The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

and potential candidate for the Berlin post, claimed that the President wanted to replace
Dodd with a career diplomat who would represent, “in the narrowest and most formal
sense,” the interests of the United States. 115 Moffat asserted, however, that FDR believed
that only the avoidance of open criticism of the Nazi regime would offer any American
Ambassador the “hope to influence events.” 116 The new Ambassador believed that the
Jewish Question was the primary point of conflict that threatened the harmony of U.S.-
German relations. He feared that public reaction to the Anschluss and its aftermath
would “maintain international exasperation against Germany at a high pitch.” 117
Nevertheless, Wilson convinced the President in 1938 to re-institute an American
diplomatic presence at the annual Nuremberg Party rallies. 118 The State Department
discounted Jewish criticism that such an attendance would be viewed by the Reich as
acceptance of the “Nazi program of racial and minority persecution.” 119 Following the
Munich Crisis Wilson attacked the negative attitude of the American press as a “hymn of
hate [that ignored German] efforts…to build a better future.” 120 Wilson warned Under-
Secretary Sumner Welles that Jews were fomenting a “hostile state of mind” that
threatened to involve America in a Continental conflict over issues that did not “appeal to
115 Joseph Davies, Mission to Moscow (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1941), 255-256.
116 Moffat Diary, January 13, 1938 cited in Shafir, “American Diplomats,” 93.
117 Wilson Diary, April 24, 1938, 66. Ibid., 95.
118 Ibid.
119 David Surowitz to Hull, August 25, 1938, and Moffat to Surowitz, September 8, 1938 in Charles C.
Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co.,
1952), 387-388. Ibid., 95.
120 Draft of Letter from Wilson to Hull (not sent), Hugh Wilson, A Career Diplomat, The Third Chapter:
The Third Reich, 51-53. Ibid.
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