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

These skilled-workers would benefit the US economy right? And the war effort?

Eventually

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

It ran deeper and much further back than the Depression. To illustrate: When the KKK was officially revived in 1915, that year was within one of the eras of highest US prosperity. However the KKK at its revival was concerned with inferior peoples diluting the morale superiority of true Americanism. Translated this meant non WASP ethnic groups threatening the political control and economic wellbeing of the Anglo Saxon & Scots Irish decended US citizenry. Surprisingly Germans and other Nordic types were included among the untermench. However religion had its place and both Catholics and Jews were specifically identified as contaminating religions. In this the Jews got a double proscription for both their religion and ethnicity. In this the official doctrine of the 1915 KKK reflected a long running antisemticism among the WASP middle and upper classes.
 

elkarlo

Banned
Eventually



It ran deeper and much further back than the Depression. To illustrate: When the KKK was officially revived in 1915, that year was within one of the eras of highest US prosperity. However the KKK at its revival was concerned with inferior peoples diluting the morale superiority of true Americanism. Translated this meant non WASP ethnic groups threatening the political control and economic wellbeing of the Anglo Saxon & Scots Irish decended US citizenry. Surprisingly Germans and other Nordic types were included among the untermench. However religion had its place and both Catholics and Jews were specifically identified as contaminating religions. In this the Jews got a double proscription for both their religion and ethnicity. In this the official doctrine of the 1915 KKK reflected a long running antisemticism among the WASP middle and upper classes.

I agree, I was only saying it would add to the already existing anti-antisemitism that already existed. I think in the near term it would make it already worse, which would make it that much harder, politically to fight the Nazis.
 
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?
A quick google search indicates the Argentine military dictatorship of 1930 enacted some sort of laws restricting Jewish migration. Butterfly away the 1930 coup (it was a close call) and, legally speaking, German jews would have (at least initially) an easier way into Argentina. OTOH, antisemitism had been on the rise in the previous decade and would probably rise more if hundreds of thousands of jews migrate. As it was, something like 40,000 jews migrated to Argentina during the 1930s. That's not "few" but it's also a small portion of the amount the Nazis would want to (initially) expel.
 
@TimTurner Your post #14 ... its accounting of some few IOTL situations doesn't really answer my questions from post # 13.
You don't really explain the by you claimed inherent "limit" of US antisemitism.
it's inherently limited due to the fact relatively (in this context, still potentially a lot in certain situations, but still, few enough that the US was unlikely to even mirror Nazi Germany) few groups in the US usually cared much about attacking, insulting, or even thinking about Jews, relative to other demographics. The traditional Catholic vs. Protestant divide that existed in the US from the 1600s to the 1960s was probably the main conduit of bigotry in the United States (rivaled only by White vs Black), and its influence was reflected in the immigration debates in that time period. Despite the presence of active anti-semitism in some sections of society (especially WASPs), it was simply not as influential here as it was in Europe.
And if you are equating levels of anti-semitism with levels of bigotry overall (assuming that the environment in America could easily have been as anti-Semitic as Europe because reasons), you are looking at it wrong. There are many kinds of bigotry, many (most?) of them driven by fear and/or dislike towards a group's influence on the national culture and/or a group's divergence from thereof. When economic interests are added in the stew, it gets only more toxic, and even be an even more powerful factor. Hence, in New England, once a major manufacturing center, you had mostly Catholic laborers and a mostly Protestant managerial class. The former were mostly Democrats; the latter was mostly Republicans. The former had more babies so eventually the Protestants who once overwhelmingly dominated politics lost control. Henry Cabot Lodge was defeated in 1952 by Jack Kennedy, and the Rhode Island state GOP lost all its power in dramatic fashion in 1934. Yankee businessmen in New England were more bigoted against Catholics than they were against blacks, because many Catholics were class enemies, and political opponents. Old-school Democrats were more viscerally racist towards blacks than the Yankee businessmen, because they were direct competition for jobs. Neither blacks, Catholics, or Protestants usually thought all that much about Jews - and why would they?
IOTL, Anti-Semitism peaked in the 1920s. And this was not because of a truly massive surge of base Anti-Semitism. It was due to fear of socialism - the Red Scare. Jews got tarred along with many Eastern European demographics, as a potentially communist-sympathizing bloc. The KKK carried the banner of 'protecting America'. The nature of Anti-Semitism in this era was linked to anti-communism - it wasn't focused just on Jews but on many demographics seen as "foreign". However, this didn't really last for a very long period of time. Immigration got restricted, especially from Eastern Europe. The Red Scare largely ended. Thus, Middle America didn't feel under threat. They went back to 'normalcy', wanting to avoid much worry altogether. (not that that 'normalcy' would last long)
 

NoMommsen

Donor
@TimTurner
I well agree with you, that it is unlikely that the US would/could become a "mirror image of Nazi Germany".
Its industrialization of genicide is something ... almost unique in humanities history (given their technical possibilities only the Aztecs might come near the amount of killing-people, ... the Khmer Rougue might have just run out of victims, if they would have lasted longer, ...)

