The Jew Who Defeated Hitler Page 5
A graduate of Vassar College, Elinor spent her early adulthood in amateur theatre and volunteering at the Neighborhood Playhouse, an amateur troupe affiliated with the Henry Street Settlement, which delivered social services and arts programs to New Yorkers. She and Henry were married in April 1916.8 Though she had been an athletic youth, she had gained weight as an adult, especially around her face. With deep-set eyes and an olive complexion, she accentuated her husband’s lugubrious image when they were photographed together. She took an interest in politics, writing letters to papers in Dutchess County as early as 1921 to protest the state of schools, including the neglect of testing of their wells, the paucity of books, and the lack of support by the community. While her husband’s syntax was garbled, Elinor’s rhetoric was striking in its clarity.9 Had she been born in a later age, it might have been Elinor, not Henry, who competed in the national political arena. But as a woman in upper-crust New York early in the twentieth century, she chose to support her husband, raising their children and working with him in Democratic politics in New York. By 1924, she was working with Eleanor Roosevelt and her circle of intimates on the women’s division of the Democratic organization for New York State. Eleanor Roosevelt’s letters from these days attest to the warmth between the two women and show the matronly Eleanor’s worry about her driven friend. “You must not get so tired,” Eleanor chided Elinor in one 1926 letter. “I think you are a brick when you feel ill to do any work of this kind,” read another undated missive. And another: “I am sorry you feel so miserable and nervous and I do hope you can have a little rest.”10 The fact was Elinor Morgenthau suffered an affliction as severe as her husband’s migraine headaches—excessive menstrual bleeding, which often left her floored with exhaustion. It was during these campaigns in New York State that Elinor and Eleanor fell out—almost irreparably. In October 1928, Henry Morgenthau was working as advance man for Roosevelt, and on one trip, his wife accompanied him, only to find that Eleanor’s friend Nancy Cook had already arranged the event. Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerson were Eleanor Roosevelt’s closest friends at the time, and Elinor Morgenthau resented them greatly. Henry Morgenthau, likely at Elinor’s urging, complained to FDR, and the fallout almost cost his wife the friendship of Mrs. Roosevelt. In the exchange of letters between the various women that continued for almost a year, Eleanor Roosevelt let Elinor know she was “amazed” by her complaints and that “somehow I always forget how tragic things seem to you.” The incident eventually blew over, but it highlighted the thinness of Elinor Morgenthau’s skin.11
Once Henry Morgenthau was ensconced in the Treasury, Elinor became an invaluable political asset for her husband. She moved easily in Washington society, conversing with newsmen, royalty, and statesmen, and she even held her own when placed next to Albert Einstein at a White House dinner. She had a calmer temperament than her husband and would frequently cool him down when his temper got the better of him. She participated regularly in the events Eleanor Roosevelt organized for the “Cabinet Ladies,” and as the wife of the Treasury secretary, she held the third-most prestigious place among them. Second place was held by Rose Frances Hull, wife of the secretary of state, another Jewess celebrated for her intelligence. The New York Times even noted that at White House social gatherings, Mr. and Mrs. Morgenthau were known to “do the Virginia Reel in the East Room of the White House with the President calling the figures.”12
Early in Roosevelt’s administration, Elinor told the Christian Science Monitor her abiding passion was pacifism—odd considering she was married to Roosevelt’s most stalwart hawk. She was also an avowed liberal (the New York Times said she contributed to “the human side” of her husband’s job13), and counterbalanced the advice the secretary received from his father, who was more aligned with the business world. When Henry Morgenthau Jr. outlined his political philosophy at Temple University in June 1938, Elinor was at his side, asking journalists afterward if they would agree that it was a very “liberal speech.”14 After Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner ran their three-part profile of Morgenthau in the Saturday Evening Post, Kintner wrote Morgenthau to thank a few people including Elinor, whose help was “invaluable.”15 She read Morgenthau’s briefing papers on Treasury business, commenting sometimes not only on the subject but also on the quality of the staff member’s analysis.16 One Sunday after the war began in Europe, she attended a meeting at which the Treasury brass debated whether the Johnson Act—a 1934 act that barred loans to countries that had defaulted on their World War I loans—prevented the United States from extending short-term credit to democracies buying American-made armaments. At one point, the brainy Harry Dexter White asked her whether she believed the concept of cash-and-carry purchases would allow a ninety-day credit. “Not as written in the original statement but it would be written in this proviso,” she responded, obviously pointing to a certain clause. “When I listened to the President the thing was to be bought and paid for; that was my interpretation.” Concluding, she summed up a point the Treasury officials all agreed on: “Cash is not credit.”17 Just as Morgenthau let few of his staff call him “Henry,” he always referred to his wife at staff meetings as “Mrs. Morgenthau” rather than “Elinor.”
