Title, and ill write down some bullet points about what i want to say, and i will order them. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. Thank you walt for is that generous introduction to generous. Thank you for the center for dance holocaust studies for the invitation and preparation work. Fdr fdr and the jews was published in march of last year and has generated a good deal of response since then. I regret to report that all not all reactions were positive. I want to start by talking about two messages sent to me by unknown readers. They were not the worst but they were certainly not the best. The reason i am singling them out is that they Say Something to us that may cause you to listen to the rest of my lecture with slightly different years. One person wrote all you have to do is go to the Holocaust Museum to see that you are wrong. I am not sure this lecture is what he had in mind. And since our book offers a mixed judgment on Franklin Roosevelt i can only guess at what he thought was wrong. But i would guess that he thought the positive elements were wrong. The second person claimed to have very specific information that in 1943 Franklin Roosevelt was crees scented with aerial photographs of the areas around the extermination camps, and identification of their functions comment and he simply ignored it. The person wrote i can think of no explanation other than indifference or antisemitism. This one i couldnt let pass, i wrote back that american planes could not reach the extermination camps during 1943 and could not possibly have taken such photographs. He then rode maybe it was 1944. I wrote back all of the extermination camps other than auschwitz were shut down by 1944. And we know today that there where some photographs taken accidentally of the extermination camp at auschwitz by reconnaissance planes looking at the damage done to Industrial Facilities in the region. But the photoreconnaissance specialists who finally found these photos did so either in the late 1970s or the early 1980s, and he wrote an article for a historical journal on why photo analyst during world war ii had failed to identify auschwitz as an extermination camp. At this point my correspondents stopped writing. Still, lets think a bit about these two emails. Both of these people had read things or learned things about the holocaust and the second critic who had only explain roosevelts behavior through negative motives, this tells us perhaps the we have a problem. Call at the problem of success. There once was a time when people avoided the subject of the holocaust. That time is long past. Now we have not only a multitude of scholarly works about holocaust and virtually every country affected, some of them geographically distant, but holocaust has become a part of popular culture, there are fictionalized movies, novels, some people complain that there is too much attention to the holocaust. So people know or think they know good deal about the holocaust. But some of those people block out the context in which it took place. War, and other climate of the times. They are harder to represent visually in museums and in the mass media this problem plus an increasing tendency to emphasize moral issues, moral choices during the holocaust creates an unrealistic picture. This is history shows and selectively, in some cases inaccurately too, to support for a moral or a political point. How can we do this better . I can only tell you hows better . I can only tell you how far it historian, in this case two historians have done it. We try to place franklin as hapat hallyby diplomacy, and the war. The word holocaust was not commonly used to be what we understand it to be today. He perceived it in blurry form and as part of the war against evil powers. And other elements of that war influenced how he reacted. So let me start by talking about the flow of information out of europe about the holocaust comment and then, let me shift to a picture of Franklin Roosevelts agenda and his world, not his whole world, not his private world, not even the war in asia he had to deal with simultaneously, but lets say the world of europe and north africa that conceivably influenced, and the holocaust. There were reports almost from the beginning of the holocaust which most scholars in this country in 1941, there were reports from the beginning of nazi killings of the jews, it was impossible to keep such things as secret. But there were also reports of other nazi atrocities, widespread civilian suffering in occupied territories, and early reports especially in this country, were not sufficiently numerous or distinctive aura of such intelligence qualities that it forced government officials to ponder the overall shape of nazi policy. Most government officials including Franklin Roosevelt were predisposed to thinking that nazi germany opposed a threat to judaism and christianity, to western civilization and they preferred to state it in those terms because Franklin Roosevelt had a long history of having to deal with a set of right wing extremists who attacked him as being a puppet of American Jews and the isolationists that he, that shortly before the war and during the early part of the war argued that American Jews were trying to drive the u. S. Into the into a war which was not in americas interest. So roosevelt had political reasons as well as an intellectual predisposition not to symbol the jews out, and these early reports of nazi shootings simply fit into a broader picture of nazi atrocities. By the summer of 1942, there were more reports about larger numbers of jews dying or being killed and then in august of 1942 came a truly alarming message which is now known in the literature, i will review it briefly. Man named gerhard representative in switzerland of the World Jewish Congress, received word that hitlers headquarters considering a plan to exterminate 3. 