The US doesn't adjust its German quotas to keep out Jews

The US immigration quota from Germany following 1924 (57,000) was never maxed out in any year following the 1924 immigration act. However in the 1930s the US adjusted the law to keep Jews from Germany who might have been able to escape the Reich of the United States.

What if the United States hadn't adjusted its German quota and the Reich's Jews had mostly emigrated to the United States?

There were about 525,000 German Jews in 1933. Not all would come to the United States, but I imagine 250,000 - 300,000 would. Germany Jews were disproportionately professionals and highly-educated (even by German standards, a country with an already high education rate).

Between 1937 and 1939 I imagine many Austrian Jews would emigrate as well.

Another knock-on effect would be that without the quotas, non-jewish Germans would be able to emigrate to the United States as well. Liberals, Socialists, and other dissidents would leave the country.

Thoughts?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The USA has one or two more cities with large German population. So you either see a big expansion of the Jewish living areas in NYC, your guess is probably better than mine on which area they settle in. (Most likely). Or some other USA city will get most of the immigrants. (less likely) For example, Cedar Rapids Iowa is the second largest Czech city in the world, despite the language being lost. This city probably has weather similar to Germany and an existing German population. And lower than average unemployment. A city like Chicago comes to mind, but it could easily be some place like Dayton Ohio or Rochester NY.

Since these new voters will be concentrated in a small area and presumably vote in a block, there will be some interesting impacts on national politics as the parties adjust their messages slightly.
 
Supposedly the refusal of other countries to take in the German Jews was a sign to Hitler that no one cared what was done to them. I do not know if the USA admitting the full quota would have made a difference but you never know. Maybe the Jews would have been made slave workers to work in factories, farms, and repairing bombing damage. Things would have been hard on the Jews and many would have still have died of abuse and neglect. However you would not have seen the death camps.

We will never know.
 
Forced emigration had been the best practical option for the Jewish problem when the nazis came to power. Except bigotry in the rest of the world made it a nonstarter. Had the US or any other nation accepted the Jewish migrants the nazis would have been happy to strip every one of them of every penny of their wealth and send them on their way.
 
They immigrate to the United States and Israel, if it even is formed, is more dominated by Eastern European Jews.

A little under 200,000 came in the 20s and early 30s as the Nazis were starting to get up some steam, but starting in 1934ish the British started enforcing immigration quotas very strictly, and only a few thousand were able to come in after that, so I doubt that there would be too much of a change in character, as many of those who OTL migrated to Palestine still would. After all, they just saw Germany, a modern and liberal state, fall to Nazis, so who's to say that the United States wouldn't have, too?
 
In short, all but the poorest areas of the USA would be in play to get more Jews, although as said, some areas more than others.

I imagine NYC would be even more Jewish, but probably other East Coast cities might be considerably more Jewish than in our timeline (I'm thinking Washington and Boston here, quite possibly Philadelphia and Hartford too). Assuming (generously) the Nazis didn't strip them of their wealth upon expulsion, that leaves more options open for them, especially from the Appalachians westward (Chicago and California obviously, and probably the Great Lakes industrial belt too). Surprisingly, especially at that time, even the South might get a lit-tle bit more Jews, especially peninsular Florida, New Orleans, and Atlanta. Texas wasn't a high-powered state yet, but it was still growing like gangbusters, so we can't even count out that state either. I doubt the extra Jewish population would be enough to tilt the state politically, barring the closest of elections (like Nixon vs. Kennedy).
 

elkarlo

Banned
This isn't all rainbows and sunshine. This was the height if the depression. Having hundreds of thousands of highly skilled workers coming would pressure white collar and woukd probably lead to more upper level anti semitsim
 
This isn't all rainbows and sunshine. This was the height if the depression. Having hundreds of thousands of highly skilled workers coming would pressure white collar and woukd probably lead to more upper level anti semitsim
true but Nazi policies killed much of anti-semitism's appeal in the US, by-and-large, so it can't be that much worse than OTL. It will be more appealing than OTL in the medium-term but thankfully not enough to counterbalance greater Jewish influence in big cities along the East Coast.
It helps that white collars were not really a (core at least) Democratic demographic in that day, with America being divided among class lines and all that.
 
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true but Nazi policies killed much of anti-semitism's appeal in the US, by-and-large, so it can't be that much worse than OTL. It will be more appealing than OTL in the medium-term but thankfully not enough to counterbalance greater Jewish influence in big cities along the East Coast.
It helps that white collars were not really a (core at least) Democratic demographic in that day, with America being divided among class lines and all that.

