1918 to 1920, offered this somewhat startling reflection about his experiences: “The strange bit of history I have to report is that in my two years in Germany, I, a Jew, saw and heard no hint of anti-Semitism. Not once in the time I spent in Germany did I hear the word Jew used as an epithet… There was less anti-Semitism to be heard, seen, felt or smelled in that postwar Germany than at any time in the U.S.A.”
Hecht may have had a couple of reasons for deliberately overlooking the anti-Semitic rhetoric that would have been hard to miss. First, he wanted to make the point that Americans had no cause to feel smugly superior on this score. Second, writing in the immediate aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, he was setting up his thesis that what led to this disaster was a national characteristic of the average German. No matter how educated or sophisticated the German appeared to be, Hecht claimed, “In him all morality was secondary to this morality of obeying a leader.” Or put differently, it wasn’t the doctrine of a leader that made Germans follow him; it was simply the fact that he demanded their allegiance and they blindly complied.
There was no denying how receptive Americans were to anti-Semitism in the aftermath of World War I. Or how energetically some Americans not only embraced anti-Semitic propaganda but promoted it. The most prominent American to do so was Henry Ford. The automaker was also a crusading pacifist who had proclaimed his worldview as early as 1915. “I know who caused the war—the German-Jewish bankers,” he told Rosika Schwimmer, a Hungarian Jewish peace activist. “I have the evidence here. Facts!”
In 1919, Ford bought the
Too much can be read into that statement of the future leader of Germany. Hitler had lived and breathed anti-Semitism long before he became acquainted with Ford’s views. And his admiration of Ford had at least as much to do with his pioneering work as an automaker as with his prejudices. Once in power, Hitler would transform his idea of the Volkswagen—the “people’s car”—into reality, crediting “Mr. Ford’s genius” for demonstrating that the motor car could be an instrument for uniting different classes rather than dividing them.
Still, the Ford record and other manifestations of American anti-Semitism serve as useful reminders that Germany was far from unique in harboring such sentiments in the 1920s. In fact, some Americans in Berlin were just as likely as their German counterparts to let their prejudices show. In a letter dated February 23, 1921, to Vivian Dillon, an aspiring American opera singer, Wiegand expressed shock that she was considering marrying “a prosperous, energetic, Jewish manager.” He inquired “why must it be a Jew, or have you come to the conclusion that there are no others, who are prosperous and energetic?”
But anti-Semitism in Germany wasn’t just a matter of all-too-ordinary bias. On June 24, 1922, Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau, the most prominent Jew in high office, was assassinated in Berlin, and other acts of right-wing violence became increasingly commonplace. Diplomat Hugh Wilson blamed a combination of factors: millions of veterans returning to a Germany where jobs were scarce and the rich and powerful included “a high proportion of Jews.” Bolshevism was seen as dominated by Jews, he pointed out, as were some of the democratic parties in the Reichstag. “One could sense the spreading resentment and hatred,” he wrote.
Once the country appeared to be getting back on its feet in the mid-1920s, many Americans in Germany were less alarmed by the anti- Semitic diatribes of the Nazis and other extremists. But they hardly could be as oblivious to them as Hecht claimed to be years earlier. Particularly when they were in the presence of German Jews, they were acutely conscious of the growing tensions.
One evening in 1928, S. Miles Bouton, the
Lewis gave no indication he had heard him, but then casually remarked: “You know, lots of people won’t believe that my father was a rabbi.” The young woman was suddenly all aglow. “Your father was a rabbi?” she asked.
Writing about this encounter a few years afterward, Bouton recalled: “There was still no indication in 1928 of the coming pogroms that were to sully Germany’s repute five years later, but songs about spilling Jewish blood were being sung by uniformed marchers, and the swastika, emblem in Germany for hatred of the race, was ever more in evidence.” For this young woman, the highlight of the evening was not only meeting the famous American writer, who in reality was the son of a Wisconsin country doctor, but hearing the white lie that he was Jewish. “I hope she has never been undeceived,” Bouton concluded, “but be that as it may, Lewis’s alertness and kindness of heart brought more cheer to one unfortunate than he will ever know.”
In 1925, Jacob Gould Schurman succeeded Houghton as ambassador. A former New York politician, Schurman had studied in Germany, spoke excellent German and worked hard to maintain the good will that his predecessor had earned. One of his initiatives was to raise money from wealthy Americans for a building fund for Heidelberg University; among the contributors was John D. Rockefeller, who donated $200,000 of the total gift of $500,000. Such activism made Schurman a very popular envoy.
So did his pronouncements praising the German government’s commitment to peace and democracy. Early in his tenure, he argued that “the will to war was dead in Germany” and he later touted Germany’s signing on to the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war. On a visit to New York that same year, he declared, “The Republic has in general commended itself to the people and grows with such strength and vitality that its permanency may now be taken for granted.”
Schurman wasn’t as blind to the dangers of more turmoil as his public pronouncements suggested. He noted during his first year in Berlin that American financial institutions were aggressively pushing their highinterest loans, disregarding the risks involved. His embassy reported that the “itch to pour unproductive millions into German municipal coffers is rapidly becoming pathological.”
American correspondents like Mowrer also began to question what was happening. Economist David Friday, who had been one of Mowrer’s instructors at the University of Michigan, came to Berlin representing an investment firm eager to pump funds into Germany. Puffing on a cigar after a dinner with the Mowrers, he explained his mission: “You see we consider these people a sound proposition: hard-working, solid… we’re going to put them on their feet again.”
“At nine per cent?” asked Mowrer.
“Well, of course, we are no philanthropists,” Friday replied.
As Lilian Mowrer pointed out, the influx of what appeared to be easy money from the United States and other countries led to “an orgy of spending.” Traveling frequently around the country for her
Germany was also using loans to make reparation payments, and Schurman openly sympathized with German complaints that the financial burden was unsustainable. Even before the Wall Street crash, there were plenty of ominous signs of the shakiness of the German economy. In March 1929, Schurman received a warning from the chairman of the Reichstag Budget Committee that the country’s finances were in the worst shape since the near meltdown in 1923.
Soon the Dawes Plan was replaced by the Young Plan, named after American banker Owen D. Young, the chairman of another group of experts. They produced a plan in 1929 to further reduce reparation payments but