5 to 4 million jews by poison gas in special facilities. And the gas was said to be based on press it acid which was in fact the gas used in auschwitz. He wanted to alert britain and the United States and he wanted to alert his colleagues and the World Jewish Congress particularly in london and new york. And took a telegram to the american consulate and the british consulate in geneva and asked american and british diplomats to send it out in code with as quickly as possible. And his colleagues in a World Jewish Congress. The message went to london, Foreign Office officials looked at it and taken aback. They didnt believe it, they didnt really want to deliver it, but the head of the british section of the World Jewish Congress was an man named Sidney Silverman who was a member of parliament and the Foreign Office bureaucrat could get into trouble by withholding a message for an mp. So silverman got the telegram. The message came to washington where state Department Officials reacted much the same way. They didnt believe it. They didnt think there was anything the United States could do even if it turned out to be true. So they decided not to pass it on to rabbi stephen wise in new york, head of the American Jewish congress. Reign reignerhad taken the precaution of asking silverman to notify wives in new york and so with considerable delay because it had to go through private mail in wartime, why is got the message. He rushed down to washington to speak to a man named sumner welles, undersecretary of state, the number 2 man in the state department. Wells was not only in some ways more powerful than the secretary of state, he was roosevelts man in the state department. Which is important in this case and in general for our book because the wells papers are quite good and they were donated and made available only in the 1990s. When we dont have direct information about Franklin Roosevelts comments and attitudes we can use some nehr wells as a kind of proxy. Wells said to why is that he didnt believe this telegram because the nazi regime was short of labor and why in the world would the nazis be executing millions of jews if they needed slave labor . Why is said can we be reassured, are we going tab solid information . And wells responded who can tell, when you are dealing with that madman . Meaning hitler. So wells asked for time. He said he wanted to launch an investigation. He undoubtedly did not know that his own subordinates, some of whom he was going to turn to for that investigation, had already sat on the telegram, ordinarily a month. But he did launch an investigation. As part of that investigation the american minister in switzerland met with their heart reigner on october 22nd getting the name of reigners source, a powerful german industrialist, and two days later, he wrote wells about the results, tending to confirm reigners telegram. He was not the only source of information from europe. The president , orwells commacks asked the american envoy to the vatican to get what information it could ot could o elsewhere he returned to the United States in october, met briefly with wells and roosevelt on october 16th. There is no record of their conversation. Taylor apparently left a set of documents that he had gathered in europe. On october 20th he followed up, writing fdr about his unsuccessful efforts to get information about what we call the holocaust out of the vatican, and his inability to melissa a denunciation of nazi atrocities by pope pius xii. He said if roosevelt spoke out, perhaps he could go back to the pope and try again. Now i will shift. What was roosevelt doing in late october 1942 . Or to put it better, what was roosevelt particularly concerned with at that time . On october 21st 21st, he met with majorgeneral George Patton jr. To discuss the launch of what was codenamed operation torch. The invasion of french algeria and morocco. This operation had the ultimate goal of controlling north africa from the atlantic to the red sea. Its most important shortterm goal was to capture to nietzsche especially the port of tunis which was relatively close to sicily and that would lead the allied forces to the possible invasion of europe, but direct lendings in tunisia were judged by too whiskey. In fact even landings in morocco and algeria were judged to be very, very risky. A large amphibious operation which roosevelt pushed over the resistance of the war department, the president said he wanted u. S. Ground troops in action in the theater in the calendar year 1942, and no one thought that the United States or britain was in a position to invade france. Roosevelt wanted an american operation because these areas were under the control of the french and the french might not resist the americans the way they would resist their hereditary enemy, the british. But roosevelt relented and this turned out to be a joint American British operation. In mid october, 1942, winston churchill, Prime Minister of britain, said if operation torch fails, i am done for. The commanderinchief of operation torch, a familiar name even in this museum, dwight d. Eisenhower, years later wrote that the hours he spent in gibraltar waiting for the start of the invasion were his most excruciating ones during the entire war, worse than the day. Algeria, morocco, to nietzsche, were not the only areas of concern in north africa. On the other side of the continents, on october 23rd, began the second battle at el alamein. If German Forces won they would capture egypt, they had plans to move into palestine. If it is worth reminding ourselves that at the beginning of november 1942 the axis still seemed to be winning the war. France, the colonial power in northwest africa, had a predominantly muslim population, eight divisions of troops and a substantial