Something I think about a lot lately is how much Nazi support there actually was in the US and if things had gone slightly differently we would not have been calling ourselves the good guys of WWII
This is beyond the normalization of publications like the Times at the time. But the Times specifically was wrong on Hitler, wrong on MLK Jr, wrong on Ida B Wells, wrong on the famine in ukraine, wrong on weapons of mass destruction. Being wrong somehow isn't disqualifying.
Circling back I do wonder what would happen if we taught WWII history not as the US "boldly daring to do the right thing" but really ending up doing the right thing by the edge of a coin toss, and even then it wasn't like the country saw Jewish people as fully human.
Lincoln thought slavery was morally wrong but did not see himself as an abolitionist and did not think Black people deserved the same rights as white people. It is ok to be honest with his views.
The abolitionists were the radical firebrands of the day; he wasn't one of them, but he became the president of the anti slavery Republicans.
His views on black civil rights seem to have become more liberal over time or perhaps he just felt safer expressing them.
Lincoln and FDR are good examples of how you're never going to get a president who's in line with leftist values but you can muscle them into doing good anyway
Ive been watching the old UK “The World at War” docu from 1973 and the ep about the US starts off with a nazi rally in NYC populists making isolationist speeches and talking about the “America First” movement. It hit hard.
Also remember the US didn't namely enter the war against Germany to free Europe. They only did so after Hitler declared war on them on 11th December in the aftermath of Pearl Harbour.
Hardly the cavalry riding to Europe's rescue they like to pretend.
Haven't seen that in years. Can't recall at what point in the series the Holocaust comes up. Acknowledged before D-Day, or not until camps are liberated.
We certainly didn’t allow Jewish refugees into the country. And though people want to blame FDR for that, the historical polls are damning. It was public opinion that kept Jewish refugees out.
The book Human Smoke does a great job of presenting the anti-semitism, isolationism, and fascist leanings of the United States in the lead-up to the U.S. finally entering the war.
“Searching for the Good War” is flawed but the case it makes is compelling: the idea that the US got into the war to halt the holocaust is more a product of Spielberg revisionism than a common attitude of the time
