The Southern Press and the Holocaust

World War II permanently changed the world. The devastation and scope of the war was previously unmatched in human history. Great and terrible new technologies brought the ability to kill to new levels. But what made World War II unique was the racial aspect. Both Germany and Japan fought to expand empires with which they hoped to populate with the great "Master Race." All inferior races were in the way, and therefore, must be eliminated. The efficiency with which this was attempted continues to haunt the human psyche. This aspect of the war also had one of the most profound impacts on humanity. The idea that racism was a "bad thing" was writ large by what the world saw coming out of places like Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald.

Not even the American South was immune to this phenomenon. In a land where racial segregation and white supremacy was enforced at every level of society, the old order looked strangely different to many people when viewed through the prism of the Holocaust. As Pete Daniel asked, "Was the Nazi stance a mirror of the South? Did not peonage, lynching, and everyday violence and hatred based on race parallel Hitler's racial policies?" Added to this dynamic was the fact that thousands of Southerners were moving into the cities and into the urban age. All of a sudden, "the problem of race was no longer a Southern rural problem, or even a Southern urban problem; it was a national concern."

The question now becomes, what of the white Southern press? How did the white Southern press reconcile the fight against Nazism with upholding the status quo at home? While no Southern paper would have ever connected Point A to Point B directly, are there any clues that this was under consideration? Or, did the South simply dismiss this correlation under the notion, much in the same way Northerners reconciled their own racism during the Civil Rights movement, that "it's different." Was there any uniformity to how the Southern press immediately responded to what happened? Were there any differences, and if so, what were they? To answer this query, one need to look at three of the major Southern dailies: The Atlanta Constitution, The New Orleans Times Picayune / New Orleans States, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

The Atlanta Constitution
The first mention of the Holocaust in the Atlanta Constitution came on 12 April 1945. The story, a front-page report by the Associated Press, quoted the International Church Movement Ecumenical Refugee Commission's listing of 1,715,000 Jews killed at Auschwitz and Birkenau. The story also quoted Dr. Bela Fabian, president of the Hungarian Independent Democratic Party, who claimed that 5 million Jews were killed at Auschwitz over a 10 month period. The story then presents a list of areas where atrocities were reported, the number of alleged dead, and the source of the information, most of which was from Soviet sources. On 15 April, the Constitution ran an Associated Press story of a "Death March" of "35,000 persons, most of them Polish" who were led on an 8-day forced march from Stutthof to Lauenburg. The story reported that "Dogs and rifle butts were used to keep them [the prisoners] moving," and that "some too weak to walk were reported shot." The story does not list any specific figures on the number of deaths. On 18 April, a story ran about "Teen-aged hun fiends" who were reported to have burned alive 1,100 "Russian, Polish and Hungarian slave laborers" in a barn near Gardelegen. This story was followed the next day with a story about the "Nazi ring-leader who planned and executed the mass slaughter" being arrested and "sent to a rear area in a prisoner-of-war cage."

On 20 April, there appeared the first story on conditions at Buchenwald. In the story, an Atlanta Army Major and a New Jersey Army Captain reported seeing men in possession of souvenirs made of tattoed skin. The next day, the Constitution reported on conditions at the Bergen-Belsen camp, where SS guards were given the task of burying "hundreds and thousands" of corpses. The next day came the announcement that "a delegation of 12 lawmakers and 17 publishers and editors" would travel to the camps to "see first hand evidence of Nazi atrocities. General Dwight Eisenhower had requested this delegation after seeing the concentration camp near Gotha. Eisenhower later wrote, "I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt." On 23 April, the report came of what the panel saw at Buchenwald. That same day, the Constitution offered its first editorial comment on the camps. While calling for "implacable justice" to be brought "to the perpetrators of these foul crimes," there was also gratitude that since American public did not have first-hand experience with the Holocaust, they "cannot . . . comprehend the bestiality in all its horror." Americans should be glad that their minds were "too decent to understand that such things happen." A final report from Buchenwald came on 30 April in an article by famed publisher Joseph Pulitzer. In describing the atrocities he witnessed, Pulitzer thundered that the "great majority of the German people must share the responsibility." However, Pulitzer concedes that "the chief responsibility . . . lies with three groups of German leaders. . . . the German general staff, . . . the SS, . . . [and] . . . the Gestapo."

