Posted on 05/04/2018 11:41:15 AM PDT by SJackson
New documents revealed by the FDR library shows the president's secret plans to resettle Jews out of Europe.
NEW YORK - New evidence suggests that as the Jews of Europe were being slaughtered across continent during the Holocaust, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want them seeking refuge on American shores.
Tucked away in a secret vault inside the White House during his 12 year tenure as commander-in-chief, the newly revealed documents recently made public via the FDR Library paint a portrait of the President’s plan to ‘spread thin all over the world’ the remains of European Jewry.
Among the files in Roosevelt’s safe was evidence of a secret initiative dubbed the “M Project,” a study he commissioned that outlined options for post-war migration of the millions of Europeans, especially Jews, expected to be displaced by the war, according to Tablet Magazine.
The project was first proposed in the summer of 1942, with Roosevelt enlisting the assistance of former diplomat and writer John Franklin Carter, who ran an informal secret intelligence service for the President, along with Carter’s colleague Henry Field.
“I know that you and Henry Field can carry out this project unofficially, exploratorially, ethnologically, racially, admixturally, miscegenationally, confidentially and, above all, budgetarily,” FDR wrote to Carter in a secret memo authorizing the plan in July 1942.
“Any person connected herewith whose name appears in the public print will suffer guillotinally,” the memo added.
The White House plan called for Carter and Field, a trained anthropologist, to seek the assistants of academics and geographers to survey “the vacant places of the earth suitable for post-war settlement,” specifically in Africa and South America, and the “type of people who could live in those places.”
Roosevelt’s initial choice to lead the clandestine resettlement plan was the curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Aleš Hrdlička.
A prominent public intellectual and disciple of the eugenics theory - the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics - Hrdlička was convinced of the superiority of the white race and obsessed with racial identity.
Roosevelt’s relationship with Hrdlička existed years before the presidency, with the two exchanging letters for more than a decade. The documents show Hrdlička’s zeal for theories on racial mixtures and notions of human racial “stock,” ideas that appeared to strike a chord with the President.
Roosevelt asked Carter to reach out to Hrdlička and convince him to lead M Project team that would study the “ethnological problems anticipated in post-war population movements.” Hrdlička would be tasked with finding “agreed opinions as to problems arising out of racial admixtures and to consider the scientific principles involved in the process of miscegenation as contrasted with the opposing policies of so-called ‘racialism.’”
The President outlined a number of questions the study would attempt to answer, such as: “Is the South Italian stock—say, Sicilian—as good as the North Italian stock—say, Milanese—if given equal economic and social opportunity? Thus, in a given case, where 10,000 Italians were to be offer[ed] settlement facilities, what proportion of the 10,000 should be Northern Italians and what Southern Italian?”
Roosevelt “also pointed out… that while most South American countries would be glad to admit Jewish immigration, it was on the condition that the Jewish group were not localized in the cities, they want no ‘Jewish colonies,’ ‘Italian colonies,’ etc.”
Keeping with this theme, the president also tasked the committee with determining how to “resettle the Jews on the land and keep them there.”
Hrdlička ultimately refused to participate in the President’s plan after the White House made clear he would not have absolute control of the project.
The next choice was Isaiah Bowman, president of Johns Hopkins University, geographer and outspoken anti-semite. Upon becoming head of the university during the second World War, Bowman fired a number of prominent professors, believing that“There are already too many Jews at Hopkins.”
He was also quoted as saying “Jews don’t come to Hopkins to make the world better or anything like that. They came for two things: to make money and to marry non-Jewish women.”
He later instituted a quota limiting the number of Jewish students allowed into the school and restricted the number of Jewish students allowed to pursue degrees in the fields of science and math
Experts say Roosevelt was well-aware of Bowman’s prejudices, having started a correspondence with him years earlier. In 1938, Roosevelt asked Bowman undertake a study examining how Jewish Europeans resettling in South America would acclimate to the environment.
