Search results for ""Author Richard Breitman""

Raymond Geist was sent to Berlin as a consul in 1929. He was not from the right social class to become an ambassador - a role reserved for men of means in the 1920s - and in his duties as a consul he primarily handled visas for emigrants intending to move to the US. Once Hitler's government began to oppress certain categories of German and Austrian citizens as well as foreigners, the consular office became vitally important. It was Geist who expedited the exits of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, and Geist who understood best the urgency of the situation in Germany and the potential catastrophe that awaited the persecuted groups.Geist was a constant presence in Berlin while US ambassadors and consul generals cycled in and out. Despite a secret homosexual relationship with a German that posed a threat to his career-and to his lover's life-Geist fearlessly challenged the police state whenever it abused Americans in Germany or threatened US interests. He balanced his diplomatic discretion with the imperative to save lives: he secured visas for hundreds of refugees and unaccompanied children while he maintained a working relationship with the most important Nazi officials, including Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Hermann Göring. As relations between the US and Nazi Germany deteriorated, Geist remained the most knowledgeable, capable and valuable analyst and problem solver in Berlin. He was the first American official to advise his government that what lay ahead for Germany's Jews was what would later become known as the Holocaust.

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Nearly seventy-five years after World War II, a contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler's Europe. Defenders claim that FDR saved millions of potential victims by defeating Nazi Germany. Others revile him as morally indifferent and indict him for keeping America's gates closed to Jewish refugees and failing to bomb Auschwitz's gas chambers.In an extensive examination of this impassioned debate, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. In FDR and the Jews, they draw upon many new primary sources to offer an intriguing portrait of a consummate politician-compassionate but also pragmatic-struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions. For most of his presidency Roosevelt indeed did little to aid the imperiled Jews of Europe. He put domestic policy priorities ahead of helping Jews and deferred to others' fears of an anti-Semitic backlash. Yet he also acted decisively at times to rescue Jews, often withstanding contrary pressures from his advisers and the American public. Even Jewish citizens who petitioned the president could not agree on how best to aid their co-religionists abroad.Though his actions may seem inadequate in retrospect, the authors bring to light a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were far greater than those of any other world figure. His moral position was tempered by the political realities of depression and war, a conflict all too familiar to American politicians in the twenty-first century.

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