On 29 April, a report ran about how prisoners still at Buchenwald were still dying "at a rate of 15 a day." Despite this high death rate, "much has been done since the Americans arrived to clean it up." This story also reported on the nearby town of Weimar, where "well-dressed, well-fed Germans go about their business through the streets, paying little attention to American occupation forces." It was mused that "perhaps their placidity will suffer a shock if the town is turned over to the Russians for permanent occupation when V-Day arrives." This knowledge that the Germans feared the Russians was addressed in a 4 May opinion article. According to the article's author, Ralph T. Jones, there perhaps were "grounds for the German fear of Russia beyond all other Allies." After all, "of all the lands ravished by the brutal Nazi forces, none was more horribly subject to destruction than Russia." Jones' elaborates that the German fear of the Russians stems from Stalin's willingness to "exact retribution, pound for pound, stone for stone, city for city, slave laborer for slave laborer." Jones believes that the United States and Great Britain would not use slave labor because they "regard jobs as assets . . . to be reserved for our own people." Also, the Western powers "could not exact . . . retribution for the concentration camps" because they could not bring themselves "to that beastly level" that the Nazis were on. It appears naive in retrospect to say of Stalin's regime, but Jones also does not believe that "the Russian could be guilty of such foulness." However, he does feel that if the Soviets used German slaves to rebuild their cities, "no one could blame them" because "whatever fate Russia brings to that portion of Germany she will occupy has been fully earned by the German people."

On 24 April, there appeared an article about a speech given by Max N. Kroloff of the B'nai B'rith at a meeting of the Atlanta B'nai B'rith. Kroloff denounced "'atrocities perpetrated by enemies of democracy'" and the "worldwide campaign of hate propaganda against defenseless minorities." Kroloff further stated that "'some of the effects of this bigotry have found lodgement in this country.'" The article does not specify if Kroloff was speaking of any particular part of "this country." The only other mention of domestic Jewish activity came on 1 May, the Constitution carried a story about an address by Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, a member of the Zionist Organization of America. In a speech to the Atlanta Zionist district, the Rabbi was "seeking to open the gates of Palestine to a million and a half Jews of Europe." The article also mentioned the Zionist lobby of the United Nations conference in San Francisco which sought to gain "an international trusteeship which would . . . allow the Jews to build a free, democratic government."

In the Atlanta Constitution's post-script on the Nazi regime, three articles, a cartoon and an advertisement stand out. The first of the three articles appeared on 5 May. In an opinion article, Gladstone Williams wrote of Hitler's missed opportunity to accomplish "all of the major aims sought for the German people" while sparing "the world and his country the disaster that has come." Had Hitler opted for the role of "statesman instead of would-be conqueror," then "Germany would have been a thriving and prosperous nation." Williams points out that Britain and France "were prepared to go to any extremes" to avoid war with Germany. If Hitler had not insisted upon war, "with her colonies thus regained and with the German peoples united under the Third Reich, with important allies in Italy and Spain, Germany would have embarked on a course that has infinite possibilities."

The following day, there appeared another sort of retrospective article by Ralph McGill. Mc Gill writes of the comments he heard in 1938 and 1939 "on the bus and train, in plane and office, in street and home." The comments were along the lines of "'I don't guess he [Hitler] is as bad as he is painted . . . Why should we worry about what Germany wants? . . . it's just the Jews . . . it doesn't concern us.'" "All the while," McGill states, "Evil was blinding the world." Although "the end came," the "wind[s] of war . . . have blown the seeds of evil to many lands," and "We will have to spray them with the killing acids of truth." An editorial on 9 May touched on some of the same themes when it compared the "complete ruin of the Nazi empire" to Jesus' parable about the "house built on the sand." This editorial stated that like the "Ku Klux Klan of the 20s" the Nazi regime "was built upon the sand of race hatred and racial persecution." Like the KKK of just 20 years before, "when its walls fell down, the world saw inside corruption, vice, murder and terror." This statement seems a titanically irony coming from a paper that was published within sight of Stone Mountain, where in 1915, that same Klan was re-born. But ironic as it seems, the focus of the Constitution's ire against Nazi Germany is the racial aspects. A cartoon on the 7th of May speaks to this theme. It shows a stereotyped stocky German man explaining to a gaunt, skeletal prisoner, "Der Fuehrer is to blame - I'm just an ordinary superman."