Morgenthau hosted Bullitt and Monnet for a dinner at his farm on October 22, 1938. Just two months earlier, the ambassador had hosted the Morgenthaus during their celebrated French vacation and had thrilled the Morgenthau boys with his mischievous spirit. But Monnet was more of a mystery, and Morgenthau was suspicious of the Frenchman and the plan for his financially desperate country to build overseas munitions plants. France had twice been forced to devalue its currency in the past two years, and Morgenthau understood her economic plight as well as any American. He tried to steer the conversation toward the financing of the project, but Bullitt kept returning to the operational side.
“Let’s take it for granted that you could overcome all technical difficulties,” Morgenthau finally said. “How much do you think the plant would cost? Twenty-five million dollars to build?”
“No,” Monnet responded. “Fifty million to one hundred million dollars.”
“How are you going to pay for that?”
“Frenchmen who have their money over here will subscribe to the stock,” said Monnet.18
Morgenthau was incredulous. The French had been removing money from their country for several years as the threat of war grew. So he wondered aloud why any Frenchman would assume France would still be around to buy the planes if Monnet was so worried that he moved his money offshore. They bickered about the pricing details, and Morgenthau insisted the French did not have sufficient money to invest in such a project.
“Mr. Monnet, we figure that during the last four years, there must be at least four billion dollars in gold that has left France,” he said. “Just as long as that is abroad, and what little money is left continues to leave France, there isn't any use talking about building aeroplanes or anything else. You people have to devise means and method whereby you get this money back.”19
Morgenthau told Monnet point-blank that the government of Édouard Daladier had to issue decrees under which citizens would be jailed unless they repatriated their money. It would probably mean imprisoning two thousand people and discharging two-thirds of the cabinet because ministers kept their money offshore. Surprisingly, Bullitt and Monnet liked the idea, though the latter said only two or three people would need jail time.
“Mr. Monnet, if you don't do something like this, your country is through,” Morgenthau said as the meeting ended. He repeated it twice for emphasis. “It’s impossible for you to continue with the bulk of your capital abroad.”
Bullitt and Monnet returned the next day, and the latter was profuse in his thanks to Morgenthau. The secretary once again encouraged him to jail people with money overseas, starting with Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet. Morgenthau said he had never seen Bullitt so enthusiastic about anything.20 Days later, Morgenthau put feelers out through his network of businessmen and di
plomats abroad to try to learn more about Jean Monnet.
Through the autumn, the Japanese continued to seize key regions in China, capturing Canton in the south on October 21 and posing a renewed threat to Hong Kong. Wuhan, a city four hundred miles west of Shanghai, where Chiang Kai-shek’s government had retreated, fell on October 27. As a result, the government fled to Chungking, a depressing city on a rocky bluff overlooking the Yangtze River in the center of China. In Spain, the republican army was being beaten back by Franco to the northeast corner of the country. After a German embassy official was shot by a Jew in Paris, Germany exploded in the worst pogrom yet witnessed under the Nazis. Organized by Goebbels, the SS (Schutzstaffel) ran amok through the country, burning and vandalizing synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses and murdering dozens of Jews. The rampage became known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. The sheer brutality of Kristallnacht galvanized public opinion around the world—especially in the United States—like no other event in almost six years of Hitler’s rule.
