{"id":85219,"date":"2021-05-13T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T15:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=85219"},"modified":"2021-05-05T07:07:08","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T05:07:08","slug":"22-05-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=85219","title":{"rendered":"New Documents Reveal FDR\u2019s Eugenic Project to \u2018Resettle\u2019 Jews During World War II"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>New Documents Reveal FDR\u2019s Eugenic Project to \u2018Resettle\u2019 Jews During World War II<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

STEVE USDIN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
As the Holocaust raged, the American president secretly asked his government to study the possible resettlement of remaining European refugees in Africa and South America. His goal: for Jews to be \u2018spread thin all over the world.\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A new exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/strong>, Americans and the Holocaust<\/a>,<\/em> explores Americans\u2019 knowledge of and responses to Nazism, war, and genocide. An unstated question runs through the photographs, films, and artifacts: What explains FDR\u2019s apparent indifference to the plight of the Jews? If he\u2019d had complete freedom to act without concern for the political consequences, what would he have done? Visitors leave the museum without answers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roosevelt didn\u2019t address these issues publicly, but confidential files kept in his personal safe in the White House and released to the public decades after his death, as well as correspondence in his personal files, provide valuable clues. They make it clear that the question of where to settle the Jews had been on FDR\u2019s mind for years. While he was uncertain about whether they would be better off on the slopes of the Andes or the savannahs of central Africa, there was one place he knew he didn\u2019t want them: the United States of America.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the files in Roosevelt\u2019s safe were documents about the origins and goals of the \u201cM Project,\u201d a secret study he commissioned of options for post-war migration (hence \u201cM\u201d) of the millions of Europeans, especially Jews, expected to be displaced by the war. The President first discussed the project in the summer of 1942 with John Franklin Carter, a journalist, novelist, and former diplomat who ran an informal secret intelligence service for Roosevelt. Carter\u2019s No. 2 was an anthropologist named Henry Field.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the beginning of July, FDR asked Carter and Field to sound out prominent anthropologists and geographers about the possibility of undertaking a survey of regions that would be suitable for settlement of displaced Europeans.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Franklin Carter in 1936.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

FDR found time on the afternoon of July 30, 1942, in the midst of a schedule packed with meetings with Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and General \u2018Hap\u2019 Arnold, to dictate a memo greenlighting the M Project. The memo, delivered by White House courier to Carter in his office in the National Press Building, a few blocks from the White House, stated: \u201cI know that you and Henry Field can carry out this project unofficially, exploratorially, ethnologically, racially, admixturally, miscegenationally, confidentially and, above all, budgetarily.\u201d It concluded: \u201cAny person connected herewith whose name appears in the public print will suffer guillotinally.\u201d Roosevelt repeatedly admonished Carter to keep the M Project completely secret.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s first choice to head the M Project was Ale\u0161 Hrdli\u010dka, curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The two men had carried on a lively correspondence for over a decade and the President had absorbed the scientist\u2019s theories about racial mixtures and eugenics. Roosevelt, the scion of two families that considered themselves American aristocrats, was especially attracted to Hrdli\u010dka\u2019s notions of human racial \u201cstock.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A prominent public intellectual who had dominated American physical anthropology for decades, Hrdli\u010dka was convinced of the superiority of the white race and obsessed with racial identity. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, he\u2019d written to Roosevelt expressing the view that the \u201cless developed skulls\u201d of Japanese were proof that they were innately warlike and had a lower level of evolutionary development than other races. The president wrote back asking whether the \u201cJapanese problem\u201d could be solved through mass interbreeding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roosevelt had asked Carter to recruit Hrdli\u010dka, and to tell him his task would be to head up a secret international committee of anthropologists to study the \u201cethnological problems anticipated in post-war population movements.\u201d Outlining the president\u2019s charge for the committee, Carter told Hrdli\u010dka it was expected to \u201cformulate agreed opinions as to problems arising out of racial admixtures and to consider the scientific principles involved in the process of miscegenation as contrasted with the opposing policies of so-called \u2018racialism.\u2019 \u201d The instructions were consistent with views Roosevelt had expressed for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1925, while undergoing therapy for polio at Warm Springs, Georgia, FDR wrote a series of columns for the Macon Telegraph<\/em>, including one that touched on his ideas about immigration. He praised elements of Canada\u2019s immigration policy, especially its regulations \u201cto prevent large groups of foreign-born from congregating in any one locality.\u201d Roosevelt added: \u201cIf, 25 years ago, the United States had adopted a policy of this kind we would not have the huge foreign sections which exist in so many of our cities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Memo from FDR to John Franklin Carter authorizing the M Project, July 30, 1942. FDR LIBRARY<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The future president remarked that \u201cno sensible American wants this country to be made a dumping ground for foreigners of any nation, but it is equally true that there are a great many foreigners who, if they came here, would make exceedingly desirable citizens. It becomes, therefore, in the first place, a question of selection.\u201d Roosevelt informed his readers that \u201ca little new European blood of the right sort does a lot of good in every community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While the column doesn\u2019t define \u201cthe right sort,\u201d it provides two examples of good emigrants, those from Southern Germany and Northern Italy. Roosevelt also expressed the opinion that \u201cfor a good many years to come European immigration should remain greatly restricted,\u201d and that \u201cforeigners\u201d who had congregated in large American cities should be encouraged to disperse into the heartland. Roosevelt apparently held onto these opinions when he moved into the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s goals for the committee were consistent with the views he had expressed in 1925. He wanted it to identify \u201cthe vacant places of the earth suitable for post-war settlement\u201d and the \u201ctype of people who could live in those places.\u201d Initial work was to focus on South America and Central Africa. Roosevelt wanted the committee to explore questions such as the probable outcomes from mixing people from various parts of Europe with the South American \u201cbase stock.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

