Washington, D.C.—In 1933, James Grover McDonald (1909-1964) sensed the danger facing Jews in Nazi Germany before almost anyone else. He worked hard to help German Jews emigrate and settle abroad, but found few leaders who were willing to join his efforts.
McDonald's early exposure to the Nazi regime and its persecution of Jews and other groups led him in 1933 to the post of League of Nations High Commissioner of Refugees Coming from Germany. Three years of his diaries were published in June of this year: Advocate for the Doomed: the Diaries and Papers of James G McDonald, 1932-1935.
McDonald was an American of Roman Catholic upbringing and chairman of the Foreign Policy Association. Later, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel (1948-51), when the nation was first founded.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum learned about McDonald's diary when a two year fragment was donated to the museum in 2003 by Patricia Sugrue Ketchum, who found it in her basement. After a long search by archivist Stephen Mize to recover the rest of the diary, he eventually found more than ten thousand pages of McDonald's diary at the home of McDonald's daughter, Barbara McDonald Stewart.
His diary sheds light on the responses of world leaders he met with as he worked to raise awareness of the threat facing German Jews. It was published by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
"What this book tells is a sort of answer to the perennial question, 'Why didn't the world do something?'" said Richard Breitman, co-editor of the diaries and professor of history at American University. "It is all about why the world didn't do something…and it reveals all the people who refused to help or could not help, or tried to help but it didn't work. It reveals all the obstacles."
In 1933, McDonald was chairman and president of the Foreign Policy Association (FPA). The association sought to promote education in international affairs, and as chairman of the FPA, he traveled every summer to Europe to gather information. In this capacity he came to know many key foreign politicians, League of Nations officials, American diplomats, and reporters. This is also how he observed the rise of the Nazi regime.
From 1933 to 1935 he served as High Commissioner of Refugees Coming from Germany for the League of Nations. The recently published diary covers his final year as chairman of the FPA as well as the two years he served as High Commissioner. The three editors of the diary discussed the book on June 15 at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
"He had unusual assets, he had the reputation of being pro-German. His family was partly of German background, he had the German language, he had good contacts in the German government before the Nazis came to power," explained Breitman.
These assets gave him access to elite German circles and the opportunity to observe as the Nazis rose to power. In March of 1933 he met with a contact from Harvard, Ernst Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler's foreign press secretary. Over dinner Hanfstaengl indicated to him the mentality within the regime, recounted in McDonald's diary.
"During [World War I] we had 1,500,000 prisoners," Hanfstaengl told McDonald. "600,000 Jews would be simple. Each Jew has his SA [storm trooper]. In a single night it could be finished."
McDonald writes that he assumed his friend spoke of arrests, but he later indicates his grave fear for the fate of German Jews. Of that night he wrote, "I almost thought I had experienced a nightmare. But it was all the enthusiastic exposition from a man who called himself my friend and promised to do his utmost to arrange for me to meet his idol—the Chief." (Adolf Hitler)
On April 8th, 1933 McDonald was, through the help of his friend Hanfstaengl, granted an audience with Germany's newly elected chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
He recollects his 1933 encounter in a letter to the editor he wrote to the New York Times in 1944 when news of the concentration camps was coming out, saying, "I was given an opportunity to tell Hitler frankly that his anti-Jewish statements and policies were injuring Germany. Immediately Hitler retorted in words which I shall never forget, 'Even if Germany must draw its belt very much tighter, that will be a small price to pay for ridding itself of the menace of the Jews.' Then he added words which fully disclosed his foul purpose: 'The world will yet thank us for teaching it how to deal with the Jews.'"
It was after these experiences in Germany in the spring of 1933 that he began the task of alerting the world about the dire situation in Germany. He hoped to put pressure on Hitler's regime to improve the situation for German Jews. He also wanted to help those trying to leave Germany make their way out and relocate to new lands. In October 1933 he became the League of Nations High Commissioner of Refugees from Germany. This work took him around the globe meeting with world leaders.
McDonald hoped to establish a working relationship with the Nazi regime to address the matters of refugees and their property, but the regime was unwilling to meet with McDonald about refugee matters.
He raised this concern in January 1934 in a meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his journal he writes, "[FDR] replied at once that we should issue a report to the world setting forth in a factual fashion what had taken place, the plight of the refugees, and the prospects for the future. This, he said would focus world opinion and impress Berlin."
Of that same meeting McDonald also writes, "So far as immigration of refugees was concerned, he [FDR] seemed to feel that there would be no difficulty in doing what was necessary now that the labor bond idea (to keep refugees from becoming public charges) had been accepted."
In his efforts to secure refugees a new home, McDonald spoke with many world leaders. The biggest challenges he faced were widespread anti-semitism and concerns of how to accommodate immigrants to ensure they not become dependent on the state.
His diary entries provide a window on the thinking of many elites of that time.
"No one else in the world was able to talk frankly with Hitler, Roosevelt, Cardinal Pacelli, Heinrich Rothmund, Mussolini, the Warburg family, the Rothschild's, the Rockefeller's, high State Department officials, British government officials, League of Nations officials, the heads of two South American governments and many, many others," said Breitman. "And he wrote it all down."
Severin Hochberg, a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, and Barbara McDonald Stewart, McDonald's daughter and a former lecturer in history at George Mason University, also co-edited the diary.
The Holocaust Museum plans to publish two more volumes of McDonald's diaries.
Feeds