By coincidence, the German savagery took place the day after the midterm elections in the United States, in which the Democrats lost seventy-two House seats to the Republicans. Morgenthau had spent election night in New York in the suite of his boyhood friend and New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The party was packed with anti–New Dealers aglow with the Republican sweep. Morgenthau hung around just long enough to learn that his wife’s cousin Herbert Lehman had been returned as governor of New York, then he left in dismay. Days later, he agreed with Cordell Hull that, “It could have been much worse [but is] as bad as I care to see it right now.”21
Roosevelt understood the American people’s outrage at the Nazi brutality and felt bolder now that the election was out of the way. He recalled the US ambassador from Berlin and issued his sternest statement yet against the Nazis, condemning their thuggery and saying that twenty countries in the Western Hemisphere would cooperate on defense. The Baltimore Sun, in its front-page article, said the president’s message was understood in every quarter of Washington to mean that the United States would meet force with force if any power “turns resentful or covetous toward the western continents.” One reporter at the press conference also asked the president whether he would recommend to Congress a loosening of immigration restrictions, and he answered he would not.22
Immigration policy and how to handle refugees were controversial issues because of anti-Semitism and because the Depression-weary country worried immigrants would take jobs from native-born Americans. What many Americans did not know was that immigration from Germany, mostly of Jewish refugees, had increased dramatically between 1933 and 1938. Exact figures are not known, and estimates of German Jewish immigrants to the United States from 1933 to 1938 range from 46,000 to 102,000.23 Many Americans would have been appalled by the figures, given the prevailing anti-Semitism. When asked by pollsters in March 1938 whether they believed Jews held too much power in the United States, 41 percent of respondents replied yes. The number rose to 55 percent by 1946.24 Such prominent individuals as industrialist Henry Ford, expatriate poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin publicly spoke of their distrust of Jews. Even within government, bigotry was a powerful force. “The Hebraic influence in the administration is very strong,” former budget director Lewis Douglas wrote in his diary in March 1934. “Most of the bad things which it has done can be traced to it.”25
Morgenthau naturally felt the difficulties of being Jewish in the United States, but he and his family worked endlessly to rise above them. The elder Henry Morgenthau told his son that anti-Semitism had always existed and always would and that the Jews simply had to accept it.26 Henry Jr. and Elinor raised their children as Americans, not Jewish Americans. In fact, in their early years, the children did not even know they were Jewish. When a child asked five-year-old Henry III what his religion was, the lad didn't understand the question. When he asked his mother later what it meant, she replied, “Just tell them you're an American.”27 Yet no Jew could escape completely the pain of bigotry. When he worked for Roosevelt in Albany, Henry Morgenthau Jr. fired a chauffeur who called him “that Jew,” “Kike,” and “the dirty Jew from New York” behind his back.28 Sometimes he used his religion to his advantage. For example, when he really needed to convince Roosevelt that he was speaking in earnest, he would remind the president that as a Jew he could seek no higher office than the position he held, so he was not taking a stance based on personal advancement.29
It’s difficult to fully assess Morgenthau’s opinion on the plight of European Jews before World War II. He rarely, if ever, broached the subject in his recorded discussions with his staff, and he steadfastly insisted he held his position on behalf of all Americans, not just Jewish Americans. Henry III would later write that both Elinor and Henry Morgenthau Sr. urged him not to become entangled in Jewish issues. Yet Henry Morgenthau Jr. was the most powerful Jew in the administration, and he and the president sporadically discussed the need to find neutral countries willing to accept Jewish refugees. There’s no record of them talking about raising immigration limits within the United States, and Morgenthau tended to tread cautiously when urging settlements in Palestine. Great Britain, whose empire included Palestine, resisted Zionist demands to allow European Jews into the Holy Land because of protests from Palestinian Arabs. Morgenthau and Roosevelt focused discussions on virgin land that was economically and politically suitable for Jewish settlements.
On November 16, Morgenthau called the president to congratulate him on his condemnation of Germany and broached the refugee subject. He said someone named Constantin Maguire had suggested to him the settlements should be allowed in British Guinea and French Guinea in return for settling outstanding war debts of Britain and France.
