America after the Holocaust: 'The Jews', Red Scare and a congressional witch hunt

Introduction: As described in an earlier article there was little difference in prevalence and intensity of antisemitism in the United States as compared to Germany before the Second World War. Which leaves the question raised in that blog, “Would the fate of Jews in the United States have been different from that of German Jewry had Roosevelt been defeated in 1940?” Even without a Ford or Lindbergh presidency (both admirers of Hitler and recipients of Nazi Germany’s highest civilian honor) the United States, long before Germany, was itself interested in applying eugenics to the creation of a racially pure Aryan gene pool; and both countries independently created concentration camps to contain perceived internal “enemies.” However Roosevelt defenders or detractors represent what I call his “policy of passivity” to the unfolding Holocaust, that policy also reflected institutional governmental antisemitism overwhelmingly supported by national antisemitism, the mood of the country.

At war’s end the United States and the Soviet Union quickly reverted from suspicious allies to their more comfortable roles as economic and military adversaries. To the Russians “the Jews” were “capitalists;” in America “the Jews” were both “capitalists” and “communists.”

The association of Jews and Hollywood as a sinister force controlling American opinion is as old as the movie industry itself. In 1921 the following appeared in Henry Ford’s antisemitic propaganda sheet, the Dearborn Independent:

In a 1941 speech, after warning the Jews to not advocate for war against Hitler “or else," political populist and isolationism proponent Air Corps Colonel Charles Lindbergh warned that,

Thirty-five years later another popular American military personality and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Brown told a reporter, 

And recently I came across this by an “investigative journalist” for an evangelical publication: 

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC): Originally named the House Committee on Un-American Activities, HUAC changed its name in 1945 and was eventually folded into the House Judiciary Committee in 1975. Although it’s described mandate was to investigate "Communist infiltration" into the United States and the risks posed by "American communists," in choosing Hollywood as its opening act chairman Martin Dies made no secret of his committee’s subtext: “There are too many Jews in Hollywood!”

Among the membership of the far-right HUAC were Richard Nixon and Representative John Rankin whose racist 1954 defense of the 1924 Immigrant Exclusion Act resulted in New York Representative Michael Edelstein’s fatal heart attack. Rankin, known for not mincing words, as a leader of HUAC again rose to the challenge and made explicit what was otherwise obscured by governmental legalese. In a House debate Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, wife of Jewish actor Melvin Douglas, asked Rankin which films the committee considered as supportive of the Communist Party? Rankin, not surprisingly, chose to ignore the question and respond instead with a list of movie actors whose evidence of criminality was to sign a petition to Congress:

The final cut was when he added, almost as an afterthought, the name of the congresswoman’s husband: 

Richard Nixon also was no retiring pansy when it came to rhetorical flare. The young Californian Congressman chimed in support of Rankin by describing Helen Gahagan Douglas as, “pink down to her underwear:” a foretaste of vintage Nixon antisemitism populating his “secret” presidential White House tapes.

Among HUAC’s victims was the Hollywood Ten, mentioned earlier. Six happened to be Jews. Appealing to the Supreme Court that their constitutional rights were trampled by HUAC. In response Dies invoked the 1918 Sedition Act against them. The Act, 

The appeal By the Ten was turned down. Five years later a dissenting member of the Supreme Court would condemn its decision as serving a “conservative” political agenda. 

But exclusion from employment and prison were not the worst possible outcomes from falling into the hands of HUAC:

When Broadway actor, J Edward Bromberg, another victim of HUAC, died of a heart attack Lee Grant, a Jewish actress, found herself blacklisted for, 

Even before Dies announced that Hollywood was just too Jewish, a 1948 survey by the American Jewish Committee,

Except, perhaps, by those determined to view the United States as “exceptional” regarding antisemitism, the implication is hard to miss.