The Times-Picayune and New Orleans States
The Times-Picayune's first mention of a concentration camp liberation came three days prior to the Atlanta Constitution on April 9, 1945. A front-page story chronicled American soldiers bringing "prominent citizens" of Ohrdruf to view the bodies of "30 men who had been shot through the head and covered with lime." One key omission from the viewing of the bodies was the "one of the town's former burgomeisters and his wife" who "were found hanging, their wrists slashed." The story then speculates, "perhaps they were murdered, or maybe it was suicide." Like the Constitution, the Times-Picayune ran the story on 12 April of Bela Fabian's claims about Auschwitz. Much of the Times-Picayune's coverage on this article is devoted to what Fabian and "Three others liberated with Fabian [who] corroborated his story." There is no comprehensive list of reported atrocities like in the Constitution, but there are first accounts of the gas chambers and crematories. On April 15 came the first report of the "Death Marches," where American POWs were unwilling participants in a forced march "as brutal as that perpetrated by the Japanese in the Philippines."

On 18 April, the Times-Picayune, like the Constitution, carried the story of the 1,100 prisoner burned alive in Gardelegen. Two days later, a report ran of American soldiers forcing the citizens of Gardelegen to "dig individual graves for each of the 1,100 slave laborers and political prisoners" killed in the incident. The same day, a story appeared of a warning Truman, Churchill and Stalin drafted that warned the Nazis "will be made to pay atrocities committed against the Allies." In the same article appears a harbinger of things to come with a report that "direct word from General Eisenhower that atrocities just discovered 'far surpass' anything seen before." In the article, Winston Churchill warned that the warning was "being directed 'not only to the men at the top but to the actual people who have done this foul work with their own hands.'" Furthermore, "'No order from superior authority would be any shield.'"

On 22 April, the Times-Picayune reported on the delegation of lawmakers and editors that traveled to Buchenwald. This announcement brought the first editorial comment from the Times-Picayune. The article called the delegation a "painful but necessary" one, and points to "charitably attributing the 'frightfulness'" of Germany's World War I atrocities "to individual criminals and refraining from indictment of the nation entire." This tendency was exploited by "German propagandists" who insisted that the previous war's atrocities "were fictions published for war purposes." Their efforts were successful as "many Americans swallowed the poisoned German propaganda, suffered their sympathies to override their judgement - and unconsciously helped prepare the way for the German conspiracy." The delegation would head off "another German propagandist effort to deceive the world and soften its judgements against Germany after this war."

April 24 brought a flurry of reports about concentration camp atrocities. Like the Constitution, there was an article about the warning to the Germans from Churchill, Truman and Stalin regarding the treatment of prisoners. The was also a rather unusual article about the liberation of a camp by the Soviets. The "atrocity camp for children" near Konstantinov in Poland housed "hundreds of emaciated children." The article's source was a report by Red Army medical officer Lt. Col. K. R. Sokolenko which was made public by the Soviet government. Another article chronicled a proposal by the U.S. House of Representatives for the "creation of an official American agency to investigate and record war crimes." Finally, a report on a proposal by a plant executive from Waukesha, Wisconsin to subject "all German prisoners, suspected civilians and officials" to lie detector tests."

On 25 April, the Times-Picayune printed the first report about the Belsen concentration camp. In addition to accounts of "forced prostitution" and the "use of human beings in vivisection experiments," was mention of the specific targeting of Jews and interviews with prisoners specifically identified as "Jewish women." It was the first mention of the specific targeting of Jews in any of the camp articles surveyed. In all others, Jews were mentioned, but simply as part of a hodgepodge of various ethnic groups and nationalities. The same day, there was an article about a report from the House Foreign Affairs Committee calling for the U.S. government to "cross neutral borders" and "to use arms and ignore treaties if necessary to pursue Nazi war criminals."

