During WW2 was the US really unaware of what was happening or did we just not care??

Question

I just don't understand how anyone could let something like that happen to millions of people and do nothing about it.....

Ok maybe I should reword here, Of course I know we did something, of course I know we went to war, Maybe my question should be did we wait too long to join the war? Or did we honestly not know of the devastation? I know the sacrifices made by our soilders, both of my grand fathers served in WW2. I am not trying to anger anyone or say that the did not do anything, I just wanted to know if we as americans had any idea of what was going on....and by the way, I am not an ahole!!!!!

Answer 1

if you are talking about the holocaust then yes they did know about it. In 1944 the camp was photographed by Allied reconnaissance aircraft in search of industrial targets; its factories, but not its gas chambers, were bombed.


Since the early years of the war the Polish government-in-exile published documents and organised meetings to spread word of the fate of the Jews. By early 1941, the British had received information via an intercepted Chilean memo that Jews were being targeted, and by late 1941 they had intercepted information about a number of large massacres of Jews conducted by German police. In the summer of 1942 a Jewish labor organization (the Bund) got word to London that 700,000 Polish Jews had already died, and the BBC took the story seriously, though the United States State Department did not[44]. By the end of 1942, however, the evidence of the Holocaust had become clear and on December 17, 1942, the Allies issued a statement that the Jews were being transported to Poland and killed. The US State Department was aware of the use and the location of the gas chambers of extermination camps, but refused pleas to bomb them out of operation. On May 12, 1943, Polish government-in-exile and Bund leader Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide in London to protest the inaction of the world with regard to the Holocaust, stating in part in his suicide letter:
cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being killed. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave.
By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people

hope that ansers you question.

Answer 2

At the close of WW1, Germany was divided up almost as if it were a prize, and several Countries demanded payment for damages that were so severe on the German People that it was rumoured, it took a wheel barrel of marks to buy a loaf of bread.

Germany picked itself up and led the way out of the depression faster than anyone had imagined, thus becomming a marvel. The initial push into Hungry, Austria, Poland and Slovenia where thus looked on with shock but tolerated out of sort of a guilt complex!

Some talk had go on about putting Hitler back in his place but none had the will to take him on alone, especially sense his politics were in fact somewhat charming to the Western Block. Besides they thought the French Line and Army are the pride of Europe..... He wouldn't dare face it, so they thought!

Still others believed that someday he'll settle in and want to be part of the Alliances and avoid sanctions, while intellectual institutions like Yale mere said that's politics, dispute having had credible evidence of the Jewish Situation!

It is no consolation, but fact is; most good men only go to war very reluctantly! Ironically they often turn out to be the best, or pay the highest price!

Answer 3

I remember reading somewhere that in the 1930s before Hitler made it illegal to leave Germany, many Jews immigrated to the United States and told stories of the persecution of the Jews (ie...Nuremberg Laws, Kristalnacht). President Roosevelt was made aware of some of these things through contact with some Jewish aquaintances. Legend has it that he wrote a letter to HItler stating that people must not be singled out and treated this way. Hitler's reply was that he would do something about his treatment of Jews when Roosevelt did something about Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes that existed in the US south and some places in the North.

The story is completely anecdotal and I've never actually seen the letter but it is an important comparison that was being drawn.
How could the US of the 1930s criticize Hitler's Nuremberg Race Laws and Kristalnachnt when Black Codes and Jim Crows persisted in the South as well as the uniterrupted activities of groups like the KKK and other horrendous evidence of lynchings of African Americans in the South.

The US did not however round up all of the Africans and ship them to concentration camps to be killed. AFter Pearl Harbor however, we did round up Japanese Americans from their homes and businesses and ship them down "Interment Camps" in the American Southwest.

Would I still have rather lived in the US during the 1930s and 40s rather than in Germany, you bet but it is an interesting juxtaposition.