“Frankly, what I am rather looking for is the possibility of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited good agricultural lands to which Jewish colonies might be sent,” the President wrote to Bowman. He added that “such colonies need not be large but, in all probability, should be large enough for mutual cooperation and assistance—say fifty to one hundred thousand people in a given area.”
Describing the M Project to UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1943, Roosevelt said the study is focused on “the problem of working out the best way to settle the Jewish question,” adding that the solution “essentially is to spread the Jews thin all over the world,” rather than allow them amass in large numbers in one specific place. The conversation was recorded in the diary of Vice President Henry Wallace, who was present at the meeting.
The M Project would eventually produce thousands of pages of reports, maps and analysis examining the characteristics of multiple racial and ethnic groups, and theorizing about optimal proportions in which to combine them in their new homelands.
The M Project would finally be scrapped by President Harry Truman, who took over as commander-in-chief after Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Truman saw the study as a colossal waste of money, which was granted $10,000 a month, and ordered the State Department to pull the funding soon after becoming President.
A previous version of this story erroneously identified the documents to be apart of a physical exhibit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Consistent with the quotation attributed to FDR: “You know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance.”
Sounds like they're talking about the entire Displaced Person population, which of course obviously included a large number of Jews.
But the substance does not seem to support the hysteria and histrionics in the headline. A lot of it seems to be innuendo based on some perceived anti-Jewish comment or action made by someone at some point in their life not connected to this matter.
If there were other countries besides the USA where Displaced Persons in post-war Europe, including Jews, could be safely settled, what is the problem? I don't understand the outrage.
The irony is that this big name biased Democrat President was trying to keep out one of the strongest Democrat constituencies in the US today.
I wonder how far one would have to look at this M Document before you see Joseph Kennedy’s fingerprints?
This is not news to anyone who studied that time period.
There was a famous international meeting at Evian where Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Europe, and of course he sent away that ship full of refugees (and we are talking good middle class hard working educated people) who sailed return back to Europe and all were killed.
I for one, can NOT fathom why the Jewish people in this country continue to support any democrat.
Could it be the love of all that “free” government money the democrats hand out?
This makes sense to me. Young FDR was a protege of Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was a big fan of the KKK. The KKK hates Jews. On a related matter, what did FDR do to help the black people?
Well, two thumbs up for President Truman for discontinuing the ridiculous plan of FDR and for recognizing the Nation of Israel right away in 1948.
>>Yet by and large they still vote straight ticket Democrat, when huge portions of the Democrat base hate them............It makes no sense................
It does when you factor in the Marxism.
Abe Lincoln felt the same way about the Negro...the North was afraid of them, Lincoln only used slavery later, to keep the North in the war between the states...aka Abe’s War.
The last Jew of Vinnitsa, 1941
A picture from an Einsatzgruppen soldier’s personal album, labelled on the back as “Last Jew of Vinnitsa”.
It shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D just about to shoot a Jewish man
kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1941.
All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa and its surrounding areas were massacred at the time.
Roosevelt is an icon of the Democrat party. The fact that he was an anti-semite is of no real concern to them. In fact, Roosevelt’s view is back in favor by the “progressive” left. So, don’t count on any statues being removed.
All the coins should be redesigned. Every single one has lasted longer in type than was usual during our history.
All five major coins have dead Presidents. The first President did not appear until 1909, and it took until 1964 for the last one to appear.
It’s time to go back to Liberty. Except of course for the Trump $10 gold.
Many Americans believe the same thing today.
Another liberal saint who was a closet bigot.
Henry Ford ran as a Democrat as well. Republicans weren't any better.
Does anybody know why the back of the penny was changed?.............
That’s true. Though credit was given post war.
Henry Ford was very anti-Jewish..................
Not really, antisemitism existed in the US long before the revolution. Jews, and to a lesser extent Catholics, couldn’t vote or hold public office in some states. Post Constitutions, Catholics could vote in all states, but Jews couldn’t in a couple of states. I think the last state allowing Jews to hold public office was MD in the late 1820s, though some sources claim NC post civil war.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.