L.K. Nicholson, president of the Times Picayune, was one of the delegates invited by Eisenhower to witness the atrocities first hand. On 28 April, the Times-Picayune ran a front page article that was his description of what he saw. Like an article in the Constitution, Nicholson mentions "patients" dying at "a rate of 30 per day." Nicholson states that the liberated prisoners "are too far gone for our doctors to check the ravages of the diseases." Nicholson concludes that anyone "who had visited" Buchenwald would be "entirely convinced of the fanatical brutality of the Germans and [would] but wonder as to the sanity of the whole race." The Times-Picayune ran an editorial the next day stating that what had been seen by the delegation "merely samples the destruction committed." The "western horrors" present the Holocaust only "in miniature." For a "complete picture" of "the Nazi atrocity system," the delegation would "have to wangle and invitation from Moscow or the Lublin government for a flight to Poland." There would be found "the reason why so many Germans are terrorized at the thought of becoming Russian captives."

On the 6th of May, the Times-Picayune ran a copy of the report the Eisenhower delegation presented reporting on what they saw and what they concluded. Although "the brutality took different forms in different places and with different groups," the "basic pattern" was the same throughout. This was an indictment of "the whole Nazi German philosophy" rather than writing the Holocaust off as a series of isolated, random incidents. Although the article calls for punishment of "all members of the Gestapo, all members of the SS," and "outstanding party officeholders," there is mention of how "the German people cannot be allowed to escape their share of the responsibility." In addition, the article singled out the Jews as primary victims, but also mentioned that "after the Jews the most cruelly treated victims were the Russians and the Poles." However, there was "no significant exceptions" when it came to the "basic policy of brutality."

Another article on 6 May reported on American and British Jewish groups lobbying the United Nations meeting at San Francisco. The groups wanted the United Nations "to create a commission on human rights and individual freedom." Curiously, there is no mention of Palestine, or creating a Jewish homeland. The same day, an editorial ran that was a reprint of an editorial from a Swiss paper, the Basler Deutcheszeitung. The editorial states that "the world had known before of the atrocities in German concentration camps . . . from the very first day of Hitler's rise to power." Because they knew ahead of time, "none of the neighbors of the Third Reich can be acquitted of the accusation that they had made it too easy for the Nazi propaganda to screen and cover up these systematic mass murders." "Those writers," who actually wrote about what was going on, "were frequently considered prejudiced or exaggerating." The heaviest blame lay on "the German people themselves." Despite all efforts to keep it all a secret, "the broad masses and particularly, the leading circles of the German high finance and industry and the intelligentsia . . . must have known full well what was happening behind the fences of these camps." If what was going on was not known, "these concentration camps could not have been so efficient a means for terrorizing the public."

The overall theme of the Times-Picayune is culpability. Many editorials speak to this theme, including the Swiss editorial on 6 May. Like the Atlanta Constitution, the Times-Picayune ran a cartoon which serves not only as a post-script, but a visualization of the theme. It shows a crowd of German civilians before an exasperated man representing the "Allied Crimes Commission" Before the commission, are a stack of "Atrocities evidence" and a memo reading "How to segregate the Nazi Party from the Gestapo, S.S., eic. from the rest." In unison, the multitude of Germans are shouting "Ve Vere all 'Goot' Germans!" The caption at the top reads, "Anybody got a few million lie detectors?"

The Memphis Commercial Appeal
The first mention of any atrocities on the part of the Nazis came on 14 April 1945. An article about the German "fear and dread" of the "thousands of erstwhile slaves now pouring westward." The article also mention fear, especially in the rural areas, of "'these wild beasts, the Russians.'" The article mentions that the Germans never complain of "the French, Czechoslovaks, Poles, or Yugoslavs." It blames "Hitler's hate and fear propaganda against 'Bolshevism'" and states that authorities have "no evidence that the Russians are any more guilty of depredations," and that "a certain amount of rape, looting and other acts of violence against former masters and oppressors" is to be expected. The Nazi system is ultimately to blame, because it enslaved "decent civilian men," and "attempted to turn them into beasts."