Answer 4

This is actually a pretty complex question. I'm assuming you are referring to the Genocide by the Nazis and imperial Japan. As far as Nazi Germany was concerned, the "Final Solution" [to the 'Jewish Question'] was not put into operation until late 1941/42. By this time the US was at war. In Japan's case, many diplomatic protests were in fact made, and part of the justification for the economic boycott by the US was due to atrocities in China. (The boycott was one of the precipating factors in Japan's attack on the Phillipines and Hawaii.) Soviet Russia also murdered several million of its citizens-leftist intellectuals condemned reports in the West as Capitalist propaganda.
We also must realize that there was really no such as mass media, as we understand it here in the 21st Century. What dictatorships didn't want publicized, wasn't-frankly.
Finally, US public opinion felt that Europe had lied to the US to get it involved in WW1, and the revulsion after that war, made the average American very suspicious of reports coming from France and Britain at the start of the war.
Hope that helps a little.

Answer 5

I think after WW1 and losing a lot of soldiers, the US wasn't ready to jump back into another long war. The Roosevelt adminstration was still dealing with the Great Depression and a lot of Americans wanted to stay neutral, that is until Dec. 7th when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor all things changed and it lead ultimately to American forces in the Pacific and in Europe and all pulled us out of the Depression.

and if you are talking about the Holocaust the adminstration knew about the killings but without stopping Hitler's forces throughout Europe first in would have lead to more killings in the long road. It was important for D-Day to take place before we went into the concentration camps in order to stop the continued surrender of lands to the German forces

Answer 6

Of course the US knew what was happening, but there was not a lot of support to send our men back into battle so soon after WWI, American people had to have a reason to be angry enough to support another war, same as now! If 9-11 had not occurred there would have been no support from citizens here to go overseas. There were also so many rumors coming out that it was hard for them to decipher what was real, again, same as now. History does repeat itself, rumors of attacks always prelude actual attacks, it takes time to determine the reality of fact and fiction and by the time they get that far, it is too late!

Answer 7

There were rumors that leaked out via Switzerland and other sources, but they were so unbelievable that the allies discounted them....the monumental scale of inhumanity was unbelievable....

Most notably, among them came from Eduard Schulte, the man who first warned the world about the systematic killing of the Jews, fled to Switzerland on 02 December 1943. Schulte’s wartime activities and his intelligence about V-2 production were brought to light in the 1986 book Breaking the Silence, by Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman.

Answer 8

The US knew people were being sent to concentration camps, but we did not know about the death camps. However, there were US companies that did, such as IBM who the Nazis hired to print and store the files of all the deceased and organize identification of peoples ancestry. Without IBM, the Nazis would not have been so organized and would not have been able to kill as many people as they did.
As for the Rape of Nanking, the US was aware of those atrocities from reports from US missionaries in the area, however the US didn't want to enter into war with Japan.

Answer 9

The US was not unaware of what was going on. After WW1 ended with the Treaty of Versailles, US went under an isolation period as they did not want to be involved with any international conflict but as the Depression took the toll and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, there was no questions about it that we were going to fight against the dictatorships of Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. The world was growing with hateful and disgraced leaders and we needed to stop them.

Answer 10

Are you talking about the 92,785 American citizens the U.S. incarcerated during WWII? The U.S. government took its own citizens away from their homes and businesses and locked them up for the duration of the war. The U.S. did not care if they were man, woman or child. It took away entire families. The only way they got their property back after the war was if a neighbor looked out for them during the time of their lock-up.

Or maybe you were talking about the over 12,900,000 U.S. citizens who were treated as second class citizens during World War II. These people were not allowed to vote for their elected officials in many parts of our great country. They were however allowed to fight for our country, as long as they didn't mind driving the supply trucks and cooking the food.

These were all treated as second class citizens in the U.S. They did not even have to go over to Europe to see how badly others were treated. They just had to look at their neighbors and their families to see the hatred of a grateful nation.

(by the way, if you didn't know, paragraph one is talking about Japanese Americans and paragraph two African Americans)