Major vectors of cooperation of the War Refugee Board with non-governmental organizations (1944 – 1945)

The article analyzes one of the areas of the operational work of the War Refugee Board, an American governmental agency that emerged at the end of the World War II. The purpose of the new US government structure was to plan and implement relief and rescue actions for Jews and Nazi minorities persecuted in wartime. This organization appeared in early 1944 due to the efforts of the Secretary to the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. and with the support of President Franklin Roosevelt. The WRB complemented the international organizations system on refugees, the active participant of which was the US government. The article shows that during the sixteen months of its existence the researched governmental structure was able to carry out specific tasks in the territory of the neutral and occupied countries as it was subordinated exclusively by the American administration. On the other hand, the WRB appeared more flexible in its operational activities in comparison with International institutions and entities (the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation initiative) which needed overall consensus in decision-making process. It is revealed that the important part of the work of the War Refugee Board was to cooperate with public non-governmental organizations. The range of American Jewish and Christian structures that established close partnership with the War Refugee Board has been identified. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of the main directions of bilateral cooperation. An important element in the implementation of US aid policy in the European armed forces was the involvement of a number of financial resources licensed by the US Department of Defense, of non-governmental organizations, mainly Jewish. It was reached that financial and diplomatic work in the neutral countries of Europe was an indispensable part of the work of the WRB, which was augmented by the cooperation with agents of non-governmental organizations on the occupied territories.

Rousing a Response: When the United States Changes Policy toward Mass Killing

When do U.S. presidents change policy to respond with increased intensity to mass killings of civilians in other countries? The twentieth century witnessed a series of state-sponsored mass killings in a variety of regions around the world. Conventional arguments suggest that although the United States has the capability of responding to such atrocities, it often fails to do so because of a lack of political will for action. Historical evidence suggests, however, that although the modal response of the United States is inaction, at times U.S. presidents reverse course to respond more forcefully to mass killings. Three factors explain when and why these policy shifts happen: the level at which dissent occurs within the U.S. government, the degree of congressional pressure for policy change, and the extent to which the case of mass killing poses a political liability for the president. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of the War Refugee Board in 1944 during the Holocaust supports this theory.

Propaganda Versus Genocide: The United States War Refugee Board and the Hungarian Holocaust

In 1944 the Second World War had been raging for more than four long years, with the death toll among soldiers and civilians alike climbing. European Jews constituted a special group of the victims, a fact that leaders of the Allied powers failed to acknowledge. In January 1944 a major revision of previous government policy was brought about in the United States with the establishment of the War Refugee Board in Washington, promising an American commitment to the rescue of European war refugees, including Jews. In March of the same year the situation for Jewish inhabitants in Hungary turned dire as German forces occupied the country. For lack of any other instantly applicable way to influence Hungarian developments, leaders of the new American War Refugee Board decided to launch a propaganda campaign to fight the Nazis and their accomplices. This paper will examine the motivations of American policy makers in focusing on political propaganda measures during the first phase of the Hungarian Holocaust (March–July 1944), and it will describe the logic and workings of the campaign as a means to save Hungary’s Jewry in the last full year of the Second World War.