The first mention of any concentration camp came on the 15th of April. An article mentioned American troops standing guard as "protesting German civilians" buried 2700 "Allied political prisoners" at Nordhausen. This was claimed to be "the first time that the American Military Government had forced the German people to pay personally for their misdeeds." There were reports that some Germans "became violently ill" and one "husky young man collapsed with a heart attack." A second report on the same day stated that "nearly 1000" were buried by "well-fed citizens of Nordhausen" who were "dressed in their Sunday best." At the end of this article, it was reported that liberated slaves "wandered about Nordhausen gathering food from shattered warehouses." Meanwhile, "German householders walked the streets, apparently in no fear of their lives." The article concludes that "when father comes home, he will have a tale to tell which should make them hide their faces from their onetime slaves and the Americans who freed them." On 17 April, there was a report about the frustration felt by American soldiers who wanted "an official Allied policy toward war criminals" else they would enact, "an unofficial one." The article stated that "many people are firmly convinced that our Government had no adequate machinery for trying and executing war criminals" and that if something was not done to that end, "frontier law may go into action." However, the article does point out that, "discipline has prevented out-of-hand executions of camp superintendents and others."

The first editorial comment in the Commercial Appeal was actually a reprint of an article in the Kansas City Times. The article concluded three things about Germany. First, there was "absolutely no sign of an antiNazi underground" that was supposed to be "waiting for the appearance of our armies on the frontier." Second, there was "overwhelming" evidence that the "barbaric tortures and murder" was carried out "by order of the Nazi authorities." Finally, "the average German regrets nothing except the loss of the war," and shows no remorse over "the way the war was started or conducted." The average German is "incapable of contrition for the criminal enterprise in which he was a willing accomplice," and would "undertake the same thing again without hesitation if he thought it were possible."

On the 19th and 21st of April, there were the first reports out of the Belsen prison, where "indefinite reports say 30,000 died in the last few months." Once again, Allied soldiers stood guard as German prisoners buried the dead. There is also the first mention of Jews specifically. In the 21 April edition, there was a small space at the end of the Belsen article announcing that the Eisenhower delegation would head to Germany "to inspect concentration camps." That same day was the Commercial Appeal's first original editorial comment. Like the Constitution and the Times-Picayune, the Commercial Appeal praises Eisenhower's idea for a delegation to inspect the camps, and calls for taking "whatever other steps . . . necessary to establish irrefutable proof." The Commercial Appeal also points to how "we were industriously advised" at the end of World War I "that the great part of the stories about German atrocities was propaganda." That idea has "proved its fallacies tragically," and "there should be no doubt this time."

On 22 April, there is a report on the incident at Gardelegen, where "1100 anti-Nazi French, Belgians, Russians, Poles and Dutch" were burned alive. The article further reports that "fat prosperous Nazi civilians" were forced to dig up and rebury 500 corpses. The same day was an article stating that Holocaust was "part of a master plan," not necessarily "exclusively Hitler's plan nor the Nazis." The plan was "historically German, finding its origins in the deeds of the Teutonic knights, tracing its progress . . . to Hitler's 'The Master Race' doctrine." The article also points to comments by Field Marshal Karl Gerd von Runstedt at the German Imperial War Academy in 1943. Von Runstedt stated that "'the destruction of neighboring peoples and their riches is indispensable to our victory,'" and that "'with the enfeebling of two generations of manpower, we shall be better placed to conquer in 25 years.'"

On 23 April there was a report from that the Soviet news agency broadcast reports from Pravda that the Western allies "Had not seen what we had seen." "What is Buchenwald?" the article asked. "It is Maidanek, but in miniature." The Soviets claimed that "we have long since exposed the true faith of our enemy." The article further demanded "trial of the Fascist hangmen on whose conscience are millions of tortured Soviet people." The next day, an editorial reproted that Germans had shown no remorse over the camps and had "adopt[ed] the position that it is none of their affair." The article demanded that documentary films in production by the Americans and British be required viewing by all Germans "before a food ration card is issued to any German adult."