FDR asked the committee to consider some specific questions, such as: \u201cIs the South Italian stock\u2014say, Sicilian\u2014as good as the North Italian stock\u2014say, Milanese\u2014if given equal economic and social opportunity? Thus, in a given case, where 10,000 Italians were to be offer[ed] settlement facilities, what proportion of the 10,000 should be Northern Italians and what Southern Italian?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Roosevelt \u201calso pointed out,\u201d Carter informed Hrdli\u010dka, \u201cthat while most South American countries would be glad to admit Jewish immigration, it was on the condition that the Jewish group were not localized in the cities, they want no \u2018Jewish colonies,\u2019 \u2018Italian colonies,\u2019 etc.\u201d Keeping with this theme, the president also tasked the committee with determining how to \u201cresettle the Jews on the land and keep them there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hrdli\u010dka ultimately refused to participate in the M Project because Roosevelt wouldn\u2019t give him absolute control. Isaiah Bowman, president of Johns Hopkins University and a geographer, was promoted from his role as a member of the committee to the head of the project. Roosevelt knew Bowman well and so was presumably aware of his anti-Semitic views<\/a>.
\n<\/span>
\nrecomended by: Leon Rozenbaum<\/strong><\/em>
\n<\/span>Bowman understood what Roosevelt was trying to achieve through the M Project. Years earlier, in November 1938, he had undertaken research for FDR about the prospects for European settlement in South America. Requesting the research, Roosevelt wrote to Bowman: \u201cFrankly, what I am rather looking for is the possibility of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited good agricultural lands to which Jewish colonies might be sent.\u201d Roosevelt added that \u201csuch colonies need not be large but, in all probability, should be large enough for mutual cooperation and assistance\u2014say 50 to 100,000 people in a given area.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The M Project expanded far beyond Roosevelt\u2019s original charge, producing<\/a> thousands of pages<\/a> of reports, maps, and charts analyzing the suitability of locations around the globe for settlement by Europeans who were expected to be displaced by the war, analyzing the characteristics of myriad racial and ethnic groups, and theorizing about optimal proportions in which to combine them in their new homelands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bowman provided overall direction to the M Project. The hands-on leader was Robert Strausz-Hupe, an Austrian \u00e9migr\u00e9 intellectual who went on to hold prominent positions in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, including U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Strausz-Hupe was in charge of six social scientists and three secretaries, along with additional part-time translators, cartographers, and secretaries. They produced memos on a plan for Jewish settlement in northwestern Australia, rice farming in Manchukuo, settlement possibilities in Nigeria, and scores of other topics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Settlement contingencies for a wide range of peoples were studied, but when Roosevelt described the M Project to Churchill during a lunch at the White House in May 1943, he focused on one particular group. FDR described it as a study about \u201cthe problem of working out the best way to settle the Jewish question,\u201d Vice President Henry Wallace, who attended the meeting, recorded in his diary. The solution, which the President endorsed, \u201cessentially is to spread the Jews thin all over the world,\u201d rather than allow them to congregate anywhere in large numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Carter wrote to Truman explaining his work for FDR, offering to continue his unit\u2019s covert activities and urging the new President to fund completion of the M Project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truman was deeply skeptical about the need for espionage or secret intelligence, and he had been informed by the State Department that the $10,000 per month that was being spent on the M Project was a waste of money. He terminated Carter\u2019s operations and cut off funding for the migration studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Very few people outside the team that produced the reports were allowed to see them and they had no discernible impact on policy decisions. In retrospect, the M Project\u2019s principal accomplishment was to shed light on how now-discredited eugenic theories influenced FDR\u2019s thinking about race, immigration, and the Jews of Europe. As the M Project\u2019s reports rolled into the White House, so did news about the methodical starvation, torture, and extermination of Europe\u2019s Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Steve Usdin<\/strong> is the author ofEngineering Communism: How two Americans spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley and the forthcomingBureau of Spies: Secret Connections between Journalism and Espionage in Washington.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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New Documents Reveal FDR\u2019s Eugenic Project to \u2018Resettle\u2019 Jews During World War II STEVE USDIN As the Holocaust raged, the American president secretly asked his government to study the possible resettlement of remaining European refugees in Africa and South America. His goal: for Jews to be \u2018spread thin all over the world.\u2019 Franklin D. Roosevelt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85219"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85237,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85219\/revisions\/85237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}