Quoting Arnold A. Offner’s American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1938, pages 57–60:
Diplomatic opinion differed on the new Germany. For the American consul general at Stuttgart, Leon Dominian, Germany’s new masters represented something old, “the cynical militarism of their predecessors of pre‐Weimar days,” and, he felt, the United States should deal with them accordingly.
For Douglas Miller, commercial attaché in Berlin, the average [German Fascist] was essentially a “young, ignorant, and romantic” misfit, willing to declare the modern capitalistic world in which he had never known success a failure, voting for a “return to medieval status where the individual does not have to do his own thinking.” [German Fascism’s so‐called] revolution, Miller believed, was the work of a handful of “fanatics and adventurers who had learned how to appeal to the moron majority in a period of depression and discouragement.”¹¹
Miller and many other Americans did not yet believe the [German Fascists] a large threat. The NSDAP represented “almost unanimous” German opinion on such critical questions as disarmament and revision of the Treaty of Versailles. Still, the [supposed] revolution was both an assertion of Germany’s rights against other nations and an effort at adjusting class and occupational problems in Germany.¹²
By the summer of 1933 Miller regarded Hitler and his immediate lieutenants as the moderate forces trying desperately to ward off a second revolution. Withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference hardly disturbed Miller, who remained unconvinced as to any threat of the new German government in international affairs.
Having given Mein Kampf a careful reading, he concluded that Hitler’s advocacy of deception in foreign affairs, his “inflammatory statements regarding foreign policy and Germany’s mission to expand in the East,” were all so much propaganda. There was no reason for concern: “The Nazis’ war talk, superman talk and posing is simply designed to impress their followers and should be discounted.”¹³
Davis, the American disarmament negotiator, had reached much the same conclusions. No one could understand what was happening in [the Third Reich] without being there. Germany, he wrote from Berlin in the early spring of 1933, was in the midst of a “real revolution.” One had to expect “certain excesses,” though the American press probably made too much of them.
He could not determine the course of the [supposed] revolution and its effects on foreign policy. These would depend on Hitler’s ability to withstand radicals in his party and also to shackle the semimilitary forces he had organized for purposes of the [so‐called] revolution. The Hitler government was committed to an early revision of the Treaty of Versailles, although the exact method was unclear.¹⁴
Long‐term objectives of the Hitler government did not appear of immediate concern. American diplomats knew that in 1933 Germany was no threat. Politically isolated, mired in the world‐wide economic collapse which saw more than 6,000,000 Germans unemployed, its army of 100,000 greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the French, the [Third Reich] could not move in any direction without running against the French alliance system.¹⁵
Nonetheless, [the Third Reich] affected American interests, and it was necessary for the government to respond to developments there.
One development, persecution of the Jews, had by no means assumed a pattern in 1933. From the end of January until the March 5 Reichstag elections, the government and NSDAP proceeded cautiously with anti‐Semitic policies, attacking Jews who were opponents of the [NSDAP] by virtue of their being Social Democrats or Communists.
After March 5, commanding a majority in the Reichstag for the first time through support by the Nationalists, the [Fascists] made their attacks more frequent, arbitrary, and bloody. The government apologized, blaming undisciplined NSDAP members acting as party men, not government officials. As attacks abated everyone waited to see what would be the outcome of the government’s official one‐day boycott of all Jewish businesses scheduled for April 1.¹⁶
Ambassador Sackett reported in early March that four American Jews in Berlin had been beaten up and one of them forced to rescind an eviction notice against a [Fascist] tenant who owed a year’s rent. Hull lodged no protest, and when Hitler on the morning of March 11 issued a public appeal to his followers to maintain law and order, Sackett optimistically declared anti‐Jewish demonstrations at an end.¹⁷
Violence intensified. Shortly a delegation representing American Jewish organizations called upon Hull to urge him to protest to the German government. He declined, saying at a press conference next day that the United States was still “endeavoring industriously” to gain information on conditions in [the Third Reich].¹⁸
(Emphasis added. Much of the chapter goes on like this, and I had to stop here so as to avoid testing your patience.)
Click here for events that happened today (September 3).
1935: The Fascists laid down the keel of submarine Iride at the Odero‐Terni‐Orlando Navy Yard in Muggiani, La Spezia.
1936: Fascist aeroplanes threw back the Republican troops on Majorca, and the Nationalist forces on the mainland captured Talavera de la Reina.
1938: The Kriegsmarine launched U‐56 at Deutsche Werke, Kiel.
1939: The Third Reich’s head of state issued an order to his generals, again stressing that the Wehrmacht must not attack British and French positions, then he departed Berlin for the Eastern Front. Coincidentally, the Fascist submarine U‐30 torpedoed British passenger liner Athenia in the Atlantic Ocean, and Otto Skorzeny returned home from Trost Barracks, Vienna (despite the outbreak of war) due to the lack of instructors to train new recruits. The Fascists exterminated fifty‐five Polish peasants in Truskolasy while Berlin issued orders that executions by members of the SS were to be carried out in concentration camps, to go into effect seventeen days later. Finally, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declared war on the Third Reich after its invasion of Poland, forming the Allied nations. (The Viceroy of India also declared war, but without consulting the provincial legislatures.) Consequently, the United Kingdom and France began a naval blockade of the Third Reich that lasted until the war’s end. This also marked the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic.
1940: Berlin commenced planning Operation Sealion (the invasion of Britain). In the meantime, fifty Do 17 bombers escorted by 80 Bf 110 fighters and 40 Bf 109 fighters flew up the Thames Estuary in southern England, then split up to hit RAF airfields at North Weald, Hornchurch, and Debden. All three airfields were severely damaged, yet remained operational. Biggin Hill also saw two minor raids on this date. The Luftwaffe lost seventeen fighters and eight bombers. During a meeting on this date, Kesselring recommended Göring to cease the bombing of British fighter airfields because there were too many of them; instead, he suggested to bomb London and use the threat of civilian deaths to force large numbers of British fighters to come to battle. Overnight, Fascist bombers attacked Kent, Liverpool, and South Wales.
As well, four Abwehr spies landed from rowing boats on the Kent coast in southern Britain. Poorly trained and without papers, the four—Charles van den Kieboom, Carl Meier, Jose Waldberg, and Sjoerd Pons—were quickly apprehended and handed over to Colonel Robin Stephens of Military Intelligence for interrogation.
1941: The Axis captured the Ukrainian village of Vakarzhany, and Axis bombers damaged British ship Fort Richepanse at noon in the Atlantic Ocean; at 2042 hours, Axis submarine U‐567 caught up with the damaged ship west of Ireland, then sunk her, resulting in forty‐one casualties (but leaving twenty‐two survivors). Lastly, Axis flightcraft sank Chinese vessel Ganlu at Bazhong, Sichuan Province, China.
1942: In response to news of its coming liquidation, Dov Lopatyn lead an uprising in the Axis ghetto of Łachwa (present‐day Belarus).
1943: British and Canadian troops landed on the Italian mainland. On the same day, Walter Bedell Smith and Giuseppe Castellano signed the Armistice of Cassibile, although it went unannounced for another five days.
1944: Axis personnel placed diarist Anne Frank and her family on the last transport train from the Westerbork transit camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp, arriving three days later.
