From the Publisher
The Allies stood by and watched Nazi Germany imprison and then murder six million Jews during World War II. How could the unthinkable have been allowed to happen? Theodore Hamerow reveals in the pages of this compelling book that each Western nation had its own version of the Jewish Question-its own type of anti-Semitism-which may not have been as virulent as in Eastern Europe but was disastrously crippling nonetheless. If just one country had opened its doors to Germany's already persecuted Jews in the 1930s, and if the Allies had attempted even one bombing of an extermination camp, the Holocaust would have been markedly different. Instead, by sitting on their hands, the West let Hitler solve their Jewish Question by eliminating European Jewry.
Publishers Weekly
In this brilliantly conceived and superbly narrated account, University of Wisconsin professor emeritus of history Hamerow (On the Road to the Wolf's Lair) makes it undeniably clear that anti-Jewish sentiments drastically slowed the response of the United States and other countries to Nazi atrocities when intervention-through diplomacy, loosening of immigration rules and, later, surgical bombing-was entirely possible. Citing opinion surveys from the 1930s and '40s, Hamerow concludes that virtually all Western peoples would have agreed that the world "had to deal with something called the 'Jewish question.' " Looking at the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Britain and France, the author carefully traces the ancient roots and history of anti-Jewish sentiment, describes the powerful xenophobic lobbies in such nations as the United Kingdom and the United States working against unrestrained Jewish immigration and shows how general skepticism in the United States about reports of mass murder also played a role. Hamerow's important book is more than history: it is an indictment and an essential cautionary tale about how easily bigotry combined with complacency facilitates evil. 30 illus. (Aug.)
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Jim Doyle
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Library Journal
In this compelling analysis of the Allied response to Hitler's Final Solution to the "Jewish Question," historian Hamerow (history, emeritus, Univ. of Wisconsin; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair: German Resistance to Hitler) pulls no punches. He argues that at the heart of the tepid reaction to the massive extermination of European Jews was a resilient anti-Semitism that permeated the entire Allied world. Through an exhaustive examination of anti-Semitic sentiment from the prewar years to the Eichmann trial of 1962, Hamerow clearly indicates that throughout the Allied world Jews were considered a clannish and avaricious sect that threatened gentiles. In fact, this anti-Semitic sentiment prevailed until the late 1950s, when it became clear that European Jewry no longer existed. Only then did the Holocaust receive the horrified recognition it deserved. Israeli scholar Shlomo Aronson's Hitler, the Allies and the Jews explores similar themes, but Hamerow's study is far more lucid and provocative and deserves a wider audience. Recommended for all academic and public libraries.
Kirkus Reviews
Masterful analysis of the conditions Jews faced in the allied countries before and during World War II. In his eminently readable account, Hamerow (History Emeritus/Univ. of Wisconsin; Remembering a Vanished World: A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland, 2001, etc.) describes how Jewish communities in parts of Western Europe and the United States reacted-and often turned a blind eye-to the growing fascist threat against their co-religionists. Relying heavily on demographic and economic data, the author is balanced and never polemical. Cultural differences caused some Jews in Western Europe and America to resist allowing more immigration from Germany and Eastern Europe, he argues, and worsening economic conditions caused people to fear admitting newcomers who would compete for already scarce jobs. Chronicling the changing nature of anti-Semitism, the author notes that in earlier periods, especially before the French Revolution, it was subtler: "The ups and downs of official policy regarding the Jewish community reflected expediency, indecisiveness and sometimes simply indifference rather than a deep-seated hostility." By the time of the Holocaust, however, attitudes toward Jews had changed, and the governments and citizens of many European countries were looking for a more drastic solution to the Jewish "problem." Examining how the Holocaust is perceived in modern society, both in academic and popular venues, Hamerow notes that while Americans generally consider it "the unparalleled atrocity of the twentieth century," Old World denizens are more inclined to lump it with the sufferings of others under Nazi rule. Though his lengthy narrative occasionally goes off on tangents, for the mostpart it moves at a brisk pace. Scholarly enough to appeal to academics, it will also find an audience with general history buffs. The story Hamerow tells is unequivocally sad, but he ends with an optimistic assessment of the current state of Jewry. An important contribution to the scholarly literature about one of the seminal events in European history.
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