I think you are underestimating just how big anti-semitism was in the US.

We usually think of the US as a good place to be Jewish in the 1930s because it was so much worse in Nazi-Germany and Europe as a whole, but it wasn't actually a good place, just better.

A greater influx of Jews, especially Jews who are not actually rich and bringing money with them, would result in a huge rise of anti-semitism in the US.

Just look at what happened to the Jews trying to flee Europe on the St. Louis in the Voyage of the Damned in 1939.

A significant percentage of the US population already was at least somewhat anti-semitic and a small minority outright shared the views of the Nazis.

With greater numbers of Jewish immigrants from Europe that would only be worse.

Just look at the amount of controversy and push-back Syrian refugees have generated across Europe in recent years. It is in no proportion to their actual numbers and the actual impact that their presence has on people.

By the same mechanisms you would see a rise in anti-Semitism in the US not necessarily in the places where Jews actually settled but in the states and regions where there were few Jews or immigrants in general.

It would be bad and could influence American politics to a disproportionate degree.
 
I think you are underestimating just how big anti-semitism was in the US.

We usually think of the US as a good place to be Jewish in the 1930s because it was so much worse in Nazi-Germany and Europe as a whole, but it wasn't actually a good place, just better.

A greater influx of Jews, especially Jews who are not actually rich and bringing money with them, would result in a huge rise of anti-semitism in the US.

Just look at what happened to the Jews trying to flee Europe on the St. Louis in the Voyage of the Damned in 1939.

A significant percentage of the US population already was at least somewhat anti-semitic and a small minority outright shared the views of the Nazis.

With greater numbers of Jewish immigrants from Europe that would only be worse.

Just look at the amount of controversy and push-back Syrian refugees have generated across Europe in recent years. It is in no proportion to their actual numbers and the actual impact that their presence has on people.

By the same mechanisms you would see a rise in anti-Semitism in the US not necessarily in the places where Jews actually settled but in the states and regions where there were few Jews or immigrants in general.

It would be bad and could influence American politics to a disproportionate degree.
There is a natural limit to how anti-semitic the US could get, even in the 30s. The US isn't going to become close to being a mirror image of Nazi Germany.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
There is a natural limit to how anti-semitic the US could get, even in the 30s. The US isn't going to become close to being a mirror image of Nazi Germany.
Cute ... this kinda religious (?) believe.

However, what is your evidence for this - as you seem to assume it - natural law of 'goodness' of the US-population ?

Also : where does this 'natural limit' you claim lay ? ... and what are its effects if met ?
 
Cute ... this kinda religious (?) believe.

However, what is your evidence for this - as you seem to assume it - natural law of 'goodness' of the US-population ?

Also : where does this 'natural limit' you claim lay ? ... and what are its effects if met ?
The US population is certainly more bigoted towards blacks than the Germans - by default, since blacks are the among the top minorities in the US and served as its underclass for many centuries. The US is by no means no less bigoted than Europe, nor any more bigoted - bigotry comes in different forms depending on where one is and what time period it is.
Anti-semitism in the 30s was less of an issue in the US than in Europe. This was at least because of the following reasons: the government of the US had less to gain politically from it; the boogeyman in the US, historically, were not Jews, but Catholics (look at the Know Nothings, for example); demographically, America was probably less Jewish than Europe. There are other reasons but those are the main ones.
P.S. Note how Mexican-Americans have suffered repeatedly (even under FDR), being seen as a threat to white labor, etc. If a Mexican-American Jew was being discriminated against, it wouldn't be because they were Jews, or they came from a group that is overwhelmingly Catholic, but because they are Mexican-American, with all the baggage that that carries. They were, and remain, "other"-ized somewhat in the American national conscience.
 
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raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
The US immigration quota from Germany following 1924 (57,000) was never maxed out in any year following the 1924 immigration act. However in the 1930s the US adjusted the law to keep Jews from Germany who might have been able to escape the Reich of the United States.

What if the United States hadn't adjusted its German quota and the Reich's Jews had mostly emigrated to the United States?

There were about 525,000 German Jews in 1933. Not all would come to the United States, but I imagine 250,000 - 300,000 would. Germany Jews were disproportionately professionals and highly-educated (even by German standards, a country with an already high education rate).

What were the specific ways the U.S. laws were changed to exclude German Jews in the 1930s? Was there an explicit religious test?

