scrub land with almost no natural resources .
Ronald Reagan gets my ear when he said he was an FDR democrat in those days. If you're going to hate on FDR, then do it for the right reasons, packing the supreme court, running 4 terms, trusting and admiring Stalin, socialism and communism, while Russia did their thing in the Ukraine in the 30's and had a desire to bring communism to Germany.
It was going to be Hitler or the socialists that took Germany, there was no middle ground, democracy failed, the economy failed, and the people of Germany had to make a choice. When the economy fails, bad things happen. This could happen in America, when the printing press fails, all hell will break loose. The 2020's have been a scary decade thus far, having a world wide economic collapse would throw everything into chaos.
I am watching it now. It looks good so far. They must have access to some incredible archival resources.
I agree! It's very good! The documentaries by Burns are all well done, I have a few of them. A lot of good points made by Mofford in this thread. Episode two plays tomorrow night.
I make an annual donation to Arizona PBS so that I can watch programming on the PBS streaming app, since I am outside the US for another year or so. I'll have to look for this new Ken Burns series on the app.
I have watched many Burns documentaries and always find a lot to learn. Jazz, Baseball, Country Music, Civil War, Vietnam War, Lewis and Clark. Maybe there are more, but can't remember the other titles. I especially liked the ones where the author Dayton Duncan contributes to the screenwriting and commentary.
I have lived in Germany off and on during my retirement, and the Holocaust is a topic that still has lots of reminders of what happened not so long ago. My neighbor is 90 years old, and even she remembers some things from that era. I live in an upscale neighborhood in Chemnitz that in the 1920s and 30s had a significant population of Jewish professionals, business owners and industrialists. Today when I walk down many streets, including the block where I live, there are "stumbling stones" in the sidewalk, brass plaques with the names, birth dates and death dates of Jewish residents who were deported, with the location of their final fate (if known). The stumbling stones are in front of the homes where they lived. Sometimes there is a stumbling stone (Stolperstein) for every member of a family.
Not a lot in part 2 that hasn't been covered already, it did mention the Madagascar plan as a possible destination, but they quickly concluded it would be unworkable. Another thought about far away locations for deportation, it may be difficult for Germany to control a far off location as the war proceeded, and no doubt, a very large percentage of the deportees could easily be convinced to fight for the allies, perhaps one million additional soldiers. I'm sure this was discussed at the spook house in Berlin where Lindbergh wanted to move to at one time, lol. That part about Charles Lindbergh was juicy, I'll say this about him, he went down fighting, but then he got back up and asked to join the air force, he was rejected but served as a test pilot/engineer for United Aircraft and eventually flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific, as a civilian pilot. He died in 1974.
After Lindbergh and Fritz Kunz went down, I was surprised about the part where the Catholics picked up the torch and continued to harass the Jews in Boston and other east coast cities, burning synagogues and beating up on Jews.
More thoughts on what FDR could have done to find a destination for Jews to escape. I keep thinking about Palestine. Did FDR have enough influence over Churchill to convince him to make Palestine wide open for Jewish immigration? At some point before the start of the war, why did he not put pressure on the British to do this? They wanted lend lease, so he could have used that to force them to open up Palestine. Before the war, perhaps he did not have enough influence to make them do that, but he did as time went on. If he did try this, would the American public be hostile to this idea? Could he sweeten it up for the American public, with a promise to deport all the American Jews to Palestine if Britain would allow unlimited immigration for any Jew around the world to move there, with funding and efforts made to set up an underground railroad, to provide safe passage from Europe to Palestine? I bet Lindbergh and many others would be happy with that plan, and all the Jews could have been saved.
Not a lot in part 2 that hasn't been covered already, it did mention the Madagascar plan as a possible destination, but they quickly concluded it would be unworkable. Another thought about far away locations for deportation, it may be difficult for Germany to control a far off location as the war proceeded, and no doubt, a very large percentage of the deportees could easily be convinced to fight for the allies, perhaps one million additional soldiers. I'm sure this was discussed at the spook house in Berlin where Lindbergh wanted to move to at one time, lol. That part about Charles Lindbergh was juicy, I'll say this about him, he went down fighting, but then he got back up and asked to join the air force, he was rejected but served as a test pilot/engineer for United Aircraft and eventually flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific, as a civilian pilot. He died in 1974.
After Lindbergh and Fritz Kunz went down, I was surprised about the part where the Catholics picked up the torch and continued to harass the Jews in Boston and other east coast cities, burning synagogues and beating up on Jews.
