Contents
Acknowledgments
page xi
Prologue: Thomas Wolfe and the Third Reich
Introduction: Defining the German Problem
Relevance of Public and Elite Opinion
Enemy Images and the Culture of War
Probing the Complexities of the Third Reich
xiii
i
3
6
10
PART ONE: PRELUDE TO WAR
1 Memories of World War I: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Germany
Germany in American Popular and Elite Imagination
Before World War I
A Patrician's View of Germany: Roosevelt's Early
Expertise Reconsidered
Preparing for the First War Against Germany
Propaganda and Atrocities
Different Lessons: Wilsonian Peacemaking and Its Discontents
Interwar Revisionism of "Internationalists" and "Isolationists"
2 News from the New Germany: Conflicting Interpretations,
Contested Meanings, 1933-1940
The Basis: Journalistic Reporting
Edgar A. Mowrer: Nazism as Collective Religion
John Gunther: Psychopathology of a Dictatorship
William L. Shirer: The Germans Are Behind Hitler
Dorothy Thompson: Nazism Is a Disease with More Than
Germanic Roots
Persecution: "Not an Exclusively Jewish Problem"
Sympathetic Views: Anticommunist, Anti-Roosevelt,
Antiwar Voices
What Americans Thought
3 The Prospect of War, 1933-1941
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29
35
38
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42
46
47
50
52
57
60
68
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Nazi Germany in the President's Sources
From Disease and Gangsters to the Irreconcilable Contrast
VII
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Contents
Conspiracies: The Threat of Domestic Subversion
The Great Debate and the "Unbelievable" Nazi Blueprint
93
96
PART TWO: MOBILIZING THE AMERICAN HOME FRONT, 1 9 4 2 - 1 9 4 3
4
"The Principal Battleground of This War Is American Public
Opinion"
Public Opinion Analysts at Work
Liberal Propaganda Versus Domestic Unity
Roosevelt's Post-Pearl Harbor Statements
North Africa 1 9 4 2 : Military Action as Morale Booster
Unconditional Surrender as a War Aim
5
6
The Office of War Information: "Explaining Nazism to the
American People Is No Easy Assignment"
105
105
112
116
120
125
131
The Strategy of Truth and Its Challenges
Further Probes into Images of Nazi Germany
The Rejection of "Racial" War
"Explain What Nazism Would Mean in Terms of Everyday
American Life"
Consequences of the Strategy of Identification with the Germans
132
Why We Fight: The Nature of the Enemy Seen Differently
156
Why We Fight: The Movie
Geopolitics and the Nazi Plan for World Conquest
Public Opinion Begins to Shift
The State Department Weighs in on Nazi Ideology
Henry Wallace: The Gotterdammerung Has Come for
Odin and His Crew
157
134
140
144
150
162
165
168
171
PART THREE: THE PUBLIC DEBATE ON GERMANY, I 9 4 2 - I 9 4 5
7
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Germans and Nazis
"The Most Labyrinthine Issue of Our Time"
Mr. Hyde, the Automaton
Valhalla in Transition: Are the Germans Behind Hitler?
Sympathy with Germans or Their Victims?
Beyond Belief: The Murder of the Jews
Nazi Youth: A Time Bomb
What to Do with Germany? A National Debate
If the American People Made the Peace
8
177
178
180
184
188
193
197
204
211
The German Disease and Nazism as Gangsterism
217
The Attraction of Psychological Approaches
The Paranoid Trend in German History
The Sociopsychological Precariousness of the Lower
Middle Class
The Teutonic Family Drama
Official Support for the Therapeutic Approach
217
223
226
227
230
Contents
IX
Nazism as Gangsterism
The Hitler Gang and the Conspiracy Against Humanity
233
236
9 German Peculiarities: Vansittartism in the American Wartime
Debate
Lord Vansittart
Vansittartism in the American Debate
Who Supports Hitler?
Emil Ludwig: A Vansittartist with Access to the President
Germany's Special Path on Screen
Containing the Monsters in Time and Space
PART FOUR: THE GOVERNMENTAL DEBATE ON POSTWAR PLANS,
242
247
252
256
259
266
1943-1945
10 What Do You Do with People Like That?
Hitchcock's Lifeboat: A Parable
Conflicting Postwar Plans: OSS Academics and the Larger Picture
The State Department's Advisory Committee on Postwar
Foreign Policy
Rehabilitating Germany like a Delinquent Youth
The Case for Dismemberment
A Public Critique of the State Department
11 How to Prevent World War III?
The Handbook Controversy
The "Agrarization" Myth
Morgenthau as Vansittartist: No Carthage
No Expert on Germany?
Contemporary Origins of the Legend
Stimson and Morgenthau
Roosevelt's Stance
12 The Enemy in Defeat: German-American Encounters at
"Zero Hour"
Preparing for the Postwar Situation
GIs and Germans
Personal Encounters
Padover's Experiment
Views of America's Role in Germany
241
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272
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281
285
288
290
293
295
299
303
307
310
315
318
322
322
323
325
329
335
Conclusion
341
Bibliography
351
Index
381