Did British, Dominion and Latin American laws have features that privileged the immigration of non-Jewish Germans over other Germans?


I do not know the figures showing the difference between applications for migration made and those accepted in OTL.

I suppose there was a difference. Without legal/administrative impediments, the numbers would have gone up.

However, for at least some of the years 1933-1939, there would be German Jews unable or unwilling to emigrate because of inability to pay exit fees, or preference to not emigrate to a country that had been their enemy in WWI.

Many German Jews hoped to wait the situation out at home, or emigrate to closer by countries that had been neutral in WWI or allied or nonexistent like Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland.

------A bigger emigration option for German Jews and then Austrian Jews would have been great for them no doubt.

However, millions of Jews in Europe still would have been endangered during WWII when the Germans started conquering countries with vast Jewish populations in a fast and furious manner.
 
This could add some motivated volunteers to the US war effort. I wonder if the Army forms Jewish regiments as it did with the Neisi Japanese, Nowegian refugees, or African Americans?
 
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These Jews, who are often highly-educated, would definitely change the demographics of New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and possibly both Milwaukee and St. Louis. And being actually educated, would quickly assimilate into the US population once they learn to speak English reasonably fluently. Los Angeles would certainly see a boom of Jews given the growing population of Jews there that are part of the movie industry.
 
This isn't all rainbows and sunshine. This was the height if the depression. . .
I think you are underestimating just how big anti-semitism was in the US. . .
I don’t want to underestimate. And I certainly don’t want to underestimate how desperate and angry the Great Depression could make people.

Still, if there had been some courageous leadership at the State Dept. . . And honestly sell the economic aspect by saying, this many people coming in with this much money to immediately pump into the economy. And maybe if you need to get some refugee organizations in other countries to donate money to pump up this second figure, so be it.
 
I know that W. D. Rubinstein's The Myth of Rescue is a controverisal book, but Rubinstein may have a point in arguing that until the last moment many German Jews were just not that anxious to come to the US--which if true suggests that adjustment in quotas might have had less of an effect than is widely assumed:

"Critics of America's immigration policies during this period have often focused upon the fact that Germany's quota was underfilled until 1939. In 1937, for instance, only 11,520 persons migrated to the United States from Germany, only 42 per cent of the possible total of 25,957 set by the 1924 quota. Critics of American policy have often attributed this to the 'paper walls' erected by America's consular bureaucracy in Germany, walls which were removed only at the last possible moment, when a vast tide of desperate refugees resulted, at last, in some humanitarianism being introduced into America's harsh immigration administration. There is, of course, an element of truth in this, and many individual cases of bureaucratic pettifoggery and narrow-mindedness, strongly suggestive of anti-semitism, can doubtless be found. Yet this begs perhaps the central question, a question which all critics of the refugee policies of the democracies during these years should certainly address and answer: how many German Jews had actually applied, at any particular point during the years of Nazi rule, to enter the United States (or any other country), but were denied entry through bureaucratic harshness or anti-semitism? No definitive data is available to answer this question, but such information as does exist strongly suggests that the answer is that, until Kristallnacht, many fewer German Jews actually wished to enter the United States than one would assume.

"On 17 November 1938 — that is, just after Kristallnacht — Frances Perkins, the American Secretary of Labor, stated that the German—Austrian immigrant quota was then filled 'for at least fourteen months'. In other words, at this time perhaps only 32,000 Germans and Austrians (Jews and non-Jews) had actually applied to migrate to the United States. At the time perhaps 250,000 Jews remained in Germany and 125,000 in Austria. During the early period of Nazi rule, the number of German Jews who applied to migrate was, almost certainly, much smaller still, and the fact that the quota figure was not met until amazingly late must be attributed in large part to the unwillingness of Germany's Jews to apply to migrate to the United States until the very last moment...' https://books.google.com/books?id=6IaEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA225
 
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elkarlo

Banned
I don’t want to underestimate. And I certainly don’t want to underestimate how desperate and angry the Great Depression could make people.

Still, if there had been some courageous leadership at the State Dept. . . And honestly sell the economic aspect by saying, this many people coming in with this much money to immediately pump into the economy. And maybe if you need to get some refugee organizations in other countries to donate money to pump up this second figure, so be it.

True, but you are talking about the 19030s with our current viewpoint. Many people would be very angry. "There aren't enough jobs for us white people, yet we're letting all these Jew in? They undercut us and they stick together!". I could see, until after the war, antisemitism go up rather sharply.
 
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