Nevertheless I still don't see why the US dwelling in one or the other kind of ... bigotry - anti-catholicism, anti-'negroism', the latter at least well combined with physical expressions of it [cynism intended] - as you name it is 'able' to protect them from developing a stronger anti-semitism. ... maybe not soo physical as their anti-negroism.


And I would question the idea, that the anti-semitism of i.e. a Henry Ford was 'only' due to fears of communism/socialism.

With a much larger influx of well educated, even high-class educated german jews the 'white-collar' as well as the 'blue-collar' workers especially at the east-coast and industrialized regions around/below the great lakes would have the potential to 'threaten' the US-american middle-class.
 
Antisemitism in the USA prior to the end of WWII was as pervasive as air, and totally acceptable. In the 1920s the presidents of top tier universities met and established strict "Jewish quotas" for admission as too many of them were being admitted based on "objective" criteria - this quota for undergraduate and graduate/professional schools lasted until the early 1960s. Restrictions in housing were blatant and up front ("restricted" communities). Employment was similarly restricted, with formal or informal quotas on Jews in some places and frank refusal to hire in other. Another example is hospital privileges, many hospitals were up front about not granting Jewish doctors admitting/surgical privileges, something that persisted in to the early 1960s. I could keep citing examples for many pages, and this does not even include "social" antisemitism in terms of Jews not admitted to various clubs of all sorts, "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one of them", etc. Famous antisemites like Henry Ford (and Edison and others) were virulently antisemitic long before the Bolsheviks took over in Russia or Lenin was a name that was recognizable in America.

From when the Nazis took power up until the US entered WWII it was US policy to prevent the immigration of Jews ANYWHERE in the western hemisphere, as there were no quotas on immigration from Latin America and there were concerns Jews would immigrate there, and then get citizenship/residence papers that would enable them to come to the USA as "Latin American" immigrants. A great deal of effort was expended by the State Department to pressure Latin American governments, the reversal forced on Cuba in the SS St Louis affair is only one example. This policy closed down a potential exit for German/Austrian Jews, there were quite a number of South/Central American countries and Caribbean countries that would have accepted a fair number of Jews.

Antisemitism was the driving force in the overall policy towards Jewish immigration in the pre-WWII 30s. Not to say economic concerns such as competition for jobs was not there, but had "economics" been the overall concern then quotas for everyone/every place would have been dropped. The reality is that the USA was, basically, like every other place - nobody wanted the Jews. The Nazis would have been perfectly OK with every Jew in Germany and Austria leaving, albeit leaving assets behind. The problem was that even those who wanted to leave could not get entry visas someplace else. The fact that emigrating from Germany/Austria to someplace else in continental Europe was not a long term solution was something nobody knew.
 
The Meyerland area of Houston is the city’s historical Jewish center. That would be an interesting area for large scale Jewish immigration. Maybe the immigrants become involved in the oil and gas industry?
 
Antisemitism in the USA prior to the end of WWII was as pervasive as air, and totally acceptable. In the 1920s the presidents of top tier universities met and established strict "Jewish quotas" for admission as too many of them were being admitted based on "objective" criteria - this quota for undergraduate and graduate/professional schools lasted until the early 1960s. Restrictions in housing were blatant and up front ("restricted" communities). Employment was similarly restricted, with formal or informal quotas on Jews in some places and frank refusal to hire in other. Another example is hospital privileges, many hospitals were up front about not granting Jewish doctors admitting/surgical privileges, something that persisted in to the early 1960s. I could keep citing examples for many pages, and this does not even include "social" antisemitism in terms of Jews not admitted to various clubs of all sorts, "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one of them", etc. Famous antisemites like Henry Ford (and Edison and others) were virulently antisemitic long before the Bolsheviks took over in Russia or Lenin was a name that was recognizable in America.

They had this one question on some admission forms 'is there any reason you could not attend classes on a Saturday?' An objective criteria? Technically.
 
The quotas were also keeping out Catholics by restricting the amount of applicants from the cities of the Northeast and Midwest in favor of applicants from the rural West.
A good but preachy book to read about Anti-Semitism in ordinary life is Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z Hobson which was later made into a movie staring Gregory Peck.
 
Last edited:
Antisemitism in the USA prior to the end of WWII was as pervasive as air, and totally acceptable. In the 1920s the presidents of top tier universities met and established strict "Jewish quotas" for admission as too many of them were being admitted based on "objective" criteria - this quota for undergraduate and graduate/professional schools lasted until the early 1960s.
IIRC a large number of them therefore went to institutions like New York University which reaped the benefits of Nobel and other prestigious prize-winning graduates and lecturers.
 
@Petros >Peter Fergus< : When I applied to medical school in 1975 (as a Vietnam era vet and with 2 degrees from a world class university), one of the medical schools I applied to STILL had the "problem with classes on Saturday" question on the application. Surprisingly they did not ask "do you have a problem with classes on Christmas/Easter/etc".
 
Top