“It’s no good,” responded the president. “It would take the Jews from twenty-five to fifty years to overcome the fever.” He suggested the Cameroons, a former German colony now a possession of France.
They discussed various ideas, such as drawing up a list of former German colonies where they could settle Jews. Morgenthau said the lands should be rich in natural resources, and the president mentioned countries with good climate and agricultural potential. Maybe, they agreed, they should write off about $500 million in war debts in return for the settlements. And Morgenthau added one criterion that his wife had insisted on: that these lands be open to refugees of all races, not just to Jews.
“The temper of the people today [dictates that] we can make this a political refuge for all creeds—I think the public is ready,” Morgenthau recorded in his diary later. “The point is the President has this. Nobody is helping him. I am going at least to do the spade work.”30
The spade work involved searching the globe for a suitable location, and Morgenthau enlisted the help of Dr. Isaiah Bowman, president of Johns Hopkins University, who gathered other academics and geographers (one of whom Morgenthau personally paid $100). They produced a short list of countries that would accept refugees that included Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, eventually recommending Costa Rica. When Morgenthau forwarded that information to FDR, he noted that Costa Rica needed $5 million to cover settlement costs. But the president insisted that the settlement be within a British colony, probably because of the influence the United States exerted over the United Kingdom. By December they had come up with a vague plan that would cost $500 million over five years to rescue about half a million German Jews, to be spread throughout several British colonies, including Palestine.31
Meanwhile, the Treasury staff pressed on with policies to punish the Nazis and their accomplices, and many of these files were handled by Herman Oliphant. The general counsel worked with the heads of the military on a plan to manufacture aircraft and to prevent profiteering by private manufacturers.32 The public had been outraged by arms profiteering in World War I, and the ethos of the New Deal demanded it not be repeated in the coming war. Oliphant also drew up customs rules for goods
from Sudetenland entering the United States. Customs officials would no longer allow Sudeten products to be marked “Made in Czechoslovakia.” When importers protested there had been more leniency when Austria was annexed by Germany, Oliphant replied it was a different situation: there was no longer a country called Austria but there was still an independent country called Czechoslovakia.33 And he prepared a memo saying the United States would probably have to impose duties on German goods because of the way that country treated US trade.34
Morgenthau continued to keep up the pressure on the State Department to approve a loan to the nationalist government in China, which Chiang’s representative repeatedly demanded. Oliphant came up with a new plan, this time for the Chinese to sell tung oil, or wood oil, a key ingredient in paint, to various US companies. The income from those sales would be used to service a new loan from the US Export-Import Bank, worth about $150 million. Though Morgenthau wanted to help the Chinese, he could not grant the request as long as they were in perpetual retreat from the Japanese. “There are all these rumors about General Chiang Kai Shek and, frankly, I don't know whether I can or cannot recommend this, because I don't know what Government there will be in China to do business with,” he told Chinese emissary K. P. Chen and ambassador Hu Shih in late October.35
As the Asian military situation stabilized, Morgenthau moved ahead with the tung-oil plan, which Roosevelt again approved as long as the State Department went along with it. But Hull and his staff prevaricated, insisting the plan had legal problems (which Oliphant solved) and violated the Neutrality Act. Following a cabinet meeting on November 11, Morgenthau suggested he accompany Hull back to the State Department offices to sign the appropriate papers, but Hull said he had to go meet the Italian ambassador. “I tried to get Hull again at five o'clock and he was playing croquet,” Morgenthau recorded in his diary.36 When Hull left Washington in late November, Morgenthau pressured Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles to approve the loans, insisting it was the president’s wish that they do so. In one of their arguments, Welles struck at the heart of the situation when he responded that FDR had never told the State Department that he wanted the loan approved.37 Roosevelt had a long history of overruling his cabinet members, and if he had really wanted the loans, he would have instructed Hull to approve it back in July. Morgenthau, of course, placed all the blame for the delays on Hull and his team, and none on the president.