15 - The Legacy of the Holocaust in Germany and the United States

Summary

The Nazi “Final Solution” was already underway when the United States entered World War II in December 1941, but it had been at most an indirect factor in America's decision. To be sure, news of Nazi violence against Jews had served to reinforce American fears of Nazism's threat to democracy and Western civilization. As the war continued, news of the mass murder leaked out of Nazi-occupied Europe and was reported widely in American newspapers. Several times between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government declared its intention to punish Nazi war criminals. Nonetheless, a wide discrepancy remained between official American rhetoric and actual American military and diplomatic efforts to intervene directly to stop the genocide. American moral repugnance at Germany's actions intensified in spring 1945 as American soldiers found mass graves, piles of bodies, and emaciated survivors at concentration camps such as Buchenwald and Dachau. Concrete evidence of German atrocities reinforced the conviction that the conflict against Nazi Germany had been a moral “crusade.”