Richard Breitman & Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("Unlike other authors, we examine FDR's decision-making as president from the perspective of his life experiences and full political career." "Roosevelt's handling of the crisis of European Jewry may offer the best opportunity to understand the political dynamics of American responses to persecution and genocide in foreign lands. FDR was a man of faith. He recognized both moral issues across the globe and the practical concerns of governing a great nation. He served in office more than four years longer than any other president and was the only leader to confront both an economic depression and a major war on his watch. Not just Americans, but suffering peoples across the world looked to FDR for inspiration and relief from their hardships. How he responded, and why, reveal much about the strengths and limitations of the American presidency." "The story of FDR and the Jews is ultimately a tragic one that transcends the achievements and failures of any one leader. Even if FDR had been more willing to override domestic opposition and twist arms abroad, he could not have stopped the Nazis' mass murder of some six million Jews. For Hitler and his followers, the annihilation of Jews was not a diversion from the war effort, but integral to its purpose. For America and Britain, the rescue of Jews, even if piratical, was ultimately subordinate to the overriding priorities of total war and unconditional surrender of the enemy. 'Action expresses priorities,' Mahatma Gandhi said while engaged in a freedom struggle of his own." Id. at 6-7. Also, see David Oshinsky, "... Congress Disposes," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/7/2013.).
Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) ("Hundreds of thousands of German women went to the Nazi East--that is, to Poland and the western territories of what was for many years the USSR, including today's Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia--and were indeed integral parts of Hitler's machinery of destruction." "One of these women was Erna Petri. [] Among the records were the interrogations and courtroom proceedings in a case against Erna and her husband, Horst Petri, who were both convicted of shooting Jews on their private estate in Nazi-occupied Poland. In credible detail Erna Petri described the half-naked Jewish boys who whimpered as she drew her pistol. When pressed by the interrogator as to how she, a mother, could murder these children, Petri referred to the anti-Semitism of the regime and her own desire to prove herself to the men. Her misdeeds were not those of a social renegade. To me, she looked like the embodiment of the Nazi regime." Id. at 3-4.).
Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over WorldWar II, 1939-1941 (New York: Random House, 2013) (See Jacob Heilbrunn, "War Torn," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/28/2013.).
