Matt McKeon
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The thesis of the series was that the United States, for all its basis in immigration, had become quite anti-immigrant in the 1920s, fueled by bigotry against Jews and southern and eastern europeans as too "foreign" and carriers of disease and political radicalism. Gripped by the Great Depression in the 1930s, the USA was even less inclined to open its doors.
When Hitler targeted Jews and at first tried to expel them, most countries were indifferent, and political leaders like FDR who wanted to open quotas faced a backlash from the voters, and resistance, some quite disgusting from the bluebloods in the State Department.
The US let in more Jews than any other country(although Palestine, a British Mandate, wavered from accepting fugitives and slamming the door, ended up accepting many), but as Ken Burns as stated in interviews, the US could have let in 10x as many and it still would have been not enough.
After the war started, the ability of the US to influence the unfolding of the Holocaust was limited, everything was focused on winning the war as the means to stop Hitler.
When Hitler targeted Jews and at first tried to expel them, most countries were indifferent, and political leaders like FDR who wanted to open quotas faced a backlash from the voters, and resistance, some quite disgusting from the bluebloods in the State Department.
The US let in more Jews than any other country(although Palestine, a British Mandate, wavered from accepting fugitives and slamming the door, ended up accepting many), but as Ken Burns as stated in interviews, the US could have let in 10x as many and it still would have been not enough.
After the war started, the ability of the US to influence the unfolding of the Holocaust was limited, everything was focused on winning the war as the means to stop Hitler.