More thoughts on what FDR could have done to find a destination for Jews to escape. I keep thinking about Palestine. Did FDR have enough influence over Churchill to convince him to make Palestine wide open for Jewish immigration? At some point before the start of the war, why did he not put pressure on the British to do this? They wanted lend lease, so he could have used that to force them to open up Palestine. Before the war, perhaps he did not have enough influence to make them do that, but he did as time went on. If he did try this, would the American public be hostile to this idea? Could he sweeten it up for the American public, with a promise to deport all the American Jews to Palestine if Britain would allow unlimited immigration for any Jew around the world to move there, with funding and efforts made to set up an underground railroad, to provide safe passage from Europe to Palestine? I bet Lindbergh and many others would be happy with that plan, and all the Jews could have been saved.
I was definitely not surprised by words in bolded text one little bit, but did find it surprising that the documentary mentioned it.
As for your idea about letting the Jews from Europe immigrate to Palestine, the Arabs in what was to become Jordan would have been very opposed to it. Mufti and his ilk were virulent anti-Jewish and Hitler took advantage of their sentiments by increasing the antl-Semitic propaganda. Just hours after the UN voted for Israel to become an independent state, all of the neighboring Arab countries declared war on Israel in 1948.
I am hoping that parts 2 and 3 will have some new information that I already did not know.
I hope that others who don't know what is being presented, or who deny it or simply pretend it wasn't as bad as people say, will pay attention.
It is hard for us to recognize today how antisemitic the US general population was in the early 1900s or how pro-German much of the population was. My paternal grandfather, a businessman, swore that FDR was Franklin Rosenfelt and secretly Jewish. My mom had German friends who told her how wonderful things were in Germany. She and my aunt innocently decided to learn to speak German. They took night school classes until the teacher was arrested as a Nazi agent and member of the German American Bund. That was the end of that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mofford
Not a lot in part 2 that hasn't been covered already, it did mention the Madagascar plan as a possible destination, but they quickly concluded it would be unworkable.
The Madagascar idea was a surprise. I'm also not sure many people realize how the local populations rose up against the Jews once the German army arrived and did the dirty work themselves.
Lindbergh was so enamored with Nazi Germany that he was blind to any negative reports. I don't think he was all that bright and could be manipulated. He was a champion of the eugenics movement and controlled human breeding to improve (purify) the race (that would be the white race).
I once visited a town in the Dominican Republic (Sosua) that was settled by Jews from Nazi Germany and Austria. The dictator Trujillo agreed to take as many as 100,000 Jews into the Dominican Republic, the only country that agreed to do so. Sosua was created with the understanding that several hundred German Jews would establish a dairy industry. Some of the families are still there. Trujillo's motivation was not strictly humanitarian. He wanted to import more white Europeans to counter the influx of unwanted Haitians who were infiltrating across the border. There had been a small Jewish Dominican population in the country since at least the 1700s.
More thoughts on what FDR could have done to find a destination for Jews to escape. I keep thinking about Palestine. Did FDR have enough influence over Churchill to convince him to make Palestine wide open for Jewish immigration? At some point before the start of the war, why did he not put pressure on the British to do this? They wanted lend lease, so he could have used that to force them to open up Palestine. Before the war, perhaps he did not have enough influence to make them do that, but he did as time went on. If he did try this, would the American public be hostile to this idea? Could he sweeten it up for the American public, with a promise to deport all the American Jews to Palestine if Britain would allow unlimited immigration for any Jew around the world to move there, with funding and efforts made to set up an underground railroad, to provide safe passage from Europe to Palestine? I bet Lindbergh and many others would be happy with that plan, and all the Jews could have been saved.
Please tell me that the bolded is simply a misstatement.
I was definitely not surprised by words in bolded text one little bit, but did find it surprising that the documentary mentioned it.
As for your idea about letting the Jews from Europe immigrate to Palestine, the Arabs in what was to become Jordan would have been very opposed to it. Mufti and his ilk were virulent anti-Jewish and Hitler took advantage of their sentiments by increasing the antl-Semitic propaganda. Just hours after the UN voted for Israel to become an independent state, all of the neighboring Arab countries declared war on Israel in 1948.
My dad was in a Catholic parochial school in the 50s and he said that the nuns said that Hitler was't all bad because, "Hitler killed Jews, and the Jews killed Christ..."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