navy. No one knew whether they would fight or how hard they would fight against operation torch. They also enacted discriminatory laws against 330,000 jews in morocco, algeria and tunisia. If germany prevailed, worse would follow, as it already had, or had started to, in metropolitan france. The police in cooperation with Adolf Eichmanns men had recently begun deportations of jews in france to the east. In september, there was a diplomatic effort in paris to get the premier of france to exempt 4,000 french jewish children from the deportations. He refused. The diplomat told washington the only way to save these children was perhaps to give them a visas to the United States. The state Department Proposed 1,000 visas. The president raised the number to 5,000. But undersecretary wells asked jewish organizations, please do not publicize this decision. Nonetheless, at a press conference wells was asked directly about this rumored step. He equivocated. He said the children were of no particular race or nationality and all of this was being done under regular immigration laws and procedures. Nonetheless there were articles published and the publicity enraged the premier decided that he would only permit bonafide orphans to leave france. These children, their parents, had been deported to the east. He was in effect saying their parents are still alive. What happened to the children . About 500 were later smuggled out through spain and portugal against the efforts of french and german authorities. Some of them along with some other children in north africa ultimately made it to the United States on those authorized visas but it was nothing like 5,000. Just before the launch of operation torch came midterm elections. The democrats lost 47 seats in the house, and 9 seats in the senate you can judge from the climate today how big the setback was. And and they now had the balance of power. The president had limited influence in congress. The invasion was launched, after days of fighting in algeria and substantial allied casualties. The french admiral who happened to be in algiers. It was recognized by the allies and call upon french troops to stop french fighting. And november 11th, the end of the second battle of el alamein and confiding in egypt, general rommel had to retreat. He had to retreat in part because British Forces have superior intelligence and superior equipment. President roosevelt diverted 300 german tanks from a planned shipment to the soviet union to British Forces in egypt and they were better than the market tanks that rommel had. Could not seize had already set up a mobile killing squad designed to be active against jews in egypt and in palestine but the retreat of rommels forces ended that possibility. Back to northwest africa the germans rushed 25,000 troops, battle hardened troops into tunisia to prevent allied forces from reaching parrot objectives. General eisenhower wrote on november 18th if we dont get to tunisia quickly we surrender the initiative, give the axe this time to do as it pleaseds, encourage all of our enemies in the area, the battle is not, repeat, not won. On november 20th, premier of all lavalle expressed his hope for the german victory in the war to prevent john it communist and jews from getting control of france and extinguishing french civilization. Back in washington roosevelt had already asked congress to pass the third war powers act which contained an interesting provision authorizing the president to suspend laws and regulations hampering the Free Movement of persons, property and information in and out of the u. S. We do not know why that provision was in there. Be do now why it was taken out. The house ways and Means Committee this worried that the president would use this clause to open the doors to and restricted immigration, strip it out, in late november, thanksgiving day, the president tried to persuade house and Senate Leaders to restore it but the speaker of the house declined and roosevelt back off. This was the climate, this was the time, two days earlier, when undersecretary wells called rabbi why ise back to washingto and said the state Department Investigation confirms your deepest fears. For reasons that you will understand i cannot give these to the press, but there is no reason you should not. It might even help if you did. Again, think of wells as a proxy for president roosevelt. The president had on his desk, metaphorically if not literally, plenty of reports from the state department, from the office of strategic services, from the office of war information and from military intelligence that all too many muslims in north africa saw the allies as fighting a war on behalf of the jews, something that nazi propaganda emphasized day after day. Assistant secretary of state burleigh wrote in his diary only god knows whether the arab tribes will rise. When eisenhower made his way to algiers, he found rumors that he was jewish, he had been sent by the Jew Roosevelt to establish a jewish state not in palestine, but in north africa. Surely, this conlan and the fate of allied troops in north africa, was the most immediate reason, cannot speak out personally and forthrightly against the nazi policy of genocide, at best it was a distraction that brought complications. At worst it might damage the success of the invasion. Of course, his earlier worries have not disappeared, he was still worried about american perceptions that he was manipulated by his jewish advisers and American Jews generally. We think he was excessively worried that this is much easier to say in retrospect. So wise held his press conference and publicized reigners telegram and the evidence collected to support it. He got greater publicity than any single atrocity story had obtained before but that was only a relative success. The New York Times put the