Could something like the Holocaust happen in the US?

Answer 1

No, the USA did not have the power to prevent the Holocaust.

During WWII, Germany was a powerful nation with its own laws and customs. The USA, which did not get involved in the European theatre of WWII until almost three years of fighting had occurred, probably had no more than 15% of the military power projected against Germany.....the remaining 85% being Russian, British, and lesser powers.

Additionally there was only scant evidence that a Holocaust was even occurring in Europe. Being at war, there was not a lot of communication between Europe and the USA. Nonetheless some American Jews did suspect it was occurring and tried to influence America's entry into the war. To some extent President Roosevelt's political decisions were influenced in this manner.

Before the actual Holocaust, Germany had already been treating Jews terribly - putting them in ghettos, adding taxes, general harassment, restrictions on travel and occupations. Although the USA also had some societal discrimination against Jews, it was no where near the level of Germany's (although many of these type restrictions WERE placed on America's Negro population). Thus America's Jews were already anxious to destroy Germany even before the Holocaust was uncovered.

The actual Holocaust did not start until well into the war, after most the continent of Europe was in German control. No outside power could have stopped the Holocaust at that point.

An alternative is that Yes the US absolutely could have prevented the Holocaust.

The US had only just put limits on the number of immigrants that that were allowed in each year. They had decided that Jews and Eastern Europeans (and for that matter Southern Europeans) were undesirable and they severely restricted the numbers that could emigrate. Had the US allowed the fleeing Jews entry then the Holocaust would not have happened.

It has to be acknowledged that the US had its own economic problems in the thirties, but it went from a country that was the refuge of people fleeing European persecution for over four hundred years to a country that could have saved millions of lives but instead turned their backs.

One needs to answer this question carefully, as there are multiple issues it raises.

Firstly, on the subject as to whether the US could have prevented Nazi Germany from initiating the systematic extermination of Jews (and certain other ethnic groups) during WW2, the answer there is an unequivocal NO. As the Holocaust did not actually start until well after the 1939 beginning of WW2, and it was carried out in areas that the Nazis had under military control, there was no military, political, or other method that the United States (or any other nation for that matter) could have prevented the Nazis from initiating their extermination attempts.

A related note is whether or not the US could have reduced the actual number of victims that the Nazis managed to kill in the Holocaust, once the US became aware that the Holocaust was happening. Here, the answer is that YES, the United States and other nations could certainly have taken some actions which would have reduced the numbers which the Nazis could kill. The Western Allies first became aware that something sinister was happening around late 1942, and, by late 1943, there was ample evidence that the Nazis were enacting some sort of targeted killing program. Unfortunately, by mid-1943, at least 40% of all Holocaust victims had been already killed. There were several options available to the Western Allies, which would have had various effects on the Nazis ability to round up and then transport Jews to the death camps:

• Most simply, the Allies could have made it a major Propaganda event, and spent a considerable amount of radio and pamphletting effort into informing the Jews (and other targeted ethnic groups) as to what the Nazis were planning. This likely would have induced many Jews to flee or fight when the Nazis came to round them up - instead, most believed the lies that Nazis told them (and local governments) about the deportations simply being relocation, rather than train trips to a gas chamber. There's no way to accurately estimate how effective this would have been, but a reasonable guess would have to be at least 10%, and possibly as much as 25% of those slaughtered could either have evaded or resisted.
• Specific airstrikes targeting the rail infrastructure used to move Jews from their countries of origin to the death camps. This would be difficult, as aerial bombing accuracy was poor, and it would have required a non-trivial re-allocation of bombers from military targets to the transportation system. Best guess here is that if a serious effort was made to disrupt the train transport of victims, maybe another 10-15% could have been saved (remember, most of the victims were from areas far beyond Allied bomber's range, as were the primary death camps).
• Bomb any identified death camp - Auschwitz being the major target here. Unfortunately, solid identification of a camp as a death camp was incredibly difficult, and, with the death camps being in Poland and far Western Russia, Allied bombers could only have reached them starting in early to mid-1944. It's unlikely that this strategy would have had much effect at all.
• Direct the SOE and the various Resistance groups to attack the rail transport lines more effectively, and to spread the word about the true purpose of the Nazi "deportations". Probably the most likely possibility, this could have seriously disrupted deportations from any Western European country, but almost certainly would have had no effect on deportations from Eastern European ones. The vast majority of Jews killed were from Eastern European countries, so the overall impact here would have been small - maybe 10% or so saved.
• Finally, applying diplomatic pressure to various governments (other than Nazi Germany) to get them to avoid cooperating with Nazi officials when rounding up the local Jewish population. There's no way to even guess at how effective this might have been.

Note that there were many reasons NOT to do any of the aforementioned - some reasons very valid, others not so much (they ranged from concerns over redirection of critically-needed military resources to non-military ends, to doubt that the Holocaust was actually happening in any large factor, to problems with coordinating SOE actions, to not wanting to reveal classified intelligence sources, to basic apathy). The sad fact is that, assuming a concentrated effort by the Allies to stop the Holocaust, I'd estimate no more than half (at the very, very, very best) of those killed in from late 1943 to 1945 could have been saved. This amounts to no more than 30% of the total (or about 2 million out of 6) being saved, in a truly best-case (and highly unlikely) scenario.

