Cold Peace by Michael W. Doyle

Author:Michael W. Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2023-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Hitler came in [to power]. He saw the need of a common enemy. Someone of whom to make the goat. Someone, by whose riddance the Germans would feel they had cast out the cause of their predicament. It was excellent psychology, and it was too bad that it had to be done to the Jews. This dislike of the Jews, however, was well-founded. They were at the heads of all big business, in law, etc. It’s all to their credit for them to get so far, but their methods had been quite unscrupulous. . . . As far as brutality [by the Nazis] is concerned, it must have been necessary to use some, to secure the wholehearted support of the people, which was necessary to put through this present program.75

These views were amplified by the private ownership of the British and US press. Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere in the United Kingdom and William Randolph Hearst in the United States were hostile to Socialism (unsurprisingly), flirted with Fascism and anti-Semitism, and, above all, were fully committed to isolationism and appeasement of the Fascist great powers.76

Those sentiments seemed to prevail past the Munich Agreement’s “peace with honor” and “peace for our time,” hailed by Neville Chamberlain and echoed by Joe Jr.’s father, Ambassador Kennedy. They persisted, at least until Kristallnacht, the Nazi rampage against Jews in November 1938, after which denials of Nazi brutality seemed both clueless and cruel.77

Second, of equal import was US anti-Black racism. As documented by Ira Katznelson, southern segregation was the second pillar of the Democratic Party in these years. Minor concern for the national rights of Haile Selassie’s Abyssinia should hardly be surprising. Combining anti-Semitism with racism, Charles Lindbergh took to the airwaves as Hitler invaded Poland and denounced potential US intervention: “It is the European race we must preserve; political progress will follow. Racial strength is vital—politics, a luxury. If the white race is ever seriously threatened, it may then be time for us to take our part in its protection, to fight side by side with the English, French and Germans, but not with one against the other for our mutual destruction.”78

And, third, the most significant factor was the persistent fear of Socialism noted at the beginning of this chapter. Even the exuberant and youthful JFK, in a letter home during a summer 1937 trip to Italy, opined: “What are the evils of Fascism compared to Communism?”79

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.