1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History

Jay Wink “1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History,” Simon & Schuster, 2015, 536 pp.

I suppose if I re-read the book more carefully I would discover the reason for the title “1944…”  The book does cover 1944 but it also covers, with equal or more intensity, all of FDR’s years as president up to his death in April 1945.  The book juxtaposes the history of the holocaust and the world’s indifference along with FDRs involvement in the European aspect of WWII; the Japanese involvement in WWII is just ignored except for mentioning the internment of 120,000 Japanese in US concentration camps, three-quarters of the detainees US citizens.

There is little in this book that I was not already familiar with.  However, I did not know the US was so well informed of the persecution and elimination of the Jews and others in Hitler’s Germany.  A particular fascinating and appalling character in this context is Breckenridge Long, the US State department man in charge of Visa control.  For instance, in June 1940 he wrote an intra-department memo “We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the US.  We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas." Ultimately, the effect of the immigration policies set by Long's department was that, during American involvement in the war, 90 percent of the quota places available to immigrants from countries under German and Italian control were never filled. If they had been, an additional 190,000 people could have escaped the atrocities being committed by the Nazis just by allowing those in under the quotas then in effect.

It was not until January 1944 that FDR established the War Refugee Board, relieving the State Department of responsibility for rescue efforts.  The board in the short time left saved as many as 200,000 lives.  And, incidentally, the Japanese were not let of their incarceration until FDR achieved re-election in 1944—he had feared losing the California vote had he let them out sooner. 

My Notes:

Pg. 162: On April 27, 1944, in preparation for the Normandy invasion, Allied assault forces conducted a military exercise on the southwest coast of England, known as Slapton Sands.  Code-named Operation Tiger, it was the central part of a weeklong, full-scale dress rehearsal of Operation Overlord.  It was held in the strictest secrecy, and measures were taken to ensure that it would be as authentic as possible, right down to the use of live ammunition and live naval fire.  Some thirty thousand men were involved.  However, German listening posts picked up on the activity resulting in nine supercharged German torpedo boats attacking the armada.  For a few moments, some of the Americans assumed these hundred-foot German attack ships might be part of the exercise.  The dead totaled 749—551 soldiers and 198 sailors—and 300 others wounded.

Pg. 200:  By the evening of D-Day some 175,000 men—American, British and Canadians—were established on French soil.  The Atlantic Wall of Hitler’s fanatical vision had taken four years for the Germans to build and months for Rommel to reinforce.  With the exception of Omaha Beach, which took a day, the Allies cracked it in under an hour.

Pg. 271:  At the close of 1941, only about 500,000 Jews living in the conquered Soviet territories had been executed.  But by the end of 1942, some 4 million Jews were dead.

Pg. 373:  Stalin’s dictatorship was a bureaucratic dictatorship from the top down, made possible by a ubiquitous secret police—the KGB—and widespread terror at all levels of society.  By contrast, Hitler’s National Socialism, although it too had a secret police, nonetheless drew its strength from an overwhelming popular sentiment, becoming in effect a populist dictatorship.  Hitler was among the most popular heads of state in the world, at least until 1940.

Pg. 375:  On February 10, 1943, the State Department sent a shocking cable—telegram 354—bearing the secretary of state’s name.  It was sent to the Bern legation in Switzerland.  It instructed the legation to cease transmitting future reports from private individuals unless there were extraordinary circumstances.  This was diplomatic doublespeak; the real intent was to impede the flow of information from Europe to the US about the ongoing Holocaust.  In effect, the State Department was now using the machinery of government to prevent, rather than facilitate, the rescue of the Jews.