True but that's also because tribal conflicts don't spiral into international crises that affect millions of people.
I'm not sure but I think we might talk past each other. My point was that it's difficult to assess to what degree the tribalist mindset and loyalty to the own social, ethnic or religious group of single, influential individuals have influenced some of the most important historic events (as opposed to their loyalty to their nation state). Whether a nation is organized as a liberal Democracy, or as a nationalist Empire, at the end of the day, only a few individuals make important decisions or control what information and narratives should be fed to the public (pre-Internet times).
I try to carefully source most claims before a certain mod uses this as an excuse to ban me for "anti-Semitism". This is not about a conspiracy but about tribalism and influences on decision-making.
President Roosevelt had Jewish advisers/administration members like Felix Frankfurter [1], Henry Morgenthau [2], or Samuel Rosenman [3].
They were outspoken advocates of Jewish interests and worried about their people in Europe in particular. It's not exactly surprising that they also were pushing for more aggressive anti-German policies. Henry Morgenthau, for example, was an advocate for Jewish refugees and welfare programs and later proposed extremely harsh treatment of ze Germans, he also wrote and signed the Morgenthau-plan[4], a proposal to wreck the German industry + mines in order to prevent a recovery after the end of WWII. A modern-day version of salting the earth of Carthago after the third Punic war, so to speak.
He and Frankfurter both were outspoken supporters of a US involvement in a European war. Frankfurter later also convinced Roosevelt [5] that Henry L. Stimson, who was already an outspoken interventionist since the beginning of WWII [6] should be secretary of war. Stimson then recommended nuclear strikes against Japan btw.
Would they have held the exact same positions if they were born into Christian or Atheist families? Was the fact that they identified as Jews while Jews suffered in Europe completely irrelevant and not related to their remarkably aggressive anti-German and pro interventionist positions? Was it a coincidence that they pushed so aggressively for a war against Germany?
William Leonard Langer, historian and chairman of the history department at Harvard University [7] noted during one of his lectures at the US War College:
"You have to face the fact that some of our most important American newspapers are Jewish-controlled, and I suppose
if I were a Jew I would feel about Nazi Germany as most Jews feel and it would be most inevitable that the coloring of the news takes on that tinge. As I read the NYT, for example, it is perfectly clear that every little upset that occurs is given a great deal of prominence. The other part of it is soft-pedaled or put off with a sneer. So that in a rather subtle way, the picture you get is that there just is no good in the Germans whatever" [8] [9]
The New York Times was more or less the most influential newspaper back then and owned by the Jewish Sulzberger family [10]. Other influential media outlets owned or run by Jewish people included The Washington Post, owned by Jewish Eugene Meyers [11] (also picked up best-known columnist Drew Pearson who was a strong advocate for a military intervention), the New York Post, owned/published by Jewish Dorothy Schiff and Jewish George Backer [12] [13], The Philadelphia Inquirer owned by Jewish Moses Annenberg[14][15], The Philadelphia Record owned by Jewish David Stern [16], RCA & NBC "ruled" by Jewish David 'the General' Sarnoff [17], large parts of Hollywood and more.
There was a shitton of movies and articles about the cruelty and barbarism of Germany's national socialists, the suffering of the Jews in Europe etc., interventionism was promoted and columnists who advocated isolationism were fired. Now, of course, there's a
massive hindsight bias. Now we know exactly how bad it really was in Germany, we already know how WWII ended, that the mission was a success etc. So, a first thought could be "Well, so what? Nazis are evil, we were victorious, Hitler was stopped. It makes sense that they wrote about it while it happened and interventionism was the right policy!". But the question here is how reasonable their reporting and one-sided presentation of options for the US, there attacks against people with different views, and the pressure they put on politicians was back then, with the information America had in the years leading up to 1941, not when the actual decision was made. And how willing to enter the war with a weakened military the American, non-Jewish public would have been because they fight over there in Europe and Jews suffer. There definitely were people in the military and in politics who had very different opinions and advocated a more isolationist approach or even negotiations with Hitler. Of course, now, today, all Generals, politicians, and columnists who were worried about a one-sided promotion of war and a possible bias of Jews in America are retroactively accused of anti-Semitism.
My argument is not that there was a Jewish
conspiracy. I also don't want to discuss if the USA should have entered the war and if it would have happened with different advisors or media narratives anyway. All of this is equaly true when we look at the early years of WWII. But completely independent of that: When you're looking at an armed conflict and a minority that suffers and some of the closest advisors to the leader of a nation state and the majority of people who publish news and movies in the pre-Internet time belong to the exact same minority, and when such a minority is well-known for their strong tribalism and loyalty to each other, how likely is it that it doesn't influence their decisions at all? I think in addition to the usual lists we see in high school "reason for war XY", questions like this should at very least complement our understanding of history.
1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter
2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau_Jr.
3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Irving_Rosenman
4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan
5.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Felix-Frankfurter
6.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-L-Stimson
7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_L._Langerp
8. Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, p. 380
9. J. Bendersky, The Jewish Thread: Anti-semitic politics of the US Army, p. 273
10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Ownership
11.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Meyer_(financier)#Purchase_of_the_Washington_Post
12.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post
13.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Schiff
14.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philadelphia_Inquirer#Annenberg_years
15.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Annenberg
16.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philadelphia_Record
17
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sarnoff