Finally, the issue of whether or not a more "open-door" policy of Immigration for Jews to the United States would have reduced the Holocaust's body count before the Holocaust began. Overall, given that the vast majority (over 85%) of Jews killed during the Holocaust were Eastern European or Russian, poorer, and less educated than their Western European (including German) Jewish compatriots, the likelihood of more than a more few of these people being willing and able to immigrate is slight. Given that the large majority of any people are unlikely to uproot themselves and move to Another Country unless there is a truly obvious immediate danger, means that virtually no Eastern European Jews would have moved to the US, and likely only a slightly larger percentage from Western European countries. At the very best, assuming a completely open US immigration policy, and a concerted effort by the US Jewish organizations to encourage and help immigration (none of which was forthcoming in any shape), a good estimate would have been a 50% increase in US Jewish immigration during the 1930s. Which means, that maybe a few 10s of thousands could have been moved out of Hitler's grasp. Which translates into an even fewer 10s of thousands being spared the Holocaust. Figure 30-40,000 would have been saved (or, less than 0.7 % ). That's insignificant enough to discount that any change in US immigration policy would have been meaningful.

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Between 1933 and 1941 the US admitted about 250,000 refugees from Nazi Germany (and from 1938 onwards also from Austria). Obviously, some of these refugees were not Jews, but a 50% higherl number of refugees would not have been insignifcant. As for willingess to migrate and so on, there were plenty of German and Austrian Jews clamouring for admission to the US. (See the Voyage of the St Louis, for example).

The Allies (not just the U.S.) were reasonably well informed about what was going on (though not about all the details) and could have done much more. In particular, they could have:

• Examined and tried to check early reports from the Polish resistance about the systematic extermination of the Jews, instead of assuming that the reports were 'Bolshevist propaganda', 'exaggerated' and so on.
• Announced that they knew what the Nazis were doing and made it very clear that anyone convicted of committing or helping to commit genocide faced the death sentence.
• Told resistance groups to give a very high priority to trying to stop the transport of prisoners to death camps. (There is only one (!) instance on record - in Belgium by the Belgian Resistance - of a train to Auschwitz being stopped by resistance fighters and the prisoners freed, albeit during a gunfight with the SS).
• Once the exact location and function of Auschwitz I and II was known (June 1944), they could tried to bomb the railways in the area. After all, the USAAF bombed Auschwitz III, not because it was a death camp, but because it was making various chemicals. So arguments like 'it was too deep inside German-held territory to be bombed' are untrue.

Obviously, none of this would have prevented or stopped the Holocaust, but it might have have reduced the death toll.

See the links.

Answer 2

Yes something like that could happen and it already did.( not to the extreme level of Hitlers Germany .) Look at the Americans treatment of the native Americans. They took their land and gave it away! Overall due to horrible conditions in the past and extreme use of force against native Americans we've indirectly killed approximately 10million native Americans. Read a book on the "trail of tears" it is an example of how this happened. Nowadays the conditions are much better. This does not mean Americans are evil because it was 1.5 centuries ago and it wasn't a deliberate attempt but there were many unfairly imposed hardships that the native Americans had to suffer.

not sure how this works but I wanted to put my 2 cents in here. Yes, the makings of another Holocaust type cleansing is well on its way in the US. It is happening with Christians. I am a Christian myself so I want to put in a caveat that I am not bashing the Bible, on the contrary, we all need to look toward The Bible to see how to behave. There is a growing sect of Christianity that is in the Calvanism belief system and one cannot readily identify if a church asribes to this belief unless you ask very specific questions. The belief is that God chooses people to be his own and if a person is not chosen, it can be detected by how ones life is going. These "christians" are looking at people ongoing, judging them and then deciding whether or not they are saved or "chosen by God". If a person is determined to not be "chosen" then the belief is that they will burn in hell when they die. Therefore, the person's goods, their help, their jobs and anything they own including their reputation is all up for grabs. The belief is a kind of pride and arrogance that I have not seen exibited by anyone but when the holocaust began. If this "sect" of Christianity takes ahold in different areas of our society, there will be euthanasia, and ongoing persecution of those determined to not be "chosen" The chosen are a sort of Arian group who are by definition successful and their life is going well. I have experienced this in a school setting in prayer groups where the prayer group is made up of people with this Calvanistic belief and they actively push people out by gossiping and persecuting those they don't think are chosen by God. They are very self righteous and sadly are very very mislead. Unknowingly, they are training their children to avoid people they feel are "weak" and if they have been victimized in their life, that is a sign that they are "not chosen" Those peoples children who are being trained up to be the same way will be the future of the second "Holocaust".

Answer 3

Yes, the United Nations and others would prevent it.

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No, something similar happened in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and the rest of the world did nothing until it was too late. As for the United Nations, it is toothless.

Answer 4

No one knew that the Holocaust would happen, not even those in charge of it.