The 24th brought an editorial article questioning why the Germans continued "giving their lives for the men and the policies responsible for the atrocities uncovered at a score of prison and concentration camps." By allowing the war to continue, "they are destroying and glorying in the destruction of their own means of living and if they are the possessors of any instinct that we have been taught to consider human, there is no evidence of it now." It also quotes a Russian soldier who, after learning of what the Americans and British had discovered, remarked, "now THEY know." In a cartoon on the same page, an unarmed Hitler Youth is shown standing before oncoming bayonets, protecting a cowering Hitler. The caption reads, "What manner of man is this?"

On 26 April, there was an article stating that 50,000 prisoners at Mauthausen and Gussen would die "if their Allied liberators fail to reach them quickly." The prisoners, according to a French prisoner named Odette Amery, "will be gassed or injected with benzol in the region of the heart, at a rate of 250 daily." This article also reported that cases of cannibalism had been reported by survivors of "a bold raid" on Mauthausen by "Geneva International Red Cross trucks." The same day, there was a report from Nordhausen, where "slave camps" were "maintained to provide manpower for the V-Bomb factory." The article waxed philosophic by stating that the plant, "would have delighted Nietzsche." At Nordhausen, "the Nazi government applied to the fullest his theory 'the influence of forcible subjugation is not a wrong. The fight is not for life, but for power. There is delight in exercising power upon the powerless.'"

On 29 April, there was an article about Count Felix von Luckner, "famed sea raider of World War I." Von Luckner stated that all Germans "are all jointly responsible for the past." Further, Luckner said that "ninety per cent of the German people concurred in Hitler's actions, either actively or in a cowardly spirit of compromise," and that "lasting shame of the German people," was their inability "to free themselves from this gang of criminals." An editorial the same day, about the Eisenhower delegation, stated that the inquiry's findings, "will stiffen our attitude toward Germans and quiet 'sob sisters whose moaning we're going to start hearing pretty soon.'" This hardening of the attitude was evident in an article on 1 May about American soldiers killing "dozens of Nazi guards" in a "furious battle" for "Dachau Prison, German's most dreaded extermination camp." The hardening of attitude was also a subject in a article on 5 May that stated "after Dachau and the like, there just aren't smiles even for the children of so evil an enemy."

The final comment on the Nazis came on 8 May 1945 in an editorial article. Unlike either the Constitution or the Times-Picayune, the Commercial Appeal found "Poetic Justice" in the fact that there had been exactly 30 years difference between the sinking of the Lusitania and the surrender of Nazi Germany. The Lusitania sinking "was received with cheers at the German consulate in Philadelphia, and that "cities were decorated, school children were given a holiday, and a medal was struck to commemorate the event." Now, "the proud and haughty German people have been brought to their knees, to sue for the quality so alien to their own creeds and deeds." In religious tones, the article describes how the Germans now "cringe and crawl to the judgement bar of God and man, crying with unashamed voices for that which they need now, that which they never gave to the hapless victims of their own bestiality." In their case, "justice cannot be unilateral and in this instance, mercy should not be." The 7th of May, "becomes a day fraught with meaning for the German people, and for the rest of mankind as well, that wrongs to man and insults to God inevitably bring retribution."

Like the Times-Picayune, there is heavy emphasis on German guilt, but not in the legal sense, so much as the ecclesiastical. In New Orleans, at the time home to two major law schools, the focus on culpability is easy to discern. The Commercial Appeal focuses on philosophy, with its mention of Nietzsche, and the idea of hubris and universal justice with its 7 May editorial. This is not terribly surprising considering that Memphis at the time was home to several seminaries. The Atlanta Constitution is the only one to broach the issue of race. But Atlanta, the capital of the "New South," was also one of its most important business hubs. Out of Atlanta and business-oriented towns like Atlanta, would come a "rising class of business conservatives" who wanted "stability, honest government, and a favorable business environment." This class would emerge after the war, and while they had "little social conscience," they put "unemployed rural people to work," and did not want "such ugly issues as racism to hurt business."

Pete Daniel, Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, (1986) C.L. Sulzberger, World War II. McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, (1970) The Atlanta Constitution, April-May 1945 The Times-Picayune/New Orleans States April-May 1945 The Memphis Commercial Appeal April-May 1945