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of extortion: Germany expected “the world to pay a ransom for the release of hostages”
while trading “human misery for increased exports.” 18 Rublee was advised by the State
Department that such an agreement could threaten American foreign trade and markets
and it was averse to any linkage of the financing of Jewish resettlement with increased
sales of German products. Welles warned, however, that rejection of the deal could
provoke further anti-Jewish violence. He favored the creation of a private economic
foundation under the rubric of the London based IGCR. The frozen assets of the émigrés
would be used to purchase German goods needed to foster and support resettlement as
well as for the care and maintenance of Jews who had to remain in the Reich. The
Under-Secretary believed that this arrangement would be more beneficial to Germany
than the Rublee-Schacht plan. 19 George Messersmith opposed the linkage of population
transfer and German trade. Acceptance of such an “insidious doctrine” of a “limited
trade agreement” with the Reich would not “help the conservative elements [or] improve
the prospects for a more reasonable regime.” 20
18 FRUS, vol. 1, 1938, 876-877 cited in Spear, “The United States and the Persecution of Jews,” 234.
Some of the Jewish press supported the payment of ransom regardless of its questionable morality. “There
is little doubt [based on earlier arrangements with and proposals from the Reich] that today a ransom of
sufficient financial persuasion” would result in Jews being allowed to retain a greater percentage of their
assets. “We favor such a ransom scheme, though we are aware that world opinion is strongly against it.
That opinion holds that to ransom the refugees by granting Germany monetary or trade favors is to endorse
her totalitarian policy.” However, in reality, the positions adopted by the Democracies vis-à-vis Germany
had “from the beginning of National Socialism…been an endorsement and that as long as ‘human
dumping’ remains Germany’s policy and as long as other nations are compelled to give haven to the
homeless and disfranchised, that endorsement continues to be articulated…” “The Kidnapper Wants
Ransom,” The Southern Israelite, August 12, 1938, 6.
19 Spear, “The United States and the Persecution of German Jews,” 234.
20 Hull to Joseph P. Kennedy (Messersmith to Rublee), September1 9, 1938, FRUS, vol. 1 (1938), 788-
90; Messersmith to Daniel N. Heineman, November 7, 1938, Messersmith Papers, 1938, box 1, folder E
cited in Shlomo Shafir, “George S. Messersmith: An Anti-Nazi Diplomat’s View of the German-Jewish
Crisis,” Jewish Social Studies 35 no. 1 (January, 1973): 40.
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