APUSH
...oosevelt behaved in the manner of a true gentleman.” – General Franco - By staying neutral, the U.S. and other democracies allowed Hitler and Mussolini to aid in the death of another democracy and the formation of another fascist state - Peace-at-any-price-ism was cursed with illogic - Despite the war and conflict going on around the world, America was so desperate to stay out of it, that it refused to build up its armed forces - This was partly because of the appearance of a large armed forces and part of it was saving taxpayer money - When Roosevelt realized that they needed more, he was labeled a warmonger - A billion dollar naval reconstruction act was passed in 1938, the year before WWII Makers of America- Refugees from the Holocaust - anti-semitism spread through Europe in the 1930s due to Hitler’s genocidal delusions - the Jews tried to escape the SS (Schutzstaffel, an elite military and police force) - Albert Einstein escaped and then his pleas to Franklin Roosevelt helped initiate the top-secret atom bomb project - Other notable escapees: philosopher Hannah Arendt, painter Marc Chagall, and composer Kurt Weill - In the 1930s, more than 150,000 Jews fled the Third Reich for America, a tiny fraction of those who would die - Jews coming to America found a very divided Jewish community, one wave had come from Germany in the mid 1800s and another group had come from Eastern Europe in decades after 1890 - Both groups had migrated as families and without thinking of returning to the old country - These two waves had little in common, especially how they dealt with the ethnic tragedy of the 1930s - The German-Jewish community, organized in the American Jewish Committee had fough hard to convince their fellow Americans of their loyalty, and many now feared that bold advocacy for refugees from Hitler’s Germany would touch off an outburst of anti-semitism - “radio Priest”, Father Charles Coughlin, was already preaching against the Jews - The European Jews organized in the American Jewish Congress, were set on pressuring the Roosevelt administration into rescuing the fleeing Jews - The American Immigration Law of 1924 set rigid national quota levels, allowing very little room for the protection of racial, religious, or political refugees - The Great Depression made it impossible to provide employment for more people - The allowance of German Jews’ entrance, would start a flood of other Jews, from countries such as Poland and Romania - Many Jews and Gentiles alike, including Congressman Emmanuel Celler and Senator Robert Wagner, both of New York, lobbied Roosevelt to extend a welcoming hand to Jews seeking asylum, they were unsuccessful - In 1941, Congress rejected a Wagner bill to bring 20,000 German-Jewish children to the United states outside of quota restriction - After entering the war, the state department even covered up early rumors of Hitler’s plan to exterminate the European Jews - In total, 6 million Jews died FDR Shatters the Two-Term Tradition (1940) - Republican aspirants were round-faced and flat-voiced Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, son of the ex-president, and the energetic boy wonder, lawyer-prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey of New York - Wendell L. Willkie, a German-descended son of Hoosier Indiana, swept the Philadelphia convention off its feet, he was a recently defected Democrat and rocketed from political nothingness in just a few weeks - “We Want Willkie” - The Republicans decided he was the only candidate who could challenge Roosevelt so they selected him as their candidate - The Republican platform condemned FDR’s alleged dictatorship, as well as the costly and confusing zigzags of the New Deal - Willkie, an outspoken liberal, was opposed not so much to the New Deal as to its extravagances and inefficiencies - Democratic critics branded him “the rich man’s Roosevelt” and “the simple barefoot Wall Street Lawyer” - Roosevelt waited until the end, but eventually declared that he would challenge the two-term tradition - He said even though he wanted to retire, he would continue to be president because he wouldn’t desert the country in such a grave time of crisis - The democrats realized that only Roosevelt could deliver a democrat victory - “Better a Third Term Than a Third-Rater” - Willkie delivered more than five hundred speeches - Willkie saw eye to eye with FDR on the necessity of bolstering the beleaguered democracies, he refrained from assailing the president’s interventionism, though objecting to his methods - Both promised to stay out of the war, strengthen the nation’s defenses - Willkie, with a mop of black hair in his eyes, hit hard at Rooseveltian dictatorship and the third term - His enthusiastic followers cried “Win with Willkie” and “No Fourth Term Either” and “There’s No Indispensable Man” - Roosevelt, who was busy at his desk with many of the mounting international problems, gave very few speeches - “your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars” was a popular quote but one that would come...