Page 212 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The American Diplomats 199

reflected Hull’s belief that foreign intervention would only evoke resent-
ment among Germany’s leaders, who would then inflict even more cruel
measures on the Jews.
But there may have been another reason, not acknowledged publicly,
for the restraint of the american government’s condemnation of the Nazis’
treatment of Jews. in a memorandum written on January 19, 1934, assistant
secretary of state Walton Moore questioned the advisability of a resolution
that senator Millard e. tydings and some of his colleagues were thinking of
sponsoring; it would call on President roosevelt to issue a formal protest
to the German government over the mistreatment of Jews. Moore granted
that the senate had the right to pass such a resolution, but he warned that it
would place the president in a dilemma. if he failed to protest, he would be
heavily criticized in the United states. if he complied with the resolution,
he “would not only incur the resentment of the German Government, but
might be involved in a very acrimonious discussion with that Government
which conceivably might, for example, ask him to explain why the negroes
of this country do not fully enjoy the right of suffrage; why the lynching
of negroes in senator tydings’ state and other states is not prevented or
severely punished; and how the anti-semitic feeling in the United states,
which unfortunately seems to be growing, is not checked.” 141 in my exami-
nation of government documents of the 1930s, i have not come across any
other reference to domestic considerations of this kind as a factor in the
formulation of american foreign policy during those years, but one cannot
help wondering whether it was an unspoken concern of several senior of-
ficials in the state department.
it soon turned out that Moore’s fears were not groundless. Not long
after he issued his warning, a leading Nazi referred to the treatment of Ne-
groes (as they were then generally called) in the United states. On august
15, 1935, streicher delivered a two-and-a-half-hour tirade at the sportspalast
in Berlin in which he touched on the “Negro question.” He began by de-
nouncing the foreign press for getting “excited” about the persecution of
Jews in Germany and questioned why journalists from abroad should be
concerned “if we have a house-cleaning.” Just as Germans do not meddle
in american affairs, so americans should stay out of other countries’ af-
fairs, he argued: “to the americans i would say: we read almost every week
that in america a Negro is hanged who has raped some white woman or
other. Here in Germany we say that if the Negro really committed the rape,
it served him right. We do not bother about the execution of Negroes,
and they should not bother if we in Germany lead racial violators through