Replies

Olog-hai: "And again, this is not about immigration but refugee status.
Nobody’s falling for that conflation canard, so let it go."

I don't buy your "immigrant vs. refugee" distinction.
First of all, what did the word "refugee" even mean in 1939?
What categories, if any, of people were being admitted to the US in 1939 as "refugees"?
Were Jews being admitted anywhere in the world as "refugees" versus as "immigrants"?

Again remember, in early 1939 the world was still at peace.
Yes, Hitler's words were full of bluster & threats, but peace had been kept by brilliant politicians such as Britain's own Neville Chamberlain -- don't you remember seeing him wave that paper showing "peace in our time"?

Surely such a brilliant negotiator as Chamberlain will find new ways to keep the peace beyond 1939, regardless of Hitler's huffing and puffing.

So, donchaknow, those MSS St. Louis passengers are not "refugees" (whatever that word means), they're just immigrants hoping to beat US laws intended to keep such people out.

Of course, FRiend, I'm not saying I agree with those 1939 mis-perceptions, only that, true or false, that's what they thought.

Olog-hai: "BTW, do not admit that FDR’s intelligence network was competent in one post (this one) and then imply it was not competent in a later post."

FRiend, I have whole books here at home which discuss FDR's "intelligence network", and none of them tell me he knew in advance of the coming Holocaust.
Of course we can assume he knew of Hitler's public pronouncements, such as his January 1939 Reichtag speech, from which I quoted above, but then, Hitler was so full of bluff and bluster that it was hard to tell if or when he was serious.

Indeed, as late as summer 1941, Nazis themselves were planning to transport European Jewry to the island of Madagascar.

Regardless, FDR continued to negotiate for the release of more Jews from Germany as late as the summer of 1939.
And indeed, by the time war started, virtually every Jew who could leave Germany (young, employable) had done so.
Sadly, many didn't move far enough away.

Again remember, in early 1939 the world was still at peace. Yes, Hitler's words were full of bluster & threats, but peace had been kept by brilliant politicians such as Britain's own Neville Chamberlain -- don't you remember seeing him wave that paper showing "peace in our time"?

Surely such a brilliant negotiator as Chamberlain will find new ways to keep the peace beyond 1939, regardless of Hitler's huffing and puffing.

So, donchaknow, those MSS St. Louis passengers are not "refugees" (whatever that word means), they're just immigrants hoping to beat US laws intended to keep such people out.

False, the Jews were not at peace. They were already refugees.

Kindertransport (Children's Transport) was the informal name of a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940.

Following the violent pogrom staged by the Nazi authorities upon Jews in Germany known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) of 9–10 November 1938, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees. Spurred by British public opinion and the persistent efforts of refuge aid committees, most notably the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, British authorities agreed to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter Great Britain from Germany and German-annexed territories (namely, Austria and the Czech lands).

Private citizens or organizations had to guarantee to pay for each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return for this guarantee, the British government agreed to allow unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. It was understood at the time that when the “crisis was over,” the children would return to their families. Parents or guardians could not accompany the children. The few infants included in the program were tended by other children on their transport.

The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain, on December 2, 1938, bringing some 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom. Like this convoy, most transports left by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in Central Europe. Children from smaller towns and villages traveled from their homes to these collection points in order to join the transports. Jewish organizations inside the Greater German Reich—specifically the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany, headquartered in Berlin (and after early 1939, its successor organization the Reich Association of Jews in Germany), as well as the Jewish Community Organization (Kultusgemeinde) in Vienna—planned the transports.

In the fight against Slavery, the British were first, while the United States lagged behind, clinging to slaves and guns. In the fight against Nazi Germany, the United States also lagged behind. The good news is the United States got their in the end, albeit there were more casualties.

You don’t have to “buy” the distinction; it exists whether you want it to or not.

For modern-day liberals, of course, it does not have to exist with respect to the US southern border. But that is not what this subject is about, and trying to conflate the two bespeaks a malicious agenda.

The rest of the reply is conjecture and misdirection. Also bespeaks an agenda of malice. There is always peace before war breaks out (which it did in 1939), and trying to pretend once more that Allied intelligence was so incompetent as to not know about machinations towards war is just insulting to not only the intelligence of the one addressed but also oneself.