U.S. Response to the Holocaust

Paper Summary:

This paper critically reviews Wyman's book about the United States' failure to help the Jews during WWII. The author of the paper argues that Wyman draws incorrect conclusions from the facts gathered and compares Wyman's book to other books on a similar subject, which the author suggests are much more accurate accounts.

From the Paper:

"For the past decades, there has been a knee-jerk conviction in the United States that among all of America's many failings was an almost savage and planned program of refusal to help the Jews being slaughtered in Hitler's Germany. It seems a specious argument, at best. Or at least, it begs the question and one relevant for today, one might add "Who died and left the U.S. in charge of the good of the entire universe?" It seems likely that the same people who abhor our entrance into Iraq, ostensibly to do two things root out weapons of mass destruction and save the Iraqis from their own leader have strong parallels with this continuing, albeit low-key, debate about whether the U.S. should have, could have or would have done more to save the Jews. We are regarded, internationally and at home, as outlaws for our activities in Iraq. Positing that we should have acted in a similar manner might well have evoked the same response in the 1940s. It would be difficult to see where the qualitative difference in "shredding" a citizen as Saddam Hussein is said to have done to dissidents and members of the other sect of Islam (not his own) and gassing them is very much different. A monster is a monster is a monster and a victim is a victim is a victim."

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